I don’t really know what to say about Alberto Gonzalez’s op-ed and testimony preview. He seems to sense that he can’t just stand pat, so he’s kinda sorta apologizing for . . . well . . . well . . . well it’s not totally clear what he’s apologizing for. To be sorry, you need to be admitting to having done something wrong. But he’s certainly not owning up to the fact that there was a concerted campaign to get US Attorneys to gin up “voter fraud” cases, to prosecute Democrats on corruption charges, and to avoid prosecuting Republicans and that the purge was part of this campaign.

At this point, however, there’s so much circumstantial evidence that there was such a campaign and so much evidence of a coverup by the White House and so much evidence of people lying to congress in their testimony it’s very hard to see how Gonzalez can offer a”measured apology for his mistakes in the dismissal of eight United States attorneys.” Which mistakes? Apologize for what? Either the line has to be that US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and therefore it’s perfectly appropriate to fire them for refusing to serve naked partisan interests and there’s nothing to apologize for, or else he needs to own up to what happened.

Back in the day, the US security establishment had a clever idea. Back during Iyad Allawi’s administration we founded a CIA-funded “Iraqi” intelligence service under the authority of Muhammed Shahwani, a Sunni Arab ex-Baathist who, Allawi-style, had worked with the CIA in trying to foment anti-Saddam activities by members of the Iraqi security forces. After Allawi’s departure, Shahwani’s intelligence service marched on, in essence working for the American government rather than the Iraqi one. In response, it seems, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki founded a second intelligence service that would be loyal to him.

Spencer Ackerman remarks that the alternative intel service’s rise “will further entrench Shahwani. Waili serves as the manifestation of the fears that led the U.S. to install Shahwani in the first place: the return to a mukhabarat-style security structure, this one loyal to the Shiites instead of Saddam.”

Jason Horowitz writing for The New York Observer tells the tale of how the Democratic candidates’ “Iraq point-people meet monthly at a Washington restaurant for a lunch presided over by former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke.”

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It being the primary mission of this blog to cover the intersection of comic books and foreign policy, I can’t avoid linking to this issue of All-Star Comics from the 1940s in which the Justice Society of America explains the truth about Germany to one confused young American. The full issue comes to me via the comment thread to thsi post from John Holbo. It’s interesting that this is so much less plausible than the propaganda mounted on behalf of the Iraq War even though intervention into World War II seems eminently justifiable on grounds that don’t involve this sort of craziness.

Tyler Cowen on Maggie Mahar’s Money-Driven Medicine concludes: “Single-payer systems will improve matters only if you think the government will make wise decisions about the supply chain. Otherwise we are choking off supply indiscriminately by lowering prices to providers.” I try not to make overly grandiose claims about health care policy because I know full well that it’s a complicated subject about which others know more than I. But how bad an idea, really, is indiscriminate supply-choking?

The evidence suggests that health care suppliers are much better at selling people health care services than they are at improving health outcomes. Choke off supply indiscriminately and you can save a lot of money without making people’s health outcomes much worse. To generate a significant adverse health impact relative to the status quo, you’d have to be actively trying to produce a bad result. What’s more, if you don’t quite choke of supply indiscriminately, but instead isolate a relatively small number of services that are uncontroversiall cheap and effective (your proverbial vaccines, pre- and neo-natal care, cholesterol medications) things might actually get better, since poor people underconsume that stuff.

Meanwhile, the range of alternative things to spend money on that would do far more than health care to make people healthier is huge. Better inter-city trains and regional mass transit would mean less driving, which would be a huge life saver. It would also lead to somewhat more walking, which would be good for people. You could subsidize fresh produce, or gym memberships, or build more public pools and better parks to get people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Lead paint abatement. Virtually anything is a potentially more effective means of improving health outcomes than is health care. That’s how I see it, at least. I basically stole this idea from Philip Longman who has a somewhat more draconian take on the issue than I do.