I don’t want to get into the details of this right now, but there is a time I had an interesting phone conversation with former President George H.W. Bush. Some interested parties in Japan were approaching him to come to Japan after the conclusion of his presidential term and were offering him $2 million.

President Bush keeps mentioning Japan and his buddy-buddy relationship with Junichiro Koizumi at press conferences as well as the fact that Japan is a stunning example of evil foe turned into fast friend and robust democracy.

As regular readers of The Washington Note know, I have been fairly stunned by the growth in readership of this blog, and I work hard to interact with those who comment — both in private emails and in the public comments sections.

I must confess that in the past I too have signed a couple of letters promulgated by the Project for the New American Century. These particular letters focused on Hong Kong’s efforts to maintain as much of a democracy as possible despite quite anti-democratic landlords.

If one wanted to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt about his sermon-ish and idealistic inaugural address, then one of the first fronts of reform in U.S. foreign policy must be our relations with Uzbekistan and Islam Karimov, one of the true monstrous cretins at the helm of a government today.

Remember the EP-3 spy plane incident with China? That is the time I got to debate Richard Perle on Crossfire about U.S.-China relations. We were spying on China from the air, testing their radar systems as well — something all major nations do.

I ran across two very interesting articles today. The first is titled “As Green as a Neocon: Why Iraq Hawks are Driving Priuses.

I was just invited to John Ashcroft’s “Farewell Heritage Lecture” scheduled for Tuesday, 1 February, 11 a.m. at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Auditorium. The title of Ashcroft’s talk: True Faith and Allegiance.

Photo credit: USHMM Photo Archives Mark Leon Goldberg has just published a provocative and important snippet in the latest American Prospect, which I am reprinting in its entirety with permission.

This news just out of Iraq about the death of 31 Marines when a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter went down. No word yet as to whether this was an accident, or whether it was brought down by hostile fire.