Lost Among The Angels

Alice Duncan, Lost Among The Angels (2006).

I just finished a perky little detective story by Alice Duncan, entitled Lost Among The Angels. It is set in 1920s Los Angeles and details the adventures of the young Mercedes Louise Allcutt. Mercy (as she would rather be called) is all of 21 and has just come west to live with her sister and brother-in-law, after growing up very rich and even more sheltered in Boston. Mercy finds life in L.A. to be a major adjustment, as for instance when her sister insists that she bobs her hair.

“Mother and Father would disown me if I had my hair bobbed,” I said.

“Mother and Father aren’t here.”

Even as she stated the obvious, my heart soared. I told it to stop doing that. Such behavior on its part was extremely unfilial and in very bad taste.

Mercy decides to find employment, not because she needs money, but because she wants to mingle with people in order that she might find grist for the novels she yearns to write. She goes to work for Ernie Templeton, a detective who is as worldly wise as Mercy is naive. They quickly develop strong feelings for one another, a fact which Mercy is reluctant to admit to herself. At one point in the story, after she has just survived a harrowing moment of danger, Ernie affectionately embraces her. Mercy provides narration:

Personally, I didn’t mind the embrace. It showed proper managerial anxiety over the welfare of a person in his employ.

Mercy’s continual incredulity at the modern world around her, coupled with her surprising effectiveness in spite of her naivete, makes this a very fun book. Hopefully it is just the first installment in a very long series.

Zarqawi and the U.S. Senate

Much has been made of a recent report by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence which claims there was no link between Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Senate report quotes an October 2005 CIA assessment which claims that before the war “the regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” (Reported on page 92 of the Senate report.)

President Bush’s critics have seized upon this as evidence that the President deliberately misled the American people back in 2003 concerning the threat that Iraq posed to the United States.

The problem with this criticism, however, is that it glosses over an inconvenient truth which is spelled out in the same Senate Report: The CIA was singing a different tune in 2002.

Back in September 2002, the CIA reported: “The presence of al-Qa’ida militants on Iraqi soil poses many questions. We are uncertain to what extent Baghdad is actively complicit in this use of its territory by al-Qa’ida operatives for safehaven and transit. Given the pervasive presence of Iraq’s security apparatus , it would be difficult for al-Qa’ida to maintain an active, long-term presence in Iraq without alerting the authorities or without at least their acquiescence.” (Emphasis added.)

This too is reported in the Senate report (on page 89) and clearly indicates that before the war the CIA did think that at the very least Saddam was “turning a blind eye” to Zarqawi.

The significance of this September 2002 CIA assessment is that it exonerates Mr. Bush from the charge that he deliberately misled the American people in 2003 about the relationship between Zarqawi and Hussein. Not surprisingly, the President’s critics have failed to admit this.

Something else which is getting very little play in the national media is the possibility that the Senate committee might very well be mistaken in its assessment that there was no relationship between the two thugs. According to a recent editorial from Investor’s Business Daily, the Senate report “suggests that, at least for the Democrats, Senate intelligence is an oxymoron.”

And on Thursday, the New York Sun reported that Barham Salih, a former Iraqi deputy prime minister, contradicted the Senate report with his assertion that “Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam’s regime.”