DebateGate

"Why don't we go stand in the corner and stomp our feet like an 8-year-old?"

-- John Edwards, quoted by the Orlando Sentinel, chastising Senate Democratic leaders for their non-binding resolution opposing the troop build-up.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/01/19/quote_of_the_day.html

BLAME AMERICA FIRST: Check out this bogus Associated Press story. Key bit:


The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.


Er, no. The truth is as close as this entry from the not especially Bush-friendly Wikipedia:


On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[40] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[41] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.


Hmm. No Bush Administration rejection there. There is this bit, later on:


The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world's second largest emitter of carbon dioxide[42]). . . . Despite its refusal to submit the protocol to Congress for ratification, the Bush Administration has taken some actions towards mitigation of climate change.


Read the whole thing, and note: The United States was never bound by Kyoto, and it was not "rejected" by the Bush Administration. Once again, a webpage by unpaid amateurs is more accurate and nuanced than an effort by the Associated Press. Anyone can make a mistake, but the AP's seem to lean heavily in an anti-Bush direction. (Thanks to reader Ronald Vogt for the AP story link.)

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll emails: "No wonder AP is trying to tie Kyoto in with Bush—because then the circle would be complete."

MORE: Greg Barto emails: "This is another example of why the AP can't keep relying on environmentalist stringers!" It was vouched for by Asst. Secretary of State Jamil Hussein . . . .

Bada bing


Embedded links here:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/2007/01/post_1734.php

Lessons of 1864
By Barry Casselman

It is almost the perfect contrarian moment in the Iraq War. Emboldened by the 2006 mid-term elections, the Democrats are openly calling for withdrawal, and opposing the president's call for more troops. The media continue their drumbeat that the war was wrong, unwinnable, and that the nation was deceived into it. Some Republican supporters of the president are now abandoning him, particularly many of those who face re-election in 2008. The president's favorable numbers are now below 30%. Conventional wisdom has thrown in the towel.

Despite some valid accounts of improvements in sectors and infrastructure, our casualties and those of Iraqi civilians continue unabated, and any sense of a turnaround eludes our forces.

The decisive congressional elections have returned power on Capitol Hill to the Democrats. Clearly, the American voters are fatigued by our apparent defeats, although our casualties, grievous as they are, remain nonetheless much smaller than in our previous major war conflicts.

As soon as the exit polls were in, in fact, most of the mainstream media declared the War over, and once they were sworn in, the Democratic leadership repeated their demands for withdrawal, labelling the president's new direction as "escalation."

Another similar circumstance, already cited by other observers, was the period of American history in the spring and summer of 1864. A "country bumpkin" president had taken the nation into a civil war, and in spite of the victory at Gettysburg the year before, the conflict had bogged down while the brilliant Confederate commander Robert E. Lee eluded his nothern counterparts. There were draft riots in New York City, and open calls to end the war. The Union commander, General McClellan, had been fired by President Lincoln, and was now the Democratic nominee for president, running as the "peace" candidate and bitterly criticising his old commander-in-chief. Lincoln himself, at this time, thought McLellan would win in November. Desperately, he took command of the war, fired many other generals, and prepared for the worst.

There is an uncanny similarity here in the two presidents' desperate circumstances. Call it luck, call it fate, call it stubborn perserverence, Lincoln found success with Grant and Sherman, and in only a few months the civil war turned decisively to the North. Only weeks after that, Lincoln was hailed as a hero, and after he was assassinated, universally mourned in the North, eulogized as a great leader, and as time moves by, is clearly recalled as our greatest and most eloquent president. So much for the dumb, awkward country bumpkin.

Recently, after the death of former President Gerald Ford, former President Bill Clinton made the comment that, in regard to Mr. Ford's pardon of former President Nixon, "it was easy for us to criticize (Ford) because we were caught up in the moment. (Ford) was not caught up in the moment, and (he) was right." Mr. Clinton knows, as the rest of us who have not served as president don't, that the Oval Office induces a certain deafening silence even as the whole country and world clamors noisily around it.

Mr. Bush has not taken an oath to Mrs. Pelosi, nor to Mr. Boehner. He has not taken an oath to The New York Times, nor to The Washington Times. He has not even taken an oath to Molly Ivins, nor to a mere prairie editor such as myself. He has taken an oath "to preseve, protect and defend the United States of America." He was re-elected decisively in 2004. Those who opposed him then, and those who disagree with him now, have every right to criticise him and second-guess him. I myself have consistently taken issue with his communicating about the war to the American people (he's neither a Lincoln nor a Ford), the mistakes in our performance in Iraq, and with those he hired to conduct the war, even as I supported his overall vision. But he is still the commander-in-chief, and doing what he feels will fulfill his oath.

Before he was president, Mr. Lincoln famously observed, after it became obvious that the Democratic party, the party of Jefferson, would do nothing to stop the growth of slavery, that the two parties had switched "coats" (identities). The Republican party, advocating halting slavery, was now the party of Jefferson, he said, and the Democratic party, placating the slave states, was now the party of Hamilton. Mr. Bush is criticized for his advocacy of allowing democracy to be introduced where totalitarianism now flourishes. Many of his Democratic opponents say that this is naive, and that democracy can only flourish in the elite industrialized world. Perhaps the two parties have switched "coats" again.

I do not know if Mr. Bush's policy of adding troops is the right one. It does make sense, yet it may, as his critics say, fail. But I do know that he is the only one currently with the responsibility to preserve, protect and defend the nation as commander-in-chief. The election is over. All of us, including most of Mr. Bush's harshest critics, need now to look at the national long-term interests, and not be caught up in the moment.

Today's apparent defeats can turn quickly into astonishing and unexpected victories.

Barry Casselman writes about national politics for Preludium News Service.
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/nothing_succeeds.html at January 13, 2007 - 08:04:13 PM CST

I’m still writing The Siege of Ain Ebel. And Iraq is back in the news.

I don’t have anything brilliant, original, or even interesting to say about the Bush’s Administration’s controversial “surge” in and around Baghdad. I am, however, reading a brilliant, original, and interesting book.

Fouad Ajami made himself slightly famous when he published The Dream Palace of the Arabs. (His older book Beirut: City of Regrets is also quite excellent.)

His newest book, The Foreigner's Gift, was released last summer by the Free Press. It is about, as he puts it, the Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq.

Ajami is a Shia from South Lebanon, and he is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He is of and from the Arab world. He is also an American. Lebanon acts as a sort of bridge between the Eastern world and the West. So does Fouad Ajami. He writes as both an insider and an outsider, so to speak. Or, perhaps I should say, he writes from inside America and from inside the Arab world simultaneously. He sees things in Iraq that most Americans do not and cannot, and he dedicates an entire chapter to what he calls “The Liberator’s Bewilderment.”

I have only read the first third or so of this book. So rather than vouch for it per se, I will publish an excerpt from the beginning. You can decide if you would like to read the rest.
Those nineteen young Arabs who assaulted America on the morning of 9/11 had come into their own after the disappointments of modern Arab history. They were not exactly traditional men: they were the issue, the children, of disappointment and of the tearing asunder of modern Arab history. They were city people, newly urbanized, half educated. They had filled the faith with their anxieties and a belligerent piety. They hated the West but were drawn to its magnetic force and felt the power of its attraction; they sharpened their "tradition," but it could no longer contain their lives or truly answer their needs. I had set out to write a long narrative of these pitiless young men -- and the culture that had given rise to them. But the Iraq war, "embedded" in this cruel history, was to overtake the writing I was doing.
A war fated and "written," maktoob, as the Arabs would say, this Iraq war turned out to be. For the full length of a decade, in the 1990s, the anti-American subversion -- and the incitement feeding it -- knew no respite. Appeasement had not worked. The "moderns," with Bill Clinton as their standard-bearer, had been sure we would be delivered by the marketplace and the spread of the World Wide Web. History had mocked them, and us all. In Kabul, and then in Baghdad, America had taken up sword against these troubles.

"The justice of a cause is not a promise of its success," Leon Wieseltier wrote in the pages of The New Republic, in a reassessment of the Iraq war. For growing numbers of Americans, the prospects for "success" in Iraq look uncertain at best. Before success, though, some words about the justice of this war. Let me be forthright about the view that runs through these pages. For me this was a legitimate and, at the beginning, a popular war that issued out of a deep American frustration with the "road rage" of the Arab world and with the culture of terrorism that had put down roots in Arab lands. It was not an isolated band of misguided young men who came America's way on 9/11. They emerged out of the Arab world's dominant culture and malignancies. There were the financiers who subsidized the terrorism. There were the intellectuals who winked at the terrorism and justified it. There were the preachers -- from Arabia to Amsterdam and Finsbury Park -- who gave it religious sanction and cover. And there were the Arab rulers whose authoritarian orders produced the terrorism and who looked away from it so long as it targeted foreign shores.

Afghanistan was the setting for the first battle against Arab radicalism. That desperate, impoverished land had been hijacked, rented if you will, by the Arab jihadists and their masters and financiers. Iraq followed: America wanted to get closer to the source of the troubles in the Arab world. It wasn't democracy that was at stake in Iraq. It was something more limited but important and achievable in its own way: a state less lethal to its own people and to the lands and peoples around it. Iraq's political culture had been poisoned by a crude theory of race and a racialist Arabism that had wrecked and unsettled Arab and Muslim life in the 1980s and 1990s. The Tikriti rulers had ignited a Sunni-Shia war within and over Islam. They had given Arabs a cruel view of history -- iron and fire and bigotry. They had, for all practical purposes, cut off the Arab world from the possibility of a decent, modern life.

It is easy to say that the expedition in Iraq is the product of American innocence. And it is easy to see that the American regent, L. Paul Bremer, didn't find his way to the deep recesses of Iraqi culture. Sure enough, it has proven virtually impossible to convince the people of Fallujah to take to more peaceful ways. It is painfully obvious that at the Abu Ghraib prison some of America's soldiers and military police and reservists broke the codes of war and of military justice. But there can be no doubting the nobility of the effort, for Abu Ghraib isn't the U.S. war. With support for the war hanging in the balance, Abu Ghraib has been an unmitigated disaster. But for all the terribleness of Abu Ghraib and its stain, this war has not been some "rogue operation" willed by the White House and by the Department of Defense. It isn't Paul Wolfowitz's war. It has been a war waged with congressional authorization and fought in the shadow of a terrible calamity visited upon America on 9/11. Sure enough, the United States didn't have the support of Kofi Annan or of Jacques Chirac. But Americans can be forgiven a touch of raw pride: the American rescue of Bosnia, in 1995, didn't have the approval of Boutros Boutros-Ghali (or of the head of his peacekeeping operations at the time, the same Kofi Annan) or of François Mitterrand either.

My sense of Iraq, and of the U.S. expedition, is indelibly marked by the images and thoughts that came to me on six trips that I made to that country in the aftermath of the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein. A sense of America's power alternated with thoughts of its solitude and isolation in an alien world. The armies and machines -- and earnestness -- of a great foreign power against the background of a big, impenetrable region: America could awe the people of the Arab-Muslim world, and that region could outwit and outwait American power. The foreign power could repair the infrastructure of Iraq, and the insurgents could wreck it. America could "stand up" and train civil defense and police units, and they could disappear just when needed. In its desire to redeem its work, America could entertain for Iraqis hopes of a decent political culture, and the enemies of this project could fall back on a bigotry sharpened for combat and intolerance. Beyond the prison of the old despotism, the Iraqis have found the hazards and uncertainties -- and promise -- of freedom. An old order of dominion and primacy was shattered in Iraq. The rage against this American war, in Iraq itself and in the wider Arab world, was the anger of a culture that America had given power to the Shia stepchildren of the Arab world -- and to the Kurds. This proud sense of violation stretched from the embittered towns of the Sunni Triangle in western Iraq to the chat rooms of Arabia and to jihadists as far away from Iraq as North Africa and the Muslim enclaves of Western Europe.

In the way of people familiar with modern canons of expression -- of things that can and cannot be said -- the Arab elites were not about to own up in public to the real source of their animus toward this American project. The great Arab silence that greeted the terrors inflicted on Iraq by the brigades of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi gave away the wider Arab unease with the rise of the Shia in Iraq. For nearly three years, that Jordanian-born terrorist brought death and ruin to Iraq. There was barely concealed admiration for him in his native land and in Arab countries beyond. Jordan, in particular, showed remarkable sympathy for deeds of terror masquerading as Islamic acts. In one Pew survey, in the summer of 2005, 57 percent of Jordanians expressed support for suicide bombings and attacks on civilians. It was only when the chickens came home to roost and Zarqawi's pitiless warriors struck three hotels in Amman on November 9, 2005, killing sixty people, that Jordanians drew back in horror. In one survey, conducted a week after these attacks by a public opinion firm, Ipsos Jordan, 94 percent of the people surveyed now said that Al Qaeda's activities were detrimental to the interests of Arabs and Muslims; nearly three out of four Jordanians said that they had not expected "at all" such terrorist attacks in Jordan. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's own tribe now disowned him and broke ties with him. He had "shamed" them at home and placed in jeopardy their access to the state and its patronage. But even as they mourned their loss, the old habits persisted. "Zionist terror in Palestine = American terror in Iraq = Terror in Amman," read a banner held aloft by the leaders of the Engineers' Syndicate of Jordan who had come together to protest the hotel bombings. A country with this kind of political culture is in need of repair; the bureaucratic-military elite who run this realm have their work cut out for them. The Iraqi Shia were staking a claim to their country in the face of a stubborn Arab refusal to admit the sectarian bias at the heart of modern Arab life.

It would have been heady and right had Iraqis brought about their own liberty, had they demolished the prisons and the statues on their own. And it would have been easier and more comforting had America not redeemed their liberty with such heartbreaking American losses. There might have been greater American support for the war had the Iraqis not been too proud to admit that they needed the stranger's gift and had the United States come to a decent relationship with them. But the harvest of the war has been what it has been. In Kurdistan, Anglo-American power has provided protection to a people who have made good use of this new order. There is no excessive or contrived religious zeal in Kurdistan, and the nationalism that blows there seems free of chauvinism and delirium. There's a fight for the city of Kirkuk, where the Kurds will have to show greater restraint in the face of competing claims by the Turkomans, and by the Arabs who were pushed into Kirkuk by the old regime. But on balance Kurdistan shows that terrible histories can be remade. In the rest of the country, America rolled history's dice. There is a view that sees Shia theocracy stalking this new Iraq, but this view, as these pages will make clear, is not mine. Iraq may not provide the Pax Americana with a base of power in the Persian Gulf that some architects and proponents of the war hoped for. America can live without that strategic gain. It is the Iraqis who will need the saving graces of moderate politics.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001360.html

New Attitude
The presidential gloves are off.

By Fred Thompson

Editor's note: Click here for audio.

In his address last night much of what the president said had been anticipated by the media — the additional troops, the understanding that he has with the Maliki government as to their responsibilities and so forth. But I was struck by a couple of things he said that indicated not just a change in tactics but a whole new attitude with regard to what's necessary. He’s taking the gloves off.
In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods — and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

And, contrary to the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, instead of talking to Iran and Syria the president is taking them on too.

Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops…we will disrupt the attacks on our forces, we will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advance weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

I'll bet that a lot of folks who support the president on this are asking themselves "what if we'd taken care of business this way two years ago?"

 â€” Fred Thompson is an actor and former United States senator from Tennessee.

 http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2UzOTBlODFjYzA3Mjk1NDJlMDczYTQ3MDBkN2FjZGQ=

January 2, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Second Thoughts on Gays in the Military
By JOHN M. SHALIKASHVILI
Steilacoom, Wash.

TWO weeks ago, President Bush called for a long-term plan to increase the size of the armed forces. As our leaders consider various options for carrying out Mr. Bush’s vision, one issue likely to generate fierce debate is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the policy that bars openly gay service members from the military. Indeed, leaders in the new Congress are planning to re-introduce a bill to repeal the policy next year.

As was the case in 1993 — the last time the American people thoroughly debated the question of whether openly gay men and lesbians should serve in the military — the issue will give rise to passionate feelings on both sides. The debate must be conducted with sensitivity, but it must also consider the evidence that has emerged over the last 14 years.

When I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I supported the current policy because I believed that implementing a change in the rules at that time would have been too burdensome for our troops and commanders. I still believe that to have been true. The concern among many in the military was that given the longstanding view that homosexuality was incompatible with service, letting people who were openly gay serve would lower morale, harm recruitment and undermine unit cohesion.

In the early 1990s, large numbers of military personnel were opposed to letting openly gay men and lesbians serve. President Bill Clinton, who promised to lift the ban during his campaign, was overwhelmed by the strength of the opposition, which threatened to overturn any executive action he might take. The compromise that came to be known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” was thus a useful speed bump that allowed temperatures to cool for a period of time while the culture continued to evolve.

The question before us now is whether enough time has gone by to give this policy serious reconsideration. Much evidence suggests that it has.

Last year I held a number of meetings with gay soldiers and marines, including some with combat experience in Iraq, and an openly gay senior sailor who was serving effectively as a member of a nuclear submarine crew. These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.

This perception is supported by a new Zogby poll of more than 500 service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, three quarters of whom said they were comfortable interacting with gay people. And 24 foreign nations, including Israel, Britain and other allies in the fight against terrorism, let gays serve openly, with none reporting morale or recruitment problems.

I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces. Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.

But if America is ready for a military policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, the timing of the change should be carefully considered. As the 110th Congress opens for business, some of its most urgent priorities, like developing a more effective strategy in Iraq, share widespread support that spans political affiliations. Addressing such issues could help heal the divisions that cleave our country. Fighting early in this Congress to lift the ban on openly gay service members is not likely to add to that healing, and it risks alienating people whose support is needed to get this country on the right track.

By taking a measured, prudent approach to change, political and military leaders can focus on solving the nation’s most pressing problems while remaining genuinely open to the eventual and inevitable lifting of the ban. When that day comes, gay men and lesbians will no longer have to conceal who they are, and the military will no longer need to sacrifice those whose service it cannot afford to lose.

John M. Shalikashvili, a retired army general, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/opinion/02shalikashvili.html?ei=5090&en=9bed174af632cb6e&ex=1325394000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

January 2, 2007
The Energy Challenge
Power-Sipping Bulbs Get Backing From Wal-Mart
By MICHAEL BARBARO
As a way to cut energy use, it could not be simpler. Unscrew a light bulb that uses a lot of electricity and replace it with one that uses much less.

While it sounds like a promising idea, it turns out that the long-lasting, swirl-shaped light bulbs known as compact fluorescent lamps are to the nation’s energy problem what vegetables are to its obesity epidemic: a near perfect answer, if only Americans could be persuaded to swallow them.

But now Wal-Mart Stores, the giant discount retailer, is determined to push them into at least 100 million homes. And its ambitions extend even further, spurred by a sweeping commitment from its chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., to reduce energy use across the country, a move that could also improve Wal-Mart’s appeal to the more affluent consumers the chain must win over to keep growing in the United States.

“The environment,” Mr. Scott said, “is begging for the Wal-Mart business model.”

It is the environmental movement’s dream: America’s biggest company, legendary for its salesmanship and influence with suppliers, encouraging 200 million shoppers to save energy.

For all its power in retailing, though, Wal-Mart is meeting plenty of resistance — from light-bulb makers, competitors and consumers. To help turn the tide, it is even reaching out to unlikely partners like Google, Home Depot and Hollywood.

A compact fluorescent has clear advantages over the widely used incandescent light — it uses 75 percent less electricity, lasts 10 times longer, produces 450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants and saves consumers $30 over the life of each bulb. But it is eight times as expensive as a traditional bulb, gives off a harsher light and has a peculiar appearance.

As a result, the bulbs have languished on store shelves for a quarter century; only 6 percent of households use the bulbs today.

Which is what makes Wal-Mart’s goal so wildly ambitious. If it succeeds in selling 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs a year by 2008, total sales of the bulbs in the United States would increase by 50 percent, saving Americans $3 billion in electricity costs and avoiding the need to build additional power plants for the equivalent of 450,000 new homes.

That would send shockwaves — some intended, others not — across the lighting industry. Because compact fluorescent bulbs last up to eight years, giant manufacturers, like General Electric and Osram Sylvania, would sell far fewer lights. Because the bulbs are made in Asia, some American manufacturing jobs could be lost. And because the bulbs contain mercury, there is a risk of pollution when millions of consumers throw them away.

Michael B. Petras, vice president of lighting at G.E., concedes that “the economics are better with incandescent bulbs.”

All that has only spurred Wal-Mart to redouble its efforts — and, in typical fashion, it is asking those who may be hurt by the change to help achieve it.

During an extraordinary meeting in Las Vegas in early October, competing bulb makers, academics, environmentalists and government officials met to ponder, at times uncomfortably, how Wal-Mart could sell more of the fluorescent lights.

The proposals discussed at what Wal-Mart dubbed the “light bulb summit” ranged from the practical (advertise the bulbs on the back of a Coke 12-pack) to the quixotic (create a tax on incandescent bulbs to make them more expensive).

Selling 100 million bulbs “is not a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination,” Stephen Goldmacher, an executive at Royal Philips, the Dutch company that is one of the world’s largest light-bulb makers, told the group. “If this were easy, it would have happened already.”

The attendees did not need to look far for evidence. Wal-Mart had asked the owners of the Mirage Hotel and Casino, where the conference was held, to commit to using the energy saving bulbs in its guest rooms in time for the meeting. The hotel politely declined.

It is not alone. Compact fluorescent bulbs, introduced in the United States with much fanfare in 1979 by Philips just as the nation’s second energy crisis of the decade was getting under way, have never captured the public imagination.

The new bulbs — lighted by sparking an efficient chemical reaction, rather than heating a metal filament — were ungainly, took several seconds to light up and often did not fit into traditional light fixtures.

Since then, refinements have made them far more convenient to use, reducing their size and price as well. But Wal-Mart sold only 40 million in 2005, compared with about 350 million incandescent bulbs, according to people briefed on the figures.

And it would have stayed that way unless Wal-Mart decided to go green. More than a year ago, Mr. Scott, the company’s chief executive, began reaching out to some of environmental groups, telling them that Wal-Mart, long regarded as an environmental offender, wanted to become a leader on issues like fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Scott viewed such a move as a way to use Wal-Mart’s influence to improve the environment, cut costs and, of course, burnish the company’s bruised image. In September 2005, Mr. Scott and Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president for strategy and sustainability, drove 6,000 feet to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown University, and Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

At the summit, where scientists measure climate change 24 hours a day, the men discussed global warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and what Wal-Mart could do about them.

“You need to look at what is being sold on the shelf,” Mr. Hamburg recalled telling Mr. Scott over a dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. He began talking excitedly about compact fluorescent bulbs. “Very few products,” he said, “are such a clear winner” for consumers and the environment.

Soon after returning from the trip, Wal-Mart publicly embraced the bulbs with the zealotry of a convert. In meetings with suppliers, buyers for the chain laid out their plans: lower prices, expanding the shelf space dedicated to them and heavily promoting the technology.

Light-bulb manufacturers, who sell millions of incandescent lights at Wal-Mart, immediately expressed reservations. In a December 2005 meeting with executives from General Electric, Wal-Mart’s largest bulb supplier, “the message from G.E. was, ‘Don’t go too fast. We have all these plants that produce traditional bulbs,’ ” said one person involved with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations.

The response from the Wal-Mart buyer was blunt, this person said. “We are going there,” the buyer said. “You decide if you are coming with us.”

In the end, as Wal-Mart suppliers generally do, the bulb makers decided to come with the company.

Philips, despite protests from packaging designers, agreed to change the name of its compact fluorescent bulbs from “Marathon” to “energy saver.” To keep up with swelling orders from the chain, Osram Sylvania took to flying entire planeloads of compact fluorescent bulbs from Asia to the United States.

“When Wal-Mart sets its mind to something with a narrow objective like that, they are going to make it happen,” said Jim Jubb, vice president for consumer product sales at Sylvania.

At the same time that it pressured suppliers, Wal-Mart began testing ways to better market the bulbs. In the past, Wal-Mart had sold them on the bottom shelf of the lighting aisle, so that shoppers had to bend down. In tests that started in February, it gave the lights prime real estate at eye level. Sales soared.

To show customers how versatile the bulbs could be, Wal-Mart began displaying them inside the lamps and hanging fans for sale in its stores. Sales nudged up further.

To explain the benefits of the energy-efficient bulbs, the retailer placed an education display case at the end of the aisle, where it occupied four feet of valuable selling space — an extravagance at Wal-Mart. Sales climbed even higher.

In August 2006, the chain sold 3.94 million, nearly twice the 1.65 million it sold in August 2005, according to a person briefed on the numbers.

But to reach 100 million, Wal-Mart has to do much more — and that, executives concede, is where the biggest challenges rest. In the fall, the company began reaching out to competing retailers, Internet companies and even filmmakers.

The goal was to turn its sales campaign into a broader cultural movement.

One proposal, headed by Lawrence Bender, who produced Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is to create a Web site that would track sales of compact fluorescent bulbs at major retailers like Walgreen’s and Target. The result would be a real-time map, with data collected by a third party, showing how much Americans have saved by using the energy-efficient bulbs.

Mr. Ruben said such a map “helps consumers see this as something bigger than buying a bulb.”

At the same time, Google and Yahoo are in talks with Wal-Mart about how to use their search engines to promote the bulbs.

But Home Depot and Lowe’s balked at the idea of cooperating with their larger rival. “We don’t think we need an organization like that to sell more CFLs,” said Ron Jarvis, the vice president of environmental innovation at Home Depot, using the bulb’s industry nickname.

Then there is the mercury inside the bulbs, a problem Wal-Mart is working with the federal government and environmental groups to resolve, possibly by collecting the bulbs at its stores or off-site locations for recycling.

In the end, though, the biggest obstacle to overcome is America’s love affair with cheap, familiar-looking incandescent bulbs — a habit 130 years in the making.

For that to turn around, Wal-Mart will have to persuade its traditional consumers that it is worth paying a bit more at the checkout counter to save a significant amount money down the line, a seemingly simple task that few companies ever accomplish. It is particularly difficult at a retailer that has long emphasized “always low prices.”

“It has taken the American public forever to grasp this,” said Charlie Jerabek, the chief executive of Sylvania.

Helen Capone encapsulates the challenge. Ms. Capone, 68, said she “curses the energy company every month” because of her electricity bill and loves the five-year-old, trouble-free compact fluorescent bulb in her attic. But she won’t switch to the energy-saving bulbs in the rest of her house in Secaucus, N.J. “They are not the prettiest things in the world,” she said, surveying the bulbs at a Wal-Mart.

That has put Wal-Mart in the strange position of racing ahead of its customers and coaxing them, bulb by bulb, toward energy conservation.

“We start with the premise,” Mr. Ruben, “that customers make good choices.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/business/02bulb.html?ei=5090&en=78dfdd6856cb7590&ex=1325394000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print