On Deck Again: One of Democrats' Favorite Clinton Foes

Consider an internal e-mail to "Environmental Communications Professional" from Peter A. Rafle Jr., a communications director at the Wilderness Society, to his counterparts at a couple dozen organizations that form what's called the Green Group. The e-mail, titled "Lessons Learned," results from some apparent unhappiness with a Nov. 13 enviro news conference "resulting in less-than-ideal headlines."

Enviros need to understand they are "now viewed as relevant," Rafle said, something "we haven't been for more than a decade." That means smoother news conferences, coordinated messages and so on.

"As a result of the elections, the press is more interested than ever in what we have to say," he wrote, noting huge reporter turnout at media events. "We no longer have the luxury of hiding our quotes in the 10th paragraph of a newspaper article," he said.

So "message discipline" is critical, and "improvising or ad-libbing can cost us friends on the Hill and in the public," Rafle said. "The press will leap on the least hint of conflict or inconsistency," he predicted, "and the resulting story is unlikely to be helpful."

You can count on that.

Turks, Kurds Have Something in Common

Remember retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, the former NATO commander who was named a few months back as special envoy to try to work through Turkey's concerns that Kurdish separatists are being supported by their cousins in Iraqi Kurdistan?

The Turkish press has been reporting that there doesn't seem to be much happening from his efforts and that the Turks are unhappy.

A Loop Fan who was in Lebanon the week before last reports that Ralston was back in the news because the Kurds are also unhappy with him. Seems he's a member of the board of Lockheed Martin, which, it appears, is supplying nifty new combat jets to the Turks, who may well use them on the Kurds.