Petrified Truth

Quote of the Day

"Within an hour's journey of this castle lies a monument to the darkest impulses of man. Today, I saw Auschwitz, the sites of the Holocaust and Polish martyrdom; a place where evil found its willing servants and its innocent victims. One boy imprisoned there was branded with the number A70713. Returning to Auschwitz a lifetime later, Elie Wiesel recalled his first night in the camp: I asked myself, God, is this the end of your people, the end of mankind, the end of the world?

"With every murder, a world was ended. And the death camps still bear witness. They remind us that evil is real and must be called by name and must be opposed. All the good that has come to this continent -- all the progress, the prosperity, the peace -- came because beyond the barbed wire there were people willing to take up arms against evil.

"And history asks more than memory, because hatred and aggression and
murderous ambitions are still alive in the world. Having seen the works of evil firsthand on this continent, we must never lose the courage to oppose it everywhere."

- President George W. Bush, remarks to the people of Poland delivered at Wawel Royal Castle, Krakow, Poland

via The White House

Creep-o captured

Glad to see the creep Eric Robert Rudolph captured. Gratified to know that he was caught while dumpster-diving, not living large somewhere. Hopeful that it would give Fox News something else to talk about besides Laci Peterson's corpse.

Fox was tremendous during the Iraq campaign, but for me they are losing the peace.

Security breach

The U. of California should lose these contracts.

The federal government is threatening to take over security at a nuclear weapons lab after learning top managers were kept in the dark for weeks about a missing access badge that could open thousands of doors. Officials at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said Friday they have no evidence that anyone tried to use the badge, or a set of keys lost separately. But they acknowledged the loss was "fundamentally a management failure."

"We don't have any excuse for this," said lab Director Michael Anastasio. The incidents were more bad news for the University of California, which manages Livermore and the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico. Problems at Los Alamos led the government to announce that it will put the management contract for that lab up for bid when it expires in 2005, breaking UC's 60-year lock on the facility.

via AP and Mercury News

The real world

Israel's Ze'ev Schiff says that facing up to the truth is indispensable to success in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Just so. President Bush has shown more interest in facing reality than many past presidents. That's one of the things that drives the professional diplomats (and the nomenklatura in general) crazy about him. I just hope he and his people will follow through.

The failure of the Oslo agreements stems primarily from the flawed implementation and not from the inherent desire to reach an agreement between the two peoples. These flaws, which cropped up quickly along the way and were based on lies and covering up for these lies, led to the armed confrontation that began in September, 2000.

The Americans usually ignored the lies because for them the main thing was rapid progress, which was subsequently revealed to be a journey on shifting sands. If the system of lies and whitewashing continues after the "road map" - failure is assured. Even now there are negative signs of the perpetuation of this shoddy system when the Americans say to the breaking of a substantive promise by the Palestinians that the main thing is to move forward. If there is not immediate attention to substantive violations, once again we will find ourselves in the post-Oslo mine field.

Baathists taken down

This is a bit of good news from Bagdhad. Best aspect is that these holdouts were undoubtedly finked on by citizens. Our guys were glad to oblige.

American forces arrested 15 members of Saddam Hussein's banned Baath Party as they met Saturday, an American official advising Iraq's Interior Ministry said. The members of the group were arrested at the country's main police college, where they had been holding weekly meetings, Bernard Kerik, former New York City police chief, told reporters.

Kerik said a crowd of police officers standing outside the academy broke into applause as the party members were taken out in handcuffs. "Evidently they knew this was going on," Kerik said of the police officers. "I believe they were afraid to come forward."

The 15 people arrested included the dean of the college, five brigadier generals and one major general. Fourteen were arrested for engaging in an illegal activity, and one for resisting arrest. Kerik said no shots were fired during the arrests.

via AP and Fox News

Islamic terrorism - no!

Some encouraging words from a Big Guy in Saudi Arabia.

Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the imam and khateeb of the Grand Mosque in Makkah, yesterday called upon international Islamic organizations to set up a project to tackle violence and terrorism. “It is high time for the Ummah to have an Islamic cultural project to tackle the phenomena of violence and terrorism through international Islamic organizations,” the imam said while giving his Friday sermon.

He advised Muslims to follow the moderate path of Islam and keep away from violence and extremism. He urged parents to bring up their children on the basis of Islamic teachings and values. The call by the imam comes two weeks after nine militants bombed three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 34 people.

Al-Sudais denounced the May 12 bombings as a heinous and horrendous crime, adding that the criminals wanted to destabilize the Kingdom and terrorize peaceful people including those under its protection. He criticized those who kill innocent people in the name of Islam. “Our Shariah calls for the protection of five essentials: the religion, life, mind, wealth and dignity of a person,” the imam said and quoted a number of Qur’anic verses that prohibit killing of innocent people.

via Arab News

Quote of the Day

"Based on the evidence presented by the expert witnesses at trial, the court finds that it is beyond question that Hezbollah and its agents received massive material and technical support from the Iranian government.''

- U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, on the 1983 terrorist bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut

China on the Moon?

Former Congressman Robert S. Walker, once chairman of the House Science Committee, says the space race is on again. Are we in the game? Sure doesn't seem like it.

Many Japanese space observers are convinced that China has a moon program and that, ultimately, Japan may be drawn into the competition. India already has created its own moon mission, in large part because they are monitoring Chinese space efforts.

At my Washington office a few weeks ago, I met with a visiting Japanese parliamentarian who specializes in science and technology issues. I related to him my belief that the Chinese would be on the moon within a decade with a declaration of permanent occupation. He disagreed. He smiled and said my conclusion was accurate but my timing was off. In his view, the Chinese would be on the moon within three to four years.

Regardless of who is right about the time frame, and I still believe that even a decade is ambitious, the fact remains that the Chinese are devoting resources and gearing up to do something that we are no longer technologically capable of achieving in the immediate future. We went to the moon, planted our flag, gathered samples, took credit for an amazing achievement in human history and then abandoned the effort. The space technology available to us today could not be used to replicate what we did 35 years ago.

via The Washington Times

Japan lands in Alaska

This is good to see.

Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-15 fighter aircraft made a bit of history in Alaska on Tuesday. Six of them landed on North American soil for the first time at Elmendorf Air Force Base, where they will take part in Cooperative Cope Thunder, a Pacific Air Forces-sponsored air combat training exercise set for June 5-20.

“The Japanese involvement is very significant ... of all the foreign participants, they bring the biggest contingent of people and different missions to this exercise,” Lt. Col. David Ennis, commander of Elemendorf’s Detachment 1, 353rd Combat Training Squadron, said in an Air Force news release.

Japan will participate with U.S. forces in defensive exercises but not in the “offensive counter air” missions other nations will practice during Cope Thunder, Ennis said.

via Stars and Stripes

Poland's importance to America

Special attention was paid to Poland today. The President had some good comments about Poland and Europe just before he left for Krakow and beyond.

In an interview with TVP Poland at the White House May 29, President Bush expressed a "special fondness" for Poland and said he was "absolutely sure" he made the right decision in asking Poland to run one of the zones in post-war Iraq.

"I think it's very important for the Polish people to understand how deeply Americans appreciate their sacrifice and their courage and their willingness to work with us in Iraq and in Afghanistan," Bush said, citing his message of thanks as one reason for his visit to Poland.

Asked about criticism by some European countries toward Poland because of its support for the campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime, Bush replied that he thinks it "unfortunate that some of the countries in Europe will try to bully Poland for standing up for what ... [it thinks] is right."

"The critics need to watch very carefully what's happening," he said. "NATO is going to support the Polish efforts inside of Iraq. Poland will not be alone."

But Bush also said that during his trip he was going to "remind the countries of Europe that we must work together."

"We don't need divides between us. We need to work together to achieve big objectives, which is to fight terror, to fight global poverty, to fight AIDS and to promote freedom," he said.

Asked about the possibility of American military bases in Poland, Bush replied that the United States is "looking at all the options."

"I make no promises, but we will remember who our friends are. And the
Polish people have been strong friends of the United States."

via the State Department's Washington File; includes full transcript.

Poland

Radek Sikorski, Poland's former deputy minister for defense and for foreign affairs, writes today about the strong relationship between Poland and the U.S., as well as Poland's strengths in peacekeeping.

Poles believe that with wise statesmanship, Europe can acquire greater influence not by opposing the U.S., but by cooperating with America in endeavors that are evidently in Europe's best interest, such as the democratization of the Arab world. If Europe's political coherence and military forces were to grow in harmony with America's strategic aims, we could restore the West's sense of common mission.

Unusual as it may seem, this vision is shared by Poles of most political parties and ideologies. There is enough here, in short, to merit talk of a closer alliance between Poland and the U.S.

We know our army is a fraction the size of the American one, but then so is everybody else's. We know our economy is still recovering from half a century of communism. But it isn't economic support that the U.S. needs. Poland shares America's values, Poland shares America's geopolitical goals. With the Polish air force soon to fly F-16s, and some U.S. military bases moving East, co-operation over Iraq may prove to have been the beginning of, as they say in the movies, a beautiful relationship.

via OpinionJournal

Syria deal?

This would be interesting, if it turned out to be true.

The United States is reportedly making a fresh attempt to strike a behind-the-scenes deal to neutralize Hizbullah, offering the government half a billion dollars if the resistance is dismantled and Syria pulls its troops out of Lebanon.

The offer is reportedly being conveyed by Darryl Issa, a Republican congressman for California, and Democrat Robert Wexler during a visit to Beirut Friday, the daily As-Safir said Thursday. The two congressmen will also travel to Damascus to discuss the offer with Syrian officials, the paper said.

The daily quoted sources in the US Congress as saying the deal is being sold as a counterweight to the Syria Accountability Act which seeks to impose political and economic sanctions against Damascus.

via LebanonWire.com

thanks to NRO's The Corner for the tip

Merchants of death

I have no idea how people who work in the tobacco industry can look at themselves in the mirror each day. I do know that America should not export death to the rest of the world.

Marlboro cigarettes, the world's most popular brand, have considerably higher levels of a potent cancer-causing compound than almost all other cigarettes, a study has found. Research by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention found that the level of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, a known cause of cancer, was at least twice as high in Marlboros as in local brands in 10 of 13 nations tested. In some countries, the Marlboro level was as much as 22 times higher than local brands. The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Tobacco and Nicotine Research, is the first to document the significantly greater threat from nitrosamines posed by an American cigarette.

The popularity of Marlboros and their high levels of nitrosamines may be related, since it is the type of tobacco used and the way it is cured and mixed that creates both the distinct American cigarette taste and the higher nitrosamine levels.

The conclusion that Marlboros and most other American cigarettes are very high in nitrosamines comes at a time when US tobacco companies are looking increasingly to developing nations as their growth market, since cigarette consumption rates in the US and in other developed nations are steady or decreasing. The report said that while overall cigarette demand was growing about 1 per cent annually, demand for American-style blended cigarettes has been projected to grow 3 per cent per year - with many more cigarettes, and more disease, going to developing nations.

via The Age (Australia)

Intelligence

More critical commentary on the CIA and the intelligence community today. The issues: quality of analysis, HUMINT, and trained people. George Friedman of STRATFOR has been saying essentially the same thing for several years to anyone who'll listen. Again, quick fixes do little good and paying attention to the people and the non-sexy factors are key -- dull and diligent would save a lot of lives.

A few key paragraphs here, but better to read the whole piece.

The world war against terrorism, analysts add, will consist of 90 percent intelligence and only 10 percent combat. That's a huge challenge for the U.S. intelligence community, which has retained most of the Cold War structures and mind-sets that many consider dangerously obsolete. At present the Pentagon and uniformed services are writhing in the painful throes of a "defense-transformation" process, bringing the national-defense community out of the Cold War configurations of the Industrial Age to Space Age and Information Age designs suitable for the world war on terrorism. These require extreme flexibility, agility, stealth and speed, as well as increasing intellect and evermore intelligence collection, analysis and processing. The intelligence community, however, has not been keeping pace, leaving what professionals see as a dangerous gap that finds U.S. national-security needs far exceeding the capabilities of the intelligence services.

The fundamental problem crying for solution is the people factor: leadership and personnel. "We see immense resources placed on acquisition of the world's best technological tools, but little emphasis on improving the vital skills of analysis, education and training," a senior administration official says. "DoD [Department of Defense] has to treat intelligence differently. It's not a weapons system. You can't just buy it." Leadership isn't only at the top levels, according to a senior intelligence officer. "It also works down through the second and third tiers of defense intelligence, where moral leadership and fortitude are in short supply."

The collection of human intelligence (HUMINT) is an art that requires intensive linguistic capabilities, social and professional interaction with counterparts in target areas and a thorough knowledge of local politics, history, mores and customs. But the intelligence community's reliance on high technology, and the nature of the personnel system and promotion practices, place relatively little value and afford few opportunities for the cultivation and recruitment of HUMINT networks around the world. According to a Pentagon official, "The system doesn't reward HUMINT officers. It doesn't reward area specialists."

Even worse, during the last decade - for reasons ranging from political correctness imposed from above to the deteriorated state of American university education that trained the intelligence analysts from below, and on to what some see as a general lack of courage - U.S. leaders have seen a dumbing-down or corrosion of the intelligence process and its products. "Throughout the 1990s the depth of analytical skill in the intelligence agencies was eroded," according to Richard Haver, until recently a senior adviser to Rumsfeld.

via Insight Magazine

A related article summarizes 10 steps for reforming defense intelligence. We moderns are suckers for a list, but this is actually pretty good.

CIA lagging

This is kinda scary, since we want to believe that our spooks have all the tools necessary to protect us. However, it's very consistent with (a) the government environment/mindset, and (b) the insularity caused by traditional approaches to security. Times have changed -- the CIA needs to change too.

A new unclassified report, titled "Failing to Keep Up With the Information Revolution," offers a withering assessment of the CIA's use of IT for intelligence analysis, calling its networking and information-searching capabilities "primitive" and saying that the agency's emphasis on secrecy fundamentally discourages IT use and adoption by CIA analysts. The study's author, Bruce Berkowitz, interviewed almost 100 CIA employees involved in producing national security analysis, including intelligence analysts, technicians and managers.

Among other problems, Berkowitz found that CIA analysts must bounce among multiple, isolated systems to gather information, including separate systems on each desk for accessing the CIA's classified network and using the public Internet.

DI agents have no easy way to share classified information with authorized intelligence personnel outside of the CIA or to access information stored in other classified information networks within the government, such as those at the U.S. Department of Defense. "The result is that DI analysts work in an IT environment that is largely isolated from the outside world. If they need to do work that is classified in any way, there is virtually no alternative other than to use the CIA's own, restricted system," the report said.

Contrary to popular depictions of CIA agents using cutting-edge information-gathering technology, Berkowitz found that DI analysts lack access to even the most common information-searching technology for conducting intelligence analysis, such as Web-based search engines.

Although the glacial pace of government IT purchasing is partly to blame for the slow rate of technology adoption within the agency, it isn't the primary source of the CIA's troubles, Berkowitz said. Instead, he put most of the blame on the CIA's obsession with security, which he charged with creating an approach of "risk exclusion" as opposed to "risk management" regarding technology adoption.

As examples of this approach, Berkowitz noted that Palm handheld devices were forbidden in CIA facilities until recently, and it took the agency years to get Internet access to analysts' desktops.

News article via Computerworld.

Full Berkowitz article via the CIA.

Quote of the Day

"I'm so old, they've cancelled my blood type."

- Bob Hope

Thanks for the memories

Bob Hope -- actor, comedian, song-and-dance man, patriot -- is 100 years old today. He's been a superstar in America and around the world since long before most of us were born. No one appreciates him more than members of the U.S. military, for whom he has repeatedly toiled even at the risk of his own life. Congratulations to Bob Hope - a national treasure.

Stars and Stripes has collected remembrances from military personnel. Two of the best comments:

It has been said that Bob Hope traveled millions of miles while entertaining millions of troops. I'm very proud to have been just one of the millions to see him perform. In this day and age where so many are considered heroes, it seems that there needs to be a more powerful word to describe Bob Hope. After all, look at all the war-torn nations he visited. Take into account the hours of dedicated service to his country that he invested in freedom, liberty and the American way. In my way of recollection, I cannot think of a single person who consistently performed their duties for so long a time. - W.R. (Bill) Barbour, Jr., Massachusetts

I was hot, homesick and scared, but for those few hours that day, I forgot those feelings. I enjoyed seeing Bob Hope and knowing that he was risking his life to come to Vietnam and give the troops a chance to laugh and momentarily forget about the War. I was thrilled to be able to shake his hand at the end of the show. - Larry J. Bailey, Nevada

Quote of the Day

"If Smersh were still around today, this country would be a better place. It wouldn't be run by bandits and crooks."

- Woman in charge of Smersh exhibition in Moscow, who refused to give her name to reporters

SMERSH

Fiction meets reality -- again.

Smersh, Stalin's brutal military counter-espionage service, immortalised in the James Bond novels, is being celebrated in Moscow with an exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of its founding.

Smersh - a contraction of Smert Shpionam (death to spies) - is depicted in today's Russia as a patriotic band of heroes who fought valiantly against foreign intelligence agencies. In reality, the organisation was a widely hated branch of Soviet state terror. It was charged with weeding out spies, interrogating returning Soviet prisoners of war and executing front-line soldiers accused of spreading "defeatism" in the ranks.

Stalin set up Smersh in 1943, when he was paranoid that the country was being infiltrated by German and Allied spies. He wound it up three years later when it was integrated into the NKVD secret police, which later spawned the KGB. At its height, Smersh had one informer for every 10 soldiers fighting in the Red Army.

According to official records, it arrested 121,000 soldiers for "belonging to counter-revolutionary groups", 135,000 for "desertion" and 84,000 for "anti-Soviet agitation". Many were shot.

Smersh is best-known in the West as one of the arch-enemies of Ian Fleming's 007 agent, James Bond.

Many Russians are nostalgic for the communist era. The authorities tend to gloss over some of the more ignominious chapters of the Soviet regime in official pronouncements.

via The Telegraph (UK)

LOTR kitsch

This is beyond pointless.

The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's dark tale of Middle Earth, is to be brought to the West End in the most expensive stage musical ever seen in London.

The epic story of Frodo's journey to Mordor will open in 2005 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of Tolkien's trilogy.

Kevin Wallace, whose idea it was to bring the masterpiece to the stage, said yesterday that the audience would "smile with pleasure" at the ways in which the show will recreate some of the more challenging aspects of the books, from the complex battle scenes to the dark Lord Sauron.

"It will have the epic scale of something like The Lion King as well as the intellectual rigour of a piece of classical theatre."

Wallace, who has produced several Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, approached the Oscar-winning producer Saul Zaentz, who owns the film and stage rights to the fantasy, a year ago.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Jewish extremism

Israel is beset by all sides, including from within. This would all be hard even without Arafat's relentless opposition.

Israel has tightened security around ministers amid fears that extreme Right-wing Jewish groups may attempt an assassination to undermine the "road map" for peace in the Middle East.

The measures come days after the Israeli cabinet endorsed the US-backed plan, which will ultimately force Israel to make painful concessions in the occupied territories.

They include a military withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a dismantling of some Jewish settlements there - anathema to Israel's far Right.

Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, is tracking Jewish extremists it considers a threat to Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, and ministers who backed him in the cabinet vote last Sunday to endorse the "road map".

One intelligence source said yesterday the security services were worried that "attacks may be carried out by Jews on government figures". Since Sunday extra bodyguards have been drafted in to protect cabinet ministers around the clock. Previously "not all of them had bodyguards all the time", he said.

Eight years ago Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's prime minister, was shot dead at a peace rally by a Jewish student with links to an extremist group. "No one is taking any chances now," said the intelligence source.

via The Telegraph (UK)

LA Times bias

Bill O'Reilly spoke to an audience of millions on Fox News tonight about a recent memo inside the L.A. Times by editor John Carroll who is intent on "purging all political bias from our coverage." If Carroll is serious and follows through, this would be a major achievement at a publication that has been routinely leftist in its news reporting, to say nothing of its editorial page.

To: SectionEds Subject: Credibility/abortion

I'm concerned about the perception---and the occasional reality---that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer.

The apparent bias of the writer and/or the desk reveals itself in the third paragraph, which characterizes such bills in Texas and elsewhere as requiring "so-called counseling of patients." I don't think people on the anti-abortion side would consider it "so-called," a phrase that is loaded with derision.

The story makes a strong case that the link between abortion and breast cancer is widely discounted among researchers, but I wondered as I read it whether somewhere there might exist some credible scientist who believes in it.

Such a person makes no appearance in the story's lengthy passage about the scientific issue. We do quote one of the sponsors of the bill, noting that he "has a professional background in property management." Seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this. Why, if this is germane, wouldn't we point to legislators on the other side who are similarly bereft of scientific credentials?

It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid. But do we quote him as to why he believes this? No. We quote his political views.

Read the whole memo via NRO's The Corner

Quote of the Day

"One of the things I love most about our country is that we have such opportunities. There are places in the world where failure is final, and one early misstep will decide your fate forever. But America is still the country of the second chance. Most of us end up needing one. And when we've gone on to accomplish something, that we can be far more grateful -- be that much more grateful for the chance.

"Gratitude, in general, is a good habit. It is usually a correct appraisal of our situation. Most of us are able to succeed and rise in the world because someone helped out along the way -- whether it was a memorable teacher, or a boss who handed us a great opportunity, or the person who took a chance and gave us the first big break in our career. A grateful heart is an honest understanding of all that we have been given, and all that is expected of us in return.

"There is always the temptation to forget this -- to carry ourselves with an air of entitlement, as if good things come to us by right. They rarely do. And life has a way of working out better when we don't take things for granted -- when we have a long memory for what others have given us, when we look for the blessings, great and small, that come with every day that we're alive on this earth."

- Vice President Dick Cheney, to new graduates at the University of Missouri at Columbia

via The White House

Michael Moore should take cover

Poseur Michael Moore is going to get a mouthful of truth, like it or not, courtesy of aspiring film director Michael Wilson, who is making a movie of his own. Check out MichaelMooreHatesAmerica.com for the full tale.

Director Michael Wilson takes viewers on a journey from Sioux City, IA—where his father is unemployed and looking for work, to Las Vegas and the height of prosperity—where he visits with Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller), to Wisconsin—where thousands of people have prospered through the nation’s most successful welfare-to-work program, to Flint, MI where he checks out Moore's background, to Minneapolis—where he meets up with immigrants from Korea who have created an incredible life for themselves through the liberty the US affords, and finally to New York for a showdown with Michael Moore—where Wilson asks Moore to return his Best Documentary Oscar® after presenting facts that show Bowling for Columbine was more fiction that fact.

“Despite the title, the film is not about bashing Michael Moore,” said Producer Carr Hagerman, “but Moore is a good starting point for showing people why America is great. He has the liberty to trash his own country, and we have the liberty to show people how he is wrong. The film debunks many of Moore’s claims through interviews with people who contradict what he’s saying by their own experiences and life stories.”

Moore, the oft-celebrated documentary director, has built a cottage industry by showing the less-than-perfect side of America in his films and by bending (and sometimes breaking) the truth to suit his personal and political agendas. In Bowling for Columbine, Moore blamed Lockheed-Martin for the Columbine shootings, despite the fact that no weapons were actually manufactured in the Littleton factory, and that neither of the killers or their parents had any connection to the company. Moore also claimed that the NRA came to Littleton after the school shootings for a large rally when, in fact, the NRA cancelled all but one morning of its four-day event. Because this didn’t help his case, Moore inserted footage he shot at a rally a full year later, stating that it came from the Denver rally. These are only two of the dozens of inaccuracies and fabrications in the film.

Kudos to Maripat and Lori at Right We Are! for the lowdown.

Iran wavers

The Australian and British press continue to out-report the U.S. media concerning the Middle East. Very interesting news tonight about Iran via the Aussies. To compare and contrast, Fox News has been "reporting" about the Laci Peterson case all damn night.

Al-Qaeda's third-ranked leader and alleged mastermind of the Riyadh bombings has been seized in Iran, intelligence sources say.

The United States has identified Saif al-Adel as the most senior al-Qaeda member linked to the attacks that killed 34 people, including one Australian, earlier this month.

Intelligence sources said al-Adel, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard, approved the bombing plans before his capture by Iranian security forces nine days before the attack.

Iran is thought to want to handover al-Adel to Washington, in return for senior leaders in the anti-Iranian terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). He would probably be deported to Egypt initially.

Washington has demanded that Iran should act against al-Qaeda leaders in the country and has conveyed a message via the United Nations of its "deep, deep concern that individuals associated with al-Qaeda have planned and directed the attack in Saudi Arabia from inside Iran". Al-Adel's presence in Iran was of particular concern, the US said.

If al-Adel is transferred into US hands it will be a serious blow to al-Qaeda and a significant move by Iran in the war on terrorism. It effectively removes what is thought to be one of the few remaining havens for the terrorist group.

via Sydney Morning Herald

Freedom of Expression

UNC-Wilmington's Dr. Mike S. Adams has been messing with the minds of the politically correct folk on his campus. He's writing about it in the form of an open letter...

Dear UNC-Wilmington Board of Trustees:

It has recently come to my attention that a feminist student at UNCW has taken offense to a sticker on my office door which reads "So you're a feminist . . . Isn't that cute." I found this out after obtaining a copy of a letter her father wrote to you, the Board of Trustees. I could comment at some length on the obvious hypocrisy of this student's decision to ask her father to defend feminism for her, but I won't. Let me get straight to the point: I did not put that sticker on my office door.

This terrible misunderstanding is all the result of an experiment on diversity and tolerance that I decided to undertake several years ago. It all started when I noticed that a colleague of mine had a "Mondale/Ferraro '84" sticker on the filing cabinet in her office. I also noticed that another colleague had one posted on the front of his office desk.

Remembering that the university has a provision specifically prohibiting faculty from using "University funds, services, supplies, vehicles, or other property to support or oppose the candidacy of any person for elective public office . . ." I decided to initiate my experiment.

First, I placed a "Clinton/Gore '96" sticker prominently on my office door to see if anyone would take offense. After two years without any complaints, I decided to replace the sticker with one that said "George W. Bush for President." Within a few weeks I heard reports from two faculty members and one staff member saying that someone was preparing to file a complaint about the Bush sticker.

Since the faculty handbook specifies "appropriate disciplinary action, including discharge from employment" as one possible consequence of violating the aforementioned rule, I decided it was time to let the faculty in on my little experiment. I did this by sending an e-mail to everyone in the building which began as follows: "You have all been involved in an experiment in tolerance which, unfortunately, some of you have failed ..."

Go to Townhall.com for the punchline, and the rest of story.

The Iraq playbook

Donald Rumsfeld reaffirms President Bush's "core principles" for transforming Iraq, and then outlines the game plan. Principles and plan look good - now we just need persistence in the face of panicked, short-attention-span media and the burblings of losers inside the bureacracy.

We are committed to helping the Iraqi people get on that path to a free society. We do not have an American "template" we want to impose: Iraqis will figure out how to build a free nation in a manner that reflects their unique culture and traditions.

What President Bush has outlined are some broad principles that are critical if Iraq's transition from tyranny is to succeed: that Iraq be a single country, which does not support terrorists, threaten its neighbors or the world with weapons of mass destruction, or threaten its diverse population with terror and repression; that it have a government that respects and protects minorities, provides opportunities for its people through a market economy, and justice through an independent judiciary and rule of law.

These are core principles that undergird the world's diverse community of free nations. The coalition will seek out Iraqis who support these principles, and who desire to have a role in their country's future. Those who oppose these principles--whose agenda is to replace Saddam Hussein's tyranny with some other form of dictatorship--will be opposed.

The game plan has 17 elements. Here are a few; the entire list is worth review.

• Assert authority. Our goal is to put functional and political authority in the hands of Iraqis as soon as possible. The Coalition Provisional Authority has the responsibility to fill the vacuum of power in a country that has been a dictatorship for decades, by asserting authority over the country. It will do so. It will not tolerate self-appointed "leaders."

• Provide security. Among the immediate objectives are restoration of law and order for the Iraqi people and provision of essential services. The coalition is hiring and training Iraqi police, and will be prepared to use force to impose order as required--because without order, little else will be possible.

• Trial and error. The transition to democracy will take time and may not always be a smooth road. In Central and Eastern Europe, the process has taken time, but it is succeeding. Trial and error and experimentation will be part of the process. It will not be perfect. Course corrections will be necessary and should be expected. This effort will require patience by all involved if it is to succeed.

• Patience and respect for Iraq's singular character. The ultimate political outcome must be decided by the Iraqi people, within the broad principles of the rule of law, minority rights, individual liberty, and representative democracy. One ought not expect the Iraqi outcome to replicate any other system.

via OpinionJournal

Quote of the Day

The President remembers

"Each Memorial Day, we pray for peace throughout the world, remembering what was gained and what was lost during times of war. From the bravery of the men at Valley Forge, to the daring of Normandy, the courage of Iwo Jima, and the steady resolve in Afghanistan and Iraq, our men and women in uniform have won for us every hour that we live in freedom. During this year's observance, we particularly recognize the courageous spirit of the men and women in our Nation's Armed Forces who are working with our coalition partners to restore civil order, provide critical humanitarian aid, and renew Afghanistan and Iraq. As we honor those who have served and have been lost, we better understand the meaning of patriotism and citizenship, and we pledge that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

Throughout our history, the decency, character, and idealism of our military troops have turned enemies into allies and oppression into hope. In all our victories, American soldiers have fought to liberate, not to conquer; and today, the United States joins with a strong coalition in the noble cause of liberty and peace for the world. On this day, America honors her own, but we also recognize the shared victories and hardships of our allied forces who have served and fallen alongside our troops.

The noble sacrifices of our service men and women will not be forgotten. Every name, every life is a loss to our military, to our Nation, and to their loved ones. Americans stand with the families who grieve, and we share in their great sorrow and great pride. There will be no homecoming on this Earth for those lost in battle, but we know that this reunion will one day come."

- President George W. Bush

via The White House

Today is Memorial Day

The World War I St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial is located at the west edge of Thiaucourt, France. This cemetery, forty acres in extent, contains the graves of 4,153 American military dead from World War I. Most of these gave their lives in the great offensive which resulted in the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient that threatened Paris.

Rabid animals?

New York Times "reporter" Chris Hedges was booed off the stage recently when he started to give a thoroughly anti-American commencement address to graduates at Rockford College near Chicago. The fact that he wasn't allowed to finish is deplorable according to the principles of free speech and free inquiry. But it was also a well-deserved audience response in the context of countless examples of suppression of free speech by Leftists on college campuses across the nation. Ask Clarence Thomas, Henry Kissinger, and plenty of other conservatives if freedom of speech is really practiced in the university setting. Maybe now that a new generation of college students is leading the counter-revolution against Leftist culture of higher education we can look forward to free speech for everyone.

Meanwhile, Chris Hedges has expanded his remarks on Amy Goodman's left-wing radio program "Democracy Now." His conclusion: patriotism turns Americans into rabid animals.

You know, as I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what my book is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience, and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd for that euphoria that comes with patriotism. The tragedy is that – and I've seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that plunges into war – with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other. And it's an emotional response. People find a kind of ecstasy, a kind of belonging, a kind of obliteration of their alienation in that patriotic fervor that always does come in war time.

As I gave my talk and I looked out on the crowd, I was essentially witnessing things that I had witnessed in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina or in squares in Belgrade or anywhere else. Crowds, especially crowds that become hunting packs are very frightening. People chanted the kind of cliches and aphorisms and jingoes that are handed to you by the state. "God Bless America" or people were chanting "send him to France" – this kind of stuff and that kind of contagion leads ultimately to tyranny, it's very dangerous and it has to be stopped.

via Democracy Now

Arafat cornered?

Unpredictable DEBKA reports that the new Palestinian PM is in grave danger from Yasser Arafat. The intended summit between Bush, Abbas, and Sharon is intended to challenge Arafat's standing, so this seems quite plausible. Will be interesting to watch this drama unfold. Removing Arafat is the linchpin to progress -- but even the Israelis have declined to just kill him. He must be rendered irrelevant.

DEBKAfile’s US and Israeli security sources report increasing signs that Yasser Arafat is now seriously gunning for the new Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. He will do anything to abort the summit expected to take place in early June with President George W. Bush and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Arafat cannot abide the notion of any top-level conference going forward without him. The plot he is thought to be preparing would inculpate Israel for any harm befalling Abu Mazen or his associates. He would thus show the Palestinians and the Muslim world that his arm is still long and that if anyone is bent on sabotaging the prospects of peace it is Israel.

Hoping to blunt the threat, our sources reveal the Americans are trying to go through Europeans with access to Arafat. US secretary of state Colin Powell asked French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin to take with him on his visit to Arafat in Ramallah Monday, May 26, a last warning from Washington: Stop trying to disempower or eliminate Abu Mazen. If you continue to obstruct Washington’s plans for the region you risk a direct American reprisal.

via DEBKA

Axis of Weasels Dance Mix

The arts advance one step at a time.

Once again music, the universal language, has brought together strange bedfellows. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA, and America's most popular radio host, Rush Limbaugh, have unwittingly collaborated on the new hit song, "Axis of Weasels: The Dance Mix" (Real).

The vast audio production staff at ScrappleFace labored for countless minutes to produce the dance mix, which includes music by Dutch keyboardist and composer Hans van den Bos.

via Scrappleface. Also available in MP3.

Quote of the Day

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

- Winston Churchill

Arab opinion

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid in Arab News has authored a tough opinion piece on the subject of Islamic terrorists. Realism is beginning to trickle to the surface of the Middle East dreamworld. Only the beginning, but better than total denial.

Many people treated the terrorist cell discovered in Saudi Arabia as a group that has grievances that can be dealt with. They said that they could be cured through religious institutions or by giving them more rights. That was the wrong diagnosis and, consequently, the wrong treatment — like giving a man with a headache a stick to lean on.

Yes, there is a problem in dealing with groups that use violence. But the need to have civil institutions as part of a nation’s continuous development is quite another matter. They have nothing to do with each other.

Khalid Al-Juhani and his group were arrested in Riyadh while planning to kill people. It is difficult to imagine that they were planning indiscriminate murder because they were not allowed to vote or express their opinion.

There is no relation between the terrorists and desire for such liberties. On the contrary, they are totally against such freedoms. The agenda of most of the terrorist movements that have existed in the Arab and Islamic world for over 20 years now is destructive, not reformist. Leaders of such movements continue to make that clear. They consider civil institutions un-Islamic and unacceptable. It is not lack of freedom that is the reason for the existence of such groups. If that were so, how would one explain their appearance in open Western societies, where voting and political diversity are allowed and where they have total freedom of expression? The fact is that they have chosen to use weapons against such societies because they are against them.

via Arab News

As we all know, civil reformers are the last people who use, or call for the use of, violence. The people who advocate violence do it because they love violence. Leaders of terrorist cells are against elections, the freedom of opinion and political diversity. Those who disagree with this analysis should explain their logic. What is the basis for their arguing that these terrorists support freedoms? What do they know about them that we have not known in the last 20 years? These terrorist groups consider civil institutions alien to our society. We know that. Do the others know differently?

The effort to project the activities of these people, such as their recent crime, as a movement for civil liberties distorts the truth. These people declare everything they see as un-Islamic. If they had lived in the Omayyad or Abassid periods of Islamic rule, they would have declared them also as un-Islamic and called the rulers apostates — in the same manner that the Khawarij declared the holy companions of the Prophet as apostates.

These people are products of the sick ideas that first appeared during the Afghanistan jihad. After the end of that war, they were scattered around the world, carrying with them not only explosives but also dangerous and destructive ideas that they spread through mosques, schools and public places. With their destructive mindset, they believe that they can “reform” Muslims — the whole one billion of them — whom they consider as having strayed from the true path and need to be guided and saved.

These people do not respect civil institutions and do not recognize the opinions of others. They do not tolerate disagreement, however politely expressed. They do not want to coexist with people who are different from them. They are waging a war against Muslims and they consider killing them part of their jihad. Knowing all these facts, how can some of us give them a reformist cover?

It is our first duty to reform these people. In fact, in view of the seriousness of the danger they pose, it must be considered an emergency operation. We have seen how dangerous they can be. It goes beyond differences, disputes, skirmishes or even anarchy. They consider the life of others, Muslims including, legitimate targets and their slaughtering as sacrifices that will endear them to God.

Reforming them, in my opinion, is not going to be easy.

Iran ultimatum?

The Aussies are speaking aloud what is only being rumored in the U.S. this weekend. There was no mention of this statement on the Sunday morning talk shows in the U.S., despite discussion on all of the shows about our stance on Iran.

The Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, delivered a tough, last-chance call to Iran yesterday to crack down on al-Qaeda terrorists allegedly in the country. His warning came as the United States threatened aggressive action to overthrow the Iranian Government.

Mr Downer told his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, that Tehran must do everything possible to crack down on al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Australia wanted to see tougher action and Washington saw this as a "life-or-death issue", he told Dr Kharrazi.

Australian officials confirmed that Mr Downer was delivering the warning on behalf of Canberra and Washington. "I cannot put this issue strongly enough, this is fundamental for Australia and America," Mr Downer told the Herald.

The US cancelled planned talks with Iran this week in protest against alleged terrorist links. Washington claims an al-Qaeda official, Saif al-Adel, directed this month's bombings in Saudi Arabia from Iran and that Tehran had advance warning of the attacks.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Brits find Iraq "smoking gun"

Evidence keeps piling up, even if the WMD stash hidden underground somewhere in Iraq or Syria hasn't been found yet.

British military officers have uncovered an attempt by Saddam Hussein to build a missile capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel, The Telegraph can reveal.

Plans for the surface-to-surface missile were one of the regime's most closely-guarded secrets and were unknown to United Nations weapons inspectors. Its range of 600 miles would have been far greater than that of the al-Samoud rocket - which already breached the 93-mile limit imposed by the UN on any Iraqi missiles.

Saddam's masterplan for the new missile, which was being developed by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission (MIC), the body responsible for weapons procurement, constitutes the most serious breach uncovered so far of the tight restrictions imposed on Iraq's military capability after the 1991 Gulf war. The range of Saddam's missiles was restricted to prevent him from using them as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction.

David Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector responsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear weapons programme in the 1990s, said the British discovery proved that Saddam had no intention of complying with UN requirements.

"This is the smoking gun we have been looking for," he said.

via The Telegraph (UK)

North Korea

Jim Hoagland makes two interesting points about our approach to North Korea. His first point, about the current state of affairs, sounds plausible if not encouraging.

Bush would quickly bridge the warring factions of the Defense and State departments -- as he did in Iraq and Afghanistan -- if either the hawks or the doves could present him with a workable option. They haven't. Fudge stays on the menu as the president pursues diplomacy, refuses "to take the military option off the table" and waits for something to turn up.

But the second point is not bold enough. Surely there is another policy choice than returning to the failed Clinton strategy.

It is hard to argue against slow and steady in such unclear circumstances. But recent events underline the costs involved in the administration's policy of talking but not negotiating with Pyongyang while playing down the military risks of the confrontation. It may now be time to elevate both the diplomatic track and the muscle track and, most important, to synchronize them.

It is too late in this crisis to consider U.S. troop withdrawals, however satisfying it would be to leave anti-American protesters in South Korea to experience the dangers of answered prayers. That will have to wait for calmer times. This is the moment to reinforce U.S. military options -- while linking them explicitly to greater flexibility in meeting North Korean demands for U.S. security guarantees.

This would be a Bush version of the "coercive diplomacy" that the Clinton administration used to get the 1994 framework agreement, which did buy an eight-year freeze on plutonium reprocessing (even as the North Koreans launched a secret uranium enrichment program in one of the starkest betrayals of an international accord in recent history).

Getting back to square one is never a glorious outcome, and it is likely to be especially disdained by this president. But squeezing Kim into a new and verifiable freeze may be the most realistic goal available.

But despite the desirability of a more definitive strategy, sometimes watchful waiting is the best, if worrisome, choice. Realistic patience may be required, with a healthy dollup of vigilance and preparation.

via The Washington Post

Quote of the Day

"History teaches us that freedom is not destined to prevail over tyranny. Liberty and our way of life are fragile gifts; their care is in your hands.

"In my lifetime, I have lived through the Great Depression, witnessed the rise and fall of empires. My generation has seen fascism, communism and now terrorism emerge to challenge free nations and free people. And we've seen free nations successfully unite and turn back every one of those challenges.

"But each time a foe has been defeated in one corner of the world, a new challenge arises, which is why each generation of Americans has been called upon to produce patriots, patriots willing to dedicate their lives to the defense of liberty.

"You are that next generation of patriots, and upon your shoulders, that burden now rests. The future must not simply unfold. Rather, it will need to be shaped by your leadership. The decisions you make, the courage and creativity you bring to your responsibilities will determine America's future."

- Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to new graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy

Stiletto Conservatives

The NY Times has a lengthy article about the new conservative movement on college campuses. The Times writer is alarmed by the fact that the right-wing kids are not only articulate, effective, and growing in popularity, but also -- egad -- connected to conservative organizations. Although the author can't help but discuss the leftist culture prevalent on almost every college campus, there is not one mention in a 6,000-word article about left-wing organizations and support networks, which are easily as well-funded and relentless as those on the right. The young conservative women in the article were impressive. And I learned a new phrase: ''stiletto conservatives.''

One Bucknell conservatives club member, Allison Kasic, buys it. She's a 19-year-old who just finished her sophomore year, and she writes a regular column in The Counterweight and has her own rock-music show each Monday on the college radio station. Raised in Littleton, Colo., the daughter of an administrative judge, she is a confident, tough young woman who wears little makeup and favors jeans and T-shirts. As a management major concentrating in marketing, she sees the importance of selling a new brand of conservatism to female students. ''There's the old stereotype of the WASP-y country-club wife or the Bible-study mom from the Midwest,'' Kasic says. ''But that's not what conservative women are anymore.'' Kasic, instead, points to ''stiletto conservatives'' like Hoff Sommers and Coulter. ''We have role models now,'' she says. ''Hip, strong women who exude the message: 'I don't need hand-holding just because I'm a woman.''' Kasic herself plans to be a working woman when she graduates (''I'm no soccer mom,'' she laughs; ''I don't even like kids''), but she respects women who choose a different path -- to be homemakers, like her own mother. ''Conservatives are inclusive in a way that liberals are not,'' she says, voicing a central theme of the Independent Women's Forum ethos. ''We say that women can be executives or stay-at-home mothers.'' Kasic extends this notion to the abortion debate. Herself an anti-abortion Catholic, she says that the Republican Party today nevertheless supports candidates who espouse the right to abortion. ''But the National Organization for Women has never supported a pro-life candidate,'' she says, as proof of the left's narrowness and the right's ''diversity'' (a term the conservative movement has deliberately co-opted from the left).

It can be disorienting to hear conservatism advanced as the ideology that frees women, but such is the skill with which the right has reframed the issues for the campus crowd, and such is the degree to which the left has allowed its own message to drift into rigidity and irrelevance for many college-age women. Another Bucknell conservatives club member, Denise Chaykun, typifies how some young women are only driven further to the right by what they see as the pieties of the left. Chaykun, with her shoulder-length blond hair, faded jeans and rock T-shirt, could have stepped out of a 1970's campus sit-in. But she is one of the most combative and hard-core conservatives at Bucknell. ''You come to college, and the message they give you is 'Your parents are racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, and we're going to take you and change that,''' she says. ''A lot of the courses are mushy stuff about sex and gender and social relations. You can't take a class about a war. We don't have a military historian at Bucknell. Everything is so dumbed down because no one wants to offend anyone.''

via The New York Times Magazine

Quote of the Day

"A new Jim Carrey movie is coming out about a man who acts like God. I think it’s called "The Bill O’Reilly Story."

- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

Rumsfeld strikes!

Bill Gertz reports that Donald Rumsfeld is continuing his efforts to tame the Pentagon and cut through the layers of bureacracy. It's amazingly hard. I hope Rumsfeld will stick around for the second term.

Stephen Cambone has assumed sweeping power over the Pentagon's intelligence bureaucracy as the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence. We obtained a copy of a May 8 memorandum from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz setting up the new office. It states that the office takes over all 286 persons and policies attached to the intelligence, counterintelligence and security, and other intelligence-related issues that were in the portfolio of the assistant defense secretary for command, control, communications and intelligence, once the Pentagon's top intelligence official.

Mr. Cambone, a protege of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who has little intelligence experience, will have several deputies, including three charged with intelligence warning, war fighting and operations, and counterintelligence and security.

The key phrase of the implementing guidance memorandum relates to the office's power over other Pentagon intelligence agencies that in the past have resisted control by Pentagon policy-makers. It states that the new undersecretary will "exercise authority, direction, and control over the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Security Service (DSS) and the DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA)."

The job of whipping the Pentagon intelligence bureaucracy into shape is formidable. Pentagon intelligence agencies consume the lion's share of the amount spent on intelligence overall, estimated to be about $35 billion annually.

Additionally, the memorandum states that the Pentagon's chief information officer has been given a new title — assistant defense secretary for networks and information integration — and will report directly to the secretary of defense, an unusual arrangement because most assistants report to an undersecretary. The post also comes with new authority over Pentagon space activities.

via The Washington Times

Quote of the Day

"The advance of freedom is more than an interest we pursue. It is a calling we follow. Our country was created in the name and cause of freedom. And if the self-evident truths of our founding are true for us, they are true for all. As a people dedicated to civil rights, we are driven to defend the human rights of others. We are the nation that liberated continents and concentration camps. We are the nation of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift and the Peace Corps. We are the nation that ended the oppression of Afghan women, and we are the nation that closed the torture chambers of Iraq.

America's national ambition is the spread of free markets, free trade, and free societies. These goals are not achieved at the expense of other nations, they are achieved for the benefit of all nations. America seeks to expand, not the borders of our country, but the realm of liberty."

- President George W. Bush, in commencement address to United States Coast Guard Academy

via The White House

Counter-Revolution

Jim Hoagland makes more explicit a point that few journalists have understood so far: the Baathists in Iraq are working very actively to turn back the liberation. As his headline says: "The War Isn't Over." It seems to me that, like in the overall war on terror, we have the advantage right now, but not victory. Not yet. The struggle will continue.

U.S. intelligence initially tended to portray a wave of postwar attacks on coalition forces and civil disturbances as ad hoc, spontaneous events. But on May 16 a secret CIA memorandum pulled together a number of incidents involving former leaders in Hussein's Baathist Party and analyzed them in the same way that many Iraqis see them: as an organized, systematic guerrilla campaign to drive out U.S. forces.

That analytical delay compounded the problems created by the failure of the administration to train and deploy with the invasion force enough U.S. civil affairs officers and Iraqi exiles to act as guides and interpreters. This prewar political decision -- not to put exile forces on a par with renegade Baathist politicians and generals whom the CIA expected to be able to install in power -- has undermined postwar operations.

"The Iraqis saw that we were not prepared to be ruthless in dealing with their jailers and killers, who were reorganizing before their eyes. So, many of the people who could have helped us kept their heads down," said one senior U.S. official. "It is hard to blame them. Threats that Saddam will come back can be dismissed easily in Washington, but not if you live in Baghdad."

Another senior Bush aide would acknowledge only that "there may have been too much desire on our part not to look like an occupation force. We are meeting that problem by reconfiguring our military units there."

But the war is not over, as even the CIA now reports: Ex-Baathists declared the formation of a new national secret movement on May 1. In Mosul on May 12, the Iraqi Vanguard Organization established a network of cells for northern Iraq. The agency has also turned up evidence of a Baathist plot to force a halt to aid shipments by attacking Western and Iraqi relief workers. And so it goes.

via The Washington Post

Saudi Arabia

It's too early to tell for sure, but the Saudis may be taking action at last against the terrorists in their midst. Now if they'll just root out the clandestine supporters and financiers, we can all be safer.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- The kingdom's three major cities -- Riyadh, Dammam and Jidda -- have been turned into near-garrison towns in recent days as the royal family confronts the biggest threat to its authority in more than 20 years. Special armed forces patrol the streets and set up posts outside Western residential compounds. By evening the kingdom's streets are deserted, with Saudis and foreigners alike now certain that a major al Qaeda attack is imminent.

Already reeling from last week's attacks on three housing compounds that claimed 25 victims, authorities yesterday confronted reports that three Moroccans arrested on Monday had planned to hijack an airliner and crash it into a building in Jidda. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef denied any such plot, but a security source who spoke on the condition of anonymity stood by the claim.

Either way, the government has been forced after months of denials to admit to the presence of a terrorist network on its soil. Three cells are said to have been formed -- one that carried out the attacks in Riyadh, one that has fled across the border and a third that is planning another assault.

via The Washington Times

Quote of the Day

"The United States military is now using the music of Metallica and other heavy metal bands to break the will of Saddam Hussein supporters to get them to talk. They’re blaring heavy metal music at them. That should make the artist feel pretty good, huh? Put your heart and soul into your last CD and the Army is using it to torture people."

- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

Virtue rewarded

The admirable Norwegians are "puzzled" to learn that their sincerity, good works, and progressive attitudes don't buy them protection from Islamo-fascists. Welcome to the new reality, neighbors.

Norwegians, proud of their role as a global peacemaker, were puzzled and concerned Wednesday that a leading Al Qaeda member singled out their country in a terrorist threat. The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired an audio tape purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahri, the top lieutenant of Usama bin Laden, urging renewed attacks on the United States, Britain and Australia, which participated in the war against Iraq. But the inclusion of the Scandinavian nation in his warning drew questions. Norway didn't support the war in Iraq but sent troops and fighter planes to help oust Al Qaeda and the Taliban forces from Afghanistan.

"We were surprised," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said, adding that experts were racing to try to figure out why Al Qaeda would want to threaten Norway.

via the AP and Fox News

Iraqi justice?

Newly-freed people have decided to take some matters into their own hands. This is a somewhat raw form of throwing off the shackles of state oppression, but sounds like they are getting the job done.

Iraqis have begun tracking down and killing former members of the ruling Baath Party, doubtful that the United States intends to adequately punish the mid-level government functionaries who they say tormented them for three decades.

The assassinations appear to have picked up since the United States issued a decree last Friday that prohibits senior Baath Party officials from holding positions in Iraq's postwar government. A senior U.S. official said the order was intended to "drive a stake through [the Baath Party's] heart," but many Iraqis who continue to see party officials walking free believe it did not go far enough.

The killers appear to be working from lists looted from Iraq's bombed-out security service buildings, which kept records on informants and victims alike. But others are simply killing Baathist icons or irksome party officials identified with the Hussein government.

via The Washington Post

Quote of the Day

"Each day the conditions in Iraq are improving, and life is slowly beginning to return to what one might call the normal pre-war standard. There are difficulties, to be sure, but that difficulties exist should not come as a surprise to anyone. No nation has made the transition from tyranny to a civil society -- has been immune to the difficulties and challenges of taking that path. As Thomas Jefferson said after our revolution, 'We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.' "

- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Graduation blues

Another biased journalist got what he deserved this weekend. I'm sure the Left will say this is "intolerance."

A New York Times reporter cut short a keynote address to graduates at a private Illinois college over the weekend after audience members shouted down his comments about the war in Iraq. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of a recent book that describes war as an addiction, was booed Saturday at Rockford College, a small liberal arts school 80 miles northwest of Chicago. After protesters rushed the stage and twice cut power to the microphone, Hedges cut his speech short.

"He delivered what I guess I would refer to as a fairly strident perspective on the war in Iraq and American policy," college President Paul Pribbenow said Tuesday. "I think our audience at commencement were not prepared for that." Many audience members turned their backs on Hedges, while others booed and shouted, said Pribbenow, who at one point pleaded to let the speech continue.

The local paper printed a full transcript, which should be read in full to appreciate the degree of self-loathing this guy feels for his own country. The speech began:

I want to speak to you today about war and empire. Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now. We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

This was before he got around to using words like "occupation," "poison," and "betrayal." And then he said the following. What a way to celebrate graduation from college.

Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated.

via Rockford Register-Star

Quote of the Day

"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat is that everybody has to choose an icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."

- Lieutenant Colonel Norman Mims, intelligence officer for the 11th Signal Brigade, Kuwait

via Wired

The Battlefield Web

The new issue of Wired Magazine arrived today and Joshua Davis files a report from the field about the ground-level impact of new communications technology on the war in Iraq.

The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology - the triumph of the longbow at Crécy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and - above all - a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute.

The Irish drink?

Listen to the sound of a stereotype being debunked. Moderation seems to be a casualty of contemporary mores and corporate marketing. There may be a special circle in hell for advertisers.

Alarmed that Ireland has become one of the hardest-drinking countries in Europe, the government announced Monday it plans to require health warnings on alcoholic drinks and limit liquor ads that invade every corner of Irish life. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern insisted in a speech to European brewers in Dublin that young people shouldn't be exposed to saturation marketing of alcohol, which he said was fueling a new "drink to get drunk" culture in a country where the pub has been the hub of life for generations. To that end, he said, the government plans to ban alcohol ads from buses, trains, cinemas and sporting events involving young people, while no ads for beer or other alcoholic beverages would be permitted before 10 p.m. on Irish television. Such ads currently face few restrictions — and adorn just about every public space and event brochure in Ireland, where more than 10,000 pubs serve a population of 3.8 million.

The Irish have long been stereotyped as heavy drinkers, but past surveys have suggested the reputation was undeserved and Ireland was actually one of Europe's more moderate drinking nations. In the past decade, however, figures show that has changed and Ireland has become a leading alcohol consumer.

First impressions are often wrong

New details today from the Associated Press about the terror attacks in Morocco. Remember: nothing is what it seems in the first accounts.

The suicide bombers attacked a Jewish community center when it was closed and empty. A day later, the building would have been packed. Another attacker blew himself up near a fountain, killing three Muslims. He apparently mistook it for one near a Jewish cemetery not far away. The cemetery was undamaged. These and other miscalculations indicate that the 14 suicide attackers who killed 28 people in Casablanca in five near-simultaneous assaults Friday were not as well-trained as first believed. One attacker survived and was arrested.

The apparent missteps "could explain a number of things'' about planning and execution of the attack, or indicate the attackers were simply recruited from poor neighborhoods, government spokesman Nabil Benabdellah said. "The experts were the ones behind the scenes,'' Benabdellah said. The attackers "were used, they were simply trained how to act,'' he said.

A high-level Moroccan official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity, that investigators suspect the bombings were the work of homegrown Islamic groups working on instructions from al-Qaida.

Quote of the Day - 2

"Let's not mince words. Hillary Clinton is never going to be president of the United States. There is no more divisive figure in the Democratic Party, much less the country, than the former first lady. And I like her. But many women don't. Even Democratic women. Even working women. Not to mention non-working, independent, non-political women."

- Susan Estrich, Democratic Party strategist

Quote of the Day

"They say that parents often have to get out of the house when their kids leave because it gets so lonely. Everyone deals with it in different ways. But I told George I thought running for president was a little extreme."

- First Lady Laura Bush, to graduates of the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies

The horror, the horror!

The New York Times is horrified to discover that popular culture is slipping away from the control of Leftist elites and that the nation has... conservative (ugh) tendencies. Their discomfort is hilarious.

The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains -- they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers.

"They have obviously reached the Bush-red audience in a big way," said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, chairman of AOL Time Warner's books unit, referring to the color coding used on television news reports to denote states voting for President George W. Bush during the last election. "It has been a seismic shift in the business, and to some of us in publishing it has been a revelation."

But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales. What is more, the chains' buyers -- especially at Wal-Mart -- carefully screen content to avoid selling material likely to offend their conservative customers.

Music executives say the chains have helped turn country performers like the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith and Faith Hill into superstars. And major book publishers say the growth of the mass merchandisers has helped produce a string of best sellers by conservative authors like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.

Inside job

The Telegraph (UK) says al Qaeda has thoroughly infiltrated the Saudi heirarchy. That's consistent with comments last weekend by Mansoor Ijaz that there is a deadly conflict underway between various factions in the royal family and elsewhere in Saudi society. Glad no one serious was thinking the war on terror is over -- we're just beginning.

Al-Qa'eda has infiltrated Saudi Arabia's military and security forces at the highest level, including those entrusted with the protection of western residential compounds, American intelligence officials believe. They are convinced that Tuesday's suicide bombers depended on a significant level of "insider" knowledge of the compounds that were hit and that al-Qa'eda even infiltrated the elite National Guard, which is involved in compound security.

Intelligence sources said several bombers were wearing National Guard uniforms to help them get into the three bombed complexes. "The only area where there is no evidence of a significant al-Qa'eda presence is in the Saudi air force," one intelligence official said. "The police, army, navy and National Guard have all been infiltrated."

American military and intelligence officers say the attack on the residential quarters of the Vinnell corporation, whose ex-US army officers train the National Guard, must have had detailed insider knowledge.

Quote of the Day

"There are killers on the loose."

- President George W. Bush

Quote of the Day

"We're going to continue to hunt them until they get so tired of running that they give themselves up or we catch them. I think it was very successful. We got one top-55 guy and about a dozen fairly bad guys off the street. And again we sent the message that we know the shadow regime is out there and it won't be tolerated."

- Major Mike Silverman, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, following the successful conclusion of "Operation Planet X," a raid near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit before dawn Thursday, and the seizure of more than 260 prisoners.

SARS

This is pretty serious.

SARS has caused more damage to the global airline industry than the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq combined, the world's airline association said Thursday.

"This is a crisis of major proportions," Thomas Andrew Drysdale, regional director for the International Air Transport Association, told a meeting of Asian airport managers in the Philippines. The world's airlines have lost more than $10 billion this year, he said. He told reporters that the combined effects of the September 11 terror attacks, the war in Iraq and the foot-and-mouth-disease in Britain did not cause as much damage to the industry as SARS. "At no time in the history of aviation have we ever seen declines of the magnitude that we are now seeing in the Asian region as a result of SARS," he said. "Virtually every airline in the world is affected."

via CNN

Thatcher

Such a relief to hear from Margaret Thatcher again. Her clear voice has been in self-imposed exile (for health reasons) but she's come out swinging. Iron Lady indeed.

Baroness Thatcher returned to politics last night with an attack on the French, whom she accused of collaborating with “enemies of the West” for short-term gain. In a one-off comeback speech in New York, which broke a medical ban on speaking in public, the former Conservative Prime Minister attacked those who use environmentalism, feminism and human rights campaigns to fight capitalism and the nation state. She praised Tony Blair, but above all President Bush, for overriding the “rot” that “paralysed” the United Nations.

Baroness Thatcher was speaking at a meeting of Atlantic Bridge, an Anglo-US free market think-tank set up by Liam Fox, the Shadow Health Secretary. Her audience included Michael Ancram, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, and Michael Howard, the Shadow Chancellor.

Lady Thatcher said: “For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain — but enough about the French. So deep had the rot set in that the UN security council itself was paralysed.”

She spoke of her pride at the way Britain stood by America over Iraq: “Our own Prime Minister was staunch and our forces were superb. But, above, all, it is President Bush who deserves the credit for victory.”

Lady Thatcher said that she had “drunk deep from the same well of ideas” as her great ally, the former US President Ronald Reagan. Both instinctively knew what worked, she said, including low taxes, small government and enterprise. “We knew, too, what did not work, namely socialism in every shape or form. Nowadays socialism is more often dressed up as environmentalism, feminism, or international concern for human rights. All sound good in the abstract. But scratch the surface and you will as likely as not discover anti-capitalism, patronising and distorting quotas, and intrusions upon the sovereignty and democracy of nations.”

Lady Thatcher warned that America and Britain faced “a pervasive culture of anti-Westernism" that needed to be challenged. "There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it."

French corruption

The Elf trial in Paris continues and The Telegraph (UK) reports that the defendants may be inching closer to naming Chirac as a participant in the corruption. What's personally interesting about watching executives of my former employer go on trial for this is that the charges fit perfectly into the personalities that I saw on display on a much smaller scale in our local office: expats who were charming, intelligent, and educated, but also with an unshakeable sense of entitlement -- and seemingly without many scruples.

The financial and political corruption at the heart of the French state is being unravelled by a trial whose daily revelations are gripping Paris and terrifying its political class with fear of exposure. This week the ex-president of Elf, Loik Le Floch-Prigent, confirmed an open secret: that for decades the state-owned energy giant provided cover for all manner of political shenanigans, including secret party funding.

"Elf money went to Africa and came back to France," he said, adding that some of its recipients were still in power. So far, he has refused to name names, keeping the capital on tenterhooks, but has made veiled reference to President Jacques Chirac and his former party, the RPR.

The Elf trial began in late March after eight years of investigation, with 37 defendants and 80 lawyers crowding into a Paris courtroom, and is expected to run for another 10 weeks. But already the court has heard of bribery and chicanery on a mind-boggling scale.

In the space of four years, between 1989 and 1993, the year before Elf was privatised, senior Elf executives are alleged to have skimmed more than £200 million from its "black box" of secret funds into their personal accounts, often with President François Mitterrand's approval. Earlier in the trial, Le Floch-Prigent alluded to an Elf investment in a factory in the Correze at the request of the region's then MP, M Chirac.

M Chirac's ghost also hovers over decades of oil deals in West Africa, where he has close ties to leaders such as Omar Bongo of Gabon, who is alleged to have received millions of pounds of Elf money in secret Swiss accounts.

General De Gaulle created the "black box" system so that Elf could pay bribes for oil contracts and challenge British and American rivals away from the gaze of French tax inspectors. But the system was ripe for abuse. During Le Floch-Prigent's tenure, the amount of money sloshing through the secret accounts, known as "the kitchen", multiplied tenfold, with £3.5 million a year allotted only for French political parties. Le Floch-Prigent says Mitterrand brushed off his concerns about the system, saying: "Let's carry on with what de Gaulle set up."

To the satisfaction of the magistrates investigating the case, Tarallo, Sirven and Le Floch-Prigent are finally turning on each other. Tarallo and Sirven say they did nothing without their boss's approval and he says they abused the latitude he gave them. With so much of the trial still left to run, investigators hope much more will come out.

NY Times

Ann Coulter is all over The New York Times in its intellectual and moral misery. Let's just call it "scoundrel time."

The Times has now willingly abandoned its mantle as the "newspaper of record," leapfrogging its impending technological obsolescence. It was already up against the Internet and Lexis-Nexis as a research tool. All the Times had left was its reputation for accuracy.

As this episode shows, the Times is not even attempting to preserve a reliable record of events. Instead of being a record of history, the Times is merely a "record" of what liberals would like history to be – the Pentagon in crisis, the war going badly, global warming melting the North Pole, and protests roiling Augusta National Golf Club. Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger has turned the paper into a sort of bulletin board for Manhattan liberals.

Iraq's future

Paul Wolfowitz is thinking very realistically about what lies ahead for our involvement in Iraq. I, for one, am damned glad that grownups are in charge now.

As he ponders U.S. policy toward Iraq, Wolfowitz wants to be sure that this time the enemy will be utterly destroyed. "The biggest mistake is to underestimate the resilience of the old regime and people's fear that the Baathists will outlast us," he says. "I think there are people in our government who underestimate the danger posed by the Baathists and the pervasive fear their presence induces." Iraqis must have confidence, Wolfowitz explains, that the Americans won't disappear again quickly, as they did after the 1991 Gulf War. "It's important to let the general population know this old regime is to going to be eliminated, root and branch," he says.

A model for the coming de-Baathification of Iraq is Romania, where an estimated 20 to 25 percent of the population was working for the secret police under Nicolae Ceausescu. "Most weren't doing it because they wanted to," says Wolfowitz. Similarly, the Iraqi Baath Party had about 1 million ordinary members. "You can't say that anyone who gave in is automatically anathema," he notes. Those with bloody hands in Iraq were the roughly 30,000 "special members" of the Baath Party -- the same number as the membership of the Iraqi security services. "Those people need to be dealt with pretty severely, so that people are sure they're out of action," says Wolfowitz.

The trick for the United States, he suggests, will be to return Iraq's politics to its people, even as America maintains a continuing, stabilizing military presence. "I think it's possible to withdraw relatively rapidly from Iraqi political life and day-to-day decisions -- but to remain there as the essential security force."

Iran connection

Knight-Ridder reports that there may be a direct link between the terrorist attack in Riyadh and al Qaeda fugitives purported to be hiding in Iran. If true, we can anticipate a dramatic escalation of pressure on the Persians.

U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether senior al-Qaida leaders hiding in Iran may have helped to plan or coordinate the terrorist bombings that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, late Monday in Saudi Arabia. Intelligence officials said several al-Qaida leaders, including Saif al Adel, who's wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and may now be the terrorist group's third-ranking official, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad have found refuge in Iran, where they remain active.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to foreign journalists in Washington on Wednesday, made no mention of a possible link between al-Qaida members in Iran and the Saudi bombings but said: "We are concerned about al-Qaida operating in Iran."

The Iranian government has expelled more than 500 lower-ranking al-Qaida members and denies harboring any of the group's senior leaders. But the U.S. officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was evidence that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard were sheltering al Adel, the younger bin Laden, other al-Qaida leaders and some other members of bin Laden's family. The officials emphasized that no hard evidence has been found that al-Qaida fugitives in Iran had a hand in the Saudi bombings.

If the CIA or other intelligence agencies find evidence confirming suspicions that the Saudi bombings were planned or supported from Iran, one senior U.S. official warned Wednesday, the conversation with Iran "could become a confrontation." Asked what the administration's options would be in that case, another senior official conceded that trying to seize al Adel and others would be extremely difficult, but added: "The military option is never off the table."

The suspicions of a link between Iran and the bombings are focused largely on al Adel, who some U.S. officials think is now the head of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf.

Quote of the Day

"I think you might want to ask Khalid Sheik Mohammed what it feels like, ask him if he thinks the United States is making success in the war against terror. You may want to ask Abu Ali Harithi. You may want to ask Rahim al-Nashiri. These are all some of the leading al Qaeda operatives who have been arrested.... you're welcome to visit them."

- White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, responding to a reporter's inane question about the war on terror: "what evidence do [the American people] have that there is actually something going on?"

Arab Insight?

A remarkable editorial was published in today's Arab News. Maybe the recent Riyadh terrorism attack will have a sobering effect on some of the key players in Saudi Arabia. Individuals and factions in that country are major enablers and supporters of al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorism. They need to be taken down from inside the country, not just from the West.

For too long we have ignored the truth. We did not want to admit that Saudis were involved in Sept. 11. We can no longer ignore that we have a nest of vipers here, hoping that by doing so they will go away. They will not. They are our problem and we all their targets now.

It goes without saying that those responsible, those who poisoned the minds of the bombers, those who are planning to become bombers, must be tracked down and crushed — remorselessly and utterly. But crushing them will not be enough. The environment that produced such terrorism has to change. The suicide bombers have been encouraged by the venom of anti-Westernism that has seeped through the Middle East’s veins, and the Kingdom is no less affected. Those who gloat over Sept. 11, those who happily support suicide bombings in Israel and Russia, those who consider non-Muslims less human than Muslims and therefore somehow disposable, all bear part of the responsibility for the Riyadh bombs.

We cannot say that suicide bombings in Israel and Russia are acceptable but not in Saudi Arabia. The cult of suicide bombings has to stop. So too has the chattering, malicious, vindictive hate propaganda. It has provided a fertile ground for ignorance and hatred to grow.

via James Taranto's Best of the Web Today.

Ship-based terror threat

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the U.S. is working on prevention of ship-based terrorist attacks, and that al Qaeda may own "as many as 15 cargo ships." This is yet another example of how multi-demensional the war on terror is, and why our best defense must be an aggressive offense. Despite our best efforts at self-protection (and we have to make a 110% effort), no defense can or will be perfect. Only killing the bad guys first will protect us.

So far, the terrorists have used trucks - as in the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Africa and Monday night in Saudi Arabia, and turned airliners into weapons on Sept. 11. Now, one of the biggest concerns of authorities is that the terrorists may try the same thing with another form of transportation - ships. Smuggling a biological or chemical weapon in a ship container could be just one approach. Another might be exploding an oil tanker at anchor, an action that might wreak devastation on petroleum ports. Or a large vessel could simply be used as a bludgeon, knocking out bridge abutments and blocking ship channels. The issue is serious enough that on May 6 the Department of Defense held a little-noticed "Impending Storm" exercise that simulated several kinds of shipborne attacks on US cities.

Al Qaeda has already demonstrated a capacity for operating on the water. It was a small explosives-laden boat that blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole while it lay at anchor in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. Seventeen American servicemen were killed. Al Qaeda used the same method near the same port this past October in hitting a French oil tanker.

The Peter Factor

Why are millions of Americans leaving traditional media like newspapers and network news for Fox News Channel and weblogs? The Washington Times reports on one reason - "the Peter Factor."

Additional charges of bias are being leveled against "ABC World News Tonight" anchor Peter Jennings, this time by Bob Zelnick, a 21-year veteran of ABC News. Just last week, we wrote that Peter Collins, a former ABC News correspondent, said in an interview with Marc Morano, senior staff writer of CNSNews.com, that Mr. Jennings manipulated his news scripts. Mr. Zelnick, who became chairman of the journalism department at Boston University after leaving ABC in 1998, has stepped forward now to tell Mr. Morano that Mr. Jennings made it his practice to insert a liberal bias into the news copy of reporters in the field. "It was very common for correspondents, both domestic and foreign, to run into a 'World News Tonight' [staff] that was influenced by Peter, who had a different interpretation of a story," Mr. Zelnick said. "The correspondent who knows that he is going to be doing a piece on 'World News Tonight' girds himself for battle when the phone rings and the editors or sometimes Peter gets on the phone," he explained. Mr. Zelnick called it the "Peter Factor," although he added that "World News Tonight" as a whole "has a tradition of changing the scripts of correspondents, often for stylistic reasons, often for editorial reasons."

Quote of the Day

"The other point that needs to be made here as well, too, is to recognize the fact that the only way to deal with this threat ultimately is to destroy it. There's no treaty can solve this problem. There's no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists. And we do everything we can here at home and around the world to create hard targets so we're difficult to get at, but in the final analysis the only sure way to security and stability and protection of our people and those of our friends and allies is to go eliminate the terrorists before they can launch any more attacks. And this president is absolutely bound and determined to do that."

- Vice President Dick Cheney, on al Qaeda and terrorism

via DefenseLink

An Amoeba's Bum

The inimitable Tony Parsons, writing in The Mirror (UK), contemplates a recent swipe at GWB by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Tony says not to worry, since "on the American radar, Livingstone registers slightly less than a speck of dirt on an amoeba's bum." Tony also thinks some deeper thoughts about empire and they are worth reading.

Only this week I received a letter from some intellectual giant telling me that Americans are arrogant, child-murdering, government-overthrowing, gum-chewing bastards. Anti-Americanism has increased in this country since the war with Iraq. Not because the peace camp were right about the number of civilian casualties. But because they were wrong. All the peacenik predictions - Iraq would be another Vietnam, the Middle East would erupt in flames, the civilian casualties would be beyond number - were totally wrong.

I know all about the CIA involvement in Pinochet's Chile. I have seen the pictures of children suffering from the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. I have even been to the museum they have in Hiroshima, Japan, where there are photographs that you will never see in any Western newspaper. I know America has blood on its hands. Which world power doesn't? Which empire doesn't? The British? The Russian? The Roman?

The more hysterical the anti-Americanism of Europeans becomes, the more I feel like John Wayne. America, for all its faults, is the world's best bet for freedom, democracy and peace. At a time in history when religious fanatics think mass murder is rewarded in paradise with a life rather like Hugh Hefner's in the Playboy mansion, the world needs America like never before. Not all superpowers are evil.

The British Empire was probably the most benevolent in history. We may have nicked a few old urns, but we left behind literacy, hospitals and the rule of law. That's not a bad deal. If you can think of one country in Africa or Asia that was better off after the British Empire left, then answers on a postcard, please.

The United States of the 21st century is history's other benign superpower. The straws that the left clutch at - Pinochet, Vietnam - are increasingly receding into ancient history. If Ken Livingstone, and all the little Yank-hating Livingstones just like him, truly believe George Bush and Saddam Hussein are indistinguishable, then they should try explaining that to the parents of the Iraqi children who were hung from lampposts because their dads shared a joke with British troops.

Euro anti-Semitism

Stephen Pollard of the interesting Centre for the New Europe in Brussels examines the recent visibility of Euro anti-Semitism, specifically the case of British MP Tam Dalyell, in a subscribers-only article in the Wall Street Journal Europe. More echoes of the 1930s - spooky.

All "decent" people, we are constantly told, condemn anti-Semitism. It is well and truly a thing of the past throughout Europe. But the evidence -- anecdotal, yes, but now coming thick and fast -- suggests otherwise. One of the most disturbing aspects of the trend is that it is appearing everywhere. From Madrid to Berlin, one hears of Jewish conspiracies in Washington or London. British euroskeptics may have the conceit that their country is not part of Europe. But, as far as this old/new fad is concerned, we're definitely Europeans. Perhaps sadder is the fact that I'm not referring here just, or even primarily, to the racism and thuggery of fascist parties like the British National Party. The scourge has reached far higher up the food chain.

Indeed, we may even see anti-Semitism as perhaps a spin-off -- though of an older pedigree -- of the newer obsession, anti-Americanism. It's all very convenient. America is becoming an evil empire. And who are the prime movers behind American policy? Yes! The Jews. Again, the facts matter not a jot - in this case that President George W. Bush presides over the first U.S. Cabinet in decades not to include a single Jew, and that none of his key policy advisers -- Dick Cheney, Condi Rice or Donald Rumsfeld -- are Jewish.

The same type of conspiracy theory about Jews in power can be heard today throughout Europe, and even French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is said to share these views. Few admit to anti-Semitism, but their words too often give them away. All right-thinking people claim to despise it, but as the non-reaction to Dalyell's rantings shows, anti-Semitism has become the hatred that dares to speak its name anew.

Kim Jong Il: 'fraidy cat

The New York Times says the North Korean geek-in-chief has been watching the news... Fox or CNN?

American intelligence officials have concluded that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, went into seclusion during the final buildup to the war in Iraq because he feared that he too might be the target of attack. That judgment has led the Pentagon to consider new ways to hold him and his inner circle at risk as a way of bolstering deterrence on the peninsula, officials say.

Mr. Kim vanished from public view for 50 days starting in mid-February, a time when the Pentagon also moved bombers into the Korean area of operations. Now, the military's ability to mount precision attacks on leadership targets in Iraq is being examined to see how it might apply in a tense standoff with North Korea, perhaps influencing North Korea's behavior without ever firing a shot.

A senior Defense Department official said that lessons from the attacks against Saddam Hussein of Iraq, including short-notice air strikes on suspected hideouts in the opening and closing days of the war, are shaping discussions of how best to re-arrange the American military presence in South Korea and nearby in the Pacific. The goal would be to assemble in the Korean region the same kind of detailed intelligence on high-priority targets -- including the location of the adversary's leadership -- and the ability to strike almost instantaneously with precision weapons should the need arise.

Disney Co. betrayal

Drudge is breaking the story on yet another reason to avoid a trip to Disney World. Walt must be having an uneasy afterlife, watching his legacy betrayed by Eisner & Co.

The WALT DISNEY CO. is set to spend millions financing a new explosive Bush-bashing documentary from Michael Moore -- a documentary which claims bin Laden was greatly enriched by the Bush family! DISNEY, via subsidiary MIRAMAX, has agreed to cover the production costs, said to be in the millions, of Moore's planned FAHRENHEIT 911.

"The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore explains. FAHRENHEIT 911 will be released during the upcoming presidential election cycle. [More Moore in '04.]

The director claims he will document on film how the "senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11." Moore will also scrutinize, in graphic detail, why America is so disliked abroad.

Deal with the devil?

The British seem to have made a pact with the devil for the last twenty-five years to fight the IRA. Dirty work indeed. One can only hope it has been worth it to defeat these deadly Irish terrorists.

The British army's most deadly double agent, who operated at the very heart of the IRA, has been identified as Alfredo 'Freddy' Scappaticci, known to spy-masters by the codename 'Stakeknife'. As the British government's most powerful weapon in its 30-year 'dirty war' against the IRA and Sinn Fein, Scappaticci is suspected of being allowed by the army's Force Research Unit (FRU) to take part in up to 40 murders. He is said to have been involved in the killings of loyalists, policemen, soldiers, and civilians to protect his cover so he could keep passing top-grade intelligence to the British. He also kidnapped, interrogated, tortured and killed other IRA men suspected of being British informers.

He is also said to have provided his military handlers with the information which led to the 'Death on the Rock' killings of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar in 1988 by the SAS. At the time, the IRA were convinced that their active- service unit had been betrayed by an informer. However, their mole-hunt drew a blank.

Files based on intelligence from Scappaticci were forwarded to prime ministers Thatcher, Major and Blair. During a 25-year career infiltrating the IRA, Scappaticci rose to become head of their Internal Security Unit (the so-called Nutting Squad) and a member of the IRA's General Headquarters Staff. He also became close to some of the most powerful members of the republican movement, including Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and former IRA chief-of-staff Brian Keenan.

The IRA fear the outing of Stakeknife could deal an almost-fatal blow to the organisation. A senior Republican source said last night: 'This is the most dreadful news I've ever heard. I don't know how we can recover from this. How can we have any confidence left in ourselves when a man like Scappaticci turned out to be Stakeknife?'

The events follow a week of turmoil and chaos within British military intelligence, the UK government and the ranks of the IRA. The exposure of Scappaticci as Stakeknife comes just weeks after Scotland Yard Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, released his report on alleged collusion between British security forces and terrorists in Northern Ireland. As a result of Stevens's work nine members of the FRU, including Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the Aberdonian army officer who led the unit, could now face prosecution. An unquantifiable number of civilians may have been killed because of state collusion with para militaries, including Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

UN Strategy

Have been pondering why the U.S. would bother to go back to the United Nations again on the subject of Iraq. STRATFOR has an encouraging analysis and concludes that it is a vigorous, challenging strategy based on the new realities of American power. The details are subscription-only, but a front-page teaser sums up their take: it's one last chance for those who rolled the dice to oppose us, and lost their bet.

The United States has presented a resolution to the U.N. Security Council that would suspend the sanctions regime and transition the oil-for-food program in Iraq into a different form. The resolution is an attempt to get a U.N. stamp of approval on coalition efforts in Iraq -- which in reality will continue regardless of the Security Council's actions. But more than that, it is a challenge to every state that opposed U.S. policy in Iraq and a threat to those who might do so again.

Tastes great - less filling?

What is the plan for sidelining Arafat? No peace is possible as long as he and his cohorts control terror assets, and use them against both Israel and the Palestinians who want to compromise.

Palestinian leaders have put aside reservations to parts of the U.S.-developed plan for peace with Israel and are ready to get started on it, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday, heeding an appeal by Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We have accepted the road map," Abbas said at a joint news conference with Powell after their first meeting since Abbas was sworn in on April 30. "For the sake of opening the road, we have dropped our reservations," Abbas said.

Referring to [Yasser] Arafat, Powell said he was "in close touch and contact" with European foreign ministers and "made it clear to them we believe this is the time to invest in new leadership. I hope that with the passage of time, my European colleagues will see the wisdom of acting in that way." President Bush, who has refused to invite Arafat to the White House, subsequently declared him deeply involved in terrorist activity against Israel. As a result, the United States has suspended contact with Arafat.

Quote of the Day

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."

- Abraham Lincoln

High Tech

Here's the new meaning of "tag and release."

U.S. interrogators in Iraq are building a digital catalog of prisoners of war and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, scanning and saving their fingerprints and other body characteristics in databases. The data banks, controlled by the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, are being used to investigate suspicious foreigners entering the United States, as well as to trace suspects in future terrorist attacks. The move also reflects the U.S. government's desire to keep tabs on Iraqi fighters after releasing them when the Iraq war is declared ended.

"We do this passive collection when we go in, because these guys will scatter over time," said Thomas Barnett, a professor at the Naval War College who advises the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "When you have the opportunity to tag them, you tag them before you release them to the wild."

U.S. military and intelligence officials started building the biometric dossiers in Afghanistan, taking digital scans of the fingerprints, irises and voices of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners, including those jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

GROM

At last we can learn more about GROM -- the mysterious commando unit from Poland founded by " the man once described in Jane's Intelligence Review as 'his country's James Bond and Rambo wrapped neatly into one daunting package.' " This is pretty cool.

It came as a surprise to many when the U.S. postwar plans for Iraq were finally revealed. Like Gaul, Iraq would be divided into three parts: an American zone, a British zone, and a Polish zone. But what role did Poland play during the war? It turns out a very important one--albeit one that was kept mostly secret.

One of the primary objectives during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the port at Umm Qasr. Without it, delivering adequate humanitarian aid to the rest of Iraq would have been nearly impossible for the coalition. Not long after the start of the war, the port was secured--in large part thanks to GROM, Poland's elite commandos.

Who even knew Poland had special forces? For a while, not many. The Polish government waited three years before publicly disclosing GROM's existence. Standing for Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno Mobilnego (Operational Mobile Response Group), the name actually stems from a special-forces commander, Gromoslaw Czempinski, who, during the first Gulf War, led a Polish unit into Western Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives. One of the other men on that secret mission was Slawomir Petelicki--the father of GROM.

GROM operators are said to be martial arts experts and capable of "cold killing." "We created our own style of martial arts," says Petelicki. "I have an old friend who is a master of karate and jujitsu and is a sixth degree black belt. He created the style with other specialists--it is most similar to what the Israelis do."

And what about "cold killing"? Asked if the ominous term refers to garrotes or piano wire, Petelicki replies "Yes." Pausing to choose his words carefully, he explains, "Many things. For instance, we can create a weapon from . . . well . . . many things."

Syria

The Telegraph (UK) is all over Syria providing asylum for fugitive Iraqi leaders -- they report that "thousands" went to Syria in return for big payments. And they corroborate that France is facilitating further escapes. One can only hope that Syria's footdragging on turning them over is mainly for show. If not, things will go badly for them in due time.

The king of clubs from America's card deck of most wanted Iraqis is being sheltered at a military base in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to a Gulf diplomat. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former vice-president of Iraq and one of Saddam Hussein's closest henchmen, is said to be under the protection of Syria's Republican Guard in the decrepit military base near the airport. He is among thousands of regime figures who are believed to have slipped into Syria before Damascus sealed the border. Izzat had been put in charge of defending northern Iraq but in the absence of a northern front, he decided to flee.

Many other Iraqis are making plans to move on from Syria. Last week, American intelligence officials accused France of providing passports to fleeing regime officials who want to come to western Europe. The French government denied the charges, but a Syrian employee of the French embassy in Damascus claimed that eight Iraqi officials from the oil and finance ministries had been given passports in the middle of April. "The commercial section of the embassy received passports for eight Iraqi officials and members of their families," he said. He claimed that Paris also ordered that a passport issued for Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, a former head of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service who is on America's wanted list, should be cancelled soon after it had arrived. It remains unclear whether al-Habbush is in Syria.

Women in combat

Conservatives are outraged over the role of women soldiers at or near the frontlines in Iraq. Seems to me that it is foolish to pretend that men and women are identical, but equally foolish to think that women don't have the toughness to fight. The professional military can probably evolve this sensibly, if mostly left alone by various pressure groups.

With one single mother from the U.S. Army killed in Iraq and another wounded and captured, some conservatives are urging the military to halt its march toward gender equality and restrict the deployment of mothers in war zones. "Healthy, responsible nations do not send the mothers of small children to or near the front lines - that violates the most basic human instincts," said Allan Carlson, a historian affiliated with the Family Research Council.

For now, the cause has found few champions in Congress or at the Pentagon; politicians and commanders are pleased by the all-volunteer military's performance in Iraq and proud that three ambushed servicewomen became national heroes. But the critics - mostly from groups opposed to the feminist movement - vow to maintain pressure in hopes the Bush administration might one day review deployment policies.

Bush, asked about the matter Thursday, said it will be "up to the generals" to determine if any changes are warranted.

Female casualties

Jessica Lynch wasn't the only female casualty of the war in Iraq. Lori Piestewa of Arizona was killed; Shoshana Johnson was wounded. Now the San Antonio News-Express profiles another gritty young woman. The efforts to support the families of those killed in action is wholly admirable -- but what about those who were wounded? They and their loved ones also face a lifetime of struggle, and we should do more for them too.

The first time her 2-year-old son asked to see her legs, Army Sgt. Casaundra Grant refused. When he persisted, Grant relented and showed the boy what remained -- two stumps, one above, the other below the knee. Blane Davis III didn't cry or shriek or hide his eyes. "The first thing he did, he came over and prayed for my legs," Grant said. "He understood."

Grant, a 1996 graduate of Business Careers, part of Holmes High School, was pinned under a tank that she was helping move in Kuwait on March 12. She immediately lost her left leg, and eventually her right. But the 25-year-old, who's stationed at Fort Hood, is grateful to have survived. A single mother, Grant has an easy smile that belies her injuries. "I have God on my side," she said Thursday at Brooke Army Medical Center, where she's recovering. "I'm not blaming anyone for this accident." She's undergoing physical therapy and will eventually be fitted for prosthetic legs that will allow her to return to her hobbies, which include working out and shopping.

For now, she keeps in contact with her unit, which remains in Kuwait. "I miss them; I miss working over there," she said. "We have a family over there."

via The Corner on NRO.

Quote of the Day

"If your uncle started talking like that at Thanksgiving dinner, you know, you'd all have a talk when he left the room about how you have to keep an eye on Uncle Bobby."

- Comedian Dennis Miller, on Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) who attacked President Bush for his visit to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln

Clash of civilizations

Jonathan Rauch has a thought-provoking article in the National Journal which captures both the opportunity and the challenge now facing us in the clash of civilizations between the West and Islamic fanaticism. This is going to be hard, but at least now there is a chance, thanks to George W. Bush.

Perhaps the most awkward and obnoxious of America's Cold War alignments were in the Arab world. Washington supported tyrannies and monarchies that wrecked their economies and stunted their politics. The Arab regimes wallowed in corruption and incompetence. They entrenched poverty and blocked middle-class aspirations. They jailed liberal dissidents and political moderates. They fertilized the soil for militant Islamists who provided the only outlet for dissent. They then attempted to neutralize Islamism by diverting its energies to hating liberalism, Americans, and Jews.

In both Iran and Iraq, Washington supported or tolerated corrupt and brutal regimes, with disastrous results in both places. Saudi Arabia has been a different kind of disaster, propagating anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism all over the world. Syria and Libya are disasters. Lebanon is between disasters. Egypt is a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe Jordan is, too.

In short, the United States has been on the wrong side of Arab history for almost five decades, and it is not doing much better than the Soviets. The old policy had no future, only a past. It was a dead policy walking. September 11 was merely the death certificate.

Bush is no sophisticate, but he has the great virtue -- not shared by most sophisticates -- of knowing a dead policy when he sees one. So he gathered up the world's goodwill and his own political capital, spent the whole bundle on dynamite, and blew the old policy to bits. However things come out in Iraq, the war's larger importance is to leave little choice, going forward, but to put America on the side of Arab reform.

Reform will take years, decades even, and it will mean different things in different countries. In Iraq, it meant force. In Syria, it means hostile prodding; in Saudi Arabia, friendly prodding. It means setting a subversive example for Iran, creating the region's second democracy in Palestine, building on change in Qatar and Kuwait, leading Egypt gently toward multiparty politics. Progress will be fitful, at best. But the direction will be right, for a change.

This is a breathtakingly bold undertaking. The difficulties are staggering. Everything might go wrong. But the crucial point to remember is that everything had already gone wrong. No available policy could justify optimism in the Arab world, but the new policy at least offers hope. It offers a path ahead, a future where there had been only a past. It is not dead. It puts America on the right side of history and on the right side of America.

Fighting EU-undertow

The Telegraph (UK) reports that opponents of Euro-utopianism are trying to stop the next phase of neutering all sovereignty among EU nations. Glad to see that not everyone in Europe has lost their minds. Maybe the Brits at least will hold out.

The European Union should be abolished and replaced with a "Europe of Democracies" based on free trade rather than shared sovereignty, say opponents of the European constitution being drawn up in Brussels. A group of members of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body writing the constitution, plans to publish a minority report opposing most of the main proposals. The rebels include around a dozen politicians from eight countries including Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland. Although the minority report stands virtually no chance of being adopted, it is a clear sign of growing concern across the EU about the planned constitution, to be published next month.

The draft constitution proposed that countries should lose their veto on foreign policy, that taxes be harmonised and that the EU should be renamed the United States of Europe. There were also plans to set up a European army and a common criminal justice system.

via RealClearPolitics

Quote of the Day

"Some believe that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely, if not impossible. They argue that the people of the Middle East have little desire for freedom or self-government.

"These same arguments have been heard before in other times, about other people. After World War II, many doubted that Germany and Japan, with their histories of autocratic rule and aggressive armies, could ever function as free and peaceful societies. In the Cold War we were told that imperial communism was permanent and the Iron Curtain was there to stay.

"In each of these cases -- in Germany, in Japan, in Eastern Europe and in Russia -- the skeptics doubted, then history replied. Every milestone of liberty over the last 60 years was declared impossible until the very moment it happened. The history of the modern world offers a lesson for the skeptics: do not bet against the success of freedom."

- President George W. Bush, speaking at the University of South Carolina

via The White House

USS Kitty Hawk war numbers

Stars and Stripes has the numbers on the USS Kitty Hawk's deployment to the Persian Gulf, and a preview of what's ahead for dry dock this summer.

More than 100 days at sea. More than 864,000 pounds of ordnance expended during 5,375 aircraft sorties. Thirty-seven underway replenishments. Almost 30,000 miles traveled since departing Yokosuka, Japan, on Jan. 20. On Tuesday, the Kitty Hawk was returning home to a rousing welcome. In the interim, the numbers kept piling up.

Six million dollars in pay and other crew entitlements; 13,486 haircuts; 473,000 cans of soda (and 1,211 cavities filled by the ship’s dental department); 8,250 immunizations; 4,480 sick-call patients. One hundred and twenty-nine new personnel joined the ship while it was under way; 168 sailors re-enlisted. Two aircraft were lost; two lives were lost.

One more number etches itself into the minds of Kitty Hawk sailors: five. That's the number of days off the crew gets before being required to report back for work. On Monday, crewmembers must return and start prepping the ship for a months-long dry dock period that ship officials have called the most extensive ever for a forward-deployed carrier.

Nice sailors

Sailors from the USS Kitty Hawk behaved themselves after returning home to Yokosuka, Japan, and apparently that rated a news report in Stars and Stripes. Glad to hear it.

The 7th Fleet's emphasis on responsibility and safety appears to have paid off: Neither base officials nor Japanese police reported any major incidents involving sailors from the USS Kitty Hawk, John S. McCain or Cowpens, all of which returned Tuesday from deployments to the Persian Gulf. For most of the cruise home, sailors repeatedly were reminded that last summer’s conduct problems were not to be repeated -- and they apparently took the words to heart.

"It would have been pretty bad if somebody did something stupid on the first night back," said Seaman Arthur Johnson of the Kitty Hawk. "After all the talk and all the warnings, can you imagine how hard they'd come down on the first guy to screw up?" Several incidents last summer led to curtailed liberties and contributed to the Kitty Hawk commander’s sudden reassignment.

Most sailors with families chose to spend Tuesday night catching up at home. Single sailors looked forward to other comforts: fast food and beer. For most of Tuesday, a very common sight was a sailor in civilian clothes, fast-food bag in one hand, bag of compact discs and DVDs from the exchange in the other.

Europe Day

Learned from NPR that today, May 9, is "Europe Day," a day in the European Union countries when they celebrate, with an unknown quantity of enthusiasm, their Europe-ness. Typically, the day is apparently a commemoration of a speech back in 1950, not of anything actually being accomplished.

The description on the EU site ain't exactly a stemwinder:

Probably very few people in Europe know that on 9 May 1950 the first move was made towards the creation of what is now known as the European Union.

Quote of the Day

"One might plausibly argue, indeed, that the complete disappearance of France would produce no more perturbation in the world than the loss of an ear produces in a man. Brussels and Lucerne would quickly put in better cooks, and Copenhagen, I venture, could take care of the peep-show business without any need of an international loan."

- H.L. Mencken, 1927

via The Washington Times

Oh, Syria!

Don't forget to keep an eye on Syria. Two eyes when you can spare them.

The United States would be forced to act if it discovered that Damascus allowed Iraq to hide weapons of mass destruction in Syria during the war, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published Wednesday. Rice said she was sure Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - the main reason cited by the United States for invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein - would turn up eventually.

But she said it was possible some had been removed from Iraq before the fighting concluded last month. "We have assurances from the Syrians that nothing crossed their borders. Time will tell," Rice said in the interviews given Tuesday in Washington to El Pais and three other Spanish dailies. But if that assurance turned out to be false, it would create a very serious situation and the international community would be forced to act, Rice said, according to El Pais.

Pressed about whether she meant another war, Rice simply repeated that the international community would be forced to act.

Mansoor's plan

Mansoor Ijaz and his colleagues at Crescent Investment Management have a plan for winning hearts and minds in Iraq. Worth reading.

The blueprint for winning the peace will revolve around bringing to life a federalist constitution that devolves power to Iraq's ethnically and religiously diverse people, insuring a system of justice that can equitably apply the rule of law to all its citizens, structuring a free-market economic system that encourages merit and uses Iraq's oil resources for the good of the people, and redefining the role of religion in society so it becomes a force for moral healing and unity rather than sowing the seeds of hatred, violence, and division.

American ideas for solving these problems will get the best reception from Iraq's people if there is a concurrent campaign waged to win over their hearts and minds. After being ruled by hardened Baathist heads for the past three decades, transforming Iraqi hearts into a democratic force for reform throughout the Arab world will require a combination of compassion, political skill, and a willingness to spend U.S. taxpayer money on things other than the latest cruise missiles, fighter jets, or armored tanks.

We need a common-sense approach that focuses on the needs of Iraq's people and empowers them to leave the era of Saddam's tyranny behind.

The Taliban lives

The Christian Science Monitor has a lengthy article on the apparent regrouping and strengthening of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That one ain't over by a long shot. Pakistan is still the linchpin and a great concern - Pak support brought the Taliban to power in the first place. The current government is in a sense surrounded - by Pakistan's own Islamic fanatics, India, and a resilient Taliban. All while sitting on a nuclear arsenal. Glad we have Rumsfeld and Franks to keep an eye on this, but vigilance is not optional - it's required.

Across the southern portions of Afghanistan, where the Taliban found strong support among the rural conservative Pashtun populations, there are definite signs that the Taliban are making a comeback. Some Taliban leaders, such as Salam and Taliban commander Mullah Muhammad Hasan Rehmani, are giving interviews once again. Others are dropping leaflets, calling for a jihad against US forces and against the new Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Still others are increasingly willing to discuss the secret hierarchy that is directing this jihad and the sources of funding that keep it running.

It's this confidence that undercuts recent assertions by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are over, and that the focus will now be on reconstruction. "The general idea that was being put forward by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld last week, is that the Afghan military, backed by US forces, is engaged in mopping up some remnants of the past - that is not true," says Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University. "They [the Taliban] are now organizing for a new offensive, and they are still getting some support from Pakistan. Even if Pakistan is not cooperating directly, it is not cooperating in efforts to end the support that is coming from Pakistani territory."

The reorganized Taliban are mounting increasingly brazen attacks on Afghan soil. In Zabul Province last month, for instance, Taliban forces took control of two remote districts near the Pakistani border for nearly a week. Afghan military forces, backed up by US Special Forces and helicopter gunships, eventually dislodged the Taliban fighters.

Comeuppance?

Comeuppances are, well, hell. Gee, they said they wanted a piece of the action...

Germany has responded angrily to a proposal that its troops be deployed in northern Iraq under the command of Poland, one of the newest members of Nato.

The United States recommended that Poland take over the military administration of northern Iraq, in charge of peacekeeping duties. The force under its command would number about 7,000, including contingents from Nato members such as Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Germany. Peter Struck, the German Defence Minister, said he would “look into” the proposal, but was clearly opposed.

Poland, which contributed 200 men to coalition forces in Iraq, had promised 10,000 men for a peacekeeping force. This has shrunk to 1,500, with troops from other countries added. The US will be responsible for central Iraq and Britain for the south. Neither Germany nor France had expected to take a leading military role in postwar Iraq, but the idea that Poland could take charge has stirred a hornets’ nest. President Kwasniewski of Poland will try to resolve the matter when he meets German and French leaders tomorrow, but there is no mistaking the dismay in “old Europe” as Poland flexes its muscles.

Payback time

This seems eminently reasonable to me. Those who sneer at such a response fail to acknowedge the depth of opposition that President Bush has faced over Iraq. It went far beyond principled opposition and mere diplomatic persuasion - it has included double-dealing, clandestine sharing of intelligence, bribery, arms transfers, military advice, and monetary support for "anti-war" demonstrations. France was the leader but there are plenty of others. So practicing diplomatic carrots-and-sticks goes far beyond pique, but it is convenient for the Left and the media to ignore the reality in favor of stereotypes.

It's payback time at the White House, and countries around the world are reaping the benefits or paying the price for their stand on the war with Iraq.

The door to the Oval Office is wide open for foreign leaders who backed President Bush, but war critics would be lucky to find a spot with Barney, the presidential dog. Foreign leaders who crossed Bush can forget about presidential visits or quick action on free-trade agreements. The retribution fits Bush's longstanding pattern of rewarding friends and punishing enemies, but critics say it is adding to the already substantial anti-American sentiment abroad.

In the latest example of tit-for-tat foreign policy, Bush signed a free-trade deal with war ally Singapore on Tuesday, while a similar agreement with war opponent Chile has stalled. This week's White House guest list is a roll call of war allies. Today, Bush will welcome Spanish Prime Minister José Mara Aznar to the Oval Office. Thursday, he meets with the foreign ministers from Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- allies all. He also will make time for Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, which hosted the U.S. military command during the war, and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who also endorsed the war.

War opponents shouldn't expect invitations anytime soon.

Quote of the Day

"Evil labors with vast powers and perpetual success -- in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general and so it is in our own lives."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, 1944

USS Kitty Hawk going home

AP reports that the USS Kitty Hawk has returned to home port after its mission to the war in Iraq.

After more than 100 days at sea, the launching of more than 5,300 sorties and the loss of just one pilot, the USS Kitty Hawk and a pair of ships from its battle group returned home to a boisterous welcome Tuesday. Based at this former Japanese Imperial Navy stronghold just south of Tokyo, the Kitty Hawk is one of the first aircraft carriers to return from the Iraq war. For most aboard, it wasn't a day too soon.

''Words cannot express how good it feels to be back,'' said Seaman David Espinosa, of Reno, Nevada. ''This was my first cruise, so it feels especially a long time to be away from my wife and son.''

About 5,000 family members and other well-wishers, many waving small American flags, turned out to welcome the ships back. Military brass bands played traditional march music for the crowd. A rock band took over as the carrier, as tall as an 11-story building, pulled up to the pier.

Stars and Stripes also covers the happy day.

Balloons, lots of 'em, in a rainbow of colors. Everywhere, American flags, both tiny and huge. Handmade signs. Booming music, clapping, arm-waving, cheering. Kisses and hugs, more of them, even, than balloons. And the good tears, the kind that spring from joy. The USS Kitty Hawk is home.

Hundreds of family and friends waited pierside as the massive aircraft carrier moored at its permanent dock for the first time since leaving Jan. 20 to support Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Persian Gulf. Also returning Tuesday were the USS Cowpens and USS John S. McCain.

Just before the Kitty Hawk was in range of tugboats, as the sun rose and tried to burn through ocean haze, sailors in freshly pressed dress whites started making their way to the flight deck, taking pictures of each other and talking excitedly about all the things they missed about being in port. And then: "Man the rails!"

When the order was given, sailors sprinted across the deck to get the coveted spots on the ship's starboard side -- the side that gets tied to the pier. As the pier came into view, music started blaring. On this morning, one that sailors had been anticipating for more than 100 days, the song was perfect: "Mama, I'm Coming Home," by Ozzy Osbourne.

"This never gets old," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Tamra Hull, a 21-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas. "I love coming into port, and this time is special."

Two Nations

Michael Barone is perceptive in US News & World Report as he ponders the existence of "two nations" in our country and the transition from youth to adulthood that seems to happen only after high school for most young people. There are some exceptional kids and we all know at least a few, if we're blessed - but they are exceptions.

Who has not been impressed by the American military personnel we have been seeing over these past two months? Calm, terse, determined, brave, confident--above all, competent, able to vanquish the enemy and spare the innocent with astonishingly low casualties. And yet a few years ago most of these young men and women were typical American 18-year-olds, most of whom don't seem competent at much of anything.

One of the peculiar features of our country is that we produce incompetent 18-year-olds and remarkably competent 30-year-olds. Americans at 18 typically score lower on standardized tests than 18-year-olds from other advanced countries. Watch them on their first few days working at McDonald's or behind the counter in chain drugstores, and it's obvious that they don't really know how to make change or keep the line moving. But by the time Americans are 30, they are the most competent people in the world. They produce a stronger and more vibrant private-sector economy; they produce scientific and technical advances that lead the world; they provide the world's best medical care; they create the strongest and most agile military the world has ever seen. And it's not just a few meritocrats at the top: American talent runs wide and deep.

Why? Because from the age of 6 to 18, our kids live mostly in what I call Soft America--the part of our society where there is little competition and accountability. In contrast, most Americans in the 12 years between ages 18 and 30 live mostly in Hard America--the part of American life subject to competition and accountability; the military trains under live fire. Soft America seeks to instill self-esteem. Hard America plays for keeps.

Soft America for a long time has been running most of our schools. Since early in the 20th century, as Diane Ravitch has shown in Left Back, educators have had a mistrust of testing and competition and a yearning to protect children from their rigors. Educators ban tag and dodge ball, because some kids lose. Teacher unions seek tenure, higher pay, and lower accountability. Parents' expectations are often low: Mom and Dad, busy working in Hard America, don't want to notice that their kids are not learning much. There are exceptions of course: Many schools do a good job despite all this. But for most kids who are not on the track to the relatively few select colleges, junior high and high school are something like the Soviet system: They pretend to teach, and we pretend to learn.

Then at 18, kids encounter Hard America--competitive colleges and universities and community colleges, competitive private-sector employers, training institutions from McDonald's to the military. Some fall behind and don't get much of anywhere. Others seek out enclaves of Soft America--soft corners in the civil service or corporate bureaucracies. But most figure out pretty quickly that how they do depends on what they produce. They develop skills that astonish those who knew them at 18. That is what we have been seeing in the American military forces in Iraq.

US Marines rock

Roger Roy writes in the Orlando Sentinel about his experience being embedded with the U.S. Marines 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. This is a great piece. It's been blogged elsewhere, including The Braden Files, but I can't resist adding it here. Go read the entire article.

Someone at the Pentagon had figured out what we now recognized: No matter what you think of the military as an institution, it's hard not to admire the actual rank-and-file troops. Who would write glowingly about the Marine Corps bureaucracy for trying to push a convoy of 150 supply trucks through hundreds of miles of enemy territory with too little fuel, too few radios and not enough heavy weapons? But it's a different story when told from the seat next to a 19-year-old lance corporal at a wheel of a truckload of high explosives who hasn't slept in two days and is just trying to get the mission done.

Before the war, I'd never spent much time with the Marines, and I wasn't sure what to expect when I was assigned to them. I think I understand Marines better now, but I'm not sure I can explain them.

They tend to do things the hardest way possible.

They call each other "devil dog" and say "Hoo-rah."

They are loud and rough. They have lots of tattoos. They'll ignore you or torment you if they think you're a fake. They'll do anything for you if they like you.

They'll believe the wildest rumors. One told me, early in the war, that he'd heard the Army, rather than the Marines, would occupy Baghdad because the Marines "break too much stuff."

Marines tend to think and travel in a straight line.

They have a talent for complaining and swearing that I've seldom seen surpassed. I heard entire conversations between Marines that consisted of nothing but acronyms laced with profanity, something like: "Where's your #&% NCO?"

Marines get things done. They follow orders. They would sometimes do crazy things if they thought they'd been told to.

The Marines Woolley and I had been embedded with were in the Transportation Support Group, which included the Orlando-based reservists of the 6th Motor Transport Battalion. They were running convoys of ammunition, food, water and fuel, and fighting wasn't supposed to be their main job.

They were ordered to more or less ignore civilians unless they were hostile. If they took fire, they weren't to stop: Getting the supplies to the front was more important than getting into a fight, especially since the fuel and ammunition trucks in a convoy would have been vulnerable targets.

Their orders encouraged a sort of don't-mess-with-me-I-won't-mess-with-you policy. But if someone messed with them, they were inviting the worst.

Marines return fire with a relish.

Quote of the Day

"America is electing a president, not a designated driver."

- James Taranto, on the topic of dull, even if sober and serious, Democratic candidates for president of the United States

Math problem

If my math is correct, then the anti-American spin machine was 0.02235% correct on the story of the "looted" museum in Baghdad. Glad to see some truth come out, even if it won't get front-page treatment like the original Big Lie.

The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to U.S. investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries. A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items. The single most valuable missing piece is the Vase of Warka, a white limestone bowl dating from 3000 B.C.

The inventory, compiled by a military and civilian team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, refutes reports that Iraq's renowned treasures of civilization -- as many as 170,000 individual artifacts -- had been scattered or lost during the U.S.-led war against Iraq. It also raises questions about why any of the artifacts went missing.

Dennis Miller TKOs Norman Mailer

Dennis Miller writes in the Opinion Journal and takes on public nuisance Norman Mailer, whose delirious Leftist ravings have floated to the surface again. Mailer has artsy, literati fantasies about being a boxer but I'd say Dennis Miller is the winner here with a TKO about 75 seconds into the first round.

Mr. Mailer was the Father of the Nonfiction Novel and now he can also claim lineage as the distant, addled Third Cousin of the Rational Op-Ed. Studying at the Sorbonne as a young man obviously made a deep impression on him because this thing reads like Jacques Chirac's Dream Journal. With six marriages under his belt, one would assume Mr. Mailer has a stranglehold on warfare. One would be wrong.

His basic contention is that we went to war with Iraq because with the dominance of white American men in the boxing ring, the office and the home front eroded, George W. Bush thought they needed to know they were still good at something. Mr. Mailer has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Harvard so he had to know that argument wouldn't fly. But then again, maybe this claptrap is just a grand put-on. The fact that I and many others can't differentiate anymore does not auger well for Norm's legend.

Ironically, Mr. Mailer seems to see everything in the world in terms of black and white, except of course, good and evil.

Clever bad guys

The bad guys continue to innovate and find ways to work around the expectations of the experts. Complacency is a sin.

Two British suicide bombers who attacked a Tel Aviv bar last week smuggled plastic explosives into Israel from Jordan inside copies of the Koran, Israel's defence minister said last night. Israeli officials investigating how Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif were able to penetrate tight border controls suggested that they could have used a new kind of explosive that is more difficult to detect.

The prospect of a new explosive in the hands of terrorists raises worrying questions for airline security around the world. Western intelligence officials will be seeking confirmation that the claim is not an attempt by Israeli security to cover up an embarrassing lapse. Israeli newspapers have dropped hints about the use of "an unfamiliar substance" in the attack on Mike's Place seafront bar, in which three Israelis were killed. Military censors have prevented publication of more details.

Quote of the Day

"I was just happy we were down, that everything was safe. It was the most beautiful dirt I've ever seen. We could smell the dirt. We could smell the grass. It was fantastic, and also the smell of the pyrotechnic bolts that open the parachute cover and open the antennas, that smoke came in. It was a gorgeous smell."

- American astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, after returning from 161 days on board the International Space Station and landing 300 miles off target in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz capsule.

Body armor

The usefulness of body armor would seem to be obvious but many things in life that seem so turn out otherwise. It's a relief to see a life-saver proven true.

The vast majority of American soldiers who suffered life-threatening wounds in combat in Iraq were hit in the limbs, not the torso, suggesting that the body armor now worn by all soldiers is remarkably effective.

The first look at the injured soldiers found that 58 percent were wounded in the hands, feet, arms or legs. Only 9 percent were injured in the abdomen, chest, back or groin. The findings are based on a study of 118 Army troops who suffered battlefield injuries severe enough to require that they be evacuated to Europe or the United States. The military has not yet analyzed the injury pattern in soldiers killed in combat, but it is clear that most died of chest, abdominal or head injuries too severe to be prevented by protective vests and helmets under any circumstances. Among nonfatal wounds, however, the highly skewed pattern suggests that the latest armor provided real protection.

Curiously, the pattern of wounds in the Iraq war -- 58 percent to the arms and legs -- resembles the pattern seen in the Civil War, but for radically different reasons. Medical records of the Union Army show that 71 percent of the wounds in soldiers who survived to get medical treatment were to the limbs. Confederate records estimate the percentage as 65 percent. Nearly a half-million men were permanently disabled by wounds in that war, which led to great advances in orthopedic surgery and the design of prosthetic limbs. In the Civil War, however, the chief reason was that almost nobody survived a wound to the torso. About 94 percent of Union soldiers killed in action died of head, neck, chest or abdominal wounds. Most wounded survivors had injuries to the limbs.

Iran

Mansoor Ijaz was asked on Fox News today about this report from the New York Daily News, and he said he thought it was unlikely that Iran would offer much support to Al Qaeda - due to their ideological differences. He's probably right; Mansoor seems very well informed. But lots of these sociopaths find common ground in one thing: hatred of the United States, so it doesn't seem too farfetched. Maybe even an example of differing factions inside Iran, which we have seen elsewhere.

Iran has rolled out the welcome mat for Al Qaeda terrorists being hunted by the U.S., according to intelligence sources and public documents. "Since the war on terrorism began, Iran has been like a Motel 6 for Al Qaeda - they leave the light on for them," said a former senior intelligence officer with decades of experience in counterterrorism and with Iran's militant mullahs.

Iran long has had a history of supporting terror groups ranging from Hezbollah to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Last week, the State Department released a report labeling Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2002." The report singled out its Al Qaeda ties. "While [Iran] has detained and turned over to foreign governments a number of Al Qaeda members, other Al Qaeda members have found virtual safe haven there and may even be receiving protection from elements of the Iranian government," the State Department report said. "It is unlikely that Al Qaeda elements could escape the attention of Iran's formidable security services."

A classified Pentagon report in February said Al Qaeda had recentralized itself after being chased from its Afghan refuge and was planning new strikes against American targets from the safety of Iran. "The highest levels of Al Qaeda leadership in Iran and Pakistan are currently planning Al Qaeda's next large-scale attack," the Defense Intelligence Agency warned.

USS Kitty Hawk

The commander of the USS Kitty Hawk says the ship will be undergoing intensive maintenance over the summer. Getting ready for North Korea, no doubt.

Just weeks after a major combat deployment, the crew of this aging aircraft carrier is about to face the "most aggressive maintenance period ever for a forward-deployed carrier," its commanding officer said Saturday. In an interview as the Kitty Hawk steamed for a Tuesday homecoming, Capt. Thomas Parker commended his crew for the job just completed and said the near future holds a summer-long dry-dock period for the ship.

"It was time to give us a good, long time to work on all of that stuff," Parker said, ticking off a list of major projects for the ship’s steam plant, hull and air-maintenance department. The payback is that you have a carrier up here forward-deployed which is able to respond to these events like we had in the Persian Gulf."

The Navy is also helping prepare everyone for the transition phase back home after forward duty.

In the final days before the USS Kitty Hawk and its air wing and escort ships - some 6,000 people - return, Fleet and Family Support centers at the Yokosuka and Atsugi Navy bases have been holding workshops to help families prepare for the homecoming. Return and Reunion programs remind servicemembers and spouses that there might be some readjustment in store after the welcome-home kisses.

"Even for the most seasoned spouse, it helps to refresh the idea: We all need to be patient with each other a little while and communicate really well," said Kim Ottmers-Orman, who heads the Return and Reunion committee at Atsugi Naval Air Facility.

American hero

An American hero may get posthumous recognition for his courage and devotion. Compare and contrast with the Leftists outside Iraq who now say it was all easy and therefore unnecessary.

The battle erupted suddenly and without warning. One minute, Bravo Company of the 11th Engineer Battalion was trying to build a holding pen for war prisoners. The next, the unit was under fire from as many as 200 Special Republican Guard soldiers defending Saddam International Airport. After helping evacuate wounded U.S. soldiers, Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith jumped into an M-113 armored personnel carrier, maneuvered it into the center of a walled courtyard and climbed into the commander's hatch to man its .50-caliber machine gun. Under fire from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, his flak jacket shredded by incoming rounds, Smith held off a counterattack until he was killed by a bullet to the throat.

Smith, 33, of Tampa, was credited with saving dozens of his fellow soldiers' lives in that April 4 battle. Among the most vulnerable were medics at a forward aid station and the staff of a command, both lightly armed units that were accompanying Smith's company of 3rd Infantry Division engineers. The division's 1st Brigade, to which the engineer battalion belongs, now seeks to honor Smith by putting him forward posthumously for the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor. "His actions clearly warrant it," said Col. William F. Grimsley, the 1st Brigade commander.

For the past couple of weeks, U.S. commanders have been putting together recommendations for valor awards, compiling witness accounts and sorting out the often painful details of battlefield actions and casualties. More than 400 soldiers from the division's 1st and 2nd brigades are under consideration for such awards. But Smith is believed to be the only one being nominated for the Medal of Honor. Whether he receives it will be determined in Washington after a lengthy process. But here in Baghdad, three weeks after the government of Saddam Hussein fell to U.S. troops, soldiers of the 1st Brigade are still talking about Smith's exploits.

WMD hidden in Syria

DEBKA may have some insights into why GWB speaks with such confidence when he says there is no doubt that we'll find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. If true, then it would have been especially interesting to overhear the talks between Colin Powell and Assad the Lesser in Damascus this weekend.

Our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

Before US secretary of state Colin Powell arrived in Damascus on Saturday, May 3, the Syrians made the placatory gesture to Washington of speeding and upgrading the handover of Iraqi fugitives from the Saddam regime sheltering in Syria. DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned from its most exclusive sources that on Monday, April 28, Dr. RihabTaha, a microbiologist known as Dr. Germ, was turned over to the Americans in Iraq. She had directed Iraq’s biological weapons program. Also turned over was Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, who headed Iraq’s anthrax project. No announcement was made of their capture. However, the surrender 24 hours later of Taha’s husband, General Amir Muhammed Rasheed, director of Iraq’s missile development program and best known by his nickname “The Missile Man”, was announced.

The United States is therefore fully apprised of the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and has taken custody of the scientists who developed them.

Anti-Semitism in UK

Anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head on both sides of the Atlantic. Glad to see a vigorous reaction from various leaders, but it's outrageous that bigots can remain in positions of public trust. Anti-Jewish bigotry is an underlying lifeforce for much of the complex web of hatreds and rivalries that fuels the conflict between the West and the Muslim world.

Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House of Commons, has accused the Prime Minister of "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers". His remarks prompted immediate outrage from politicians and members of the Jewish community. The MP expressed concern that Tony Blair continued to back the United States' stance on Syria and Iran, having given his support to war on Iraq.

Mr Dalyell named, in his interview with Vanity Fair, Lord Levy, Mr Blair's personal envoy to the Middle East, Peter Mandelson, whose father was Jewish, and Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who has Jewish ancestry, as the influential figures behind the Government's Middle East policy. The MP claimed Mr Blair had also been directly influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including Richard Perle, the Pentagon adviser, Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz and Ari Fleischer, President George Bush's press secretary.

A spokesman for No 10 said the MPs comments were "ludicrous" and Mr Mandelson branded him "incorrigible", while a spokesman for the Foreign Secretary added: "If these reports are accurate, these remarks are too unworthy to be worth a comment."

Iraqi Information Minister

The Telegraph (UK) lets us know more about the fate of Saddam Hussein's hapless minister of information, Mohammad Said Sahhaf. I still think his best new gig would be flacking Hillary Clinton's new book.

Even after the statue of Saddam was toppled on April 9, Mr Sahhaf refused to accept that Saddam's era was over. But in the early hours of April 10, with the sound of battle raging ever closer to the studio, in the al-Adhamiyah district, even Mr Sahhaf headed for the exit. "Sahhaf slowly removed his black beret," recalls Raibah Hassan, 35, the manager of the Hikmat studio, the last person to have seen Mr Sahhaf in public. "He folded down the epaulettes on his military jacket to hide his rank and then he reached for a red and white kaffiyeh scarf. He wrapped it around his head as he told us to keep on re-broadcasting until 3am. He said goodbye, and then disappeared out of the back door."

A former Iraqi general who is working closely with Gen Jay Garner, the man overseeing Iraq's post-war reconstruction, told The Telegraph that he had been approached by one of Mr Sahhaf's cousins, seeking a deal. The general described Mr Sahhaf as "naive" and claimed that Saddam used to beat his minister of information.
"Sahhaf's cousin told me he wants to give himself up, but with certain conditions," the former Iraqi general says. "They know I had a connection with Jay Garner and I sent him to see Garner. But I warned him not to set conditions with the Americans.

"He wants to be outside Iraq," said the general, who did not wish to be identified. "He wants to get to Egypt. He has a lot of money stashed there in a bank and loves those Egyptian women very, very much."

Quote of the Day

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that still goes on. al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist networks still operate in many nations. And we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger.

"The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we.

"Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend our homeland and, more importantly, we will continue to hunt the enemy down before he can strike. No act of terrorists will change our purpose or weaken our resolve or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory."

- President George W. Bush

Reporting reality gap

Jonathan Foreman, embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad, writes in The Weekly Standard on the reality gap between what's actually happening on the ground in Baghdad and mainstream media reports. Bottom line: the media continue to focus on the negative at the expense of a balanced account that would also include the many positives. In my view, most reporters are both over-estimating the breadth of Iraqi opposition to the U.S. and failing to report the role of Saddam loyalists and outside provocateurs in fomenting incidents.

It's endlessly fascinating to watch the interactions between U.S. patrols and the residents of Baghdad. It's not just the love bombing the troops continue to receive from all classes of Baghdadi - though the intensity of the population's pro-American enthusiasm is astonishing, even to an early believer in the liberation of Iraq, and continues unabated despite delays in restoring power and water to the city. It's things like the reaction of the locals to black troops. They seem to be amazed by their presence in the American army. One group of kids in a poor neighborhood shouted "Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson" at Staff Sergeant Darren Swain; the daughter of a diplomat on the other hand informed him, "One of my maids has the same skin as you."

But you won't see much of this on TV or read about it in the papers. To an amazing degree, the Baghdad-based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population--most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city.

Well, I've met hundreds of Iraqis as I accompanied army patrols all over the city during the past two weeks and I've never encountered any such fury (even in areas that were formerly controlled by the Marines, who as the premier warrior force were never expected to carry out peacekeeping or policing functions). There is understandable frustration about the continuing failure of the Americans to get the water supply and the electricity turned back on, though the ubiquity of generators indicates that the latter was always a problem. And there are appeals for more protection (difficult to provide with only 12,000 troops in a city of 6 million that has not been placed under strick martial law). But there is no fury.

Carrier Air Wing 5

Stars and Stripes covered the return of Carrier Air Wing 5 to Japan from the USS Kitty Hawk.

Air wing pilots and aviators with about 70 jets flew home to big hugs, tears of joy and hoots of cheer Thursday during the Carrier Air Wing 5 homecoming at Atsugi Naval Air Facility. The air wing is from the USS Kitty Hawk, returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom. The air wing is called "America’s 911 air wing," the only one forward-deployed - and the only one in the 7th Fleet.

The air wing squadrons returned in groups throughout the day. For each return, eager families waved flags, plugged their ears against the jet engine screams and pointed and waved as aircraft taxied in carrying loved ones gone since January.

The Hornet, Tomcat, Viking and Prowler pilots flew in under a cloudless sky. The rest of the airwing returns Tuesday with the Kitty Hawk crew.

Quotes of the Day

"Fred not only was my husband, but my gentle giant, my best friend. He wanted to give me and Taylor the best of everything. He embodied what it is to be a Marine -honor, courage, commitment. We shared a love that helped us through the trials and tribulations of life and marriage to me and the Marines. I find comfort in knowing that the last eight years were the best years of our lives, especially the past three years since the birth of our daughter Taylor. I will dread the nights, knowing that we will never share our bed together again. He will no longer hold me, comfort me and make me feel safe.''

- Carolyn Rochelle

"My Daddy, my hero. I will take care of Mommy for you as you asked. We will be best friends. I will take her to Sea World for my birthday like we planned. I love you! I need you! I miss you!''

- Taylor Rochelle Pokorney

"United States Marine Corps First Lieutenant Frederick Pokorney was killed in action in Iraq on March 23, 2003. On that day, Nevada lost a true American patriot, proud Marine, and loving husband and father. The hearts of all Nevadans and all Americans go out to his family and friends. Our thoughts and prayers are for his wife and three year old daughter."

- Hon. Shelley Berkley of Nevada read these statements aloud in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, April 29.

Quote of the Day

"Our war against terror is proceeding according to the principles that I have made clear to all.

"Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country and a target of American justice.

"Any person, organization or government that supports, protects or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

"Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world and will be confronted.

"And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States of America.

"Our commitment to liberty is America's tradition, declared at our founding, affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan's challenge to an evil empire."

- President George W. Bush, on board the USS Abraham Lincoln

Bush video

The White House has posted the full text, as well as complete video and audio, of President George W. Bush's fine speech Thursday on board the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Bush in flight

From an e-mail submitted to National Review Online's blog The Corner:

The Secret Service must have gone bananas over this idea and the poor flight crew that flew with the POTUS must have been a nervous wreck knowing that the life of the President was in their hands while they crashed/landed on the carrier. You see, most of the aircraft and crews we lose in the Navy are during carrier take-offs and landings. Here is what the President probably did not know. The very best pilots in flight training get to fly combat jets. The guys who do not finish at the top have to take the remaining flight assignments in the order of their academic standing in flight school. In all likelyhood, the plane he flew in was piloted by a flight crew that did not graduate flight training at the top of their class. Not in the middle of their class either.

Everybody on that carrier gets what the President did. Everybody who ever experienced a carrier landing knows what he did.....What he did was this; He exposed himself to a very dangerous experience to show the troops that he was willing to take risks that they take everyday for low pay. Everybody on that ship got that message. It was meant for them, not us. It was by my measure a damned brave thing to do.

Iraq is an armed camp

I said early on that one challenge with Iraq would be that it was an armed camp from border to border, and infested with thugs. Both opinions are proving true.

U.S. Army officials said it could take years to catalogue and destroy the tons of weapons it is finding in thousands of weapons and munitions bunkers across Iraq. Since soon after entering Iraq on March 21, coalition forces have found stockpiles of rounds for AK-47s, boxes of rocket-propelled grenades, vests rigged for suicide bombing missions and various missiles. The munitions have been uncovered in former Iraqi military installations, factories, government buildings, schools and restrooms.

"We have not gone into any city yet where we have not found huge caches," said Gen. Daniel Hahn, chief of staff of the Army's V Corps. "There was an ammunition supply point up in Mosul that had an estimated 1.2 million rounds of mortar ammunition." Coalition forces have discovered more than 300 weapons and munitions sites, according to Hahn. "Up in Mosul we had in excess of 153, I think we have consolidated about 58 of those," he said Thursday. "Here in Baghdad it's in excess of 150 locations, and we know there is more out there."

"It will take years and years to clear this stuff," said Sgt. David Donell, who runs a demolition team attached to the 4th Infantry Division, 10th Cavalry.

Iraqi provocateurs

The role of Iraqi provocateurs in crowd violence has been obvious for days, but today is the first time I've seen it in the media.

Saddam Hussein's last remaining loyalists are using a trick they employed in the war by mingling with civilian crowds and firing on American forces trying to stabilize Iraq, U.S. military officials say. Since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, the tactic has been used sporadically, mostly in Sunni Muslim-dominated towns such as Kut, Mosul and Fallujah west of the capital. It was in the conservative Islamic town of Fallujah this week that 82nd Airborne Division soldiers ran up against one of the largest collection of armed Saddam loyalists. As townsfolk protested outside U.S. headquarters in an Islamic school, paramilitaries armed with AK-47s fired from within the crowd and from rooftops.