Petrified Truth

JI revealed

More information is emerging about Jemaah Islamiyah -- the Pacific Rim terrorists and al Qaeda franchisees who bombed the Bali resort. This is a very dangerous group operating in a region ripe for exploitation by Islamic fanatics.

The International Crisis Group has issued a 60-page report outlining lots of details about JI's history and capabilities. From the summary on their site:

Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the South East Asian terrorist organisation based in Indonesia, remains active and dangerous, despite the mid-August 2003 arrest of Hambali, one of its top operatives.

Though more than 200 men linked or suspected of links to it are now in custody in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, JI is far from destroyed. Indonesian police and their international counterparts have succeeded in seriously damaging the network, but the bombing of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on 5 August provided clear evidence that the organisation remains capable of planning and executing a major operation in a large urban centre.

The information emerging from the interrogation of JI suspects indicates that this is a bigger organisation than previously thought, with a depth of leadership that gives it a regenerative capacity. It has communication with and has received funding from al-Qaeda, but it is very much independent and takes most, if not all operational decisions locally.

The arrests of Hambali and others surely have weakened its ability to operate, and the Indonesian police and their international counterparts have made major progress in hunting down its members. But this is an organisation spread across a huge archipelago, whose members probably number in the thousands. No single individual is indispensable.

The one piece of good news is that there are some indications that internal dissent is building within JI. Members are said to be unhappy with recent choices of targets, including the Marriott hotel bombing that killed mostly Indonesian workers. There is disagreement about the appropriate focus for jihad and over the use of a practice known as fa’i – robbery of non-Muslims to support Islamic struggle. Internal dissent has destroyed more than one radical group, but in the short term, we are likely to see more JI attacks.

Article via ICG's CrisisWeb, including a download of the entire report.

Meanwhile, the Australian press has gotten access to JI's secret operations manual, which has apparently been used as a basis for investigating JI's activities and prosecuting terrorist suspects.

The manual, known in Indonesia by its acronym PUPJI (Pedoman Umum Perjuangan Jemaah Islamiah), contains a constitution, outlines the roles of office bearers and even goes into what to do when a quorum cannot be met during meetings of the leadership council.

The document gives the lie to the previously widely held belief that JI is a loose hodgepodge of fanatics. The manual shows the outlawed organisation is highly ordered, with specific guidelines for planning "operations", and rules for communication. It also highlights the importance of educating and training more extremists to ensure JI flourishes.

The 44-page manual does not give instructions on how to build bombs or how to assassinate. Rather, it provides guidelines on how to plan operations. It includes four pages of diagrams depicting the organisation's structure.

A JI witness in the Bali bombing trials recently testified that the manual, JI's most important document after the Koran, is held only by the heads of JI's four mantiqis, or regions.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Missile defense progresses

Japan is going to get ready in case the North Korean nuclear threat can't be defused. Japan's decision will worry China, but that's just too damned bad. With a nuclear-armed wacko in their neighborhood, the Japanese are well-advised to take action. Our own program is proceeding as well, but quietly compared to the yackety-yack on other issues.

The Defense Agency plans to begin deploying a ballistic missile shield in 2006 and is seeking 134.1 billion yen in its fiscal 2004 budget request for the initial phase of spending, agency officials said Friday. The total cost of the system, aimed at countering a North Korean missile attack, is estimated to reach 500 billion yen by 2011.

The agency's overall budget request for the fiscal year beginning April 1 amounts to 4.96 trillion yen, up 0.7 percent from the initial budget for fiscal 2003.

The introduction of the missile defense shield "would have a significant bearing on Japan's defense policy because it would give the nation defensive capabilities against ballistic missile attacks while providing a deterrent against such attacks," Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba said Friday.

Japan has been leaning toward a missile defense due to the threat of a ballistic missile attack by North Korea and due to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons threat.

The agency plan calls for a two-tier defense, combining a sea-based missile shield to counter short-to-medium range ballistic missiles and a ground-based system to shoot down missiles that got past the first shield.

via The Japan Times

The case for gun control?

Frank J. posts dramatic before and after images. So sad when it comes to this.

Battling "Manichaean ramblings"

This is too good to pass up. The Rev. George W. Rutler, as quoted on NRO's The Corner.

Vegetarians assume an unedifying posture of detachment from the sufferings of vegetables that are mashed, stewed, diced, and shredded. In expensive restaurants, cherries are publicly burned in brandy to the applause of diners. It is not uncommon for people to submerge olives in iced gin and twist the peels of lemons. Be indignant, vegetarian, but not so selectively indignant that the bleat of the lamb and the plaintive moo of the cow drown out the whine of our brother the bean and the quiet sigh of the cauliflower.

Vegetables have reactive impulses. Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats.

Quote of the Day

"I don't have any adjectives and I don't have any adverbs."

- State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker, refusing to characterize the six-way talks in Beijing on the North Korea crisis.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Strength

Scholar and author Bernard Lewis has another fine essay about the struggle in and around Iraq. Among other good points, he is perceptive about the importance of strength and constancy of purpose -- especially as perceived by both our terrorist enemies and the various tinhorn dictators.

In the writings and speeches of Osama bin Laden and of his allies and disciples, hatred of America is less significant than contempt--the perception that America is a "paper tiger," that its people have become soft and pampered--"hit them and they will run." This perception was bolstered by frequent references to Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia, as well as to the feeble response to subsequent terrorist attacks in the 1990s, notably on the USS Cole and on the embassies in East Africa. It was this perception which undoubtedly underlay the events of Sept. 11, clearly intended to be the opening barrage of a new war against the Americans on their home ground.

The response to this attack, and notably the operations in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, brought a rude awakening, and that is surely why there have been no subsequent attacks on U.S. soil. But the perception has not entirely disappeared, and has been revived by a number of subsequent developments and utterances. Compunction--unwillingness to inflict as well as to suffer casualties--is meaningless to those who have no hesitation in slaughtering hundreds, even thousands, of their own people, in order to kill a few enemies. Open debate is obviously meaningless to those whose only experience of government is ruthless autocracy. What they think they see is division and fear--and these encourage a return to their earlier perception of American degeneracy. Such a return could have dangerous consequences, including a renewal and extension of terrorist attacks in America. By terrorist attacks, they believe, they will encourage those whose response is to say, "Let's get out of here"--perhaps even procure the election of a new administration dedicated to this policy.

via OpinionJournal

What's really going on

Austin Bay says we are winning a very tough war in Iraq and makes several insightful points in the process. Among them:

Better there than here.

As the fall of 2003 approaches, Iraq is two battlefields and one birthplace. On one battlefield, the venomous regime of Saddam Hussein dies a slow, painful and dangerous death. Big vipers die killing because killing is their be-all and -- to the last -- their end-all. With cash stashed in Iraq and corrupt banks throughout the world, with weapons littering Iraq's landscape, the snake still has ready poison. It's why Americans who understand the enemy continue to apply deadly, insistent military and political pressure.

The second battlefield is a large "strategic" ambush, and the enemy entering the kill zone still hasn't quite figured it out. From an American perspective that presents an opportunity, an opportunity with risks, but one with huge potential payoffs. In Iraq, America is ambushing Al Qaeda and tag-along jihadis powered by the fantasy ideology of Islamo-fascism.

On 9/11, Al Qaeda chose the battlefields: New York and Washington. American leaders have decided it's better to fight terrorists "over there" than "over here." So our soldiers slug it out in the Sunni Triangle instead of Seattle. U.S. and British soldiers, and increasingly Iraqi police, are engaged in this fight. It's tough. In eight to 10 months, we'll know if it worked.

Democracy is being born, not manufactured, in Iraq -- and it's got the tyrants scared.

Iraq is the birthplace of something every committed human rights advocate should praise -- a free land escaping murderous tyranny. Baathists and Islamo-fascists are both old-time autocrats, the control freaks of the past trying to kill the future in its crib. It's an exhausting and bloody birth, and understandably, given the legacy of murder and theft. Yet Iraq is on a time-line for an elected government.

Understanding the underlying truth is essential.

Defeatist hotheads who natter about "root causes of terror" must understand the taproot of terror is tyranny. Theft and brutality by local dictators are the leading causes of Third World poverty. UC-Berkeley faculty resolutions don't stop gangsters. Cutting the taproot usually requires the explicit presence and sometimes the precious lives of Western soldiers.

via StrategyPage

The good stuff

Oliver Kamm has moved his site.

The thought and writing remain excellent.

The notion that the activities of Hamas can be segregated between the violent and the philanthropic is worse than ill-informed: it's frivolous. The distinction itself is a mainstay of Hamas's propaganda, and is a means by which it draws supporters into terrorism. The ostensibly non-violent activity - the Da'wah - agitates and recruits, provides infrastructure and raises funds. It is the route traversed by men who later become rioters and finally suicide-bombers.

Un-civil rights - II

The first volley in the 2004 Florida presidential election has been fired by the politicized U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. This cynical attempt to exploit a family's tragedy, noted here earlier, will be played out endlessly for the next year in Florida's African-American community -- just wait and see.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said Thursday it is asking the Justice Department to investigate the hanging death of a black man because of persistent rumors he was lynched by law enforcement officials. The commission criticized police for automatically treating the death of Feraris "Ray" Golden as a suicide, and raised questions about whether Golden could have climbed a tree on a rainy night and with a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit.

...

Golden, 32, was found hanging from a tree in his grandmother's yard the morning of May 28 in the farming community about 45 miles from West Palm Beach. Rumors of a lynching immediately spread, including one that Golden was found with his hands tied behind his back. Rumors persist even though a judge last month ruled the death a suicide. Autopsy photos showed a single bruise around Golden's neck, and video from a police car arriving at the scene showed Golden's arms dangling at his sides.

Testimony showed Golden to be a troubled, unemployed father of four behind in his child-support payments who frequently joked about killing himself. Relatives also acknowledged the bedsheet used as a noose came from Golden's home.

via The Ledger

The would-be assassin

The do-gooders who coddle wannabe presidential assassin John Hinckley have been maneuvering for years to get him released. The next step is looming, and President Reagan's daughter Patti Davis has this pathetic loser's number.

Hinckley’s attorneys have said that giving him more freedom is “a critical component” of his treatment. My response to that is: Who cares? The man plotted carefully, calculating his moves, in an attempt to go down in history as the man who killed President Reagan. He forever changed the lives of the Brady family when he left Jim Brady lying in a pool of blood, his brain irreversibly damaged. Two other men, a secret service agent and a Washington police officer, were shot and injured. Justice was not served when he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is certainly insane; he is just as certainly guilty.

I don’t believe for a second that John Hinckley is no longer mentally ill. Neither do the attorneys for the government who have collided with Hinckley and his attorney for many years now. I also don’t believe that mental illness means a person is not also extremely smart, deceptive and calculating.

If on Sept. 2 John Hinckley is granted the right to walk off hospital grounds with no supervision, we should all ask some very serious questions about our legal system. A methodical, narcissistic man who sought fame through murder knows the value of tenacity, patience, and deception. His ultimate fame might come from his ability to work the system.

via MSNBC

Bad bet

I guess this would look bad for the western intelligence agencies...

Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

As evidence, officials say former Iraqi intelligence operatives have confirmed since the war that Saddam's regime sent agents disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites.

"Then, because they believe it, they pass polygraph tests ... and the planted information becomes true to the West even if it was all made up to deceive us," the senior intelligence official said.

via the Houston Chronicle

... but wouldn't it have been really, really stupid of Saddam to "dupe" us into invading his country, overthrowing his regime, and killing his sons? Surprise!!

Dead or alive

Nice poster. Maybe the folks who commercialized the famous deck of cards will make one for us here at home.

Four months after his image was officially banned from the streets of Baghdad, the face of Saddam Hussein began popping up all over the city today, plastered on walls and monuments.

This time, however, the image was not that of the all-powerful, all-seeing dictator watching over his people but the fugitive father of two slain sons, hunted by the American occupiers.

"Wanted: Saddam Hussein," reads the red and black poster bearing the image of the former dictator, gazing into the distance clad in his customary military beret. "Any information leading to the arrest or proof of death of Saddam Hussein may lead to an award of up to $25 million."

via The Times (UK)

That ole dafficit

Journalists and politicians are shocked, shocked -- by the "news" that the federal deficit is big and getting bigger. The implication of most of the hand-wringing commentary is that it's all President Bush's fault, which is a canard. The Wall Street Journal makes a few pertinent observations today.

By the way, if our politicians are shedding more than crocodile tears about "the deficit," we have a suggestion. They could always slow the growth of their own spending. CBO points out that in fiscal 2003 non-defense discretionary spending will rise a remarkable 8.5%, or $33 billion, mostly for education, health care and transportation. As a share of GDP, this spending will increase to 3.9%, "its highest level since 1985." Anyone who argues that the war on terror is crowding out domestic spending should be laughed out of the room.

The CBO report makes another useful point: Its deficit estimates assume no change in current law. That is, they do not include the monumental increases in federal outlays that are certain to follow the passage of a new Medicare entitlement for prescription drugs for seniors. If someone wants to guarantee deficits as far as the eye can see, just pass that huge expansion of the entitlement state.

We've praised President Bush for keeping his eye on the prize of economic growth, but on spending control he's been disappointing, to say the least. He seems to think that the only way to get his essential increases in defense is to accept huge new domestic outlays. Perhaps he should ask the Members to choose guns or butter. In this time of war and deficits, he might discover that the voters agree with his priorities.

via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only)

Wacky Koreans

I hope the talks with North Korea are going as planned...

The United States delegation to six-way talks in China about North Korean nuclear weapons is hoping for "some really wacky stuff" from Pyongyang.

"For diplomats, talking with North Korea is like breakfast with Sam Kinnison," said an unnamed envoy. "First they threaten to turn our country into a lake of fire, then they say they'll get rid of their nukes if we let them take over South Korea. It's really a riot. We like to bait them and see if we can get them to say even wackier stuff."

The career diplomat listed some threats and promises North Korea might be expected to make at the talks in Beijing:

-- We will unilaterally disarm, just as soon as we shoot all of our nuclear missiles into the gaping mouth of U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton.
-- If you don't let us build nuclear ICBMs, we'll turn New York City into a ... [more]

via Scrappleface

Vocabulary lesson

Donald Sensing provides a useful and needed lesson in vocabulary for journalists and others. Check it out.

Osama deal?

UK newspaper The Guardian reports that Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of Crescent Investment Management and insider in the shadow world of international affairs, is making the sensational claim that the U.S. and Pakistan have made a deal not to arrest Osama bin Laden -- for now. Ijaz also says he knows where bin Laden is hiding. Excerpts:

Bin Laden fled the [Tora Bora] mountains and spent the next six or seven months trying to re-establish his network, according to Mansoor Ijaz, a financier who has spent years tracking his movements and operations. In the small world of international terrorism analysts, Mr Ijaz, an American of Pakistani origin, knows al-Qaida better than most.

Mr Ijaz argues that the flight from Tora Bora badly disrupted al-Qaida's access to electronic communications: satellite phones, radios and email. "Initial communications were stopped and it took them a while to transplant and regroup," he said in an interview. "It was in a place where it was impossible for them to get communications across to anybody."

He suggests Bin Laden is hiding in the "northern tribal areas", part of the long belt of seven deeply conservative tribal agencies which stretches down the length of the mountain ranges that mark Pakistan's 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan.

Mr Ijaz, who has recently visited Pakistan, believes Bin Laden is protected by an elaborate security cordon of three concentric circles, in which he is guarded first by a ring around 120 miles in diameter of tribesmen, whose duty is to reportany approach by Pakistani troops or US special forces.

Inside them is a tighter ring, around 12 miles in diameter, made up of tribal elders who would warn if the outer ring were breached. At the centre of the circles is Bin Laden himself, protected by one or two of his closest relatives and advisers. Bin Laden has agreed with the elders that he will use no electronic communications and will move only at night and between specified places within a limited radius.

Then this:

Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from Tora Bora. The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill Bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and would trigger a spate of revenge al-Qaida attacks on western targets across the world.

"There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term," he said. "There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate."

The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Bin Laden, but the "retaliation infrastructure" of al-Qaida.

For the future, the single greatest task facing the Pakistanis and the Americans will be to tame the powerful elders who run Pakistan's tribal areas and who appear to have given Bin Laden sanctuary. The danger is that the longer he remains uncaught, the bolder and stronger the surviving al-Qaida elements will feel.

"With so much of the retaliation infrastructure gone or unsustainable, Bin Laden's martyrdom does not pose nearly the threat it did a year ago," Mr Ijaz said.

Yet failing to catch the Saudi now could embolden the surviving al-Qaida forces. It was like "watching a radiation-hardened cancerous tumour regenerate and proliferate even more dangerously", he said. "That's why Pakistan must now end the charade and get Bin Laden."

via The Guardian

Blackout photo faked

A doctored photo of the Northeast U.S. blackout is circulating around the Internet by e-mail and has now appeared on the excellent blog site The Braden Files. The photo is too compelling to be true, and a Google search helps me find a site called Break the Chain that (a) points out the flaws and (b) has a link to the USAF site where genuine weather satellite photos can be seen. Interesting.

Photos below via the USAF: before the blackout (left) and during the blackout (right). The effects of the blackout are dramatic but not total. Click to enlarge.

"We, the idiots"

Larry Miller is dubious about the prospects for a successful outcome of the recall election in California. Read the whole thing, and don't forget to note the headline of his article.

Now, from the very beginning of this madcap adventure I have been against, against, against, and against the recall, and it seems every day I add another "against." Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I'll see the light in the next seven weeks, but I can't help thinking that even if the Republicans (whoever they are at this point) manage to beat Davis and put someone in office, they'd just be sliding over and taking the wheel of a truck that's already gone off the cliff.

What news, Horatio? Here's what: Cruz Bustamante (which I still think sounds like the junior officers' nickname for an Italian honeymoon ship) is essentially neck and neck with Schwarzenegger in the polls. Cruz has become a nationally known figure because of all this, which is significant given that until last week his parents weren't even sure who he was. They know now. He's tied with Arnold, who is apparently not über alles anymore. And how dumb can I possibly be about all this? I still think Gray Davis is going to foil them all and win.

...

You know how most people are in the media. Through the '80s and '90s, it ate them up every time Arnold had a hit movie and they had to report another huge success for him. And then when he made "Last Action Hero" they coiled and pounced and bit him like cobras. Remember? Every interview he had for a year started with a reporter putting on a phony voice of concern and saying, "It must've hurt to fail that big. Want to tell us about it?" I think these same folks are in their basements sharpening their knives on a big grinding wheel right now. Oh, sure, they've been dumping on the governor, but in a few weeks they'll tear into Schwarzenegger and make Davis look like Cicero.

via The Weekly Standard

Iraq and al Qaeda

Stephen Hayes has a detailed analysis of the numerous links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, and a warning for the Bush administration about its reluctance to use the evidence publicly.

In interviews conducted over the past six weeks with uniformed officers on the ground in Iraq, intelligence officials, and senior security strategists, several things became clear. Contrary to the claims of its critics, the Bush administration has consistently underplayed the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Evidence of these links existed before the war. In making its public case against the Iraq regime, the Bush administration used only a fraction of the intelligence it had accumulated documenting such collaboration. The intelligence has, in most cases, gotten stronger since the end of the war. And through interrogations of high-ranking Iraqi officials, documents from the regime, and further interrogation of al Qaeda detainees, a clearer picture of the links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is emerging.

...

The Bush administration has thus far chosen to keep the results of its postwar findings to itself; much of the information presented here comes from public sources. The administration, spooked by the media feeding frenzy surrounding yellowcake from Niger, is exercising extreme caution in rolling out the growing evidence of collaboration between al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq. As the critics continue their assault on a prewar "pattern of deception," the administration remains silent.

This impulse is understandable. It is also dangerous. Some administration officials argue privately that the case for linkage is so devastating that when they eventually unveil it, the critics will be embarrassed and their arguments will collapse. But to rely on this assumption is to run a terrible risk. Already, the absence of linkage is the conventional wisdom in many quarters. Once "everybody knows" that Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do with each other, it becomes extremely difficult for any release of information by the U.S. government to change people's minds.

via The Weekly Standard

Daniel Pipes

President Bush has finally stopped deferring to Ted Kennedy and various Arab pressure groups, naming courageous scholar Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute for Peace. This is a small step in the right direction -- America needs to develop a much more realistic understanding of the threat posed by radical Islam and Pipes is an expert. Watch how this appointment will become one more talking point for the President's opponents.

President Bush announced yesterday that he is appointing Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, who has long warned of the dangers posed by Islamic extremists, to the U.S. Institute for Peace, a federally funded think tank. The White House said Mr. Bush decided to place Mr. Pipes on the institute's 15-member board of directors as a temporary recess appointment, circumventing Democratic opposition led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who blocked his confirmation in the Senate.

The Harvard-trained scholar, who has written and spoken widely about the dangers of militant Islamic fundamentalists, was bitterly opposed by Arab and Muslim organizations but won strong support from Jewish organizations and a large number of academics. Mr. Pipes has said that militant Islamists pose the greatest threat to peace since communism and that moderate Islam must be encouraged to combat this threat.

via The Washington Times

Pipes is no yes-man for the administration. The Weekly Standard makes an interesting observation about the appointment.

So why would the White House go to all this trouble for someone who hasn't been particularly friendly? Pipes has often hinted, suggested, and even said outright that the Bush administration is overly beholden to Muslims and the interest groups that claim to represent them. His appointment to the U.S. Institute of Peace over serious opposition from those very groups, and in the face of his refusal to moderate his message, speaks volumes about just how little pandering the administration is planning on in the near future.

Check out Daniel Pipes's web site to read his own words, not the spin promulgated by his opponents. High-octane stuff.

Arnold stirs up the idiots

In the carny funhouse that is California politics, a supposedly serious U.S. senator has now gone after actor/candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger over the deep public policy import of his movie roles. Less than profound.

In her most passionate comments yet on California's recall election, Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie image "glorifies violence'' and called on the actor-turned-candidate to get behind her federal ban on assault-style weapons.

"I'm one that believes there is too much violence in movies and that violence begets violence, and that you become a role model for someone of lesser maturity out on the street to try to imitate what you do in the movies,'' the state's senior senator said during a news conference outside Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. That, she added, is not "terribly healthy for a society.''

via the Mercury News

To round out the picture, Hollywood's leftists are starting to get their knickers knotted, including the always horny, publicity-seeking Cybill Shepherd, who inexplicably thinks that we care that she once kissed Gray Davis when they were teens, or that The Terminator can be threatened by his own dark past.

Cybill Shepherd is freaked out by the prospect of the Austrian-born action hero in the executive mansion. "That would be the worst tragedy in the history of California," Shepherd hyperventilated to "Access Hollywood."

"I think that we are the laughing stock of the world, with Arnold Schwarzenegger running [for] governor," Shepherd said. "I think he's a real hypocrite. I think he has a past that is going to come out, and I'm not going to mention what it is, but it's not going to be pretty."

via the New York Post

Phase III

Victor Davis Hanson says we're entering a new and decisive phase in the war on terror, and that fortitude is required. Too right.

After the first two conventional military victories in Afghanistan of November 2001 and this spring in Iraq, the recent bombings suggest that we are now entering a third phase: A desperate last-ditch war of attrition in which our enemies feel that bombing, suicide murdering, assassination, and general terrorism against Westerners the world over might still achieve what conventional military operations did not. The idea is to make life so miserable for Iraqis, and so dangerous for foreigners, that the United States will withdraw, thus allowing either a fascist autocracy or terrorist theocracy — in the manner of the Taliban or an Afghan warlord — to emerge from the chaos.

Indeed, the abhorrent assault on a U.N. complex in Baghdad — taken together with the near-simultaneous murdering of innocents in Jerusalem, the recent attack on the Jordanian embassy, and the bombing of Iraqi oil and water pipelines — may suggest to critics of the Americans that the enemy is recouping and gaining the upper hand.

Far from it. We are indeed entering a third phase. But it is not quite what most people think, since it has brought a brutal clarity to the conflict that the terrorists may not have intended. For those who were still unsure of the affinities between the West Bank killers once subsidized by Saddam, Baathist fedeyeen, the Taliban, and al Qaedist terrorists, the similarity in method, the identical blood-curling rhetoric, and the eerie timing of slaughtering during peace negotiations and efforts at civil reconstruction should establish the existence of a common enemy. It has been fighting us all along — a general fascism, now theocratic, now autocratic, that seeks to divert the Middle East from the forces of modernization and liberalization.

...

It is the American way and the nature of our media culture to exaggerate setbacks and ignore successes. Thus even as our television screens seem to be overcome by panic and fear, high-ranking Baathists continue to be arrested in Iraq, terrorists find themselves stymied in achieving another 9/11, and the reconstruction of Iraq continues.

Our real problem? We must shed our complacency that has habitually arisen after the absence of another 9/11 attack in the United States, and the rapid victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, and press on. Either the Middle East will be a breeding ground for terrorists and rogue regimes that threaten sober nations and peoples the world over, from Manhattan to Jerusalem, or it will desist and join the rest of the world. It really is as simple as that.

via National Review

Sarindar Plan

Ion Mihai Pacepa, identified as "the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc," thinks he knows what happened to the Iraqi stockpiles of WMD. An insider's view, and an analysis to remember as more is disclosed by our investigators currently working in Iraq.

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place.

The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar," meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.

All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction.

Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.

The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals,Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcomingwar—Saddam'sKatyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.

via The Washington Times

Always remember

The world lost another hero of World War II this week.

Jannie Brandes-Brilleslijper, the last person known to have seen Anne Frank alive and a member of the Nazi resistance in occupied Netherlands, has died at the age of 86. Brandes-Brilleslijper died of heart failure on Friday in Amsterdam, spokeswoman Mariette Huisjes of the Anne Frank House said today.

She worked as a nurse in the Nazi camps providing clothing, medicine and food to fellow prisoners. She saw Frank, the Jewish teenage diarist, two or three days before she died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the spring of 1945.

She told Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, of his daughter's death after the war.

"Anne was sick and hallucinating, and had thrown away her clothes because she was afraid of lice. Ms Brandes-Brilleslijper gave her clothes and some food," Huisjes said. "She mostly helped young people in the camps in those difficult times."

Brandes-Brilleslijper worked in the wartime Jewish resistance, forging identification papers to help other Jews escape the Nazis, before she was deported, along with Frank, on a transport out of Amsterdam. They both survived stays in the Westerbork and Auschwitz camps.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Al Hillah

It's reassuring to read a dispatch from Iraq like this one, published on the same day as the brutal truck bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad. The Baghdad-Tikrit area is a big, big problem... but it's not the same everywhere in Iraq.

There's more to America than New York, Washington and Los Angeles. The same is true for Iraq; there's a vast country outside Baghdad and the "Sunni triangle" that's now the center of a guerrilla campaign. It's understandable that Western press reports are fixated on attacks that kill American soldiers. But that focus is obscuring what's actually happening in the rest of the country--and it misleads the public into thinking that Iraqis are growing angry and impatient with their liberators.

In fact, there is another Iraq that the media virtually ignore. It is guarded by the First Marine Division, and, unlike Baghdad, it has been a model of success. The streets are safe, petty and violent crime are low, water and electrical services are almost universally available (albeit rationed), and ordinary Iraqis are beginning to clean up and rebuild their neighborhoods and communities. Equally important, a deep level of mutual trust and respect has developed between the Marines and the populace here in central and southern Iraq.

I know because I'm one of those Marines.

via the OpinionJournal

A nuclear Middle East?

Henry Sokolski says that proliferation of nuclear weapons widely across the Middle East and North Africa is looming, and that dealing effectively with North Korea now is the key to prevention. He makes a persuasive case.

On Aug. 27, the U.S. will join China, Russia, North Korea, Japan and South Korea in negotiations over how best to neutralize the North Korean nuclear threat. One country that's sure to be watching is Iran.

Earlier this summer, I attended a meeting in Geneva that included Tehran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and several members of Iran's Expediency Council. After the formal session, they pulled me aside. The one question--the only question--they pressed me about was what Washington planned to do about North Korea.

Since then, Iranian diplomats have been consulting European officials. Tehran has begun developing a grand negotiated nuclear bargain of its own. The stakes are high. If, like North Korea, Iran succeeds in getting the world to accept its nuclear program and is allowed to finish its nearly completed "peaceful" light water reactor (which after little more than a year of operation can make over 50 bombs worth of near weapons-grade plutonium), its neighbors are sure to follow suit.

via OpinionJournal

What to think?

The heart is saddened by today's double tragedies in Baghdad and Jerusalem. In both cases, the forces of evil are the same: deadly and implacable enemies -- fanatic gangsters who can only be defeated and killed. The President spoke about the Iraq incident, but his words would not have been much different about Israel's struggle.

The terrorists who struck today have again shown their contempt for the innocent. They showed their fear of progress and their hatred of peace. They are the enemies of the Iraqi people. They are the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people. By their tactics and their targets, these murderers reveal themselves once more as enemies of the civilized world.

Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq. The Iraqi people have been liberated from a dictator. Iraq is on a irreversible course toward self-government and peace. And America and our friends and the United Nations will stand with the Iraqi people as they reclaim their nation and their future.

Iraqi people face a challenge, and they face a choice. The terrorists want to return to the days of torture chambers and mass graves. The Iraqis who want peace and freedom must reject them and fight terror. And the United States and many in the world will be there to help them.

All nations of the world face a challenge and a choice. By attempting to spread chaos and fear, terrorists are testing our will. Across the world, they are finding that our will cannot be shaken. We will persevere through every hardship. We will continue this war on terror until the killers are brought to justice. And we will prevail.

May God bless the souls who have been harmed in Iraq.

Via the White House

LASHing the North Koreans

This hotel in San Jose offers high-speed Internet connections, but performance has just about ground to a standstill as the latest virus targetting Microsoft has infected the hotel's ISP. So won't post much today.

However, the complimentary dead trees edition of USA Today has an interesting story on an upcoming military test that will probably enrage the North Koreans. Not that they need an excuse. Snips:

The Navy plans to begin testing a new method for hunting hostile submarines this fall off the coast of Japan, and the test will include looking for the real thing: diesel-electric North Korean and Chinese subs prowling in the Sea of Japan.

The tests, as well as similar trials off Hawaii, are scheduled to begin in about two months. They are intended to try out the prototype of a detection device that analyzes underwater color patterns and detects color gradations too faint for the human eye to notice. Early versions of the device -- called the Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral, or LASH -- have spotted whales and submarines below the surface.

Current detection methods used by the Navy rely on sonar and other methods to ''hear'' the location of enemy submarines. The LASH system is designed to permit the Navy to see where submarines are.

Military officials say that although many or most Chinese and North Korean submarines rely on technology that originated in World War II, advances in propellers, engines and electronics make these subs extremely quiet.

Adding to detection challenges: The relatively shallow ocean waters over the continental shelf are so noisy that it's difficult to hear submarines there.

''Sound waves are diffused and distorted in this coastal zone, and you have a huge number of vessels, motorboats, even whales making noise,'' says Jonathan Gradie, chief technology officer for STI. ''There is a cacophony of noise that reduces the effectiveness of acoustic systems.''

via USA Today

Fighting back

The Braden Files posts another dispatch from the front in Iraq. Again, an example of the vast discrepancy between the reality on the ground and the media reports here at home.

The enemy is primarily made up of insurgents from Iran and Syria who hire Iraqis to attack coalition soldiers, not disgruntled Iraqis who are mad that their power is not on all day yet. They provide them with AKs and RPGs and send them on their way with a promise of cash after the attack. They even give motorcycles to kids which they get to keep if they ride by a coalition checkpoint and drop a grenade.

After one such attack, we found out how easy it was to shoot people off motorcycles. You can hear them from a long way off and shoot them long before they get within grenade dropping distance.

We have good leaders, and they're responding aggressively and well to the attacks, they emphasize that everyone must engage the enemy whenever they show themselves....

We read press articles on the net that have no resemblance to reality every day. Just last week I read an article where a car bomb killed fifteen American soldiers, destroyed three armored vehicles, and one tank at the Baghdad Airport. Our unit there was surprised when we told them about it since they've been there the whole time and never heard any explosion. The press lies, they make things up, and they misrepresent things to forward their own ideals. It would be funny except that so many people believe them.

Ignorance

Ralph Peters has an interesting take on the prevalance of ignorance and irrationality in Iraq and elsewhere.

Addicted as we are to the buzz of daily developments, it's hard to stand back and recognize that the most powerful long-term threat to success in Iraq doesn't come from gunmen, but from the inability of many Iraqis to interpret events accurately.

We take for granted the ability to separate fact from fiction, to identify that which looks, feels and smells reasonably like the truth. Yet the long Western struggle to view the world objectively is culturally unique. Especially in the Arab world, myth, comforting lies and cynical rumors trump facts that seem undeniable to us.

It makes things tough for our soldiers, who come from a Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am" civilization, yet must bring order to an Alice In Wonderland culture in which nothing is quite what it seems and things just grow "curiouser and curiouser."

Even in relatively "Western" countries, such as Russia or Greece, I've been astonished at the patently lunatic conspiracy theories to which even elites subscribe. Indeed, one of the many politically incorrect questions that needs to be asked is simply this: Is there a direct correlation between our appetite for accurate data and the success of American civilization? The answer seems obvious, but don't try raising that question at Columbia.

via the New York Post

Posted by Alan at 09:34 AM

Hillary's analysis

I heard last week that Sen. Hillary Clinton had gone on Larry King's show and blamed the Northeast blackout on the Bush administration, within hours of the lights going out. Found the transcript today via CNN and, yep, she really does show that kind of cynical opportunism.

I happen to think that making sure we have a reliable, affordable system of energy is a national priority. And I don't think that this administration sees it that way. They have continued to try to push deregulation and privatization, and to try to undo a lot of the systems in changes that many of us thought were important and necessary that we tried to work on during the Clinton administration under Secretary Richardson's leadership. And frankly to throw in a lot of roadblocks in the way of Governor Davis, when he tried to clean up some of the problems that he had with the manipulation of the energy markets by Enron and others. So, no, I don't think the federal administration under this president is really focused on making sure we don't have these problems in the future.

via CNN Transcripts

This just corroborates yesterday's post.

Victory or purity?

Let's see if the California Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, again.

Simple arithmetic adds up to a problem for Republicans in the California recall election -- divide their votes among the top three GOP candidates and none may end up in the governor's office.

That's why some Republicans backing actor Arnold Schwarzenegger are trying to perform a little subtraction -- urging GOP conservatives Bill Simon and Tom McClintock to get out.

"All they're doing is taking votes away to a certain extent from Schwarzenegger,'' said Republican consultant Allan Hoffenblum, who is not working for any of the candidates. "If you have three Republicans running great campaigns and one Democrat running a mediocre campaign, the Democrat probably would win.''

The numbers in a statewide Field Poll released today back that up. Among the major candidates to replace Gov. Gray Davis should the governor be recalled, Schwarzenegger gets 22 percent, McClintock 9 percent and Simon 8 percent -- a total of 39 percent of likely voters. That's much more than Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's 25 percent -- when it's not split three ways.

via the Mercury News

News from flyover country

A great take from Memphis on the media coverage of the blackout, via The Corner at NRO.

Ninevah found again

Few of us remember that the Iraqi city of Mosul, a name now familiar from recent news dispatches, is in fact the ancient city of Ninevah, home of the biblical prophet Jonah. The Hebrew heritage of this place has been almost obliterated, but a Jewish chaplain with the 101st Airborne has been exploring, very carefully, and his report is intimate and moving.

A few excerpts below, but read the whole thing at The Braden Files.

As I entered light came through the half-open roof and I could just make out writing engraved on the walls. It was Hebrew. It was then that I knew I had stumbled into the ancient synagogue of the city of Mosul-Nineveh. My heart broke as I climbed over the garbage piles that filled the room where, for hundreds of years, the prayers of Jews had reached the heavens. I realized I was probably the first Jew to enter this holy place in over 50 years.

Over three-and-a half meters of garbage filled the main sanctuary and what appeared to be the women's section. I could barely make it out because of the filth, but there was Hebrew writing on the walls.

...

As I walked through the quarter I was shown the grave of the prophet Daniel, once a synagogue. I saw that many of the doorposts had an engraving of the lion of Judah on the top. I felt the presence of our people, of their daily lives as merchants, teachers, rabbis, doctors, and tailors. I felt their rush to get ready for Shabbat, felt their presence as they walked to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. I could almost hear singing in the courtyards, in the succot, as they invited in the ushpizin. I could hear the Pessah songs echoing through the narrow streets late into the night.

And the children, I could see their shadows as they raced down the alleys and around the corners, praying. I heard their voices learning the aleph beth in the yeshivot as they prepared for their bar and bat mitzvot.

But I also heard the babies crying, and I could see the young daughters of Zion clinging to their mother's skirts, asking why the bad people were killing them and making them leave their homes of thousands of years.

...

There is a great history to be written here, a great opportunity to recover the lost narrative of our people, the Sephardim of Iraq. My prayer and hope is that when the gates finally open for scholars the remnants of our people will still be here for historians to recover.

The sorcerer speaks

So, on to Dhuluaiyah then.

The wrinkled old man sprays perfume around the sparse, dingy room, then holds out his hands and feet and instructs one of his visitors to tie him up, knot the cloth three times and blow on it. The lights die and small red flashes go off beneath the black cloak that covers a bowl of magic powders and water. The visitors feel pokes and jabs and things fluttering over their heads in the darkness — "birds," the wizard says. Water splashes from the bowl. The genies have arrived, and the questions begin.

Will Saddam be found? A genie answers in the old man's voice: "Yes." Dead or alive? "Dead." And the $25 million question: Where is he? "Dhuluaiyah," he says. Dhuluaiyah is a village 55 miles north of Baghdad.

Thousands of magicians, fortunetellers and faith healers make up a huge world of Iraqi spirituality that thrives despite being considered by many Muslims to be sinful. But this man is different. He was Saddam's own sorcerer, and therefore, for Iraqis, his visions of the dictator's demise carry special weight.

via The Washington Times

Blackout

Oh, now it's all clear.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NYArk, said today that the electrical power grid in America "suddenly became antiquated early last year, and George Bush hasn't done a thing about it."

"When my husband was in office, the power grid was like new," said Sen. Clinton. "But right after he left, the grid got all rusty and decayed...like some form of mechanical progeria. But President Bush was so distracted by the war on Iraq that he has tragically inconvenienced 50 million people."

via Scrappleface

Victor Bout: Godfather

Peter Landesman has a lengthy and fascinating article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine about the international arms trafficking industry and its current godfather, Russian Victor Bout. This is the stuff of thrillers, but real and scarier. Reads like good journalism.

Most people think that controlling arms shipments is merely a matter of international diplomacy. That may have been true during the cold war, when traffickers were often subcontractors of the superpowers, feeding the proxy conflicts Washington and Moscow wanted fought. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the exclusive club of arms brokers metastasized. Some brokers still work at the behest of governments and intelligence agencies. But most are now entrepreneurial freelancers who sell weapons without regard for ideology, allegiance or consequence. They have only one goal in mind: profit.

''Victor Bout is a creature of the Yeltsin era, of disorganized crime, who adapted to live in the era of Putin and more organized crime,'' according to Jonathan M. Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration.

In the wake of the cold war, to adapt meant to exploit the chaos. The Soviet Army's massive arsenal ended up in the hands of former Soviet republics. Desperate for hard currency, they sold off weapons the same way they sold off other resources and products they inherited from the defunct Soviet empire. ''Who owned what and who ran the fire sale was a free-for-all,'' Winer said.

Of all the republics outside of Russia, Ukraine got the most -- and most lethal -- weapons, enough conventional firepower, by many accounts, to sustain a million troops. The Ukrainian government made a public show of transferring its vast nuclear arsenal back to Russia. But between 1992 and 1998, it has been reported, $32 billion of large- and small-scale Ukrainian weaponry and ammunition, as well as other military property, simply disappeared.

''The Ukrainian military was turned into a tool for revenue by a generation of politicians who took advantage of the factories and used them to manufacture and ship weapons for money to anyone who wanted them,'' Winer said.

Representatives from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, the Taliban and Pakistan came calling. So, perhaps, did North Korea, by way of Pakistan, and Al Qaeda, through the Taliban.

via The New York Times Magazine

Dueling CYAs

As noted earlier, the BBC may have blown the cover on an international arms-trafficking "sting" operation. Now the Justice Dept. has given them an opening to counter-punch.

The BBC journalist who broke the news that a British man had been arrested for trying to sell a missile to terrorists is to sue an American magazine which claimed his scoop had ruined FBI plans to infiltrate al-Qa'ida.

Tom Mangold - a friend of David Kelly who spoke on behalf of the weapons inspector's family after his death - has instructed the law firm Mishcon de Reya to begin legal action against Newsweek.

The magazine claimed on Wednesday that officials in the US Justice Department believed the report had scuppered their plans to persuade the arms dealer to work for them.

Christopher Christie, the US attorney for New Jersey, said on American television that the report had not affected the outcome of the operation. "This investigation has gone on for 18 months and we executed the plan in almost exactly the way we laid it out," he said.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "Obviously ... for Christopher Christie ... to say the news media in Britain did not compromise the investigation gave Tom Mangold the confidence to go to Mishcon de Reya and ask them to start proceedings."

via The Independent (UK)

History lesson

Britain's Oliver Kamm demonstrates admirable skill in research, writing, and moral fortitude on his site today, taking the time and effort to demolish "the stupidest blogger alive" for a tortuous and ugly defense of the infamous Baader-Meinhof Gang, some of the vilest 1970s Euro-terrorists. Visit Kamm's site and be both impressed and educated. His conclusion:

The Federal Republic of Germany - a country whose political culture I enormously admire, and not only in comparison with the cess-pit that preceded it - came into being in 1949 founded on the principles of 'militant democracy' and 'antitotalitarian consensus', shared by conservatives, liberals and social democrats. The polity that grew up on that shared understanding was intent on defending democratic politics from both Nazism and Communist totalitarian expansionism.

This free and liberal society was what the Baader-Meinhof gang was attacking. There is no such thing as distinguishing the aims of the group from its methods. A movement dedicated to overthrowing constitutional democracy is already a violator of principles of justice, for there is no greater injustice than ordering the lives of adult human beings without their consent. Having dedicated themselves to that end, the Baader Meinhof gang and their fellow-terrorists, of course and inevitably, also arranged the deaths of adult human beings. Many of those deaths were random and vicious. Where they became systematic was in what the terrorists dressed up as the cause of liberation of an oppressed people - in fact the annihilation of the Jewish state. The world saw this horror at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when the new Germany proved utterly ineffectual in preventing the murder of Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists and thereby betrayed the democratic principles that in many respects it had previously bravely defended. The cause of attacking Jews, Israel and democracy itself was well-established.

Then at Entebbe airport in 1976 the assault on West German democracy joined seamlessly with traditional antisemitism. For this time it was German terrorists who were intent on the destruction of the Jews - the ghost of what Germany had been, arising to identify and destroy its victims once more.

But this time our side, the democratic side, was ready. May it ever be so.

The occult?

It's common enough for oddball search engine entries to bring people to a web site, but one today for this site is certainly thought-provoking:

occult forces behind schwarzenegger

Who knew?

The BGC-in-Chief

Savvy Fred Barnes says George W. Bush is a "big government conservative," and that such a label is more than an oxymoron.

When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals.

A second trait is a programmatic bent. Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn't do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative. His most ambitious program is his faith-based initiative. It would use government funds to expand social programs run by religious organizations. Many of them have been effective in fighting drug/alcohol addiction and helping lift people out of poverty. So far, the initiative has had only a small impact, its scope limited by Congress.

Another trait is a far more benign view of government than traditional conservatives have. Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) This means they support transfer payments that have a neutral or beneficial effect (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and oppose those that subsidize bad behavior (welfare). Mr. Bush wants to reform Social Security and Medicare but not shrink either.

via OpinionJournal

A big success

Al Qaeda and its franchises, including Jemaah Islamiyah, are still hard at work. But the latest bad guy bust may have prevented an assault on world leaders at the upcoming APEC summit. Good work.

Hambali, Asia’s most wanted man and second in command of the alleged terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), has been arrested in Ayutthaya on suspicion of plotting to stage a terrorist attack during the Apec summit in October, sources said yesterday. Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, has been held since early this week in a secret location for questioning by Thai authorities and FBI officials from the US, sources said.

Sources said police discovered that Hambali had travelled from Chiang Khong border district in Chiang Rai to hide among the Muslim community in Ayutthaya. Authorities have confiscated a number of explosive devices and weapons, which Hambali allegedly confessed were being prepared for use in a terrorist attack during Apec, which brings together prime ministers, presidents, and chief executives from 21 Asia-Pacific econo-mies.

via The Nation (Thailand)

Posted by Alan at 12:13 AM

North Korea's secrets

The Washington Post has started a two-part series on North Korea's clandestine efforts to sell missile technology to various rogue nations. A good window into the dangers posed by this creepy, secretive country.

When the ship's doors were finally reopened at gunpoint, the reason for the extreme secrecy became clear. Hidden inside wooden crates marked "water refinement equipment" was an assembly line for ballistic missiles: tips of nose cones, sheet metal for rocket frames, machine tools, guidance systems and, in smaller crates, ream upon ream of engineers' drawings labeled "Scud B" and "Scud C." The intended recipient of the cargo, according to U.S. intelligence officials, was Libya.

"In the past we had seen missiles or engine parts, but here was an entire assembly line for missiles offered for sale," said an Indian government official familiar with the discovery. "This was a complete technology transfer."

Today, the evidence from the Kuwolsan remains locked in a military warehouse in the Indian capital, where it has been scrutinized since being seized four years ago. The results of India's investigation, shared among a small circle of intelligence and defense analysts, offer an extraordinary glimpse into the shadowy world of weapons proliferation, in which missile parts and bomb materials circle the globe undetected, secreted away in cargo containers and suitcases, concealed by phony ship manifests and fictitious company names, eluding customs agents and defying international treaties.

Part one via The Washington Post

BBC not helping

The FBI and others are ticked at the BBC for blowing their cover, and rightly so. But how did our counter-spies come to let the cat out of the bag anyway? BBC should never have known in the first place.

Less than 48 hours after Americans boasted they had caught a Briton trying to sell missiles to terrorists, their "incredible triumph" descended into recriminations, including the claim that the BBC ruined a larger operation by breaking news of the arrest.

The BBC, already regarded as anti-American by many US conservatives, was accused yesterday of wrecking the 18-month operation that ended up netting only Hemant Lakhani, a 68-year-old London businessman with no known terrorist links.

Unnamed "top officials" from the US Justice Department told Newsweek magazine they were "fuming" that the BBC's leak "may have blown a rare opportunity to penetrate al-Qa'eda's arms-buying network".

via The Telegraph (UK)

Missing jet

A Boeing 727 vainished in Africa since May -- and inquiring minds want to know if it could be in the hands of terrorists.

There are only a few places where a 46.5 metre-long, 90,718 kilogram commercial airliner can take off without warning and simply disappear. Africa is one of them, and whoever was at the controls of the Boeing 727 - registration number N844AA - on the afternoon of May 25 must have known the possibilities of what pilots call the "gauntlet" - the vast, virtually uncontrolled airspace south of the Sahara Desert and north of the Limpopo River. For, at around teatime, the plane suddenly fired up its engines, rumbled down the runway, soared into the velvety dusk and vanished.

"In 22 years in this business, I've never come across anything like this," says Chris Yates, a security analyst for Jane's Aviation Service. "Even for Africa it's astounding." But who took the 727? Terrorists? Criminals? Joyriders?

From the moment the plane's disappearance was disclosed, the CIA and the secretive National Security Agency in the United States have been urgently trying to find out. British, French and Russian intelligence services have been co-opted into the search. Spy satellites have swept all potential landing places within the plane's range. Western diplomats throughout Africa have been ordered to keep their ears to the ground, and thousands of hours of air-traffic communications have been analysed in the search for clues.

The State Department says there is "no reason" to believe the Boeing has been taken by terrorists. But the apparent ease with which a purpose-built flying bomb can vanish is a sobering reminder of the kind of opportunity available to an outfit like al-Qaeda.

"African aviation is another world,' says Chris Yates. "Anything can happen there. And now it has."

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Our Russian friends

Tons of news today on the arrest of shady arms dealers trying to provide a SAM to a "terrorist" in what turned out to be a sting. The FBI put the news release on its front page. But Jane's had a somewhat more dyspeptic take:

Despite the plethora of over-excited media headlines earlier this week, the classic 'sting' operation, which was organised by the Russian secret service (FSB) and the USA's FBI to entrap an alleged arms dealer allegedly seeking to sell an Igla missile to what he apparently believed was a group of Islamic terrorists in the USA, revealed little beyond the intelligence services' insatiable desire for positive publicity. Put bluntly, there was no realistic prospect of this sort of advanced weapon being supplied to anyone without the active collusion of the Russian state authorities.

Above all, most reports missed the main points. The real threat to the USA and its allies - and there is a genuine risk - comes less from hi-tech weaponry of the Igla variety than from the committed militant willing to commit suicide, which was demonstrated by Al-Qaeda on 11 September 2001. Moreover, Russia became involved in this 'sting' because its military has a well-deserved reputation for selling anything to anyone.

via Jane's Intelligence Digest

Posted by Alan at 05:32 PM

Arnold picking up speed

Arnold picked up one heck of an endorsement today, and some advising muscle, in his quest to be California's next governor. His tactical advisors are veterans of Pete Wilson's successful campaigns. Impressive.

Financial and investment guru Warren Buffett will serve as actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's senior financial and economic adviser in his gubernatorial bid, the Schwarzenegger for Governor campaign announced Wednesday.

"I have known Arnold for years and know he'll be a great governor. It is critical to the rest of the nation that California's economic crisis be solved, and I think Arnold will get that job done," said Buffett, who is estimated to be worth more than $30 billion.

Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., an insurance and investment holding company, will help Schwarzenegger tap other prominent business leaders and economists to advise the candidate on the economic issues facing California.

via Fox News