Petrified Truth

Idealists

Toby Harnden is leaving his assignment as the Daily Telegraph's Washington bureau chief, on his way to become their Middle East correspondent. He's filed a last report from America, including this:

Americans had little choice but to rise to the challenge September 11 presented. But acting decisively has stirred the embers of anti-Americanism - among other governments and elites at least. Even more dangerous is the rise of "counter-Americanism", the doctrine that the United States has to be stopped, its goals frustrated and a counter-balance created.

Yet it is worth recognising the self-evident truth that America is a force for tremendous good in the world. Opposing it means opposing the universal values that Europeans first exported. Certainly, the United States has its faults. After all, it is an experiment still in progress. Mr Bush has many qualities as a president but he has needlessly antagonised allies, often as much by his dismissive manner as by the substance of policy.

None of this, however, justifies the tendency of so much of the world to define itself by the ways it is against America. Mr Bush once said that he didn't "do nuance". His fondness for the black and white encourages those who want to feel superior to see a caricature of the world's sole superpower rather than seek to fathom it.

But nuance should work both ways.

via The Telegraph (UK)
Tip via Andrew Sullivan

Paranoid narcissist

Mark Steyn says "...whatever happens, the 44th President will not be Wesley Clark." And he knows five reasons why. Reason number one:

First and foremost, Wes is a Friend Of Bill, as in Clinton. Bill gets through FOBs at an enormous rate and even those who don’t wind up dead, in jail or drowning in legal bills rarely prosper. As has been noted in this space many times, the Clintons’ Democratic party is great for the Clintons, disastrous for the Democratic party. From Arkansas, Bill went on to Washington; his successor as governor, Jim Guy Tucker, went on to jail. His party lost control of Congress, but Bill got re-elected. He survived the impeachment trial, but his vice-president lost the White House. He bequeathed a New York senate seat to his wife, but the Clinton flack he installed at the Democratic National Committee led the party to defeat in just about every competitive senate race last November.

Anyone spot the pattern here? If Bill and Hill were to demand a constitutional amendment to lower the age qualification so that Chelsea could run for President, I’d put better odds on that than Clark’s chances of success. In last year’s election, despite the usual media gushing about his ‘rock-star charisma’ enthusing his party, you could pretty much correlate the Democrats’ worst results with Bill’s travel schedule during the campaign. Unless Wes Clark marries Bill in a Vermont civil union and takes his husband’s name, he’s got a one-way ticket on the same oblivion express as Al and Jim Guy. If I were a Democrat, my main priority for the party would be to get the car keys back from Bill Clinton.

via The Spectator (UK)

Fraud and abuse

The Fresno Bee reports on an oddity in California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's resume. If this was on the record of President Bush, it would fuel charges that he was a fraudulent dunce and a beneficiary of favoritism.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante got credit but did not have to attend a basic speech class at Fresno State in the late 1990s because a professor decided in 15 minutes or less that the Fresno Democrat would have earned at least a C based on his public utterances.

Bustamante left Fresno State in the late 1970s without earning a bachelor's degree but returned 20 years later to complete it, which he did this spring. He needed to take approximately eight classes, and the speech class satisfied a general-education requirement.

"In my judgment at the time, he had certainly demonstrated minimal proficiency, and I emphasize minimal proficiency ... in the fundamental skills mandated by the course," Robert Powell, former chairman of the communication department, said last week. He interjected: "I'm not going to make any judgment about the eloquence or anything else" of Bustamante's speeches.

Powell, who still teaches at the university, gave Bustamante credit for the class based on "the plethora of presentations" the lieutenant governor has given during his career and also from hearing him speak publicly. Powell could not remember exactly when or where he heard Bustamante speak, though he did recall it was more than once.

Tip via Best of the Web

Loose talk can kill

The New York Post editorial page says the war on terror is going pretty well, but that reckless political posturing here at home poses a grave risk.

Democracy can easily be misunderstood by those unfamiliar with it; the terrorists and Ba'athists may think they need only to continue to prick away at U.S. troops in Iraq, and eventually Washington will tuck tail and run.

If they hold out just a little longer - another month; another year. A Dean or a Kerry or a Clark may take the White House - and presently flies the last helicopter from Baghdad.

All citizens have the right - indeed, the duty - to oppose administration policy if they think it to be wrong. But those who seek partisan advantage for its own sake, those steeped in blind ambition, need to consider the price of providing the enemy unwarranted hope.

It will be measured in dead young Americans.

This is a just war. It is a necessary war. America is winning. That's the reality of it.

Enemies among us

Middle East expert Daniel Pipes says there is a Fifth Column of militant Islamists at work here in the U.S.

The news last week that two Muslim military personnel, James Yee and Ahmad al-Halabi, had been arrested on suspicion of aiding Al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantnamo Bay (with another three Muslim servicemen under watch) seemed to prompt much surprise. It should not have.

It has been obvious for months that Islamists who despise America have penetrated U.S. prisons, law enforcement, and armed forces.

Executive-branch insistence on "terrorism" being the enemy, rather than militant Islam, permits this Islamist penetration.

TV land

Home today, so can see what's on TV and elsewhere. Right now, C-SPAN2 has a live program on "Terrorist Financing & Problem States," hosted by the American Foreign Policy Council, and featuring former CIA Director James Woolsey, Mansoor Ijaz, and others.

Interesting presentations, but also worth noting that, based on what the camera is showing, there is almost no one in the audience. Given the importance of the topic and the qualifications of the speakers, that's just bizarre.

C-SPAN2 is available on the Web. This program will be replayed on cable at 1:00pm Central time, and perhaps available for Web replay later.

The Infantryman

The origin of this piece seems to be unknown. It's available in a number of Internet sites; this text I found via The Braden Files. Author unknown or not, it's worth your time.

The average age of the infantryman is 19 years. He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, but old enough to die for his country. He never really cared much for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father's; but he has never collected unemployment either.

He's a recent High School graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away. He listens to rock and roll or jazz or swing and 155mm Howitzers. He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk.

He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it in less. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must. He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He can march until he is told to stop or stop until he is told to march. He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity.

He is self-sufficient. He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low. He has learned to use his hands like weapons and his weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it, because that is his job.

He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death then he should have in his short lifetime. He has stood atop mountains of dead bodies, and helped to create them. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed. Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom.

Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years. He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

He is an Infantryman.

"Mexifornia"

Teacher and scholar Victor Davis Hanson was interviewed for an hour yesterday on Booknotes. His new book Mexifornia: A State of Becoming sounds like an important effort to insert some reality into the questions surrounding illegal immigration from Mexico.

Our immigration dilemma is a simple but apparently unsolvable calculus: Americans want the work they won't do to be done cheaply by foreigners who, they wrongly assume, will inevitably transform themselves into Americans. In turn, the downtrodden Mexicans who come here and their elite advocates in America romanticize Mexico, a nation that brought them the misery they fled, while too often deprecating the place that alone gave them sanctuary. Everyone sees this—at least in the abstract—and can probably agree on the appropriate remedy: far less illegal immigration and a more measured policy of legal immigration, along with a stronger mandate for assimilation. But caught in a paralysis of timidity and dishonesty, we still cannot enact the necessary plans for a workable solution. To do so, after all, entails confronting a truth that is painful and might displease thousands who have grown comfortable with the present chaos. Who wants to be called an isolationist or a nativist by the corporate Right, and a racist or a bigot by the multicultural Left?

For those of you who live outside of California, far away from Mexico, and sigh that the problem is ours, not yours: be careful. California has always been an idea, not merely a place. Our climate, social volatility and an absence of anything farther west always put us on the cutting edge.

Wherever you live, if you want your dirty work done cheaply by someone else, you will welcome illegal aliens, as we did. And if you become puzzled later over how to deal with the consequent problems of assimilation, you will also look to California and follow what we have done, slowly walking the path that leads to Mexisota, Utexico, Mexizona or even Mexichusetts—a place that is not quite Mexico and not quite America either.

Joseph C. Wilson flap

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, primary debunker of the "Niger yellowcake" story, is much in the news this weekend. A mid-September article in Slate, reporting that Wilson has blamed the White House for leaking the identity of his wife as a CIA operative, was noted by Donald Sensing, who made this observation:

I happen to have been a seminar attendee in 1993 in which Wilson was a speaker one day. There were only about two dozen attendees, some of us military and others civilian government factotums from all branches of government. So we had very informal and engaging discussions with the daily speakers.

I found Wilson to be expertly knowledgeable on the Middle East and quite sober-minded. I rate his credibility extremely high, so I find the charges he has made very credible and very disturbing.

Wilson's accusation was given further credence by a story in today's Washington Post stating that the CIA has requested an investigation by the Justice Dept.

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

All this attention makes an inquiring mind want to know more, and a bit of Internet digging turns up more information about Ambassador Wilson.

The Slate article itself is pegged around remarks made by Wilson at "a forum about intelligence failures on Iraq held by Rep. Jay Inslee, a fervently anti-war Democrat."

Condoleeza Rice was asked about the flap this morning on Fox News Sunday and she said this:

I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.

My understanding is that, in matters like this, as a matter of routine, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action, and that's what's going to be done... it was well known that the president of the United States does not expect the White House to get involved in such things.

Now Monday's Washington Post reports that the inquiry is underway, and the Democrats think they have a fresh political opportunity.

President Bush's aides promised yesterday to cooperate with a Justice Department inquiry into an administration leak that exposed the identity of a CIA operative, but Democrats charged that the administration cannot credibly investigate itself and called for an independent probe.

White House officials said they would turn over phone logs if the Justice Department asked them to. But the aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer who is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one of the most visible critics of Bush's handling of intelligence about Iraq.

Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates seized on the investigation as a new vulnerability for Bush.

This may be something or may turn out to be not much. However, two things are clear. First, some weak-kneed figures in the Bush administration are beginning to turn on each other now that the President's poll numbers are down, and using leaks to do so. This always seems to happen when the going gets tough -- similar nonsense happened during the early, difficult days of the Iraq invasion. Frankly, more discipline and fortitude is needed to prevail in this time of war.

UPDATE: The omnisicient InstaPundit has some thoughts and a gaggle of links to other ruminators.

Capt. Scott Speicher, MIA

Still no resolution in the case of Navy Capt. Scott Speicher, missing since 1991 in Iraq.

Government investigators reached Navy Capt. Scott Speicher's F-18 crash site in Iraq earlier this month, but found no evidence that would solve the mystery of whether the pilot is dead or alive.

The next step, according to a U.S. official, is to interview people in the town of Hit, a Sunni Muslim and Saddam Hussein stronghold southwest of Baghdad. There are unconfirmed reports that a shot-down allied pilot was taken there during Operation Desert Storm before being transferred to Baghdad.

Iraqi gunners shot down Capt. Speicher's jet on the war's first day in January 1991.

via the Washington Times [link probably not stable]

Iran: an even bigger enemy

Sooner or later, we're going to have to confront Iran, a resourceful and implacable enemy of both the U.S. and Israel. Another reason to protect our new beachhead in Iraq, and to encourage the democratic resistance inside Iran.

Iran has dispatched hundreds of agents posing as pilgrims and traders to Iraq to foment unrest in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, and the lawless frontier areas.

Teheran's hardline regime has also allowed extremist fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a terror faction with close links to al-Qa'eda, to cross back into Iraq from its territory to join the anti-American resistance.

The Pentagon believes that Iran is building a bridgehead of activists inside Iraq, ready to destabilise the country if that serves its future interests. So concerned is the coalition about Teheran's activities that it is recruiting former agents from the Iranian section of Saddam Hussein's notorious mukhabarat (intelligence) to help to counter Iran's influence in the predominantly Shia south and east of Iraq.

Iran has also taken advantage of its largely unpoliced border with Iraq - a 210-mile stretch of which was yesterday turned over to an American-trained police force by the US Army - to deploy agents who are building networks of spies.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Iraq's WMD

TIME magazine has an intriguing new article about the paradoxes in the search for the truth about Iraq's WMD program. Right now, it's still a puzzle.

Bush Administration officials never anticipated this predicament. They expected that WMD arsenals would be uncovered quickly once the U.S. occupied Iraq. Since then, Iraq has been scoured, and nearly every top weapons scientist has been captured or interviewed. That the investigators have found no hidden stockpiles of VX gas or anthrax or intact gas centrifuges suggests that it may be time to at least entertain the possibility that Iraqi officials all along were telling the truth when they said they no longer had a wmd program.

Over the past three months, TIME has interviewed Iraqi weapons scientists, middlemen and former government officials. Saddam's henchmen all make essentially the same claim: that Iraq's once massive unconventional-weapons program was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt; that officials destroyed or never kept the documents that would prove it; that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systems—missiles, air defenses, radar—not biological or chemical programs; and that even Saddam, a sucker for a new gadget or invention or toxin, may not have known what he actually had or, more to the point, didn't have. It would be an irony almost too much to bear to consider that he doomed his country to war because he was intent on protecting weapons systems that didn't exist in the first place.

These tales are tempting to dismiss as scripts recited by practiced liars who had been deceiving the world community for years. These sources may still be too frightened of the possibility of Saddam's return to power to tell his secrets. Or it could be that Saddam reconstituted an illicit weapons program with such secrecy that those who knew of past efforts were left out of the loop. But the unanimity of these sources' accounts can't be easily dismissed and at the very least underscores the difficulty the U.S. has in proving its case that Saddam was hoarding unconventional arms.

via TIME

ESA to the Moon

Glad to see someone is still interested in the Moon, but I do wish it was the U.S. The lack of focus by NASA on further exploration and eventual exploitation of the Moon is inexplicable.

Europe's first mission to the moon got off to a smooth start today with the launch of a rocket carrying the European Space Agency's SMART-1 probe from a base in South America. The Ariane-5 rocket lifted off from its launch pad in Kourou, French Guinea at 8.14pm local time (0914 Sunday AEST) and was to place the unmanned spacecraft and two communications satellites in space within about 40 minutes, Arianespace said.

The SMART-1, short for "Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology," is off for a long voyage: It's expected to reach the moon by December 2004. The core mission of the probe is to test a new solar-electric propulsion technology. The SMART-1 will rely on energy generated by solar panels used by "ion engines" that provide a thrust of charged particles.

The craft, weighing only 367kg, will also pioneer minute instrumentation to be used to explore the origins of the moon, look for water there and examine the prospect of building a permanent human base on the lunar surface.

via The Age
European Space Agency
ArianeSpace

North Korea tantrum

Wacked-out North Korea has had another diplomatic hissy fit, this time aimed at the unflappable Donald Rumsfeld. He must've touched a nerve.

North Korea called US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a "psychopath" and a "stupid man" yesterday, denouncing him for saying that one day freedom would come to the isolated Communist state.

Speaking before a group of US and South Korean businessmen last week, Rumsfeld predicted freedom would eventually "light up that oppressed land with hope and with promise", casting aside the dictatorship that has ruled the North for more than half a century.

North Korea, whose media regularly churn out anti-American denunciations, is especially thin-skinned when outsiders attack its political leadership.

KCNA, North Korea's official news agency, said today that Rumsfeld's "unsavoury remarks intended to tarnish the image of the dignified DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and destroy its steel-strong political system".

"His remarks only go to prove that he is just an old man, politically illiterate," it said. "His outbursts ... cannot be construed otherwise than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed." KCNA accused Rumsfeld and other "neo-conservatives" in the United States of "wantonly harassing peace and security in different parts of the world and igniting wars".

"He is cursed and hated worldwide for this," KCNA said. "Rumsfeld, whose political faith is to establish the US style world order by strength, is known to be a typical stupid man," it said. "He is, therefore, not a guy who the DPRK can deal with."

It also called Rumsfeld "a dangerous international dictator".

via the Sydney Morning Herald

The Prisoner

Aung San Suu Kyi is still being prisoner by the head goons of Burma.

Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi returned home yesterday after more than three months in detention, but her doctor said she faced house arrest with the military government screening visitors. The Nobel laureate, who had major surgery a week ago, rode in a two-car convoy from the hospital to her lakeside Rangoon home.

The Government confirmed Ms Suu Kyi, in isolation at a secret location since May 30 before entering the hospital, had returned home. It did not say whether she was in custody. "She will continue to rest at home under the supervision of her doctors while the Government stands ready to provide and assist her with medical and humanitarian needs," a government statement said.

Her return came four days before UN envoy Razali Ismail arrives for talks with Burma's military rulers, who also face pressure from Southeast Asian neighbours to free Ms Suu Kyi before a regional summit next month.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Allies

Paul Sheehan from down under writes about the long alliance between Australia and the U.S. Great article -- read the whole thing to find out the specific reasons why he thinks this is continuing into the 21st century.

Beyond the US, there are 188 sovereign nations (give or take a microstate or two) and only one of them has fought beside it in every one of the major international wars the Americans have waged over the past 100 years.

Australia.

In the US's seven wars of the past century (not counting numerous and sometimes bloody military actions in Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, Guatemala and elsewhere) - World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan war, and the Iraq war - only Australia fought in all seven wars, and every one of them was fought far from Australia's shores.

In World War I, when the population was only 5 million, 300,000 men enlisted for duty and the majority, 216,000 of them, were either killed, wounded or captured. To put this in perspective, it was the equivalent of today's US (with 290 million people) suffering 12 million military casualties.

Why would a nation so far from harm be so willing to fight? Two basic reasons. Australia is an altruistic nation. It stands for something. With allies, it is willing to fight expansive tyrannies. As for the other reason, when Howard committed Australia to the American cause in Iraq, he did so for the same reason five of his predecessors went to war: the need to be aligned with a superpower that can stop an invasion from Asia, and did stop an invasion from Asia.

via the Sydney Morning Herald
Tip via Tim Blair

Nuke security lacking?

This is one to ponder, given the high stakes.

Federal inspections and security exercises at commercial nuclear power plants often overstate the level of protection and reduce the likelihood of security improvements, according to congressional investigators. The report said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspection reports were found to not include incidents such as a guard found sleeping or falsification of security logs as security violations.

It also said that attack exercises that are supposed to test a plant’s ability to detect and repel a mock terrorist assault often are staged in such ways that they provide false assurances about a facility’s security.

The findings by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, mirror claims made by nuclear industry watchdog groups and some industry whistle-blowers. They maintain that security at nuclear power plants, despite some recent attempts at improvement, cannot deal with a sophisticated, well-armed terrorist attack.

Article via MSNBC
Full report (pdf) available from GAO.

Watching Pakistan

Pakistan is increasingly revealed as a nexus for terrorist activity. What a tinderbox -- barely governed, filled with Islamic fanaticism, and armed with nuclear weapons by China, North Korea, and others. But these arrests sound like progress being made.

The recent arrests of 19 Southeast Asian seminary students in Karachi has sent a tremor through Pakistan's security agencies, and is triggering concerns that these students could be the first trace of a sleeper cell run by the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network.

Since Islamabad sided with the American-led war on terror after Sept. 11, Pakistani security agencies have rounded up around 500 suspected Al Qaeda fugitives mostly from Arab and North African countries. But this is the first time Pakistani authorities have found imprints of the JI, a Southeast Asian extremist group linked to Al Qaeda, on Pakistani soil.

The discovery means that uprooting Islamic terror networks within Pakistan will require investigators to expand their scope beyond Arab militants. It also brings renewed attention to the nation's more than 10,000 madrassahs, or Islamic seminaries - many of which are believed to serve as breeding grounds for extremists.

Among the arrested students is the Indonesian student Rusman Gunawan, who has been identified as the brother of Hambali, a key Al Qaeda operative accused of being involved in the Bali bombings.

via the Christian Science Monitor

Teddy's folly

Sen. Edward Kennedy recently charged that President Bush lied to set up the Iraq war.

"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

Today the astute Charles Krauthammer analyzes this deranged charge in detail, not only for its demonstratable factual errors but also its logical absurdity:

You can say he made a misjudgment. You can say he picked the wrong enemy. You can say almost anything about this war, but to say that he fought it for political advantage is absurd. The possibilities for disaster were real and many: house-to-house combat in Baghdad, thousands of possible casualties, a chemical attack on our troops (which is why they were ordered into those dangerously bulky and hot protective suits on the road to Baghdad). We were expecting oil fires, terrorist attacks and all manner of calamities. This is a way to boost political ratings?

Whatever your (and history's) verdict on the war, it is undeniable that it was an act of singular presidential leadership. And more than that, it was an act of political courage. George Bush wagered his presidency on a war he thought necessary for national security -- a war that could very obviously and very easily have been his political undoing. And it might yet be.

via the Washington Post

Robert Palmer

Hyper-cool rocker Robert Palmer has died at 54. The Guardian has a good roundup of his musical career.

Fond of blending genres (once, unforgettably and perhaps unforgivably, engineering a marriage between heavy metal and bossa nova), he was often just far enough ahead of pop music's evolutionary curve to have missed the big payoff.

Palmer was noted for the care he devoted to the visual presentation of his music. Some fans, particularly those whose tastes were formed in an era that prized authenticity, found this off-putting. Others, however, understood that he aspired to inhabit the space between Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye on the one hand, and Bryan Ferry and David Bowie on the other. Like Ferry and Bowie, he grew up loving the sound and attitude of black music, and wanting to project it with what Rickie Lee Jones later called "white-boy cool".

In any age Robert Palmer would have been a hipster, with a hot line to the coolest sounds, the sharpest threads, the latest pose. It is a hard stance to maintain, and occasionally he wobbled. But his last album, the recently released Drive, showed him enthusiastically returning to his roots with direct and inventive versions of songs by JB Lenoir, Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson, Little Willie John and others - and not a model girl or wardrobe credit in sight.

Coffee culture

Starbucks is moving into... France. This should be a hoot.

It is a fair bet that the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, and de Beauvoir, would not have become the giants of world literature they are today had they been fuelled by Starbucks takeaway caffe lattes rather than shots of strong espresso in such celebrated Left Bank cafes as Flore and Les Deux Magots. But that did not stop the giant US coffee chain announcing plans yesterday to open its first branch in France early next year and even to insist that customers would have to observe its no-smoking policy.

Until this year, we might have bemoaned further Americanization of a charming French tradition -- the cafes -- but as of now a takeover of France by American capitalists seems like a good idea. And the French may be ripe for the picking.

Starbucks could also benefit from the perennially ambivalent approach of France to all things American. While forever moaning about US cultural imperialism, US unilateralism and US-driven globalisation, the French flock to such temples to theAmerican way of life as McDonald's. Even Disneyland Paris, described by one intellectual in the Sartre mould as a "cultural Chernobyl", has proved as popular with the French as with foreign tourists.

via The Guardian (UK)

Where the jobs will be

Glad to see that Texas made the Top Fifteen in a new ranking of states for being conducive (or not) to small business. And not surprised to see some familiar locales occupying the bottom of the list.

Today, the Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) released its eight annual rankings of the states according to their respective policy climates for small business and entrepreneurship in the "Small Business Survival Index 2003."

In terms of their policy environments, the most entrepreneur-friendly states under the "Small Business Survival Index 2003" are: 1) South Dakota, 2) Nevada, 3) Wyoming, 4) New Hampshire, 5) Florida, 6) Texas, 7) Tennessee, 8) Washington, 9) Michigan, 10) Mississippi, 11) Alabama, 12) Colorado, 13) Illinois, 14) Virginia, and 15) Indiana.

In contrast, the most anti-entrepreneur policy environments are offered by the following: 37) North Carolina, 38) Montana, 39) Ohio, 40) West Virginia, 41) Iowa, 42) Oregon, 43) New Mexico, 44) Vermont, 45) New York, 46) California, 47) Rhode Island, 48) Maine, 49) Minnesota, 50) Hawaii, and 51) District of Columbia.

According to SBSC chief economist Raymond J. Keating, author of the study, "The 'Small Business Survival Index 2003' compares how governments in the states treat small businesses and entrepreneurs. Since small business serves as the backbone of the U.S. economy—for example, by providing the bulk of new jobs and being a font of innovation—every state and local lawmaker should be concerned with how their policies impact small business."

SBSC president Darrell McKigney added, "With small businesses creating some three-quarters of all net new jobs, everyone has an interest in knowing if their state’s government stands behind its small businesses – or is standing in the way."

via SBSC, including full report (pdf)

Thanks to Townhall's C-Log for the tip

Offer up a sacrifice...

Retribution can be swift.

The primary author of a report critical of Microsoft is out of work.

@Stake, a Boston-based computer security firm that does business with Microsoft, issued a statement Thursday that Daniel Geer, who presented a white paper Wednesday in Washington that said the government's increasing reliance on Microsoft desktop software makes federal systems "susceptible to massive, cascading failures," is "no longer associated" with the firm as its chief technology officer.

The @Stake statement also said Geer's report was not approved by the company and that the "values and opinions of the report are not in line" with the company's views.

Neither @Stake, which has done software evaluation research for Microsoft, nor Geer would comment whether he was fired or resigned from the company. By Friday morning, Geer was no longer listed on the company's website as part of @Stake's management team.

Microsoft also denied it had any hand in the matter.

via Internet.com

The Microsoft threat

The government tried once to break Microsoft's "monopoly" power -- and may have kicked off the collapse of the high-tech bubble in a classic example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. So which is worse in this case -- the disease or the cure?

Whatever Microsoft Corp.'s strengths or failings as a developer of reliable software, the mere existence of an operating-system monopoly is a critical security risk, argues a new report released Wednesday at a Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) gathering in Washington, D.C.

Written by seven IT security researchers, "CyberInsecurity -- The Cost of Monopoly" calls on governments and businesses to consider in their buying decisions the dangers of homogenous systems, and to diversify the software mix deployed in their organizations. It also urges the U.S. government to counterbalance Microsoft's user lock-in tactics by forcing the company to offer multiplatform support for its dominant applications, including Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office products.

Microsoft's pledge to improve its products' reliability won't fix the underlying problem of the vulnerability inherent in a system that depends on just one architecture, said co-author Perry Metzger, a computer security consultant.

"It doesn't matter how hard Microsoft works on security. So long as they continue to be human beings, there will continue to be flaws -- and you don't want every machine on Earth to have the same flaw revealed at the same time," he said. "It's as though every person in the U.S. had the exact same genes."

Beyond recommending diversification, the paper suggests steps the U.S. government could take to mitigate the effects of Microsoft's monopoly position. Forced publication of APIs (application program interfaces) for Microsoft's Windows and Office software would help, as would requiring the company to work with other industry vendors on development of future specifications through a process similar to the Internet Society's RFC (request for comments) system, the report said.

via IDG

Full report available from CCIA (pdf)

A dog's life

Maybe one day there will be a genomic explanation for this....

Man’s best friend, in this case a male poodle, is genetically more similar to humans than is the mouse, a more commonly used laboratory animal, according to researchers who have completed the first rough draft sequence of the genes of a dog.

Ewen F. Kirkness of the institute for Genomic Research, the first author of the study, said that genetic sequence is important for medical research because dogs share about 360 of the same genetic disorders that are known in humans.

Dogs, he said, are second only to humans in the thoroughness of medical understanding and research. Also, Kirkness said the dog is much more genetically similar to humans than is the mouse, even though mice and humans are closer together on the tree of evolution.

via MSNBC

USAF responds

The talk is being talked; we'll see if the walk gets walked.

The top official at the U.S. Air Force Academy on Thursday promised a campaign to change the culture at the military institution, which has been plagued by a sexual assault scandal. "This is very serious. We're developing a campaign, just as we've done in Iraq," Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa said in response to the Fowler Commission report, which blamed weak leadership for the scandal.

The independent panel appointed by Congress said in its report released earlier this week that former top Air Force officials and those who led the academy should be made to answer for allowing the problem to continue.

Rosa, who took over as superintendent of the academy in July after other leaders were ousted, was charged with changing an atmosphere in which female cadets said they were often ostracized after being sexually attacked by fellow cadets.

Rosa, speaking at a press conference, said an Air Force team would come to campus soon to assess the 21 recommendations in the Fowler report. He said he was at a loss to explain why surveys show that one in five male cadets at the academy still do not want women at the school. "I find it curious that women were first admitted here 27 years ago and we still have this question."

via Reuters

Posted by Alan at 11:13 PM

Expect to Live It

Friday will see the groundbreaking ceremony of the planned National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. Sounds cool. I just wish my late friend Norv, every inch a Marine, could have lived to see it.

"While most Americans know something about the U.S. Marine Corps, most don't know what it actually means to be a Marine," said Lt. General Ronald Christmas. "That's where this Museum differs from other military museums: every decision we've made is driven by our wish to share the experience of life as a U.S. Marine, its monumental challenges and unparalleled rewards."

The entire Museum concept is intended as an immersion experience that tells the story of the Marine Corps. Created by award-winning firm Christopher Chadbourne and Associates, the Museum's exhibits will help visitors see, feel and appreciate what it means to be in the Corps. Visitors will learn about the evolution of Marine Corps and its history through exhibits that put them in the middle of the action, from witnessing a grueling boot camp experience, walking through a winter battlefield scene from the Korean War, and listening to recordings of Marine oral histories. The Museum's exhibits will use both cutting-edge multimedia and priceless vintage artifacts to tell the Marine story, from combat locator maps depicting Marine engagements both past and present, documentary films and artifacts such as an AV-8 Harrier jet, personal letters from the front and even the original flag raised at Iwo Jima.

"The Museum will have resonance with a child's sense of adventure, a parent's awareness of history and service, and the Marine's sense of duty and honor," said Lt. General Christmas. "For over 200 years the Marine Corps has been making history. The Museum will capture it and bring it alive."

The Museum will also feature era galleries chronicling the role of the Marines in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Future exhibits will touch on subjects including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I as well as more recent initiatives in Panama, Kuwait, and the Balkans. They will all be designed to bring visitors face-to-face with the scope of Marine contributions to many of the significant events in American history. But while the exhibits have been organized by major conflicts around the world, they will not simply constitute a battle chronology. Each exhibit addresses the political climate at the time, the specific role of the Marines, and how those experiences affected the trajectory of military - and American - history.

via the USMC

Brian Prosser, RIP

Two posts here back in June featured retired LAFD firefighter Brian Prosser. Mr. Prosser lost his son, Special Forces Sgt. Brian C. "Cody" Prosser, in military operations in Afghanistan. He wrote a moving letter to President Bush following that tragic experience and the end of the invasion of Iraq. Based on the subsequent exchange of comments, many people found it uplifting; a few folks were bitterly opposed. The debate was sharp.

Although I did not know him personally, all the evidence from here indicates that Mr. Prosser was a courageous and even inspiring individual. I do not believe his sacrifices have been in vain and I hope his family feels the same way. It seems certain that he and his son have now been reunited in a place far from this contentious world and will find peace together. Best wishes from Texas to the Prosser family in California.

Mr. Prosser's story was also profiled in a local newspaper during the summer.

UPDATE:

The father of the first Kern County soldier killed in Afghanistan died Monday. Family members found Prosser in his wheelchair at his Frazier Park home. Brian Prosser was thrust into the spotlight after his son, Cody Prosser, was killed during "Operation Enduring Freedom" in December 2001.

Prosser was a firefighter in Los Angeles for 18 years. After his retirement, Prosser suffered a neck injury that left his legs, and part of his arms, paralyzed. He became a spokesman for families who had lost loved ones in war, while pushing the community to be more patriotic.

via the BakersfieldChannel.com (KERO)

Hiatus

No posting on Wednesday; will be on a roadtrip to Dallas and back. Visit to IBM all day and then dropping off winter clothes with daughter no. 1 at college -- the first real cold front is coming next week.

Bush at U.N.

The President spoke to the U.N. today and laid it all out again, for those would listen.

Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men and women and children without mercy or shame.

Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup and recruit and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history.

The former regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq knew these alternatives, and made their choices.

Transcript and video available via the White House

Banned books

This week, Sept. 20-27, is Banned Books Week. This year's event has the theme "Open Your Mind to a Banned Book."

Please pause for a moment and take this survey (courtesy of a *conservative* librarian)!

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." — Benjamin Franklin

"Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book." — Walt Whitman

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." — Ray Bradbury

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life." — Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451"

"LIBERTY, n. — One of Imagination's most precious possessions." — Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary

American Library Association - The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2002

Index on Censorship

PEN American Center

International PEN

Mark Twain on book banning

The nature of freedom

Vocal Leftists, including the ACLU and the leadership of the American Library Association (ALA), are in full hoohaw about John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, and the supposed erosion of our domestic freedoms in the name of fighting terror.

In NRO's The Corner this weekend, several self-described "conservative" librarians submitted bitter comments about ALA and were concerned enough about possible retaliation that they requested anonymity.

The ALA is certainly culpable. Stalinist, self-important, pin-heads who see themselves as the last defense against fascism make up most of the leadership. They pass resolutions on Cuba (good), Israel (bad) and American foreign policy (worse).

But the re-education starts in grad school. What used to be Library Studies is now “Information Science.” Librarians (oops, I mean, Information Media Specialists) are constantly drilled in the notion that they and only they can properly deliver “Information Bearing Entities” (that’s books and stuff to you) to a public desperate for “critical thinking skills.” I once mentioned in an Archives class that the archivists of old learned their trade by working in archives, without the degree. People reacted as if I advocated home-surgery kits. This is the cult of the advanced degree. After all, when ALA denounced the dissident Cuban librarians who were jailed for operating private libraries, the number one complaint about these brave folks was that they did not have a Library Science degree.

If you want to be part of the Master Race you must have a Master’s Degree.

Turning back to Ashcroft (the Left's favorite bogeyman), Dorothy Rabinowitz, who is no stranger to examining the heavy hand of government oppression, demolishes this week the paranoia about the Attorney General of the United States:

The ACLU was the first to charge, after Sept. 11, that the government's antiterrorist measures and detention of terror suspects threatened civil liberties. Even as workers struggled to pull bodies from the mountain of rubble in downtown Manhattan, the ACLU and like-minded allies had begun issuing warnings that government efforts to prevent more terrorist assaults posed greater dangers to the nation--would destroy our Constitution and the America we have always known--than the terrorists could possibly do.

The arguments found instant acceptance, not surprisingly, among faculty ideologues on the campuses. Who can forget the instantly organized teach-ins, where speakers argued, even as the nation mourned nearly 3,000 dead, that the United States had received just deserts for its policies? Efforts to protect ourselves with rational means of defense--investigations and apprehension of likely suspects, increased security measures, profiling--all connected with the spirit of these arguments: We--not the terrorists so avid for our destruction--were the enemy that would cause the demise of our democracy.

This was, and remains, claptrap of the rankest kind, which the great mass of sane Americans would never buy--and still, it cannot be ignored. It cannot be ignored, that is, that we are in a time never before seen in this country--a time produced in part by what remains of the politics and values of the 1960s, but only in part. For even in the '60s, we did not see what we do today--namely significant quarters of the culture, elite and popular, sympathetic to the views of those home and abroad most hostile to this nation. A time when talk of American "swagger" and "bullying" comes tripping from the tongue.

For such times John Ashcroft was a target made to order. Devoutly religious, appointee of George Bush, he could scarcely have been a better fit for the bogeyman figure advanced as the greatest threat to our civil liberties--the perfect model to fire up the crowds at marches, and breast-beating festivals. Not for nothing do the Democratic presidential candidates out-do themselves denouncing the attorney general: they know, the candidates do, what has filtered down to their base, their main audience, after all. They all know, as John Kerry does, that he can say whatever he wants about John Ashcroft--that he views, as a nightmare, members of other races creeds and religions, or anything else the Democratic candidate finds convenient--and it will all be understood, a mark of political virtue.

via OpinionJournal

Banned Books Week is a good opportunity to think, hard, about the freedom to read and other aspects of our fundamental liberties. It's also a time to ponder our responsibilities to protect our civilization, the welfare of our children, and our nation's existence when under attack by forces of medievalism and true repression.

Besides the above, here are some relevant links for those who want to explore further:

DOJ's Patriot Act site

Legislative history of the USA Patriot Act

Google links to USA Patriot Act sites (mostly anti-)

Google links to libraries and the USA Patriot Act (also mostly anti-)

Friends of Cuban Libraries

Wesley Clark fibbing

Not a good beginning, all in all. This behavior is, of course, completely consistent with Clintonian standards.

When will Wesley Clark stop telling tall tales? In the current issue of Newsweek, Howard Fineman reports Clark told Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and University of Denver president Mark Holtzman that "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls."

Unfortunately for Clark, the White House has logged every incoming phone call since the beginning of the Bush administration in January 2001. At the request of THE DAILY STANDARD, White House staffers went through the logs to check whether Clark had ever called White House political adviser Karl Rove. The general hadn't. What's more, Rove says he doesn't remember ever talking to Clark, either.

via The Weekly Standard

Animals making news

Speaking of Wesley Clark, today has been quite a day for odd animal news.

An unusual breed of rats is inflicting damage on Kyrgyzstan's Dzhalal-Abad region. The rats "are killing numerous farm birds, are damaging grape and corn crops, and have destroyed 14 hectares of grain in one of the districts. These rats can climb trees and are destroying apples, pears and other fruit. The rat invasion may also give rise to different epidemics," parliament member Dooronbek Sadyrbayev told Interfax.

via Interfax.

A bull moose charged at a hunter, clobbering him with his antlers and tossing him through the air two days before the start of the Maine's split, two-week moose hunt. Jim Osgood was tossed through the air when the moose came charging on Saturday, a game warden said. The attack left him him with a broken collarbone and broken cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut.

via The New York Times

A kangaroo has been hailed a hero after he helped rescue a farmer knocked unconscious by a tree branch during weekend storms in north-eastern Victoria. The kangaroo kept banging on the door of the family's house in Morwell in Gippsland after discovering the farmer lying unconscious in a paddock... In a story reminiscent of an episode of Skippy, the kangaroo led the farmer's wife to where her husband lay with serious head injuries.

via News Interactive

Some 7,000 mink were released Sunday night from a fur farm in northwest Finland, with no group yet claiming responsibility, officials said Monday. Police said they had no suspects in what fur farmers have called the biggest attack on a Finnish mink farm. Leif Finne, head of the fur farming organization in the region, told Reuters over telephone from Kokkola that the attack was the biggest in Finland. "This is a farm with seven to eight thousand animals and all of the cages had been opened. This was a well planned attack with many perpetrators," Finne said.

via Reuters

Interstate 40, the main east-west highway in Oklahoma, was closed for several hours on Thursday when about 800 baby pigs spilled on to the road after the truck transporting them overturned, police said on Friday. Several pigs were killed when their vented livestock truck overturned just east of Oklahoma City. And the pigs, all of which were under a year old, had little idea what to do with their first taste of freedom. Some of the pigs plunged to their deaths when they jumped off a highway bridge near the wreckage as law enforcement officials were closing in for their capture.

via Reuters

The Air Force's shame

The independent commission investigating charges of severe sexual misconduct at the U.S. Air Force Academy has turned in its report to DoD. The New York Times says it is shocking in its condemnation of the Air Force leadership.

Top leaders of the United States Air Force disregarded persistent warnings over the last decade that frequent and unpunished sexual assaults were undermining its academy in Colorado Springs, a civilian commission investigating the matter reported today.

The commission also said that in an attempt "to shield Air Force Headquarters from public criticism," the Air Force's general counsel had largely ignored this history of official neglect when he reported on rape at the academy earlier this year.

Citing repeated warnings from the Air Force surgeon general and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee, the commission concluded that, "Since at least 1993, the highest levels of Air Force leadership have known of serious sexual misconduct problems at the academy," but failed to take effective action. Instead, it made fitful and limited attempts to investigate the issue, but quickly dropped them, the commission's report said.

The panel flatly rejected a key assertion of the Air Force General Counsel's report last June, which found "no systemic acceptance of sexual assault at the academy," or "institutional avoidance of responsibility."

It said, "The panel cannot agree with that conclusion given the substantial amount of information regarding the sexual assaults and the academy's institutional culture available to leaders at the academy, Air Force Headquarters and the Office of the Air Force General Counsel."

Full 141-page report (in pdf) is available via the DoD.

Several damning sentences in just the executive summary stand out immediately:

The sexual assault problems at the Academy are real and continue to this day.

The Panel examined and reviewed the culture and environment at the Academy. It found an atmosphere that helped foster a breakdown in values which led to the pervasiveness of sexual assaults and is perhaps the most difficult element of the problem to solve.

This should be intolerable. I stand by an earlier comment: the kind of brutality that has apparently existed at the U.S. Air Force Academy is a violation of the fundamental values of U.S. law, military law, and the American spirit. I'm certainly no expert on the military, but it seems to me that if these revelations do not result in both sweeping change and tough punishments, something is really rotten at the heart of the military culture.

Time for Sec. Rumsfeld to show his quality.

Sense from Sensing

Donald Sensing muses today on the inherent contradictions in the Left's noisy claims that President Bush has "lied" about the war with Iraq, and finds his way in short order to a bedrock conclusion:

To the Left, a lie is any kind of statement that hurts their cause, truth is any kind of statement that helps their cause. "Facts" have no independent veracity. When Bush tells the truth about Iraq, the Left says he’s lying, because the truth hurts the Left’s cause, which is to get power no matter how, even if - especially if - they have to lie to get power, because in the Orwellian world of the Left, any statement that serves their purpose is definitionally true, and any that harms it is definitionally false.

It's now obvious that the President's political and ideological opponents are focusing on just a few key themes between now and November 2004, all lacking in substance but all easy to present via a compliant media:

These relentless messages will be leavened with an underlying shot of "Republicans hate black people" and off we go. This is going to be a long year -- a shooting war abroad, a war of words and ideas at home.

The Alamo

Courage unde fire during the battle of Debecka Pass in northern Iraq has come to light thanks to recent awards for bravery, including three Silver Stars and thirteen Bronze Stars.

The low-slung ridgeline overlooking a strategic crossroads in northern Iraq offered scant protection for the small band of Green Berets, vastly outnumbered and under attack from four T-55 tanks, six armored personnel carriers and hundreds of infantrymen with artillery on call.

"We all made a mental promise," Staff Sgt. Jeffrey M. Adamec recalled of that battle on Day 18 of the war. "Nobody had to yell out commands. Everybody just knew. We were not going to move back from that point. We were not going to give up that ground. We called that spot 'the Alamo' "

In what is becoming one of the most celebrated missions of the war, just 26 Green Berets, along with three Air Force bomb targeters and two others faced off against a reinforced Iraqi motorized rifle company numbering in the hundreds.

After a four-and-a-half-hour firefight, not only did they seize their first objective, a crossroads, but they also moved on deeper into enemy territory to sever Highway 2. That way they could halt the Iraqi Army's ability to maneuver across the north, and at the same time secure a route to the Kirkuk oil fields.

Soldiers are known for what they carry into combat. And the Green Berets who battled and bested tanks and armored personnel carriers that day had no armored vehicles of their own. In fact, they had no armor at all save body armor, useless against a direct hit from the artillery and tank shells that rained so close that dirt was tossed in their laps.

via The New York Times

Earlier coverage provided by the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer, the United States Army, and dcmilitary.com.

Machiavellian thoughts

William Safire examines the Wesley Clark candidacy and ponders the involvement of Bill and Hillary Clinton, without whose support Clark's campaign would have ended before it began. The phrase "stalking horse" presents itself again.

To what end? What's in it for the Clintons?

Control. First, control of the Democratic Party machinery, threatened by the sudden emergence of Dean and his anti-establishment troops. Second, control of the Democratic ideological position, making sure it remains on the respectable left of center.

What if, as Christmas nears, the economy should tank and President Bush becomes far more vulnerable? Hillary would have to announce willingness to accept a draft. Otherwise, should the maverick Dean take the nomination and win, Clinton dreams of a Restoration die.

Here is where the politically inexperienced Clark comes in. He is the Clintons' most attractive stalking horse, useful in stopping Dean and diluting support for Kerry, Lieberman or Gephardt. If Bush stumbles and the Democratic nomination becomes highly valuable, the Clintons probably think they would be able to get Clark to step aside without splintering the party, rewarding his loyalty with second place on the ticket.

G'wan, you say, the Clintons should be supporting Dean, a likely loser to Bush, thereby ensuring the Clinton Restoration in 2008. But plainly they are not. Their candidate is Clark. Either they are for him because (altruistic version) they think Clark would best lead the party and country for the next eight years, leaving them applauding on the sidelines, or (Machiavellian version) they think his muddy-the-waters candidacy is their ticket back to the White House in 2004 or 2008.

Which is more like the Clintons?

via the Houston Chronicle

Reagan-Bush

Time magazine is running excerpts this week from a newly-published volume of Ronald Reagan's letters. The letters are worth reading in whole, so a copy of the book itself will be a good investment. Also interesting is the grudgingly positive commentary by the Time reporters, which pauses to compare Reagan with George W. Bush.

It has always been tempting to compare the two men, especially since the Bush shop keeps a 24-hour honor guard around the Reagan flame. The letters remind us that Bush and Reagan both rose as Governors of big states; both are Westerners to the core, vigorous, unabashed, plainspoken and dismissed as incurious. They were bracketed by tinkerers and tacticians: Carter, Bush pere and Clinton all worked the margins, looked for an opening. Reagan and Bush are by contrast radicals, risk takers, playing for keeps. It's almost part of the conservative catechism: Bush, as Reagan did, conveys the sense that he has had a full life apart from his political fortunes; both men give the impression that they could have run and lost and been content back at the ranch with their beloved wives, clearing brush, chopping wood, moving on. So with nothing to lose, they play for the whole table: overhaul the tax code, topple the evil empire, save the world from terrorism. Why settle for less?

Khalid talking

Lots of commentary on cable news today about a report from the Associated Press concerning intelligence gleaned from a captured al Qaeda leader. Interesting background info -- why leaked now?

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, has told American interrogators that he first discussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and that the original plan called for hijacking five commercial jets on each U.S. coast before it was modified several times, according to interrogation reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

Mohammed also divulged that, in its final stages, the hijacking plan called for as many as 22 terrorists and four planes in a first wave, followed by a second wave of suicide hijackings that were to be aided possibly by al-Qaida allies in southeast Asia, according to the reports.

U.S. authorities continue to investigate the many statements that Mohammed has made in interrogations, seeking to eliminate deliberate misinformation. But they have been able to corroborate with other captives and evidence much of his account of the Sept. 11 planning.

Full AP report via the Houston Chronicle

Goodbye Galileo

As noted here earlier, Galileo will end its life Sunday by plunging into Jupiter while travelling more than 100,000 miles per hour. Brave ship; great science.

When the Galileo spacecraft slams into Jupiter on Sunday, one of the longest-running dramas in the history of space exploration will come to an end. For the 800 or so people who have worked on the mission since its inception in the mid-1970s, the occasion will be bittersweet

Many of them will be among 1,500 people expected to congregate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for what amounts to a funeral for a much-loved, soon to be long-lost friend.

Dr. Claudia Alexander recalls beginning her career in 1986 at the age of 26 as an instrument specialist for Galileo. Now 44, she is the last of Galileo's project managers -- NASA-ese for head honcho.

"Sometimes it's like an old car that's giving you everything it can give you, and other times I think of it like your troubled kid that ended up getting graduated from Harvard," Alexander said.

via Wired News

· Spaceflight Now has a detailed chronology of what is expected during the probe's last hours.

· Visit the Galileo Mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab

· Watch NASA TV via the Web

· Listen to National Public Radio coverage over the weekend

FBI agents in the library

How will the American Library Association respond to this chilling exercise of raw government power? Government agents ransacking library records, oh my. As daughter no. 3 says, "Gasp, egad!"

FBI agents seeking a self-proclaimed arsonist searched computers at the California Institute of Technology for clues in the vandalism and fires set at four Southern California car dealerships last month.

The agents were hoping to uncover the identity of man claiming to be a member of the radical Earth Liberation Front who told the Los Angeles Times he was involved in the attacks.

The man contacted the newspaper this week via telephone as well as through e-mails, which appeared to have come from computers at Caltech or Pasadena City College.

FBI spokeswoman Cheryl Mimura confirmed that agents visited the Caltech campus Friday but would not provide details, citing bureau policy not to comment on ongoing investigations.

A source close to the investigation told the Times that FBI agents recovered hard-drive data from computers at the school's Fairchild Library.

via the Mercury News

Yes sir, Yasser

Yasser Arafat's grasp of English is as tenuous as his grip on reality, if this interview with ABC News's Judy Woodruff is any indication. This is all a bit reminiscent of the infamous Iraqi Information Minister, but it's hard to laugh at the Palestinian deathmaster.

Woodruff: Are you saying you are the only one who can make peace for the Palestinians?

Arafat: No, the Palestinian leadership, which I am one of them, [is] making the peace, and I've been accepted to make the peace with the Israelis.

Woodruff: Are you able to control the street?

Arafat: I am doing my best.

Woodruff: Does Hamas have more control than you?

Arafat: You have to know we are the authority of the Palestinians — that has been recognized by all the Palestinians.

Woodruff: If you want to control suicide bombers, can you stop them?

Arafat: We have stopped them and we've succeeded.

Woodruff: Can you stop them again?

Arafat: Yes, and yesterday they had called, they are ready to return back to truce.

Woodruff: Do you want to stop them now?

Arafat: What?

Woodruff: Do you want to stop the suicide bombers now?

Arafat: Ask them and ask your American representatives how many times we have succeeded to stop the suicide bombers and arrest them.

Woodruff: But do you have the power now to stop them?

Arafat: You are not fair and thank you.

Saddam giving up?

Tantalizing story from an unlikely source. I guess it will be proven true or false soon enough.

Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, a British tabloid newspaper said today.

According to the Sunday Mirror report, Saddam was demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus in exchange for information on weapons of mass destruction and his bank accounts.

US President George W Bush was being kept up to date on the talks by his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice who was coordinating negotiations led by US general Ricardo Sanchez, the Sunday Mirror said. Sanchez is the commander of US forces in Iraq.

"A representative of Saddam in Western-style civilian clothes came to coalition people at Tikrit at sunset on September 12. He led them to a house where the security official was waiting," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior Iraqi as saying.

"The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of General Sanchez," the source said, according to the newspaper. The source maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal "because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter," the tabloid said.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

No link apparent yet at the Sunday Mirror site. UPDATE: now the story is posted.

George as Abe?

Victor Davis Hanson recalls the bitter election-year summer of 1864 when the nation seemed bogged down in a wartime quagmire with no end in sight, and persevered to do what was necessary. The current sinking spell, brought on by electioneering and a feeble media, will likewise pass, if our President has the necessary fortitude.

Hanson draws this conclusion:

Our real challenge is not the conduct of the war, not the money, not even the occasionally depressing news from Iraq. After all, if the problem is manpower, there are tens of thousands of idle Iraqis. If the problem is money, Iraq will shortly be a very wealthy oil-exporting country. If the problem is know-how, no one better than the United States understands how to establish a free market, democratic society.

No, it is more a psychosocial malaise, a crisis of confidence that is beginning to creep back into the national mood a mere two years after September 11, fueled by election politics. Too many of us have forgotten that we are in a global war, and that victory demands tenacity, sacrifice, and adherence to unpopular beliefs and values.

We are fighting with tremendous skill, at a minimum loss of lives — and in the middle of an economic slump and a raucous campaign. But the paradox remains that the very rapidity of our victories abroad and the absence of another 9/11 at home have lulled far too many into thinking that Islamic fascism and Middle East totalitarianism can be eradicated in a few months, or that a complex society like postbellum Iraq should resemble a New England township five months after a war.

Ponder instead that in a summer long ago a similarly beleaguered Abraham Lincoln did not remove Grant. Nor did he lecture Sherman about the niceties of taking Atlanta or later veto his bold ideas about cutting loose through Georgia. He did not broker a deal with Mr. Frémont on his right nor did he listen to gabby George McClellan — or consider the Copperheads anything other than defeatists whose enticing policy of appeasement would only postpone but not end the killing. And he most certainly did not ask Canada or England to broker an honest peace, or to send peacekeepers along the Mason-Dixon line.

Instead, with a treasury that was almost broke, and an electorate that was exhausted, he pushed on through the gloom of summer and found his reward in autumn.

So will we — if we do the same and push our rock over the top.

via National Review Online

Faithfulness

As the winds from Hurricane Isabel swept over Arlington National Cemetery, the soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given for the first time in history permission to abandon their posts and seek shelter.

"They told us that. But that's not what's going to happen," said Sgt. Christopher Holmes, standing vigil on overnight duty. "That's never an option for us. It went in one ear and right out the other."

With the fierce storm bearing down Thursday night, cemetery officials decided to let the guards move indoors if they felt they were in danger. Cemetery Superintendent John Metzler said he believed it was the first time they have been allowed to do so. "We certainly didn't want to put these guards in jeopardy unnecessarily," Metzler said.

The tomb is protected by soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment. Usually about a half-dozen are there, taking turns standing guard, and security cameras also are used. Holmes' group was on duty for 24 hours, from 6 a.m. Thursday until 6 a.m. Friday. They took turns patrolling the tomb in hourly shifts.

Staff Sgt. Alfred Lanier, also on duty Thursday night, said guards might move inside if the storm became truly life-threatening. But he didn't think it was likely.

"Once you become a badgeholder, it's like you'll do whatever you have to do to guard the unknowns," Lanier said. "For one, it's my job. And for two, that's just how much respect I myself have for the unknowns. That's just something we cherish."

The sentries were not entirely unprotected in the storm; they wore rain gear and could warm up with coffee or hot chocolate when not standing guard.

Holmes said he was willing to risk his life keeping watch over the tomb. "It's just considered to be the greatest honor to go out there and guard," Holmes said. "It's not only the unknowns. It's a symbol that represents everyone who's fought and died for our country."

via ABC News

Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery

Betrayal

The Washington Times is reporting that an Islamic U.S. Army chaplain who served at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo has been arrested as a spy. Horrible.

Capt. James J. Yee, a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was arrested earlier this month by the FBI in Jacksonville, Fla., as he arrived on a military charter flight from Guantanamo, according to a law-enforcement source.

Agents confiscated several classified documents in his possession and interrogated him. He was held for two days in Jacksonville and transferred to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where two Army lawyers have been assigned to his defense.

The Army has charged Capt. Yee with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. The Army may also charge him later with the more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum sentence of life.

It could not be immediately learned what country or organization is suspected of receiving information from Capt. Yee. He had counseled suspected al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo for a lengthy period.

A betrayal like this is unconscionable. It also calls to mind the case of Hasan Akbar, who is awaiting a military trial on murder charges for fragging his fellow soldiers in Kuwait as the Iraq war started. Such examples of twisted disloyalty should be punished with the utmost severity.

Feeling lucky?

Daniel Henninger says the French still don't get it, but they face an important choice anyway: GWB or Dirty Harry.

Like it or not, the American superpower is going to be in the world. Isolationism isn't an option, But there are two post-9/11 Americas on offer to the world.

You can either get the benign version of the American superpower, the one that comes with American values, such as a belief in self-determination even for the wogs, a version that most likely will include continued support for institutions such as the U.N. Or, amid derision and abuse, you may get the truly realpolitik version, which will be mainly about cold-bloodedly protecting the superpower's commercial interests, and will include little or no interest in the U.N. and similar platforms. Americans are patient. But they aren't punching bags.

Put it this way: Either you can have George Bush's America ("In Iraq, we are helping the long suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society"). Or Dirty Harry's America ("But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya--punk?").

For decades, Europeans have regarded their American summer visitors as ill-dressed rubes with little sense of history or the grand, complex world beyond Peoria. In the past two years, Americans have learned a lot about history. Out of that history emerged once again the unique combination of idealism and toughness that brought the U.S. into Iraq, and will keep it there. It would behoove this country's critics to try harder to understand both impulses. If only out of self-interest.

via OpinionJournal

The stalking horse

Townhall columnist Jay Bryant explains in more depth what it means for Wesley Clark to act as a "stalking horse" for Hillary Clinton in the 2004 presidential campaign, along the same lines noted here two days ago.

The term "stalking horse" has pretty much gone out of favor in American politics, although at one time it came up in almost every presidential cycle. Its decline has reflected the decline of the importance of party conventions. Here's the Safire definition of a stalking horse: "a decoy; a candidate put forward to split a vote or deadlock a convention, concealing another candidate's plan."

Wesley Clark is a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton.

That much is clear, but little else is. For example, there is the intriguing question of whether Clark knows he is a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton. It is entirely possible he is being duped into being a decoy. With no political experience, he would make an easy mark for a team of con artists as skilled as Hillary and Bill Clinton.

But he may very well have been in on the plot all along.

However, government professor Peter Augustine Lawler thinks it'll be Clark-Clinton in 2004.

Clark has to be regarded as the favorite for the nomination, and it would be a mistake at this point to regard him as an underdog in the general election. The main stumbling block to his success would be Hillary entering the race. As far as I can tell, her judgment is that the risk for her at this point is too high. She surely secretly hopes for a narrow Democratic defeat next year to clear the way for her in 2008. But political results can't be engineered that precisely, and don't be surprised if she doesn't adopt the amazingly low-risk strategy of making herself available as Clark's running mate. That would make her the presumptive nominee in either 2008 or 2012, depending on the general's skill and fortune.

Why would the senator give up her all the influence that comes from having a safe seat from one of our largest states? The former First Lady could hardly be fulfilled as a mere senator; her real ambition is to be president. And whomever Clark picks as his vice-presidential candidate — if the ticket is elected — would have immediate advantages in the struggle to succeed him. Hillary can't count on that person not catching on. And no insider Democratic senator has won the party's presidential nomination under the present primary-nomination system. If Mrs. Clinton wants to be president, she'll want to be on the Clark ticket.

via National Review Online

Personally, I think he has it backwards -- if Bush appears weak and the Dems can be kept in disarray until the convention, it'll be Clinton-Clark.

Kamm on Dean

The U.K.'s redoubtable Oliver Kamm pauses to dissect Howard Dean during the course of a rumination on the right way to think about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The populism that has afflicted the Democrats' recent campaigns is the speediest way to ensure this party of minorities remains a minority party, and deservedly so. Howard Dean demonstrated his unfitness to be President several months ago with his judgement on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein:

"We've gotten rid of him. I suppose that's a good thing."

But I understate. A man who so grudgingly weighs the question of Saddam's departure is devoid of imagination, public-spiritedness and internationalist principle. He is not a reliable compass for humane sentiment let alone the highest office of state. Being a leftist myself, I am painfully aware that candidates of the Left do not get elected to executive office if they're perceived as untrustworthy on issues of security: McGovern, Foot, Lafontaine, Rau and the serial election loser Shimon Peres are all testament to the rule. Never mind what else he believes: if Dean is unmoved by the ousting of a tyrant who modelled his rule on Stalin and Hitler, he is untrustworthy to exercise authority in the public interest.

Aung San Suu Kyi update

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is receiving medical care during her continuing captivity.

Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has undergone surgery for an unspecified gynaecological condition, hospital officials said. Ms Suu Kyi was admitted to the Asia Royal Cardiac and Medical Centre in the capital, Rangoon, on Wednesday night, a doctor at the facility said on condition of anonymity. Details of her condition were not available, but doctors described the operation as a success, saying there were no complications.

The hospital has been guarded closely by more than a dozen undercover police and military intelligence officers since Ms Suu Kyi was admitted. Some members of the hospital's staff were instructed not to discuss Ms Suu Kyi's presence, the source added.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Recent reports of a hunger strike were not correct, and the claims themselves may have been a clever ruse, according to this story earlier in the month.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has visited detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and found she is well and not on hunger strike, as the US claims. The United States reported last week that the 58-year-old Nobel Peace laureate was refusing food to protest her three-month detention by Myanmar's military rulers.

But when Red Cross officials visited her at a secret location to deliver messages from her family members, she was observed to be well. It is said that the visit was granted because of US pressure.

Analysts had said the objective of the US claims may have been to allow independent observers access to Ms Suu Kyi to show she was in good health amid increasing concerns over the health of the diminutive opposition leader.

via Channel News Asia

Not-free trade fails

There will be a hearty chorus of "I told you so" today from advocates of free trade.

In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection.

Eighteen months later, key administration officials have concluded that Bush's order has turned into a debacle. Some economists say the tariffs may have cost more jobs than they saved, by driving up costs for automakers and other steel users. Politically, the strategy failed to produce union endorsements and appears to have hurt Bush with workers in Michigan and Tennessee -- also states at the heart of his 2004 strategy.

"They tried to play politics, and it looked like it was working for a while," said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with ties to the administration. "But now it's fallen apart."

via the Washington Post

France - zut alors!

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has finally had it with France, and come to the same realization as many ordinary Americans before him: the French government is deeply, truly not our friend or ally.

It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy....there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.

What is so amazing to me about the French campaign — "Operation America Must Fail" — is that France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France. Let me spell it out in simple English: if America is defeated in Iraq by a coalition of Saddamists and Islamists, radical Muslim groups — from Baghdad to the Muslim slums of Paris — will all be energized, and the forces of modernism and tolerance within these Muslim communities will be on the run. To think that France, with its large Muslim minority, where radicals are already gaining strength, would not see its own social fabric affected by this is fanciful.

If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.

But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam's one-man rule — is so patently cynical.

Election polls

Polls are coming out every day and few will matter for another 8-9 months. This one is interesting.

President George W. Bush is cruising along with a 53 -- 39 percent approval rating and a comfortable lead over any likely Democratic challenger -- including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. This compares to President Bush's 53 -- 41 percent approval rating in a July 24 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

In an early look at the '04 Presidential race, Bush tops all comers:

· 53 -- 41 percent over Gore;
· 52 -- 42 percent over Sen. Clinton;
· 52 -- 41 percent over Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman;
· 53 -- 38 percent of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry;
· 51 -- 39 percent over Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt;
· 53 -- 38 percent over former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean;

But American voters say 67 -- 22 that the economy will matter more than Iraq in deciding how they vote for President. Voters disapprove 50 -- 44 percent of the way Bush is handling the economy and say, 49 -- 42 percent, that a Democratic administration will do a better job on the economy.

"Despite all the inside-the-Beltway chatter, the nation's voters still pick President Bush over any of the Democrats, as the President's approval holds steady," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

So assuming no major meltdowns in national security or a new war, the condition of the economy in late 2004 is the key for Bush's re-election. If a recent but seemingly little-noticed analysis by NABE is right, then the Democrats might have an uphill climb by this time next year.

The economy, buffeted by everything from recession and terrorist attacks to a collapsing stock market and corporate scandals, is finally poised for stronger growth. Even jobs, a notable no-show in the recovery so far, will start to improve, a national economists' group predicted Monday.

In its new outlook, the National Association for Business Economics forecast that the gross domestic product, the country's total output of goods and services, would increase at an annual rate of 4.5 percent during the current July-September quarter and would continue growing at a 4 percent pace in the final three months of the year.

The NABE forecasting group said the wave of job layoffs that continued through last month may finally be coming to an end as growth moves up to levels which will prompt companies to rehire laid-off workers.

"The U.S. economy finally appears to have hoisted its sails," said NABE president-elect Duncan Meldrum. He said two-thirds of the NABE's 35-member forecasting panel believe businesses will be adding at least 100,000 workers per month to their payrolls by the end of this year.

via the Houston Chronicle

In any event, the recent downturn in Bush's poll numbers isn't so shocking to those who recall back in January when Karl Rove gave his prediction about the 2004 election during a wide-ranging interview:

Discussing politics, Mr. Rove said he expected the 2004 presidential race to be more like the tight election of 2000 than President Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election in 1984. He said the Democratic challenger would emerge from a tough primary fight strengthened, and that even the successful prosecution of any war would not be cause for overconfidence at the White House. "I see a very close election," he said.

via Tax Policy Center

Nuclear Saudi Arabia

The Guardian reports that the Saudis are deeply spooked by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia's rulers know that Israel is no threat to them -- the Israelis have been considered nuclear-armed for years. But the threat from Iran is new and now pressing.

Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned. This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme.

A strategy paper being considered at the highest levels in Riyadh sets out three options:

· To acquire a nuclear capability as a deterrent;
· To maintain or enter into an alliance with an existing nuclear power that would offer protection;
· To try to reach a regional agreement on having a nuclear-free Middle East.

The Charters of Freedom

President Bush visited the National Archives this week for a ceremony unveiling a new and enhanced exhibit of the "Charters of Freedom" -- the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Many Americans have seen reproductions of the Declaration of Independence. A lot of us have seen reproductions of the Constitution. We know so well the first three words of our Constitution, "We the people." Yet, as familiar as these documents are, to see them in their originals is a moving experience. I hope a lot of our fellow citizens come to this rotunda and see firsthand the work of our founding fathers.

Looking at the faded names of Hancock and Adams and Jefferson, Franklin, and others, you can better see the bravery behind the stirring words declaring independence. It was one thing to nod in agreement as the text was read and approved. It's quite another to take the quill and add your name, becoming at that instant the enemy of an empire. And each of the signers, as his pen moved across the page, had not only reached a great turning point in his own life, but in the life of the world. The true revolution was not to defy one earthly power, but to declare principles that stand above every earthly power -- the equality of each person before God, and the responsibility of government to secure the rights of all.

via the White House

The Charters of Freedom at the National Archives

Iranian weapons

Michael Ledeen has a stern warning about Iran's nuclear program, and thinks the U.S. is deluded to believe that their efforts will take years to reach fruition.

In recent weeks, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been receiving many senior clerics for happy embraces. They have come in unusually large numbers to congratulate him. According to Iranians I talk to, they believe that Iran now has all the necessary components for an atomic bomb or two or three, and all that remains is to assemble the damned things.

That would track with the mullahs' clear international strategy, which is to stall for time. They think that if they can make it into early 2004, they'll be safe from us for at least eleven months, as Bush would not attack during an election year (never mind that Bush has no intention of attacking at all, we're talking about how they see things). In the meantime, they expect to be able to test a nuclear device, which will, they think, transform them into the North Korea of the Middle East. That is, invulnerable to us.

So the stall is on, in all directions.

via National Review Online

Clark takedowns begin

Richard Brookhiser sums up Wesley Clark in one line:

Wesley Clark is George McClellan--proud, smart, by the book, untalented, incompetent. All stars, no battles.

An e-mail sent to NRO's The Corner makes essentially the same point in more words:

The man is an empty suit or I should say uniform complete with four stars. My father and husband were both military officers and I have seen the likes of Wesley Clark many, many times. He is a political officer. That means that his main objective in his career is to be promoted and he will say and do anything to achieve that objective up to and including ruining other officers careers. He was promoted up the line by others of the same ilk. These guys always look good on paper---that means, they went to the right schools (usually the Academies or one of the private military schools), they went to the right wars (known as being in the right place at the right time) and had the right sponsors. Even had the right medals. But they are lousy leaders of men and real leaders can spot them a mile away. It is somehow fitting that Bill and Hillary Clinton would sponsor him. I'm sure they see him as one of their people and he is. Vain, shallow, looks good in a uniform and easily manipulated. You will no doubt receive plenty of e-mail from people who have had the occasion to run into or afoul of General Clark. You should also look into his record as Commander during the war in Kosovo. He almost started WWIII but thankfully a British commander wouldn't follow his orders. He didn't do it out of mendacity just good old garden variety stupidity and vanity. Wesley Clark is not a class act.

Dean's bad back

Thanks to a tip from Eye on the Left's link to a post by Derek James, we rediscover a portion of Howard Dean's interview last June with NBC's Tim Russert. Note this one question, then Dean's unconvincing answer. Then further consider that the Democrats still mock George W. Bush for his Air National Guard service during the same period.

Russert: Let me turn to a Boston Globe article about the military service during the Vietnam War as it applies to you and I’ll put it on the screen. “Dean did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War because he received a medical deferment for an unfused vertebra in his back. Several articles in the last year have noted that after his deferment, Dean spent 80 days skiing in Aspen, Colorado.” And then The Aspen Times wrote this profile. “In Howard Dean, we could have a president who spent the winter of 1971-72...pounding bumps on Aspen Mountain. ‘I paid $250 for a ski pass and skied 80 days on Ajax. It was the greatest mountain. ... I went to work pouring concrete for a small company.’” Why were you able to ski on Ajax Mountain, pounding your back, and pouring concrete, and not serve in the military?

Dean: First of all, let me say that there’s only one person who’s contending for the Democratic nominee for president who did serve in the military, nomination for president, and then let me explain the circumstances of my draft classification. I went to my physical in Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, which was a great deal like the scene out of Alice’s Restaurant in terms of the different sizes, shapes, colors, and all kinds of people were there. I was given an examination. I had a previous back problem, which is evidently congenital, which prevented me from doing any sustained running, a problem that I’ve had since then, since that time, which requires that when I get out of the car I often have some pains up and down my leg and back and so forth. But I have been able to exercise at—ry vigorous athletic life except for some things. One of those is long-distance running, which is how the problem came to my attention in the first place. I noticed the pain when I was in high school running track. In any case, the—after the physical, I received a one Y deferment. That’s how the United States government decided that they would use me. One Y deferment means you can only be called in times of national emergency. I didn’t have anything to do with choosing any draft deferment. I didn’t try to get out of the draft. I had a physical. The United States government said this is your classification. I’m not responsible for that. I didn’t have anything to do with the decision. That was their choice.

Russert: A military physical.

Dean: Yeah. I had a military physical. I had a draft induction physical in Ft. Hamilton. I think it was, perhaps, during my senior year. I don’t remember the exact date.

Russert: If called, you would have served?

Dean: Of course.

Transcript via MSNBC

Questions: How plausible is it that back pain would disqualify Dean from military service, but leave him in fine condition to ski and pour concrete? I would have expected "Dr." Dean to give a more medically precise explanation. And didn't Russert drop the line of questioning pretty quickly? He was a lot nastier to Vice President Cheney last Sunday.

Clark running more than his mouth

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark announced his presidential candidacy today. Although it's hard to rule out a candidate after seeing millions of people vote in obviously absurd candidates like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Clark seems like a true long-shot. What's really interesting is the in-depth support being provided by various well-known Clintonistas and the Clintons themselves.

Clark's associates said yesterday he will run as a moderate southern Democrat in the tradition of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. Clark is surrounding himself with key operatives from the Clinton-Gore White House and campaigns. Among those expected to play key roles are Eli J. Segal, a former Clinton administration official who was chairman of Clinton's 1992 campaign; Donnie Fowler, former vice president Al Gore's 2000 field director; Ron Klain, a strategist for Gore; and Mark Fabiani, a communications specialist for Clinton and Gore. Bruce Lindsey, a close Clinton friend and a lawyer in the Clinton White House. Mickey Kantor, who played a key role in the Clinton-Gore campaign and was Clinton's commerce secretary, will also be helping Clark.

via the Washington Times.

Seems to me that the Clintons have surveyed the current Democratic scene and perceive opportunity: a large field of weak candidates creating a chance for Hillary. If Clark can contribute to a dispersion of voter support and there is no clear Dem winner for the nomination after the primaries, then it's plausible to imagine a dream scenario: Hillary rides to the rescue as a white knight and is "drafted" without having to take the punishment of the primary campaign. With Clark as her putative VP, she can then go after Bush as a fresh voice. This also allows her to assess Bush's strength or weakness in the polls late next year vs. fourteen months before the election.

One Bush-basher writing in New York Magazine is tantalized. His article is entitled "Dream Team."

It may be that in every election season, this exact what-if or who-else fantasy arrives just as—indeed precisely because—it is too late. But this time, uniquely, making the fantasy so much more compelling, the Democrats do have potential candidates who don’t need a year of prior brand-building and dues-paying and war-chest-accumulating and humping it all over the place to be as big and as scene-stealing as they would have to be.

Now there’s the general—a liberal, even eggheaded, war-winning, southern-born four-star general. And, in some pageant-size fantasy, there’s the former First Lady—in an age when the true cost of any political or marketing campaign is the creation of recognition and brand, she is as famous, as iconic, as you can be. This may be an opportunity such as has never before been presented to one political party.

Saudis funding death

The New York Times reports that funding for Hamas from Saudi sources is under increasing scrutiny. This is a shadowy area, but it seems increasingly clear that our own money, transferred to Saudi Arabia in payment for oil, is paying for death and destruction on a global scale. Energy independence is a national security matter for more than one reason. And our friends the Saudis need to clean out this nasty stable.

As relations between the Israelis and Palestinians continue to deteriorate, in no small part because of recent Hamas-sponsored suicide bombings, Saudis have come under fresh scrutiny by American and European investigators here and in Israel for their political and financial support of the group.

At least 50 percent of Hamas's current operating budget of about $10 million a year comes from people in Saudi Arabia, according to estimates by American law enforcement officials, American diplomats in the Middle East and Israeli officials. After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Saudi portion of Hamas financing grew larger as donations from the United States, Europe and other Persian Gulf countries dried up, American officials and analysts said.

The estimated donations coming from Saudi Arabia — about $5 million a year — are a significant sum for Hamas but a very small portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow into Saudi charities each year, officials said. Nearly all the donations are given in cash, making it extremely difficult for Saudi and American authorities to track the money.

Justice in action

Odd, but I don't recall any Palestinian courts taking legal action against their terrorists, either before or after the fact. This is what is means to be a democracy operating under a system of laws, warts and all, not a thugocracy under a leader like Arafat:

A Jerusalem court on Wednesday convicted three Israeli settlers for attempting to blow up an Arab girls' school in Jerusalem last year to avenge Palestinian attacks against Jews.

via the San Francisco Chronicle

Y chromosome politics

Jay Nordlinger says the "mommy party" has its work cut out for it, since Republicans like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are exuding political virility right now.

Many years ago Chris Matthews--now famous on TV--hit on an interesting formulation: He said the Democrats were the "mommy party" and the Republicans the "daddy party." That is, the Democrats were "nurturers," concerned with health policy and day care. The Republicans were "protectors," taking care of national security and other manly matters. This notion is obviously galling to some. But Mr. Matthews was on to something, and we now find ourselves in a "daddy party" time.

...

Mr. Bush's personality grates on some. On many. He is accused of machismo, belligerence, cowboyism. For Europeans, in particular--and for European-like Americans--he is the very model of the swaggering, heedless, vulgar right-winger. He said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." About Saddam holdouts in Iraq, he declared, "Bring 'em on"--meaning, our boys are ready to confront them. This prompted a hue and cry among Mr. Bush's critics. As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank commented, "It's the sort of thing that sounds pretty shocking," although "often this sort of Old West rhetoric appeals to the American people."

via OpinionJournal

Depravity returns to the spotlight

Newsweek reports that Harrison Ford has continued his gleeful efforts to support convicted child-rapist and fugitive Roman Polanski. Thanks, Harrison -- remind me not to go to your movies either, if you ever make another one worth seeing anyway.

When Harrison Ford accepted the best-director Oscar on behalf of Roman Polanski at the Academy Awards in L.A. last March, he promised he’d deliver it in person to the director of “The Pianist” as soon as he could. Last week, at the Deauville Film Festival in France, Ford kept his word.

“Delivery for Roman Polanski! Delivery for Roman Polanski!” called the star as he strode into the bar of Deauville’s swanky Hotel Royal, carrying a small brown carton under his arm. Polanski, president of the festival jury, was chatting with Jack Valenti, chief of the Motion Picture Association. The filmmaker laughed and gave Ford a big hug. With a swarm of paparazzi waiting outside the hotel, Ford opened the package to show Polanski the golden statuette.

At least some normal people in the U.K. still care.

Child protection campaigners are calling for a UK-wide boycott of Roman Polanski's Oscar-nominated film The Pianist because of the director's sex conviction.

Polanski fled Los Angeles for Paris almost 25 years ago to escape sentencing after admitting having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. He has been warned by police that if he returns to the US for the 75th Annual Academy Awards he will be arrested.

A survivors' action group has called on the British public to examine their consciences when deciding whether or not to watch the film at the cinema which, they claim, would give money and credibility to a convicted offender. Referring to the decision to nominate Polanski for an Oscar, Phoenix Survivors spokesperson Shy Keenan said: "To those who have turned their blind eye, who are you to forgive? Would you if it was your child?"

via ITV

Catholic agony

Eloquent Peggy Noonan attended a private meeting of Catholic officials and laymen a few months ago, and is now disclosing what she said to them. She laid out some powerful truths -- those of us watching from the outside the unravelling of the Catholic church in America can only hope they listened.

I attempted to paint a picture of a man in the suburbs of America, taking his kids to church. He stands in the back in his Gap khaki slacks and his plaid shirt ironed so freshly this morning that you can still smell the spray starch. He stands there holding his three-year-old child. He is still there every Sunday, he is loyal and faithful; but afterwards--away from church, with his friends, at the barbecue and the lunch, he now feels free to say things about the church that only 10 years ago would have been shocking. "He thinks the church is largely populated by sexual predators, men whose job now is to look after their own." And then perhaps he says, "But not my priest." But maybe these days he doesn't say "but not my priest" anymore.

And so, I said, we must move. "We use buzzy phrases from the drug wars like zero tolerance" for sexual predators, but maybe we should use words that reflect who we are and where we stand--"defrocking," and "excommunication" being good words that speak of who we are as a church.

via OpinionJournal

Bork on judicial activism

Judge Robert Bork has a new book out called Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges. He lectured on the subject recently at an American Enterprise Institute event, and his remarks were played on C-SPAN2 last weekend. The AEI has posted both video and written versions.

The Democrats were right to be afraid of his prior candidacy to the U.S. Supreme Court - their agenda would have been in grave danger. He's brilliant and persuasive. Watch, listen and/or read, and learn.

Judges engage in activism when their decisions cannot plausibly be related to the constitution they claim to be enforcing. That imperialism is now characteristic of just about all Western nations. That fact suggests that the problem is not due simply to some unfortunate appointments to the Court. It is inherent in men and women given power without democratic accountability.

I will suggest four things about this phenomenon. First, it is one battleground, and perhaps the decisive one, in a transnational culture war involving a war which displays the same alignment of forces in all Western nations and in which judges everywhere play the same role.

Second, and most obvious, activism is a usurpation by judges of powers rightly belonging, in a democracy, to the political branches.

Third, everywhere judges are forcing their nations' cultures to the left, breaking down traditional moral codes and the efforts of electorates to preserve those codes.

And, fourth, the internationalization of law, often improper in any event, may be a major force in the movement toward international government, which, as we are beginning to see in the European Union, is likely to be authoritarian, if not, ultimately, tyrannical.

MI6

The secretive head of MI6 stood strongly behind the much-criticized intelligence dossier on Iraq in a British courtroom today. Piece by piece, the swirling innuendos and empty charges against Tony Blair's government for supposedly falsifying the case for war in Iraq have been dismantled by this court of inquiry.

The head of MI6 has publicly defended the claim in the Government's Iraq dossier that some chemical and biological weapons could have been deployed in 45 minutes.

In an unprecedented session of the Hutton Inquiry, Sir Richard Dearlove said the intelligence had been "well sourced" and its inclusion in the dossier had been valid. However, he admitted "with hindsight" that the way it had been presented had been open to "misinterpretation" by the public.

The spymaster - who has never had a contemporary photograph of him published - did not appear in person in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice but gave evidence through an audiolink.

After introducing himself as "the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6", he almost immediately took issue with the suggestion that the 45 minute point in the dossier had just been a "claim".

"You use the word 'claim'," he told counsel to the inquiry James Dingemans QC. "I would prefer to refer to it as a piece of well-sourced intelligence."

via The Telegraph (UK)

Sensing on bin Laden

Donald Sensing has an extended essay pondering Osama bin Laden's lack of strategy, despite his overarching goal of tearing down America and other powers he perceives as inimical to "true" Islam. Good reading; many supporting links.

Trained strategists know that nations rarely sacrifice much blood and treasure for inconsequential aims. From the beginning, the American military action in Somalia was for humanitarian relief there. The mission was extremely ancillary to America’s total self interest. There was no vital national interest at stake there by any stretch of the imagination.

While then-President Clinton can be fairly faulted for the timing of the mission’s cancellation and the full withdrawal of US forces, he did what any president of either party almost certainly would have under the circumstances. American certainly had the combat power on the ground to prevail militarily- for awhile - but it had neither the political nor popular will to suffer such casualties for unimportant reasons or to continue to kill thousands of Somalis by fighting back, simply to flex its muscles.

A minimally-competent strategist would understand this, but bin Laden did not. From one relatively small American military action in Somalia, of little strategic value to the United States, bin Laden convinced himself that all he needs to do in order for the Americans to vacate Saudi Arabia specifically and the Muslim world generally is to kill Americans.

This is not strategy, it is ignorance and self-delusion.

The deadenders

Knight Ridder reporter Hannah Allam says she has tracked down and interviewed some of the irregulars fighting Coalition forces in Iraq. An intriguing report that confirms suspicions about who's fighting us:

The two cell leaders said their fighters primarily were former Iraqi army officers and young Iraqis who had joined because they were angry over the deaths or arrests of family members during U.S. raids in the hunt for Saddam Hussein and his supporters.

The group also shelters remnants of a non-Iraqi Arab unit of Saddam's elite fedayeen militia force, they said, as well as foreigners who slipped across the country's long and porous borders to battle American troops. Abu Abdullah, who directs the camp near Baqubah, said he came to Iraq shortly before the United States invaded last spring.

The anti-American forces appear to be more organized than some U.S. intelligence and military officials thought. Cells receive orders and intelligence from Diyala, a province in central Iraq, which lies within the northern "Sunni triangle." According to the fighters, the Diyala leadership oversees about 100 guerrillas, including an all-woman unit, and is backed by private donations as well as Syrian funding. Both said they had been told by superiors not to contact other cells for fear of infiltrators.

Abu Mohammed seemed confident that Saddam is directing at least some of the activity. He said he had heard that leaders above him had met recently with the ousted Iraqi leader.

via the Mercury News

Thanks to James Taranto's Best of the Web for the tip.

Media truths

Two surprises and one confirmed suspicion from our friends in Big Media today.

First, listening to National Public Radio, we hear a story on how many of the Palestinian residents of Nablus have welcomed the presence of Israeli troops. Ordinarily, we hear only about the oppressive Israeli "occupation" and Palestinian rage.

For the past few months, armed gangs have roamed the West Bank town of Nablus, fighting each other for control of the city. Residents are so concerned by the complete breakdown of law and order they say they welcomed a recent incursion by Israeli troops into the city.

Then Time offers a new story about how the Israeli defense forces are trying to interdict the plots of Palestinian suicide bombers/terrorists. The story is uncharacteristically sympathetic to Israel's point of view.

To many Israelis, frayed by the constant threat of suicide bombers, the war against Palestinian terrorism has become a fight for personal survival. At the spearhead of that war are the soldiers charged with hunting suicide bombers and their paymasters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — Israelis like the men from the Nahal Brigade's reconnaissance unit, one of the army's most active terrorism-fighting groups. The unit is admired for its skills at waging guerrilla warfare; early this year, members of the U.S. Green Berets visited Beit Lid to pick up pointers on how to conduct urban combat in Iraq. Still, most of the unit's members are in their early 20s, driven less by any gung-ho thirst for combat than by a weighty sense of national duty. "You have to do it," says Uri, 23, a lieutenant in the reconnaissance unit. "It's an obligation to myself and to my country." Uri's boss, Captain Dan, is even less sentimental. "I'm not here to save the world," he says. "I'm here to protect myself."

The danger is rising. The number of alerts of possible terrorism attacks inside Israel climbed last week to 40 a day, up from an average of 15 a day in August. Israeli commanders in the West Bank say they have taken steps to seize the offensive. A senior Israeli intelligence official says security forces have widened the focus of their raids from "ticking time bombs"--the suicide bombers — to the entire "ticking infrastructure," including the strategists, bombmakers and paymasters. The army's Operation Defensive Shield in spring 2002 left Israeli troops positioned in and around every major Palestinian city in the West Bank. Except for the Bethlehem area, from which they withdrew, the Israelis still hold those positions, allowing commanders to contain the movements of possible terrorists and deploy troops at a moment's notice when intelligence pinpoints one.

Finally, via John Little's Eye on the Left, comes notice of a USA Today story that contains a risable accusation from CNN's left-wing "war correspondent" Christiane Amanpour, who is apparently feeling the heat from her competition:

On last week's Topic A With Tina Brown on CNBC, Brown, the former Talk magazine editor, asked comedian Al Franken, former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke and Amanpour if "we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the war."

Said Amanpour: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

That's a mouthful from CNN's star considering the earlier admissions from CNN brass that they intentionally covered up information concerning Saddam Hussein's atrocities against the Iraqi people for years, with no "intimidation" from anyone.

It does seem that one of the accused isn't impressed by the charge:

Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour's comments: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

CNN had no comment.

French demands

Fareed Zakaria notes the illogic and hypocrisy of France and the U.N. over governance in Iraq.

It is strange that U.N. officials argue that we must quickly move, in Kofi Annan’s phrase, from “the logic of occupation” to that of Iraqi sovereignty. The United Nations has blessed and assisted in the occupation of Bosnia, where it took seven years to transfer power to the locals. It boasts of “the logic of occupation” in Kosovo, which has gone smoothly for the past four years, with no prospect of ending any time soon. It administered tiny East Timor for two years before handing over power. Does Kofi Annan really think that what took seven years in Bosnia can take one year in Iraq, with six times as many people?

It is touching to learn of the French faith in the Governing Council. When the council was set up, the French government (as well as the Germans) refused to endorse it, privately disparaging the group as American puppets. It took a month for the United States to get it to vote in the Security Council simply to welcome the formation of the council. France’s newfound love for the council is simply an attempt to get the United States out as soon as possible.

The Governing Council is a vital part of the new Iraq. But there is simply no way it could become the government right now.

Popular sovereignty is a great thing, but a constitutional process is greater still. The French know this. The French Revolution emphasized popular sovereignty with little regard to limitations on state power. The American founding, by contrast, was obsessed with constitution-making. Both countries got to genuine democracy. But in France it took two centuries, five republics, two empires and one dictatorship before getting there. Surely we want to do it better in Iraq.

via Newsweek

Bloggers change

UK's Stephen Pollard has unveiled his new site design. Nicely done, although it's still more green than is good for my tired old eyes.

John Little says his new Eye on the Left is getting lots of attention.

Futuristic author William Gibson has decided to give up blogging, despite its "mildly narcotic" nature, to spend more time on fiction. Will miss the blog, but look forward to more new fiction from the man who invented the idea of "the matrix."

Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it’s time for me to stop blogging. I’ve found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I’ve most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.

Hamas and Jihad

Stephen Pollard examines the true nature of Hamas and the reality that must be faced by everyone seeking "peace" between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hamas is explicit about its aims. In August 1988 it published the Islamic Covenant, which makes clear its opposition to Israel's existence in any form. It states that "there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad (holy war)". Any Muslim who leaves "the circle of struggle with Zionism" is guilty of "high treason". It calls for the creation of an Islamic republic in Palestine to replace Israel. Muslims should "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine".

In a statement released on May 19, after a wave of suicide murders in previous days, Hamas said: "These attacks will continue in all the territories of 1948 and 1967, and we will not stop attacking the Zionist Jewish people as long as any of them remain in our land." A Hamas member explained to an interviewer last month that: "The Jews have destroyed your Christianity just like they are trying to destroy our Islam. You should read the words of the Prophet. Join us. We do not just want to liberate Palestine. We want all countries to live under the Caliphate. The Islamic army once reached the walls of Vienna. It will happen again."

Talk of "negotiation" with Hamas is meaningless - as meaningless as the idea that you can negotiate with Osama bin Laden. You cannot negotiate with the man who intends only your murder and the destruction of your country and who is prepared to die - and kill you in the process - rather than settle for less.

The only possible response to both Hamas and al-Qa'eda is military - which, to be blunt, involves targeted assassinations.

Saudi change?

The New York Times is reporting that Saudi Arabia is going through a seachange in attitude towards al Qaeda and terrorism. It won't be easy to change direction, even if the Saudi leadership is sincere, but this NYT account sounds like progress. America needs to keep the pressure on.

Since May, the Saudis have acknowledged that their terrorist problems are far worse and more difficult to combat than they had imagined, American officials said.

Only weeks after the May bombings in Riyadh, Saudi security forces cornered a senior Qaeda operative suspected of orchestrating the attacks and fatally shot him as he tried to flee in his car on a Riyadh street. The retribution visited upon the suspect, Yousif Salih Fahad al-Ayeeri, known by a nom de guerre translated by the Saudis as Swift Sword, was hailed in Saudi Arabia as a significant blow to the Qaeda network in the country and proof that the Saudi authorities were willing to bring the war on terrorism home.

But less than a month later, security officials stumbled upon enormous caches of terrorist weaponry — 20 tons of explosives and detonators, rocket-propelled grenades and high-powered rifles — at three different locations. Several senior Saudi officials said the discoveries served to underscore the reality that despite what they believed to be an aggressive crackdown on terrorists, the Saudi royal family faced the prospect that scores of heavily armed Qaeda terrorists were entrenched inside the kingdom and might be plotting further attacks against Saudi targets or members of the royal family themselves.

"It was another shock to the system," said Jamal Khashoggi, a former newspaper editor who is now a senior adviser to the Saudi ambassador in London. "Clearly, the terrorists were planning a big attack inside the kingdom, and they had the weapons and manpower to do it."

American officials familiar with Saudi Arabia said the recent bombings had a major effect. An American diplomat in the Middle East said they had "fundamentally changed the way Saudis view terrorism and threats and the best way to deal with them." The official said that Saudi citizens were now demanding the arrest, or even elimination, of militant Muslims — a sea change in a country that has long been hospitable even to radical Islamists.

"They have realized that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of terrorists inside Saudi Arabia," a senior American official based in the Middle East said.

Marked men

Always interesting DEBKA is reporting that Israel has begun to target Yasser Arafat's violent henchmen for death as part of a strategy to force Arafat to seek exile outside Palestine. Risky business.

Israel is finally going to start hitting the men at the hard core of Palestinian terror, the terror chiefs assembled under Arafat’s wing at his own offices in Ramallah. Until now, Israeli counter-terror operations focused on the Islamist groups, the Hamas and to a lesser degree the Jihad Islami. The Fatah, Tanzim, al Aqsa Martyrs’ (Suicides) Brigades were barely scratched and the group sheltering in Arafat’s headquarters left untouched.

The first actions may begin next week. Their initial targets will be three men who appear on a select Israeli list of 13 wanted terrorists. They are Kemal Ghanem, Khaled Shawasha and Jamil Tirawi – cousin of the notorious terror master Tawfiq Tirawi. They will be informed that their names have been added to the dark catalogue of Hamas terror activists relentlessly targeted for assassination. Wherever they may be, Arafat will no longer be able to protect them. The remaining 10 wanted terrorists will be taken out next.

In the course of this offensive, Sharon intends to open talks with Washington to persuade George W. Bush that there is no other way but to remove Arafat bodily from the country. He will hold up the example of Liberia’s ex-president Charles Taylor whose exit the United States demanded as the pre-condition for military and political assistance. If Bush were to declare that all US involvement in the Palestinian-Israel conflict is placed on hold until Arafat is gone, the Palestinian leader may go into voluntary exile. In other words, Sharon has concluded that exile cannot be forced on the Palestinian leader by Israel or the Americans; he must leave of his own volition. The prime minister has confided to his close aides his belief that this may happen when Arafat sees Israeli knocking over his company of terrorist activists one by one, just as the Hamas is being shorn of its active terrorist operatives.

The Israelis may be sending a public signal to Arafat that it's time to get out of town.

Israel's vice prime minister said Sunday that killing Yasser Arafat is an option being considered following a decision to "remove" the Palestinian leader.

"Killing (Arafat) is definitely one of the options," vice premier Ehud Olmert told Israel Radio. Israel's security Cabinet said last week it had decided to "remove" Arafat, but did not elaborate.

Olmert's statement echoed threats by other Israeli leaders who have said they are keeping options open as to whether the decision means Arafat will be expelled, further isolated at his West Bank compound or dealt with more harshly. But Olmert, considered a likely future candidate for premier, is the official closest to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to state Arafat might be killed.

via The New York Times

Un-civil rights III

Martin Luther King III showed up this weekend in Florida as the civil rights industry continues its cynical effort to exploit a family's tragedy for political gain, despite overwhelming evidence that no "lynching" occurred. This sorry episode has stretched out since early summer, as noted here earlier. I suspect they will find a way to make this last through the 2004 election, where the President will be in a tight race in divided Florida and the black vote was a major factor in the 2000 election.

Martin Luther King III on Saturday visited relatives of a black man who was found hanged and called on authorities to investigate whether the man had been lynched.

Authorities ruled that Feraris "Ray" Golden killed himself, but rumors in Belle Glade persist that he was murdered. King said that "many of us do not believe that it was suicide," but also called for healing in the community. "We're not trying to inflict pain on anyone. We're just seeking the truth because a family has been victimized by a hanging, perhaps a lynching," King said during a prayer breakfast with local ministers. "We need to determine if that is factual."

After spending eight hours with Golden's family, local ministers and residents, King said the rumors in the community warrant more investigation but he declined to cite any new evidence in the case. King is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil-rights group co-founded by his father.

King said many people believe that Golden had marks on his head when he died, that his hands were tied behind his back when his body was found May 28 and that he would have been unable to climb a tree on a rainy night in a drunken stupor.

Autopsy photos, however, showed only a single bruise around Golden's neck, and video from the first police car arriving at the scene showed Golden's arms dangling at his sides, not tied.

The medical examiner said Golden had a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal limit for driving and traces of cocaine in his system. Testimony showed Golden to be a troubled, unemployed father of four who was behind in his child-support payments and frequently joked about killing himself. Relatives also acknowledged the bedsheet used as a noose came from Golden's home. [emphasis added]

via The Ledger (Florida)

ELF caught

The so-called "peace movement" has been nabbed again acting, well, violently. And, don't arson fires create a load of pollution?

Federal agents arrested a 25-year-old member of a co-op dedicated to peace and environmentalism in connection with arson fires and vandalism that did $1 million in damage to a Hummer dealership. Joshua Thomas Connole, of Pomona, was arrested at home Friday, said Cpl. Rudy Lopez, a West Covina police spokesman. He was booked for investigation of felony arson and vandalism and jailed $825,000 bail.

The fires Aug. 22 gutted a parts warehouse and destroyed 20 Hummer H2 sport utility vehicles at a West Covina dealership. Another 20 Hummers and several Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs were badly damaged by fire and spray paint.

via Yahoo! News

Dennis Miller speaks

Dennis Miller has a wide-ranging interview with the American Enterprise Institute. He has a lot to say, including a take on French-looking presidential candidate John Kerry.

I've met John Kerry and I don’t think he wants the Presidency. If he did, he wouldn’t have said that what we need now is not just a regime change in Iraq, but in the United States, too. That’s a stupid play for a smart man. It reminded me of Gary Hart back in 1987 when he told the press to follow him and then got caught with Donna Rice. I think Kerry’s statement was a subconscious way of pleading, “Get me out of here!”

When you’re running for President and it’s the culmination of all your supposed dreams, it’s tough to get yourself out of it. And you’re thinking, “This is what I’ve always wanted, isn’t it?” And then some deep unconscious alarm goes off. It says, “No, no! Wife has $500 million! Have place on Nantucket! Get out now! Golf! No, no!” So you blow it up yourself.

Progress in Iraq

Via the Braden Files, we get another report from the front lines in Iraq that differs markedly from the mass media stories we get at home. Seabee Senior Chief Art Messer has a lot to say about the pace of reconstruction and the level of violence as well:

As usual the news media has blown some things way out of proportion. The countryside is getting more safe by the day despite all the attacks you are hearing about. Imagine every shooting incident or robbery committed in LA or Portland being blown way out of proportion. This is a country where most of the Saddam Hussein thugs are being chased around like scared rabbits by Coalition forces. It is literally open season on them!

We hunt them down like animals. There were about a million soldiers in the Iraqi army at the beginning of hostilities and most of them took off before we attacked. There are some that were very loyal to Saddam that are trying to sneak around and take pot shots at us. We are cleaning them up pretty fast. There are also thugs from other countries running around, like Iran and Syria. Well the Iraqis hate these thugs as much as we do. So the Iraqi people are hunting them down too!

Pakistan

Anwar Iqbal, UPI's South Asian affairs analyst, surveys what's happening in Pakistan, including clashes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Among other things, Pak leader Musharraf has been slowly ratcheting up the pressure in the wild tribal lands where Osama bin Laden is probably being sheltered.

Iqbal makes some interesting observations about al Qaeda's motivations in attacking the Pakistan leadership in their recent propaganda.

These troops are helped by American Special Forces operating across the border in Afghanistan. Using electronic listening devices and satellites, U.S. intelligence agencies have recently been able to locate some hidden al-Qaida pockets in these areas and have guided Pakistani troops in raiding these hideouts.

Fearing that if this pressure continues, they may soon be forced out of their hideouts, al-Qaida and Taliban leaders appear to have decided to expand their propaganda war. That may well be why the al-Qaida video calls Musharraf a "traitor" and urges Pakistanis to rise against him.

via the Washington Times

Ted Olson speaks

Ted Olson, solicitor general of the United States, lost his wife Barbara in the plane that hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Barbara Olson was known to many as a personable intellectual and commentator, so we all shared a little bit in his loss. Ted Olson's personal grief has been tempered in public by an eloquent toughness in standing up to the evil that caused his wife's death. He spoke this week at the Justice Dept.

Remembering and honoring the victims of September 11 is therefore not remotely sufficient. We must engrave their faces and tragically shortened histories on our hearts and in our souls. We must commit ourselves to the only goal that is worthy of their memories: to eradicate the disease that killed them, wherever it is and however long is takes. Their suffering and deaths must fuel our dedication to stamp out this cancer, and, in doing so, save those we love, and those who come after us, from future September elevens and the pain, loneliness and helplessness we experienced on that day two years ago and have lived with every day since then.

We can never forget, but we can never even rest until that debt is paid, and September 11 can be remembered not as a beginning of a slide into chaos, but as the beginning of the end of blind, ruthless, random brutality, and the tears of orphaned children, the screams of hideously burned bodies, and the numbing grief that terrorism delivers.

Read the whole thing via the OpinionJournal.

Iran's nukes

One would think that Iran would have observed what eventually happens to despotic countries building WMD. The mullahs think they are beyond reach.

Iran threatened yesterday to end co-operation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog after it gave Teheran a seven-week ultimatum to prove that it was not secretly trying to build an atomic bomb.

Under pressure from the United States and European countries, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a strongly worded resolution declaring that it was "essential and urgent" for Iran to co-operate fully with nuclear inspectors by the end of next month.

The Iranian delegation stormed out in anger, saying: "We will have no choice but to have a deep review of our existing level and extent of engagement with the agency vis-a-vis this resolution."

The comments amount to a thinly veiled threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat, under which countries are allowed to develop a nuclear power industry as long as they do not try to build nuclear weapons.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Read the IAEA report (pdf)

Lighter than donuts

Glad to know the Dutch federales are "worried" about this. But remind me not to count on a Dutch cop in a time of need.

The Dutch Government is worried that too many of its police officers are getting stoned on and off duty, and is to ban them from coffee shops that sell marijuana.

The Interior Minister, Johan Remkes, fears the spectacle of spliff-wielding police - in or out of uniform - is chipping away at the force's image, and opening it to accusations of hypocrisy. "A police officer has an exemplary role to fulfil and has to show some authority," he told the newspaper De Telegraaf. "They could be in a difficult position if they have to stop and search people for drugs."

The country's 1500 marijuana coffee shops, where customers can buy up to five grams at a time, are tolerated by the authorities. Hard drugs are not allowed. Mr Remkes says he wants to ban police officers from frequenting coffee shops both on and off duty.

The Government is under pressure to act after a television documentary revealed that senior officers in Amsterdam regularly used hard drugs and even sold ecstasy and cocaine to colleagues. The documentary led to the sacking of 12 officers. A leaked report from the police's internal affairs department said two of the 12 claimed that a quarter of the Beursstraat station's personnel in central Amsterdam used hard drugs. The investigation was begun after a detective saw a police brigadier taking ecstasy while on a stake-out.

Witnesses described occasions when officers were so high on ecstasy that they could not even find Amsterdam's main shopping street, Kalverstraat, just two minutes from the station.

The Dutch police union believes Mr Remkes is going too far.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

J.R. "Johnny" Cash

Johnny Cash's passing is a great blow to American music. Tough that it would happen in the same year as the death of Sam Phillips, who gave Cash his first recording opportunity at Sun Records. Both were pioneers, with the wounds to show for it.

Several good write-ups were posted today. Since Cash had been ill for some time, I guess the obituarists were ready.

Nice section in the Nashville Tennessean. They say there will be more coverage on Saturday.

Stephen Holden in The New York Times, including numerous links to older NYT articles.

Rolling Stone collects several past articles.

"21 Reasons Why Johnny Cash Was Cool" from Canada's ChartAttack.

Industry reactions from Billboard.

Johnny Cash's profile at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is worth reading.

National Public Radio has a terrific collection of interviews and audio samples.

Arafat's fate

While the world's diplomats worry themselves about whether or not Israel should expel Yasser Arafat, the view from bloodied Israel is moving rapidly beyond mundane solutions -- now the Jerusalem Post has called for more dramatic change.

The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.

When the breaking point arrives, there is no point in taking half-measures. If we are going to be condemned in any case, we might as well do it right.

Arafat's death at Israel's hands would not radicalize Arab opposition to Israel; just the opposite. The current jihad against us is being fueled by the perception that Israel is blocked from taking decisive action to defend itself.

Arafat's survival and power are a test of the proposition that it is possible to pursue a cause through terror and not have that cause rejected by the international community. Killing Arafat, more than any other act, would demonstrate that the tool of terror is unacceptable, even against Israel, even in the name of a Palestinian state.

Arafat does not just stand for terror, he stands for the refusal to make peace with Israel under any circumstances and within any borders.

In this respect, there is no distinction, beyond the tactical, between him and Hamas. Europe's refusal to utterly reject him condemns Palestinians, no less than Israelis, to endless war and dooms the possibility of the two-state solution the world claims to seek.

The memories of September 11th will never leave us. We will not forget the burning towers, and the last phone calls, and the smoke over Arlington. We will not forget the rescuers who ran toward danger, and the passengers who rushed the hijackers. We will not forget the men and women who went to work on a typical day and never came home. We will not forget the death of schoolchildren who were on a school trip.

And we will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks. And we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief and our mourning.

- President George W. Bush, address to the FBI, September 10, 2003

Posted by Alan at 11:59 PM

Progress report

The White House has released its new Progress Report on the Global War on Terrorism (pdf). Lots accomplished; much left to do.

The United States is engaged in a comprehensive effort to protect and defend the homeland and defeat terrorism. Using all instruments of national power, the United States and its partners are attacking terrorists both at home and abroad, denying terrorists sanctuary and sponsorship, disrupting the financing of terror, and building and maintaining a united global front against terrorism.

With the help of our friends and allies, we have eliminated Afghanistan as a safe haven for al- Qaida and disrupted terrorist cells around the world. Iraq is now the central front for the war on terror. While the United States and its partners have defeated Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror, enemies of freedom -- both members of the old regime and foreign terrorists who have come to Iraq -- are making a desperate stance to reclaim this liberated nation for tyranny. They will be defeated. In the past, terrorists have cited Beirut and Somalia as examples of America fleeing from challenge when harmed. In this, the President has affirmed, they are mistaken. We are resolved to win the global war on terrorism.

America and all free nations are fighting an enemy that wishes to strike with indiscriminate terror to weaken our resolve, and exploit the way of life that makes our nation both strong and inherently vulnerable. Our best defense against terrorists is to root them out wherever they hide - - in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters and throughout the world -- and preempt acts of terror by using all the tools of statecraft. We will continue to invigorate traditional alliances and build new partnerships to carry this effort forward.

This report highlights the Administration’s efforts to defeat terrorism and secure the homeland. It also underscores the nature of the continuing threat and the Administration’s dedication to bringing to justice those who plot against America. Despite accumulating successes in the war on terrorism -- some seen, some unseen -- terrorists continue to wage war on the civilized world. Murderous attacks in Bali, Jakarta, Mombasa, Riyadh, Casablanca, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Najaf underscore terrorists’ continued contempt for the innocent, their fear of progress, and their hatred of peace. The civilized world must remain vigilant and committed to a long and critical struggle -- until Americans and people around the world can lead their lives free from fear of terrorism.

via the White House

No flagification

Tough-minded Christopher Hitchens says we should not commemorate this second anniversary of the September 11 attacks and warns against the mistake of "flagification." Excerpts:

What is required is a steady, unostentatious stoicism, made up out of absolute, cold hatred and contempt for the aggressors, and complete determination that their defeat will be utter and shameful. This doesn't require drum rolls or bagpipes or banners. The French had a saying during the period when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were lost to them: "Always think of it. Never speak of it." (Yes, Virginia, we can learn things from the French, even if not from Monsieur Chirac.)

This steely injunction is diluted by Ground Zero kitsch or by yellow-ribbon type events, which make the huge mistake of marking the event as a "tribute" of some sort to those who happened to die that day. One must be firm in insisting that these unfortunates, or rather their survivors, have no claim to ownership. They stand symbolically, as making the point that theocratic terrorism murders without distinction. But that's it. The time to commemorate the fallen is, or always has been, after the war is over. This war has barely begun. The printing of crayon daubs by upset schoolchildren and the tussle over who gets what from the compensation slush fund are strictly irrelevant and possibly distracting. Dry your eyes, sister. You, too, brother. Stiffen up.

Should this solemn date be exploited for the settling of scores? Absolutely it should.

Two beautiful fall seasons ago, this society was living in a fool's paradise while so far from being "in search of enemies" that its governing establishment barely knew how to tell an enemy from a friend. If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled—the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly "suicidal" mistake.

via Slate

Thanks to Outside the Beltway for the tip.

Noonan on Sept. 11

Peggy Noonan summed up a lot of things worth remembering concerning September 11, as noted here earlier this summer.

September 11 sources

The broadcast networks are blowing off the second anniversary of September 11, but other sources offer more.

Google Directory: web resources

Joint Select Committee Report on Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.

Library of Congress: Witness and Response

National Public Radio

New York Times: Complete Coverage

The September 11 Digital Archive

Yahoo! News updated coverage

Sept. 11 via the TV networks

This is what the major TV networks have scheduled for tonight:

NBC - Friends; Will & Grace; Scrubs; ER

CBS - CSI; Without a Trace

ABC - Extreme Makeover; Primetime Thursday

Fox - Anything for Love; Temptation Island

One hour, "Primetime Thursday" on ABC, will cover the fact that the nation is engaged in a World War.

Rapid response

The U.S. military is working to establish a network of bases and capabilities throughout the "Arc of Instability." Our opponents and the defeatists see this as empire-building. Not quite so.

It certainly looks like a new empire. But empires imply a desire to hold and defend vast territories. The United States wants only to land, fight - then leave, if need be.

Pentagon chiefs envisage a global network of "lily pads" or "warm bases", forward depots which would hold enough weaponry, vehicles and supplies to equip large rapid reaction forces, which would fly in at short notice through a handful of large air hubs, such as Ramstein in Germany. Other equipment would be kept in floating warehouses at sea.

Strike forces would head for "virtual bases", airfields in any of a wide range of countries to have granted the United States emergency access rights.

So, far from entangling the United States in imperial alliances, the new doctrine is instead born of distrust, and America's fears of being let down by even its oldest allies, argues Celeste Johnson Ward, a fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In the long term, the Pentagon's dreams are more radical still.

Its research arm recently solicited bids for a new breed of space-based unmanned hypersonic bombers, capable of taking off from American soil and striking targets on the far side of the globe within two hours, without waiting for permission to use bases, or for overflight rights.

The ultimate aim is to leave America's enemies in fear of a strike from a clear blue sky at any second or, in the Pentagon's words, "to hold adversary vital interests at risk at all times".

via The Telegraph (UK)

Search engine fun

Looking over the referrals from search engines is always at least somewhat amusing. This week is above average. To my visitors:

"WTO Cancun nude protesters" -- you found one post. Try also here and here for the pictures you're seeking. If you're actually interested in the WTO, click here, here, or here for more info.

"Kim Jong Il Scandinavian blondes" -- no luck here, but keep trying elsewhere; it sounds plausible.

"E.D. Hill naked" -- you're living in a dream world; E.D. has too much class.

"flight training for slurry bombing" -- must be from a real warrior.

"gobsmack" -- a perennial favorite and one of my favorite words, too.

Missing

Uncertainty and doubt are among the many agonies from 9/11, even two years later.

Among the 2,792 names on the official World Trade Center death toll are 42 persons actually listed as missing — not dead — because their remains have not been identified and their whereabouts on September 11 cannot be established with certainty. Some of those people may not be dead, or even exist. A few may be trying to fake their deaths, while others could have been wrongly reported missing, city officials said in interviews with the Associated Press.

The remains of about 1,520 people have been identified, most of them by DNA, and 1,230 others were confirmed dead by the courts because families submitted proof to a judge that the victim was at the trade center or on one of the hijacked planes that crashed into the twin towers.

But 42 cases have no such proof and no identified remains. They will remain listed on the trade center death toll for now.

via the Washington Times

Lifting and separating

More stripping protesters, this time in New Zealand. At least the bras stayed on, saving the delicate sensibilities of the assembled parliamentarians.

Stunning hot pink bras held up Parliament today, as blouses were whipped off in a colourful and rowdy protest against genetic engineering (GE).

Desert-dry United Future MP Gordon Copeland was asking about the apparent duality of the economy when an array of bra-clad dualities were unveiled in the public gallery above him.

"It was a dull question, so we thought it's now or never," Mothers Against Genetic Engineering (MAdGE) protester Maike Nevill told NZPA.

via Stuff

Posted by Alan at 04:43 AM

Deja vu all over again

This seems a bit familiar.

"French Veto Threat Strains Ties with U.S., Britain"

"Bush is evil"

William F. Buckley explores the feelings of hatred and loathing felt by Democrats towards George W. Bush and ponders how far that will go as the presidential campaign unfolds. I think the Dems will moderate their rhetoric a bit as time goes on, for fear of alienating swing voters, but that their emotions will still rule the day -- and lead us to a year of low and hateful politics that will break modern records.

Hard to say yet what the effect will be on the election outcome, but I remember my yellow-dog Democrat father telling me that he voted for Nixon's re-election in 1972 ("and not proud of it") because of McGovern's relentless personal attacks on a sitting president -- which struck my dad as entirely too disrespectful of the office. Of course, that was before the tone of our culture was so fully debased. Today's standards are lower in every way.

Will the average voter wish to hear about the evil of Bush? What is the good of hating Bush if you can't interest your neighbor, and his neighbor, in hating Bush? That, after all, is the point of this exercise-to send Bush back to his ranch, permanently.

Probably the first person who will need to explore these questions is Howard Dean. Dean is campaigning against Bush using language that would be appropriate in campaigning against a public enemy. One assumes the sincerity of Dean's passion, which is doing yeoman work for him with Internet ideologues and with Manichaean Democrats drawn to the proposition that the only way to understand Bush is to know that he is evil.

Is it predictable that after Dean sews up the nomination, winning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, he will confront a body of previously inert Democrats who will be reluctant to endorse an anti-Bush campaign based on the incumbent's venality?

If that happened, how quickly would it happen? The nomination might well be sewn up by early March of 2004. How soon after that would Candidate Dean discover that the drumbeat which has been propelling him isn't resonating over hill and vale into the body of voters needed to proceed with the election of a new president, which is something different from the excommunication of a sinner?

via National Review Online

Posted by Alan at 04:33 AM

Safer, smarter, more secure

We're getting new money in October. Pretty classy, but wouldn't it be even better if we could get giant bills in loud colors, like tiny third-world countries? With pictures of parrots and fruit? Just dreaming....

The first newly redesigned Series-2004 $20 notes, featuring background colors and improved security features, will be issued October 9, the U.S. government announced today. On the day of issue, the Federal Reserve System will begin distributing the new notes to the public through the nation's commercial banks.

"This is the most secure note the U.S. government has ever produced," said Federal Reserve Board Governor Mark W. Olson. "Its enhanced security will help ensure that our currency continues to represent value, trust and confidence to people all over the world.

via the Federal Reserve

Whatever it takes

David Brooks is off to a good start as one of the proud, the few: a token conservative op-ed writer for The New York Times. Today he reflects on President Bush's speech Sunday night and what he sees as the "infuriating" way GWB and his administration adjust their strategies as needed. Not that it's a bad thing per se, but that the style could be improved.

Eventually, Brooks gets down to the heart of the matter:

The truly important initiatives Bush launched were, first, to sharply increase the level of spending on Iraq, and therefore increase the likelihood that major infrastructure problems will be addressed. With this, Bush is not only taking on the antiwar Democrats, but also the so far silent but oh-so-sullen fiscal conservatives in his own party.

Second, Bush has finally signaled that the U.S. is going to hand over real authority to newly selected Iraqi ministers. Yesterday, Bremer released a seven-step process for handing power back to the Iraqis that reads like a treatment program for Imperialists Anonymous. If this process is carried out, Americans administrators will be serving Iraqi executives, not the other way around.

Some close advisers suspect the violence may not abate in Iraq until early next year, and it will be interesting to see whether Americans can sustain their morale over that time. Still, as Bush makes these pivots, I'm reminded of the way Ronald Reagan made his amazing policy shifts at the end of the cold war, some of which outraged liberals (Reykjavik) and some of which outraged conservatives (the arms control treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev). Presidents tend to be ruthless opportunists, no matter how ideological they appear. Even as he announced his strategy on Sunday night, Bush left open the possibility that he might be compelled to shift again and send in more U.S. troops if circumstances warrant.

The essential news is that Bush will do whatever it takes to prevail, and senior members of his administration are capable of looking honestly at their mistakes. You will just never be able to get any of them to admit publicly they've ever made any.

via The New York Times

Nekkid again

Leftie protesters have been gettin' nekkid again, this time on the sandy beaches of Cancun. It seems like the WTO and other member organizations of the global domination cabal should be foresighted enough to meet only in cold climates, so the naked protesters will have to work for their fame. Cancun -- no fair. Includes pictures, so watch out.

Anti-globalization protesters stripped out of their clothes and spelled out the words "No WTO" with their naked bodies Monday, the first of several actions against the World Trade Organization meeting in this Caribbean resort.

A mix of radical activists, farmers and labor rights promoters have planned a week of protests to show the harmful effects of free trade and growing corporate domination. Demonstrators say Cancun, whose miles of white-sand beaches are mostly hidden behind high-rise hotels, is a good example of increasing private control.

"This is a rejection of the WTO ... and the symbolic reclaiming of our beaches, using the only weapons we have left, our bodies," said a member of the Direct Action Network, the group that organized the protest. He identified himself only as Abraham, and refused to give his last name because he feared reprisals.

via Yahoo! News

Warren Zevon, RIP

Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon died yesterday, a year after being diagnosed with mesothelioma and given three months to live. Just got his farewell recording, "The Wind," a few days ago and have been getting to know it. It's a great end to a memorable musical career: good songs, an all-star lineup of guest artists helping out, and performances by Zevon that range from strong and sardonic to barely-there and elegaic.

Newsday's Stephen Williams had a good writeup last month as we waited for the new CD.

Fans looking for the Grim Reaper redux in "The Wind" will be shocked to find instead a collection of rollicking party songs and gritty love ballads, and some typically gorgeous Zevon-esque hooks, instead of a gruesome package of my-life- warmed-over-and-I'm-Paradise-bound numbers. The exception is Zevon's cover of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which some may find morbid until the end, when Zevon starts shouting, "Open up, open up!"

Brave, intimate and more accessible than some of his most recent work are "Keep Me in Your Heart," and "Please Stay," which is uncharacteristically schmaltzy for Zevon (using the word "please," for example).

Throughout "The Wind," Zevon's voice sometimes cracks and warbles. He is clearly having trouble keeping up with the more breathless passages, but he tries. There's no obvious digital sonic manipulation to improve his sound: What he's got is what you get.

It may be worth checking out "The Late Show" on CBS tonite or tomorrow. Zevon and David Letterman go way back, and I expect Letterman and Paul Shaffer to have something special to remember their friend. Zevon was the sole guest on the Letterman show after the diagnosis and gave a courageous performance. In the interview part of the show, Letterman asked him how he was dealing with a death sentence, and Zevon was notably down to earth: "I enjoy every sandwich."

He was a great talent, and seems to have been one of the good guys, too. So, rest in peace, excitable boy. We'll be listening to "Werewolves of London" for a long, long time.

Update: VH1's site says there will be several rebroadcasts of their recent show (Inside)Out, featuring Warren Zevon and the recording sessions for "The Wind," starting tonite at 10 eastern/9 central. I didn't get to see it earlier, but heard it was a good profile.

Bush's speech

President Bush's address to the nation Sunday night was a winner, although he's not at his best speaking just to a camera -- he's better with an audience (think back to the remarkable speeches to joint sessions of Congress and the U.N.). His point that it's greatly preferable to wage the war on terror in the streets and alleys of central Iraq than in the U.S. is an important one and something that the average citizen may not have grasped explicitly.

This passage about the violent opposition to the Coalition from Ba'athist dead-enders and the motley collection of jihadists inside Iraq was among the more important:

This violence is directed not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom and progress.

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there -- and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.

Read the full text via the White House.

Most of the mass media and political opposition won't be mollified, of course, but there's actually nothing Bush could say or do that would satisfy their ravening desire to gnaw at his credibility.

The omniscient InstaPundit has the best linkable take of the evening. I'm sure there will be more to ponder tomorrow and in the days to come.

It was an outright challenge to the neo-McGovernites, and even more of a challenge to those wafflers (and several are beginning to appear) among the Democratic presidential candidates, specifically mentioning Somalia and Beirut (bipartisan bugout history there), and noting that lessening our commitment would be a disaster, and play into the terrorists' hands.

via InstaPundit

Eye on the Left

Note that the popular site Blogs of War has been retired (mission accomplished), and new site Eye on the Left has replaced it. It's rockin' already -- check it out.

Nature of the beast

Mark Steyn's theme today is the inability of our elites to understand the true nature of predators, human and otherwise. It's impossible to summarize with just one snippet, but here's one savory bit. Then go read the whole thing.

Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to. The terrorist won't be a problem if, like young Jessie with the shark, we just give him a helping hand. Or, as the novelist Alice Walker proposed for Osama bin Laden, ''I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.''

That's why America's TV networks have decided to sit out this week's anniversary. On the day itself, it was all too chaotic and unprecedented for the news guys to impose any one of their limited range of templates. For the first anniversary, they were back on top of things and opted to Princess Dianafy the occasion, to make it a day of ersatz grief-mongering, with plenty of tinkly piano on the soundtrack and soft-focus features about ''healing circles.'' That didn't go down too well, so this year they've figured it's easiest just to ignore it. The alternative would be to treat 9/11 as what it was -- an act of war -- and they don't have the stomach for that. War presupposes enemies, and enemies means people you have to kill, or at least stop, or at the very least be ever so teensy-weensily judgmental about.

via the Chicago Sun-Times

Polls and pols

A new poll analysis by The Gallup Organization looks at the current factors influencing the public's perceptions of President Bush. Interesting. Makes his planned address on television tonight especially important. Right now, the media's one-sided portrayal of the situation of Iraq is bringing down Bush's poll numbers. Most of the media does not appreciate the successes being achieved; nor do they grasp the true nature of the challenges. Genuine victory is the most important thing in the long run, and the poll numbers will eventually follow. But politicians also cannot ignore current trends in public perception, so expect changes in direction.

Bush's overall approval rating still remains above where it was just prior to the terrorist attacks (51% in a Sept. 7-10 Gallup Poll), and the public does not give Bush exceptionally high marks on most other issues.

However, a special analysis of the data shows that Bush's general rating on foreign affairs is most strongly related to his current job rating. For each issue, we performed a correlational analysis to measure the strength of the relationship between the rating people give Bush on a particular issue and the overall rating they give Bush....

The analysis shows foreign affairs has the strongest relationship, followed closely by the situation in Iraq. Terrorism comes further down the list, with taxes, the economy, and energy policy bearing a stronger relationship to one's overall view of Bush than terrorism bears.

A more detailed analysis of these data supports these basic findings, and shows that even after taking into account one's partisan affiliation, a person's rating of Bush on foreign affairs is the strongest predictor of one's overall view of him. This analysis also shows that in addition to foreign affairs ratings and party affiliation, ratings of Bush on Iraq, taxes, and energy policy help predict whether a person approves of Bush, but ratings of Bush on the deficit, healthcare, Medicare, terrorism, and the economy do not.

Thanks to John at EyeOnTheLeft for the tip.

Posted by Alan at 10:45 AM

Coyotes

The Italian intelligence service says terrorists are turning to smuggling illegal immigrants into Europe. This would be a great way for them to raise cash, as well as to master evermore devious ways to move their own operatives across borders. Note the lack of ideological factors cited in the article -- it's cold hard cash that's the main motivation. Sounds just like the Mafia. Note also that Reuters still can't use the word "terrorist" -- Al Qaeda is a "militant group."

Italy's secret services say they see increasing evidence militant groups such as al Qaeda are moving into the smuggling of illegal immigrants, a billion dollar trade they can use to fund other activities. An intelligence report released at the weekend says "terror networks" and groups who traffic in illegal immigrants share a natural overlap, often relying on false documents and intricate logistics, transport and communication setups.

"There is the fear, too, that the same routes used for illegal immigration are being used by militants to help form Islamic terrorist groups," says the report, compiled by Cesis, which coordinates the work of Italy's secret services.

Italy's Interior minister, who held talks with U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge at the weekend, told reporters ahead of that meeting that he thought al Qaeda was increasingly involved in the multibillion dollar illegal immigration trade.

"Illegal immigration is a filter for drug trafficking, arms and terrorism," Giuseppe Pisanu said on the sidelines of a gathering of business and political leaders in Italy. "It is highly likely that al Qaeda has worked its way into the trafficking, managing the flow of illegal immigrants from Muslim countries. In such a way, al Qaeda can diversify its sources of funding and evade intelligence gatherers," he added.

Pisanu estimated that around 500,000 illegal immigrants make their way into Europe each year, paying on average $4,000 for their passage, giving the industry a rough turnover of at least two billion euros a year. Smuggling of people into Italy has traditionally been the work of gangs from eastern Europe, but in recent years the routes have shifted to North Africa, with Libya and Tunisia now the focus of Italian attempts to stem the tide of arrivals.

via Reuters

What's going on?

Recent economic data are puzzling many experts, although the fact that even economists don't quite understand the trends isn't stopping pundits and politicians from heaping criticism on President Bush -- just tune in the Democrats, read the major media, or tour around the blogosphere.

What surprises many economists is that the job shedding has continued despite what they describe as an extraordinary level of economic stimulus. Low interest rates, tax cuts and rebates, a rise in military spending, mortgage refinancings, growing corporate profits, even a long-awaited improvement in business spending on new equipment and software all have contributed to the rise in the economic growth rate.

But jobs are disappearing, and employers continue to resist adding hours for their existing workers. Economists warn that without payroll expansion and rising income from wages, sustaining the economic growth will be difficult once the stimulus weakens.

via the Houston Chronicle

Now the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has published a study that digs a bit deeper.

This new study argues that the failure of employment to rebound during the current recovery may reflect an unsually high concentration of structural changes resulting in permanent shifts in the distribution of workers throughout the economy.

Authors Erica Groshen and Simon Potter find that permanent job losses predominated over temporary layoffs during the 2001 recession and that in most industries job losses are continuing, not being reversed, during the recovery. For employers, the creation of new jobs takes longer than recalling workers to their old positions and--at a time of economic uncertainty and financial market weakness--can pose significant risks, according to the authors. Thus, the fact that most jobs added after the recession need to be new positions, not rehires, may explain why payroll numbers have yet to rise.

The trend that emerges in the 2001 recession, the authors note, is "one in which jobs are relocated from some industries to others, not reclaimed by the same industries that had lost them earlier."

When the authors tally the share of employment held by industries undergoing cyclical changes and compare it with the share held by industries undergoing structural changes, they find that in the downturns in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, half of employment was in industries affected structurally and half in industries affected cyclically. In the 2001 downturn, by contrast, fully 79 percent of employees worked in industries affected structurally.

Groshen and Potter offer three possible explanations for the increased role of structural change in the most recent recession. First, the structural decline observed in many industries might be a correction following a period of overexpansion. Second, more responsive monetary and fiscal policy may have reduced cyclical swings in employment, leaving structural change as the dominant form of change. Third, new management strategies may be encouraging a structural shift toward leaner staffing.

Summary and full report via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

My humble take is that it's a combination of all three of the factors cited by the Fed scholars. My dumb guy mind blames the economic decisions make during the euphoria of the late 1990s boom. Both corporate leaders and politicians made some truly bad bets, including dishonest ones, resulting in a seriously bent economy: resources misallocated, chimerical jobs created, and little attention being paid to the real issues of the late 20th century.

So we're not just coming back after an economic lull; we're redesigning and rebuilding the world's largest economy as we go. This will take some serious time. But election cycles take place on an inexorable schedule and the politicians can use and misuse complex issues to get the results they want from us simple voters. If the wrong people -- i.e., the Left -- take power, they can make it all much, much worse.

Al Qaeda now

Sunday's edition of The Washington Post has a lengthy report that the core remnant of Al Qaeda has now focused on Iraq as the new nexus of conflict with the West, and that Iran has been deeply involved all along the way.

Two years after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden's leadership cadre has been isolated and weakened and is increasingly reliant on the violent actions of local radicals around the world to maintain its profile. But the al Qaeda network is determined to open a new front in Iraq to sustain itself as the vanguard of radical Islamic groups fighting holy war, according to European, American and Arab intelligence sources.

The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said. Two seasoned operatives met at a safe house in eastern Iran. One of them was Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, the military chief of al Qaeda, who is better known as Saif Adel. He welcomed a guest, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had recently fled Iraq's Kurdish northern region in anticipation of U.S. targeting of a radical group with which he was affiliated, Arab intelligence sources said.

The encounter resulted in the dispatch of Zarqawi to become al Qaeda's man in Iraq, opening a new chapter in the history of the group and a serious threat to American forces there.

"The monster is already near you," said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. "I don't know if you can kill it."

The official added: "Iraq is the new battleground. It is the perfect place. It will be the perfect place."

Part of the story is encouraging about overall progress in breaking Al Qaeda elsewhere in the world.

With the capture of other top-tier al Qaeda leaders around the world, the group in Iran -- accompanied by numerous low- and mid-ranking Saudis, including some who would later participate in the May 2003 Riyadh bombings -- became the core of al Qaeda's functioning leadership.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri went into hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and their ability to communicate with their followers has been severely constrained, often limited to oral messages or handwritten notes.

Elsewhere, al Qaeda's leadership structure began unraveling in earnest a year ago, with the capture in Pakistan of self-proclaimed Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh. Since then, many of the senior leaders have been caught, with information gleaned from one arrest leading to others.

via The Washington Post

Speicher mystery continues

Washington magazine Insight reports that Senators Bill Nelson and Pat Roberts continue to believe that U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, missing in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, could very well be alive as a POW. This despite an apparent effort by the Defense Intelligence Agency to debunk the idea. The odds seem long, but we can only hope for the matter to be resolved very soon -- one way or another.

Nelson believes there still is a secret underground prison system being run by Saddamist holdouts that may contain not only Speicher but also hundreds of missing Kuwaiti prisoners. In late August about a dozen Kuwaiti prisoners were freed, but no one seems to know what happened to the 600 others reportedly still being held, Nelson says.

Roberts, however, thinks Speicher may be being moved about as Saddam's trophy prisoner. Asked if he saw any evidence on his recent trip to Iraq suggesting that Speicher still is alive, Nelson replied, "No. But I didn't see any evidence that he was not alive."

In fact, one piece of evidence that has raised hopes is a 90-page Iraqi document found in a prison in July. The report, dated January 2003, lists prisoners of war (POWs) being held, and Speicher is among those named. While it remains unclear whether the names of those so listed include the subsequently deceased, the Pentagon still is analyzing these records along with thousands of other POW-related files.

via Insight

Ledeen differs

Scholar and pundit Michael Ledeen isn't buying Mansoor Ijaz's reported remarks about Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and offers his own take in a comment to that earlier post:

Osama went to Iran, not Pakistan, and the Iranians "disappeared" him, in keeping with their belief that vanished Imams are more powerful than visible ones. I wrote that Osama was going to Iran before the end of the fighting in Afghanistan, btw.

And now Saddam is headed toward Iran, because Syria is too dangerous for him and Iraq is of course a real threat to life.

Dean the fiscal conservative?

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway (a favorite blog) says:

I'm apparently in a silly mood this morning. I found this line from Andrew Sullivan more amusing than I should:

"If you're a fiscal conservative, Howard Dean is beginning to look attractive."

My own take is that Andrew Sullivan is a very smart guy, but his analytical skills seem a bit rusty after a lengthy August vacation. For one thing, why would we expect Howard Dean to veer from the longstanding and unrelenting tax-and-spend policies of the Democratic Party? Bill Clinton, another governor from a small state and likewise armed with an arguably "moderate" record, supported the full Democratic agenda until forced by circumstances and Republican political success to cave in and act "moderately" on some issues.

For another, Dean talks the talk, but his own record is quite different. John McClaughry, a Vermonter and long-time Dean opponent, has a quite different take on Dean's tenure as governor in the WSJ this week:

On one occasion (in 1999) Dr. Dean did get the Legislature to lower income-tax rates 4% across the board. But aside from that one instance, Dr. Dean gladly spent all he could take in. In his early years, when he was still restricted by his predecessor's fiscal bailout program, he earned a respectable "B" on the Cato Institute's fiscal responsibility report card. By 2002 his ranking had dropped to "D."

During his last eight years Dr. Dean signed into law increases in the sales and use, rooms, meals, liquor, cigarette and electrical-energy taxes. In 1997 he raised the corporate, telecommunications, bank-franchise and gasoline taxes. Dwarfing all of these was his approval of a state education finance "reform" built on a new 1.1% state real property tax. All of the 1997 tax rate increases were justified in the name of property-tax relief for some Vermonters, but the relief is rapidly evaporating with ever-increasing educational costs.

Dr. Dean as government manager does not compute. Attuned to political implications, his style has been to intervene at critical points rather than devote time, effort and political capital to creating efficient and predictable government. He used his influence to whisk favored applicants through Vermont's maddening tangle of environmental regulations, while ordinary small-business people trying to open a convenience store could only take a ticket and wait.

McClaughry concludes:

Many Americans are asking what kind of a president Howard Dean would make. Based on his 11 years as governor of Vermont, a reasonable person could fairly conclude that he would not make a very good one. This verdict is not based on his views on particular issues. It is based on a review of his autocratic style, his lack of ability to deal with bureaucratic management and his overwhelming commitment to his own political ambitions rather than to any recognizable principle.

He has run a brilliant pre-primary campaign. He is saying the things that energize the Angry Left of his party. He can boast of executive experience and, at least superficially, some fiscal conservatism. But as chief executive of a multitrillion-dollar enterprise and leader of the most powerful nation in a dangerous world, I believe that most Vermonters who have watched him closely as governor would, after sober reflection, agree that as president Howard Dean would be far, far, over his head.

Tipping the balance

If I lived in California and if I hadn't made up my mind on how to choose between Ahnold and uber-conservative Tom McClintock, an endorsement from Michael Savage would almost certainly tip me towards The Terminator. Savage is wrong about almost everything and an embarrassment to conservatives -- a walking caricature of everything that the Left wants to believe is true about the Right. He was thrown off MSNBC earlier this year. Too bad his radio syndicate won't do the same. And pitiful that station owners want to peddle his trash-talk to an unthinking audience.

Nationally syndicated talk radio host Michael Savage weighed in on the California governor's race, offering strong praise for State Sen. Tom McClintock. The Republican McClintock was interviewed on Savage's show Thursday night and Savage praised the gubernatorial candidate as the "most qualified" to be governor.

Savage told McClintock that "without a doubt, you are the clear leader" among the 135 candidates in the race.

via NewsMax

Ambushes coming?

George Will isn't too impressed with the depth of thought being expressed in the various bids for the worst job in politics: governor of California. But after he's finished holding up both Schwarzenegger and Bustamante for ridicule, George also makes a prediction about the Democrats' political tactics. Let's file this one away and compare notes once the recall election is finished next month.

Can the tone of the recall campaign get worse? Just wait. Ken Khachigian, a veteran Republican strategist, warns that Schwarzenegger should brace himself for what has become the Democrats' trademark tactic. In football it is penalized as a "late hit," but in politics it is often rewarded with success.

George W. Bush received such a hit in the final weekend of the 2000 campaign -- the revelation of his drunk driving arrest 24 years earlier. That probably contributed to an unusual development: Late-deciding voters, who usually break against the incumbent party, broke for Vice President Gore in 2000.

California Republicans have experienced late hits three times in the last 11 years. In 1992, Bruce Herschensohn narrowly lost a Senate race against Barbara Boxer when it was revealed on the Friday before the election that he and his girlfriend and another couple had visited a strip club. In 1994, Michael Huffington narrowly lost a Senate race against Feinstein when, a few days before the election, it was revealed that he had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. In 1998, Darrell Issa -- he is now a congressmen; his $1.6 million funding of the recall petition drive produced this recall election -- lost a Senate primary when it was revealed that he had embellished his military record.

A late hit by the Davis campaign against Schwarzenegger cannot come so late that there is no time for another such hit, one against Davis' other problem, Bustamante. This could get even uglier.

via the Houston Chronicle

The 2004 recall

While discussing John Kerry's pathetic candidacy, Charles Krauthammer makes a good point about what's creating the dramatic early success of Howard Dean during the pre-primary season.

On paper, Kerry has all the attributes: senatorial stature, dynastic marriage, square jaw and a sterling military record that he put on lavish display in his announcement speech. What he lacks, however, is passion. And passion is a currency of the current Democratic primary campaign.

A solid record, a good program and judicious judgment serve you well when there is no incumbent. When Ronald Reagan retired in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 2000, the Democrats nominated judicious, thoughtful, passionless (Kerry-like) candidates.

But 2004 is a recall election. The Democratic primary activists and liberals have rarely been more energized by their antipathy to a sitting Republican president. There has not been such disdain, resentment and outright hatred of a president since the high Nixon days.

The activists and liberals who dominate the primary process want desperately to beat Bush. They, of course, want to beat him at the polls, but more than anything they want the pleasure of beating him with a stick. Howard Dean is the stick.

via the Houston Chronicle

Crime at its worst

The kind of brutality that has apparently existed at the U.S. Air Force Academy is a violation of the fundamental values of U.S. law, military law, and the American spirit. I'm certainly no expert on the military, but it seems to me that if these revelations do not result in both sweeping change and tough punishments, something is really rotten at the heart of the military culture.

An Air Force Academy graduate has told an oversight panel she was raped by two cadets at the academy's prepatory school in retaliation for reporting an earlier rape.

The charges were contained in an unsolicited letter from the victim last week to members of a congressionally chartered panel that is looking into alleged mishandling of sexual assault cases at the school over the past decade.

Although panel members would not discuss the case in detail, they said during a rare public session Friday that it helps explain a climate that has made so many female cadets too fearful to report sexual assaults.

The retaliatory rape charge was contained in a letter the panel received last week. The writer said the initial rape occurred when she was a student at the academy's preparatory school, which is on the grounds of the Air Force Academy and prepares students to be accepted into the academy.

She said that after reporting the initial rape, commanders began an investigation that eventually caused her attacker to be expelled. However, one night when she was in her dormitory room, two other male cadets entered and raped her in retaliation, the letter said.

via the Rocky Mountain News

Aung San Suu Kyi

New reports about the condition of courageous Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi seem to confirm earlier reports that she may be making the ultimate sacrifice for her country and its oppressed people.

She was a legitimate recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Her plight and her cause deserve a lot more attention from the free world.

In her 15 years as leader of the Burmese people's struggle for democracy and an end to military dictatorship, Aung San Suu Kyi has constantly sacrificed herself.

She has spent a total of almost eight years jailed or under house arrest, she has lived without her children and now grandchildren and, when her husband lay dying of cancer in England several years ago, she chose to stay in Burma - knowing that to go to his side would certainly have meant permanent exile.

Ms Suu Kyi's singular courage and selflessness have been a strand of hope for a despairing nation, and the main reason the world has not forgotten Burma and the thuggery of its junta.

Now the Nobel laureate is said to have embarked on her most desperate, and risky, strategy to break the stalemate over Burma's future and end her latest, three-month imprisonment.

An announcement last weekend by the US State Department, which officials later reiterated was based on "credible reporting" by the American embassy in Rangoon, said Ms Suu Kyi, 58, has been on hunger strike for at least a week. The report has been hotly denied by the regime.

Members of Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in Burma and exile groups in Thailand said they believed she had begun a hunger strike and they held fears for her safety.

A cryptic message smuggled from a military intelligence camp 40 kilometres outside Rangoon - the latest of several places of detention since Ms Suu Kyi was arrested in late May during a bloody crackdown on the NLD - is believed to have been passed to the US embassy last week.

Officials of the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma based in Bangkok said a friend who took food, medicine and clothing to Ms Suu Kyi each week had been given the note on Wednesday of last week. Disguised to avoid the attention of the jailers, the note declared, with an asterisk for emphasis: "No need to send me any food at all."

A coalition spokesman, Sann Aung, told the Herald that reliable sources in Rangoon reported Ms Suu Kyi had been taken by ambulance to a hospital in the military cantonment in Rangoon on Tuesday - apparently so the military can more closely monitor her condition.

Without a united international stand, even Ms Suu Kyi's staunchest supporters remain pessimistic about her prospects of forcing change - with or without the desperate weapon of a hunger strike.

"It's a very sad situation. You have two strong camps, both of whom are very stubborn," says Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy, an independent Burmese magazine published in Thailand.

"This is a last resort for her, but if this is the only option left for the Burmese struggle, what hope is there for us?"

via the Sydney Morning Herald

The touchstone

Daniel Pipes ponders the question "Who Supports Israel?" and why. He says the rules have changed, especially in the U.S. and Great Britain.

Ethnicity and religion certainly play a role in shaping attitudes but ideas matter more. One telling symbol of this was in 1998, when The Nation magazine called on a leftist Jew (Andrew N. Rubin) to savage a book by a conservative Muslim (Fouad Ajami) for being too friendly to Israel.

In many other countries, notes Charlotte West, Israel also finds its most solid support among conservatives; Australia, Canada, France, Italy come to mind.

This is new. Twenty years ago, liberal or conservative outlooks had little bearing on one's views of Israel or other Middle East issues. During the Cold War, Middle Eastern problems stood largely outside the great debate of that era - policy toward the Soviet Union - so views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, militant Islam and other topics were formed in isolation from larger principles.

Today, all that has changed. The Middle East has replaced the Soviet Union as the touchstone of politics and ideology. With increasing clarity, conservatives stand on one side of its issues and liberals on the other.

via DanielPipes.com

Depp is deeper

No suprise to learn that actor Johnny Depp shares some of Hollywood's typical attitudes, but it is good to see that he recognizes a hole when he's in it, knows to stop digging, and even can try to climb out. Smart fellow... or at least smarter than some other actors we could name. And he wuz a great pirate...

Denying any anti-American sentiment on his part, actor Johnny Depp said on Thursday that quotes attributed to him as likening the United States to a "dumb puppy" were inaccurate and taken out of context.

"I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it," Depp said in a statement released by his Los Angeles-based publicist. "It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country and for this I am eternally grateful."

Depp, currently starring in the swashbuckling film "Pirates of the Caribbean," issued the statement a day after the German news magazine Stern published an interview in which he ridiculed Washington's confrontation with France, where he lives, over the U.S. war in Iraq. The magazine quoted the actor as saying "America is ... like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive." He was further quoted as saying he wanted his children to "see America as ... a broken toy" that they should explore, get the feel of, then "get out."

Explaining his comments a day later, Depp [said] he had been using a metaphor that was taken "radically out of context," adding, "There was no anti-American sentiment."

"What I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation," he said. "My deepest apologies to those who were offended, affected, or hurt by this insanely twisted deformation of my words and intent."

via Yahoo! News

Fun with math

This is great research by blogger Matt Evans.

According to data published by the Social Security Administration, the name Hillary is the most severely poisoned baby name in history. Hillary had been steadily climbing the baby name charts since the 1960s, when it first graced the Top 1000, becoming the 136th most common name for baby girls in 1992. But the name sharply reversed course in 1993, smashing several longstanding records for name contamination in its plunge from the Top 1000 girl names last year.

The title for the most rapid case of name contamination had been held by Ebenezer and then Adolph, names that were shunned by parents after they became associated with Dickens's miserly banker and the Nazi dictator Hitler. But while Ebenezer and Adolph each took over 30 years to fall from the Top 1000 after they were negatively associated with their prominent name sakes, Hillary dropped off the charts in just 10 years, upsetting the prior records in less than 30% of the time. Besides this achievement, Hillary also set records for largest drop in a single year (295 places in 1994), two years (420 places in 1993-1994) and ten years (>864 from 1993 to 2002). These titles taken together constitute the grand slam of name poisoning.

via The Buck Stops Here

Thanks to James Taranto's Best of the Web for the tip

The trophy

Some people teach us what "first class" really means through their example, and we have to consider ourselves privileged to learn.

For those without relatives in the military, war news can become a blur of daily press briefings and TV news reports. For Teri Merickel, the conflict got up close and personal during a flight from Chicago. She walked aboard her United plane to San Diego behind a Marine captain who was with a young woman. The officer was carrying what appeared to Merickel to be a beautiful trophy in his arms. The two passengers were seated directly across the aisle from her. Merickel admired the "trophy" but didn't have a chance to ask what it was because another passenger quickly came back from the first-class cabin and invited them to come up to that section. After they moved, the passenger returned and took one of the empty seats. He started sobbing.

After a few moments he composed himself, apologized to Merickel and explained: He, too, was a Marine en route home from Iraq. He informed her that the beautiful "trophy" she had seen was actually carrying the remains of a fallen Marine. The wife of the deceased and the urn were being escorted home by the officer.

The story doesn't end there. Merickel soon learned that the fellow who had done this good deed was returning home to San Diego on a brief 26-hour turnaround for the first time in nearly a year.

His 9-year-old daughter had saved all her money to help buy a first-class ticket for her dad. But when he saw the grief-stricken widow and her Marine escort sitting in coach seats, he asked a flight attendant if he could give his seat to the woman, and if the captain could take the empty seat next to it.

When the plane touched down, the pilot announced that a fallen Marine was aboard. Everyone was silent and the passengers remained in their places while the widow and her escort disembarked. As Merickel said goodbye, she asked the Marine passenger next to her if he was going to tell his daughter he gave up his first-class seat.

He thought and then softly replied, "Maybe someday."

via the San Diego Union-Tribune

Thanks to Steve W. for the tip

The indifferent masses

I am dubious about the value of the current fad for citywide reading programs. But at least this year's selection for Books on the Bayou: Houston Reads Together, is a worthy title: "Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury. (If you haven't read it, find a copy today and get going. It is prescient and you're late.)

The Houston Chronicle, one of the main sponsors of Houston's reading program, has a pretty good article today, including this nugget:

One of Bradbury's chief inspirations for the book came when, as a teenager, he viewed newsreel footage of Nazis torching books in Berlin. Yet its theme had percolated in his mind for years.

"My love of libraries goes back to when I was 8 years old," Bradbury, 83, said. "I've grown up with libraries and books. All the women in my life were librarians, teachers or booksellers. I met my wife, Marguerite, in a bookstore. Libraries have been a constant, from grammar school through high school, and since I couldn't afford to go to college, I spent three years educating myself at libraries."

The destruction of books blazed in Bradbury's imagination. "To me," Bradbury says, "burning books is a terrible blasphemy, the worst sin that could be committed."

A better article by John J. Miller appeared in OpinionJournal last May to mark the 50th anniversary of the book's publication.

Mr. Bradbury has written some 30 books, more than 600 short stories, and countless numbers of poems, essays and screenplays. Even as an octogenarian, he gets up every morning and spends a few hours composing. His most recent novel, "Let's All Kill Constance," came out in January to mixed reviews. A new collection of 100 short stories is slated for release in August.

Amid this prodigious output, "Fahrenheit 451" is the book for which Mr. Bradbury will be best remembered. Perhaps that's because the concept is so unforgettable: In the near future, firemen don't put out fires; they start them instead. Books have been outlawed. When they're discovered, first responders hurry to the scene. The title refers to the temperature at which paper burns.

One of the paradoxes of science fiction--and a fact poorly understood by many people who don't read it--is that much of the genre displays deep doubts about the future. Some of the finest books in the field, from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" to William Gibson's "Neuromancer," regard technology as dangerous and dehumanizing.

"Fahrenheit 451" falls squarely into this dystopian tradition. Kingsley Amis said of it: "Bradbury's is the most skillfully drawn of all science fiction's conformist hells."

Mr. Bradbury insists that the purpose of "Fahrenheit 451" was not to prophesy. "I wasn't trying to predict the future," he says. "I was trying to prevent it."

Today, Mr. Bradbury is more concerned with another problem that he thinks he didn't prevent. "There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them," he says. "The education system in this country is just terrible, and we're not doing anything about it."

One of the often-overlooked details of "Fahrenheit 451" is that the censorship Mr. Bradbury describes was not imposed from the top by a ruthless government. Rather, it seeped up from the indifferent masses. As a villain explains: "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. . . . No wonder books stopped selling."

Only part of that speech captures our world now, because books haven't stopped selling. Mr. Bradbury, however, finds many of the latest ones worthless. He spends his free time reading the plays of Shaw and the poetry of Pope. "I'm learning from the past," he says. "Few modern novelists teach me anything."

Miniter excerpts

As noted here earlier, Richard Miniter's new book details how the Clinton administration declined to deal with Osama bin Laden. Prone to inaction, numerous diplomatic and legalistic niceties always took precedence in the minds of their national security team. Now The Washington Times is running excerpts in four parts. Check it out.

Part One - Failure on terrorism
Part Two - Indifference
Part Three - Unprepared for battle
Part Four - Much known, little done

And thanks to Townhall's C-Log for the tip.

Wobbly on Iraq?

The editors of The Wall Street Journal offer some timely advice to President Bush today. Points well made, as usual.

As a matter of strategy, President Bush's decision to seek another U.N. resolution for rebuilding Iraq may well make sense. But the commander in chief should also note how his adversaries are portraying this move as a sign that both he and the U.S. are on the run.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi could barely contain her glee: "a welcome admission that the current policy is not realistic and not sustainable." Republican Senator Chuck Hagel lectured the President that he's now going to have to turn over large chunks of authority to other countries, while at the U.N. the French and Russians are angling to take up that offer. In Saddam Hussein's bunker, they doubtless see this as the first step toward Somalia or Lebanon redux.

This is not of course how Mr. Bush is portraying the move. White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday said that some countries, such as India, need a U.N. imprimatur before they dispatch troops to Iraq. Mr. Bush wants to provide that fig leaf--our words, not Mr. McClellan's--but the current coalition will retain civilian and military control in Baghdad.

...

The guerrilla war the U.S. is now fighting in Iraq is winnable, notwithstanding the current media pessimism. The terrorists have to be denied foreign aid and sanctuary. Better intelligence, which can only come from Iraqis, will be needed to ferret out the Baathists and jihadis. Above all, Iraqis themselves will have to begin taking responsibility for keeping the power on and maintaining order--in short, for governing themselves.

The paradox is that this will all be easier the more determined America is to stay as long as it takes to succeed. Mr. Bush has made that pledge many times, most recently last week. But the world also watches America's political debates and it remembers Saigon, Mogadishu and Beirut. We'd like to hear the President explain that his new U.N. strategy is about strengthening America's commitment to victory in Iraq, not the first step toward walking away.

via OpinionJournal

Al Qaeda not broken

This news isn't too encouraging, but perhaps that's what was intended. Plausible information. Plausible disinformation as well. The hall of mirrors stretches on and on.

Al-Qaeda operatives in custody are providing only the barest information on the terror network's activities, often proving too canny to be broken down quickly during interrogation, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday. Ridge provided a glimpse into the ongoing interrogation of top al-Qaeda operatives such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others captured in the worldwide dragnet since Sept. 11, 2001.

"They're schooled. They're practiced. And extracting information from them is a very time-consuming, arduous, difficult, painstaking, complex task," he said.

The interrogations are being conducted by the CIA and foreign security services, with assistance from the FBI and the U.S. military. The results are provided to Homeland Security. Ridge didn't discuss interrogation methods, or the locations of the top prisoners, but suggested they have not provided the wealth of information counterterrorism officials had hoped for.

"The higher they are in the chain of command, the tougher the show is," Ridge said. "We extract bits and pieces from them. It is a very complex, methodical process. One little bit of information we may get from one of the big fish or from a minnow can lead to another little bit of information."

A few prisoners have provided gratifying reports. "We've been told by a couple of detainees that a couple of potential operations were put on the back shelf because of enhanced security," Ridge said.

But the al-Qaeda operatives still at large are also learning and adapting, making them harder to track. "They watch and read and know what's going on the United States," he said. "They've changed in many respects their communications patterns — how they communicate, how they talk to each other."

via USA Today

Much obliged

Thanks to John Hawkins at Right Wing News for naming Petrified Truth as his site of the day yesterday. If you haven't visited his well-known site before, take a look now.

Hillary bandwagon

Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times, examines Hillary's denial about running for President, and he ain't buying it.

We're moving past Labor Day, and the Hillary for President campaign is beginning to bubble and soon there may be a little steam. Her denial that there's anything to the speculation that she's running next year and not in '08 — a denial far short of a Sherman — hews carefully to a script carefully worked out by the fun couple.

She is "absolutely ruling it out," the former first lady told reporters in New York. Well, of course she is. Ruling it in comes later. She didn't say, as the infamous Tecumseh Sherman famously did, that she wouldn't run if nominated and wouldn't serve if elected.

Clintonspeak is not difficult to parse. Bill was similarly coy, back in Arkansas in that other century, making a solemn promise to his constituents that if they would elect him governor one more time he would absolutely, positively serve the full term and not even think about the White House. The dust had hardly settled on the Bible on which he made his oath before he was on his way to New Hampshire.

Organizing a spontaneous draft is not easy, but this one will be easier than most.

Terror network

Michael Ledeen warns that our terrorist foes are far more coordinated than many would like to believe. His analysis is absolutely consistent with what we have seen for months, even years... at least for those paying attention.

Anyone who has worked on terrorism for the past 20 years will recognize the murderous techniques employed in the most-recent monster bombings at the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, and the shrine of Ali in Najaf. They all bear the imprint of Hezbollah's infamous chief of operations, Imad Mughniyah, the same man who organized the terrible mass murders at the U.S. Marine barracks and the American embassy in Beirut in the mid-1980s, and also, in all probability, the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires a decade later. And this conviction is strengthened by the news that Mughniyah — who has changed his face, his fingerprints, and his eye color, since he knows he's one of the most-hunted men on earth — has been in Iraq for several weeks.

There is great reluctance in high quarters of Western governments to come to grips with the fact that the Lebanese Hezbollah is engaged in such actions, because they have convinced themselves that Hezbollah is primarily a social-welfare organization, and that its military arm has not operated against Americans for nearly two decades. They have not accepted the fact that there are many Hezbollahs, one of which is now growing in Iraq, under the leadership of the young Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr, who was named chief of Iraqi Hezbollah by Iran's strongman Mohammed Hashemi Rafsanjani several months ago. And, as luck would have it, the young sheikh just happened to be absent from Friday prayers at the shrine of Ali when the car bombs went off.

The terror network is more complex, and far more united, than most of our analysts have been willing to accept.

via National Review Online

Powerful forces

One could say that Russia is a third-world country in many, many ways, and that this story is just one example. But millions in America have equivalent superstitious beliefs. The Russians need to get more compliant scientists and attorneys on their side to keep up with our modernity!

An ancient icon depicting Christ has been removed from display at the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg after claims that its "energy field" is killing staff. The icon has led to the deaths of several supervisors, an official at Russia's foremost art museum, on the banks of the River Neva, said yesterday.

Boris Sapunov, of the Hermitage's Russian section, said: "It's an inexplicable phenomenon and it started long ago. Three or four people died of diseases and the coincidence began to make me wonder. When the custodians' seats were moved away all the trouble stopped. It won't be exhibited any more.

Mr Sapunov is not the only one who believes the icon has affected those exposed to it. Vyacheslav Gubanov, a local doctor who conducted an expert analysis of the icon, said: "This is a very powerful one. It is not directly guilty of making people feel bad.

"But it produces a lot of power which makes the human brain vibrate at a high frequency. Not every person can stand that. Most likely, the icon was meant for the elite, not for common people."

via The Telegraph (UK)

Pirate compromise

One of the heavy hitters in the recorded music industry has finally chosen a rational market response to competition from Internet file-swapping music piracy. Took them so long that it may be too late. But it will make for better Christmas shopping this year!

Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today an aggressive plan to significantly reduce the cost consumers pay for CDs by decreasing its wholesale prices and by instituting a $12.98 Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) on virtually all top line CDs in the U.S.

UMG will introduce a new pricing policy with the aim of bringing music fans back into retail stores and driving music sales. The program, which will begin in the fourth quarter of 2003, will eliminate $16.98, $17.98 and $18.98 equivalent MSRPs. UMG believes retailers will begin offering the lower priced CDs to consumers as soon as October 1, 2003.

via Universal Music Group

Mussels and beer next?

There was a minor outbreak of candor at the State Department yesterday. Everyone is a bit giddy after the summer doldrums, I guess.

QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, do you have anything on the proposal for the creation of a European Union military headquarters in Brussels independent of NATO -- something that have angered the United States, according to reports?

MR. BOUCHER: I'm not quite sure what proposal that is. You mean the one from the four countries that got together and had a little, bitty summit?

QUESTION: That's exactly it -- and Belgium insisting to this --

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, the chocolate makers.

(Laughter.)

MR. BOUCHER: Sorry. No --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. BOUCHER: I think they have been referred to that way in the press. I shouldn't repeat things I see in the press.

No, our position on that has always been that, you know, we have been strong supporters of the European Union, we have been strong supporters of the effort that was made by the European Union to create its own military and security capabilities, and to do that in cooperation and conjunction with NATO. And we have worked very closely with European governments, particularly in this administration, to work out the arrangements to do that, and we think that's quite sufficient. We don't understand why they need more military headquarters or training colleges.

QUESTION: Do you know, is there anything new on -- has that --

MR. BOUCHER: I'm not aware there's anything new on that. I'll have to --

QUESTION: Or perhaps they've expanded to mussels and beer now?

MR. BOUCHER: I'd have to check and see. I'm not aware of anything new. I'll see.

via U.S. Department of State

Cuba's repression

Exiled Cuban dissident Ramon Colas, founder of a now-crushed movement to establish independent libraries, was in Washington, D.C. recently. He was lucky -- he was allowed to leave. Others weren't so fortunate when Fidel Castro, Cuba's liar-in-chief, remembered that books are dangerous.

He started with more than a thousand books, many of them brought into the country by a friend authorized to travel abroad. Other materials had been provided by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana. Colas, an intense man who is the son of peasants, said word of his audacious initiative spread quickly. Within 12 days, a counterpart library opened in Cuba's second largest city, Santiago. Before long, all 14 provinces had one. From abroad, books started coming in from Sweden, the United States, Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Canada, Spain, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

In time, the authorities started cracking down. Colas, who had become a traveling salesman on behalf of his idea, was told to stay home. His wife was fired from her job as an accounting professor. His two children, then 14 and 8, were shunned by their friends and were warned by school authorities that education in Cuba was exclusively for supporters of the revolution.

Cuban authorities, not surprisingly, saw Colas' efforts on the island as a counterrevolutionary ploy that enjoyed covert U.S. backing. Roughly 15 independent libraries were shut down and their inventory confiscated during a broad-based crackdown on dissidents last March. The directors of each library were given long prison terms, including Colas' successor in Las Tunas.

via ABC News

Journey's end

NASA has ordered the Galileo Orbiter to end its life on September 21. It's the culmination of a remarkable story of science, engineering, and discovery, all explained very well in a new article by Michael Benson.

Obliteration is precisely what NASA intends for the spacecraft. The reason is that Galileo may still harbor some signs of life on Earth: microorganisms that have survived since its launch from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, in 1989. If the orbiter were left to circle Jupiter after running out of propellant (barring an intervention, this would likely happen within a year), it might eventually crash into Europa, one of Jupiter’s large moons.

In 1996, Galileo conducted the first of eight close flybys of Europa, producing breathtaking pictures of its surface, which suggested that the moon has an immense ocean hidden beneath its frozen crust. These images have led to vociferous scientific debate about the prospects for life there; as a result, NASA officials decided that it was necessary to avoid the possibility of seeding Europa with alien life-forms. And so the craft has been programmed to commit suicide, guaranteeing a fiery, spectacular end to one of the most ambitious, tortured, and revelatory missions in the history of space exploration.

via The New Yorker

Check out JPL's Galileo Project web site.

Iraq is the center

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz knows determination when he sees it.

I saw the troops in Iraq... I can tell you that they, above all, understand the war they are fighting. They understand the stakes involved. And they will not be deterred from their mission by desperate acts of a dying regime or ideology.

Not long ago, a woman named Christy Ferer traveled to Iraq along with the USO. She'd lost her husband Neil Levin at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, and she wanted to say thank you to the troops in Baghdad. She wrote a wonderful piece about her trip, and in it, she wondered why our soldiers would want to see her, when they could see the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, movie stars and a model. When the soldiers heard that a trio of Sept. 11 family members were there, she found out why.

Young men and women from across America rushed to the trio, eager to touch them and talk to them. One soldier, a mother of two, told Christy she'd enlisted because of Sept. 11. Another soldier displayed the metal bracelet he wore, engraved with the name of a victim of 9/11. Others came forward with memorabilia from the World Trade Center they carried with them into Baghdad. And when it was Christy's turn to present Gen. Tommy Franks with a piece of steel recovered from the Trade Towers, she saw this great soldier's eyes well up with tears. Then, she watched as they streamed down his face on center stage before 4,000 troops.

To those who think the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the global war against terrorism . . . tell that to our troops.

via OpinionJournal

Lost opportunity

What we suspected has now been documented: a legacy of weakness and inaction that cost thousands of American lives.

Bill Clinton refused to order a strike on Osama bin Laden after the bombing of the American destroyer Cole even though the al-Qa'eda leader's whereabouts were known, according to a book to be published this week.

In early leaks from Losing bin Laden, Richard Miniter, an investigative journalist, claims that Mr Clinton allowed the September 11 attacks to happen by squandering more than a dozen opportunities to capture or kill bin Laden. In two cases the terrorist leader's exact location was known, the book says.

Though Clinton supporters would doubtless reject the implication of responsibility for September 11, senior members of the Clinton White House did confirm, in interviews for the book, that they shied away from an attack immediately after the Cole bombing for reasons of diplomacy and military caution.

Janet Reno, then the attorney general, said an attack would break international law. Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, is quoted as saying that "bombing Muslims wouldn't be helpful at this time".

Most controversially, the book quotes William Cohen, then the defence secretary, as saying the Cole attack "was not sufficiently provocative" and retaliation might cause trouble in Pakistan.

via The Telegraph (UK)

North Korea as it really is

Philip Gourevitch examines the North Korean threat this week in The New Yorker, based largely on conversations with defectors. His article isn't posted online, but an interview with him is and he paints a grim picture: mass mind control, deliberate starvation of millions, cannibalism, and massive armaments -- "probably the largest threat to international security in the world."

Among other things, he says South Korea has zero interest in reunification due to the extreme condition of their northern neighbors.

Anything could happen. There is no civil society. There has never been a civil society in the territory known as North Korea. There was an oppressive dynasty. There was an oppressive imperial presence, and then there was an absolutely and totally oppressive prison camp. I mean, the country’s a gulag. It’s a prison camp. That doesn’t mean that these people are all zombies. They live in a zombie-ish culture, but many of them, judging by the defectors, are capable of retooling their mentality. But it takes a lot. These are lives that have been criminally wasted. The crime of this regime can’t be measured merely by the number of people who have died or who have been thrown in prison camps because of its bad policies. To exist as a North Korean citizen is to be a victim of the regime. The crime is against anybody who lives in North Korea.

via The New Yorker

Col. Tim Collins cleared

Justice is served.

The British Army colonel accused of war crimes for "pistol-whipping" a Ba'ath Party official during the war in Iraq has been cleared, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday. Tim Collins, hailed as a hero for the oration he gave before his troops went into battle, will face no charges.

The allegations of war crimes on five separate counts were made against the commanding officer of 1 Bn the Royal Irish Regiment by an American reservist, Major Re Biastre, 37, who had not witnessed any of the alleged incidents.

Major Biastre, whose civilian career is as a social worker, is said to have acted after Col Collins criticised him in front of other troops.

"There will be no criminal charges and no other disciplinary proceedings," a spokesman said. "The investigation found no substance to the allegations."

via The Telegraph (UK)

His speech to the Royal Irish Guards, 19 March 2003:

We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.

There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory. Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood, and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there.

Read the whole thing via the U.S. Naval Institute

Visioneer in waiting

Retired NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark wants to be President (or maybe Vice President first as a stepping stone) and thinks he would do the job much better than George W. Bush. While the nation waits on his decision to run or not, Donald Sensing has already figured out one important aspect of Clark's worldview.

What Gen. Clark is really implying, even if he does not intend, is that the Bush administration is in a fog when it comes to "that vision thing" and that the Old Europeans should really be given the dominant voice. He apparently discounts the enormous contributions of Britain to the war on terror, which is not surprising to me: Clark seems to have been more attracted to continental Europeanism, with its webs of entangling alliances and transnational obligations than British bulldoggery. (The Brits still have a stiff-necked, go-it-alone-if-necessary nature that staunch multilateralists find alarming.)

Make no mistake. When Clark complains that America has not enlisted allies in the terror war, he means certain Europeans, not the brown people of the world. Clark isn't racist, he's just a Euro-phile. In his view, the US should not have acted decisively against Iraq because the French, Germans and Belgians opposed doing so. But there is no diplomacy that would have garnered even their background military participation. Hence, Clark's concept of alliance really means American paralysis in the face of allied intransigence. They get to veto American policy and security requirements.

Happy Labor Day!

Not everyone has the day off. Enjoy yours if you do.

The hall of mirrors

Two of our "allies" in the war on terror are permeated with terrorists and supporters of terrorism themselves. Their internal divisions are messy, difficult, and risky for everyone.

Pakistan's army confirmed yesterday that several officers have been arrested on suspicion of being linked to Islamic extremist groups. The move will raise renewed fears that the security organs of Pakistan, a nuclear power and important Western ally in the war on terrorism, have been infiltrated by allies of the former Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden. The Pakistani military spokesman, Maj Gen Shaukat Saulat, admitted that three or four mid-level officers, including a lieutenant colonel, were being investigated for violation of discipline and about suspected links to Islamic extremist groups.

via The Telegraph

A new book, cloaked in secrecy until Sunday, reports that top Saudi and Pakistani officials continually cooperated with Osama bin Laden. Although ostensive allies in the war on terror, these new allegations are sure to stir up a diplomatic controversy, Time magazine said in a review. The new book, "Why America Slept," is written by veteran investigative author Gerald Posner. Posner quotes two senior sources about the Sodium Pentothal-induced interrogation of al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah who was captured in March 2002. Zabaydah told interrogators that various high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family maintained contact and funding with bin Laden in the years leading up to the Sept. 11th, 2001 attacks.

Posner names Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief, as the main bin Laden contact. Turki has admitted to some meetings, but denied any cooperation. Posner also names Mushaf Ali Mir, a high-ranking Pakistani air force officer, as another contact.

via The Washington Times

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has ordered Muslim clerics to combat extremist ideologies which he said have duped some Saudi youth into joining terrorist cells that aim to harm the kingdom and Islam.

Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is trying to quash militants at home and improve its image abroad after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities two years ago and suicide bombings in Riyadh in May.

"Ignorance has penetrated some of the nation's youth and tempted terrorist networks to use them for aims which only serve the nation's enemies and harm Islam and Muslims and open the door for accusations against Islam of violence and terrorism," King Fahd said in a speech carried by newspapers on Sunday.

"Brothers, this sorry state calls for contemplation and treatment and this is not difficult because what is needed is reforming this deviant and strange thinking by delivering the correct message at mosques against excess in religion."

His speech to an Islamic conference on Saturday comes as the United States steps up pressure on its key regional political and economic ally to crack down on Muslim militants and reform its powerful religious establishment which has been accused in the West of breeding hatred towards Christians and Jews.

King Fahd told the gathering of clerics from across the Muslim world that the duty of mosques was to preach peace, security, cooperation, justice and tolerance.

via Reuters

Euro-Loutism

Europe's dirty little secret -- rampant and continuing anti-Semitism -- rears its ugly head, this time from one of France's oh-so-sophisticated diplomats. Speaking of "louts"...

France's new ambassador to Israel caused a diplomatic row with his hosts yesterday after he was reported to have described the Jewish state as "paranoid" and called its prime minister, Ariel Sharon, "a lout".

Limor Livnat, Israel's education minister, said the remarks attributed to Gerard Araud were "very grave". If true, she said, Israel should refuse to accept his letter of accreditation.

The row is reminiscent of comments by Daniel Bernard, the former French ambassador to London. He caused a storm in December 2001 after being heard at a dinner party speaking of "that s####y little country, Israel".

M Araud's comments appear to have been made in a similarly unguarded moment. Boaz Bissmuth, a correspondent for the mass circulation Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, reported hearing M Araud talk disparagingly about Israel in conversation with two other French diplomats during a recent cocktail party in Paris.

via The Telegraph

Courage

Dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is striking back at the tryants who control Burma, using the only weapon she has available.

International concern is mounting about the fate of the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is reported to have begun a hunger strike in protest at her three-month detention by the country's military regime.

Burmese exile groups said they believed Ms Suu Kyi had timed her protest to repudiate plans by the regime to revive discredited talks on drafting a new constitution, a move seen as a ploy to relieve the crippling impact of economic sanctions. She was sending a message to the world and the Burmese people that she did not accept the plans of the military regime, said Sann Aung, said a spokesman for the opposition government-in-exile, based in Thailand.

Ms Suu Kyi is believed to have begun the hunger strike at the weekend at the military intelligence camp about 40 kilometres from Rangoon where she is being held in isolation.

The Nobel Peace laureate was arrested in May after a pro-Government mob attacked her entourage during a tour of the north, killing scores of members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) and local villagers.

via the Sydney Morning Herald