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