Petrified Truth

Israel under Euro-siege?

This news from Europe could be easily dismissed as just more mewlings from comfortable Euro-weenies. But it also coincides neatly with an unsettling report from Israeli source DEBKA (see below).

Over half of Europeans think that Israel now presents the biggest threat to world peace according to a controversial poll requested by the European Commission. According to the same survey, Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The specially commissioned poll which asked citizens 15 questions on "the reconstruction of Iraq, the conflict in the Middle East and World peace", has caused controversy in Brussels.

The European Commission is coming under fire for publishing the results of a number of questions - relating to Iraqi reconstruction - while failing to publish the results which revealed the extent of mistrust of Israel and the United States in Europe, according to Spanish daily El Pais.

According to El Pais, a massive 59 percent of Europeans said they believed that Israel is the biggest obstacle to world peace.

via EUobserver

DEBKA reports that influential Europeans are now working actively to neuter and eventually dissolve the state of Israel, starting with a U.N. or NATO military force to provide international oversight of Israel's decisions about the Palestinians.

Ariel Sharon, the focal point of European discontent, is aware and fighting back. But is European opinion, rife with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic feeling anyway, being prepared for the greatest sellout in history? Keep an eye on this one; American buy-in, probably to some Trojan Horse diplomatic scheme, will be required.

... a DEBKAfile informant dining at a Knightsbridge restaurant with a highly-placed British intelligence official heard him drop this remark: “Some people in the West have come to the conclusion that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was a mistake.” When asked to explain whether this meant that the Jews were to be evicted from the Middle East, he replied: “Certainly. Israel has a little more than 5 million Jews. If the United States and NATO were to finance their relocation in other countries, that would solve many Middle East problems.”

This is the scheme lurking behind the recent rush of anti-government political initiatives on the part of Israeli leftwing circles who maintain intimate connections in certain European capitals. The Israeli pilots’ revolt against operations in Palestinian territory was enthusiastically backed by the same group that went on to instigate the “Geneva understandings”. At the core of this draft is a panacea for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: All points at issue will be brought to international arbitration or handed over to international monitors.

Co-author Amram MItzna, the former Labor leader who lost the last general election to Ariel Sharon’s Likud, returned from Europe a few days ago and publicly questioned Sharon’s legitimacy as Israeli prime minister.

The realization of the Brussels plan would satisfy Arafat’s demand for internationalization of his dispute with Israel because it would internationalize the Jewish state.

Israel’s standing as an independent democracy would make way for its subservience to international rule.

China wants more

China is moving confidently to expand its presence in space. Without change in our program, it won't be that long before we'll look up at night and see a Moon with a Chinese lunar base on it.

China's next manned space launch will carry three astronauts into orbit for a week, a newspaper reported Tuesday, citing a space program official.

Plans call for the next launch within two years, the Chengdu Evening Post said, citing Xu Dazhe, deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Technology Group.

China's first manned space launch on October 15 carried astronaut Yang Liwei's Shenzhou V capsule into orbit for a 14-orbit flight that lasted 21 1/2 hours.

Following Yang's return, space officials said the next Shenzhou launch would take place within two years, but they didn't give a date or say how many astronauts it would carry.

The space officials said China eventually wants to send up a permanently manned space station, suggesting they already are at work on supporting space crews for long periods.

via the Peoples' Daily

Please retire

Trent Lott, military strategist and overall deep thinker:

Asked whether he favored any policy changes in Iraq, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) responded: “We need to have a different mix of troops, is the key. We may need to move some troops around.”

Lott suggested moving more troops from the relatively stable south closer to the region around Tikrit, where attacks on U.S. forces have been common. He said there was a need for more trained military police, adding that his comments were not a criticism.

“Honestly, it’s a little tougher than I thought it was going to be,” Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: “If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.”

Republicans fear they could suffer in the polls if the situation does not improve, since the administration’s Iraq policy is so closely associated with Bush.

via The Hill

Baghdad - fair and balanced

Here's a realistic, first-hand, and balanced report from Tish Durkin in Baghdad. Read the whole thing now -- the New York Observer doesn't seem to make its content available longer than the current issue.

... from here, it is disturbing to note the momentum that seems to be gathering behind those who are back home chanting for the U.S. to get out now. It is scarcely less disturbing to contemplate the belief of some leading American politicians that they can go halfsies: keep funding Iraqi reconstruction, for instance, but put the funding in the form of a loan. (Whoever thought of that probably had a cash bar at his wedding.) This is not because the occupation is some sort of triumph. But if this is about the Iraqis, it simply doesn’t matter whether it is in the context of American glory, American gloom or something in between that these people finally get a decent shot at a decent life. It only matters that they do get it, and the only question is how.

Americans, of course, have the right to criticize the occupation. But they also have an obligation to criticize it proportionately, accurately, realistically—and, above all, with the Iraqis constantly in mind.

Of course, I cannot speak for the Iraqis. But after spending four of the past six months talking to Iraqis, I do feel that it is relatively safe to make the following five points:

One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation. Four, although the Bush administration should be hung out to dry for whatever it has lied about, it is widely accepted here that various of their pet assertions happen to coincide with the truth. Iraqis do not need Mr. Bush to tell them that most of the troublemakers here are not resistance fighters, but highly paid, often imported thugs; Iraqis have been saying that from the start. Fifth, a steady stream of terrible events has generated a steady stream of legitimately negative news stories about Iraq, the sum effect of which seems to have been to leave the rest of the world with the impression that Iraq now appears in the dictionary next to "unqualified disaster"; that hardly anything is improving here, and that hardly anyone is or feels any better off than he or she did before the war. This impression is false.

via the New York Observer
Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit

Syria's hidden charms

Not such a mystery after all, those missing Iraqi WMDs. It would help things if The New York Times would put this on the front page, not buried deep inside.

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material "unquestionably" had been moved out of Iraq.

"I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.

Interestingly, this strategem was reported earlier, back in May.

Conference time

Well, Internet access from my laptop ain't working, so the only way to update would be this busy cyber-station on the conference exhibit floor. Updates can wait until Tuesday night.

Watched CNN this morning (no Fox News, dammit) and can only feel sorrow for the folks in San Diego who are being burned out. Hope our own familiy members are OK in their neighborhoods.

UPDATE: Family reports severe damage near their homes, but so far they are safe. Some friends and neighbors are homeless. One schoolmate was killed; another burned. What a tragedy -- our prayers are with them all.

Squirrel tagging

It's bad enough to have to get up early on a Sunday to travel, but I do hate realizing that I forgot to reset my clock and am awake at 4:00, not 5:00.

New posts will be even more erratic than usual while I travel to Phoenix and give a talk at a conference on using the Internet in healthcare. In the meanwhile, check out the implications of... squirrel-tagging.

Tip via NRO's The Corner

Reaping the harvest

More big changes in our society show up in the national statistics. Is this because feminism has meant careerism?

About 18 percent of women ages 40 to 44 in 2002 had never had a child, compared with 10 percent in 1976. Women in the same age group, on average, had 1.9 children in 2002, considerably fewer than the 1976 average of 3.1 children, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today.

According to the report, Fertility of American Women: June 2002, 44 percent of all women of childbearing age (15-to-44 years old) were childless. Seventy-one percent of these childless women participated in the labor force.

via the U.S. Census Bureau

The scruffy travelers

President Bush's actual remarks to the Australian parliament last week were overshadowed by the media's focus on a handful of protesters. As usual, he had a lot to say.

We seek the rise of freedom and self-government in Afghanistan and in Iraq for the benefit of their people, as an example to their neighbors, and for the security of the world. America and Australia are helping the people of both those nations to defend themselves, to build the institutions of law and democracy, and to establish the beginnings of free enterprise.

These are difficult tasks in civil societies wrecked by years of tyranny. And it should surprise no one that the remnants and advocates of tyranny should fight liberty's advance. The advance of liberty will not be halted. The terrorists and the Taliban and Saddam holdouts are desperately trying to stop our progress. They will fail. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq measure progress every day. They are losing the habits of fear, and they are gaining the habits of freedom.

Some are skeptical about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East, and wonder if its culture can support free institutions. In fact, freedom has always had its skeptics. Some doubted that Japan and other Asian countries could ever adopt the ways of self-government. The same doubts have been heard at various times about Germans and Africans. At the time of the Magna Carta, the English were not considered the most promising recruits for democracy. And to be honest, sophisticated observers had serious reservations about the scruffy travelers who founded our two countries. Every milestone of liberty was considered impossible before it was achieved. In our time, we must decide our own belief: Either freedom is the privilege of an elite few, or it is the right and capacity of all humanity.

By serving our ideals, we also serve our interests. If the Middle East remains a place of anger and hopelessness and incitement, this world will tend toward division and chaos and violence. Only the spread of freedom and hope in the Middle East in the long-term will bring peace to that region and beyond. And the liberation of more than 50 million Iraqis and Afghans from tyranny is progress to be proud of.

via the White House

Big attack coming?

Serious terrorism warnings were issued this week.

The U.S. embassy in Riyadh is warning Americans in Saudi Arabia about an increased risk of terrorist attacks. An embassy advisory issued Saturday warns that it "...continues to receive information that terrorist groups within the kingdom are still active and planning future operations."

The embassy statement said that the terrorist groups may focus their operations during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when it said Americans should be particularly vigilant. Ramadan begins either Sunday or Monday, depending on when the new moon appears.

On Friday, the British government warned that terrorists may be in the "final phases" of planning attacks in the kingdom and advised its nationals to avoid all un-essential travel to Saudi Arabia. Australia issued a similar warning to its citizens on Thursday.

via Voice of America

Israeli site DEBKA was even more dire, as it is wont to be.

DEBKAfile counter-terror sources revealed: Specific al Qaeda terror warnings rise to 20. US special forces capture key al Qaeda men in successful raids this week in Yemen, Pakistan, Kashmir and Kazakhstan. Interrogations revealed imminent al Qaeda strikes planned for Saudi Arabia, Gulf emirates and Middle East countries including Israel. Governments warned.

This might well fit al Qaeda's longstanding interest in multiple, simultaneous attacks to achieve maximum PR impact. I am not diabolical enough to yet understand their reasoning for attacks during Ramadan.

Hitch on Twain

Christopher Hitchens evaluates a new biography of Mark Twain, "this enormous and subversive personality," and finds it severely wanting. Along the way he offers his own insights into Twain's life and cultural importance.

Ernest Hemingway's much cited truism—to the effect that Huckleberry Finn hadn't been transcended by any subsequent American writer—understated, if anything, the extent to which Twain was not just a founding author but a founding American. Until his appearance, even writers as adventurous as Hawthorne and Melville would have been gratified to receive the praise of a comparison to Walter Scott. (A boat named the Walter Scott is sunk with some ignominy in Chapter 13 of Huckleberry Finn.)

Twain originated in the riverine, slaveholding heartland; compromised almost as much as Missouri itself when it came to the Civil War; headed out to California ("the Lincoln of our literature" made a name in the state that Lincoln always hoped to see and never did); and conquered the eastern seaboard in his own sweet time. But though he had an unimpeachable claim to be from native ground, there was nothing provincial or crabbed about his declaration of independence for American letters. (His evisceration of Cooper can be read as an assault on any form of pseudo-native authenticity.) More than most of his countrymen, he voyaged around the world and pitted himself against non-American authors of equivalent contemporary weight.

via The Atlantic

Suffering with Hillary

Political observer and admitted conservative Rich Lowry examines just some of the untruths he encountered while researching his new book; 35 out of 36 Hillaryisms were prevarications, actually.

One of the more unpleasant parts of writing Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years was reading Hillary Clinton's Living History. But I had to do it — for the cause! for history's sake! for my sins! — so I might as well make use of it. Herewith is an accounting — just partial, I'm sure — of some of [the] deceptions, distortions, misrepresentations, and general howlers in Hillary's book. Perhaps foolishly, I'm trusting her on things like her assertion on page 363 of Living History that "I'm a pushover for big, stirring ceremonies."

via National Review

VDH rocks

Victor Davis Hanson has a kick-ass essay at National Review. Read the whole thing. Excerpt:

States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking. The autocracies of Latin America resented Spain and Portugal in theory, but themselves only embraced democratic reform after the demise of the old mother tyrannies in Madrid and Lisbon. A newly democratic Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan have played a role in demonstrating to some Chinese that their own dictatorship is a relic of the past. The tottering Soviet Union was the catalyst for freedom among Eastern Europeans, and its failure convinced them that there was no future in state-imposed Stalinism.

So, too, a successful consensual government in Baghdad will serve as a glimpse of what life can be like amid the economic and political stagnation of the surrounding Arab world. More importantly, it will confront radical Islam with a competing ideology that possesses a far more revolutionary message than the Islamists' tired old culture of death that ruined Afghanistan and Iran, wrecked the economy of the West Bank, tore apart Algeria, ended the tourist industry of Egypt, brought international scorn on Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, turned the president of Malaysia into an international laughingstock, nearly made Pakistan an outlaw regime — and led to the reckoning after 9/11. Holdover Soviet-style Baathism didn't work; Islamic fascism was a failure; tribal dictatorship and monarchies are no better; Pan-Arabism was a cruel joke. The Arab world is running out of alternatives to democratic governments and free markets.

A free Iraq will place a terrible dilemma on the governments and elites of these closed Arab societies who must explain to their own poor and oppressed how satellite pictures of voting Iraqis, Internet cafes, and raucous debates on television are really fabricated images concocted by the American-Zionist international consortium. There is a time bomb ticking in the Middle East, but it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh, where corrupt elites can only pray that things don't calm down in Baghdad and thereby prompt al Jazeera to switch from tailing dead-end Baathists to interviewing Iraqi parliamentarians.

A moment of silence

Houstonians continue to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country in Iraq. They have our respect and gratitude.

Another Houston native has died this month while serving in Iraq, making him the area's seventh war casualty, the Defense Department announced Thursday.

Spc. John P. Johnson, 24, died Oct. 22 in Baghdad of noncombat-related injuries. He was assigned to the Army's 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division in Baumholder, Germany. No other details about the incident were released.

Pfc. Analaura Esparza-Gutierrez, 21, of Houston was killed Oct. 1 by a bomb during an attack on her convoy in Tikrit, Iraq. Gutierrez, a native of Mexico, was the fourth female U.S. soldier to die in combat in the war.

Other casualties include:

· Army 1st Lt. Jonathan D. Rozier, 25, died July 19 when his unit was fired upon by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire in Baghdad. Rozier, a Dallas native, moved to Katy with his family in 1991.

· Army Cpl. Tomas Sotelo Jr, 20, died June 27 in Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his vehicle. The Houston native graduated from Reagan High School.

· Marine Cpl. Brian Matthew Kennedy, 25, died along with three other U.S. Marines and eight British Marines when their CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed March 20 about nine miles south of the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr. Kennedy's stepmother lives here.

· Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip Jordan, 42, who grew up in Houston, Alvin and League City, was one of eight Marines killed on March 23 when ambushed near An Nasiriyah.

· Marine Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Arnold, 30, of Spring was one of three Marines killed at Kut on April 22 when an Iraqi weapon they were test-firing malfunctioned. He graduated from Klein Oak High School in 1990.

via the Houston Chronicle

1990s drag

Manufacturing overcapacity built during the go-go 1990s gets the blame again this week for holding back our weakened economy. Apparently Bill Clinton wasn't the economic genius some would like for us to believe.

Rising imports from China are not to blame for the doldrums at U.S. factories, the Federal Reserve said in a report Thursday that took issue with the standard criticism among manufacturers that China is the source of their woes.

Even as manufacturers accuse China of violating free trade laws and increase pressure on the Bush administration to take action against China, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank said other issues, like weak export markets, were more important.

Besides economic weakness around the world, it cited a variety of homegrown factors, such as an overhang of investment from the boom years and productivity gains that have stymied new job growth.

via the Houston Chronicle
Full report (pdf) via the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Certainty and uncertainty

George F. Will reviews this week's kerfuffle about a leaked war memo by Donald Rumsfeld and examines the "feigned excitement among the very war critics who have hitherto complained that Rumsfeld is incapable of seeing the dark side of things." Rumsfeld himself remains stalwart.

The remarkable souring of political argument in 2003 continues as some Democrats, with their calculated extravagance, insist there was "no plan" for postwar Iraq. But if that were so, how is it that we have gone, in just six months, from zero to 85,000 Iraqis participating in providing security? And what was all that work done with the World Food Program before the war?

Critics correctly fault the mistaken certitude of some of the administration's prewar pronouncements. But critics indicting the administration not merely for mistakes but for meretriciousness would do well to avoid that in their indictments.

via the Houston Chronicle

Solar storm

This could be interesting.

Set in motion by an eruption of gas on the sun, an enormous space storm—known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME—was headed towards earth Friday afternoon, and it could cause problems with satellites, cell phones, pagers, and other technological equipment. The storm has already interfered with high-frequency airline communications and power grids.

"It's like seeing a hurricane in November rather than August, when you'd typically expect it," says Larry Combs, one of the Space Environment Center forecaster. "The peak of the cycle was in 2000, and here we are 3 and half years later with a dynamic sunspot region that you could put 10 earths inside."

Then, on Wednesday morning, at 3 am EDT, the larger of the two spots produced the CME, which is headed in the direction of earth, achieving speeds of 2 million miles per hour.

According to the NOAA, the sunspot already produced a major solar flare earlier in the week, causing a radio blackout on October 19 at 12:50 pm EDT. Today's CME could cause similar problems.

via PC Magazine
NOAA

Blog war

Estimable Donald Sensing is really, really irritated with James Lileks's take on the leaked Rumsfeld memo. (See the extended discussion in Sensing's comment section, too.) Lileks is often insightful, even more often entertaining, but he was way off base on this one. Also think mebbe Rev. Sensing has used higher-caliber ammo than needed. Oh well; it'll be interesting to see if Lileks has any second thoughts.

Hypocrites

The editorial page of The Wall Street Journal gets it right concerning the two-faced votes in Congress on aid to Iraq. Why the votes and quasi-votes for extorting a "loan" out of a struggling nation where we want to nurture success?

The issue is whether to exploit Iraq's future oil revenues by giving some of the aid not as a grant, as the White House insists, but as a loan. The Senate voted last week to make $10 billion of its $18.4 billion reconstruction package a loan. Though the House voted all the money as a grant, that schizoid chamber passed a non-binding motion Tuesday instructing conferees to adopt the Senate position.

For most Democrats, of course, this is politics pure and simple. They see it as an opportunity to tweak Mr. Bush on Iraq policy, where they believe he's vulnerable. But we're having a much harder time fathoming the motivations of the eight Republicans who voted for the loan provision in the Senate, and the 84 who supported the resolution in the House.

Many are probably assuming the President will get his way in the final bill, and that their votes are a cost-free way to be seen protecting the taxpayer. "It's very hard for me to go home and explain that we have to give $20 billion to a country sitting on $1 trillion worth of oil," says South Carolina's Lindsey Graham.

But Congressmen are fooling themselves if they don't think their actions are also being noticed in, say, Tehran, and wherever Saddam and Osama are hiding. The rap on America in the Middle East is that for all its technical military superiority, the country has no patience and no stomach for body bags. Hit them hard enough or long enough, and they will leave before the job is done. Barely six months into the Iraq mission, the Congressional naysayers are giving hope to all those who want us to fail, including the Baathist and jihadi fighters who are attacking our troops.

Clinton's legacy

"Citizen diplomat" Mansoor Ijaz and others have long recounted the tale of the Clinton administration's historic and short-sighted refusal to accept an offer from Sudan to hand over Osama bin Laden in 1996 -- before the violent deaths of thousands. Now Bill Clinton and his various minions are trying to finesse their way out of the charge. Ijaz, a former Democratic support and FOB, is having none of it.

In detailed confidential memos to Mr. Berger (provided to The [Washington] Times by Mr. Ijaz), Mr. Ijaz sets out the Sudanese offers. In a Sept. 27, 1996, brief, he details the contents of the intelligence files, which he had told Mr. Berger about in a previous August memo. In letters to President Clinton from officials from Islamic governments delivered by Mr. Ijaz, repeated appeals were made for efforts to work on better relations between Washington and Muslim nations. In one letter to Mr. Clinton from Hassan Turabi, chairman of the National Assembly of Sudan, the Sudanese official wrote:

"We are prepared to work with you to usher in a new era of improving the understanding and attitudes of all elements in the Islamic world, whether here in the Sudan or in other Islamic regions of mutual interest and concern." The most significant cause for concern with the Muslim world was then what it still is today: bin Laden. And the Sudanese were in a position to hand him over. The Clinton administration might not have taken the Sudanese seriously, but the Sudanese voluntarily placed all their cards on the table. Mr. Ijaz's correspondence proves the administration knew what was available. The Clinton administration simply chose to snub the offer to work together with the government that harbored the al Qaeda mastermind.

In an interview yesterday with the Washington Times, Mr. Ijaz summarized his view of the Clinton administration's culpability regarding September 11. "I said then as I say now: Bill Clinton's inability to understand what was fueling the rise of bin Laden as a phenomenon — not as an individual — was the greatest U.S. foreign policy failure of the last half-century. It has affected hundreds of millions worldwide. Even if we get him now, who will be the next bin Laden? There are many willing candidates standing in line. Islamic radicalism exists today because Clinton didn't dismantle al Qaeda when he had the chance."

via The Washington Times

Rumsfeld's insight

USA Today and other media outlets stupidly characterized a leaked memo by Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the Global War on Terror as presenting a "grim outlook" and worse.

The reporters, pundits, and politicians who can't see that are apparently too inexperienced, too stupid, or too biased to see the truth. Judge for yourself:

October 16, 2003

TO: Gen. Dick Myers; Paul Wolfowitz; Gen. Pete Pace; Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:

We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.

USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.

With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.

Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the US?

Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?

Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions.

Do we need a new organization?

How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?

Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.

Does CIA need a new finding?

Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course?

What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday.

Thanks.

Original now available via DefenseLink
InstaPundit has a mass of links about the leak, the memo, and implications thereof.

Nukes in Saudi Arabia - II

Sure enough.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on "nuclear cooperation" that will provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil, according to a ranking Pakistani insider.

The disclosure came at the end of a 26-hour state visit to Islamabad last weekend by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, who flew across the Arabian Sea with an entourage of 200, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and several Cabinet ministers.
Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the pro-American defense minister who is next in line to the throne after the crown prince, was not part of the delegation.

"It will be vehemently denied by both countries," said the Pakistani source, whose information has proven reliable for more than a decade, "but future events will confirm that Pakistan has agreed to provide [Saudi Arabia] with the wherewithal for a nuclear deterrent."

"Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia," the Pakistani source said, "see a world that is moving from nonproliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons."

The Saudi rulers, who are Sunni Muslims, are believed to have concluded that nothing will deter the Shi'ite Muslims who rule Iran from continuing their quest for a nuclear weapons capability.

via the Washington Times

Nukes in Saudi Arabia

Israeli website DEBKA reports tonight on a strategic military escalation in the Middle East:

Pakistan will deploy nuclear missiles and warheads at Saudi bases under military-nuclear accord signed in Islamabad by Crown prince Abdullah. Pakistani security umbrella will replace US troop presence withdrawn from kingdom this summer. Deal flatly defies Bush warning to Abdullah this year not to deploy nuclear weapons on Saudi soil.

Drudge is reporting a similar headline and says it will be front page news in Wednesday's Washington Times. This is potentially very destabilizing.

Maginot Clark

Political gunslinger Dick Morris says Wesley Clark is fighting the last war, and cannot win with that strategy. Howard Dean has a different strategy.

Dean has deeply penetrated the early primary and caucus states with his Internet-era campaign. He can name his supporters in each state, a particularly valuable asset when it comes to a caucus contest as in Iowa. His Internet candidacy is as packed with cyber-roots (formerly grassroots) supporters as Clark's is devoid of real backing.

Dean will probably win in Iowa, and knock out Rep. Dick Gephardt of neighboring Missouri in the process. The momentum from Iowa will swamp Kerry in New Hampshire and the surge from the first two victories will eviscerate Sen. John Edwards in his next-door South Carolina.

The impact of this trifecta of upsets cannot be offset by Clark's national base of amorphous popularity. By the time Wesley Clark shows up to the dance, it will be over.

Dean is using the Internet to develop, brick-by-brick, a massive base of popular support. He faces Clark, who is trying to use the old-style media campaign to propel his way to the nomination.

Clark's managers, veterans of the 1992 Clinton run, are like the generals of France, who enter each war perfectly prepared to win the last one.

via the New York Post

Cyber-war

Hosting Matters, the company that hosts Petrified Truth, is apparently experiencing repeated Denial of Service (DoS) attacks from Internet hackers, so the site has been inaccessible for short or extended periods of time recently. That was the case most of today; only a very few visitors got through.

According to WorldNetDaily, Hosting Matters is being attacked because it hosts an anti-terrorist site that not only annoys the bad guys but also gets real results.

A website devoted to shutting down Internet supporters of terrorism has itself been shut down by denial-of-service attacks directed from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Internet Haganah, an Israeli-based website that works to uncover and shut down terrorist-sponsored Internet entities, was attacked by hackers beginning Thursday.

Supporters of a number of al Qaida-affiliated forums registered to Saudis and running in Malaysia declared "an online jihad against Haganah" after eight such terror-related sites lost their third-party DNS service, according to a spokesman for the organization. The result was that the sites dropped offline, and four of them remain offline.

GeoCities sites have been used to distribute the attack tools, and a site at Everyone's Internet posted graphics that show not just how to use the tools, but specifically how to use them to attack the site.

Hosting Matters has done its best to keep the site online in the face of an increasing level of hostile traffic, but there's only so much one can do unless you can get someone at the backbone level to block the incoming attacks, explained Internet Haganah.

Winds of Change has been following the situation today as well, and has more details if you're interested.

CIA sets 'em up?

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh takes on the deeply flawed relationship between the Bush administration and the CIA in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, with a special focus on the intelligence controversy over reports that Iraq tried to acquire uranium from Niger.

Astonishingly, Hersh cites sources within the CIA who say the forgeries were prepared by CIA insiders for the purpose of striking back at the Bush administration, whom the insiders saw as meddling with the integrity of the intelligence process.

Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has been published speculation about the intelligence services of several different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome, is that SISMI produced the false documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’” These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the SISMI intelligence.

“They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go—to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,” my source said. “They thought it’d be bought at lower levels—a big bluff.” The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration, who would be unable to resist flaunting them at a press conference or an interagency government meeting. They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. “It got out of control.”

Like all large institutions, C.I.A. headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, is full of water-cooler gossip, and a retired clandestine officer told me this summer that the story about a former operations officer faking the documents is making the rounds. “What’s telling,” he added, “is that the story, whether it’s true or not, is believed”—an extraordinary commentary on the level of mistrust, bitterness, and demoralization within the C.I.A. under the Bush Administration.

via The New Yorker
Listen to Seymour Hersh discuss his story via National Public Radio

The accuracy and actionability of intelligence is of critical importance and there are currently serious questions about the CIA's level of competence across many dimensions. But the idea that CIA personnel would try to set up their civilian leadership through forged evidence would mean that a vital component of our national security apparatus has gone rogue, and would call into question every piece of intelligence the CIA produces. Is the CIA unravelling? Or is Hersh all wet? Stay tuned on this one.

Pondering economics

Globalization and other economic issues are much on the mind these days. Sunday's newspaper alerts us that CAFTA negotiators are due here in Houston to hammer out a hemispheric trade deal. Houston is a major port and international trade city, so it's easy to see the potential for wider commerce with our neighbors to the south.

Of course, the immediate question is whether or not the anti-globalization protesters planning to show up will get naked like they did in Cancun and elsewhere. (I do suggest they should not step in front of Houston pickup drivers, clothed or not.)

Nearly six weeks after global trade talks collapsed in Cancun, negotiators from the United States and five Central American countries -- along with hundreds of protesters -- will gather in Houston this week to wrestle over a trade deal covering everything from sugar to cell phones.

Working against a self-imposed January deadline to reach an agreement after a year of negotiations, the five-day talks here over the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, may well determine the success or failure of the accord.

If successful, this would be the first regional free trade deal signed by the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was adopted more than a decade ago. That trade deal included Canada and Mexico.

But this week's meeting could also prove to be just as confrontational as the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun because some of the same issues are on the table. That meeting pitted rich countries against poor countries over agriculture subsidies and other issues.

Developing nations say that if they eliminate trade protections for farmers, they'll be run over by U.S. growers backed by billions of dollars in government aid. U.S. farmers respond that many of them are struggling, in part because they are shut out of many international markets.

The importance of this gathering isn't lost on protesters. Several hundred demonstrators are expected to hit the streets near the negotiating sessions at the Westin Oaks Galleria hotel.

via the Houston Chronicle

Looking at another aspect of the economic scene, the forecast for employment growth is still uncertain, despite an uptick in September statistics. Already a major issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, employment is a muddle -- both manufacturing and service sectors are experiencing wrenching change in how they get work done, and new domestic jobs are still scarce.

The political implications by next November are unclear, but Leftist demogoguery is a certainty. To be honest, it's hard to see how much a political leader can do to solve outright industrial overcapacity.

Much of the public outcry over America's failure to generate jobs has focused lately on a surge in the outsourcing of work to China and India. But another dynamic closer to home is weighing on job creation the slow process of working through a glut of boom-era investment that continues to litter the economy with underused factories.

"As long as there is extra capacity available in manufacturing, there is going to be room to move work around among companies without having to add workers," said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor and management expert at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That is true with a vengeance today. Not since the severe recession of the early 1980's has capacity use in manufacturing stayed so low for so long, government data show. Production as a percentage of total capacity fell precipitously in the aftermath of the last recession, which ended in 2001, and 23 months into the recovery, the upturn has still not come. On average, manufacturers are using less than 73 percent of their capacity.

Struggling to get rid of this costly glut, many companies continue to shut plants and lay off the workers.

New York Times article via The Ledger (Florida)

Government statisticians can't even measure how many jobs are going overseas, but it's plenty.

The Labor Department, in its numerous surveys of employers and employees, has never tried to calculate this trade-off. But the "offshoring" of work has become so noticeable lately that experts in the private sector are now trying to quantify it.

By these initial estimates, at least 15 percent of the 2.81 million jobs lost in America since the decline began have reappeared overseas. Productivity improvements at home — sustaining output with fewer workers — account for the great bulk of the job loss. But the estimates being made suggest that the work sent overseas has been enough to raise the unemployment rate by four-tenths of a percentage point or more, to the present 6.1 percent.

That leakage fuels the political debate.

While most of the lost jobs are in manufacturing or in telephone call centers, lately the work sent abroad has climbed way up the skills ladder to include workers like aeronautical engineers, software designers and stock analysts as China, Russia and India, with big stocks of educated workers, merge rapidly into the global labor market.

New York Times story via The Ledger (Florida)

And now comes a new story about the concerns of white-collar workers facing the "offshoring" of their careers, and their attempts to respond through political action. (I'm not a fan of "nouning" things, but "offshoring" may stick, often with an "anti-" in front of it.)

A new anti-free-trade movement is emerging in the United States, comprising highly skilled workers who once figured they would be big winners in the globalized economy but now see their white-collar jobs moving overseas in growing numbers.

The new opponents to lowering trade barriers are especially vocal, and their complaints already are getting the attention of Congress and the White House.

The new free-trade opponents include design engineers, skilled machinists, information-technology experts, and chief executives of specialized manufacturing concerns, among others. They long believed they were largely protected from foreign competition because of their advanced degrees, English language skills and the supposed necessity of dealing face-to-face with customers. But now they worry their jobs are at risk.

At the focus of their ire are big U.S. companies that have shifted business to China and India, which are becoming increasingly successful at nabbing service, information technology and high-end manufacturing work that until recently have been the preserve of U.S. firms. Companies seeking to lower their costs have either moved operations abroad or have contracted with foreign companies to supply essential services.

via the Contra Costa Times

A recent study, commissioned by the Indian information technology business association NASSCOM and completed by a U.S. research firm, says offshoring is both a net benefit to the U.S. economy and necessary because of the "graying" of the American workforce. (Indian IT firms would sure like to make that part of their business case.)

Evalueserve Inc., a full-service business research firm, interviewed worldwide economists and offshoring experts to produce the 80-page report. Additional information was gathered from statistics and forecasts available with the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Frankly, the results are compelling," says Marc Vollenweider, CEO, Evalueserve. "The study clearly shows the necessity of offshore activity to support the growth of the US Economy. The report also found that offshoring keeps US businesses competitive, creates new markets for US goods and services, and fills the shortfall in services labor that the US is expected to face in the next seven years."

Over the next decade, the US economy will mirror the growth of the 1990s leading to an increased demand for labor. There will be a domestic labor shortfall of approx. 5.6 million workers by 2010 due to slow population growth and an aging population.

If the labor shortfall is not met, the US economy will lose out on growth opportunities resulting in an estimated cumulative loss of $2 trillion by 2010. Global sourcing in the form of immigration, temporary workers and offshoring can overcome this shortfall.

via NASSCOM

Global consultancy McKinsey & Co. has conducted its own study and also concludes that offshoring is a net gain for the U.S.

Many businesses have turned to offshoring as a way to boost profits while many politicians see the gain only at the unacceptable cost of American jobs. MGI's latest research and analysis offer a new perspective: offshoring is as beneficial to the U.S. as it is to the destination country, probably more so.

The most obvious benefits of offshoring accrue to businesses and English-speaking destination countries. Lower wages in foreign countries translate into significant savings and, often, improved quality. A software developer in the U.S., for example, costs $60 an hour whereas one in India only costs $6 an hour. This and other benefits could translate to a net impact of a 50 percent increase in profits for American businesses.

Destination countries see increased investment and job creation through offshoring. India, for example, gains in net benefit at least 33 cents for every dollar of spend offshored to its country.

While Forrester, a technology research and trend analysis firm, predicts the loss of some 3.3 million jobs to offshoring in the U.S. by 2015, MGI's analysis shows that America has much more to gain.

Offshoring will allow America to capture economic value through multiple channels:

Reduced costs - savings from reduced costs means more savings, which can be passed to consumers or to investors to reinvest.

New revenues - Offshoring creates demand in destination countries for U.S. products, especially for high tech items.

Repatriated earnings - Several providers serving the U.S. market are incorporated in America, which means they repatriate their earnings back into the U.S.

Redeployed labor - U.S. workers who lose their jobs to offshoring will take up other jobs, which will in turn generate additional value for the economy.

Of the $1.45 - $1.47 of value MGI estimates is created globally from every dollar spend a domestic company chooses to divert abroad, the U.S. captures $1.12 - $1.14 while the receiving country captures on average 33 cents. In other words, the U.S. captures 78 percent of the total value.

via McKinsey Global Institute

All I know is that pervasive technological innovation is changing the world of work in dramatic, even radical, ways. Late sci-fi author John Brunner, who was not optimistic, called it "the Shockwave" and we're going to have to find a way to ride it.

"For all the claims one hears about the liberating impact of the data-net, the truth is that it's wished on most of us a brand-new reason for paranoia." --John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider", 1975.

What's wrong with the CIA?

Herbert E. Meyer, who served as special assistant to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and as vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council during the Reagan administration, considers why the CIA is having trouble with its intelligence work. Meyer's short answer: the agency no longer attracts the best minds.

The problem with the CIA lies within its structure and culture. It doesn’t match the task, because the analytic side of intelligence is unlike any other function of government. It is unlike budget-making, diplomacy, or the setting of policy for trade or agriculture. Intelligence is like science, which means that success depends utterly on having the most brilliant people studying a problem. Only they will know how to go about finding the right answer – and how to communicate it clearly and early enough to make a difference.

As geniuses like Albert Einstein and Jonas Salk remind us, in science there is no substitute for sheer intellectual firepower – in other words, for brains. This is why scientific research institutes hire the smartest people they can find, and why they place scientists at the top who are even more brilliant to manage the team and, when necessary, to decide which of their proposed experiments to back and which to stop. That’s why so many leading research institutes are headed by Nobel laureates. And it’s why the big breakthroughs in science come from research institutes rather than government-operated labs.

The most striking feature of the CIA’s analytic culture was its blandness. The secrets were fascinating, of course, but intellectually it was a boring place to work. Most of the analysts simply weren’t as well read as they should have been. For instance, they seemed not to have read much more in history than most college graduates. That may be acceptable for people elsewhere in the government, but not for people on whom the president relies to know what is really going on in the world and to predict the future soon enough so that he can change that future before it happens. They read the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, perhaps U.S. News & World Report, and occasionally the Economist. I rarely met anyone who read Commentary, National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, or any other cutting-edge publication where the world’s leading thinkers expound their ideas and perceptions about the world. The CIA’s analysts thought that the secret information to which they alone had access made all of that “open-source” insight unimportant.

via Hillsdale College's Imprimis

Al Qaeda and Saddam

New revelations courtesy of the translators at MEMRI about the links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq:

The independent Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher reveals details on the training of Al-Qa'ida members operating under the orders of Saddam's Presidential Palace two months before the September 11 attacks. The following are excerpts from the article:

Training At Nahrawan and Salman Pak

"An Iraqi officer (L) [only identified by initial] tells us that one day a Land Cruiser belonging to the Personal Security Force (Al-Amn Al-Khass, responsible for the protection of Saddam Hussein) arrived and a senior officer from the Presidential Palace stepped out of it. He was one of those officers who used to stand behind Saddam, which means that he was one of [his] personal bodyguards. After a two-hour meeting with a select group of officers at the Special Forces School, we were informed that we would have dear guests, and that we should train them very well in a high level of secrecy - not to allow anyone to approach them or to talk to them in any way, shape, or form.

"A few days later, about 100 trainees arrived. They were a mixture of Arabs, Arabs from the Peninsula [Saudi Arabia], Muslim Afghans, and other Muslims from various parts of the world. They were divided into two groups, the first one went to Al-Nahrawan and the second to Salman Pak, and this was the group that was trained to hijack airplanes. The training was under the direct supervision of major general (M. DH. L) [only identified by initials] who now serves as a police commander in one of the provinces. Upon the completion of the training most of them left Iraq, while the others stayed in the country through the last battle in Baghdad against the coalition forces."

Al-Qa'ida Group Headed by a Saudi Cleric

"I remember that the leader of the group was a Saudi cleric called [Muhammad], who was a fervent and audacious individual and did not require much training. He was highly skilled, and could fire accurately at a target while riding a motorcycle. Additionally, he used to deliver fiery sermons calling for Jihad and for fighting the Americans anywhere in the world. Surprisingly, this man's picture, alongside the commander of the Special Forces School, was televised several times before the beginning of the war and the fall of the former regime."

Training Supervised by the Fedayeen Command

"...The Fedayeen command [Fedayeen Saddam under Uday's command] supervised the 100 Al-Qa'ida fighters directly, to the extent that senior Fedayeen officers visited them constantly and inspected them almost daily, especially during the final days when they transferred them, late at night in two red trucks that belonged to the Ministry of Transportation, to an undisclosed destination. I witnessed that with my own eyes because on that day I was the duty officer."

Tip via Econopundit

Gallic brakes on the Internet

A French court decision could be a significant speedbump for the burgeoning new industry of search engine marketing. The French just keep helping out in every way, don't they?

A French court has ruled against the internet search engine Google in an intellectual property rights case that may have far reaching technological and financial implications for internet search firms, which process tens of millions of queries a day.

The civil court in Nanterre, near Paris, fined Google €75,000 ($126,000) for allowing advertisers to link text internet advertisements to trademarked search terms and gave the company 30 days to stop the practice, common at internet search services.

The ruling, handed down last week, is believed to be the first in which the owner of a trademarked term successfully sued an internet search service for allowing advertisers to use protected terms in text ads.

If it is upheld on appeal and validated in other countries, the decision could force the search services to pre-screen search terms for trademarks before letting advertisers use them.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, said it would appeal against the decision and declined further comment.

Because the decision is enforceable, Google will have to make the changes while the appeal is under way or face fines of up to €1500 for each infraction.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Chavez glowers

Venezuela's strongman, self-declared champion of "the people," is continuing on his path to totalitarianism, inch by inch.

President Hugo Chavez issued a warning Saturday to anyone planning to sign a referendum on his presidency, saying their names would be registered and remembered "forever."

Venezuela's elections authority this week said the opposition could gather signatures supporting a recall referendum from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1. The constitution says a referendum request must be backed by signatures from at least 20 percent of the electorate.

But Chavez warned: "Their names will be recorded forever."

"They should know that although they are not going to get (a referendum), their names will be recorded. Unlike in a vote, which is secret, they will sign. They will put their names and surnames, their national ID number and their fingerprint," he said.

via ABC News

Bumpersticker watch

Best bumpersticker seen this week:

Iraq - loans or not?

Both the blogosphere and mainstream pundits are having a hot debate about the Senate vote requiring that half of the proposed $20-billion in reconstruction assistance to Iraq take the form of a loan, not an outright grant.

Lindsey Graham typified the muddled thought-process of the Republican deserters, failing to appreciate the implications of siding with Tom Daschle and friends:

"We've given lives and we've given money, all we're asking is some of that money be paid back when they can afford to pay it back," Mr. Graham said. "I see this as the first step — sort of a wake-up call that we need to tend to the domestic aspects of this more."

Blogger Spoons has a roundup of what might constitute the case against outright grants.

But the estimable Donald Sensing makes a passionate and persuasive case for the idiocy of the loan idea.

We took the place over. We want to establish a non-aggressive, representative government there.

And now our Senate wants to make the Iraqis pay for it.

That is worse than merely miserly. It is punitive. It is effectively equal to making Iraq pay reparations. We didn’t even make Japan and Germany do that after the second world war because the ruinous reparations imposed on Germany after World War I contributed to the rise of Hitlerism there.

It doesn’t matter that Iraq will never actually pay the money back (the debt will be quietly forgotten by the Bush administration and later Congresses). Politics is a realm of symbolism, and the symbolism of the United States Senate is now clear: "Iraq, up yours."

My own take is that we should keep in mind that loan idea was hatched by Democrats who do not support the President and either (a) don't care if we fail in Iraq, (b) want us to fail in Iraq, or (c) don't have the vision to understand how to succeed in Iraq. On that basis alone, loans are Bad.

However, this is a useful reminder of the importance of keeping a decisive edge in political contests. High poll numbers are like big electoral margins: they push opponents back and make it much easier to keep the waverers in line. And there are always waverers, ready to jump when the going gets tough.

"The Good, the Bad, the Ugly"

David Brooks says the Democrats are split into three -- no, make it four -- camps on American strategy towards Iraq. His best take is on the first camp, the "Nancy Pelosi Democrats."

These Democrats voted against Paul Bremer's $87 billion plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. The essence of their case is that the Bush administration is too corrupt and incompetent to reconstruct Iraq. If Bush is for it, they're against it.

Their hatred for Bush is so dense, it's hard for them to see through it to the consequences of their vote. But if Pelosi's arguments had carried the day, our troops in Iraq would be reading this morning about the death of the Bremer plan and the ruination of our efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Saddam Hussein would be jubilant in Pelosi's Iraq. He has long argued that America is a decadent country that will buckle at the first sign of trouble. If the Pelosi Democrats had won yesterday's vote, the Saddam Doctrine would be enshrined in every terrorist cave and dictator's palace around the world: kill some Americans and watch the empire buckle.

A few days ago the Pelosi Democrats came up with a fig leaf alternative to the Bremer plan, which would have reduced U.S. control of reconstruction and shifted power to the World Bank. When that plan went nowhere, the Pelosi Democrats were faced with a choice: trust Americans or choke off the funds. They voted to choke off the funds.

And so in Pelosi's Iraq, there would be little money for children's hospitals, jails, clean water and schools. In Pelosi's Iraq, everyone would begin preparing for the post-U.S. power vacuum. The Kurds would rush to independence, the Sunnis would stock up on weapons, and the Shiites would call in Iran to help them in the coming civil war. The dream of an Iraqi constitution would die in its crib.

For the roster of the Pelosi Democrats, look at those who voted against the Bremer plan. Some names are obvious: Dennis Kucinich, Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer. But there are some names you wouldn't expect to see on that list: John Kerry and John Edwards.

France, Russia and Syria don't oppose the Bremer plan, but the Pelosi Democrats are to the left of Bashar al-Assad.

via The New York Times

Apostrophe vs. Apocalypse

The misuse of the humble but essential apostrophe is getting some much-needed attention in Britain.

Something must be done to protect the correct use of the apostrophe, or civilisation will crumble and anarchy will ensue.... What we need now is militant action.

I propose a new breakaway Apostrophe Action Front which will take direct action to punish and shame absusers of the apostrophe.

via The Thinker
Tip via Stephen Pollard

The Left edge

Last week was pledge time for both National Public Radio affiliates and for the Pacifica network. Local Houston station KUHF raised over $540,000 by appealing to our sense of nobless oblige, and through incentives like an Engines of Our Ingenuity CD-ROM, as well as the usual assortment of books, mugs and t-shirts.

All in all, Conventional Wisdom is easier to tolerate than true Leftist babble.

Dirty nukes?

Jihadist WMDs may be coming our way. Perhaps civil libertarians should be more concerned about the fair and equal distribution of anti-radiation sickness meds than the purported dangers of the USA Patriot Act and John Ashcroft.

A key al Qaeda terrorism suspect was in Canada looking for nuclear material for a "dirty bomb," The Washington Times has learned.

Adnan El Shukrijumah is being sought by the FBI and CIA in connection with a plot to detonate a dirty bomb — a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material.

According to an FBI informant, El Shukrijumah was spotted last year in Hamilton, Ontario, posing as a student at McMaster University, which has a 5-megawatt research reactor. U.S. officials believe El Shukrijumah, whose photograph was posted on the FBI's Web site in March, was in Hamilton trying to obtain radioactive material.

U.S. intelligence officials said earlier this year that al Qaeda planned to detonate a dirty bomb inside the United States, a plot directed by [captured al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed.

According to the officials, the al Qaeda members were sent to North America and assigned with making the bomb from materials acquired there, rather than trying to smuggle conventional explosives and radioactive material into the United States. The terrorists were to buy or steal radioactive material with help from people who had access to research reactors or radioactive medical waste.

via The Washington Times
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Teach your children

Well, this is probably not helpful. What would make them do such a thing? Bad character? Lack of adult supervision? ADHD?

Palestinian children have burned a holy site near the West Bank city of Nablus where Jews believe the biblical Joseph is buried, witnesses and the army said. The children threw several burning tyres into the shrine on Thursday.

The shrine was nearly destroyed by Palestinians three years ago when fighting erupted between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Palestinian fire department rushed to the scene to put out the fire.

Oh, I see -- the Israelis drove them to it.

Some of the children said they set the tomb on fire because the army had placed a curfew on the surrounding area and blocked them from getting to school so that Jewish settlers could pray at the holy site.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

I'm sure the little hoodlums, er, angels, would have been studiously applying themselves at school if it hadn't been for the darned IDF.

Asinine

Stupidity like that being shown by hack politico Haley Barbour is exactly what holds the Republican Party back from becoming the majority party in this nation. Not to mention the moral obtuseness. Gawd.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Haley Barbour said he will not ask the Council of Conservative Citizens to remove his picture from a group Web site that promotes white supremacist and anti-Semitic causes.

Barbour, 55, said some views on the St. Louis-based group's Web site are "indefensible," but he does not want to tell any group it cannot use his picture or statements.

"Once you get into that, you spend your time doing nothing else," Barbour said Thursday. "I don't care who has my picture. My picture's in the public domain. It gets published in newspapers every day."

In the photo on the national CCC Web site, Barbour and several other casually dressed people are shown at a political rally this past summer in rural Carroll County.

The CCC site also features Confederate flags, has links to articles such as "In defense of racism" and offers books on why the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't deserve a national holiday and why Germany should be cleared of the "blood libel of the 'Holocaust."'

via Fox News

Some fairness and balance

Just by tuning in any traditional news outlet, you can hear all about what's difficult in Iraq and elsewhere (at least during pauses between the latest sordid Kobe Bryant trial developments).

In Afghanistan:

Afghan soldiers backed by U.S. troops and helicopters have killed seven Taliban and captured 12 others during a raid in southern Afghanistan, a police chief said Wednesday.

The raid was launched on the suspected Taliban hideout Monday, sparking a shootout which ended Tuesday. About 500 Afghan soldiers armed with heavy machine guns, AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers participated in the operation.

In Yemen:

Yemeni police have arrested two men and seized nine suitcases full of explosives in the southeastern town of Hadramout, a security official said Wednesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the arrest took place Saturday after a tip. Both men are under investigation, the official said. One of