Petrified Truth

Today in history

In 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens -- better known as Mark Twain -- was born in Florida, Missouri. His contributions to American letters and to our unique civilization are enduring. In his memoir Life on the Mississippi, Clemens recounted how he came to choose his memorable pen name, remembering the example of Captain Isaiah Sellers, late riverboat veteran.

At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands-- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Also worth noting, in 1874 Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, England. I would argue that Churchill was the single most important political figure of the 20th century. His unflinching courage in facing up to Hitler's expansionist totalitarianism changed the course of history and prevented a collapse of Western civilization in Europe.

Churchill was a great writer and orator, and always eminently quotable. Many of his insights are perfectly applicable to our situation today, as noted earlier this year by his grandson Winston Churchill III. This one comes to mind often:

If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

Wofford playoff

I'll be darned -- the Wofford-NC A&T playoff game from Spartanburg, SC is on cable here in Houston. Go, Terriers.

UPDATE: Wofford up 10-0 at halftime. Nice sideline interview with President Benjamin Dunlop, noting that Wofford is the smallest school (1100 students) in NCAA Div. I, either A or AA, and gives only 48 football scholarships annually, but the athletic graduation rate at Wofford is #10 in the nation. 20% of the male students are on the football team!

Very different from back in the day (70s) for me. For one thing, Joe Lesesne, the college president from my time, has now retired and is an assistant coach of the football team. That must be unique to the world of small colleges.

UPDATE: Wofford wins 31-10. They looked very good, esp. their running game. In fact, the game summary on MBC Sports says zero yards passing, so it was ALL running, and defense. Next round will be against the winner of Western Kentucky v. Jacksonville State.

UPDATE: AP game story via The State. And Western Kentucky has blown out Jacksonville State 45-7, so it will be the Terriers vs. the Hilltoppers next week.

Getting power

Tony Blankley says the Medicare victory, with AARP's cooperation, is just more evidence that Republicans are slowly breaking the deathgrip of Democrats on the levers of power in Washington, D.C.

Power is, of course, never complete and always changing. But as the Republicans continue to peel away more and more pieces of the remaining Democratic influence in Washington, more and more Democratic senators and congressmen will feel compelled to work with, and vote with, the Republicans on legislation. Crumbs are better than starvation. The remaining loyal Democrats will sound ever more shrill and thus unfit to govern — pungent adjectives being the last resort of a minority party.

via the Washington Times

Traversing the blogosphere

Round-up of some notable recent posts from around the blogosphere, or why I like to read weblogs:

Stephen Pollard examines the recent maneuverings around Britain's possible entry into the euro and deeper involvement in the EU in general and uses the phrase "lies, hypocricy and economic madness." Very perceptive.

Bush in Baghdad -- it rocks

President Bush's daring visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day stunned the troops, the media, and the Democrats. Talk about shock and awe.

The President's remarks were concise but heartfelt and powerful, including this central passage:

Today, Americans are gathering with their loved ones to give thanks for the many blessings in our lives. And this year we are especially thankful for the courage and the sacrifice of those who defend us, the men and women of the United States military.

I bring a message on behalf of America: we thank you for your service, we're proud of you, and America stands solidly behind you. Together, you and I have taken an oath to defend our country. You're honoring that oath. The United States military is doing a fantastic job. You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don't have to face them in our own country. You're defeating Saddam's henchmen, so that the people of Iraq can live in peace and freedom.

By helping the Iraqi people become free, you're helping change a troubled and violent part of the world. By helping to build a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East, you are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful.

You're engaged in a difficult mission. Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will. They hope we will run. We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.

We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you're part of the finest military ever assembled. And we will prevail because the Iraqis want their freedom.

Every day you see firsthand the commitment to sacrifice that the Iraqi people are making to secure their own freedom. I have a message for the Iraqi people: you have an opportunity to seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever.

via the White House

Happy Thanksgiving

As proclaimed by the Continental Congress on October 11, 1782:

By the United States in Congress assembled.

PROCLAMATION.

IT being the indispensable duty of all Nations, not only to offer up their supplications to ALMIGHTY GOD, the giver of all good, for his gracious assistance in a time of distress, but also in a solemn and public manner to give him praise for his goodness in general, and especially for great and signal interpositions of his providence in their behalf: Therefore the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these States, in the course of the important conflict in which they have been so long engaged; the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war, in the course of the year now drawing to a close; particularly the harmony of the public Councils, which is so necessary to the success of the public cause; the perfect union and good understanding which has hitherto subsisted between them and their Allies, notwithstanding the artful and unwearied attempts of the common enemy to divide them; the success of the arms of the United States, and those of their Allies, and the acknowledgment of their independence by another European power, whose friendship and commerce must be of great and lasting advantage to these States:----- Do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these States in general, to observe, and request the several States to interpose their authority in appointing and commanding the observation of THURSDAY the twenty-eight day of NOVEMBER next, as a day of solemn THANKSGIVING to GOD for all his mercies: and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience of his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.

Done in Congress, at Philadelphia, the eleveth day of October, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two, and of our Sovereignty and Independence, the seventh.

via the Library of Congress

Jihad arts and sciences

Apparently Howard Dean isn't the only one making imaginative use of the Internet.

As part of its evolving structure, al-Qaeda has commenced a major expansion into a new medium – the World-Wide Web. Affiliates of the terrorist group say the organization is in the process of establishing an “Al-Qa’ida University for Jihad Sciences” on the internet, with the aim of recruiting new members and training existing ones.

via AFPC's Eurasia Security Alert

Hillary speaks

Hillary Clinton is keeping her powder dry regarding a possible presidential run next year, but she sounds more interested in 2008. If Bush's poll ratings hold and the economy continues to improve, she'll wait until the way seems clear. Who among the current crop of GOPers could compete? Hard to see a good candidate right now -- mediocrity seems rampant.

Hillary Clinton has suggested that she may run for US president in 2008 but would stay out of the campaign for next year, in an interview with a German magazine released yesterday.

Asked by Bunte magazine why she was not standing in 2004, a race already well under way, the New York senator said she was happy with her job.

But people are disappointed she was not competing, she was told.

"I know. Well, perhaps I'll do it next time around," she replied.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Giving thanks in a strenuous year

Karl Zinsmeister, former embedded journalist with U.S. forces in Iraq, finds much to admire among our military and much cause for giving thanks.

Independent thinking by line soldiers is not only tolerated in our armed forces, it is required by the new freelancing style of warfare. Outsiders who envision our fighting forces as authoritarian institutions would be surprised to observe the meritocratic nature of our military in action. Obstacles are generally surmounted after open, democratic-style contention among competing views. I witnessed many spirited debates--among officers in the command tents as well as between privates and sergeants--over the best ways to achieve important objectives. The general modus operandi is competition: "May the smartest idea, and biggest bicep, win."

America's soldiers have the skills to fly missiles into designated windows and squeeze off one-mile sniper shots. They have the openness and democratic habits to serve as good representatives of our liberal society. And they are also admirable on a third front: for their moral idealism.

Hollywood war stories like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down" promulgate the notion that contemporary soldiers fight not for cause and country but simply for the survival of themselves and their buddies. But most American soldiers are quite conscious of the titanic clash of moral universes that lies behind today's U.S. venture into the Middle East. They are not only aware of the historical importance of this fight, but proud of their role in it, and broadly motivated by high principles extending far beyond self preservation.

When you talk to our wounded soldiers they say, astonishingly, that they don't regret the fight. Almost universally, they say they are anxious to return to their units as soon as possible. Most American warriors subscribe to the words of John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

It's easy for critics on both the left and right to convince themselves that the U.S. is a decadent society, that our young people have gone soft, that we will never have another generation like the men who climbed the cliffs at Normandy. That judgment, I'm here to report, is utterly wrong. We've got soldiers in uniform today whom Americans can trust with any responsibility, any difficulty, any mortal challenge.

At the end of this strenuous year, we give thanks for them.

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

School as innoculation against jihadism

Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz and Afghani-born American Malalai Wassil say the U.S. and the West need a more strategic approach to rebuilding the education system in Afghanistan.

While the terrorist challenge will not easily fade, as multiple, indiscriminate terrorist attacks in Turkey and Saudi Arabia have now shown, it is vital to limit the scope and impact of its threat by focusing on educating future generations in countries that are today's havens for terrorists. US policymakers must focus on cutting the terrorists' recruitment cords by rehabilitating the education systems of countries like Afghanistan so the pursuit of jihad becomes one of seeking knowledge and becoming productive members of society, not joining terrorists in their quest to destroy humanity.

At the height of the Soviet invasion, primary-school enrollment was roughly 54 percent for boys and 15 percent for girls. But war with the Soviets, followed by a devastating civil war and the antieducation rule of the Taliban, reduced those numbers to 35 percent for boys and just 3 percent for girls at the primary school level, and 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively, at secondary levels.

Little wonder that bin Laden and Al Qaeda's educated leadership structure thrived in such a vacuum, picking off young men prone to years of systematic fighting to join its jihadist plots because they had no system in place to teach them any better. Targeting the uneducated was, from the inception of Al Qaeda, a cornerstone of the terror group's strategy for expansion.

via the Christian Science Monitor

Hugh Kenner, RIP

Dammit, Hugh Kenner has died. He was a brilliant literary critic, one of the very few worth reading consistently. Everything he wrote was original and worthwhile. Discovering The Pound Era changed my life. This is a great loss.

Hugh Kenner, the critic, author and professor of literature regarded as America's foremost commentator on literary modernism, especially the work of Ezra Pound and James Joyce, died yesterday at his home in Athens, Ga. He was 80.

The variety of Mr. Kenner's interests was contained in 25 books of his own (he contributed to 200 more) and nearly 1,000 articles, as well as broadcasts and recordings. He wrote commandingly on everything from Irish poetry to geodesic math and Li'l Abner's pappy (Lucifer Ornamental Yokum), to the Heath/Zenith Z-100 computer (one of which he built for himself and then wrote the user's guide) and the animated cartoons of Chuck Jones.

But it was for his pioneering guide to English-language literary modernism and for his books "Dublin's Joyce" (1956), "The Pound Era" (1971) and "Joyce's Voices" (1978) that Mr. Kenner was best known. In these works and others he employed the techniques proposed by the writers themselves to define new standards by which to judge their work.

Over time his prose style grew increasingly graceful, witty and accessible, prompting C. K. Stead, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, to call him "the most readable of living critics." He thought of writing as an "abnormal act," as he told an interviewer at U.S. News & World Report in 1983, rendered an increasingly "quaint skill" by the rise of other forms of communication.

Yet he scarcely confined his communication to print. Told by Pound in the early 1950's "to visit the great men of your own time," Mr. Kenner befriended many of his subjects, as well as the poet Louis Zukofsky, Buckminster Fuller and William F. Buckley Jr., who was best man at his second wedding.

Nor, surprisingly, did he deplore the decline of print as our main medium. "We forget that most of what people read when everybody read all the time was junk — competent junk," he told U.S. News & World Report. "Now they get it from television. The casual entertainment people get in The evening from the box was what they used to get from the short fiction in The Saturday Evening Post. That magazine and others like it were the situation comedies and cop shows of their era. It is not a cultural loss that this particular use of literacy has been transferred from one medium to another."

via The New York Times

Iraqis going long

Savvy Jalal Talabani, current president of the Iraq Governing Council and secretary-general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, says Iraqis want the ball.

It has been my privilege to preside over the Iraqi Governing Council during a month of momentous events. We now have an agreement for the transfer of authority between the coalition, the liberators, and the council, the representatives of the liberated Iraqis. President Bush has outlined an inspiring vision for a free and democratic Middle East. Our American friends are resolutely striking back at the vicious remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and damaging the network of Baathists and foreign Islamists attempting to destroy the Iraqi experiment in democracy. Yet these gains could easily be forfeited if we Iraqis do not bear the brunt of the fighting.

The enemies of Iraqi freedom are not "resistance," a word that evokes the heroism of Poles in the Second World War, nobly battling their occupiers. Nor can those who murder our American liberators, Red Cross workers, U.N. officials and Italian policemen be termed "guerrillas." Rather, they are terrorists. They are the thugs and torturers who repressed their fellow Iraqis for 35 years, the perpetrators of genocide, men who butchered hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Shiite Arabs. The creation of an antidemocratic fascist counterrevolution of Baathists and foreign Islamic volunteers, some of whom are from al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, is a classic unholy Middle Eastern alliance. These people have more support among the Arab media and in the studios of al-Jazeera than they do in Iraq.

The significance of this wave of terrorism is not military but political. On the battlefield the terrorists are losing. But the terrorists have grasped something that too few in the U.S. will admit: that Iraq is now the central front both in the war against terrorism and the struggle for a better Middle East. The terrorists will not stop fighting if the U.S. troops are withdrawn, rather they will become emboldened to believe that they can win this conflict.

The terrorists want our bid for democracy to fail, just as the same terrorists attempted in recent years to undermine self-rule in Iraqi Kurdistan. The courage of the U.S. and Britain in liberating Iraq was a blow to the negative forces in the Middle East, to the Arab chauvinism and Islamist radicalism that so murderously combined to commit the atrocity of September 11. These terrorists know that if they are defeated in Iraq, then they will be defeated everywhere, but that if they can make the U.S. stumble or lose its nerve in Iraq, then their cause is not yet lost. It is for Iraqis to prove them wrong.

via WSJ's OpinionJournal
Tip via Healing Iraq

Talabani and his colleagues are following up their rhetoric with actions.

Iraq's political factions have agreed to establish what they are calling an "antiterror front" to confront the anti-U.S. insurgency, with an organizing committee to meet before the end of this month. Plans for the force were detailed in a telephone interview with Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who currently is president of the Iraqi Governing Council.

Members of the antiterror front, which would take over some duties from coalition forces but not immediately replace them, "will come from both inside and outside" the political parties and factions that make up the Governing Council, Mr. Talabani said.

He said a "security committee," which will meet by the end of November, would choose both fighting men and intelligence officers, who would be drawn from existing militias such as his own Kurdish pershmerga, the Iraqi National Council's militia and the Shi'ite Badr Brigade.

The 60,000 pershmerga guerrillas would not be deployed in Arab areas as peacekeepers, but could be used to guard facilities and patrol the borders, he said. That would free up Sunni and other forces for operations in the Sunni Triangle.

via the Washington Times

Czech President Vaclev Klaus, no stranger to fighting the efforts of totalitarianism to hang on to power, sounds like he would sympathize with the Iraqis' desire to lead the way.

"My concern was always what to do after the end of the war because I know something about the transition from a totalitarian regime to a free society," he said. "This cannot be done by soldiers, or by foreigners.

"After we won back our freedom at the end of the Cold War, there was a proposal to bring back Czechs who had escaped to Western countries and make up a new government of those people who had been living in free countries.

"Those who had lived the tragic communist experience said no to the idea of foreigners organizing our transition back to freedom. We said we had to do this ourselves without outside influence dictating what we should do."

via the Washington Times

Three pillars

A BBC page has a link to video of President Bush's important "three pillars" speech in Whitehall during his recent trip to Great Britain.

Today in history

Italian author Carlo Lorenzini, better known by his pseudonym Carlo Collodi, was born on this day in 1826. He is best remembered for his tales of the puppet Pinocchio.

More importantly, today is the anniversary of the 1859 publication of British naturalist Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," which explained his theory of evolution. Darwin's "dangerous idea" changed the intellectual trajectory of our civilization.

Orwellian delusions

Scholar Victor Davis Hanson's essay on immigration in the new issue of Hillsdale College's Imprimis is full of insight.

Since roughly 1970, the evolving concept of multiculturalism—which holds that Western civilization merits no special consideration, inasmuch as all cultures are of equal merit—has proved to be the force-multiplier of illegal immigration from Mexico. By denying or deprecating the singularity of democracy, capitalism, the rule of law, civic audit and religious freedom, multiculturalism confuses both native Americans and immigrants about why people are leaving Mexico in droves in the first place, and in the second, why they are heading northward rather than southward into Central or South America. Rather than explaining reality, this new ideology emphasizes racial prejudice and economic exploitation in America’s past—a topic of increasing interest to comfortable elites, but apparently not seen as an obstacle by the millions of poor and impoverished Mexicans who risk their lives daily to reach the American promised land.

Almost every well-intended and enlightened gesture designed to help immigrants over the last three decades—bilingual education, ever expanding and new state welfare programs, the affirmation of a hyphenated identity and the radical historical revisionism of southwestern American history—has been detrimental to the processes of assimilation and economic improvement. Almost everything stern and uncompromising that for two centuries has helped other immigrants to the United States—entry under legal auspices, language immersion, autonomy from government assistance, rapid assumption of an American identity and eager acceptance of mainstream American culture—has either been dismissed as passé or carried on halfheartedly.

Most Californians of all backgrounds understand the growing social and cultural costs that flow from this situation. Yet the Orwellian alliance of many libertarian-leaning conservatives—who embrace the idea of a perpetual supply of hard-working, unskilled and inexpensive workers—with the race industry of the Left—which envisions an endless influx of unassimilated potential voters who can be appealed to on the basis of group rather than individual identity—tends to demonize any discussion of the issue. Opposition to massive illegal immigration is customarily and cleverly equated with disdain for immigration per se, hence characterized as un-American. Given the demagoguery of our elected state representatives and the general hostility to frank talk about illegal immigration, ballot propositions led by unelected partisans and enacted through popular vote, rather than through legislative debate, have become the chief mechanisms of addressing this issue. Embittered Californians give tacit approval to therapeutic bromides in their schools and state agencies—and then flock to the polls to vent their rage by voting to end what they see as special consideration for those who broke the law in coming here. In the last decade, California majorities have voted against state aid to illegal immigrants, affirmative action and bilingual education, but far fewer than a majority will admit to taking part. It is not a healthy thing to have a voting population of millions thinking privately what they won’t express publicly.

Dr. Hanson has the advantage of being a California native who is living in an area currently being transformed by Mexican immigration -- he's a first-hand witness, sympathetic and keen-eyed. His recent book Mexifornia: A State of Becoming sounds valuable.

Getting the queen bees

Fareed Zakaria recently interviewed Singapore's leader Lee Kuan Yew, who had a lot to say about the threat posed by global terrorism.

"The Europeans underestimate the problem of Al Qaeda-style terrorism," he said. "They think that the United States is exaggerating the threat. They compare it to their own many experiences with terror—the IRA, the Red Brigade, the Baader-Meinhof, ETA. But they are wrong."

He went on: "Al Qaeda-style terrorism is new and unique because it is global. An event in Morocco can excite the passions of extremist groups in Indonesia. There is a shared fanatical zealousness among these different extremists around the world. Many Europeans think they can finesse the problem, that if they don’t upset Muslim countries and treat Muslims well, the terrorists won’t target them. But look at Southeast Asia. Muslims have prospered here. But still, Muslim terrorism and militancy have infected them.” Lee pointed out that Singapore and Thailand have both been targeted in recent years, though neither has mistreated its Muslim populations.

"The Americans, however, make the mistake of seeking largely a military solution. You must use force. But force will only deal with the tip of the problem. In killing the terrorists, you will only kill the worker bees. The queen bees are the preachers, who teach a deviant form of Islam in schools and Islamic centers, who capture and twist the minds of the young."

Lee was critical of both sides of the Atlantic alliance on Iraq. "When America and Europe are divided, when Japan is hesitant, the extremists are emboldened and think they can win against a divided group. The terrorists' tactics for the time being are to hit only Americans, Jews and America’s strong supporters, the British, the Italians, the Turks, warning the Japanese but leaving others alone. They intend to divide and conquer."

via Newsweek

Lee's points are well-taken. Both Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have thought out loud along the same lines, but it isn't obvious what's being done, if anything, or even who should take the lead -- the Pentagon isn't the natural place for a cultural/political war, but the State Dept. seems both inept and unwilling to do this.

History lesson

Today in history: in 1765, Frederick County, Md., repudiated the British Stamp Act. Over the next few years, hijinks ensued.

Bigotry hiding

The collapse in moral bearings among European elites continues apace.

The European Union's racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined.

The Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) decided in February not to publish the 112-page study, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times, after clashing with its authors over their conclusions.

The news comes amid growing fears that there is an upsurge of anti-semitism in European Union countries.

Following a spate of incidents in early 2002, the EUMC commissioned a report from the Centre for Research on Anti-semitism at Berlin's Technical University.

When the researchers submitted their work in October last year, however, the centre's senior staff and management board objected to their definition of anti-semitism, which included some anti-Israel acts. The focus on Muslim and pro-Palestinian perpetrators, meanwhile, was judged inflammatory.

"There is a trend towards Muslim anti-semitism, while on the left there is mobilisation against Israel that is not always free of prejudice," said one person familiar with the report. "Merely saying the perpetrators are French, Belgian or Dutch does no justice to the full picture."

Some EUMC board members had also attacked part of the analysis ascribing anti-semitic motives to leftwing and anti-globalisation groups, this person said. "The decision not to publish was a political decision."

via the Financial Times
Also reported in The Telegraph (UK)

Other wisdom

Today, Nov. 22, is the 40th anniversary of the death of philosopher and novelist C. S. Lewis, whose passing was overshadowed by the dramatic events that day in Dallas, Texas. A quote of the day:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Today also marks 40 years since the passing of novelist Aldous Huxley ("Brave New World"), who was thought-provoking in a way that is, well, different from C. S. Lewis.

"Experience teaches only the teachable."
"Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."

Small arms

The U.S. Army continues to adapt to changing conditions on the battlefield, which is a virtue. Since the Russians are such good friends now, why not just go for real Kalashnikov AKs, the mainstay of combat in primitive conditions around the world?

After nearly 40 years of battlefield service around the globe, the M-16 may be on its way out as the standard Army assault rifle because of flaws highlighted during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

U.S. officers in Iraq say the M-16A2 -- the latest incarnation of the 5.56 mm firearm -- is quietly being phased out of front-line service because it has proven too bulky for use inside the Humvees and armored vehicles that have emerged as the principal mode of conducting patrols since the end of major fighting on May 1.

The M-16, at nearly 40 inches, is widely considered too long to aim quickly within the confines of a vehicle during a firefights, when reaction time is a matter of life and death.

Instead of the M-16, which also is prone to jamming in Iraq's dusty environment, M-4 carbines are now widely issued to American troops. The M-4 is essentially a shortened M-16A2, with a clipped barrel, partially retractable stock and a trigger mechanism modified to fire full-auto instead of three-shots bursts.

Still, experience has shown the carbines also have deficiencies. The cut-down barrel results in lower bullet velocities, decreasing its range. It also tends to rapidly overheat and the firing system, which works under greater pressures created by the gases of detonating ammunition, puts more stress on moving parts, hurting its reliability.

Consequently, the M-4 is an unlikely candidate for the rearming of the U.S. Army. It is now viewed as an interim solution until the introduction of a more advanced design known as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, or OICW.

via The Guardian

Capitalist totalitarianism?

Former KGB strongman Vladimir Putin is methodically placing former state security operatives in droves at every level of Russia's government. Putin seems to have earned the favor of certain world leaders, including Israel's Ariel Sharon and President Bush, for reasons that aren't really clear. We can only hope that GWB's stated aspirations for the spread of democracy include backward Russia as well as the Middle East.

Over the past few years literally thousands of such men have followed the road to power forged in 2000 by former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin. In every region of Russia, at every level of government, former secret-police agents are grabbing power, digging in and recruiting old KGB friends. More and more, they are stepping in to “manage” Russia’s fledgling democracy—most recently (but by no means exclusively) with their legal assault on the giant Yukos Oil Co. and the arrest of its biggest shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. A whiff of repression rides the air. Liberals worry that the Russian police state is being reborn. Nonsense, say conservatives. Russia needs more law and order, even at the sacrifice of a bit of freedom. Whatever the Yukos case portends, it is clear that the old secret police will play an ever larger role in Russia’s future. Well-disciplined, smart and loyal, these men of power, the siloviki, are back.

Russian politics are notoriously opaque, but a leading sociologist in Moscow, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, has dedicated her career to tracking such men and their activities. Unsurprisingly, she’s not particularly popular at the Kremlin these days. Rumors of a “creeping KGB coup,” she says, are borne out by the numbers.

A full 25 percent of senior Russian officials in Moscow come from the siloviki, according to her figures, up from 3 percent under the last head of the Soviet police state, Mikhail Gorbachev. (Most other analysts accept Kryshtanovskaya’s numbers, and the Kremlin doesn’t dispute them.) Outside government, tens of thousands of former KGB men now working for private security companies function effectively as “sleeper cells,” she adds, which spring to life at critical moments—such as the current election campaign, where they contribute everything from legwork to kompromat, or “compromising materials,” on candidates opposing the Kremlin’s United Russia Party. “In the past,” she says, “we had a socialist totalitarian state. Now we will have a capitalist totalitarian state.”

via Newsweek

The ultimate smart bomb

Wonder why so many terrorist assaults now are suicide attacks? Aside from the underlying psycho-social reasons, the tactical reason is: they work.

Terrorists are increasingly choosing to conduct suicide-type attacks because of their increased effectiveness, a terrorism expert said Wednesday.

Speaking before a conference held here by the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, RAND Vice President Bruce Hoffman listed several reasons why terrorists are increasingly turning to suicide attacks, including the ability of the attacker to adopt to changes in situation and to defenses around targets, as well as the fact that the perpetrator is no long available after the attack for possible capture and interrogation by authorities.

“In essence,” suicide bombers are “the ultimate smart bomb,” Hoffman said.

To demonstrate the increased effectiveness of suicide attacks, Hoffman said that suicide attacks conducted in Israel kill six times more than other types of attacks and injure 26 times more people. He said that the suicide component of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed more than 2,500 people, was “essential” to the attacks’ successes.

via Global Security Newswire

JFK's "legacy"

Stringent columnist Christopher Hitchens has a few words for the "hagiographers and mythologists" who nurture the fading legacy of slain president John F. Kennedy.

I may still be in a minority in this, and don't care if I am, but I am glad to find that the Kennedy drama and the Kennedy cult is falling away into nothingness. The effort of keeping it up is too much trouble. It has been a long time since anyone rang me, or wrote to me, with hectic new information about the real scoop on the assassination. It has been a very long time since I heard anyone argue with conviction (let alone with evidence) that if the president had been spared that day we would not be referring to the Vietnam calamity as "Kennedy's War."

The Kennedy interlude was a flight from responsibility, and ought to be openly criticized and exorcised rather than be left to die the death that sentimentality brings upon itself.

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

William F. Buckley was asked about Kennedy's legacy recently, and concludes that JFK's record of achievement was thin at best, but the record isn't really the point now.

What I said to the interviewer was that the legacy of John F. Kennedy is his sheer . . . beauty. I have visited yurts in Mongolia, adobe huts in Mexico, and rural redoubts in Turkey and seen framed pictures of John F. Kennedy. He was all-American, splendid to look at, his expression of confident joy in life and work transfiguring. Add to this that he was slaughtered, almost always a mythogenic act, and what we came to know about the awful physical afflictions he suffered, making his appearances as a whole, vigorous man, the equivalent of seeing FDR rise from his wheelchair and play touch football.

That is why JFK is worshipped, which word exactly describes the attitude we have toward him.

via National Review Online

Osama in Iran

Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz has told Fox News that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Iran.

Citing an "unimpeachable source," Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are in Iran, according to a Fox News analyst.

Al-Zawahiri was seen within the last two weeks, and bin Laden was spotted in July, says the network's foreign affairs analyst Mansoor Ijaz.

The report dovetails with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's announcement last summer that he had sent his own army into the northern tribal areas near the border with Iran to ferret out bin Laden.

"That was an extraordinary admission at the time, one that I could not understand how he could make if bin Laden, in fact, was still in that area," Ijaz told Fox News host Brit Hume. "Well, it turns out that it was around that time that bin Laden moved from the Afghan-Pakistani border into Iran."

via WorldNetDaily

Scholar and pundit Michael Ledeen said the same thing, but back in September when Ijaz thought Osama was still in Pakistan.

Bush ascendant

President Bush's speech at Whitehall on Wednesday was a brilliant piece of oratory, as good as anything he's done, which is saying something. A few excerpts:

The last President to stay at Buckingham Palace was an idealist, without question. At a dinner hosted by King George V, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson made a pledge; with typical American understatement, he vowed that right and justice would become the predominant and controlling force in the world.

President Wilson had come to Europe with his 14 Points for Peace. Many complimented him on his vision; yet some were dubious. Take, for example, the Prime Minister of France. He complained that God, himself, had only 10 commandments. Sounds familiar.

...

We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.

As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.

...

It is the nature of terrorism and the cruelty of a few to try to bring grief in the loss to many. The armed forces of both our countries have taken losses, felt deeply by our citizens. Some families now live with a burden of great sorrow. We cannot take the pain away. But these families can know they are not alone. We pray for their strength; we pray for their comfort; and we will never forget the courage of the ones they loved.

The terrorists have a purpose, a strategy to their cruelty. They view the rise of democracy in Iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions. In this, they are correct. They believe their acts of terror against our coalition, against international aid workers and against innocent Iraqis, will make us recoil and retreat. In this, they are mistaken.

We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties, and liberate 25 million people, only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East. And by doing so, we will defend our people from danger.

via the White House

Bush right; Euro-sceptics wrong

Andrew Sullivan says The Telegraph in London "gets it" about President Bush. He's right. Read the whole thing.

George W Bush's Whitehall address yesterday represented the boldest challenge to the conventional wisdom of the British and European elites since Woodrow Wilson preached the rights of self-determination of smaller nations after the First World War.

He believes that terrorism and rogue states can be vanquished on the West's terms: unlike the exhausted European empires of the post-war era, which lost almost every insurgency that they fought, America is fighting this battle at the height of its powers. Above all, it is doing so convinced of the rightness of its cause, namely the spread of liberty from which no one should be excluded.

He believes that the misery of many millions in the vast Muslim world cannot mainly be ascribed to the wrongdoings of Israel, but rather to the rottenness of their own rulers. That includes the Palestinian people, whom EU politicians have ill-served by indulging Yasser Arafat's corruption. And, in a fascinating mea culpa for years of Western policy to the region, he made clear that it was no longer enough to turn a blind eye to the depredations of tyrannical "allies" for the sake of stability. Such an approach turned out not only to be morally wrong, but also failed to bring geopolitical equilibrium, as evidenced by September 11.

Anti-semitism in Indiana

Anti-semitism turns violent here at home, this time in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The FBI has joined the investigation into a fire at a Terre Haute holocaust museum, one day after the museum was destroyed in a suspected arson. Doug Garrison, a spokesman for the FBI's Indianapolis office, said Wednesday the FBI has classified the case as an investigation into possible "domestic terrorism."

Authorities have said accelerant was used to start the early Tuesday morning fire at the CANDLES Holocaust Museum. The museum at 1532 S. Third Street is operated by Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor and her husband, Michael, also a holocaust survivor.

Someone apparently threw a brick through a window before setting the building on fire just before 12:15 a.m., Vigo County Prosecutor Bob Wright has said. On a brick exterior wall, investigators found the spray-painted phrase "Remember Timmy McVeigh."

McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber and a suspected member of the patriot movement, was executed at the U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute in June 2001.

Outside the museum Wednesday, someone left three pink roses in a vase, along with a sympathy card. It was a small token in an outpouring of support that museum education director Mary Wright has seen since the early morning hours Tuesday.

"It's been a curse and a blessing," she said of the fire that destroyed irreplaceable exhibits, many of which were created by visiting school children at CANDLES, acronym for Children of Auschwitz Nazis' Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors.

via the Tribune Star

Mossad on Iran

America isn't the only nation concerned about Iran's burgeoning capability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons.

Iran will continue to develop nuclear weapons, a move that will put it in the position of being an existential threat to Israel for the first time, Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

His assessment of Iranian nuclear capabilities did not differ from those held by the international community, which predicts Teheran could have nuclear weapons by late 2004 or 2005. He said nuclear missile capabilities could pose a threat not only to Israel, but also to Europe.

According to Dagan, the Iranians are developing ground-to-ground missiles with a range of thousands of kilometers in addition to developing an aircraft transport capability.

Dagan told the committee that the 100 megawatt reactor is Bashir is too large to be used only for electricity production. The Kashan uranium enrichment facility is close to completion and has the potential of producing material to make 10 nuclear bombs a year, he said.

Labor MK Ephraim Sneh said the United States has the ability to disarm Iran of its nuclear capabilities and should do so.

Dagan said Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons to become a nuclear power and to achieve the intimidating status of North Korea.

via the Jerusalem Post

Missile proliferation

The CIA says the bad guys of the world, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Libya, are making steady progress in the development of offensive missile capabilities.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s most recent report to Congress, meanwhile, has painted an alarming picture of growing ballistic missile capabilities among American adversaries. The intelligence study, which covers international ballistic missile and WMD developments from January to June 2003, lists Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Syria as primary states of missile concern. Iran, the report states, has continued to receive assistance in missile “equipment, technology, and expertise” from China, North Korea and Russia. North Korea, meanwhile, has moved forward considerably in its long-range ballistic missile capabilities, and its “multiple-stage Taepo Dong-2—capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized payload—may be ready for flight-testing.” With regard to Syria, the report cites evidence that Damascus is “developing longer-range missile programs such as a Scud D and possibly other variants with assistance from North Korea and Iran.”

The greatest strides in ballistic missile development during the first half of 2003, however, were made by Tripoli. “Libya continued to depend on foreign assistance—particularly from Serbian, Indian, Iranian, North Korean, and Chinese entities—for its ballistic missile development programs,” the report states. “Libya’s capability therefore may not still be limited to its Soviet-origin Scud-B missiles.” And, according to the CIA study, “with continued foreign assistance, Libya will likely achieve an MRBM capability—a long-desired goal—probably through direct purchase from North Korea or Iran.”

via the American Foreign Policy Council
Full unclassified report via the CIA, in html and pdf

Hackers, Inc.

This is discouraging, even if not unexpected.

Hackers who attack computer systems are becoming more nimble and are taking less time to exploit system vulnerabilities as they become known, a new report says.

The Internet Risk Impact Summary Report, published by Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems, Inc., said that overt attacks on computer systems increased by 15 per cent in the third quarter of 2003 over the previous quarter.

Moreover, network administrators saw an overall rise in "security events" of 9 per cent, which are defined as "confirmed attacks or events that present unusual risk."

The report blamed the increase in security incidents on fast-moving attacks that quickly targeted vulnerabilities in existing hardware and software disclosed during the second quarter of the year.

In what ISS calls a continuing security trend, the hacking underground is catching up with security research. ISS offered as an example the appearance of hacking code just two days after Cisco announced an operating system vulnerability, leaving virtually no time for administrators to patch their systems.

via The Globe and Mail
Full report via Internet Security Systems, Inc. (pdf)

This hallowed ground

NPR usefully reminds us that today is the 140th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This brief speech became one of the most significant documents in our history. It's useful to remember exactly what he said on November 19, 1863:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

The Library of Congress developed an exhibition in 2001, including drafts and the only known photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg.

History lessons

Jim Hoagland thinks the U.S. is improving its approach to building a legitimate government in Iraq, including a recognition of the "need to turn from the occupation style of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Japan to that of John J. McCloy in Germany."

By agreeing to hand over sovereignty to a provisional executive and legislature on July 1, 2004, and let Iraqis organize democratic national elections thereafter, the White House seems finally to have accepted the wisdom of the political adage that you can't beat somebody with nobody.

The clear and realistic path to sovereignty will finally make the 24-member Iraqi Governing Council into "somebody" by giving it significant responsibilities in the fight against the guerrilla remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and in designing Iraq's future constitution. Mounting casualties and growing political tensions in Iraq forced Washington to overcome its wariness of taking this admittedly big gamble.

This suggests that the administration's military and civilian leaders are learning from mistakes in Iraq and adjusting to changing circumstances. Nothing could be more welcome, even if the administration predictably minimizes in public its need or willingness to change policy as it combats a nasty insurgency.

via the Washington Post

"Peace" psychosis in a nut's hell

Protests in London against President Bush and, by extension, Prime Minister Blair, will be much in the news in the coming days. However, it's hard to imagine a more rigorous commentary on the cynical and self-absorbed spectacle to come than that offered today by Mark Steyn.

So this week they'll be splashing red paint hither and yon to symbolise all the Iraqi blood spilled by Bush. In yesterday's Independent, Dr David Lowry noted that Medact, a respected NGO of British medical chappies, has decided that, since the start of the Iraq war in March, between 7,800 and 9,600 civilians have died. This is presumably the same Medact that a year ago predicted that in the Iraq war and the three months following 260,000 would die, with a further 200,000 succumbing to disease and famine, and another 20,000 getting killed in the ensuing civil war.

If the anti-war cause is so just, it seems odd that it has to be so risibly "sexed up" by Medact and the rest, but the post-9/11 grand harmonic convergence of all the world's loser ideologies, from Islamic fundamentalism to French condescension, is untroubled by anything so humdrum as reality or logic. There's "no connection" between Saddam and al-Qa'eda, because radical Islamists would never make common cause with secular Ba'athists. Or so we're told by pro-gay, pro-feminist Eurolefties who thus make common cause with honour-killing, sodomite-beheading Islamists, apparently crediting Saddam with a greater degree of intellectual coherence than they credit themselves.

The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist. And even its imperialism is too vulgar and arriviste to appeal to real imperialists: let's face it, the ghastly Yanks never stick it to the fuzzy-wuzzy with the dash and élan of the Bengal Lancers, which appears to be the principal complaint of Sir Max Hastings and his ilk. To the mullahs, America is the Great Satan, a wily seducer; to the Gaullists, America is the Great Cretin, a culture so self-evidently moronic that only stump-toothed inbred Appalachian lardbutts could possibly fall for it. American popular culture is utterly worthless, except when one of its proponents - Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon - attacks Bush, in which case he or she is showered with European awards and sees the foreign-language rights for his latest tract sell for six figures at Frankfurt. The fact that the best-selling anti-Americans are themselves American - Moore, Chomsky - is perhaps the cruellest manifestation of the suffocating grip of the hyperpower.

Too Christian, too Godless, too isolationist, too imperialist, too seductive, too cretinous, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear, you will find it therein - for the Continentals, excessive religiosity; for the Muslims, excessive decadence....

via The Telegraph (UK)

Arnie begins

Arnold Schwarzenegger took the oath of office to become California's 38th governor yesterday. His acceptance speech was brief, humble, eloquent, optimistic and strong. Nice beginning.

I know there are some who say that the Legislature and I will never agree on solutions to our problems. But I've found in my life that people often respond in remarkable ways to remarkable challenges.

In the words of President Kennedy, "I am an idealist without illusions."

I know it will be hard to put aside years of partisan bitterness. I know it will be hard to overcome the political habits of the past.

But for guidance, let's look back in history to a period I studied when I became a citizen: the summer of 1787. Delegates of the original 13 states were meeting in Philadelphia. The dream of a new nation was falling apart. Divisions were deep. Merchant against farmer. Big states against small. North against South.

Our founding fathers knew that the fate of the union was in their hands, just as the fate of our California is in our hands. What happened in that summer of 1787 is that they put their differences aside and produced the blueprint for our government: our Constitution. Their coming together has been called "the miracle of Philadelphia."

Now, the members of the Legislature and I must bring about the "Miracle of Sacramento," a miracle based on cooperation, good will, new ideas and devotion to the long-term good of California.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those years of lifting and training hard. When I thought I couldn't lift another ounce of weight, what I learned is that we are always stronger than we know. And California is like that, too.

We are stronger than we know.

There's a massive weight we must lift off our state. Alone, I cannot lift it. But together, we can.

It's true, things may get harder before they get better. But I've never been afraid of the struggle. I've never been afraid of the fight, and I've never been afraid of the hard work.

I have big hopes for California. President Reagan spoke of America as "the shining city on the hill." I see California as "the Golden Dream by the Sea."

Perhaps some think that this is fanciful or poetic, but to an immigrant like me who, as a boy, saw Soviet tanks rolling through the streets of Austria, to someone like me who came here with absolutely nothing and gained absolutely everything, it is not fanciful to see California as the Golden Dream.

via the Contra Costa Times

Hero lost

Last week, in honor of Veteran's Day, our local PBS station aired American Valor, a history of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the courageous men who have received our highest award for valor from Bull Run to Mogadishu ("Black Hawk Down").

Every story was compelling. One of them was that of Mitchell Paige, a son of Serbian immigrants who won the Medal for conspicuous courage amid the desperate brutality of Guadalcanal. This is the text of the official citation:

For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, in combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands area on October 26, 1942. When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, Platoon Sergeant Paige, commanding a machine-gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct fire of his gunners until all of his men were either killed or wounded.

Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he manned his gun, and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire against the advancing hordes until reinforcements finally arrived. Then, forming a new line, he dauntlessly and aggressively led a bayonet charge, driving the enemy back and preventing a breakthrough in our lines. His great personal valor and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

According to today's New York Times, Mitchell Paige died Saturday at his home in La Quinta, California, at the age of 85. PBS said he was "the sole surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the ground battle for Guadalcanal, America’s first ground offensive of World War II." His shining example will be missed.

W. and Tony to the fray

Protesters of all kinds are turning out in Great Britain to greet President Bush with jeers, demonstrations, and perhaps more violent acts. British PM Tony Blair isn't giving an inch to the peaceniks and Euro-deadenders.

Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday dismissed antiwar protesters' criticism of the state visit this week by President Bush as peace demonstrations got under way and the police tightened security around London.

"I just want to say how strongly I believe that it is indeed the right time for the president of the United States to come here to this country," Mr. Blair told the annual convention of the Confederation of British Industry in Birmingham.

Citing recent bomb attacks in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Mr. Blair said, "This is the right moment for us to stand firm with the United States of America in defeating terrorism, wherever it is, and delivering us safely from what I genuinely believe to be the security threat of the 21st century."

In comments that drew loud applause from the business audience, he said, "Now is not the time to waver, now is the time to see it through."

via The New York Times

Author Oliver Kamm and others in the UK have already exposed the protest organizers, the so-called "Stop the War Coalition," for what they really are: "a front organisation for a totalitarian and antisemitic party of the Fascist Left," pursuing a Stalinist, pro-tryanny agenda. Somehow, NPR never seems to bring that up.

Sharp elbows

Political observer Fred Barnes looks at the Louisiana gubernatorial election and notes that we can see evidence again of racial politics, including the inside-out opposition of black Americans to the election of a dark-skinned candidate who is a conservative.

Why did [Bobby] Jindal lose after leading his Democratic opponent, Kathleen Blanco, in statewide polls in the weeks before the election? In a word, race. What occurred was the "Wilder effect," named after the black Virginia governor elected in 1989. Wilder, a Democrat, polled well, then won narrowly. Many white voters, it turned out, said they intended to vote for a black candidate when they really didn't. Questioned by pollsters, they were leery of being seen as racially prejudiced.

Jindal's advisers worried that he might lose the "Bubba vote," rural whites unwilling to vote for a black candidate or even a dark-skinned Indian-American. The Jindal camp's fears were realized. A Republican normally needs two-thirds of the white vote to win in Louisiana to compensate for losing nearly all of the black vote. But Jindal got only 60 percent of whites, according to an analysis by GCR & Associates Inc., a political consulting firm.

Jindal, whose parents moved to Baton Rouge from India shortly before he was born, won 70 percent of the white vote in the New Orleans area. But outside that urban hub in the more rural and poorer parts of the state, only 48 percent of whites voted for Jindal, according to the GCR analysis.

via The Weekly Standard

Not only was the Jindal campaign afffected by black-white politics, fanned by many political operatives, this particular contest included recidivist South Asian rivalry as well.

Republican Bobby Jindal's campaign to become the first Indian-American governor in American history has touched a nerve with some Pakistani-Americans, who are lining up to support Democrat Kathleen Blanco of Lafayette in Saturday's runoff.

The support culminated during an Oct. 21 fund-raiser for Blanco in Lake Charles sponsored by the Pakistani-American Business Association of Louisiana, which gave Blanco $50,000 for her campaign.

One attendee said Jindal's Indian heritage has some Pakistanis worried, given the decades of animosity between India and Pakistan.

"I think it's a kind of unforeseen fear that if Bobby Jindal gets elected he might push things that are against the Pakistani interest," said Ashraf Abbasi of Port Arthur, Texas, president of the Pakistani-American Congress, an umbrella organization for Pakistani-American groups.

via the Shreveport Times

Our melting pot is more like a cauldron sometimes.

Water, water everywhere

Well, we had another toad-strangling rainstorm in Houston today, this time a scion of the same weather system that dumped half a foot of hail on Los Angeles last week. Sixteen tornados in the area; gobs of rain; snarled traffic -- after a 3-hour trek from work to the house, via a rain-hobbled METRO, it's time for bed. What will tomorrow bring?

He's back...

Lawyers for wannabe presidential assassin John Hinckley are back at it again.

The man who tried to assassinate President Reagan is trying to persuade a federal judge to allow him to visit his parents without being accompanied by staff from the psychiatric hospital where he has lived for more than two decades.

Naturally, certain people who aren't shills for murderous psychotics are dissenting.

Reagan's family and the government oppose the idea. In a recent filing, prosecutors wrote: "No one knows what Mr. Hinckley is thinking. He has boasted that he can fool medical experts and he continually has been proven deceptive about important matters throughout the years of his hospitalization."

In an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Reagan's son, Ron Reagan Jr., said the would-be assassin now wants a "free pass" for his actions.

"Maybe if John Hinckley isn't insane any more he needs to just go to prison and there he can reflect for a while on what he did," the former president's son said.

via Fox News

This risky scheme came up last September, and Patti Davis was eloquent on her family's behalf when quoted then on MSNBC, as noted here. I hope her good sense on this will prevail this time.

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

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

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

Israel and America

Natan Sharansky is a courageous former dissident in the USSR under Soviet tyranny, a survivor of the Gulag, and now Israel's minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs. Today he has a lengthy essay exploring the linkage between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, and why Israel and America so often find themselves isolated in the world, particularly in the eyes of the Middle East and Europe. Read the whole thing.

Despite the differences between them, however, anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked, and both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism. It is, after all, with some reason that the United States is loathed and feared by the despots and fundamentalists of the Islamic world as well as by many Europeans. Like Israel, but in a much more powerful way, America embodies a different--a nonconforming--idea of the good, and refuses to abandon its moral clarity about the objective worth of that idea or of the free habits and institutions to which it has given birth. To the contrary, in undertaking their war against the evil of terrorism, the American people have demonstrated their determination not only to fight to preserve the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, but to carry them to regions of the world that have proved most resistant to their benign influence.

In this positive sense as well, Israel and the Jewish people share something essential with the United States. The Jews, after all, have long held that they were chosen to play a special role in history, to be what their prophets called "a light unto the nations." What precisely is meant by that phrase has always been a matter of debate, and I would be the last to deny the mischief that has sometimes been done, including to the best interests of the Jews, by some who have raised it as their banner. Nevertheless, over four millennia, the universal vision and moral precepts of the Jews have not only worked to secure the survival of the Jewish people themselves but have constituted a powerful force for good in the world, inspiring myriads to fight for the right even as in others they have aroused rivalry, enmity and unappeasable resentment.

It is similar with the United States--a nation that has long regarded itself as entrusted with a mission to be what John Winthrop in the 17th century called a "city on a hill" and Ronald Reagan in the 20th parsed as a "shining city on a hill." What precisely is meant by that phrase is likewise a matter of debate, but Americans who see their country in such terms certainly regard the advance of American values as central to American purpose. And, though the United States is still a very young nation, there can be no disputing that those values have likewise constituted an immense force for good in the world--even as they have earned America the enmity and resentment of many.

In resolving to face down enmity and hatred, an important source of strength is the lesson to be gained from contemplating the example of others. From Socrates to Churchill to Sakharov, there have been individuals whose voices and whose personal heroism have reinforced in others the resolve to stand firm for the good. But history has also been generous enough to offer, in the Jews, the example of an ancient people fired by the message of human freedom under God and, in the Americans, the example of a modern people who over the past century alone, acting in fidelity with their inmost beliefs, have confronted and defeated the greatest tyrannies ever known to man.

Fortunately for America, and fortunately for the world, the United States has been blessed by providence with the power to match its ideals. The Jewish state, by contrast, is a tiny island in an exceedingly dangerous sea, and its citizens will need every particle of strength they can muster for the trials ahead. It is their own people's astounding perseverance, despite centuries of suffering at the hands of faiths, ideologies, peoples, and individuals who have hated them and set out to do them in, that inspires one with confidence that the Jews will once again outlast their enemies.

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

The cost of freedom climbs

The cost of freedom is being felt widely by wounded soldiers and their loved ones. The New York Times has a sympathetic profile on several of these heroes, damaged on our behalf, whose lives will go on but are now changed forever. We at home owe them, big time.

More than 6,800 have been evacuated from Iraq for medical reasons, including disease and "nonbattle injuries," the Army said.

[By Friday, the Defense Department said, 1,994 had been wounded in action, with 342 more injured. The dead totaled 399, with 272 from hostile action. At least 18 more soldiers were killed and five wounded in Iraq yesterday.]

Some of the most seriously wounded come through Walter Reed.

Thanks to advances in everything from flak jackets to battlefield medical attention, many soldiers survive attacks that would have killed them a generation ago. But as more survive, more inevitably return from Iraq with grievous injuries, including amputations. Already, 58 amputees have been treated at Walter Reed, 47 with major single-limb removals and 11 with multiple-limb amputations.

For all the numbing similarity of the ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs that wounded the soldiers now at Walter Reed, each has begun to piece his life back together in a different way, into a shape he never expected.

Master and Commander

Saw Peter Weir's new movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Saturday night. It's a terrific dramatization of the seagoing, Napoleonic-era world created by author Patrick O'Brian. Although this movie -- like any movie -- must inevitably fall short of the totality of the highly detailed and nuanced world created by O'Brian, it does bring to visual life the world aboard ship in Nelson's navy.

Co-screenwriter John Collee dexcribes how the script was developed over a period of several years, and he is pleased with the result.

We had started writing Master and Commander three years ago. I can speak of it objectively now because I was merely one of this film's progenitors – I wasn't there when it grew up. I finally went to see the finished version two weeks ago and was moved to tears by the experience, like attending the graduation of a favourite, long-lost child. To our script the actors had added not just their voices but their personalities. Historical advisor Gordon Laco had added a wealth of period detail. Peter's wife, the costume designer Wendy Stites, and her team had given every man the grubby, salt-encrusted look of a 19th-century sailor.

Paul Bettany gave flesh and blood to Stephen in all his tortured compassionate complexity. Russell Crowe was Captain Jack Aubrey, investing him with a massively joyful zest for life which makes you think: "Oh, what fun it would be to ride the high seas with such fellows as these for companionship."

It's a film at once emotionally captivating and philosophically profound. A long meditation – to my mind – on what it means to be a man, told with all the passion and wit and leisurely digression of an O'Brian novel. A film that, once you have seen it, you immediately want to see again, just to re-inhabit that wooden world and spend another two and a quarter hours with the wind in your hair and the salt spray in your face and the scrubbed boards of HMS Surprise under your bare feet. I only wish O'Brian had been alive to see it.

via The Telegraph (UK)

I agree with Collee: I want to see it again as soon as possible. However, Brit writer Christopher Hitchens is in no mood to settle for anything less complete than what's presented in O'Brian's original works. I think he sets the bar impossibly high.

Venezuela should not be ignored

Investment banker/writer Christopher Whalen says President Bush isn't paying enough attention to growing danger from Hugo Chavez's radical Leftist government in Venezuela. This threat has been discussed earlier, and clearly more needs to be done. It exemplifies how a de facto do-nothing alliance between key elements of the Conventional Wisdom in Washington, D.C. -- the US State Dept. and Senate Democrats -- leads to paralysis now, and crisis later.

A year ago... House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) sent Bush a powerfully phrased letter warning that the triumvirate of political extremists leading economic powerhouse Brazil, oil giant Venezuela and the terrorist-sponsoring regime of Cuba had become an emerging Axis of Evil that the United States must stop. Nonetheless, the Bush administration studiously has ignored the deteriorating political situation in Caracas and, indeed, has gone out of its way to comfort and reassure the Chavez government even as he uses thuggish tactics to obliterate what remains of Venezuela's political opposition.

Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst for Latin America Stephen Johnson argues that ignoring Chavez no longer is the best way to deal with him, if it ever was, and that the White House needs to articulate a clear policy toward this Castroite demagogue. Indeed, some U.S. officials believe that because of the growing presence of Middle East terrorists operating freely in the country, the Bush administration soon may be faced with a Caracas-based threat - or an actual attack on the U.S. homeland from radical Islamists operating from a training base in that country.

via Insight Magazine
Text of Henry Hyde's 2002 letter to President Bush

More doom & gloom

More confirmation this week of just how scary our world has become.

Advances in biotechnology could lead to a generation of biological weapons far more dangerous than those currently known, scientists have told the CIA. The life sciences experts, convened by the agency's Office of Transnational Issues, raised fears of genetically engineered diseases that "could be worse than any disease known to man," according to the CIA's unclassified report on their conference.

The report, "The Darker Bioweapons Future," speaks only generally of the dangers of newly created diseases and does not specify countries that could use them to threaten the United States.

"The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons," the report says.

via Fox News
Full report via the Federation of American Scientists (pdf)

Mighty Terriers

The Wofford College Terriers are rolling on. Pretty amazing, and great fun for everyone back at my alma mater.

The 2003 Southern Conference champion Wofford Terriers completed a perfect 8-0 league season with a 7-6 win at Furman this afternoon in Greenville, S.C., giving coach Mike Ayers his 100th victory with the Terriers.

Fourth-ranked Wofford (10-1, 8-0), picked to finish fifth in the league in a preseason coaches' poll, is the first team to go undefeated in SoCon play since Georgia Southern in 1998. The Terriers have also won 10 in a row in the same season for the first time since 1970. This year's squad is just the third in school history to reach 10 wins, the last time being 1970 when Wofford advanced to the NAIA national championship game with an 11-0 record before falling to Texas A&I.

via Wofford College

Love and the Marine Corps

The U.S. Marine Corps. celebrated its 228th birthday on November 10th. The story of the Schaeffer family shows how the USMC continues its positive impact at the individual & family level, not just on the world stage.

Before his youngest son joined the Marine Crops, Frank Schaeffer's impression of military service could be summed up on a mock recruiting poster: "Out of Work? Undereducated? No Health Plan? Join the Army and see Iraq."

But his attitude changed dramatically after his son, John, signed up for the Marines after high school, graduated from boot camp and later went to Iraq.

Father and son teamed up to co-write the book, "Keeping Faith – A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps." The book covers John's boot camp experiences at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, S.C., and the family's perspective of dealing with issues of class, duty and patriotism raised by residents of their affluent, suburban-Boston community along the North Shore of Massachusetts.

The book, written in alternate voices by father and son, is about how the experience changed them both.

His son's decision to join the Marines made it harder for the elder Schaeffer to face his friends. "So where is John going to college?" was the question he said he didn't relish answering "from parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard."

Noting that in 1999, his son was the only senior graduating from the Waring School, an elite prep school in Beverly, Mass., to consider military service, Schaeffer said one perplexed mother asked him, "But aren't the Marines terribly Southern?"

"What a waste, he was such a good student," said another parent.

When John graduated from boot camp, more than 3,000 parents, relatives and friends were there to see their new Marine, Schaeffer said. "Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in the backs of pickups, others by bus. John told me that a lot of parents could not afford the trip," he said.

"We in the audience were white and Native American. We were Hispanic, African American and Asian," Schaeffer said. "We were former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned with battles' names."

Noting the diversity of the spectators at Parris Island that day, Schaeffer said he couldn't help comparing the experience with one he'd had six months earlier.

"We would not have been mistaken for the educated and well- heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John's private school a half-year before," he said.

American Forces Press Service via DefenseLINK
"Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps" via Amazon.com

Neanderthals and turkeys

The distinguished senior senator from Massachusetts, Sen. Ted Kennedy, called President Bush's judicial nominees "Neanderthals" and "turkeys" this week. The nominees include the current Attorney General of the state of Alabama and a sitting Justice of the California Supreme Court.

A marathon Senate session called by Republicans failed to produce action on some of President George W. Bush's stalled court nominees.

Undeterred by nearly 40 hours of straight debate, Democrats continued to block votes Friday on three of Bush's appeals court choices.

Republicans called the special session to protest the stalling tactics. But in three successive votes, they never got close to the 60 votes needed to overcome the Democratic resistance and get a final yes-or-no vote on the judicial nominees.

After the votes, top Democratic senators stuck to their guns. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said Democrats will continue to resist what he describes as "any Neanderthal" the president nominates.

Noting that Thanksgiving is coming up, Kennedy called on Bush to release his "right-wing turkeys."

via News9 San Antonio

Sen. Kennedy received the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service in early November, courtesy of former president George H.W. Bush and his colleagues.

British hospitality

Liberal hand-wringing has already started over the drama of President Bush's planned visit to Great Britain next week, and the carefully arranged, precisely scheduled spontaneous outpourings of protest that will accompany it. Editorial writer Tom Utley makes a pertinent observation in The Telegraph:

Many Britons are kicking up a fuss about all the disruption that the President's visit will cause, and the cost of the security operation to the Treasury. This seems extraordinarily mean-spirited to me. Even if the cost is 10 times greater than the £5 million figure that is being bandied about, it seems a small price to pay for policing the first state visit to Britain by an American President.

I mentioned the Roman Empire earlier, and I am reminded of the brilliant scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which the leader of a Judaean terrorist organisation asks : "What did the Romans ever do for us?" The answer to that question went on for ages. (They gave us aqueducts, education, sanitation, decent roads, the rule of law.)

It occurs to me that the answer would be equally long if the question were now put: "What did the Americans do for us?" For a start, they twice saved us from German tyranny, entering conflicts that were not obviously their own; they rebuilt the economies of Europe and Japan; they gave democracy a chance all over the world; they gave us Hollywood and The Simpsons, the internet and the Boeing 747. Britain's greatest ever contribution to civilisation was the liberal democracy upon which America was founded, and for which its President is now the chief standard-bearer. How dare people quibble about the cost of his visit, when America has paid us a billion times more, in blood and dollars?

via The Telegraph (UK)

Saddam & bin Laden

"Bombshell" is not too strong a word for this story, given the nattering naysaying of the Bush administration's critics.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Usama bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support, offering Al Qaeda money, training and haven for more than a decade, it was reported yesterday.

Their deadly collaboration — which may have included the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks — is revealed in a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee that cites reports from a variety of domestic and foreign spy agencies compiled by multiple sources, The Weekly Standard reports.

Saddam's willingness to help bin Laden plot against Americans began in 1990, shortly before the first Gulf War, and continued through last March, the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, says the Oct. 27 memo sent by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

via Fox News
UPDATE: Full story via The Weekly Standard

Doom & gloom

John McCaslin of the Washington Times reports on a recent address by State Dept. truthsayer John Bolton.

In one of the most monotonic speeches ever delivered in Washington, John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security, warned the Washington Club Dinner audience that terrorists, terrorist nations, terrorist states, rogue states, Iran, Syria, North Korea, even the island of Cuba, threaten to annihilate America with nuclear, chemical, biological and every other weapon of mass destruction known to mankind.

When he finally walked away from the podium, actor and commentator Ben Stein, the dinner's master of ceremonies, quipped: "I'm going home to kill myself. The end of the world is happening in 15 minutes. Enjoy your meal."

Full transcript of John Bolton's speech via the US State Dept.

Blog clogging -- not a dance

Blog clogging, thanks to ingenious spammers. It's happening here; started this week. The address being left says he's from Russia. Sure. I look forward to the equally ingenious blogosphere finding a solution.

Spam has never been limited to e-mail. But now, commercial pitches are increasingly popping up in online chats, instant messages, cell phones with text messaging and, as Kalsey found, Web log comments.

Spammers are flocking to new communications tools like moths to light, threatening to cripple these tools just as they are beginning to take off.

Howard Rheingold, a futurist who predicts always-on communication will revolutionize public discourse, is worried that all these new forms of spam could freeze the revolution in its tracks.

There will be no great social transformation if cell phones are turned off, instant messenger programs shut down or blog comments disabled to halt the flow of offers for online porn or cheap drugs.

Mena Trott, chief executive of Six Apart, the maker of the popular Web log system Movable Type, said the company is working on updates to make deletion of unwanted messages easier.

via the Mercury News
Adam Kalsey's Comment Spam Manifesto

Iran's nuke program

The next big story: the IAEA has completed a report on Iran's nuclear development activities. IAEA wants to downplay the findings, but experts have a different take.

"The report is a stunning revelation of how far a country can get in making The Bomb, while pretending to comply with international inspections," said Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based think-tank. "This is a classic case of a bomb in the basement."

"Iran has secretly enriched uranium, made plutonium, and hidden the evidence of it from the world," he told Reuters. "There's only one reason why anybody would do that -- because they want to make the bomb."

The IAEA said in a confidential report circulated on Monday that Iran had a centrifuge uranium enrichment programme for 18 years and a hi-tech laser enrichment programme for 12 years, both of which it hid from the U.N. The report also said Iran admitted to producing small amounts of plutonium, useable in a bomb and with virtually no civilian uses, and had conducted secret tests of its enrichment centrifuges using nuclear material.

via MSNBC

Elf execs go down

Disgraced executives from my former employer are getting prison time for corruption. It's still just the tip of a very big iceberg that no one will ever fully see.

A Paris court on Wednesday convicted three former executives of misappropriating money from the former state-owned oil company Elf and sentenced them to prison terms in one of the largest graft scandals ever to hit France.

Former Elf chairman Loik Le Floch-Prigent, 60, and former director Alfred Sirven, 76, were sentenced to five years in prison. Floch-Prigent was also fined euro375,000 ($435,000) and Sirven was ordered to pay euro1 million ($1.16 million). A third company official, Andre Tarallo, was sentenced to four years in prison and fined euro2 million ($2.3 million).

They were among 37 people on trial since March for their roles in what prosecutors said was the embezzlement of some euro300 million ($345 million) from Elf during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The three defendants testified that upon joining Elf, they became involved in an existing system of bribes, commissions and fixing fees paid to foreign officials. Le Floch-Prigent also said some $5 million was paid to French political parties during his 1989-1993 tenure at Elf, which was privatized in 1994.

Le Floch-Prigent, Sirven and Tarallo refused to name the recipients of those alleged payments, but spoke more openly about their African activities. Le Floch-Prigent testified that money was funneled to the leaders of Gabon, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Angola.

via ABC News

UPDATE: NPR's Morning Edition had a good report on the case Thursday morning.

A noble cause

President Bush spoke today at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the nation's veterans.

Every veteran has lived by a strict code of discipline. Every veteran understands the meaning of personal accountability and loyalty and shared sacrifice. From the moment you repeated the oath to the day of your honorable discharge, your time belonged to America; your country came before all else. And whether you served abroad or at home, you have shared in the responsibility of maintaining the finest fighting force in the world.

Veterans who took the oath and served in battle have known the hardships and the fears and the tragic losses of war. These memories follow them through life, and are sometimes hard to bear. Yet our war veterans, wherever they fought, can know this: In the harshest hours of conflict, they serve just and honorable purposes.

Americans are a peaceful people, and this nation has always gone to war reluctantly, and always for a noble cause. America's war veterans have fought for the security of this nation, for the safety of our friends, and for the peace of the world. They humbled tyrants and defended the innocent, and liberated the oppressed. And across the Earth, you will find entire nations that once lived in fear, where men and women still tell of the day when Americans came and set them free.

via the White House

Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day in Great Britain, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth nations: a day to commemorate the armistice that finally ended the long, bloody "Great War" -- World War I.

Here in the U.S. it's easy to overlook the impact that this terrible conflict had on an entire generation in Europe.

During the course of World War One, eleven percent (11%) of France's entire population were killed or wounded! Eight percent (8%) of Great Britain's population were killed or wounded, and nine percent (9%) of Germany's pre-war population were killed or wounded! The United States, which did not enter the land war in strength until 1918, suffered one-third of one percent (0.37%) of its population killed or wounded.

The casualties were concentrated on young men, of course. I've read estimates that as much as one-third of that generation's men were killed or wounded, on all sides.

Author and former soldier J.R.R. Tolkien felt the war's impact keenly, and it had a profound influence on his life and writing.

"One has personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

The memorable scenes of Frodo, Samwise, and Gollum inching their way through the haunted Dead Marshes before the Black Gate of Morder seem right out of Tolkien's memories of the trenches and blasted landscapes of the Western front.

In his spare time off duty, in the barracks behind the front, and often disturbed by music from gramophones (as he would later say), Tolkien started writing in a notebook the beginning of a mythology that he initially called The Book of Lost Tales. He would never finish this book, although most of it would eventually be published as The Silmarillon.

In those months Death was omnipresent. Bodies of British and German soldiers lay unburied, stinking and rotting, around him in No Mans Land. Writing became for Tolkien a way to deal with this brutality and barbarity around him. He wrote whenever he found an opportunity, "in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even down in dugouts under shell fire".

Here in America, we've set aside November 11 as Veteran's Day, a day to honor living veterans. But it's important to remember the sacrifices made by our friends and allies in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Keep them in your thoughts, too.

UPDATE: Kind reader Gerald from Nebraska points out that Great Britain celebrates Remembrance Day on the Sunday before 11 November. A bit of checking via Google News verifies that he is correct. (Thanks for the tip.) Also noted that the Brits held additional ceremonies today honoring the contributions of Australian veterans. Classy on their part.

Honor the veterans

The estimable Donald Sensing has a thoughtful post about November 11 -- Veteran's Day here and Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth countries. He invokes Will Shakespeare, Robert Heinlein, and Peggy Noonan while exploring the new significance of domestic first responders as deserving to be considered "veterans."

Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote the best definition of veterans that I have ever read. He was a medically-retired US Navy officer himself when he wrote his classic novel, Starship Troopers. In it he said that there is only one distinction between veterans and non-veterans. It isn’t intelligence or education or class. It is only the fact that veterans are those who have put their own mortal bodies between their loved ones’ homes and the war’s desolation, a fact that the full verses of the Star Spangled Banner first recognized. Veterans are those who love others enough to risk laying down their lives for them, especially people they do not even know. That’s all patriotism is, really: the willingness to risk yourself on behalf of people you do not actually know.

So the firemen and police and rescue workers of New York and Arlington, Va., are veterans of a new kind for a new kind of war.

......

Let us Americans remain united now, because we are now really all in this together, somehow. Perhaps it is the sense that we are living in shared danger, however remote the risk may actually be to most Americans. And there are police and firefighters in New York and Northern Virginia who shall stand a tip-toe when Sept. 11 is named. They shall remember what feats they did that day. And the police and firemen who shed their blood together that day are brothers henceforth.

And so will the troops who toppled Saddam’s regime, and destroyed the Taliban rule and freed Afghanistan.

Bush on Kennedy

As noted earlier here and here, former president George H.W. Bush decided to present an award for "public service" to, of all people, loutish Sen. Ted Kennedy. Despite my admiration for the former president's personal qualities, I still believe this is a sad example of political and moral naivete on the part of people who should know better.

U.S. Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, a harsh critic of the current Republican president and his father, received the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service on Friday.

"We regularly differed on the issues and there were times when we were at each other's political throats, but at the end of the day, we are Americans who love our country and want the very best for it," the elder Bush said in honoring Kennedy.

"Our prescriptions for what ails America may be different, but each is born of the same patriotic concern," Bush said.

Kennedy said that despite his disagreements with the elder Bush and now Bush's son, he has "great respect for both President Bushes, and it's been a great privilege to work closely with them on a wide range of issues."

Earlier this year, an ad hoc committee of acquaintances of the former president and members of the Bush Presidential Library Foundation suggested to Bush that Kennedy would be an appropriate nominee for the award. "He was immediately supportive," Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said.

via the Houston Chronicle

A soldier's wisdom

A dyspeptic look at the vagaries of life in the field for our soldiers in Iraq is making the rounds. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these same challenges have been true in other campaigns -- Willie and Joe would recognize the sentiment exactly. But that only makes them more real. There are 40 points; here are just a few:

Subject: How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

23. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.

25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambience.

29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

via The Braden Files

Bogus accusations

Steven Kelman, a former Clinton administration official and now a Harvard professor, says recent insinuations of Bush administration cronyism over Iraq contracts are politically-driven bunk, and actually destructive to progress being made to reform government procurement.

There has been a series of allegations and innuendos recently to the effect that government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan are being awarded in an atmosphere redolent with the "stench of political favoritism and cronyism," to use the description in a report put out by the Center for Public Integrity on campaign contributions by companies doing work in those two countries.

One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd.

The whiff of scandal manufactured around contracting for Iraq obviously has been part of the political battle against the administration's policies there (by the way, I count myself as rather unsympathetic to these policies). But this political campaign has created extensive collateral damage. It undermines public trust in public institutions, for reasons that have no basis in fact. It insults the career civil servants who run our procurement system.

Perhaps most tragically, it could cause mismanagement of the procurement system. Over the past decade we have tried to make procurement more oriented toward delivering mission results for agencies and taxpayers, rather than focusing on compliance with detailed bureaucratic process requirements. The charges of Iraq cronyism encourage the system to revert to wasting time, energy and people on redundant, unnecessary rules to document the nonexistence of a nonproblem.

If Iraqi contracting fails, it will be because of poorly structured contracts or lack of good contract management -- not because of cronyism in the awarding process.

via the Houston Chronicle

PolySci professor and blogger Daniel Drezner had earlier debunked the Center for Public Integrity "study" anyway, just based on the data.

The Center for Public Integrity wants to claim that there's a fire here. Looking over their numbers, I'm not even convinced there's any smoke.

The power of one

Activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is playing hardball again with Burma's military regime.

The United Nations human rights envoy to Burma says Burma's military government has released pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, following months of international pressure, but that she is refusing freedom until 35 leaders of her National League for Democracy party are also released. The envoy, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, made the remarks at the end of a week-long visit to Rangoon.

Mr. Pinheiro told reporters in Rangoon Saturday that Burma's military leaders told him Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is not being held under any security law. But he said the pro-democracy leader is refusing to accept any freedom of movement for herself until all her colleagues who were detained during a government crackdown on her party five months ago are also released.

via Voice of America

The next generation of foreign aid

President Bush has a plan underway to really alleviate world poverty, including nurturing the crucial element of freedom: a new Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Tired of simply throwing money at symptoms, President George W. Bush wants America's foreign-aid program to target the root causes of poverty in those corners of the world that are perpetually developing, but seemingly never fully developed. In Bush’s view, "We must include every African, every Asian, every Latin American, every Muslim, in an expanding circle of development."

Unlike many aid programs, the MCC is not a hand-out program. Applicant countries must develop and submit proposals for aid, along with detailed plans for liberalizing their societies. MCC aid will be based solely on how an applicant scores on a rigorous test of social-political progress.

By rewarding those nations that are striving to transition from statism and dependency to economic and political liberalization, Bush believes MCC grants will build "the infrastructure of democracy." Indeed, countries that hope to tap into this new source of aid will have to make room for civil society—that amorphous zone of space where liberty flourishes and where places of worship, businesses, charities, associations, unions, and political parties buffer the individual from the state.

via the Hudson Institute

Saudi Arabia under siege

Saudi Arabia learned more today about just how ruthless al Qaeda can be, and how the seeds of Islamic radicalism, long sewn freely in the country, can yield a bitter harvest. Maybe it's time for real change.

Terrorists stormed past security guards into an affluent, heavily secured residential neighborhood in the Saudi capital Saturday and set off three explosions, journalists and officials in Riyadh said.

Although the Saudi official confirmed two dead and another 87 wounded Saturday, diplomatic sources said as many as 28 people were killed and 100 wounded -- many of them children -- in the complex targeted.

According to reports, the attackers first fired on security guards and then drove their explosives-laden cars through the gates.

Hanadi Fundouqli, manager of the Al-Muhaya compound, said all but four of the residents are Arabs. The four are from Italy, Germany, and France, she said.

Saudi business sources told CNN the compound was about a mile from the homes of several top members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family.

The explosions happened about midnight, a time when many of the adult residents were away from their homes because of Ramadan observances, leaving a large number of children in the compound, Fundouqli said.

via CNN

UPDATE: The Saudis have confirmed a high number of casualties:

Eleven people were killed, among them four children, and more than 100 were wounded in an armed raid and car bomb attack on a residential compound in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, the Saudi Interior Ministry said today.

The huge blast from the explosives-laden car occurred just before midnight on Saturday in what the country's Interior Ministry described as a terrorist attack.

The ministry, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said that those killed included Saudis, Sudanese and Egyptians. It said those wounded were Americans and Canadians, as well as people from Africa, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Romania.

via The New York Times

Terriers rule

Well, the fighting Terriers from my alma mater, Wofford College, have won the Southern Conference football championship and will be going to the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs. Pretty cool.

True freshman Kevious Johnson rushed for 101 yards and two touchdowns while All-America free safety Matt Nelson had a key interception and fumble recovery as Wofford claimed the outright Southern Conference championship and the league's automatic bid to the Division I-AA playoffs with a 28-14 win over East Tennessee State this afternoon at Gibbs Stadium.

Wofford has won nine games in a row in the same season for the first time since 1970, when it went 11-0 before losing in the NAIA national championship game. Dating back to last season, the Terriers have won 18 of their last 22 games overall and 11 of their last 12 in the SoCon.

via the Spartanburg [SC] Herald-Journal

Living in Texas now, I had no idea that Wofford's entry into the Southern Conference a few years back was a controversy, but an AP story written before today's game says that has been the case. Glad they're being vindicated.

All Wofford needs Saturday is a win over East Tennessee State to end the pain of last year's playoff snub and quiet the laughs of Southern Conference fans who couldn't believe the league replaced Marshall with the Terriers.

[Wofford coach Mike] Ayers has been patient all his career. He took over a Terrier team that went 1-10 in 1987 and led them to the Division II playoffs three years later. He then started the slow climb into Division I-AA, making steady progress and weathering the occasional backslide.

"The big part of building a program is people that will hang with you long enough, trust you long enough to do your job," Ayers said.

But even Ayers was able to let off some steam after the Terriers' 42-16 win over The Citadel last week clinched at least at share of the league title.

"All those guys who said Wofford would be an embarrassment to the conference, guess what?" Ayers said after the game. "You can eat some crow."

via the Miami Herald

"Victory vindicates and defeat indicts"

The worst nightmare of the Conventional Wisdom is coming true: George W. Bush is more Reaganite that Ronald Reagan himself. The President's huge and idealistic speech to the National Endowment for Democracy this past week generates a fretful analysis in the Washington Post.

Bush believes Reagan was "entirely correct," and that what worked in the 1980s against the Soviet empire will work again in the Middle East. Reagan's critics are now his critics, Bush suggested, and Reagan proved them wrong.

But not even Reagan dared press Reaganism this far. Operating in the superpower standoff of the Cold War, Reagan did not risk pushing the closed and autocratic governments of the Middle East to embrace human liberty. Rather, he pursued essentially the same Middle East strategy that his predecessors, Republican and Democrat, had embraced, favoring stability over modernization and an unpleasant status quo over a very risky gamble on progress.

"Even Reagan himself implicitly fenced off the Middle East," said one administration official.

Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy was long and highly rhetorical. He announced a break with "60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East," a policy that "did nothing to make us safe." Instead, the United States will pursue "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."

What this means in practical terms -- beyond the obvious in Iraq -- was left unsaid.

But as rhetoric, the speech was Reaganism distilled, the 150-proof stuff, and revealed the extent to which ideas that were being batted around on a lonely fringe of politics 40 years ago have become the governing worldview of the global hyperpower. In the age-old foreign policy struggle between sunny idealism and ice-cold cunning, the idealists are at the controls -- surprising, perhaps, given that Bush's father leaned, by training and temperament, in the other direction.

Worried or not, even the Post understands the ultimate bottom line:

Ultimately, the only test of an idea is time. Bush promised his gamble in Iraq will prove to be "a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." The proof is yet to come.

"Victory vindicates and defeat indicts," one White House strategist said. "And we're not going to know for a long time."

Jessica IS a hero

Former POW Jessica Lynch is much in the news this week and next, what with a biographical book and a made-for-TV movie coming, and an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer. Lynch herself has always eschewed the idea that she was a "hero."

Jonathan V. Last in the Nov. 7 e-mail newsletter from The Weekly Standard makes a pertinent observation.

Let's stipulate that the nitty-gritty details of the Lynch capture and rescue are unknowable except to those who were present. So what do we know? Jessica Lynch is a young woman who joined the military, went to Iraq, saw a bunch of her buddies killed, was wounded, and then taken prisoner by Iraqis soldiers. She was later rescued. (New reports suggest that she didn't shoot anyone before her capture and that she was raped as a prisoner.)

That she endured all of that doesn't make her brave? I think women who fight breast cancer are brave; people who endure physical peril and face death for their country are pretty darn heroic in my book, whether or not they inflicted any enemy casualties. Jessica Lynch is [a] soldier; she did her duty and shed her blood so that the people at DemocraticUnderground.com can embarrass themselves in the safety of their local Starbucks.

Clearly, what's going on here is transference. People who hate George W. Bush hate him so much that they're taking it out on Lynch. Shame on them.

Anthrax back in the news

An anthrax scare has closed several postal facilities in the Washington, D.C. area today. Tommy Thompson says it's probably nothing.

The U.S. Navy said on Friday it hoped to be able to say within days whether a suspicious substance found at one of its mail handling centers this week was actually anthrax, as preliminary tests suggested. The Navy shut down the automated facility in Washington to run additional tests after sensors on Wednesday detected traces of a substance that could be anthrax, a deadly bacterial agent.

As a precaution, the U.S. Postal Service earlier closed 11 facilities that were serviced by the same contractor that transported mail to the Navy center.

U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson, attending a health ministers' conference in Berlin, said he did not expect analysis to confirm the presence of anthrax at the Navy facility.

via Yahoo! News

Coincidentally, Australia's Sydney Morning Herald has a report reviewing the so-far fruitless search for the perpetrators of the 2001 anthrax terrorism in the U.S. that claimed five lives. American scientist Steven Hatfill has been a prime suspect, but the case has divided the FBI and those who know the field.

Dr Dick Spertzel, who worked for years at the US Army's lab at Fort Detrick, says the anthrax sent to the senators came from a sophisticated laboratory.

"This is not something that a person could casually make," Spertzel told the Herald. "And I contend that you can't do this in a clandestine fashion so it had to be made in a country that was complicit in its production - and that narrows the field."

But Spertzel, who has worked with Hatfill, is one of the few experts who does not believe the perpetrator was a US scientist. A former UN weapons inspector who is still convinced Saddam Hussein kept an active bio-weapons program, he is convinced Iraq is the most likely anthrax source. And the failure of the WMD search in that country has not dissuaded him.

"The FBI spent a year and a half trying to duplicate the product and failed by their own admission," said Spertzel. "It think I know what's being done in America and there is nothing resembling this."

Dr Martin Hugh-Jones, while deferring to Spertzel's military expertise, disagrees. "The betting is still that it's domestic and I have no reason to doubt that. My working model is that somebody came across some weaponised material being used in a trial and appropriated a small amount of it." Who was it? "I have my suspicions and I start with some of my best friends."

Forward strategy of freedom

President Bush delivered a heckuva speech today at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for the 20th Anniversary of their National Endowment for Democracy. His themes were freedom and democracy; his focus the Middle East.

Read the whole thing, but here are just a few excerpts.

Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today, and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. In many nations of the Middle East -- countries of great strategic importance -- democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.

Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. This "cultural condescension," as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would "never work." Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are, and I quote, "most uncertain at best" -- he made that claim in 1957. Seventy-four years ago, The Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be "illiterates not caring a fig for politics." Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the Indian people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government.

Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are "ready" for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches cooperation, the free exchange of ideas, and the peaceful resolution of differences. As men and women are showing, from Bangladesh to Botswana, to Mongolia, it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path.

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.

Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.

The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.

Working for the spread of freedom can be hard. Yet, America has accomplished hard tasks before. Our nation is strong; we're strong of heart. And we're not alone. Freedom is finding allies in every country; freedom finds allies in every culture. And as we meet the terror and violence of the world, we can be certain the author of freedom is not indifferent to the fate of freedom.

Full text available via the White House, in English and Arabic.

Termination shock

Writer Kathy Sawyer has a good article in today's Washington Post about the status of the Voyager 1 space probe, including a cogent explanation of the boundary between our Solar System (the "heliosphere") and deep space.

The spacecraft Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has become the first human emissary to approach the boundary region where the sun's domain ends and the vastness of interstellar space begins.

The first signs came in August, when onboard instruments detected evidence that the spacecraft had entered a new environment fraught with bizarre cosmic rays and other characteristics not seen in its previous 26 years of space exploration, scientists said yesterday.

But they disagreed on whether the 1,600-pound spacecraft has already felt the effects of "termination shock" -- a long-awaited milestone zone that the craft must cross as it leaves the solar system.

Includes video (Real format)
JPL news article
Voyager mission site

Harry is "benign"?

Here's an odd twist on book censorship.

Malaysia, which strictly censors foreign movies and books, has decided to ban tomes with "ghostly" tales and those touching on the supernatural, reports said today.

Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung was quoted by The Star as saying that the Government would no longer approve permits to import and publish reading material containing elements "calculated to entertain by frightening."

These include books within the categories of mystery, mysticism, fantasy, occultism and superstition, he said.

"These materials will create an unhealthy picture in the minds of the readers and influence them by such far-fetched ghostly stories," he said.

However, titles such as the popular Harry Potter series would not be affected as they were deemed to be "benign", he added.

via News Interactive (Australia)

Partisan intelligence

Sen. Jon Kyle (R-Arizona) has tough words to say about Democratic plans to completely politicize the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

"This strategy memo lays bare what we’ve started to see for some time: an orchestrated effort by Democrats at a time of war to improperly use an intelligence investigation as a weapon against President Bush. The memo completely shreds Democrats’ claims of bipartisanship in this investigation and falsely attributes ugly motives to the President, members of his administration, and fellow members of Congress. It has reached conclusions about this investigation before it’s even been concluded.

"The Senate should examine whether its rules have been violated by this memo. It is, for example, improper under Senate rules to impugn the motives of fellow Senators. Additionally, committee staff should never be involved in partisan political scheming, most especially Intelligence Committee staff members, who in the past have always acted in a nonpolitical, bipartisan fashion.

"If Senators continue to attribute this memo to staff, then those staff members should be fired. Additionally, I call on Senator Rockefeller and Senate Democratic leaders to immediately disassociate themselves from this partisan attack plan. A failure to denounce this memo publicly would clearly seem to be an acknowledgement of its authenticity."

So does Sen. Zell Miller (D-Georgia):

"I have often said that the process in Washington is so politicized and polarized that it can’t even be put aside when we’re at war. Never has that been proved more true than the highly partisan and perhaps treasonous memo prepared for the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee.

"Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics. The information it deals with should never, never be distorted, compromised or politicized in any shape, form or fashion. For it involves the lives of our soldiers and our citizens. Its actions should always be above reproach; its words never politicized.

"If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both should be dealt with quickly and severely sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused.

"Heads should roll!"

Intelligence gap widens?

While the Left back home tries to use intelligence as a political wedge issue, there may be a growing intelligence crisis on the front lines in Iraq, if this report is true. Maybe everyone should grow up and get focused on the important things.

U.S. forces are losing the intelligence battle in Iraq to an increasingly organized guerrilla force that uses stealth, spies and surprise to inflict punishing casualties.

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces — their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets — than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

With local knowledge and the element of surprise on their side, the guerrillas are exploiting their intelligence edge to overcome the coalition's overwhelming military superiority.

The key problem is that Iraqi guerrillas simply have more and better sources than the coalition. U.S. military officers worry that the Iraqis who work for them, such as translators, cooks and drivers, include moles who routinely pass inside information back to insurgents. In at least two cases, Iraqis have been fired on the suspicion that they were spies.

A former senior director in the Iraqi intelligence service says the Americans are right to be anxious.

"The intelligence on the Americans is comprehensive and detailed," says the Iraqi, who insisted on not being identified and spoke to a reporter in a private home rather than at a restaurant or hotel to avoid being observed.

via USA Today

UPDATE: Then again, today's Washington Post has a story on how our troops are starting to adapt to this very challenge. Not easy at all, but the effort is underway.

[Lt. Chris] Kane, 24, a tall, fair, bespectacled officer from Fairfax County, two years out of West Point, approached an elder among the men and said, through his Iraqi interpreter, "Tell him we need his help." The interpreter took aside the old man, dressed in a white dishdasha, a traditional robe, and visibly shaking. The two spoke at length. With its armored vehicles sitting in parking lots, the 1st Armored Division is reinventing itself on the fly, grooming neighborhood informants and sending paid sources deep into Baghdad's teeming neighborhoods, CIA-style, to collect information on Islamic militants and Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.

Foot patrols knock on doors posing as water and sewer survey teams; they are actually gathering information. Military intelligence officers, who normally study an enemy's armored order of battle, send sources out with global positioning system devices to record precise locations of targeted homes.

"This is not what they trained for," Lt. Col. Randall Lane, a tank battalion commander, said of his soldiers. "These guys are tankers by trade. They like to blow stuff up. This is entirely different."

At first, the old man said he knew nothing. But after more prodding and cajoling by Kane, the man relented. "I need time to relax," he said, "and then I will give you all their names."

This is the kind of war that the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, "Old Ironsides," is fighting in Baghdad -- not with tank rounds and artillery shells but with persuasion and cultivated trust that produce far more powerful ammunition in the fight against a burgeoning Iraqi insurgency.

"The way to win this is intelligence-based operations," said Lt. Col. Brian J. McKiernan, who commands the 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, "and in this environment, it's all driven by human intelligence."

Posted by Alan at 06:07 AM

Euro anti-Semitism, again

More anti-Semitism has surfaced in Germany. The bigots who showed their true colors have been slapped down, but the underlying sentiment is still simmering along.

The commanding officer of Germany's special forces was sacked yesterday for writing a letter thanking an MP who made anti-Semitic remarks.

Brig Gen Reinhard Guenzel was removed from the head of the KSK, Germany's equivalent of the SAS, with immediate effect after a letter he wrote to the MP, Martin Hohmann, was made public.

Mr Hohmann, a member of the opposition Christian Democratic Union, has been publicly reprimanded after he said many Bolsheviks of Jewish descent took part in mass executions during the 1917 Russian revolution and therefore Jews, like Germans, could be called "perpetrators".

Gen Guenzel, 59, sent the MP a letter of thanks. He wrote: "An excellent speech, if I allow myself the judgment, [which shows] the courage for truth and clarity of which one only very rarely hears and reads in our country.

"And also, although all those who share this opinion or even articulate it clearly and loudly are immediately put in the radical Right corner by our public opinion, you can be sure that with these thoughts you clearly speak for the majority of our people.

Peter Struck, the defence minister, described the letter as intolerable and said there would be no honourable discharge for the general. He said the officer did not speak for the politically neutral armed forces.

He added that Gen Guenzel had damaged the country and the army and described him as a "lonely and confused general who had agreed with the even more confused opinion of an MP".

via The Telegraph (UK)

Knives are out

The true nature of the political knife-fight happening within the Senate Intelligence Committee is now out in the open. The fight won't change, but you can bet that the Democrats' staff won't be putting such things in writing as often in the future.

Fox News has obtained a document believed to have been written by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee that outlines a strategy for exposing what it calls "the administration's dubious motives" in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

The memo, provided late Tuesday by a source on the Committee and reported by Fox News' Sean Hannity, discusses the timing of a possible investigation into pre-war Iraq intelligence in such a way that it could bring maximum embarrassment to President Bush in his re-election campaign.

Among other things, the memo recommends that Democrats "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the [Senate] majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time — but we can only do so once ... the best time would probably be next year."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., appeared clearly shocked by the memo, which Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, acknowledged was written in draft form and not meant for distribution.

Roberts said Tuesday a leaked strategy memo from Rockefeller's staff "exposes politics in its most raw form."

via Fox News

Click on "Continue reading..." below to see the full text of the strategy memo. (Text via NRO's The Corner.)

Democratic strategy memo:

We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by Administration officials. We are having some success in that regard. For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the Chairman has agreed to look at the activities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (e.g. Rumsfeld, Feith and Wolfowitz) as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department. The fact that the Chairman supports our investigations into these offices, and cosigns our requests for information, is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find, but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the Majority. (Note: We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing).

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic "additional views" to attach to any interim of final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it. In that regard, we have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior Administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims and contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an independent commission (i.e. the Corzine amendment).

3) Prepare to launch an Independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the Majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the Administration's use of intelligence at any time -- but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report -- thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public: (1) additional view on the interim report; (2) announcement of our independent investigation; and (3) additional views on the final investigation; or

B) Once we identify solid leads the Majority does not want to pursue. We would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context that on e in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the "use" of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the Majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the Vice Chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD; and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

Summary

Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives - of the senior Administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the Administration's dubious motives and motives.

Gift of Groceries

This seems like a terrific way to show support for our troops AND their families.

With the holiday season right around the corner, officials at the Defense Commissary Agency are encouraging the American public to show its support for U.S. service members through its highly successful "Gift of Groceries" program.

The program, which enables anyone to purchase and donate gift certificates good at all 280 military commissaries worldwide, reached the $1 million mark just six months after its launch in September 2002, according to Kaye Kennedy, the agency's corporate communications chief. Now that figure has climbed even higher, with $1.6 million in gift certificates purchased through the program.

Jean Villerreal, DeCA's gift certificate program manager, said the program "has really exceeded all our expectations as customers, industry and military charities embrace the service."

Kennedy attributes the program's success to the fact that it gives friends, family and the public an opportunity to show their support for military families. Donors can present the gift certificates to military families directly or send them to a local military relief organization. They can also elect to donate them to one of the three nonprofit organizations supporting the program: the Air Force Aid Society, the USO and the Fisher House Foundation.

American Forces Press Service article via DefenseLINK
Gift certificates via Defense Commissary Agency
CertifiChecks via the USO

Knocking 'em down

Missed this report last week. Missile defense of all kinds has been making steady progress in the years since SDI when my physicist friend Dr. B. spoke of working on "laser-surface interfaces"-- i.e., what happens "when a death beam meets a rocket."

A joint U.S.-Israeli laser cannon can knock down rockets in flight, but it will not be ready for battlefield use until at least 2007, an official with the company developing the weapon said Wednesday.

The system, called Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), uses an advanced radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a laser beam to destroy them.

Bob Bishop, media relations manager for Northrop-Grumman Corp., which is developing the system, said it has passed tests at the White Sands, N.M. facility since 2000. "It has shot down a number of Katyusha rockets and artillery shells, too," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. The test at White Sands marked the first time that a rocket has been destroyed in flight by a laser beam.

However, the test version of the system is stationary, and it could not be deployed in the battlefield until it is made mobile. That could happen in 2007, he said, if all the contracts are signed and production continues.

The project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56 million allocation, he said. It was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush on Sept. 30.

via The Guardian (UK)
Background information via Defense Update

Bush gets the crowd on its feet

President Bush spoke today in Alabama, addressing the economy, the global war on terror, and the conflict in Iraq. He got an interesting response.

President Bush came here to talk about the nation's economy but it was his message about Iraq -- a day after an Army helicopter was shot down -- that brought a crowd to its feet Monday when he declared: "The enemy in Iraq believes America will run ... America will never run."

The president did not mention it specifically, but it was clear that the 16 Americans killed in Sunday's helicopter crash were on the minds of the 350 people gathered at a crane company for his speech.

Bush's remarks about the economy hardly stirred workers, who sat nearly motionless in a warm maintenance shop where a white crane that can lift 385 tons served as a backdrop for the president. But the crowd started applauding when he talked of how a free Iraq would allow children to grow up without the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001.

And they rose to their feet after he said: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world ... freedom is the Almighty's gift to everybody who lives in this world."

via The New York Times

The President's remarks in more detail:

As we overcome the challenges to the economy, we're also answering the challenges to the national security. September the 11th, 2001 moved the country to grief. It also moved us to action. We must never forget the lessons of September the 11th, 2001. We must never forget that tragic day.

I made a pledge that day, and we've kept it. We will bring the guilty to justice. We will secure America. We put together a Homeland Security Department to do the best we possibly can in coordinating federal efforts and state efforts and local efforts to protect people. We're doing everything we can to get resources to the -- those on the front line of national, state, and local emergency. That would be your fire fighters, and your police officers, and you're emergency management teams. But the best way to secure the homeland is to hunt the enemy down one at a time and bring them to justice, which is what America is going to do.

America cannot retreat from our responsibilities. We can't hope for the best. See, that's what September the 11th taught us, that we must be diligent and active. We can't hope terrorists will change their attitudes. I like to remind people that therapy is not going to work with this bunch. And that's why we've got some really incredibly brave people on the hunt. We will win the war on terror, there's not doubt in my mind. We will not rest, we will not tire, until the danger to America and civilization is removed.

We have got a great United States military. And some of the best have fallen in service to our fellow Americans. We mourn every loss. We honor every name. We grieve with every family. And we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders.

The terrorists and the killers and those who harbor terrorists cannot stand the thought of a free society in their midst. That's why the mission in Iraq is vital. A free Iraq will be a peaceful Iraq. And a free and peaceful Iraq are important for the national security of America. A free and peaceful Iraq will make it more likely that our children and grandchildren will be able to grow up without the horrors of September the 11th. We'll defeat the terrorists there so we don't have to face them on our own streets.

The enemy in Iraq believes America will run, that's why they're willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops. America will never run. America will do what is necessary to make our country more secure.

Transcript via the White House

Inept advice

Deborah Orin isn't too impressed with Bill Clinton as a political strategist, especially in light of waning prospects for Wesley Clark, widely touted by Bubba as the Democrats' magic bullet not long ago.

Wesley Clark's fizzle from superstar wannabe to self-proclaimed "underdog" is raising new questions in the Democratic Party about former President Bill Clinton's star - and political smarts.

Clinton helped launch Clark in a wave of media buzz by talking up the retired general as one of the Democrats' top two stars - along with wife Hillary - and prodding allies like Mickey Kantor to back him. But political novice Clark is sinking in most polls, down to also-ran status in Iowa and New Hampshire, and had a few deer-in-the-headlights moments at last Sunday's debate.

Officially, Clinton now insists he wasn't promoting the retired general, but other Democratics don't buy it. "Yeah, and he never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," sniffed a rival strategist.

What now looks like Clinton's Clark miscalculation comes on top of other missteps by the former president - like claiming the way to stop Arnold Schwarzenegger in California was for Gov. Gray Davis to copy his own strategy during the impeachment crisis. Funny how Clinton disappeared at the end of that race.

via the New York Post

Dennis coming back

This is good news. CNBC is an also-ran in the ratings, but it'll be nice to have a hip voice from the Right on the air.

After whispers that he was being drafted to run for the U.S. Senate, comedian Dennis Miller is instead returning to television. Miller has signed a multi-year contract with cable network CNBC to host a nightly prime-time program beginning in January. He'll also serve as an executive producer of the show.

"With all that's going on in the world today, it's nice to have a nightly platform to air my opinions," Miller says in a statement. "I'm happy to be back in the NBC family."

The format for Miller's show hasn't been set yet. It will likely feature a mix of interviews and opinion pieces styled on the "rants" Miller was famous for on his HBO series.

via Zap2it

Solidarity

Defense Department administrative judge Will Ross got caught up in severe flight delays in Baltimore last week due to the California wildfires. He wasn't the only one, and something good happened.

When Ross reported to the United Airlines counter the following morning for the next scheduled flight to Los Angeles, bad weather and aircraft mechanical problems made the prospect of a timely trip even more grim.

As he waited in the terminal, Ross noticed many soldiers in their desert camouflage uniforms, newly arrived from Southwest Asia. All, like Ross and the other passengers at the airport, were awaiting connecting flights — but in the soldiers' case, it was to begin two weeks of rest and recuperation leave.

Flight delays continued and the airport had become, in Ross's words, "a zoo." By the afternoon, one flight to Denver had been delayed several hours. United Airlines agents kept asking for volunteers to give up their seats and take another flight, but Ross said they weren't getting many takers.

Finally, Ross said a United Airlines spokeswoman got on the public address system and made a desperate plea. "Folks, as you can see, there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area," the agent said. "They only have 14 days of leave and we're trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more time in an airport than they have to.

"We sold them all tickets knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know … we respect what you're doing, we are here for you and we love you," the agent continued.

"The entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary people -- a cross-section of America -- broke into sustained and heartfelt applause," Ross said. "We're talking about several hundred people applauding, a whole terminal.

"The soldiers looked surprised and very modest," he continued. "Most of them just looked at their boots." Many of the travelers in the terminal wiped away tears.

"And, yes," Ross said, "people lined up to take the later flight and all the soldiers went to Denver on that flight."

Ross said he figured that 30 or 40 people had suddenly jumped at the change to offer their seats to U.S. soldiers.

American Forces Press Service report via DefenseLINK

Ansar in Italy

The many tentacles of international terrorism reach out in all directions.

In Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces could soon face a growing threat from a reconstituted Ansar al-Islam. The Kurdish terrorist group, decimated during the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, has reorganized and regained operational capability, thanks largely to an al-Qaeda support network based in northern Italy. That network, established in the spring and summer of 2002 and centered in the triangle between Milan, Varese, and Cremona, has funneled money to Ansar and al-Qaeda operatives abroad and served as a recruitment base for both organizations, a new report from the Special Investigative Unit of Italy’s military police says.

via AFPC's Eurasia Security Watch

FDR remembered

Tough-minded captain of industry Lord Conrad Black says we should acknowledge the success of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a savior of capitalism during a time of much greater danger than we face now.

Those worried about the recent sluggishness of the American economy should look to the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he entered office in 1933, unemployment was at 33%, there was almost no public-sector relief for the jobless, 45% of family homes had been or were in imminent danger of being foreclosed, and the Chicago Grain Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and the banking system had collapsed. Almost no one was engaged in agriculture on an economically sustainable basis, and the nation's food supply was apt to be severely interrupted at any time.

The country was entitled to something more bracing than Herbert Hoover's defeatist, self-exculpatory gloom. Economics was then not as exact a science as it has become; Roosevelt was no economist and in policy terms he had a severely divided entourage. He produced a smorgasbord of measures and kept those that worked. He made fairly steady progress through the 1930s, co-opting the Progressive isolationists to Keynesian economics in the early years, and then ditching them in favor of pro-defense, pro-British Southern senators and congressmen when the time came to switch from pump-priming to rearmament, and saving the world from Hitler. In this intricate process, Roosevelt never singled out specific scapegoats, and preserved the moral integrity of the nation so he could focus national attention on America's real enemies, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Roosevelt spared the country the extremes of left and right that plagued every other Great Power in the 1930s. He left the U.S. twice as wealthy as it was when he assumed the presidency. As economics, the New Deal deserves a passing grade, but as crisis management it was a huge success. And in the 1930s, Roosevelt was almost the only leader of an important country who was not either a barbarous dictator, an appeaser of barbarous dictators, or an ineffectual ditherer. For these reasons, as well as his genius as a war leader, he is rightly judged the greatest American president since Lincoln.

via WSJ's OpinionJournal

Back to the Moon?

It may be that the U.S. is going to renew its commitment to manned lunar exploration. That'd be a good thing, if NASA can be rebuilt to handle it.

The year-long review of future directions for the U.S. space program is rapidly drawing towards selection of a policy path, Spacelift Washington has learned from sources close to the deliberations.

The final result may be a presidential announcement of the new space goal in a national address at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 2003, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first heavier-than-air powered flight.

As of late October, sources indicate that a central recommendation is likely, but not certainly to be resumption of manned lunar flights to develop advanced technologies that can support U.S. astronauts working beyond Earth orbit to not only the Moon, but eventually on near-Earth asteroids and Mars.

via SpaceRef.com
Tip via NRO's The Corner

A sign?

Mel Gibson seems sincere, if perhaps too intense, in making his controversial movie about Jesus, but this sure doesn't seem like a good omen:

Actor Jim Caviezel has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ. The lightning bolt hit Caviezel and the film's assistant director Jan Michelini while they were filming in a remote location a few hours from Rome. It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.

via BBC News

A new scourge

This is truly scary news. Naturally it comes from Florida.

Cogon grass, a fast-growing Asian weed that initially hitchhiked to America as a packing material, is becoming a worse plant scourge than the infamous kudzu vine in many parts of the South.

It kills pine seedlings, is a hot-burning fire hazard, squeezes out native plants and ruins habitats for threatened species such as the gopher tortoise and indigo snake. Cogon is even more aggressive and harder to get rid of than the ubiquitous kudzu.

"There's no pest, disease or fungus that destroys it," said Ross Price, manager of a 45,000-acre pine plantation for La Floresta Perdida Inc. "We can retard it, slow it and stop it, but the word 'control' I don't have."

"Kudzu's a weenie plant compared to cogon grass," said James H. Miller, research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service in Auburn, Ala.

Cogon is considered one of the world's 10 worst weeds and has invaded every continent except Antarctica. In the United States, it has spread as far south as the Everglades, up into South Carolina and west into Texas, but Florida is the epicenter, Miller said. Cogon has invaded 30 of Florida's 67 counties.

via ABC News

Real piracy

The ICC's International Maritime Bureau monitors incidents of piracy on the high seas, and says the trend is way up.

In its latest quarterly piracy report, the IMB reported that numbers of piracy attacks on shipping throughout the world reached a record 344 in the first nine months of 2003, with Indonesian waters remaining the most dangerous.

The IMB and its Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre said the spate of attacks on small tankers by gangs of heavily armed pirates aboard fishing boats and fast craft had heightened tensions in the area.

"In most cases the attacks are thought to be led by Aceh rebels," the IMB said. Their main purpose was to raise money to fund their separatist fight by holding hostages for ransom, it added.

More recently, a fully laden oil tanker, the Penrider, was attacked by pirates wearing military-style fatigues and carrying assault rifles. The IMB said the attack bore all the hallmarks of the Aceh rebels.

IMB Director Captain Pottengal Mukundan said: "If Aceh rebels are behind the Penrider attack, we need to know...Politically motivated pirates are prepared to take greater risks to further their cause. We have seen the devastation that results from this in other parts of the world."

via the IMB
IMB Weekly Piracy Report

Along similar lines, only a few weeks ago "citizen diplomat" Mansoor Ijaz told Fox News that seaborne terrorism is a gathering threat.

Dean's metrosexuality

As noted by Eye on the Left and others, Howard Dean blundered into a rhetorical bramblebush this week, declaring himself a "metrosexual" and then immediately disavowing it.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean tried to be all things, except George W. Bush, to all voters on fundraising stops in Boulder and Denver on Tuesday.

The pack-leading Democrat hit all the marks, courting fiscal conservatives and social liberals. He bashed the war and pumped up his plans for universal heath care, renewable energy and investments in schools, highways and broadband Internet for everyone.

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

At a luncheon in Denver, Dean surged past the issues and got down to more immediate business, spelling out the main reason for his fourth Colorado visit in the past year.

"This is all about raising money to beat George W. Bush," he told a full ballroom at the Oxford Hotel.

via the Denver Post

Men, if you're not sure about whether or not you're a metrosexual yourself, check out the ESPN metrosexual test or read the, uh, seminal article at Salon.com.

Maybe there is an overlarge synaptic gap between Dean's speech control center and the strategic-thinking lobe of his brain. He was backing up like a big dog that had just hit a spot of freshly-polished linoleum and felt himself sliding towards the far wall. In this case, he was suddenly foreseeing how the label "metrosexual" will play in the S.C. primary.

Truth and untruth

Two thoughts come to mind concerning the gathering storm over CBS's bogus docudrama about President Reagan. One, it's important to ensure that our media-drenched, but largely historically ignorant, citizenry gets the truth, not a pack of lies. CBS deserves all the brickbats being heaved its way, and we can only hope that this thing will be shelved or drastically reworked.

Second, it's terrific to see the Right get energized and united to support a courageous and gallant public figure who can no longer speak for himself. For that, thanks CBS.

The protectors of the Reagan legacy are in full cry.

Critics who believe former President Ronald Reagan is portrayed unfairly in CBS' "The Reagans," a miniseries scheduled for broadcast Nov. 16 and 18, have challenged the network and its advertisers to either revise or abandon the project, which they consider a partisan hatchet job and a distortion of history.

Many are particularly troubled by the omission of Mr. Reagan's role in the economic expansion of the 1980s, and say the portrayal of his personality borders on cruel caricature. Fictional conversations also imply he was apathetic toward the AIDS crisis.

In the meantime, the Reagan family has issued no public statements, though several recent press reports say the family is both hurt and deeply disturbed by the CBS series, which the network describes as a "compelling and historical account" and "meticulously researched."

Longtime Reagan family friend and TV host Merv Griffin was perhaps the most vehement. He called the series a "cowardly act ... the most cowardly thing I've ever heard," he told MSNBC on Wednesday. "Is that what the 'C' in CBS stands for?" Mr. Griffin asked.

via the Washington Times

Defeatism

The Wall Street Journal cuts to heart of the matter (again) in its commentary on the defeatist mewlings of the Left concerning our policy and strategy in Iraq.

Just as the going gets rough in Iraq, some of our elites are losing their nerve.

This of course is precisely the goal of the terrorists in Iraq who this week began their Ramadan offensive. Their car bombs and rocket attacks are destructive and terrifying but not a serious military threat. The guerrilla insurgency remains leaderless, with no great power support and largely confined to the Sunni Triangle surrounding Baghdad. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis continue to support the U.S. presence, and progress continues toward Iraqi self-rule. In short, Iraq is not in "chaos" or on the verge of a popular uprising, and this anti-guerrilla war is clearly winnable.

But the Baathist die-hards know that they do not have to win in Iraq; they merely have to prevail in Washington. So like the Tet offensive of 1968 and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, their terror campaign is intended to shake American resolve.

In this, we regret to report, they are having some success. A good portion of the Democratic Party and its intellectual cohort are already predicting American defeat.

We are not saying that these voices want the U.S. to lose. But their criticism is so virulent and unconstructive that it is clear they won't let themselves believe that America could win.

The Bush policy has been to take the battle to the terrorists and their state supporters. Iraq is now the central battlefield of that campaign. It is a fantasy to believe that if we are driven from Iraq because of flagging American resolve then the terrorists would leave us alone. They are sure to follow us here and kill more innocent civilians until we cease to pursue them anywhere and in any way. The Kerry strategy--now dominant among Democrats and liberal intellectuals--is a Maginot Line that guarantees our eventual defeat.

Lessons of fire

Daniel Henninger ponders the lessons of leadership in both the rampant wildfires in California and the global war on terror.

A year before September 11, the Bremer Commission on Terrorism said weaknesses in the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism "should be addressed immediately." In an eerie premonition of the failures leading to the 9/11 disaster, the Bremer report began with a quotation from Thomas Schelling's foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter's classic study of the Pearl Harbor intelligence failures. "Surprise, when it happens to a government," Schelling wrote, "is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost." (Emphasis added.)

It is too late for Southern California. Forest policy has become such a "diffuse, bureaucratic thing" that the addition of status quo environmental opposition made public leadership impossible. If we have learned anything, again, from this awful catastrophe, it is that not making a decision amid imminent threat is the worst form of public leadership.

With terrorism, it is not too late to avoid the same mistake. With next November's election, the American people have a chance to express their preference for a style of leadership in a complicated and dangerous world.

Ample room exists for disagreement and debate about terrorism and Iraq. But there is a real question to be asked whether modern liberalism has become so tied to belief in the benefits of bureaucratic "process" that the process itself has become an impediment to acting or a pretext for doing nothing, as it did with the fires. The result in either case has proven to be mortal risk for Americans.

When John Kerry, Wesley Clark and the rest are asked what they would have decided differently after September 11, and when in virtual unison they say they would work in partnership and cooperation with the United Nations, we are entitled to wonder why their foreign policy, like their forestry policy, would not place the war on terror into the hands of the exact equivalent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

via WSJ's OpinionJournal