Petrified Truth

"The Western Disease"

End the old year, or start the new, with a bracing essay by scholar Victor Davis Hanson, with whom I am more impressed daily. He's been watching the domestic and international media at work and finds what he sees disturbing and ungrounded in real life.

There is something terribly wrong, something terribly amoral with the Western intelligentsia, most prominently in academia, the media, and politics. We don’t need Osama bin Laden’s preschool jabbering about “the weak horse” to be worried about the causes of this Western disease: thousands of the richest, most leisured people in the history of civilization have become self-absorbed, ungracious, and completely divorced from the natural world — the age-old horrific realities of dearth, plague, hunger, rapine, or conquest.

Indeed, it is even worse than that: a Paul Krugman or French barrister neither knows anything of how life is lived beyond his artificial cocoon nor of the rather different men and women whose unacknowledged work in the shadows ensures his own bounty in such a pampered landscape — toil that allows our anointed to rage at those purportedly culpable for allowing the world to function differently from an Ivy League lounge or the newsroom of the New York Times. Neither knows what it is like to be in a village gassed by Saddam Hussein or how hard it is to go across the world to Tikrit and chain such a monster.

Our Western intellectuals are sheltered orchids who are naïve about the world beyond their upscale hothouses. The Western disease of deductive fury at everything the West does provides a sort of psychological relief (without costs) for apparent guilt over privileged circumstances. It is such a strange mixture of faux-populism and aristocratic snobbery. They believe only a blessed few such as themselves have the requisite education or breeding to understand the “real” world of Western pathologies and its victims.

No beardnik he

Hard to believe there's a prankster in Cuba daring enough to mock maximum leader Fidel Castro like this, but the picture speaks for itself.

The black and white photo, shot from a distance as Castro addressed American students at the Palacio de las Convenciones, shows what many believe to be a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler upon close inspection.

Using magnifying glasses to get a detailed look, Cubans were stunned by what they surmised was a deliberate manipulation of the photo published Dec. 4 in the print edition of Granma.

"It was all over the street, everybody was talking about it," a foreign diplomat in Havana said in a telephone interview.

"The head does look like Hitler," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The hair looks like it's parted on the side. It looks like he doesn't have a beard. It looks like he has a Hitler mustache."

Speculation also swirled about possible arrests at the daily newspaper, which serves as the official voice of the Cuban government.

via the Miami Herald

UPDATE: Compare and contrast the daring of a protester in Castro's oppressed police state with this puerile and offensive image at IndyMedia in a free Washington, D.C.

Lynch and Piestewa videotape

NBC News has aired excerpts from an Iraqi television videotape showing badly injured Jessica Lynch and her colleague Lori Piestewa. Tough to watch.

Iraqi doctors took good care of captured Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch and labored hard but unsuccessfully to save her best friend, according to Iraqi television videotape shot during the soldiers’ captivity in Iraq last spring.

The tape, which was never aired in Iraq but has been obtained by NBC News, provides a new look at the treatment the Iraqis gave Lynch and other members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Co. after they were ambushed March 23. Lynch and four other soldiers were rescued by U.S. special forces on April 1, but 11 of their colleagues died during and after the ambush in Nasiriyeh.

Officials said Iraqi television videotaped the U.S. POWs for propaganda purposes, but because the tape of the wounded prisoners did not make the Iraqis look good, the network never aired it.

Article and video via MSNBC

Blinders coming off?

While Saudi Arabia's leaders worry about being assassinated at home by al Qaeda, the nature and the results of their support, both explicit and tacit, for Islamic radicalism worldwide are starting to be understood, even in a Europe that hasn't wanted to believe it.

For years, Saudi Arabian support for Europe's burgeoning Muslim population was seen as little more than benign help for sometimes beleaguered immigrants. In a remarkable change, Europe's police and intelligence forces have revised their view, identifying Saudi money and theology as a cause for growing radicalism and support for terrorism.

In recent months, countries across the continent have launched inquiries into Saudi influence on their Muslim communities, which in some countries account for more than 10% of the population and are growing rapidly due to immigration. The investigations focus especially on Saudi-backed schools, mosques and foundations that European police and intelligence officials allege help to breed intolerance. In some cases, the institutions have been the spiritual home to terrorists.

"We need to look at the organization that is providing the money and support," says a German intelligence official who works for a new government task force investigating Saudi influence of Islam in Germany. "For years, this has been coming from Saudi Arabia."

Germany's frustration is shared by other countries. In the Netherlands, reports that a foundation had trained at least one terrorist caused parliament to launch an inquiry into Saudi influence and tighten terrorism laws, while in France, police are investigating whether a Saudi-funded school is fostering extremism. In Britain, police are investigating how a prominent imam, or prayer leader, obtained a Saudi diplomatic passport.

via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only)

Mr. Personality

Howard "Dr. No." Dean is starting to accumulate an entire assortment of campaign nicknames due to his multitudinous and unsavory personality quirks.

All candidates develop a reputation with the media. In 2000 the story line on Al Gore was his wildly exaggerated claims. Mr. Gore may not have said precisely that he "invented the Internet," but his propensity to tell "whoppers" got him tagged with the line nonetheless. Unfortunately for Mr. Dean, that's the kind of story line that's now emerging about him.

After building a campaign on the anger of the Democratic electorate, the former Vermont governor can now be called "Backsliding Dean." He leaps forward with a bold statement aimed at pleasing his core supporters, but ultimately is forced to slide back because of the ludicrousness of his position.

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

Just as in the 2000 election, if the choice is between a normal human being and someone who is going to work out his psychological issues in front of us for 4 years or more, I pick George W. Bush -- regular guy.

No, not like the NGOs

As is so often the case, the American armed forces step in to get the job done, when others cannot or will not. What's so impressive about what's going in Iraq is their ability to improvise and adapt to circumstances in the theater of operations. Some decry "lack of planning," but I see leadership at every level.

With civilian aid experts still in short supply or scared off by the security threats... the American military continues to shoulder the biggest effort to help a nation restore its civilian society since the end of World War II.

Young soldiers plucked from their combat specialties are playing critical roles in areas in which they have no formal training, from running cement factories to rebuilding sewage systems.

But in the aftermath of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government, no organization except the military had the resources and organizational wherewithal to deal with issues from setting up local governments to rebuilding roads. Since late April, the 101st Division alone has spent more than $40 million on 3,900 projects in northern Iraq.

Eight months after the United States declared the end of major combat in Iraq, the military is handing over more and more responsibilities to Iraqi officials, who are also working with civilians reporting to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American civil administrator in the country.

But military commanders here expressed frustration that most international aid organizations have not returned in force since the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad last summer.

"The N.G.O.'s have been a disappointment," said Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Division, speaking of nongovernmental organizations. "Don't get me wrong, the truck bomb at the U.N. headquarters was horrific. But they seemed as if they were very, very quick to bail out of here, compared to the risks they have run in a variety of other missions."

via The New York Times

North of the border

Toronto writer Kathy Shaidle is fed up with the reflexive and unreasoning anti-American attitudes of so many of her fellow Canadians, per her opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News this week.

(The Dallas Morning News site requires a lengthy and intrusive registration, so will go out on a limb here and excerpt extensively.)

Being an American trapped in a Canadian's body means always having to say, "You're stupid."

I once was one of those smug sneerers at our southern neighbor, the product of a typical Canadian upbringing: my memorizing Trudeaupian doctrine about our superior "cultural mosaic" and the Yanks' inferior "melting pot."

The U.S. Bicentennial made a particularly indelible impression. I was 12 in 1976, the perfect age to be scandalized for life by red, white and blue toilet seats.

And like all Torontonians, I have my share of Stupid American Tourist Stories: loud, super-sized folks wearing what appear to be pajamas, asking if they can walk to Niagara Falls from here.

So, what happened?

Well, I am a recovering liberal, and Sept. 11 is my dry date.

That morning, my leftist life flashed before my eyes. I remembered to my shame all of those "Yankee, go homes" I had chanted as a Reagan-era peacenik. And rolling my eyes at the tacky teddy bear memorials at the Oklahoma City bombing and muttering, "You would think a building never had blown up before."

How sophisticated I was. And how sick.

Wherever I go, conversations like the following are commonplace:

"Bush."

"I know."

"I hate him."

"I know."

I have worn out my computer's "delete" button, weary of asking co-workers to refrain from sending me "funny" e-mails about setting George W. Bush on fire.

I have taken to wearing a Stars and Stripes scarf. When asked about it, I explain that I use it to strangle old draft dodgers.

I really want to buy a gun (somehow) just so that I can refuse to register it.

I even have developed a taste for iced tea.

No, I am not entirely friendless. I have "met" new pals online: fellow Canucks equally outraged by the World Trade Center attacks and appalled by the matter-of-fact "they asked for it" attitude that permeates elite Canadian culture.

A few thousand of us attended a pro-U.S. demonstration in April. We gathered at City Hall, where I had demonstrated against the United States on a regular basis all of those years ago.

A dozen very young counter-protesters showed up, too. Those kids chain-smoked, swaggered and even sang "Give Peace a Chance."

The deja vu was dizzying. I pitied the angry, stupid girl I used to be, and I fumed while the arrogant little brats booed a speaker at the podium whose father had died on Sept. 11.

Their hatred of Mr. Bush is palpable. I had hated Ronald Reagan just as much. Then, I had started hearing about parents in the former Soviet Union who named their children "Ronald."

I believe I am on the right side of history now. Just on the wrong side of the border.

Tip via NRO's The Corner
Kathy Shaidle's blog

Holiday cheer

Good to note last night that the in-laws seem to be enjoying their Christmas gift: a Donald Rumsfeld talking action figure. The figure's resemblance to the real guy is striking. Very nice.

Payback time

The fight to the death with al Qaeda continues, with the Saudi government now one of the major targets. Decades of domestic appeasement and covert support for jihadism are now coming to a bitter and inevitable conclusion.

Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia with links to Al Qaeda appear to be making a concerted new effort to destabilize the Saudi government by assassinating top security officials, according to senior American officials.

A series of assassination attempts in the last month, including a failed car bombing in the Saudi capital on Monday, have also included a previously undisclosed shooting in early December of Maj. Gen. Abdelaziz al-Huweirini. As the No. 3 official in Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry, he is the kingdom's top counterterrorism official.

General Huweirini, who has worked closely with American officials, was moderately wounded in that Dec. 4 attack, the American officials said. No one has been killed in the attacks, which continued despite major setbacks for Al Qaeda in a battle with Saudi security forces.

The Qaeda militants have carried out a wave of major suicide-bomb attacks in Riyadh, the capital, killing at least 50 people in the last seven months. But they have also been punished by a Saudi security crackdown in which hundreds of militants have been arrested and dozens more killed, and secret caches have been uncovered that contained tons of weapons and explosives.

"The Saudis have done a good job of taking down a lot of their leadership," a senior American official said Monday of Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia. "But they continue to be very dangerous and to go after royal family-related targets."

via The New York Times

Wide open?

Reporters from the Houston Chronicle are apparently on a driving tour of sensitive locations in our area, eyeballing the security arrangements during a period when the nation is on high alert for terrorism. On Christmas Eve they wandered with impunity around the Port of Houston. Now they've been gamboling about the grounds of a nuclear power plant. Appalling, at least on the face of it. What the hell is going on?

The South Texas Project, about an hour's drive from Houston and owned in part by Houston's Centerpoint Energy, is one of the most powerful nuclear plants in the country. In 2001, Unit 1 alone produced 10.8 million megawatts of power -- more than any other reactor in the United States that year.

But even while the United States is on a heightened terror alert, a closer look at the nuclear plant reveals little evidence of increased security. Plant officials, however, say just because their security measures aren't readily visible doesn't mean they aren't there.

On Saturday morning, a Houston Chronicle reporter and photographer accompanied a security industry consultant on a tour of the South Texas Project's perimeter. The consultant asked to remain anonymous, fearing that his security criticism could cause clients to reject his business.

This is worse than I have ever seen it," said the security consultant. "It's appalling to think that we have a multibillion-dollar asset vital to the infrastructure to the United States that is being protected by one guard at the front gate and no guards at the back gate in the face of a heightened alert due to a significant terrorist threat."

The consultant suggested the plant should hire more visible, armed guards and use heavy-duty retractable barriers that would stop all vehicular traffic from penetrating the grounds.

According to its website, security at STP is managed by the Wackenhut Corporation.

Gangsters at heart

More evidence that terrorists are as much gangsters as they are ideological fanatics: drug running is now a focus for raising the money they need to fund their dirty war.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has become deeply involved in international drug trafficking, using the money to buy arms and, possibly, radioactive material for use in a so-called "dirty" nuclear bomb, senior U.S. officials say.

The seizure earlier this month of boats carrying heroin and hashish, and operated by al Qaeda-linked persons, has brought to light an al Qaeda drug operation that has grown tremendously since the September 11 attacks, the sources say.

"Bin Laden does not mind trafficking in drugs, even though it's against the teaching of Islam, because it's being used to kill Westerners," said a defense official who asked not to be named. "He has allies and associates who are not members per se, but who move products for him and take drugs and buy arms and give the arms to al Qaeda."

"If you're going to get terrorism under control, we've got to stop their livelihood, which is money," said the defense official. "Without money, they die."

via the Washington Times

Forbidden knowledge

If you have two minutes, check out the TV commercial for the Honda Accord that will never appear on American television.

Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit

Oh, a "religious" idiotarian candidate

So, Howard "Dr. No" Dean has told the Boston Globe that he describes himself as a "committed believer in Jesus Christ" and will include references to his Christian faith in his campaign for president just as he heads south for the Feb. 3 primaries in the Bible Belt.

Tough-minded Wesley Pruden, editor of the Washington Times, is more than a little dubious about (a) Dean's sincerity and (b) the upside potential for this as a campaign technique.

The former governor of Vermont, who grew up in New York as an Episcopalian, found a Jewish wife and became a Congregationalist, auditioned his Jesus talk in, of all places, Boston.

Mr. Dean described himself to the Boston Globe as "a committed believer in Jesus Christ" who expects to "increasingly include references to Jesus and God" in his speeches as he stumps the South.

Jesus Christ, he says, "was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind. He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. ... He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."

Mr. Dean described himself as a Christian in the "Northeast tradition," uncomfortable discussing religious beliefs in public, and if the Jesus talk he displayed in his Boston interview is the best he can do he will be wise to take his own advice, and not talk about it in public. His beliefs smack of "the social Gospel" universally disdained in the Bible Belt, warmed-over Unitarian theology that Mr. Dean says he and his wife rejected when they considered trying to find a faith they could embrace together.

Mr. Dean and his handlers are looking past the primaries, of course, and to the general election, and the good ol' boys, some of whom fly the Confederate flag on their pickups but nearly all of whom are deeply, deeply suspicious of any candidate without a genuine faith. Southerners instinctively mistrust a man who thinks he can do it all by himself.

But worse than a man of no faith is a man who merely pretends to be something he is not. Worst of all, the man who condescends to invoke the name of Christ. Such a foolish man will reap only scorn, and no pity.

Meanwhile, the perspicacious Moxie has her own lowdown on "the painful truth" of the issue. Be warned that one reader of her post says it made him blow eggnog out his nose.

Water-borne terrorism?

Here's another dimension to previously-discussed threats of terrorism on the high seas. Our jihadist enemies seem to be busy everywhere.

Al-Qaeda has turned its terror sights to the sea, targeting luxury cruise liners in an expansion of its "jihad" against the West. Owners of the recently launched $1.3 billion Queen Mary 2 yesterday confirmed threats of terror hang over its maiden voyage early next year.

US intelligence officials also found evidence Al-Qaeda was planning to attack the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal as it passed through the Gibraltar Straits en route to the Gulf War earlier this year. Plans for the attack emerged after a US spy plane discovered scores of acoustic sea-mines had disappeared from a naval base in North Korea.

US intelligence services believe the mines could be aboard 28 "terror ships" Osama bin Laden has assembled in the past year. The capture of Al-Qaeda's chief of naval operations, Ahmad Belai al-Neshari, has helped to reveal the extent of the organisation's maritime ambitions. Al-Neshari was found carrying a 180-page dossier that listed "targets of opportunity". These included large cruise liners sailing from Western ports.

Anti-terrorism expert and former Sydney Olympics security chief Neil Fergus said yesterday that he was not convinced Al-Qaeda could launch sea attacks.

via News Interactive (Australia)

Leaders at risk

Always-interesting but seemingly unverifiable DEBKA makes a good point today in a discussion about recent unsuccessful assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

It is a realistic possibility that al Qaeda’s repeated targeting of Musharraf is part of a larger plan to eliminate pro-Western Arab and Muslim rulers. The Pakistani president was lucky till now, but King Muhammad VI of Morocco and Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia are also thought to be imminent targets as linchpins of America’s global war on terror. Al Qaeda appears to believe that by knocking over key US props within the Arab and Muslim world, it will undermine America’s strategic standing universally.

Their report also includes information about various anti-explosive technologies that would be very encouraging if deployed.

Democracy and the Enemies of Freedom

Bernard Lewis, Middle East scholar and professor emeritus of history at Princeton, has a thoughtful essay in today's OpinionJournal on the challenge of implanting and nurturing freedom in the Islamic world. Excerpts:

The attempt to bring freedom to the Middle East evokes two fears: one in the U.S. and still more in Europe, that it will fail; and the other, among many of the present rulers of the region, that it will succeed.

Certainly, policies of political liberalization in Afghanistan and in Iraq offer a mortal threat to regimes that can survive only by tyranny at home and terror abroad. The enemies of freedom are dangerous; unrestrained by any kind of scruple and unhampered by either compunction or compassion, even for their own people. They are willing to use not just individuals and families, but whole nations as suicide bombers to be sacrificed as required in order to defeat and eject the infidel enemy and establish their own supremacy.

The creation of a free society, as the history of existing democracies in the world makes clear, is no easy matter. The experience of the Turkish republic over the last half century and of some other Muslim countries more recently has demonstrated two things: first, that it is indeed very difficult to create a democracy in such a society, and second, that although difficult, it is not impossible.

The study of Islamic history and of the vast and rich Islamic political literature encourages the belief that it may well be possible to develop democratic institutions--not necessarily in our Western definition of that much misused term, but in one deriving from their own history and culture, and ensuring, in their way, limited government under law, consultation and openness, in a civilized and humane society. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other to provide the basis for an advance towards freedom in the true sense of that word.

Even after the arrest of Saddam Hussein this week, the forces of tyranny and terror remain very strong and the outcome is still far from certain. But as the struggle rages and intensifies, certain things that were previously obscure are becoming clear. The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional and then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us.

If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.

Unworthy leadership

As an Episcopalian, I find much that is alarming in the worldview, statements, and actions of Dr. Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury and putative spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide. Today, The Telegraph in London calls him "unworthy" and particularly notes his moral flabbiness on the issue of Islamic terrorism. Well said.

On Christmas Day the Pope appealed to God to rid the world of the scourge of terrorism. The Archbishop of Canterbury, on the other hand, reserved his clearest condemnation for the West's counter-terrorism campaign. Imprisoning terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh prison, he complained, "sends out the wrong message" to Muslim societies. Those of the Christian faith, he said, should show themselves to be "on the side of humanity" by "making sacrifices for the sake of justice".

The "sacrifices" to which Dr Williams refers presumably involve risking another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11. So far, the counter-terrorist campaign has been remarkably successful in preventing al-Qaeda attacks in Europe and America, in spite of that organisation's strikes elsewhere in the world. Moreover, this has been achieved without any curtailment of the rights of ordinary Muslims in Britain and America, who are free to practise their faith with a degree of freedom of which Christians in many parts of the Islamic world can only dream. Does Dr Williams really suggest that humanity would better be served by refusing to imprison those who, given the chance, would delight in making a nuclear attack on a Western city?

The bitter pill

George F. Will reviews the incoherent public statements of Howard "Dr. No" Dean and considers the impending implications for the Democratic Party.

Regarding foreign policy, Dean recently said not only that America is no safer because Saddam Hussein was captured but that America is "no safer today than the day the planes struck the World Trade Center." Well. He says he supported the war to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan, although he thinks it made us no safer. And even though he says the war in Iraq made us no safer, he says he would "not have hesitated" to attack Iraq if the United Nations had given us "permission."

Because Dean's foreign policy pronouncements have been curiouser and curiouser, his recent speech on domestic policy did not get the attention it deserved for its assertion that America is boiling with "anger and despair." Republicans are, Dean says, trying to "dismantle" the welfare state -- presumably when they are not enriching Medicare's entitlement menu -- and they aim "to end public education."

via the Washington Post

Our Port wide open

Should we just hope that al Qaeda doesn't read the Houston Chronicle? Or is Port of Houston management going to actually correct this?

A drive along the Port of Houston's docks by two Houston Chronicle employees and a security consultant -- despite a heightened national terrorism alert -- brought strong warnings to security guards and law officers from the port police chief.

"The security people who allowed it to happen were not having a merry Christmas," port spokeswoman Argentina James said Friday.

Russell Whitmarsh, police chief in the nation's second-busiest port, said he has strongly reminded the security staff that only essential personnel are to enter in view of the code orange terrorism alert issued Sunday by federal officials.

Whitmarsh said he met with security supervisors Wednesday to go over "what went wrong, what error was made" in allowing a Chronicle reporter and photographer, along with a security consultant, to drive along the docks earlier in the day.

The three drove past several ships and warehouses, heavy equipment and bridge supports after showing their driver's licenses to security guards.

via the Houston Chronicle

The unauthorized visitors apparently had a leisurely tour on Christmas Eve, courtesy of security guards who failed to take even the most basic precautions.

A Christmas Eve tour of the Port of Houston and the petrochemical industries along the Houston Ship Channel shows that -- despite a recently heightened national security alert -- they lie wide open to even a moderately determined terrorist.

A local corporate security consultant, accompanied by a Houston Chronicle reporter and photographer, pointed out numerous vulnerabilities at the sites and suggested ways to fix them. The consultant asked to remain anonymous, fearing that his security criticism could cause some of the corporations to reject his business.

"It's Christmas Eve. Think Dec. 7, 1941," the consultant observed as he and the others in a late-model sport utility vehicle approached the port's main gate, just off the Sidney Sherman Bridge on the East Loop.

Once inside the port, the group was able to move around at will. At the very edge of the wharf, group members could almost reach out and touch any of the dozen or so large ships unloading -- including an auto carrier and a bulk cargo ship.

The group also drove within a few feet of a work crew unloading the cargo ship without being challenged. The visitors cruised a mile of dockside without any business there, but were never stopped or questioned.

The massive supports of the Sidney Sherman Bridge carrying traffic on Loop 610 looked especially vulnerable. A major explosion collapsing the columns could kill hundreds of motorists and disrupt truck access to the port for months.

Unfortunately, especially for those of us who live downwind, the Port of Houston -- filled with ships, terminals, and petrochemicals -- is a huge target waiting for terrorist attention.

The Port of Houston is a 25-mile-long complex of diversified public and private facilities located just a few hours' sailing time from the Gulf of Mexico. The port is ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne commerce, second in total tonnage, and sixth in the world.

The Port of Houston is made up of the port authority and the 150-plus private industrial companies along the ship channel.

Approximately 175 million tons of cargo moved through the Port of Houston in 2002. A total of 6,414 vessel calls were recorded at the Port of Houston during the year 2002.

Military Survival Rules

Some "rules" of unknown provenance, but undoubted wisdom:

· "Aim towards the enemy." - Instruction printed on U.S. Army rocket launcher

· "When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend." - U.S. Army training notice

· "Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. From 30,000 feet, every single bomb always hits the ground." - U.S. Air Force ammunition memo.

· "If the enemy is in range, so are you." - Infantry Journal

· "A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit." - Army preventive maintenance publication

· "Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo." - Infantry Journal

· "Tracers work both ways." - U.S. Army Ordnance Corps memo.

· "Five-second fuses only last three seconds." - Infantry Journal

· "Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid." - Col. David H.
Hackworth

· "If your attack is going too well, you're probably walking into an ambush." - Infantry Journal

· "No combat-ready unit has ever passed inspection." - Joe Gay

· "Any ship can be a minesweeper - once." - Anonymous

· "Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do." - Unknown Army recruit

· "Don't draw fire; it irritates the people around you." - Your buddies

· "If you see a bomb disposal technician running, try to keep up with him." - U.S. Army ordnance manual

· "It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed" - U.S. Air Force flight training manual

Tip via the Library Dragon

Joe gets it

Sen. Joe Lieberman says presidential candidate, and former physician, Howard Dean has become "Dr. No." So be it.

"In this campaign, I'm putting forward a strong, positive vision for America. And that stands in sharp contrast to what Howard Dean offers today. He seems to believe if you are just against everything, that's enough. Against removing Saddam Hussein. Against tax cuts. Against knocking down walls of protection around the world so we can sell more products that are made in America, by Americans. Dr. Dean has become Dr. No."

- Sen. Joe Lieberman

Sharp shooting

USA Today has a profile on U.S. Army snipers at work in the urban warfare of Iraq.

The sun was sinking at the desert's edge when Sgt. Randall Davis, an Army sniper, spotted his target: an armed Iraqi on a rooftop about 300 yards away. ''It was just getting dark. I saw a guy step in front of the light,'' Davis, 25, recalls.

He says he knew he was watching another sniper by the way the man stepped back into the shadows and crept along the roofline to spy on a squad from his unit, B Company of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, known as the ''5-20.''

''Most people, when they get on a roof, will just move around and do what they've got to do,'' Davis says. ''This guy was moving slowly, trying to have smooth motions, trying to stay in the shadows.''

From his own rooftop position, Davis tracked the man through the sight of his M-14 rifle. He didn't have to wait long before the enemy sniper made another mistake. ''He silhouetted his rifle from the waist up, trying to look over at the guys in the courtyard.''

Davis fired one shot. ''I hit him in the chest. He fell back. His rifle flew out of his hands.''

It was Davis' eighth confirmed kill. Earlier, he had killed seven enemy fighters in a single day.

Accolades

Austin Bay thinks that Time Magazine naming "The American Soldier" as Person of the Year doesn't go nearly far enough. Amen.

Person of the Year should be the first in a crescendo of honors. Frankly, the grand accolade U.S. GIs have earned is the Nobel Peace Prize.

Peaceniks perish the thought? It's high time, actually. Pacifists didn't liberate Nazi concentration camps, American GIs and British Tommies did. This past year, U.S. Central Command and crack line units like the Army's Third Infantry Division did far more to promote and secure real peace and justice on this broken and brutalized planet Earth than decades of posturing peace marches and thousands of toothless U.N. declarations deploring dictators and genocide.

In the raw mathematics called body count, dropping Saddam's fascist death machine saved 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi lives -- the innocents his henchmen would have slain during 2003 while the United Nations fiddled and France burned with anti-American ressentiment.

Iraqis freed of Saddam's moment-by-moment terror know American GIs brought that blessing, belated as it is.

It is an intricate, complex paradox that warriors waging just war are the source of a more resilient peace.

via the Houston Chronicle

The tribe is all

Interesting report in the Washington Post on the intelligence progress being made in Iraq. I think we knew, as a generality, that tribalism was, and still is, a huge factor in how the Saddam Hussein regime was organized, but getting the level of detail needed for operational success is new. Impressive work by the good guys.

Unfortunately, there is still a lot to do and attacks by bad guys will continue. Iraq is a very nasty stable to clean out.

As U.S. forces tracked Saddam Hussein to his subterranean hiding place, they unearthed a trove of intelligence about five families running the Iraqi insurgency, according to U.S. military commanders, who said the information is being used to uproot remaining resistance forces.

Senior U.S. officers said they were surprised to discover -- clue by clue over six months -- that the upper and middle ranks of the resistance were filled by members of five extended families from a few villages within a 12-mile radius of the volatile city of Tikrit along the Tigris River. Top operatives drawn from these families organized the resistance network, dispatching information to individual cells and supervising financial channels, the officers said. They also protected Hussein and passed information to and from the former president while he was on the run.

At the heart of this tightly woven network is Auja, Hussein's birthplace, which U.S. commanders say is the intelligence and communications hub of the insurgency.

U.S. commanders have blamed the violence on a combination of Hussein loyalists, Islamic guerrillas and foreign fighters, but the structure and operations of the insurgency have been the subject of speculation and debate. The commanders say the detailed picture that they now have of the Iraqi campaign is the result of months of sleuthing, including raids targeting suspected Hussein loyalists in the Tikrit area.

The interrogations and documents uncovered in the raids, coupled with electronic and other intelligence, repeatedly revealed the involvement of the same extended families and marked the way toward the inner circle.

Seasons greetings

Remember those serving far away -- they sure haven't forgotten us. Merry Christmas to the troops.

For generations, U.S. service men and women and government civilians have spent the holiday season far from loved ones, so that all Americans can celebrate the peace, prosperity and liberty that our armed forces have fought to protect.

Today, you continue to keep steadfast watch across the globe, from bases on land, planes overhead, and aboard ships at sea; from distant, remote locations, and within our own borders.

During this holiday season, the United States is asking much of you -- and you are responding with a strong sense of duty, a willingness to give up personal comfort for the greater good, and the professionalism that has earned our military services honor and respect throughout the world. It is never easy to be away from home, but especially during the holiday season, the courage, patriotism and unconditional support of families and loved ones mean so very much.

Your service and the sacrifices of your families come at a crucial moment in our nation's history. Your dedicated work is making the world a better, safer, and more peaceful place. I am inspired by your character and courage, and am extremely proud to serve with you. The Joint Chiefs of Staff join me in sending to you and your families our very warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

- Gen. Richard B. Myers, USAF, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Text via DefenseLINK

White House Christmas

While waiting for new terrorist strikes, be sure to check out Christmas at the White House, including BarneyCam II: Barney Reloaded, Karl Rove reading "Santa's New Reindeer," and more.

What Christmas Brings

This night bestowed peace on the whole world;
so, let no one threaten;
this is the night of the Most Gentle One—
let no one be cruel;
this is the night of the Most Humble One—
let no one be proud.
Now is the day of joy—
let us not revenge;
now is the day of good will—
let us not be mean-spirited.
In this day of peace let us not be conquered by anger …
Today the Bountiful impoverished Himself for our sake;
so, rich one, invite the poor to your table.
Today we received a gift for which we did not ask;
so let us give alms to those who implore us and beg.
This present day cast open the heavenly door to our prayers;
let us open our door to those who ask our forgiveness.
Now the Divine Being took upon
Himself the seal of humanity,
in order for humanity
to be adorned by the seal of Divinity.

—Saint Isaac of Nineveh's "Christmas Sermon"

via Christianity Today

Thinking ahead

Savvy political pundit William Safire notes that Howard Dean's war with the "Old Democrats" is now out in the open, and he thinks it would be bad if Dean doesn't win the nomination.

But what if Dean loses momentum in Iowa, does "less than expected" in New Hampshire, gets clobbered in Carolina or blows his cool at media tormentors once too often? What if the Old Democrat center, revivified as a stop-Dean movement and helped by the pendulum press, actually stops Dean? Could happen. Then what?

He is not the sort who gives up easily. Nor is he likely to ask Clark or whomever in a smoke-free room for the No. 2 slot. Dean has grass-roots troops, a unique fund-raising organization, the name recognition and the fire-in-the-belly, messianic urge to go all the way on his own ticket.

Politronic chatter picked up by pundits monitoring lefty blogsites and al-Gora intercepts flashes the warning: If stopped, Dean may well bolt.

That split of opposition would be a bonanza for Bush. In a two-man race, the odds are that he would beat Dean comfortably, but in a three-party race, Bush would surely waltz in with the greatest of ease.

Here's my problem: Such a lopsided, hubris-inducing result would be bad for Bush, bad for the G.O.P., bad for the country. Landslides lead to tyrannous majorities and big trouble.

Which is why I worry about Dean not getting the Democratic nomination.

via The New York Times

Baathist strife

Seasoned Middle East observer Amir Taheri, writing in the Arab News, reports that the arrest of Saddam Hussein is having a dramatic effect on the insurgents previously under his control. Disarray in their ranks should provide a bonanza of fresh intelligence.

With Saddam Hussein under arrest, a power struggle has started within the remnants of his Baathist regime.

At least three rival groups are positioning themselves to fight for the control of what they call “popular resistance” (Al-Muqawemmah Al-Shaabaiyah).

The issue is attracting broader Arab interest with some pan-Arabists, Islamists and other groups focusing on the Iraqi insurgency as the vanguard of a wider struggle against the West led by the United States.

Inside Iraq, however, the power struggle within the insurgency is fought around more mundane issues. At stake is some $400 million in cash that Saddam and his entourage took away from the Iraqi Central Bank in Baghdad on April 8, hours before the US Marines arrived.

The fallen regime is also believed to have stashed away billions of dollars in foreign, mostly Swiss, French and Austrian banks. Until 2002, these were managed by Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam who is now believed to be held by the coalition forces.

The rival groups are also fighting over control of large quantities of weapons that the Saddamites looted from army barracks last spring. One of the last orders Saddam issued to his supporters on April 8 was to “seize and secure” as many weapons as they could. According to Iraqi sources, however, there are enough arms in secret locations to supply the insurgency for months if not years.

The three main groups involved in the power struggle are organized along tribal and clan lines covered by a veneer of ideology.

Profiling is not enough

Harvard terrorism expert Jessica Stern thinks profiling is inadequate to catch adaptive terrorists, including a new source of jihadist recruits: women. A point well-taken, although profiling and other blunt instruments will have to do until we get more human intelligence into place, a process that will take months and years.

Terrorists seek out vulnerabilities in the enemy government's countermeasures. When metal detectors were installed at airports, terrorists found other ways to attack planes. When governments began protecting their embassies with concrete barriers, terrorists turned to larger explosives. Profiling men exclusively, and also focusing so tightly on countries known to harbor terrorists, are significant loopholes that have not been closed despite the FBI's recognition that al-Qaida has begun recruiting women, and despite the discovery last spring that a female scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may have been providing logistical support to al-Qaida.

Although women represent a fraction of terrorists worldwide, it is naive to assume they're not recruited to violent extremist groups. Women are responsible for approximately one-third of the suicide attacks perpetrated by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and two-thirds of those by the Kurdistan Workers' Party. Women have founded and led terrorist groups, hijacked planes, served on all-female tank units, blown up buildings and assassinated national leaders. What is new is that women are participating in attacks on behalf of organizations that promote Islamist causes.

The lack of scrutiny of women entering the United States and the broadly held -- and correct -- view that women are less prone to violence are likely to cause al-Qaida to turn increasingly to women and other recruits who don't fit the standard profile. According to intelligence assessments cited in the press, the al-Qaida movement is seeking recruits all over the world -- in Western prisons and inner cities, among Hispanic-Americans and among French converts to Islam. Through Internet communications, it is urging individuals to create their own cells and carry out their own strikes, without necessarily joining existing militant organizations. It is also recruiting women.

via the Houston Chronicle

Muammar knows

Col. Gaddafi, maximum leader of Libya, understands what the Democrats do not: American resolve and action make a difference.

Col Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, called yesterday on other "rogue states" to follow his dramatic example, by admitting involvement in banned weapons programmes, if they were to prevent "tragedy" from striking their nations.

He sidestepped direct questions about whether the war in Iraq had influenced his decision to scrap nuclear, biological and chemical research, saying his motives were "not important".

But his stark warning to other "rogue" states appeared to offer endorsement of Washington's and London's policy of diplomacy backed by pre-emptive strikes.

Asked if he had a message for other leaders, especially the heads of Syria, Iran and North Korea, he replied: "They should follow the steps of Libya, or take an example from Libya, so that they prevent any tragedy being inflicted upon their own peoples."

via The Telegraph (UK)

Pundit William Safire says the Libyan agreement is clear evidence that President Bush's plans are working, and that the implications for Old Europe are just sinking in.

As American tanks began to roll through Iraq to overthrow Saddam, Libya's longtime terrorist, Moammar Gadhafi, came up with a strategy to avoid being next on the regime-change list: pre-emptive surrender.

Nobody calls it that, of course. Diplomats and doves want to treat the dictator's epiphany as the result of patient negotiation stretching back for decades. Some Republicans claim he was softened up by a bomb dropped his way in the Reagan years. But three years after that, his terrorists murdered 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Subsequent sanctions led to economic pain and the threat of a coup. After acknowledging Libyan responsibility, he has been trying to get U.S. oil companies back by promising to pay damages to the families of his victims.

That was not what caused this tyrant suddenly to confess to buying and developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and to promise to reveal all to inspectors. He was transformed into a pussycat by the force of American arms in stopping the spread of mass-destruction weaponry.

Why did Gadhafi have his spy chief, Musa Kussa, approach Britain's Tony Blair -- and not France, Germany or the milquetoast United Nations, to get off George W. Bush's short list of rogue nations? The reason: Britain was America's primary ally in the war against Saddam and was the bridge to Washington. This shows that it pays to be the staunch friend of the United States in extending freedom and does not increase a nation's strategic importance to be America's political adversary.

via the Houston Chronicle

Terrorism feint?

Citizen diplomat and Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz thinks the current terrorism threat may be a feint.

My guess is that what these terrorists are trying to do is mislead us domestically, and they do that because they do still have some elements of the sleeper infrastructure left here in the United States, where they're able to then see how we react, how we respond. What does it mean for our terror level alert to go up one notch at this time of year? Are we changing shopping mall entrance, checking them? Are we checking the bridges? Are we checking tunnels?

What exactly are we doing to try and counteract whatever it is that they have in mind? That is what I think this is really geared towards, not so much an actual attack on U.S. soil, which I still do not believe they have the capacity to pull off in any sort of a 9-11 type style.

He also thinks al Qaeda is rebuilding, within the sheltering arms of Iran, and getting ready to attack again, probably outside the U.S.

It is my understanding that bin Laden has met in recent weeks on a number of different occasions with small militias of people coming across the Iraqi border to get instructions, to get theological sustenance and so forth. And Zawarhiri is engaged in the long-term attacks, that I've said, are going to come sometime in the not too distant future, within the next six months or so, against maritime attacks.

Break down al Qaeda's theological way of doing things in to nuisance terrorism, symbolic terrorism and structure terrorism. The nuisance terrorism is what we see on the ground in Iraq today. The symbolic terrorism is like 9-11 that had major economic consequences. And the structural terrorist attacks that they want to put together. For example, hitting a major maritime canal like the Suez Canal or Panama Canal, would affect the global economy in a significant way. That is the ultimate objective that they've got.

And all rest of what they do in the meantime is to keep the cells active, to keep everything fluid. And to keep us occupied in what they are doing. A little bit like a magician. Do something over here while the real stuff is going on over here.

Joy to the world

The 4th Infantry Division in Iraq has some excellent holiday spirit this year. Not sure this particular old elf is so jolly, but... oh well.

via Yahoo! News

Using the tools

The Army is using innovative analysis techniques adapted from the civilian sector to get the best of insurgents in Baghdad. It's working, bit by bit.

U.S. troops battling the shadowy guerrilla insurgency in Iraq have adopted the computer-sleuthing tactics of big-city American police departments to prepare strikes against rebel fighters and their sources of money and weapons.

Military intelligence analysts have adopted databases and software used by civilian law enforcers to catalog names, pictures and suspects' fingerprints and to search such for links among guerrilla suspects, said Lt. Col. Ken Devan, the top intelligence officer for the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division.

Devan and the division's intelligence analysts study clusters of attacks in Baghdad neighborhoods, looking for the time of day and days of the week when strikes are most likely. They then alter their convoy schedules and routes to avoid ambushes or send patrols to confront the guerrillas, Devan said.

The division uses three programs in tandem, entering data on every bomb blast, every firefight, every suspect detained and every tip given by a local resident. Digital fingerprints are taken from every arrested suspect and added to the database.

"We're seeing patterns emerge. There are certain neighborhoods you don't want to be out in, or there's a better likelihood you'll be attacked," Devan said. "You try to predict what the enemy's going to do next. We try to cut him off at the knees."

AP report via CNN

Ho ho ho

An astute, but worried, reader of the Washington Times sends in his politically correct greeting for the season:

Please accept with no obligation, explicit or implied, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, non-judgmental, tolerance embracing, inclusivity enhancing, equality seeking, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious/secular persuasion of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice any religious and/or secular traditions.

Salute them

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, has a message for America during this holiday season.

As our nation continues to pledge and show support to our Soldiers, our Soldiers in turn continue to pledge support to our nation. They will continue to sacrifice and endure the hardships as they take the fight to the enemy in places that many Americans will never visit or even read or hear about in news reports. They will grit their teeth, tighten their belts and dig their boots into the dirt as they've done in the past. These battle-tested warriors, who demonstrate courage, intensity and a dogged determination to succeed, will continue to fight with the backing, support and appreciation of a grateful nation. They know no other course -- they are American Soldiers.

And like all American Soldiers, past and present, they will endure. The evidence lies in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan and in the towns and cities of Iraq where Soldiers, today, are carrying out combat operations against the enemy at altitudes of 10,000 feet. They are fighting and they are winning. The evidence is also vividly apparent in the Walter Reed Medical Center, where critically injured Soldiers are learning to cope with lifelong injuries and painful rehabilitation. They too are fighting and winning. While thousands of miles separate these great Americans, they share no complaints -- no regrets.

What they do share is a common love for their comrades and their country. They know no other course but selfless service -- they are your American Soldiers. Salute them this Christmas.

via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only)

I think his remarks are equally meaningful for the men and women of each of the armed services, not just the Army. We salute them all.

Pumping up "weak" countries

The RAND Corporation has been studying strategies for using the American military in the Global War on Terror. A new report focuses on how to operate in "weak" countries where terrorists can thrive.

Increasingly, however, U.S. military forces will need to fight al Qaeda and other groups in countries that do not support terrorism but are too weak militarily or politically to counter such groups on their own. Examples include the Philippines and Yemen. U.S. operations in these countries will look less like traditional warfare and more like what has been called “nation assistance,” “foreign internal defense,” and counterinsurgency.

RAND Project AIR FORCE studied effective counterinsurgency operations to derive concepts for likely U.S. strategy against terrorist groups abroad. The central lessons are as follows:

- Host governments, not the United States, should play the leading role in hunting down terrorists.
- Terrorists should be subjected to relentless pressure by host government forces so that they cannot determine the tempo and timing of operations.
- Effective counterterrorist operations will be “information intensive,” relying on accurate information about the activities, locations, and identities of terrorists.
- Most important, host governments should seek to win the support of their populations, thus alienating terrorists from potential sources of support.

Based on these concepts, the primary role of U.S. military forces will often be to train, equip, advise, and assist host country forces in rooting out terrorist groups. U.S. forces will be called upon to forge strong relationships with host-country personnel, to show great discretion in their conduct of operations, to maintain a low profile in the host country, and to be able to react swiftly and effectively when promising targets arise.

Summary and full report via RAND

Sixth-grade justice

Some Houston sixth-graders were asked by their teacher to discuss the capture of Saddam Hussein and what is the appropriate way for the civilized world to respond. As noted in an audio report by KUHF-FM, Houston's NPR station, their response was clear and immediate.

A group of middle school students took time to discuss the capture of Saddam Hussein and what they think is a just punishment for his crimes.

A group of about 25 sixth graders at Hogg Middle School talked about the history, crimes and downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The students broke out into several discussion groups and every group came to the same conclusion, that Hussein should be executed.

The kids' teacher wanted to talk about "tolerance." I asked my seventh grader the same question: her answer was exactly the same. The kids understand in a way that adults sometimes do not.

Threat level Orange

Happy holidays, courtesy of the jihadists.

The government is raising the national threat warning from yellow, the midpoint on its five-color scale, to orange, a federal official said Sunday. Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, planned to discuss the change at a midafternoon news conference at the agency's headquarters. A department official and a Bush administration official both confirmed the elevated threat level but declined to provide details before Ridge's announcement. U.S. officials by the end of last week were telling holiday travelers to be vigilant about the threat of terrorist attacks. The warning was prompted in part by a raised level of ominous intercepted communications that has not quieted for months.

via Fox News
Department of Homeland Security

UPDATE: Tom Ridge made the announcement Sunday afternoon.

The U.S. Intelligence Community has received a substantial increase in the volume of threat related intelligence reports. These credible sources suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond.

The strategic indicators, including al-Qaida's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, are perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th.

Information indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will rival - or exceed - the scope and impact of those we experienced in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania more than two years ago.

Recent reporting reiterates that al-Qaida continues to consider using aircraft as a weapon. And they are evaluating procedures both here and abroad to find gaps in our security posture that can be exploited. Our actions are directed against their efforts.

Friendly reminder: if you see some fanatical asshat starting trouble while you travel or shop, just kill him then and there.

Good news via London

Two interesting reports in the Sunday edition of The Telegraph in London.

First, they say the agreement with Libya to eliminate that country's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction was precipitated not just by our anti-terror action in Iraq and elsewhere, but also by the seizure of inarguable physical evidence of Libya's culpability.

Libya's promise to surrender its weapons of mass destruction was forced by Britain and America's seizure of physical evidence of Col Muammar Gaddafi's illegal weapons programme, the Telegraph can reveal.

United States officials say that America's hand was strengthened in negotiations with Col Gaddafi after a successful operation, previously undisclosed, to intercept transport suspected of carrying banned weapons.

The operation is said to have been carried out under the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an international, American-led scheme to halt the spread of WMD by seizing them in transit. The PSI was first mooted by President George W Bush in May but was not officially launched until September.

Last week, a senior official from the US State Department confirmed that the PSI had "netted several seizures", although he refused to give further details.

Second, they report that we now have evidence that Saddam Hussein was in fact directing much of the opposition to Coalition forces in Iraq. That seems consistent with radio reports this morning that hundreds of Iraqi bad guys have been arrested in the last few days since Saddam's ignominious capture.

Saddam Hussein was personally directing the post-war insurgency inside Iraq, playing a far more active role than previously thought, American intelligence officers have concluded since his capture.

Despite the bewildered appearance of the deposed dictator when he was hauled from his hiding-hole last weekend, he is believed to have been issuing regular instructions on targets and tactics through five trusted lieutenants.

Documents found in his briefcase when he was caught indicated that he had been kept informed of the progress of the insurgency but they did not suggest he had overall control of operations by former Ba'ath Party loyalists.

However, since the arrest and interrogation of guerrilla leaders named in the paperwork, US investigators believe that Saddam was at the head of an elaborate network of rebel cells.

They have put together a detailed picture of Saddam's support structure while in hiding. This enabled him to issue commands without the use of satellite phones that could be picked up by monitoring devices.

The Telegraph has also learned that millions of dollars to support the insurgency were recovered in raids on other suspected Saddam safe houses. US officials say he was in regular contact with five "enablers" - veterans of his feared security services drawn from his power base of Tikrit.

Each man had his own responsibility: logistics, financing, planning, operations and as chief of staff. It was the last of these, picked up in a swoop in Baghdad nine days ago, who gave away Saddam's hiding place.

The "self-licking ice cream cone"

Scholar and military analyst Robert Kaplan is just back from a month with the troops in Afghanistan. He's concerned about creeping bureaucratization of the war effort there, and the implications for the larger War on Terror. Thank God for the non-coms.

Instead of powering down to a flattened hierarchy of small, autonomous units dispersed over a wide area--what the 1940 Marine "Small Wars Manual" recommends for fighting a guerrilla insurgency--we have barricaded ourselves into a mammoth, Cold War-style base at Bagram that drains resources from the fire bases. It is ironic that just as the Pentagon is proposing a more light and lethal world-wide basing posture (with many smaller footprints rather than a few large ones in Korea and Europe), in Afghanistan, whose mountains and tribes make it the most unconventional of battlefields, we have reverted to such an antiquated arrangement.

We are fighting a world-wide counterinsurgency, and you don't hunt down pockets of insurgents over vast swaths of the earth with large bases, large infantry columns, and central control. Operation Iraqi Freedom only shaped the battlefield for the war in Iraq, which is of a small, unconventional kind. Because insurgencies vary from country to country, and even within countries, it is necessary to divest power from places like Washington and Bagram to the edges of the command structure, where noncoms at Advanced Operating Bases constitute the sensitive, fingertip points of defense policy--tailored to the particular situation in their respective microregions. For example, while the U.S. seeks to fold the Afghan Militia Forces into the newly created Afghan National Army, in some provinces these same militias are vital to the security of our special forces fire bases. Therefore, decisions about integrating these forces must be left to individual base commanders, who are familiar with local personalities.

The U.S. military is the world's best because its sergeants and warrant officers are without equal. It is a matter of better utilizing them. Mistakes will occur, like the children killed recently near Gardez, but remember that Green Berets have been regularly saving the lives of young mine victims in rural Afghanistan.

In El Salvador in the 1980s, 55 special forces troops beat back a guerrilla insurgency while gradually integrating renegade militias into a newly professionalized national army. They had advantages, though. A force cap kept the number of uniformed Americans in the country from mushrooming, and except for some basic guidelines they were given relatively limited instructions. So the question is: Can we find our way back to 2001 in Afghanistan and to 2002 in the Philippines, when the Fifth and First Special Forces Groups led the way to military transformation?

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

Smart "Gimli"

John Rhys-Davies, the versatile actor who portrays sturdy Gimli in The Lord of the Rings films, is apparently much smarter than the typical Hollywood actor. For one thing, he recognizes the primal quality and importance of the current struggle between Western civilization and militant Islam.

I think that there are some questions that demand honest answers.

I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.

What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a jewel it is.

How did we get the sort of real democracy, how did we get the level of tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you around this table, and yet you will take it and you will think about it and you’ll say no you’re wrong because of this and this and this. And I’ll listen and I’ll say, “Well, actually, maybe I am wrong because of this and this.”

[He points at a female reporter and adopts an authoritarian voice, to play a militant-Islam character:] ‘You should not be in this room. Because your husband or your father is not hear to guide you. You could only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.’

I mean… the abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True Democracy comes form our Greco-Judeo-Christian-Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world.

There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesn’t matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss—because, g**dammit, I am for dead white male culture.

You do realize in this town what I’ve been saying [is like] blasphemy…

…but we’ve got to get a bit serious. By and large our cultures and our society are resilient enough to put up with any sort of nonsense. But if Tolkien’s got a message, it’s that “Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and fight for what you believe in.” He knew what he was fighting for in WW1.

via Promontory Artists Association
Tip via Andrew Sullivan

Howie losing friends

Ever the epitome of the Washington conventional wisdom, the Washington Post, has started to comment on Howard Dean's rhetorical incoherence and general nuttiness. The Democrats and their allies may sense impending doom.

It is Mr. Dean's position on Iraq, however, that would be hardest to defend in a general election campaign. Many will agree with the candidate that "the administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at unbelievable cost." But most Americans understand Saddam Hussein for what he was: a brutal dictator who stockpiled and used weapons of mass destruction, who plotted to seize oil supplies on which the United States depends, who hated the United States and once sought to assassinate a former president; whose continuing hold on power forced thousands of American troops to remain in the Persian Gulf region for a decade; who even in the months before his overthrow signed a deal to buy North Korean missiles he could have aimed at U.S. bases. The argument that this tyrant was not a danger to the United States is not just unfounded but ludicrous.

Tip via Andrew Sullivan

Hinckley out & about

Michael Reagan on the approval of unsupervised excursions by wannabe presidential assassin John Hinckley:

"They're saying, 'He's fine, he's on his meds. He gets off his meds, does that mean everybody has to duck?"

Tolkien defended

British columnist and blogger Stephen Pollard, a normally astute fellow, has gone off on the BBC, its Big Read poll promoting books and literacy, and most of the poll winners, especially The Lord of the Rings. Among other things, he thinks LOTR is boring and too long. Just for fun, here's the comment I posted on his site.

Stephen, Stephen, Stephen... such an overreaction. If the Beeb's contest is inherently meaningless, then the results don't call for such an angry post.

And whatever terms one might apply in criticism of The Lord of the Rings, "drivel" shouldn't be one of them. Guy Davenport, a serious, thoughtful author and critic, called it "the best" book of the century when Tolkien died, but carefully differentiated that from the book being "the greatest" of the century - a different virtue with different criteria.

Poor old Tolkien is hardly to blame for over-adulation by the young and the credulous, and doesn't deserve a boomerang effect of contempt. Many see his work only as heroic romance, but the texts themselves reveal a bitterly realistic view of evil and violence in the world. It is leavened only with a Christian's respect for perseverance in the face of death, and hope for a better world to come. "Drivel" it ain't.

Perhaps the late professor said it best after all: "Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

So, cut 'em some slack. At the very least, better the people should read Tolkien than 99% of what passes for "literature" these days.

Cheers.

Finally

Today is the long-awaited day. We're going to the 7:35 show tonight since today is a school day. Like Jason in Foxtrot, I think we'll always associate these thrilling and moving films with the holiday season.

Out in public, the buzz is already well underway.

Normally a champion of arty, independent fare, the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday chose The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King as the top film of 2003.

The three-hour-plus epic, which is the final part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, is a sweeping spectacle of computer-generated imagery -- and it couldn't be more different from the rest of the films the group honored.

The Return of the King also was named this week as one of the American Film Institute's top 10 movie picks for 2003.

The critics group, composed of writers for the city's major newspapers and magazines, usually honors films that stand as an intellectual counterpoint to the Oscar voters' more traditional choices.

This year, the New York critics chose Lord of the Rings because it's "a masterful piece of filmmaking," chairman Andrew Johnston said.

"It's just beautifully made, it's pure cinema, it does everything," said Johnston, a critic for Radar magazine. "It's got amazing, epic scope to the drama, to the battle scenes, a lot of strong emotional stuff, really complex, well-rendered characters and effective comic relief where it needs it."

via the Houston Chronicle

UPDATE: Well, it was a very festive scene -- sold out, numerous folk in costume, big lines, etc. The audience oohed, aahed, and cried in all the right places. It's a big movie -- will take time to digest and several viewings to even notice everything. Give it an "A."

Hinckley's Christmas stocking

Deceptive wannabe presidential assassin John Hinckley has gotten his Christmas wish. Too bad Ronald Reagan and James Brady won't get theirs. As noted here and here earlier this year, the Reagan family has opposed this every step of the way, often with great eloquence.

The man who tried to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 will be allowed to have limited unsupervised visits with his parents, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman decided that John Hinckley Jr. can visit his parents within a 50-mile radius of Washington, D.C., without an escort from St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he has been confined since the assassination attempt. However, the judge said Hinckley could not have overnight visits, or visits to his parents' Williamsburg, Virginia, home, which is outside the 50-mile limit.

via CNN

It may or may not be a factor, but NewsMax notes that the judge is a Clinton appointee.

Howie's X-rated friends

Deborah Orin reports on a hate-filled fundraiser for Howard Dean that featured a full-throated gaggle of honking leftist "comics." The putrid language is no surprise, but it's useful to acknowledge with whom Howard Dean likes to associate, as well as the usual media double-standard.

You won't be seeing any video of Howard Dean's x-rated, epithet-ridden New York fund-raiser because Team Dean made sure to bar the TV cameras. Which suggests they expected trouble.

Maybe it was the same foresight that inspired Dean to seal his records as Vermont governor for 10 years because of worries, as he put it in a moment of candor to Vermont public radio, about "future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."

So there were no TV cameras last Monday night when pro-Dean comics took the stage on West 18th St. in Chelsea at a $250-a-head Dean fund-raiser (reduced from $500) and competed to see how often they could use the F-word in the same sentence.

Republicans are fuming. They say that if anything like this had happened at an event where a top Republican was present and did nothing to stop it, the media would rage about it for weeks.

"It's disgraceful. It's like an Upper West Side Manhattan left-wing Ku Klux Klan mentality," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.). "If some Southern redneck talked like this about a liberal, everyone would denounce it. But because it's Upper West Side humor, somehow it's supposed to be chic."

via the New York Post

Watching Korea

Another reminder today that al Qaeda is a worldwide threat, this time hints of an attack to come in South Korea. Still unknown: whether or not there are links between al Qaeda and North Korea.

Agents from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network made repeated visits to South Korea recently scouting for U.S. targets, a lawmaker said yesterday, citing a closed-door intelligence briefing to parliament.

Ham Seung-hui, a member of the Millennium Democratic Party, said that South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) was now on terrorism alert to respond to reported al Qaeda activity in South Korea. "The NIS briefing said suspected al Qaeda members had checked security of the U.S. troops in South Korea on two or three occasions recently," Mr. Ham said in an interview.

One suspected al Qaeda member was detained at a South Korean airport for 10 hours last year before being expelled, he said, citing the intelligence briefing. Another was expelled earlier this year from South Korea. He was believed to be examining security at South Korean airports and carrying out the same task in the Philippines.

via the Washington Times

Feeling safer

Scrappleface reports that Donald Rumsfeld is taking a contrarian position on Howard Dean's foreign policy statements. Such a dude.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that today's foreign policy speech by Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean has made America "measurably safer."

"I get continual updates on the security status of our nation from the CIA, FBI and our own internal analysts," said Mr. Rumsfeld. "This afternoon there was a measurable increase in safety within minutes after Mr. Dean began to deliver his speech."

Experts attribute the jump in the so-called American Safety Index to "the soothing character of Howard Dean's voice, combined with his deep understanding of global geopolitics and military affairs."

"Even though Howard Dean is not yet the commander-in-chief," said one unnamed expert. "The slightest hope that he might be one day just makes Americans feel safer."

Howie the Hawk

William Saletan doesn't seem too impressed with Howard Dean's "major" foreign policy speech this week in Beverly Hills, although it's obvious that Dean and his team want to be taken seriously.

Is Dean too inexperienced to handle national security? That's the gist of the first question he gets in the Q and A. He answers by talking about his travels abroad. He sounds like a candidate in a job interview trying lamely to paper over a hole in his résumé. The stronger rejoinder conveyed by Dean and his chief foreign policy adviser, Ivo Daalder, is that a Dean-Bush race pits an inexperienced prodigy against an inexperienced moron. Daalder touts Dean's "quick grasp" of foreign affairs. Dean promises never to do what Bush did: start a war without planning for its aftermath.

The risk for Dean is that in trying to sound smart, he'll come off as a jerk, as Al Gore did in his first debate with Bush in 2000. I still think Dean's problem on national security is arrogance, not weakness. The election is a choice "between brash boastfulness and considered confidence," he asserts in his speech. Sounds like a boast to me. Answering the question about inexperience, Dean says he studied "under what I consider to be the best history department in the United States, at Yale University." I can see the ad. Left half of the screen: "Bush. Won Two Wars." Right half: "Dean. Studied at Yale."

On my way out, I ask Daalder about something Dean said in Iowa four months ago: that he wants a foreign policy more like Jimmy Carter's. Daalder practically jerks backward, as though he's just been told somebody saw his candidate wearing a dress. You can be sure we won't be hearing stuff like that from Howard Dean anymore.

via Slate

Dragged farther in

Citizens of Great Britain got another reminder this week of what it means to sign on with the nannycrats of the EU: surrender of sovereignty over things large and small.

The Royal Navy was forced by the European Court of Human Rights to suspend all courts martial yesterday until an Act of Parliament can be passed changing the way in which they operate.

It also faces the possibility that every Navy court martial since the Human Rights Act was passed in October 2000 will be quashed.

via The Telegraph (UK)

What it all means

Mark Steyn is on fire today. First, he sets his sights on Saddam's tattered image in the Arab world:

Saddam looking like a wino round the back of Waterloo Station meekly submitting to a lice inspection by an American soldier is a much better photo than Saddam's bullet-riddled corpse at the end of a shoot-out. When was the last time a Middle Eastern thug wound up on the receiving end of an infidel tongue depressor? For fellow dictators like Boy Assad, the sight of the despot-turned-hobo may be a fearful premonition. For Islamist appeasers like the House of Saud, it's a reminder that the way you neutralise a troublemaker is not to throw money at him in the hopes he'll only blow other people up but to hunt him down and finish him off.

For the Palestinians, who never met a loser they weren't dumb enough to fall for (the Mufti, Nasser, Yasser), Saddam still has an honoured place in the Pantheon of Glorious Has-Beens. But for millions of Iraqis a monster has shrivelled away into a smelly bum too pathetic even to use his pistol to enjoy the martyrdom he urged on others.

Then he interprets the response to Saddam's capture by the international smart-set, and comes to the only reasonable conclusion.

For months the naysayers have demanded the Americans turn over more power to the Iraqis. Okay, let's start by turning Saddam over to the Iraqis. Whoa, not so fast. The same folks who insisted there was no evidence Saddam was a threat to any countries other than his own and the invasion was an unwarranted interference in Iraqi internal affairs are now saying that Saddam can't be left to the Iraqi people, he has to be turned over to an international tribunal.

You can forget about that. The one consistent feature of the post-9/11 era is the comprehensive failure of the international order. The French use their Security Council veto to protect Saddam. The EU subsidises Palestinian terrorism. The International Atomic Energy Agency provides cover for Iran's nuclear ambitions. The UN summit on racism is an orgy of racism.

All these institutions do is enable nickel'n'dime thugs to punch above their weights. The New York Times, sleepwalking through the 21st century on bromides from the Carter era, wants the UN to run Saddam's trial because one held under the auspices of the Americans would "lack legitimacy". Au contraire, it's the willingness of Kofi Annan, Mohammed el-Baradei, Chris Patten, Mary Robinson and the other grandees of the international clubrooms to give "legitimacy" to Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, Arafat, Assad and co that disqualifies them from any role in Iraq. I've come to the conclusion that the entire international system needs to be destroyed.

Finally, he ponders the implications of it all for President Bush in the face of unrelenting, if lunatic, criticism from his opponents. Game, set, match.

The fact (if you'll forgive the word) is that things are going pretty well, and there's really no losing scenario in Iraq. Mr Bush may not succeed in bringing democracy to Mesopotamia, but so what? If he has to settle for a Musharraf and a big American base on the Syrian border, it's no skin off his back. But it's still better to have tried.

But I think he'll wind up with something close enough to a free society in Iraq.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Saddam's fate?

Learned military historian John Keegan looks back at how victor states have handled deposed tyrants in past conflicts, and ponders the fate of Saddam Hussein. It's hard to imagine that the Iraqis won't impose a death sentence.

He may, de facto, have been head of state but, by fleeing his capital and office at the outset of the last Gulf War, he effectively abandoned whatever constitutional status he enjoyed. The power vacuum he left has been filled by the creation of the Iraqi Governing Council, which, very conveniently last week, announced the establishment of a tribunal empowered to try any Iraqi citizen - and that Saddam unquestionably is - for crimes under domestic law. Prima facie, Saddam has to answer for many crimes, including murders he has himself committed, large-scale episodes of murder and torture of his fellow citizens, and organised extermination of minorities, particularly Kurds and Marsh Arabs, inside his own country.

The Prime Minister has announced that the Iraqis themselves would deal with Saddam. No doubt they will, but, until the tribunal sits and reaches its verdict, the coalition still bears a responsibility. Saddam will have to be held in captivity, interrogated and prepared for trial. The Americans may wish to remove him, perhaps to an American warship, for questioning. He is a human repository of much military intelligence, which they need to bring guerrilla activity in Iraq to an end. They will also wish to question him about his relationship with al-Qa'eda and his sponsorship of international terrorism in general. They will particularly seek to extract from him whatever he is prepared to admit about his development of weapons of mass destruction.

The opportunity for the anti-American lobby remains large. It will come to a head at the close of his trial. At present there is no death penalty in Iraq, but it seems possible that the Iraqi Governing Council will introduce one and Washington will undoubtedly wish to see Saddam dead. As he has brought death to so many innocents, it is a fate he unquestionably deserves.

via The Telegraph

Bad for Howie

Back to the domestic front, this sentence from Tom Shales in the Washington Post just might be the quote of the day (although Saddam's capture is bringing out the best in many good writers and commentators, and the day is still young -- stay tuned.)

There was widespread agreement, as the saying goes, on virtually every network that the Bush administration's triumph in capturing Hussein was very bad news for Dean, a constant critic of the war now left looking like a monkey whose organ grinder had run away.

Tip via NRO's The Corner

Visitor

Good news on a Monday morning: indication that the lovely and talented Moxie visited this site. Coolness.

More responses

John at Eye on the Left is tracking responses from all directions of the moral compass, including -- naturally -- the panicked Left. Amazingly, he's also got a screenshot of an early edition of the latest issue of Prison Life.

The gifted Peggy Noonan has some advice for us all:

Let's not be boring people who Consider the Implications. Let's not talk about the domestic political impact. For just a day let's feel the pleasure history just handed us.

Agreed. So I'm just going to head out to the grocery, get the fixings for an all-American dinner tonight, and enjoy the slight jaunt in everyone's walk.

First responses

Ambassador Paul Bremer tried to strike a note of "reconciliation" in his announcement about the capture of Saddam Hussein.

With the arrest of Saddam Hussein, there is a new opportunity for members of the former regime, whether military or civilian, to end their bitter opposition. Let them come forward now in a spirit of reconciliation and hope, lay down their arms and join you, their fellow citizens, in the task of building the new Iraq. Now is the time for all Iraqis—Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis, Shias, Christians and Turkomen-- to build a prosperous, democratic Iraq at peace with itself and with its neighbors.

President Bush was more firm.

Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.

I also have a message for all Americans: The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq. We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East. Such men are a direct threat to the American people, and they will be defeated.

We've come to this moment through patience and resolve and focused action. And that is our strategy moving forward. The war on terror is a different kind of war, waged capture by capture, cell by cell, and victory by victory. Our security is assured by our perseverance and by our sure belief in the success of liberty. And the United States of America will not relent until this war is won.

Iraqi blogger Alaa isn't talking about reconciliation.

Before this, I prayed the traditional prayers of thanksgiving. That I, and the Iraqi people should see this day! This, surely, is the mother of all days for us. The heroes of our valiant Pesh Mergas, and the heroes of the U.S. Fourth division have done it. Now is the time to unleash the Iraqi Counter Terror; now is the time to go for the kill. Let us go after them. Don’t lose this moment. They want to recant and live in equality with the people? they have a chance - otherwise they will have to go. I am too overwhelmed with emotion to write coherently; please excuse me. The foul mouths of the enemies of our people everywhere and the neighboring vultures and hyenas be stuffed with dirt; we will come after you; your time will come.

Long live the great alliance of Mesopotamia and the United States of America and her allies. Now is the time, now is the time; Do not delay; unleash the Counter Terror.

God Bless Iraq; God Bless America; God bless the Allies.

And above all Praise be to Allah the Almighty the Avenger.

Salaam

The bad guys have responded with a car bomb in the middle of Baghdad, timed to go off as soon as President Bush finished speaking. Thanks for clarifying the situation. This is a fight to the death, not for "reconciliation."

Palestinians are dejected. Losers.

Disbelief and gloom seized many Palestinians Sunday at news of Saddam Hussein's capture as Israel fired off a telegram of congratulations to Washington.

The former Iraqi ruler was a hero to many Palestinians for his stand against Israel and its U.S. ally, as well as for helping families of Palestinians dead in an uprising.

For Israel, he was a menace over the horizon who long bankrolled the enemy.

"It's a black day in history," said Sadiq Husam, 33, a taxi driver in Ramallah, West Bank seat of the Palestinian Authority.

"We got him"

The U.S. Army caught him hiding in a rat hole. Sweet. What a nice way to wake up this morning. Congrats to our forces and the Kurdish allies who are reported to have assisted this operation. Watch the videos here and here to see for yourself the joyous reaction from the Iraqis in the room with Ambassador Bremer. All the talking heads, including those on Fox News who should know better, yakked over the tape all morning.

Celebratory gunfire rang out across the Iraqi capital, radios played festive music, drivers honked their horns and passengers on buses and trucks chanted “They got Saddam, they got Saddam,” as word of the former dictator’s capture spread from car to car and shop to shop on a sun-filled Sunday afternoon.

U.S. troops stationed around the country cheered when they heard the news and held back as Iraqis fired their guns in the air. Iraqi journalists gave U.S. officials a standing ovation and cheered wildly when video of a captured Saddam was shown during a news conference announcing the arrest.

via MSNBC

Smoking gun found?

The Telegraph in London is reporting Sunday that a documented link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 hijackers has been uncovered in Baghdad. Devastating evidence, if it proves true. In the hall of mirrors that is Iraq today, it's hard to say, but it sure sounds plausible.

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

News article and analysis via The Telegraph (UK)

Wofford semi-final

The mighty Terriers of Wofford College have a tough NCAA Division I-AA semi-final playoff game today against the Blue Hens of Delaware. All or (more likely) part of the game is supposed to be broadcast on ESPN2. The Teamline web site says fans can also listen to the game for free there.

The News-Journal in Delaware says Wofford is "just a bit different."

Wofford head coach Mike Ayers knows it doesn't make sense for his football team to be this good. "If you look at all of the variables, at our student population, at our scholarship numbers, it probably doesn't," Ayers said.

Yet there he was Friday afternoon, in cowboy boots and a sports coat, preparing to lead his 12-1 team into Delaware Stadium for a final walkthrough before today's NCAA Division I-AA playoff semifinal against the University of Delaware.

The major players in the development of Wofford's football program admit they have reached this point, just nine years after moving up to Division I-AA, through a combination of careful planning and well-timed luck. When a football team has the former 28-year president of the college now coaching tight ends, and has a starting fullback who serves as the student body president, you know things are a bit different there.

"I don't think anybody could have dreamed this one," said Danny Morrison, the former longtime Wofford athletic director who is currently the president of the Southern Conference. "More of us were nervous about the move (to Division I-AA), but any time you take that kind of bold move, there is some anxiety attached. But the real truism is that risk and reward are complementary variables."

The weather forecast is partly cloudy and a chilly 38 °F. Hope those southern boys can play in the cold.

UPDATE: Well, the boys didn't make it today. Delaware looked better from the beginning. Fellow alum John said Wofford's defense was bending but not breaking in the first half, which was true. The Blue Hens adjusted better in the second half (which is more than can be said for their idiotarian fans). The Terrier offense didn't click all day. But what a great year for Wofford. Way to go.

The Delaware football team displayed far more patience than its fans Saturday.

Germaine Bennett ran for 186 yards and three touchdowns, and Delaware pulled away in the second half to earn a berth in the Division I-AA championship game with a 24-9 victory over Wofford.

Hundreds of Delaware fans stormed the field with three seconds left as Wofford was lining up for the final play. After a lengthy delay, they were herded together on the sideline - just long enough for Wofford to score a touchdown on the final play. The fans then returned to tear down the goal post, and the game was called before a conversion could be attempted.

Wofford, which averaged 340.5 yards rushing in its first two playoff games, could only muster 136 yards on the ground against Delaware.

"They were sound as a dollar, and their people executed and tackled very well," Wofford coach Mike Ayers said.

It was Wofford's first loss since a 49-0 defeat at Air Force on Aug. 30. The Terriers won two straight playoff games at home before flying to Delaware - only the sixth time in the 114-year history of the program that Wofford traveled by air to a game.

via The State

They can run, but...

Bill Gertz reports that work is continuing on a burrowing nuclear weapon, albeit at a reduced funding level. Sci-fi continues to come to life around us.

Pentagon officials were quietly overjoyed last week when President Bush signed into law the 2004 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. Tucked away in the spending law is $7.5 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. It was half the $15 million request.

The money will be spent studying the ultimate precision guided weapon: a high-yield nuclear bomb designed to drill through rock and destroy deep underground bunkers and facilities. If the weapon is built, rogue states like North Korea and Iran can forget about hiding weapons of mass destruction in rock-hardened, blast-proof shelters.

And the penetrating nuke also would put Russia, China and other nuclear states on notice that they will be unable to protect hardened silos or cave missile complexes. Russian underwater submarine caves also could be taken out with the bomb. Pentagon officials would love to chalk a note on the penetrator before firing one into the cave used by Osama bin Laden and company in Afghanistan, when he is eventually located.

Little has been said in public about the new weapon. Linton Brooks, director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told a Senate hearing earlier this year one idea is to use a B-61 or B-83 nuclear warhead on a new guided aerial bomb with a special nose cone that can burrow through solid rock. "It's not just that you have to be able to penetrate," he said. "We know how to make things that will penetrate. You have to be able to penetrate and still have nuclear weapons, which are actually quite intricate machines, to work right."

Both warheads have 350 kilotons or more of explosive power — the equivalent of 350,000 tons of TNT. The Pentagon wants a bomb that can go through 30 feet to 60 feet of solid rock before detonating. The bomb could also be used for what the Pentagon calls "agent defeat" — frying deadly biological or germ weapons.

Read more about the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator at GlobalSecurity.org

Arnie hangs tough

Arnold Schwarzenegger got a compromise victory this week in his contest with the disfunctional California legislature. Not as tough as the proposal that failed last week, but any agreement with the hardcore Dems who run the nuthouse in Sacramento that isn't a total sellout could be fairly called a "victory." Score another one for Arnie.

After a week spent reviving a plan left for dead a week ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Friday a fiscal recovery package that will place before voters in March a $15 billion bond measure and new spending restrictions. Schwarzenegger signed the bills shortly after the Senate voted for the bond and spending limit bills Friday afternoon. Their votes followed the Assembly's approval Thursday night and gave the new Republican governor his biggest victory since he took office last month.

With his signature, Schwarzenegger capped a week of bipartisan cooperation rare in recent years, as he and legislative Democrats revived the package considered dead last week and then worked throughout the week to reach a compromise. Once that was done, they had to corral reluctant Republicans, who had wanted a tougher spending limit, to agree.

"This is a compromise," said Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte. "What it does is force this state to begin to live within our means. This bill is better than the current situation."

via the Sacramento Bee

Warlords coming

Israeli security hands have issued a pessimistic forecast for the near-term future of inchoate Palestine. Pretty tough to see a solution -- there's no partner for Israel. Warlords might be an improvement... if they aren't bent on the destruction of Israel per se. Sometimes warlords can be bought off.

Warlords will probably take control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Yasser Arafat departs as the Palestinian leader, Israeli security veterans say.

Former heads of the Mossad intelligence agency and other security services have told the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in a report that they believe there is no chance of reaching a peace deal while Mr Arafat is alive or for many years after he leaves the stage.

"I wouldn't put my money on peace," Shmuel Bar, chairman of the study team, said. "What we will see is a lot of small areas of control and influence. Warlords with their own armed forces . . . It will be fiefdoms, Afghanisation."

Mr Bar blamed Mr Arafat's policies and the Israeli Army's isolation of Palestinian cities for a three-year-long process of "feudalisation" in which leaders backed by local militias were gaining footholds in many areas.

In the post-Arafat era, he said, the Muslim militant group Hamas would be the only coherent power centre in Palestinian areas because it would remain united under one leadership.

But the security experts did not believe Hamas would succeed in taking power, as militia chiefs, many affiliated with Mr Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction, would block them. Islamist factions get about 30 per cent support in Palestinian polls.

via the Sydney Morning Herald

Growth

Here's bad news for the Democrats, who have pilloried President Bush for his efforts to pull the U.S. out of its Clintonian economic hangover.

The U.S. economy, building on a strong finish this year, is set to grow in 2004 at its fastest rate in 20 years, as improving profits and productivity feed increased business spending, a private business group said on Thursday.

The New York-based Conference Board forecast that real growth in gross domestic product will hit 5.7 percent next year, following an estimated growth rate of 3.1 percent in 2003.

But the group acknowledged that job growth remains sluggish in the world's biggest economy, and said productivity gains are likely to fuel much of next year's growth. Some economists have gone further, saying dramatic productivity gains, which enable fewer workers to do as much or more work than before, are a big reason job growth is so slow.

The Conference Board predicts productivity growth will edge down slightly to 3.6 percent in 2004 from 4.3 percent in 2003.

"Growing business spending and continued strength in consumer spending are generating growth throughout the U.S. economy," Gail Fosler, chief economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement. "While the labor market, a critical factor in sustaining growth, is growing slowly, a pick-up in hiring may already have begun."

The Conference Board expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.6 percent in 2004 from 6.0 percent in 2003.

via Forbes

Lowry pouts

Star pitcher Andy Pettite, raised in nearby Deer Park, Texas, is leaving New York to join the Houston Astros and pitch in front of his family. Rich Lowry shows off his NYC parochialism in NRO's The Corner in response. Pathetic, even if meant in jest.

Andy Pettite was a fine athlete, a true gentleman, and a great Yankee. I’m writing about him in the past tense, of course, because he’s going to pitch for some team in Texas, which means the effective end of his meaningful baseball career.

HOUSTON TRAFFIC RULES

Houston Traffic Rules for People Visiting During Super Bowl XXXVIII, February 1, 2004.

1. You must learn to pronounce the name of the city. It is "Hue-stun," not "Ewe-ston," and definitely not "How-ston." The street named San Felipe is pronounced "San FIL-uh-pee," not "San Fi-LEEP" or "San Fay-LEE-pay."

2. Forget any traffic rules you learned anywhere else. Houston has its own version of traffic rules. They are called "Hold on and Pray." There is no such thing as a high-speed chase in Houston. We all drive like that.

3. All directions start with "Go down to Loop 610," which has no beginning and no end.

4. You have the East, Katy, Southwest, North, South, Northwest, and Eastex freeways, which are actually I-10 East, I-10 West, 59 North, 59 South, I-45 North, I-45 South, and 290, but not in that order. Your job is to figure out which one you really want to get on, without any signs to tell you. God help you if you are in the wrong lane, or you will go around Loop 610 again, which is an endless circle.

5. The Chamber of Commerce calls getting through traffic "a "scenic drive." It is if you love seeing wrecks and people risking their lives changing tires, running through pot holes, slamming on your brakes to avoid a collision, having people cut you off, seeing a lot of people's middle fingers, and exhaust fumes.

6. The morning rush hour is from 5:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The noon-hour rush is 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The evening rush hour is 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., sometimes 9:00 p.m. (or 3 a.m. during floods, which we call "ponding"). The teenagers take the streets from 9:00 p.m. through 5:00 a.m., and Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday morning.

7. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you WILL be rear ended, or at least cussed out, and/or possibly shot. When you are the first off the starting line, count to 5 before moving when the light turns green, to avoid being "T-boned" by crossing traffic.

8. Construction on every freeway, loop, and toll way in the city is a permanent form of entertainment as well as a source of delays.

9. Kuykendahl Road can be pronounced ONLY by a native Houstonian. (It is pronounced "Kirk-n-doll.")

10. All unexplained smells are accompanied by the phrase "Oh, we must be near Pasadena."

11. If someone actually has his turn signal on, it is probably a factory defect and should be ignored.

12. All Suburbans have the right-of-way, unless you are driving an 18-wheeler or perhaps a Bradley tank.

13. The minimum acceptable speed limit on Loop 610 is 85 mph. Otherwise, you will be stopped by Houston's Finest for impeding the flow of traffic.

14. The wrought-iron bars on windows in east Houston are NOT ornamental.

15. Never look at the driver of a car with a bumper sticker that says, "Keep honking. I'm reloading." In fact, don't honk at anyone.

16. If you are in the left lane, and going only 70 mph in a 60 mph zone, the people who are passing you are not really waving at you.

17. If it is 100 degrees outside, then January 1st must be next weekend.

18. The Sam Houston Toll Road is Houston's daily version of a NASCAR race.

19. When in doubt, remember that all unmarked exits lead to the state of Louisiana.

20. Don't get on Main Street unless you really WANT to be on Main Street. Left turns and right turns are not allowed between the South Loop and Dallas (that's Dallas, Texas, not Dallas Street).

21. Don't get sick or injured. There are no parking spaces in the Texas Medical Center for anyone but doctors.

22. You don't have to wait for an exit to get off the freeways. Just follow the ruts in the grass to the frontage road like everyone else. This is how Houston residents notify the Texas Department of Transportation where exits should have been built in the first place.

Y'ALL ENJOY YOUR STAY IN HOUSTON, AND COME BACK REAL SOON NOW, Y'HEAR?

Tip via Ms. Jan

The battle of ideas

The American Conservative Union has launched a new online journal, Conservative Battleline, apparently because ACU believes that National Review has gone too mainstream. Wars of ideas between various conservative groups are an old tradition, and often productive. This will be worth watching.

The Big Man

So-called "President" Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is continuing his lifelong quest to personify a tinhorn dictator character from a mediocre novel of intrigue. Mugabe pretends to be a statesman and the world's diplomatic class pretends to believe him.

President Robert Mugabe's anti-British diatribes rose to new extremes yesterday when he declared that Britain was using the internet to destroy Zimbabwe and recolonise the Third World.

Making his first public appearance since withdrawing from the Commonwealth three days ago, Mr Mugabe used a United Nations conference on information technology to deliver his attack.

"Beneath the rhetoric of free press and transparency is the iniquity of hegemony," he said.

He controls all broadcasting in his country and in September closed the Daily News, the only independent daily newspaper.

He said information technology was dominated "by a few countries in the selfish interests of those countries which are in quest of global dominance and hegemony".

via The Telegraph

Howie and Al's excellent adventure

David Frum looks back into history to ponder the significance of fickle Al Gore's endorsement of bad boy Howard Dean.

Add one more name to the list of those who believe that Howard Dean will prove a cataclysmic disaster for the Democratic party: Al Gore. Why else would Gore have endorsed him?

Think about it. Does Gore still wish to be president? Pretty clearly, he does: Otherwise he would have found himself a real job and moved to LA, rather than dabbling in business while maintaining a theoretical domicile in Carthage, Tennessee.

But how to gain the presidency?

It’s very striking that the party’s two frontrunners for 2008, Gore and Hillary Clinton, are both borrowing pages from the old Richard Nixon playbook. Hillary is reinventing herself just as the “new Nixon” did in 1968; Gore meanwhile is following exactly the same plan for 2004 that Nixon adopted in 1964, when he made sympathetic noises toward Goldwater while complacently watching his successor lead his party to the worst debacle in its post-Depression history.

2004 may not be quite as one-sided an election as 1964 or even 1972, unless of course Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein is captured or shown to have been killed before November. But even without a spectacular further victory in the war on terror, 2004 is shaping up to look a lot like 1988, when another Northeastern near-pacifist won only ten states, all of them except West Virginia in the band of Yankee settlement across the top of the country.

Robert Bartley, RIP

Conservatism lost one of its most eloquent voices today: Bob Bartley, former editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, has passed away at 66.

Bartley's editorial page was essentially an economic-political samizdat during the bleak 1970s and into the 1980s when the conventional wisdom of the Left dominated the media thoroughly. He and his colleagues promoted spirited thinking on the Right and were unrelenting opponents of counter-productive government regulation and taxation. All this to an audience that included both the political class and, more importantly, the business leadership of the U.S. and the world. He will be missed.

Many of the ideas that Bob conceptualized and crusaded for over so many years by now have taken root at or near the center of political and economic life," said Peter Kann, chairman and chief executive of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Journal. "On issue after issue he turned out to be right. Most broadly, the philosophy that he summed up as "free men; free markets" has turned out to be ascendant in country after country around the world. In that sense, the sometimes-lonely warrior turned out to have a world of allies. Ascendant ideas will be Bob's most enduring legacy. But that legacy also includes the men and women he hired, taught and inspired at the Journal editorial pages who remain to carry on his work."

Bartley viewed himself as an optimist, and was heartened by what he had observed during his career. At a retirement party in 2002, he contrasted the current political climate to the one prevailing when he took over the editorial page 30 years before. "This was not merely a troubled society, " he said, "this was a society in the process of becoming unglued."

"Don't wish for the good old days," he counseled his admirers. "In 1972, problems were worse. We did overcome Communism, stagflation and the Vietnam syndrome. For all our momentary problems, at the turn of the century the Soviet empire had collapsed, democracy was spreading in unlikely spots and the American free-enterprise mode was established as the route to development."

"What I think I've learned over three decades," he said, "is that in this society, rationality wins out, progress happens, and problems do have solutions. This, I like to think, is what happens when a society incorporates the traditional editorial credit of my newspaper: free markets and free people."

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

A win against terrorism

Not all terrorists are Islamic. This is very good news for France and Spain. I visted Pau several times when working for Elf, and always had to wonder if these nasty characters would strike while I was there.

French anti-terrorist police have arrested a man described as the top military commander of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, dealing a massive blow to western Europe's most active guerrilla force.

In the second high-profile swoop in a week, Bordeaux detectives and officers of the national anti-terror squad arrested on Tuesday the man along with three other ETA suspects in a dawn raid in the village of Lons, west of Pau in southwest France. They later confiscated documents, weapons and a car.

Close cooperation between French and Spanish police has led to scores of arrests of senior ETA suspects in recent years. Before Tuesday's arrests, 175 suspected ETA members or collaborators had been detained this year.

ETA has killed nearly 850 people since 1968 in a bloody campaign for an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France. It is listed as a terrorist organisation by Spain, the United States and the European Union.

via Reuters
Profiles of ETA via Naval Postgraduate School and the Council on Foreign Relations

Gorish on Dean

So, Al Gore is going to endorse Howard Dean for president tonight. Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO's The Corner anticipates more endorsements from the Democratic pantheon of failed candidates. After all, the Democrats

"now have a candidate with McGovern's foreign policy, Mondale's domestic policy, Dukakis's regional background, and Gore's arrogance. How perfect is that?"

ALA's shame - will it continue?

Nat Hentoff asks some pertinent questions about the leadership of the American Library Association (ALA). As noted here earlier, they have plenty of energy to attack John Ashcroft and the Bush administration over provisions of the USA Patriot Act, but still have refused to condemn Cuban repression of independent librarians and other human rights activists.

Now ALA has another chance coming up -- will they do the right thing? I expect not, since speaking out against genuine tyranny has never been a key virtue for them.

Yet, here is the ALA with its rallying cry, "Free People Read Freely," abandoning these extraordinarily courageous Cuban librarians, who, under a dictatorship, advocate, to their own great peril, the same right to read freely that we Americans enjoy. The ALA's membership booklet proclaims "the public's right to explore in their libraries many points of view on all questions and issues facing them."

In our American libraries, we can borrow George Orwell's "1984" and a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but those, and many other publications, were only available in Cuba in the homes of the independent librarians who dared to offer them to their fellow citizens.

The ALA will have its next Midwinter Meeting from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 in San Diego. Those in attendance — ALA officials, including officers of libraries around the country and rank-and-file members — will have a chance to rescind the shameful silence of the ALA.

Mr. Ashcroft has put none of the delegates to San Diego in prison; and it takes no courage — only self-respect — for them to insist on the freedom of those librarians in Cuba who may not be "professional" librarians. But they certainly are the very exemplars of the ALA's purported dedication to everyone's freedom to read — and freedom of conscience.

The next time you go to a public library, ask the librarians if they stand with their colleagues in Mr. Castro's prisons.

via the Washington Times

Anti-Semitism watch

Anti-Jewish bigotry and violence is on the rise in Europe, and the old elites are having trouble mustering the moral and political fortitude to combat it. Interesting, and often depressing, to ponder how little attitudes have changed in the last century. If the blood on their hands for six million victims of the Holocaust can't produce lasting change, no wonder that European sympathy for America's casualties on September 11 hasn't persisted.

Across much of Europe, Jews see old prejudices mixing with new threats from militants among the continent's 17 million Muslims spread rapidly by mosques, the Internet and Arab satellite TV. In a clear reflection of Israeli-Palestinian tensions and the war in Iraq, many Jews also say they sense growing hostility among European intellectuals they see as demonizing Israel.

Surveys say anti-Jewish assaults and incidents in much of Europe are at their most frequent since Hitler's defeat.

Henryk Broder, a Berliner with Der Spiegel magazine who made waves across Germany with a 1986 book called The Eternal Anti-Semite... believes the phenomenon of new anti-Semitism is real and growing. He sees a generalized antipathy toward Jews, whatever individuals may feel about the Jewish state or its prime minister, Ariel Sharon. "This is the globalization of anti-Semitism," he said. "What used to be directed at 'the Jew' is now directed at 'Israel.' "

Broder concluded, "People call me paranoid, but I have a feeling that many Europeans secretly hope that the Arabs might finish the business that Germany started with the Jews in 1938."

via the Houston Chronicle

The European Union commissioned a recent report on anti-Semitic violence and then promptly tried to suppress its politically inconvenient results. The combination of ancient European prejudice and the bitter resentments of newly-settled Arab immigrants in European slums is potent and dangerous. NPR correspondent Sylvia Poggioli had a good dispatch last week when the EU report was leaked.

There's a bitter dispute over the European Union's alleged suppression of a report blaming a new wave of anti-Semitism on Muslim youth and on anti-globalization activists. An EU poll found that nearly 60 percent of its citizens believe Israel is the greatest threat to world peace.

Over the last three years, across Europe, Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have been attacked and Jewish students beaten. The violence has been blamed on young Muslim males whose anger is fueled by what they see as Israeli oppression of Palestinian Arabs.

CRIF site with EU-commissioned report

The United Nations, a haven of intolerance and antagonism thoroughly dominated by corrupt despots and their double-talking diplomats, is showing its moral hollowness, as noted by Anne Bayefsky.

Last week, the U.N. once again proved itself incapable of rising to the moral challenges embraced in its founding Charter: "tolerance," "the dignity and worth of the human person" and "equal rights." A draft resolution on anti-Semitism--which would have been a first in the U.N.'s 58-year history--was withdrawn in the face of Arab and Muslim opposition.

Daily incidents of anti-Semitic violence around the globe are reported in the media. Yet while leaders of the Free World condemn synagogue bombings in Turkey, firebombings of Jewish schools in France, and the hate speech of Malaysia's president who now heads the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the U.N. moves in the opposite direction, encouraging the proliferation of this centuries-old hatred.

The U.N. is an organization founded on the ashes of the Jewish people, and whose core human rights principles were drafted from the lessons of the Holocaust. The inability of the organization to address seriously one of the very evils it was intended to prevent is a scandal of global proportions. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared, "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind." Fifty-five years later the outrage is gone, the silence of the U.N. when it comes to anti-Semitism is deafening, and the only ones benefiting are those planning future barbarous acts against Jews everywhere.

via the WSJ's OpinionJournal

The arsenal of jihadism

The fact that money-soaked Saudi Arabia is a hotbed of terrorists is becoming more and more clear. We can only hope that the Saudi government elements who are now motivated to stamp out the threat are serious and able to overcome internal, competing factions who either support the jihadists or are at least committed to continuing the blackmail-based status quo. The Bush administration needs to further toughen its stance on Saudi accomodationism.

The Saudi government's vigorous pursuit of al-Qaida has exposed a nationwide terrorist arsenal that experts believe is being fortified by a steady supply of illegal arms pouring across the kingdom's borders.

While Saudi authorities are confident their six-month assault has al-Qaida on the run, huge stockpiles of arms and explosives uncovered in the investigations show that the terrorists have been able to assemble immense destructive force.

Many of the weapons cross the border from Yemen, where Saudi authorities say they disrupt smuggling attempts on an hourly basis. A just-released report by the United Nations warns that the region is "awash in weapons" readily available to terrorist groups.

Over the last six months, beginning with the first of two devastating terrorist attacks in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, authorities have uncovered surface-to-air missiles, belts of explosives for suicide bombers, rocket-propelled grenades, hundreds of Soviet-era rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Authorities have repeatedly found evidence that al-Qaida's scattered cells in Saudi Arabia may be armed with surface-to-air missiles.

via the Houston Chronicle

Christmas spirit

Dave Barry says Christmas in Miami is very, very special. There are lights, and Santa's Enchanted Forest...

Christmas is not about weather. It's about the holiday spirit, and there is only one true measure of that: the number of colored light bulbs in residential yards.

By that standard, Miami has holiday spirit out the wazoo. We have many homeowners who cross the fine line, in terms of illumination, between "tasteful holiday yard display" and "municipal airport." You know the houses I mean: the ones with a Frosty the Snowman the size of Godzilla; the ones with so many lights in the trees that you need an umbrella to avoid being struck by the falling bodies of electrocuted squirrels.

via the Houston Chronicle

Witness to WMD in Iraq

More evidence this weekend that the still-missing WMD in Iraq did exist and may yet be found.

An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.

Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year.

He said they were to be used by Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitaries and units of the Special Republican Guard when the war with coalition troops reached "a critical stage".

Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq's air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. "Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons," he said.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Pearl Harbor

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thousands of military personnel were killed and wounded on that day of horror, but many civilians were also both victims and heroes. The Navy will remember them today.

Every year on this terrible anniversary, they are reminded of the attack on Pearl Harbor just as an aching joint precedes a storm. But every year, very few people remember what these men did 62 years ago.

For a time this afternoon, amid the solemn graves of veterans at Punchbowl Crater, that will change. The Navy will pay special tribute to 30 civilian survivors of the attack and to 49 civilians who died that Sunday morning. The names of each casualty will be read aloud, and a red or white rose placed beside memorial wreaths.

"When you think of Pearl Harbor survivors, you think of military survivors," said Lt. j.g. Erin Bailey, a spokeswoman for Navy Region, Hawai'i, host of the 2 p.m. ceremony at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

"They were the same people witnessing the attack and being fired upon by Japanese Zeroes," she said. "They were right alongside the sailors. They were in the same situation."

via the Honolulu Avertiser
Remembering Pearl Harbor via National Geographic
USS Arizona National Memorial
U.S. Naval Historical Center

More Wofford

Success brings more media coverage for Wofford College. The State profiles the team's volunteer kicking coach: Lee Hanning, an 80-year old former paratrooper in the 101st Airborne and veteran of D-Day, who is also a driver in fund-raising for the athletic program. Amazing.

Hanning, who turned 80 in October, has devoted most of the past 15 years to Wofford College, and the team’s kicking success speaks for itself. "We have developed some good ones," he said.

This year, punter Jimmy Miner made all-Southern Conference for the fourth time and freshman place-kicker Nick Robinson, who had never played football before this season, made his first 46 extra-point attempts before experiencing a tough day in the Terriers’ win against Western Kentucky on Saturday.

But his contributions run far deeper. He earns high marks in fundraising, too.

"He gets a former player on the phone and won’t hang up until the guy commits," Wofford sports publicist Mark Cohen said.

"When they graduate" — and almost all of Wofford’s players do — "I let them know the old man will be calling and we start at $500," Hanning said. "I enjoy the opportunity to promote Wofford. They know what the college meant to them, and I tell them to imagine what we could do if we could fund the full number of scholarships."

Hanning does his part in helping the bottom line, too. He works on a volunteer basis.

"He works as hard as anybody and he won’t have anything to do with money," Ayers said. "The thing is, when he handled the equipment, he would be in the laundry room in the old gym with the temperature 110 degrees or he would be there washing at 2 a.m. after we got back from a night game.

"He’s unbelievable."

Wofford rolls on

The mighty Terriers of #2-ranked Wofford College made it through another round of the NCAA Division I-AA football playoffs, beating the Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky 34-17 today. Kudos are well-earned. Don't know yet who their next round opponent will be.

Earlier this week, found an interesting article from The State in Columbia about coach Mike Ayers and the Wofford football program. Sounds like Wofford, the smallest school playing Division I football, and with an average SAT score (1,236) that is higher than its enrollment (1,100), is trying to get it right.

The routine of practice is broken occasionally by a player jogging up or down the hill to either leave or join the group. There’s no dressing-down by an assistant, because they aren’t late, or they aren’t leaving early. It’s all according to the way Wofford does things.

Classes come first; football comes second. Even extracurricular activities take precedence. On Wednesdays, J.R. McNair, the fullback-cum-student body president, hardly touches base with the team. He has a philosophy and law class smack in the middle of practice, and he has just come from some meeting or other. And that’s OK.

“We knew when we came here in ’88 what the mission statement of the college is,” Ayers said. “We knew that we had to bring in good, young men who want to get a good education. Part of that education process deals with being able to do things outside of football and outside the normal classroom setting.”

In some ways, McNair is unique. His resume in the football media guide takes up an entire page, and little of it deals with football stats. He is a Phi Beta Kappa with a 3.66 grade-point average, and he has a double major in finance and philosophy. He sings in about every choir on campus and is a member of just about every student and/or church group.

But in some ways, he is only typical. McNair is not even the first football player to be student body president.

Today's win more than makes up for their preordained doormat experience in Thursday's 103-72 basketball loss against the Texas Longhorns.

UPDATE: Wofford will play the Blue Hens of Delaware next weekend up in the frigid north. Wish them luck.

A terrible war against terrible enemies

Victor Davis Hanson says the West is still fooling itself about the nature and scope of the threat posed by radical Islam and the cynically disfunctional states of the Arab world. His critique is on-target and entirely devastating.

Precisely because we worry publicly that we are insensitive, our enemies scoff privately that we in fact are too sensitive — what we think is liberality and magnanimity they see as license and decadence. If we don't have confidence in who we are, why should they?

To arrest this dangerous trend requires a radical reappraisal of our entire relationship with the Middle East. A Radio Free Europe, though valuable, nevertheless did not free Eastern Europe; nor did Voice of America. Containment and deterrence did. As long as governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many Gulf states encourage hatred of the United States, we must quietly consider them de facto little different from a Libya, Syria, or Iran. For all the glitter and imported Western graphics, al Jazeera and its epigones are not that much different from Radio Berlin of the 1930s.

We had also better reexamine entirely the way we use force in the Middle East. We did not drive on to Baghdad in 1991 out of concern for the "coalition" — and got 350,000 sorties in the no-fly zones in return. We chose to worry about rebuilding before the current war ended, and let thousands of Baathist killers fade away, and in the aftermath allowed mass looting and continual killing before our most recent get-tough policy.

In fact, anytime we have showed restraint — using battleship salvos and cruise missiles when our Marines were killed, our embassies blown up, and our diplomats murdered; allowing the killers on the Highway of Death to reach Basra in 1991; letting Saddam use his helicopters to gun down innocents — we have earned disdain, not admiration.

In contrast, the hijackers chose not to take the top off the World Trade Center, but to incinerate the entire building — proof that they wished not to send us a message but to kill us all, and to kill us to the applause of millions, if the recent popularity of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen in the Arab street is any indication.

We are not in a war with a crook in Haiti. This is no Grenada or Panama — or even a Kosovo or Bosnia. No, we are in a worldwide struggle the likes of which we have not seen since World War II. The quicker we understand that awful truth, and take measures to defeat rather than ignore or appease our enemies, the quicker we will win. In a war such as this, the alternative to victory is not a brokered peace, but abject Western suicide and all that it entails — a revelation of which we saw on September 11.

Despite some disappointments about the postbellum reconstruction and the hysteria of our critics, our military is doing a wonderful job. We should understand that they have the capability to win this struggle in Iraq and elsewhere — but only if we at home accept that we have been all along in a terrible war against terrible enemies.

via National Review Online

Arnold at work

The Governator suffered his first setback from the Democrats in the California legislature. I think the spending cap was the problem, not the deficit bonds. Welcome to the funhouse, Arnie. Good thing you're no quitter.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to put a spending limit and $15 billion in deficit bonds on the March ballot was blocked by the Democratic-controlled Legislature on Friday night, giving the Republican governor his first legislative defeat.

Barring an extension of the midnight deadline, the governor will bypass the Legislature and gather signatures to place a spending limit on the November ballot, a Schwarzenegger spokesman said.

"The governor is disappointed, yet firm in his resolve to follow through on his mandate to represent the people and to let the people have a say," said Rob Stutzman, Schwarzenegger's communications director.

"As he said he will do, he will go over the head of the Legislature – that appears to be necessary – and put this spending limit on the November ballot next year," Stutzman said.

via the San Diego Union Tribune

Turkeygate rolls on

Australian blogger Tim Blair is paying close attention to the burgeoning Turkeygate scandal. You should, too, if you've ever, ever found yourself believing the media about any action by President Bush without triple cross-checking first.

Once more, compare and contrast the mewlings of naysaying journalists with the authenticity of reports directly from the front lines. Freedom of Thought provides an e-mail from a captain in the room when President Bush arrived for Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad:

The mess hall actually erupted with hollering. Troops bounded to their feet with shocked smiles and just began cheering with all their hearts. The building actually shook. It was just unreal. I was absolutely stunned. Not only for the obvious, but also because I was only two tables away from the podium. There he stood, less than thirty feet away from me! The cheering went on and on and on.

Soldiers were hollering, cheering, and a lot of them were crying. There was not a dry eye at my table. When he stepped up to the cheering, I could clearly see tears running down his cheeks. It was the most surreal moment I've had in years. Not since my wedding and Aaron being born. Here was this man, our President, came all the way around the world, spending 17 hours on an airplane and landing in the most dangerous airport in the world, where a plane was shot out of the sky not six days before.

Just to spend two hours with his troops. Only to get on a plane and spend another 17 hours flying back. It was a great moment, and I will never forget it. He delivered his speech, which we all loved, when he looked right at me and held his eyes on me. Then he stepped down and was just mobbed by the soldiers. He slowly worked his way all the way around the chow hall and shook every last hand extended. Every soldier who wanted a photo with the President got one.

All the truth and nothing but...

Much-admired Ronald Reagan isn't doing so well as his illness progresses, according to news reports this week.

President Reagan, who suffers from advanced stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, is now confined to a bed, rarely awake and unable to walk or talk, according to a story in the latest issue of People magazine.

In an essay accompanying the article about the former president’s condition, daughter Patti Davis said people may still think Reagan, 92, is somewhat mobile and active, despite his well-publicized illness, because his family has guarded his privacy so zealously.

"But it would be a disservice to every family who has an Alzheimer’s victim in their embrace to say any of that is true, and I don’t believe my father would want us to lie," she wrote.

John at Eye on the Left alerts us that the "compassionate Left" isn't looking forward to the day when he passes away, but not for the same reasons as the rest of us.

John has also uncovered a hitherto top secret photo of North Korean geek-in-chief Kim Jong Il. View at your own risk.

"Off nominal"

Glad to see NASA making use of America's other space assets, as they did not during the Columbia disaster. Also good as of now that the Russians are our partners, but worrisome that we are so dependent on them. No successor to the space shuttle is in sight, so this hobbled capability will continue for years.

NASA has enlisted U.S. spy satellites and taken other measures to inspect the exterior of the international space station for signs of any damage that might explain a strange metallic crunching noise that was heard by the two astronauts on board in the middle of the night of Nov. 26.

NASA has also shifted steering control of the orbiting laboratory to Russian-built thrusters while engineers study a new problem in the ailing U.S.-built gyroscope system, spaceflight officials said yesterday.

The station has a system of four gyroscopes to control its motion and can operate with as few as two. One failed last year, but NASA has been unable to carry up a replacement or return the failed unit for analysis to determine the nature of the problem and whether it affects the three other gyros.

via the Washington Post
NASA - International Space Station

al Qaeda at sea?

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway got to hear financier, analyst and citizen-diplomat Mansoor Ijaz speak recently on the increasing evidence that al Qaeda may be pursuing maritime terrorism, and links us to an October article by Ijaz on that subject -- including discussion of a possible threat in the Gulf of Mexico.

While the US Homeland Security Department argues about how many screening machines to install at airports, terrorists are planning how to convert supertankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas or other chemicals into floating bombs - or perhaps even dirty bombs with help from a rogue nation with nuclear knowhow.

Other dangers to maritime interests are also becoming apparent. In June, for example, an offshore maintenance engineer with deep-sea diving skills, who had been kidnapped in 2000, was released by Abu Sayyaf. He reported that his captors had wanted to learn how to dive, but were not interested in learning how to resurface.

At first sight, one purpose of gaining such one-way expertise might be to set charges for blowing up a supertanker. But supertanker hulls rest no more than 40 feet below sea level, hardly deep-sea diving depths. It is more likely that al-Qaeda is training for attacks against deep water rigs and platforms. Where? One target could be the offshore oil and gas drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, near New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. Attacks on the pipes that link drilling platforms to the ocean floor at depths of more than 500 feet, where large clusters of machinery are set up to pump natural gas and oil to the surface, could cause serious disruption to domestic US energy supplies as well as grave environmental damage. In an extreme case, such an attack could severely restrict seagoing traffic through the mouth of the Mississippi.

Ijaz also spoke about this threat on Fox News in October, as noted here earlier.

Here they go again

Our "allies" France and Germany have found another set of tyrants to support. Apparently we liberated both countries in WWII just so they can now actively seek out totalitarian regimes to befriend.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, has joined France in calling for a resumption of arms sales to China, as the Beijing government reiterated threats to invade the democratically governed island of Taiwan.

Mr Schröder, who is currently visiting China, told the country's new prime minister, Wen Jiabao, that he would "work towards" lifting the ban on arms sales, according to a German government spokesman. The embargo was imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Michele Alliot-Marie, France's defence minister, made a similar call during the summer, and Mr Schröder's proposition also received some support from the European Union trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, who told reporters on Tuesday the EU "would be ready to reconsider" the ban.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Chocolate soldiers

Tony Blair has signed on to the goofy and counterproductive idea of a European Union defense force, separate but somehow not apart from NATO. British journalist Melanie Phillips is unimpressed.

The Americans will now inevitably wonder why on earth they are supplying troops and materiel to NATO when they are no longer wanted, and when they are desperately needed in the Middle East or wherever else the US happens to be engaged. So NATO, which has kept the peace and helped protect us all these years, may now be judged past its sell-by date and British security will be left to the tender mercies of the chocolate soldiers of Brussels.

A Democrat makes the case

Author Orson Scott Card is, apparently, a committed Democrat. But he has a cogent and insightful commentary on how the Democratic Party presidential candidates are conducting their shameful campaign against George W. Bush. Read the whole thing, but here is his powerhouse conclusion:

We are being lied to and "spun," and not in a trivial way. The kind of dishonest vitriolic hate campaign that in 2000 was conducted only before African-American audiences is now being played on the national stage; and the national media, instead of holding the liars' and haters' feet to the fire (as they do when the liars and haters are Republicans or conservatives), are cooperating in building up a false image of a failing economy and a lost war, when the truth is more nearly the exact opposite.

And in all the campaign rhetoric, I keep looking, as a Democrat, for a single candidate who is actually offering a significant improvement over the Republican policies that in fact don't work, while supporting or improving upon the American policies that will help make us and our children secure against terrorists.

We have enemies that have earned our hatred, and whom we should fear. They are fanatical terrorists who seek opportunities to kill American civilians here and Israeli civilians in Israel.

But right now, our national media and the Democratic Party are trying to get us to believe that the people we should hate and fear are George W. Bush and the Republicans.

I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House.

But right now, if the alternative is the Democratic Party as led in Congress and as exemplified by the current candidates for the Democratic nomination, then I can't be the only Democrat who will, with great reluctance, vote not just for George W. Bush, but also for every other candidate of the only party that seems committed to fighting abroad to destroy the enemies that seek to kill us and our friends at home.

And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end.

via The Ornery American
Tip via Andrew Sullivan

Hugh Kenner remembered

Elegaic ripples continue to spread following the recent death of author Hugh Kenner, and Robert Fulford has a sympathetic portrait in Canada's National Post.

... [Kenner] refused to accept the existence of a natural antipathy between engineering and the humanities. In one excellent little book, The Mechanic Muse, he wrote a detailed, affectionate essay about the now-vanished linotype machine, which made modern literary culture and journalism possible. He followed carefully the influence of mechanical inventions on literature, not only in obvious cases (Hemingway's prose reflecting the invention of the typewriter) but also Eliot's position as "chief poet of the alarm clock," the writer who depicted the world of work and commuting regulated by the clock.

Kenner was a worldly philosopher. In his view, science and literature, far from being antagonists, moved side by side into the future as partners, each interpreting or enhancing the other, each taking its place as part of modernity. Their relationship, and their place in our lives, illustrated a central message of Kenner's work: Do not send to ask what Joyce and Beckett are writing about; they are writing about you.

Jeet Heer remembers the days when politically-oriented journals like National Review still included serious literary and cultural ideas in their coverage, with gifted writers like Kenner and Guy Davenport as contributors, but debunks the idea that Kenner was some kind of traditional right-winger.

In short, Kenner was a slippery writer who evades any easy political labeling. Rather than placing him on the left-right spectrum, it would be better to describe him as a collector of marginalized thinkers and artists: He loved to demonstrate that figures who were dismissed as cranks or freaks did work that has coherence and value. During his lifetime, Kenner's crank collection included Marshall McLuhan, Louis Zukofsky, Buckminster Fuller, and Chuck Jones, as well as Pound and Lewis. Some of these figures were right-wingers, but their real commonality is that they tend to be undervalued or misunderstood.

via Slate

A beast to be killed, not fed

Mark Steyn observes that the current Archbishop of Canterbury is having trouble understanding the difference between good (i.e., us) versus evil (terrorists), despite being a guest at the home of the British Consul in Instanbul, Roger Short, only a few hours before Short's death at the hands of jihadist bombers.

One reason why George W Bush comes on a bit strong about "evildoers" and the like is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and any number of the great and the good have rendered less primal language meaningless in this sphere: when Dr Williams condemns terrorism as "vicious and senseless", that's just the mood music of the evening news. When he says "these acts of violence achieve nothing", what he means is that his "shock" stops at the end of the soundbite; whether or not the terrorists "achieve nothing", he intends to do so.

We got used to these muzak formulations in Ulster for 30 years: Paddy Ashdown and others liked to turn it into a Danny Kaye routine about how we mustn't let the bomb and the bullet win out over the ballot and the bollocks, or whatever it was. It was just words. In last week's Northern Ireland elections and the obliteration of moderate nationalism, we saw the logical consequence of enhancing the prestige of terrorists. It's the same in the Palestinian Authority.

Will the archbishop's recent run-ins with reality shake him from his equivalist pap? Islamic terrorism is a beast that has to be killed, not patted and fed. The Palestinians use children as human shields and as human bombs.

Would it be too much to expect the archbishop, instead of bleating about "serious moral goals", to dust off, say, Matthew 18:6 and offer up something about how it would be better if these fellows shoving their kids into the suicide bomber belts hung the old millstone round their necks and drowned in the sea? Or will we have to wait for such Bushesque "self-referential morality" till His Grace is brushing the plaster from his cassock after his next close shave?

via The Telegraph (UK)
Matthew 18:6

To the ramparts!

Well, my Christmas shopping is done: one copy of this for everyone, even if it does have to come from Great Britain. We dare not wait for the U.S. edition.

A book about the serial abuse of apostrophes and commas... has become a surprise Christmas bestseller.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves (subtitled The Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation) chronicles "the mind-bogglingly depressing misuse of the apostrophe". Last night it was the number one bestseller on the Amazon.co.uk chart - a position usually reserved for thrillers or books about boy wizards.

The author, Lynne Truss, said yesterday that she felt moved to describe the feeling of being "an isolated nerd" because the sight of a misplaced apostrophe or absent comma made her feel irritated, and occasionally violent.

Miss Truss, a writer and broadcaster whose war against bad grammar began during her days as a newspaper sub-editor, said: "The main impetus was that I really did want to write about that feeling that the isolated nerd has."

She feels tortured on a regular basis by sightings of signs for Mens Toilets and Pupil's Entrance, but is usually too frightened to say anything as reactions to correction are rarely appreciative.

And that strange title? It derives from...

via The Telegraph (UK)
The Apostrophe Protection Society

one of Miss Truss's favourite jokes. A panda goes into a bar, orders a sandwich, fires a gun and heads for the door.

"What was all that about?" asks the shaken barman.

"Look it up," says the panda, throwing him a badly-punctuated wildlife manual.

The barman turns to the relevant page. "Panda: Bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Available from Amazon.co.uk