Petrified Truth

Cautious optimism

Insightful Steven den Beste conducts an extensive examination of the pitiful state of affairs in which the Palestinians find themselves, thanks to the cynical, blockheaded maneuverings of Yasser Arafat and their other so-called "leaders." Incidents like the recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem, claimed by both Hamas and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, may be the violent death throes of the Palestinians' long, futile struggle. If so, credit will due to the fortitude of both Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush.

Israel is about to unilaterally implement a two-state solution, and it is Arafat who is running out of time. Once the wall is complete and Israel disengages from the West Bank, there will be no hope that the Palestinians could eventually take Israel back. And there is a very high chance, approaching certainty, that the Palestinian interfaction power struggle would turn violent and lead to an extremely bloody Palestinian civil war similar to the one that took place in Lebanon.

The old strategy of making incremental gains against Israel over a period of years is about to fail. I think that the decision to put up the wall around the West Bank was a brilliant stroke by the Sharon government, because it offers a way for Israel to "win" without cooperation by the Palestinians, even though that win would be partial.

In every way, the decision to build the wall puts time on Israel's side, where time used to be viewed as being on the side of the Palestinians. Once the wall is complete, the Israelis can withdraw their military forces from the West Bank. Part of why the Palestinian power struggle hasn't turned violent is that the Israelis have been keeping the peace. When they are gone, it will turn ugly very rapidly.

And with the wall in place, it will become far more difficult for the Palestinians to make attacks on Israel.

Worst of all, the wall de facto draws the line of demarcation for the two-state solution, and the longer that it exists without any formal agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, the less chance there would eventually be of renegotiating the border, even if the Palestinians ultimately accepted a two-state agreement.

Meanwhile, America's war continues and shows no sign of being abandoned, and the deep American strategy in the war (to inspire political and cultural reform in the entire region) has become apparent. Our efforts to try to create a functioning democracy in Iraq are, and are intended to be, a profound threat to the corrupt autocratic governments in neighboring nations, and since they're the primary source of support for the Palestinians, it's a threat to the Palestinian cause as well.

Read the whole thing.

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This is pretty fun: a map of the countries outside the U.S. that I've visited. Lots more to go.

You can go create your own visited country map

Tip via Backcountry Conservative

Beyond Iraq

The Bush Administration never saw the war in Iraq as either a stand-alone operation or as distinct from the generalized war on the Islamist movement that al Qaeda was part of. As clumsy and, at times, devious the public presentation of the war was, it had a clear logic. Despite ongoing tactical problems in and around Baghdad, the broad strategic goals of the Iraq campaign are being realized. Therefore, the question now is: What will the next stage of the U.S.-Islamist war look like?

In order to project forward, it is important to recall the strategic purpose of the Iraq war. This was two-fold. First, the United States had to establish its ability to carry out extensive military operations to the conclusion, despite casualties. The perception in the Islamic world -- a perception that al Qaeda attempted to systematically exploit -- was that the United States was unwilling to undertake the level of effort and endure the level of pain needed to impose its will on the region. The war in Afghanistan, rather than proving American will, was seen as the opposite -- another demonstration that the United States is averse to casualties and unable to bring a campaign to a definitive conclusion.

The second goal was geopolitical. The United States knew it could not defeat al Qaeda on the retail level. They were too well dispersed, too few and too secure. Defeating al Qaeda meant inducing several enabling countries -- particularly Saudi Arabia. These countries had little interest in the internal destabilization that engaging al Qaeda would entail, and in some cases, they sympathized with al Qaeda. The United States had no direct means for inducing these countries to change their behavior. Iraq -- bordering on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran -- was the single most strategic country in the region, and a base from which to exert intense pressure throughout the region.

The occupation of Iraq was intended to solve both problems. By invading, occupying and pacifying Iraq, the United States would be able to reverse the perception of American weakness. In addition, U.S. forces based in the Iraqi pivot, would force fundamental reconsiderations of national strategies in Saudi
Arabia, Iran and Syria -- and in other countries also.

The strategy ran into a major challenge with the discovery that the Iraqi government had planned an extended resistance after the collapse of Iraq's conventional forces and the fall of Baghdad. The United States miscalculated the extent and intensity of Iraqi resistance and the extended difficulty in suppressing that resistance. This created a situation, starting in the summer of 2003, and reaching its greatest intensity during the October- November offensive, in which the United States appeared to have failed to achieve either of its strategic goals. It appeared unable to bring the conflict to closure, and its forces appeared incapable of threatening any neighbor.

The perception had a kernel of truth to it, but only a kernel. Most of Iraq was not involved in the guerrilla war. Neither the Kurdish nor the Shiite regions were involved. The war was confined to the Sunni regions and, when compared to guerrilla wars in Vietnam or Afghanistan, was neither particularly intense nor particularly effective. Its significance was magnified by the Bush Administration's consistent and curious inability to manage public perception of the war's status. The loss of credibility the administration suffered over weapons of mass destruction and its inability to express a coherent strategic sensibility made benchmarking the war impossible for the administration.

In spite of this, the behavior of regional powers began to shift. Saudi Arabia began shifting its behavior before the Iraq war began, once it realized it could not longer prevent it. Iran began shifting its behavior by the fall, when it became apparent to it that the United States was prepared to create a Shiite-
dominated government. All of these processes accelerated in December 2003, when the United States succeeded in penetrating the Baathist guerrillas' security system and began making headway in shutting down that segment of the insurrection. Attacks today are, in spite of headlines, a small fraction of what they were in October-November 2003.

The situation in January 2004 is startlingly different than it was in November. The guerrilla movement is contracting, and the core problems in Iraq have become primarily political, involving the transfer of power. The Saudis are intensely involved in an internal conflict with Islamists and are paying a significant price to wage the war. The Iranians are discussing the public price of reconciling with the Americans while privately collaborating. The Libyan government has reversed policies dramatically, while the Syrians have also begun to search for a path to policy reversal, having massively miscalculated the course of the Iraq war in the summer of 2003.

Finally -- and this may be the single most important fact -- threats that an explosion in the Islamic world would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq proved to be in error. The single most important fact is that the genuine anger in the Islamic street has not had any political repercussions. Rather than trending away from the United States, the political behavior of Islamic states has been toward alignment. This tendency has accelerated since the decline in guerrilla activity until it is difficult to locate an Islamic state that overtly opposes the United States. When even Syria is asserting its desire to cooperate with the United States, the situation is utterly different than what some expected in February 2003, before the war began.

The situation, therefore, is much better than the administration had any right to expect last fall and substantially better than the general perception. It might be put this way. Even while the tactical situation in Iraq deteriorated, the strategic situation in the region improved. Once the tactical situation in Iraq improved, the improvement in the strategic situation accelerated. The United States is in the process of securing -- to the extent anything in the Middle East can be called secure -- the Middle East from the Nile to the western reaches of the Hindu Kush. All of the states on this line are aligned with the United States or in the process of aligning to the extent that they are no longer willing to facilitate al Qaeda in any way, and are prepared to act against the Sunni Islamist movement. That is an extraordinary achievement, but is not in itself sufficient.

First, the situation throughout this line remains fluid and can deteriorate. Second, the Arabian Peninsula has not stabilized and is likely to remain a battleground in which al Qaeda will seek to reverse its fortunes by destabilizing the Saudi regime and, if possible, bringing it down. Third, the situation in the Hindu Kush is, from the U.S. point of view, entirely unsatisfactory. Al Qaeda remains embedded in that region, particularly in the Pakistani Northwest Territories, and the war cannot be concluded until al Qaeda loses its Pakistani sanctuaries -- as well as whatever footholds it retains on the Afghan side of the border. Indeed, the situation in Afghanistan itself appears to be deteriorating.

>From the U.S. point of view, therefore, the next steps are obvious. First, having changed regime behavior in Saudi Arabia, it is now in U.S. interests to stabilize the situation there and prevent the fall of the Saudi government, or facilitate a shift to a more favorable regime. Since the latter is unlikely in the
extreme, it follows that the next step must be a change in policy that is more supportive of the current regime but still rigidly opposed to al Qaeda. This will be difficult to achieve.

Second, the United States must, at some point, liquidate the remnants of al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistani theater of operations. Ideally, the Pakistani army will bear the burden of moving into the tribal areas in the northwest and will do the job for the United States. In reality, it is extremely unlikely that the Pakistani military will have the ability or motivation to undertake that mission. Therefore, it is likely that the United States will try to close out the war with a final offensive into northwestern Pakistan, preferably with the approval of a stable Pakistani government, but if that is impossible, then on its own.

We would be very surprised if the United States launched this offensive prior to its elections. The administration has no appetite for another military campaign until the election is finished. Therefore, we would expect the United States to be in a defensive mode until November 2004. It will seek to consolidate its position in Iraq and in the Egyptian-Iranian line. It will work to assist the Saudi government, while carrying out covert operations throughout the region to mop up identified remnants of al Qaeda. This could include increased operations in northeastern Africa and in Afghanistan. Until then, the task of General John
Abizaid, head of Central Command, will be to focus on developing a plan for moving into al Qaeda's homeland, if you will, and terminating the war by liquidating the final command centers. Assuming that the preference is not to launch this campaign during the winter -- not necessarily a fixed principle -- the
offensive would take place in spring 2005.

Al Qaeda's mission is to prevent this end game. It has three potential strategies, all of which can be used together. The first is to intensify its operations in Saudi Arabia to such a degree that regime survival is in doubt and the United States is forced to intervene. We cannot help but note that in the rotation of forces into Iraq, an excessive amount of armor for the mission
remains there. It is excessive for Iraq, but not if U.S. forces should be forced to move into Saudi Arabia. If al Qaeda can bog the United States down on the Arabian Peninsula, it might by time for itself in its redoubt.

The second strategy is to completely destabilize Pakistan. It is no accident that two attempts have been made on President Pervez Musharraf's life. There will be more. There are powerful forces within Pakistani intelligence and military that oppose Musharaf's alliance with Washington and sympathize with al Qaeda. You can add to this number those who would oppose any American
intervention in Pakistan under any circumstances. Invading the northwest while Musharraf is nominally in control of the country is one thing. Invading in the face of a hostile government or total chaos is another. The United States does not have the forces to occupy and pacify Afghanistan or Pakistan. It has what
it needs to execute a large-scale raid against al Qaeda. Therefore, it is al Qaeda's strategy to protect its redoubt by intensifying operations in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

Finally, al Qaeda might seek to break U.S. will by conducting extreme operations in the United States, obviously focusing on weapons of mass destruction. Al Qaeda's initial read of the United States was that it didn't really have the stomach for this war. It is unclear how al Qaeda reads the current political situation in the United States. Indeed, that situation is not altogether clear. However, if al Qaeda determines that the United States lacks the will to prosecute the war in the face of massive U.S. civilian casualties, it might try to carry out an extreme attack. Certainly, Sept. 11 did not achieve what al Qaeda wanted. Therefore, another attack on the order of Sept. 11 is unlikely. It is not clear if al Qaeda can carry out a more extreme operation, or if it views such an operation as helpful, but the strategic possibility remains.

We would, therefore, expect that between now and the U.S. elections, it will appear that Islamist forces have the initiative. They will press hard in both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and the United States will appear to be in a passive
and defensive mode. In fact, during the next nine months, in our opinion, the United States will be engaged in intense preparations, coupled with defensive actions designed to shore up the Saudi and Pakistani regimes.

The fundamental issue now is what al Qaeda and its Islamist allies can achieve between now and November. This is their open window and the period in which they must reverse the direction the war has taken. If the current trend continues, and the Saudi and Pakistani regimes survive, the United States will attack in Pakistan; Al Qaeda, an organization that took a decade to create,
will be shattered. The Islamist movement will become a widely held sentiment rather than an effective politico-military force. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not really that easy to construct a group such as al Qaeda, which is effective and resistant to intelligence.

Therefore, the United States has had an extremely good few months. It has recovered from its imbalance in Iraq -- and although the resistance has not been destroyed, it is in the process of being contained. The U.S. strategic position has improved markedly, to the point that it is actually possible to
begin glimpsing the end game. But between the glimpse of the end game and the end, there is al Qaeda, which must move vigorously now to reverse its losses and regain the initiative.

Via Stratfor's The Stratfor Weekly 21 January 2004
("Please feel free to send the Stratfor Weekly to a friend or colleague.")

The only choice

Unlike most of the country, Charles Krauthammer does not have a short attention span, and he remembers the context of President Bush's decisions about Iraq over the past three years, not just the controversy over WMD or not-WMD. He says the President made the right-- and only -- choice.

People forget that when the Bush administration came into office, Iraq was a very unstable situation. Thousands of Iraqis were dying as a result of sanctions. Containment necessitated the garrisoning of Saudi Arabia with thousands of "infidel" American troops -- in the eyes of many Muslims, a desecration (cited by Osama bin Laden as his No. 1 reason for his 1996 Declaration of War on America). The no-fly zones were slow-motion war, and the embargo was costly and dangerous -- the sailors who died on the USS Cole were on embargo duty.

Until Bush got serious, threatened war and massed troops in Kuwait, the United Nations was headed toward loosening and ultimately lifting sanctions, which would have given Saddam carte blanche to regroup and rebuild his WMDs.

Bush reversed that slide with his threat to go to war. But that kind of aggressive posture is impossible to maintain indefinitely. A regime of inspections, embargo, sanctions, no-fly zones and thousands of combat troops in Kuwait was an unstable equilibrium. The United States could have either retreated and allowed Saddam free rein -- or gone to war and removed him. Those were the only two ways to go.

Under the circumstances, and given what every intelligence agency on the planet agreed was going on in Iraq, the president made the right choice, indeed the only choice.

Via the Houston Chronicle

The illusion of debate

Ralph Peters has a general idea of what's been going on inside the intelligence apparatus.

Few human beings argue with conclusions they want to believe. When the U.S. intelligence community insisted that Saddam's regime possessed hidden weapons of mass destruction, President Bush and his advisers welcomed the "evidence."

Bush believed correctly that Saddam needed to go. And the supportive analysis provided by U.S. intelligence was seconded by the British. Even the French and German intel organizations believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Remember that the pre-war argument was not about Saddam's capabilities. It was about the best means to de-fang him.

What went wrong?

Three factors led our intelligence apparatus down the garden path: decades of overreliance on technology; a corresponding neglect of the human factor, and group-think.

Intel professionals — many of whom are far better than their sullied reputation — will respond that there was a great deal of internal debate on the issue of Iraq's WMDs. But it's the terms of the debate that matter: Once the system concluded, as it had done over a decade before, that Saddam had WMDs and wanted more, the internal discussions declined a fatal notch. It was no longer a matter of if, but of how much and where.

"Serious" questions could only be asked within the accepted paradigm. We had only the illusion of a debate.

Certainly, the evidence of WMDs was plentiful: Saddam had used chemical weapons in the past; inspections after Desert Storm found a vigorous WMD program, which the United Nations demanded must be dismantled; and Saddam, suicidally foolish, played cat-and-mouse games to the end — even though his stockpiles were gone.

Now we learn that even Saddam didn't have a grip on the situation — lied to by his subordinates, he, too, believed he had more advanced programs than actually existed. All the while, craven Iraqi exiles told us what they knew we wanted to hear.

It would have taken brilliant "out of the box" analysis to get it right. But our intelligence system is, above all, a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies cherish consistency, while shunning the risks of excellence. Bureaucracies only deliver what executives demand. Left to their own devices, they plod along in a defensive crouch.

Administrations come and go. If we truly want to improve our intelligence system, only sustained, bipartisan congressional action can force the critical changes. We all know that members of Congress have a genius for criticism. But can they summon the will to fix a system that their own neglect and rhetoric has crippled?

Via the New York Post

Posted by Alan at 11:20 AM

Right so to do

Victor Davis Hanson wants America to feel confident about the ongoing struggle in Iraq. Among other thoughts, he reminds me of what JFK said about a prospective landing on the Moon: "not because it's easy, but because it is hard." If this were easy, it would not be so important.

Take September 11 away and the United States would never — despite the conspiracists' theories of pre-9/11 mediation — have gone into either Afghanistan or Iraq. Both reactive military campaigns were waged humanely to minimize civilian casualties, often at risk to American military lives. The defeated were odious; their oppressed deserved to have been freed, and their nations returned from the graveyard to the family of nations.

For all the rhetoric about American corporate profiteering — the "Afghanistan pipeline," the Halliburton bonanza, the carving up of the Iraqi petroleum pie — the ultimate cost of restoring the two countries will be enormous, yet justifiable not in economic advantages, but in both national-security interests and, yes, moral terms. This is as it should be, since we Americans recently have had a prior relationship with both the Afghan and Iraqi nations. Unlike the British or Russians, we have never attempted to colonize them, but we are nevertheless obligated to set things right since, at critical times when we had the ability to offer aid, we chose isolationism and retreat — and thousands died as a consequence.

Arguments against our efforts have already evolved precisely because of the moral nature of our enterprise. Two years ago, American leftists and most Europeans alleged that America was after oil, or sought global hegemony in its plans to take out the havens of terror. Now those same voices — more strident than ever — are cynical and coldly rational: We are spending too much money, too many Americans are dying, the mythical "Afghanistan pipeline" and "Iraqi oil" won't pay for the costs after all, such countries can never adopt democracies, and so on.

Only the ossified Left is shameless enough to have screamed for one year that we were after the petroleum of Iraq, and then harangue that we are breaking our treasury through foreign reconstruction, hoodwinked into thinking Arab natural resources might instead have shouldered the costs of mammoth aid.

Only the ossified Left objects to American foreign aid if it involves first taking out fascists and mass murderers in the bargain.

Only the ossified Left for a year condemned Afghanistan as either hopeless or immoral, but now claims that, in comparison to Iraq, it was a necessary and understandable multilateral response all along.

And only the ossified Left could decry poor intelligence for prompting us to go into Iraq, and then suggest we should have acted earlier on poorer intelligence prior to 9/11, as they now suggest with regard to North Korea.

We are winning a difficult peace. It is not surprising that we have made scores of mistakes, since nation rebuilding in the Middle East has no recent pedigree...Yet throughout this tumultuous year, what amazes is not that we made errors, or major blunders even — but how quickly we reacted, adjusted, and learned from our mistakes. So we press on, learning as we go, combining power with justice, determined to leave behind something better than we found. We are comforted by knowing that for all the current yelling from Democratic candidates, our own intelligentsia, and the European mainstream, this has not been a war of conquest or exploitation, but something altogether different — a needed effort that, if we see it through, will end up doing a great deal of good for everyone involved.

Our efforts in Iraq to remove a genocidal murderer and inaugurate democracy are not a "quagmire," but one of the brightest moments in recent American history — and we need not be ashamed to say that, again and again and again.

Hard truth

Scrutiny of the CIA is mounting, with the baffling case of Iraq's WMD providing fuel for the fire. Now an internal CIA review is coming to similar conclusions as those made by David Kay: the agency has fundamental problems in intelligence collection and analysis. President Bush seems to have utter confidence in George Tenet and his team, but it's hard to see how that is justified.

Either the President and the GOP will lead a hard look at the CIA or the Democrats will make relentless use of these criticisms as a political weapon in a crucial election year. It's Bush's choice.

The beleaguered CIA faces new criticism in an internal report submitted this week by a veteran officer, who found serious fault with the agency's analysis on Iraq and said he believes intelligence officials have not come to grips with the causes or scope of the failure.

After spending three months reviewing virtually every piece of raw intelligence that went into the CIA's assessments on Iraq since the end of the first Gulf War, Richard J. Kerr, the former deputy director of the agency, said he found failings with the way the data was analyzed and presented, and gaps in the underlying intelligence itself.

"It is very hard to see (the prewar analysis on Iraq) as anything but a failure in terms of the specifics that we provided" to policy-makers, Kerr said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. He said he submitted a report of his findings to CIA Director George J. Tenet this week that in many respects echoes the criticism raised in recent days by David Kay, who resigned last week as head of the U.S. weapons search team in Iraq.

Kerr stressed that Iraq was an extremely difficult target, and that many of the intelligence community's judgments were understandable, even if they were wrong. Kerr, like Kay, said he found no evidence that analysts shaded their estimates to support the Bush administration's case for war.

But Kerr challenged some of Kay's broader criticisms, saying he did not believe the former weapons inspector was qualified to pass judgment on whether the intelligence community needs wholesale restructuring or reform.

Even as he came to the CIA's defense on certain points, Kerr said that, overall, the agency has not owned up to fundamental problems exposed by the failure to find banned weapons stocks in Iraq.

"They're going to have to face up to it and deal with it in a direct way, and I don't think they have," Kerr said. "I don't think they have systematically looked at how they did this, at this whole problem, looking at the lessons and trying to understand the strengths and shortcomings" of their assessments on Iraq.

Kerr submitted his report during a week in which the agency was tossed by a storm of criticism. In his appearance on Capitol Hill and a series of interviews with the media, Kay said there had been "major shortfalls" in the intelligence on Iraq, and that he did not believe there were any stocks of weapons in the country when the United States invaded last year.

Kerr's comments are likely to carry particular weight within the intelligence community because he is a respected, 32-year veteran of the agency. A Soviet analyst during the Cuban missile crisis, he went on to hold a number of prominent positions, including interim director of the agency during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. He retired in 1992.

Kerr said his inquiry focused on the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate -- a document that represented the intelligence community's most thorough assessment of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities. It concluded that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

As the suspected stocks of weapons failed to turn up after the war, Tenet tapped Kerr to lead a team of agency retirees to review the document and determine whether its assertions were supported by the raw intelligence collected over the past decade by spies, inspectors, satellites, signals intercept equipment and other sources.

Kerr said the outcome of his review "is a fair report, and I think it understands the problem, but it's critical in some areas of how the analysis was done and the presentation of the estimate."

Via the Los Angeles Times (registration required)

Brutal realities

The Foreign Ministry of Israel has decided to show the world graphic details of what it means for Israelis to live and die with Palestinian suicide bombers in their midst.

Israelis started their morning today having to face shocking pictures of dead commuters - victims of a yet another suicide bomber. The anti-terrorist fence could have prevented this massacre. The sheer absurdity cannot be ignored.

While Palestinian terrorists continue to murder Israelis, the pro-Arab majority at the UN is forcing Israel into the dock at the International Court of Justice over the fence. Thus, the supporters of terrorism condemn the victims of terrorism for simply trying to protect themselves.

All those who criticize Israel for building the fence should take a good look at this morning's pictures from Jerusalem. (Caution: Video contains very graphic footage.)

On a day when Israel is exchanging hundreds of imprisoned terrorists for the freedom of a kidnapped Israeli civilian and the bodies of three missing soldiers, Palestinian terrorism claims the lives of ten innocent victims, while maiming dozens more. This proves once again that in contrast to Israel's humane outlook, which views each individual as an entire world, the terrorists murder indiscriminately and disdain the sanctity of human life.

Taking a stand

Nat Hentoff expands on his earlier reaction to the American Library Association's hypocritical refusal to condemn Fidel Castro's imprisonment of former independent librarians in Cuba, and takes a personal stand in protest.

Karen Schneider, a member of the governing council, proposed an amendment to the section of the final report on the proceedings of the mid-winter meeting that concerned Castro's imprisonment of the librarians along with 65 other independent journalists and human rights workers. She said, "In calling for the release of the people arrested in [Castro's] March 2003 crackdown, we join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, President Jimmy Carter, journalist Nat Hentoff (recipient of the 1983 ALA Immroth [Intellectual Freedom] award), and other organizations and individuals who champion free speech everywhere."

In her amendment, Karen Schneider emphasized that demanding Castro free these prisoners of conscience "is consistent with ALA policies, including ALA Policy 58.8, which affirms our support for Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression[,]' . . . and especially [ALA Policy] 58.1 (2) . . . to 'support human rights and intellectual freedom worldwide.' "

And this is how the vote went down on Schneider's amendment to free the prisoners, some of whom are of an age that makes it likely that, unless liberated, they will die in the gulag for the crime of thinking and acting as free individuals in a dictatorship.

Karen Schneider's amendment was overwhelmingly voted down by the 182-member ALA council. Only about five hands were raised to support it. Next week, I will report on praise from a high Cuban official for the ALA's rejection of the Schneider amendment.

So much for the ALA leadership's devotion to "free speech everywhere."

It is the leadership I accuse of hypocrisy, of being whited sepulchres. As a reporter on intellectual-freedom issues, I have known and respected many librarians around the country as they fought, sometimes in peril of their jobs, against censorship by local politicians, library boards, and right-wing and left-wing politically correct pressure groups.

It is hard for me to believe that the majority of rank-and-file librarians agree with the spinelessness of their governing council, which couldn't bring itself to ask the luminous Fidel Castro to let these people go.

Karen Schneider, in her scorned amendment to the final report, mentioned my support of her amendment, and that I had received the prized ALA Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom. The citation reads: "For courageous and articulate advocacy of the First Amendment as an author, speaker, and activist for human rights" (June 1983).

I now publicly renounce the Immroth Award and demand that the American Library Association remove me from the list of recipients of that honor. To me, it is no longer an honor. Someone I know in the ALA, who was at the San Diego meeting, explained to me that some members of the council whispered privately that they agreed with the amendment calling for freeing the librarians but had to vote it down because they didn't want to be vilified as being "on the wrong team." They have put themselves in their own prison.

Via the Village Voice
Visit The Friends of Cuban Libraries

Blockbuster news

The United Nations announced yesterday that the kingdom of Gondor has officially been granted member status effective February 1, 2004.

"We are very excited about bringing this stalwart nation into the fold," said Secretary General Kofi Annan. "I think this is a great day, not just for Gondor, but for all nations."

Gondor is a relatively small coastal kingdom which has received considerable media attention recently due to the Peter Jackson docu-drama. Although it claims a history thousands of years old, this marks the first time it has been officially recognized as a sovereign nation.

Some member states objected to the admission of Gondor on the grounds that it is not a real country. Annan brushed aside these concerns.

"Come on now," he replied. "Neither is Luxembourg, but we let them in.

Read more via The Watley Review

Vietnam redux

Candidate John Kerry mentions his Vietnam service at every opportunity, and now a lot of veterans are armed and ready to refight the argument about the way our troops were sold out at home by Kerry and other protesters.

Terry Garlock of Georgia seems to be one. A recipient of the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross, he has a few things to say about John Kerry.

Like Kerry, I have a couple of medals, but who has what medal among combat veterans doesn't make a dime's worth of difference between us. What matters is that we are, for the rest of our life, brothers who kept faith with one another in a miserable war.

A young Kerry, however, broke faith with his brothers when he returned to the United States. With the financial aid of Jane Fonda, he led highly visible protests against the war. He wrote a book that many considered to be pro-Hanoi, titled "The New Soldier."

The cover photo of his book depicted veterans in a mismatch of military uniforms mocking the legendary image of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi in the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, holding the American flag upside down.

Kerry publicly supported Hanoi's position to use our POWs as a bargaining chip in negotiations for a peace agreement. Kerry threw what appeared to be his medals over a fence in front of the Capitol building in protest, on camera of course, but was caught in his lie years later when his medals turned up displayed on his office wall.

Many good and decent people opposed the Vietnam War. Many of us who fought it hated it, too. I know I did.

But like Fonda's infamous visit to Hanoi in 1972, Kerry's public actions encouraged our enemy at a time they were killing America's sons. Decades after the war was done, interviews with our former enemy's leaders confirmed that public protests in the United States, like Kerry's, played a significant role in their strategy.

Many of us wonder which of our brothers who died young would be alive today had people like Fonda and Kerry objected to the war in a more suitable way.

Now that it serves his ambition to be president, Kerry reminds the public of his war record daily. But the dark side of that record is not being told. Many Vietnam veterans have taken notice, and many of us will vigorously oppose Kerry's election to any office.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Hooey

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the media's conventional wisdom brigade predictably examines another conventional liberal and concludes... gosh, he's more complex than all that.

"In Kerry's Record, A Liberal Strain With Complexities"

John Kerry may look like a tax-and-spend liberal and a Washington insider at first glance, but an inspection of the Massachusetts senator's record reveals a man who hasn't been afraid to swing to the right and who many believe has the heft to challenge Bush.

Via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only)

Note that Kerry's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is a 5, only slightly ahead of Ted Kennedy with a 3 (score of 100 = a perfect conservative).

One would like to expect better than pathetic hooey from the WSJ, but, alas, it is often not to be. Their political reporting is as conventional as the rest of the herd. The reality gap between the WSJ's news coverage and their perceptive editorial page is often striking.

Falsity

Tony Blair's statement in the House of Commons about the David Kelly tragedy and its aftermath was pointed and devastating. Are the ilk of Ted Kennedy and Wesley Clark listening

Let me make it plain: it is absolutely right that people can question whether the intelligence received was right; and why we have not yet found WMD. There is an entirely legitimate argument about the wisdom of the conflict. I happen to believe now as I did in March that removing Saddam has made the world a safer and better place. But others are entirely entitled to disagree.

However, all of this is of a completely different order from a charge of deception, of duplicity, of deceit, a charge that I or anyone else deliberately falsified intelligence.

The truth about that charge is now found. No intelligence was inserted into the dossier by Downing Street; nothing was put in it against the wishes of the intelligence services; no-one, either in Downing Street or the JIC, put any intelligence into it, "probably knowing it was wrong"; and no such claim to the BBC was made by anyone "in charge of drawing up the dossier". Indeed, Lord Hutton's findings go further. The claim was not even made by Dr Kelly himself.

The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie. And I simply ask that those that made it and those who have repeated it over all these months, now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly.

I repeat what Lord Hutton said in his Summary, at page 322.

"The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media."

That is how this began: with an accusation that was false then and is false now.

We can have the debate about the war; about WMD; about intelligence. But we do not need to conduct it by accusations of lies and deceit. We can respect each other's motives and integrity even when in disagreement.

Let me repeat the words of Lord Hutton:

"False accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others ... should not be made".

Let those that made them now withdraw them.

Text via 10 Downing Street
Video in Real and Windows Media via 10 Downing Street
Lord Hutton's report via BBC

Toast and worse

British journalist Melanie Phillips examines the David Kelly affair following the release of Lord Hutton's devastating report, which completely exonerated Tony Blair, and says both the BBC and the leader of the opposition Tories have lost all shreds of credibility.

If the BBC is in dire trouble, the Conservative party's recent smirk now deserves to be wiped off its face. Michael Howard's performance in the Commons was simply jaw-dropping. Having previously repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of lying about the naming of Dr Kelly -- a conclusion emphatically rejected by Hutton -- he not only failed to apologise but dug himself further into the hole by claiming that the naming strategy had not been covert but overt, on the basis that the government's statement revealing that an unnamed civil servant had come forward was bound to lead to his being named. Such sophistry didn't stop there; Howard also wrenched other remarks by Hutton out of context in order to arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposite to Hutton's own. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, he had the bare-faced cheek to try to move the goal-posts altogether by demanding an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the decision to go to war on the basis of the missing WMD -- a quite staggering demand, considering the Tories had originally supported the war and the reasons for it to the hilt. Yet now the Tories are apparently leaping on the anti-war bandwagon.

This disgraceful performance was quite sickening to watch. I am normally the first to criticise Tony Blair's government, not least for the way I think it has misled the public over a number of issues. But on this occasion, he had it absolutely right when he told the Tory leader in tones of withering contempt: 'Being nasty is not the same as being effective, and opportunism is not the same as leadership'.

Right from the time Iain Duncan Smith first started on this line about Blair having lied over Dr Kelly, the Tories have been told over and over again that they were calling this one completely wrong. First, there was no evidence that Blair had lied. Second, by deciding that Blair was the villain of the piece, the Tories were effectively siding with the BBC, when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the BBC was entirely in the wrong, that its position was utterly indefensible -- and that in the long run, it is the BBC, not the Labour party, that is actually the Tory party's biggest enemy because of the role it plays week in, week out in subverting the values of this country and the nature of truth itself.

But the Tories simply would not listen. They were warned again when Michael Howard came to power. They still would not listen, because they were transfixed by the mantra of 'Blair the liar' which they have elevated to their main plank of opposition. Now they have been well and truly caught out on the wrong side. The roar of derision from the Labour benches that greeted Howard's feeble and glancing nod towards Hutton's demolition of the BBC was well deserved.

The BBC is toast. The Tories are beneath contempt.

"An open till waiting to be robbed"

Well, this is just shocking news from the sainted world of Eurocracy.

The European Commission has overseen an "intolerable" breakdown of EU financial control while subjecting whistleblowers to vindictive treatment, Euro-MPs said yesterday.

The European Parliament's annual report on the EU's £70 billion budget expressed "extreme alarm" over failures in the commission's accounting system, finding that the books did not add up and large sums of money could not be traced.

The report, drafted by Paulo Casaca, a pro-EU Portuguese socialist, complained that no commissioner had taken the blame for the disappearance of £3 million into "black accounts" at the EU's data office, Eurostat.

Pedro Solbes, the economics commissioner in charge of Eurostat, has refused to accept the blame for abuses described by investigators as "a vast enterprise of looting".

Not "sexed-up" please, we're British

The Sun newspaper in London has been the recipient of a stunning leak of Lord Hutton's secret official report examining the suicide of Dr. David Kelly amid charges by a BBC reporter that Tony Blair's government "sexed up" the evidence against Saddam Hussein. Lord Hutton's conclusion: Tony Blair did nothing wrong and the BBC reporter is a liar. "Sensational" indeed.

Tony Blair is today sensationally cleared of any “dishonourable or underhand” conduct leading to the suicide of tragic scientist David Kelly.

Lord Hutton’s long-awaited report into Dr Kelly’s death also exonerates ex-Downing Street media boss Alastair Campbell. And it makes only passing criticism of the Defence ministry headed by embattled Geoff Hoon.

But the document — top secret until it is published officially at noon today — is a devastating indictment of the BBC and its defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan is effectively accused of LYING in a bombshell broadcast blaming Number Ten for “sexing up” a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Beeb bosses are blasted for failing to check the notes of the journalist, who was already under a cloud over his misuse of language. And chairman Gavyn Davies, director-general Greg Dyke and the BBC board of governors are implicitly blamed for dereliction of duty to licence-payers.

The Prime Minister ordered Lord Hutton’s inquiry hours after the MoD weapons scientist was found with his wrists slashed a few miles from his Oxfordshire home.

The contents of the retired Law Lord’s 320-page report are known only to a handful of people directly affected by their findings.

But The Sun has learned from other sources that the judge will say it was RIGHT for Downing St to suggest changes to a Joint Intelligence Committee dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

He will insist suggestions the report was sexed up are “unfounded” — and that the BBC’s editorial system was “defective”.

ALA's shame - cont.

Old-style liberal and patriot Nat Hentoff looks again at the failure of the American Library Association (ALA) to stand up for the rights of independent librarians jailed by Castro's regime in oppressed Cuba. As noted here before, ALA should be shamed by its failure to live up to its own credos. Then again, double standards have always been a characteristic of those who would fellow-travel with despots.

From Sept. 25 to Oct. 2, libraries across this country will invite their communities to the annual Banned Books Week, decrying censorship. I've spoken, by invitation, during those weeks at libraries around the country. Will any library invite me this year to talk about the burning of library books in Cuba?

It's a shame that librarians around this country have a leadership that mocks the ALA's Library Bill of Rights, which requires its members to "challenge censorship" — but refuses to call for the release of 10 librarians among Castro's prisoners of conscience, who indeed challenged censorship.

Via the Washington Times

The Ketchup Kid & friends

Ubiquitous columnist Mark Steyn has been up-close with the Democrats' primary campaigning in New Hampshire and is less than impressed.

After spending the best part of a year listening to the Democrats' strolling minstrels strumming their way round the White Mountains, I'm staggered by how little any of them have to say. If you go to a Kerry rally – something of an oxymoron, but let that pass – the senator's stump speech is a karaoke tape of floppo populist boilerplate. If he'd downloaded it for free from the internet, that'd be one thing. Instead, he paid a small fortune to hotshot consultant Bob Shrum, who promptly faxed over the same old generic guff he keeps in the freezer: "I (insert name here) will never stop fighting for ordinary people against the powerful interests that stand in your way."

This shtick worked so well for Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008) that he evidently sees no reason why it shouldn't elect a fifth president this time round. Throw in a few mandatory sneering references to Enron, Halliburton and Attorney-General John Ashcroft plus a handful of local hard-luck stories of doubtful general application – "47-year-old Arlene Claxton of Hooksett worked 20 years to build up her hairdressing business only to contract a rare skin disease from a conditioner manufactured overseas by corporations George W Bush has given tax breaks to in order to export American jobs abroad to jurisdictions lacking environmental safeguards thanks to a sweetheart deal negotiated by a lobbyist for Halliburton and then learnt that her health insurer wouldn't cover the cost of treatment because etc etc."

Sen John Edwards, the pretty-boy southern lawyer, does a much better job of this sort of thing. I caught him at Gorham Town Hall way up in the mountains on Saturday morning. It was a brutally cold morning – 40 degrees below freezing – but the place was packed and we all came away enthused, unlike at a Kerry rally where you come away trying not to think about why you're not enthused. Next to the groggy, haggard Kerry, Edwards has a fabulous, glowing complexion. In Gorham, surrounded by leathery weatherbeaten chapped blotched Yankee faces on all sides, the North Carolina trial lawyer looked like a star. If he'd taken my question, I'd have asked him for the name of his moisturiser. True, his stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he'd like to get a piece of – we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc – and he has nothing of interest to say about the war. But his qualified support – or qualified lack of support – seems to suit a Democratic electorate that recoils from Joe Lieberman's full-throated backing of the Iraq liberation and isn't quite suicidal enough to nail its colours to the mast of the fruitcake anti-war Left.

That's the real story here: for all Howard Dean's talk that you can't beat Bush with "Bush Lite", the candidates who'll survive to the southern primaries next week are doing their best not to sound anti-war, anti-tax cuts or anti-guns. In other words, even in the Democratic primary, this election's now being fought on Republican terms.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Dreaming of Mars

Now we know why the Republicans are supporting an aggressive program for exploring Mars. And, after all, someone has to go.

The fundamental dilemma of the new century

Just consider the implications of this. The mind boggles.

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority.

As forecast in 1973 by Jean Raspail in his controversial novel The Camp of the Saints?

Dennis Miller primetime

Looking forward to the new Dennis Miller show in CNBC, starting Monday night at 8:00 p.m. Central time.

Miller has two words for people concerned about his credentials as host of a quasi-news show: lighten up.

"I don't have credibility, I'm a comedian," he said. "I'm not Ed Murrow up on the roof in a London fog reporting on the blitz."

As a viewer, Miller believes one of the titans of objective network news ABC anchorman Peter Jennings couldn't appear more liberal.

"At least I come out upfront and tell people about my politics," Miller said. "He sits there and displays it through subtle poker (expressions) all year long the raised eyebrows, the arch tone of the voice. We get it that he's liberal. We get it that he doesn't like Bush. Just come out and say it!"

Miller cautions against making too many assumptions about his politics. He's conservative on taxes and defense issues but more liberal on social policy, he said.

"If two gay guys want to get married, I couldn't care less," he said. "It's their business. If some foreigner wants to blow their wedding up, I want my government to eliminate him."

The United States right now is simultaneously the world's most loved, hated, feared and admired nation, he said.

"In short," he said, "we're Frank Sinatra."

He's been having fun putting the show together, posing with a chain saw in promos and promising to obliterate the line between news and entertainment. He's bought a bunch of Bill O'Reilly paraphernalia and promises to give it away to viewers.

The show will feature interviews, a rant on a selected topic, a "Weekend Update"-like comic newscast and a pundit panel he calls "The Varsity."

And a monkey.

via ABC News

More David Kay

David Kay has now given a more detailed interview to National Public Radio after leaving the Iraq Survey Group. It's helpful and at least more complete than his sketchy comments to Reuters and The Telegraph earlier this weekend.

The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said Sunday he believes Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. David Kay said the challenge for the United States now is to figure out why intelligence indicated that the Iraqi president did have them.

"We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why," Kay said Sunday on the National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition."

Asked whether he feels President Bush owes the American people an apology for starting the war on the basis of apparently flawed intelligence, Kay said: "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people.

"You have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It is not a political 'got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future."

"It's not a political issue. Its an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."

Since Kay's resignation Friday as the top U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, Kay has said Iraq had no large-scale weapons production program during the 1990s, after it lost the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and no large numbers of mass destruction weapons were available for "imminent action."

Still, "that is not the same thing as saying it was not a serious, imminent threat," he said Sunday. "That is a political judgment," he said, "not a technical judgment."

Kay said he believes the American public and politicians now have to grapple with the question of whether the Iraqi dictator posed an imminent threat. Given the reality on the ground, as opposed to estimates, some may reach different conclusions than they did before the war, he said.

"I must say I actually think Iraq — what we learned during the inspections — made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than in fact we thought it was even before the war," Kay added.

Article via Yahoo! News
Interview available at NPR

Opportunity

Opportunity has landed on the surface of Mars. Now we wait to see if it survived and can talk back.

More good news: Spirit has been partially restored as well.

UPDATE: Opportunity has sent back its first photos, which the experts at JPL already call "bizarre."

Zinger

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has the best final take on the Democratic "debate" earlier in New Hampshire.

There can't be much doubt about who turned in the best performance in last night's New Hampshire debate. Only one man on that stage was consistently calm and thoughtful, well-spoken and well-prepared.

He didn't wilt under pressure, he was forceful without being discourteous -- if anyone appeared ready for the responsibilities of the White House, it was he. Too bad Brit Hume isn't running for president.

And too bad Wesley Clark is.

Tip via Outside the Beltway

Cheney at Davos

Vice President Dick Cheney's speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was focused on the War on Terror and typically steadfast in tone, even while sounding conciliatory as well.

We must act with all urgency that this danger demands. Civilized people must do everything in our power to defeat terrorism and to stop he spread of weapons of mass destruction.

These tasks that we face are tasks that we'll face far into the future. And our success will depend on meeting three fundamental responsibilities. First, we must confront the ideologies of violence at the source, by promoting democracy throughout the greater Middle East and beyond. Second, we must meet these dangers together. Cooperation among our governments, and effective international institutions, are even more important today than they have been in the past. Third, when diplomacy fails, we must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary. Direct threats require decisive action.

He also disclosed a remarkable statistic about European military preparedness that was news to me.

As Lord Robertson, NATO's former Secretary General, has said, "NATO's credibility is in its capability." Today Europe and Canada have 1.4 million soldiers under arms, but only 55,000 deployed, and many European militaries still maintain they are overstretched.

Reality checking

Donald Sensing is all over Wesley Clark's callow willingness to share the stage during a false public charge by asshat poseur Michael Moore that President Bush was a "deserter" during the Vietnam War.

He also has a lot to say about the ignorance of those who want to pontificate on the subject with no experience with, or knowledge of, the subject.

Clark, a retired four-star general, admits he is entirely unconcerned that an ideologue celebrity has made this most serious, unfounded charge against the commander in chief. In fact, he strongly implies that he is not bothered at all that the charge was made. He admits he is not interested in the facts. He admits he is "delighted" to have the support of the man who made the accusation. I find that just incredible and utterly repugnant.

Obfuscatory David Kay

David Kay has resigned and been replaced as head of the Iraq Survey Group, and has given an interview with Reuters that is getting a lot of play this weekend, for obvious reasons.

Former chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay has concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, a potential embarrassment for President George W. Bush and ammunition to his election-year Democratic rivals.

Undercutting the White House's public rationale for the war on Iraq, Kay told Reuters by telephone shortly after stepping down from his post on Friday that he had concluded there were no such stockpiles to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.

"I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find," said Kay, who returned from Iraq in December and told the CIA that he would not be going back.

"I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and that's what we're really talking about," Kay said.

In a fresh interview, this time with The Telegraph in London, Kay is also confirming that "a lot" of Iraq's WMD materials were moved to Syria, which is also highly provocative.

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

It seems to me that this subject is far too important to be argued only through summaries in foreign media reports. David Kay needs to either give a public extended interview in the U.S. with a knowledgeable questioner or testify before an appropriate Congressional committee and say what he's ready to say. Neither of these media interviews seem to be in-depth and are not being presented in full detail. Kay's non-definitive comments are more hurtful than helpful to his country.

Sick puppies

Essential Victor Davis Hanson casts a skeptical eye on the never-ending "harangues" directed at President Bush from candidates in the Democratic primary campaign. One of his many useful observations concerns Europe:

What is strange about our new European relationship is not that it has deteriorated, but that its Orwellian premises had not been questioned long ago. The Iraq war woke us from a deep, dangerous coma, and raised questions unasked for decades: Why defend a continent larger and more populous than our own? Why consider the German and French governments staunch allies, when, by any measure of their rhetorical and diplomatic anti-Americanism, they appear no different from — and indeed, far worse than — what emanates from a China, Brazil, or Middle Eastern "moderate" nations?

Europe, not America, has proved most interested in Iraqi oil over the last decade. Europe, not America, is apt to tolerate massacres in the Balkans or Iraq. Indeed, the victory in Iraq emphasized that our greatest sin is in being cumbersome and often acting belatedly to stop autocratic killing — but this is a far different moral quandary than never acting at all. When you look at Iranian fascists being wined and dined in Paris, count up all the corpses from the August heat wave, and contemplate the explosive issue of school scarves, France, not the United States, is the real sick puppy.

via National Review Online

Land of the plushy elites

Canadian Elizabeth Nickson, writing in the National Post, is just a bit jealous of the lively scene to her south.

The Americans can have a war of ideas and we can't discuss anything. Because anything not out of the Bigger Government playbook is called right-wing extremism, and worse Christian, and thus demonized. Meanwhile, the sleepiest country in the world, which lives next door to the most vibrant country in the world, continues to tumble into the wormhole of complete irrelevance. Unluckily for us, the extraordinary American growth and innovation can float even our dozy economy, and we never have to grow up and behave like adults.

And on Tuesday, the State of the Union. You'd have to go back to the Greeks to find theatre like that. There was the scarlet-faced Ted Kennedy stuffed into his $2,500 suit, and the harridan Hillary, her selfish little ferret face looking punched and puffy, like the schoolyard bully she is. As every policy initiative slipped from their grasp, the Democratic side of the aisle, visibly shrank. It was bliss, bliss, bliss.

What do we have here? Crony capitalism, and every 50-year-old with a graduate degree still left in the country, running around under the big Ottawa money tree, hands grasping at a nice six-figure gov'mnt job with travel allowance, car, driver, and big entertainment budget. The highest form of Canadian accomplishment: to spend your 60s living high off waitresses in Kamloops, discussing impenetrable and useless things. Just as long as they are so boring that no one notices.

Does anyone else wish they were living in a real country?

Tip via Relapsed Catholic

The supermarket

The Bush administration's success in getting WMD cooperation from Libya has uncovered a large failure in both intelligence and non-proliferation efforts. Pakistani expertise seems to be the upstream source.

Libya's quest for atomic weapons was aided by a sophisticated nuclear black market that offered weapons designs, real-time technical advice and thousands of sensitive parts -- some of them apparently manufactured in secret factories, according to diplomats and experts familiar with the probe of Libya's weapons program.

The scale of the black-market operation -- described by one expert as an "international supermarket" for nuclear parts -- exceeds anything seen before, and it was undetected by Western intelligence agencies until recent months, the officials said. The same operation also is believed to have aided Iran, they said.

The smuggling enterprise supplied Libya with thousands of parts for gas centrifuges -- machines that enrich uranium for nuclear weapons -- as well as machine tools for making additional centrifuges, the sources said. It also provided Libya with designs for making a nuclear bomb, officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Friday.

The identities of the people behind the smuggling operation have not been revealed, but investigators say the centrifuges provided to Libya are of the same design as machines used in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

via the Houston Chronicle

Now the Libyan connection is forcing Pakistan's culpability out into the open. All in all, it appears that the military overthrow and capture of a despot is more powerful and persuasive than just mucking around with spooks and informers.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, personally acknowledged Friday that scientists from his country appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations, probably "for personal financial gain." He denied that the Pakistani government knew of the sales at the time but vowed that those involved would be dealt with "as anti-state elements."

Musharraf's statement at a global economic forum in Switzerland came after several weeks of delicate efforts to force Pakistan to deal with the scientists, according to diplomats and U.S. officials. Technical documents from Libya on its nuclear program, and documents relating to Iran's nuclear activities, undercut years of Pakistani denials and appeared to forced Musharraf's hand.

Musharraf continued to insist that there was no government involvement in the sales, portraying the actions as the efforts of corrupt scientists. U.S. officials, however, are skeptical of those claims.

They note that when Pakistan received missile parts from North Korea -- believed to be the quid pro quo for nuclear aid -- a Pakistani air force cargo jet was dispatched to Pyongyang, North Korea, to pick up the parts. They also note that the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories are the crown jewel of the Pakistani nuclear program, with close ties to both the military and the intelligence agency.

via the Houston Chronicle

Library science

Now even staff from the Library of Congress are engaged in the de facto debunking of uncorrected myths about the supposedly spontaneous "looting" of cultural sites in Baghdad during the Iraq campaign.

The Library of Congress (LoC) has stepped in to help rebuild and restructure Baghdad’s National Library after it was devastated by arson and looting in April.

On an 11-day State Department-sponsored trip that began in late October, three LoC experts became the first non-Iraqi group since the spring fires to view the entire collection firsthand. The door to the library’s stacks, which had been welded shut after the crime spree, was opened for the team to assess the damage.

“They waited until we landed in Iraq to unseal those doors,” said Mary-Jane Deeb, the LoC specialist on the Arab world who led the trip. “That shows you the trust they have in our efforts as librarians.”

The team’s most significant finding was that the looting was “highly targeted” and “highly focused,” Deeb said. “You had rooms turned to ashes and other rooms full of documents that were untouched.”

The LoC group determined that the rooms in which materials were turned to ashes were burned with incendiary substances. “Only security of the Baath regime would have had that type of material,” Deeb said.

Furthermore, the only collection destroyed in the stacks was Saddam Hussein’s “Republican Archives” — documentation from 1977 to the present that included the entire microfilm collection and all documentation related to acquisitions. Earlier archives covering the period 1920 to 1977 had been placed in rice bags and were not damaged.

“It’s tremendously important to show that it was not your average looter,” Deeb said.

The LoC staff also discovered for themselves what kind of soldiers we have serving in Iraq. Doesn't sound like an imperialist stormtrooper to me.

The LoC group quickly determined that the Baghdad library building had been damaged too extensively to be useful.

“Even if repaired, the present building would be inappropriate to represent the Iraqi cultural heritage regionally and internationally,” the team’s report said. “Its location is unattractive, its facilities limited and it is rather undistinguished architecturally.”

The team recommended that the library be relocated to a senior officers club on two acres overlooking the Tigris River that is currently occupied by more than 300 U.S. troops.

In its report, the team said that the three-story building, situated in a historical district, is “perfectly suitable for a great national library.”

Deeb said that a U.S. officer who was also a civil engineer led the team around the facility. The officer had drafted “kind of a blueprint” of how the building could be transformed to a library.

“It was absolutely wonderful,” she said.

via The Hill

Capt. Kangaroo, RIP

This is a shame. Bob Keeshan was a cool guy.

Bob Keeshan, who gently entertained and educated generations of children as television's walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76. Keeshan, who lived in Hartford, Vt., died of a long illness, his family said in a statement.

Keeshan's "Captain Kangaroo" premiered on CBS in 1955 and ran for 30 years before moving to public television for six more. It was wildly popular among children and won six Emmy Awards, three Gabriels and three Peabody Awards.

The New York Times has a well-prepared obituary, as is so often the case. After chronicling all Keeshan's accomplishments, there's this:

Asked on one occasion how he found time to star in his own show and still engage in lecturing, volunteerism, the study of French, reading, and also spend time with his family and his hobbies of photography, fishing and sailing, Mr. Keeshan replied, "one of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television."

Strategy

Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of the Washington Times, has an election-year warning for President Bush.

The pessimists among the president's best friends see an eerie similarity in the election-year prospects of father and son.

The elder Mr. Bush went into 1988 with sky-high approval ratings, which collapsed with his pursuit of votes he was never going to get. George W.'s approval rating sparkles at 60 percent or so, enough to fuel a landslide if it holds up. But that's a big "if," because he, too, is chasing phantoms at the expense of turning out big numbers from his base.

Almost any reading of the senior-citizen constituency finds that seniors are counting on Democrats, not Republicans, to expand the drug-prescription program. Hispanic voters see the Republican resistance to amnesty and expanded illegal-immigrant rights, notice that the president couldn't get away from the subject fast enough in his State of the Union address, and put it down to half-hearted pandering. The first President Bush signed on to many of the Democratic favorite things, too, environmental, civil rights and disabilities initiatives, and all he got for his trouble was personal satisfaction. Liberal voters treated him to Bronx cheers on their way to the polls. Many of the voters who wanted to be his friends felt snubbed and frost-bitten by what they regarded as a cold shoulder. If history repeats itself, the result this time will be tragedy, not farce.

Red Moon Rising

A report in today's New York Times reads between the lines of President Bush's State of the Union address and perceives an outreached hand to China in the area of space exploration. Interesting idea since China is making significant strides in space right now. I don't want their flag on the Moon without ours right beside it.

In all, China plans to launch 10 satellites this year, and a total of 30 by 2005; it currently has 16 in orbit. The satellites have scientific, commercial and military applications.

More bold are China's plans to build on the success of last year's Shenzhou 5 space orbit, and eventually to land on the Moon. Officials say next year's Shenzhou 6 mission is expected to carry two astronauts on a five- to seven-day space journey.

Efforts to reach the Moon are beginning in earnest this year, and some experts in the United States speak ominously of a "Red Moon" — the possibility that China might one day launch military astronauts into space with the aim of setting up a Communist lunar base.

Last March, Luan Enjie, director of the China National Aerospace Administration, described the Moon as "the focal point wherein future aerospace powers contend for strategic resources."

But Mr. Luan and other Chinese officials say China's lunar ambitions are wholly peaceful. Mr. Luan suggested that one of China's primary motivations for reaching the Moon was possible economic exploitation. He told People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, that China was also interested in developing lunar energy resources, like helium-3, a rare form of the element that scientists say could power advanced reactors on Earth.

In an interview this week, Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for China's Moon program, said the program was part of China's larger efforts to become a leader in space.

Cheney interviewed

Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview to NPR's Juan Williams.

Primal scream

In the hall of mirrors that is politics as presented by America's media, Howard Dean's wacky speech/rant to his dazed foot soldiers in Iowa Monday night (now dubbed his "I Have a Scream" speech) has (a) had an undeniable impact on prospective voters and (b) become a self-referential story of its own. Check out Fox News, the Houston Chronicle, NPR, the New York Post, Newsday, and USA Today for just a sample.

Since the next stage in the short-lived evolution of such a thing will be handwringing analyses ruing the fact that too much was made of the story... it's best just to enjoy some of the jokes at Howard Dean's expense, like Jay Leno did:

Did you see that speech Howard Dean gave last night? I heard that the cows in Iowa are now afraid of getting mad Dean disease.

I’m not an expert in politics, but I think it’s a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun.

Howard Dean is a doctor. He acts more like a postal worker.

What kind of a bedside manner is that? "We’re gonna go in there and pull out your spleen! Then fix that appendix! Then take out your tonsils, then we’re going to take your darn heart and replace it!!!”

One-liners via NewsMax

"Lucky"

This is one heckuva story from Iraq.

In an urban neighborhood where Saddam Hussein tried to erect the world’s largest mosque, a cadre of American artillery troops learn street smarts dodging grenades and the neon threads of tracer fire.

The soldiers of the 1st Armored Division’s Battery A, 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery, weren’t trained to kick in doors in search of terrorists. Yet they’ve had to endure one hot tour in one of Baghdad’s toughest boroughs.

Al Mansour is so treacherous that the Baumholder, Germany-based unit has pinned Purple Hearts on 10 of its 90-some soldiers. One soldier even has two. Last month, its medic died during a grenade attack and a hard hail of gunfire.

“It’s crazy around here, sir,” says Cpl. Wayne Santos, pulling guard duty out front. He pulls back his Kevlar collar to expose a bulging lozenge of a scar. “I was lucky, because I’ve got a 1½-inch hole that goes through the back of my neck.”

Read the whole thing.

Tip via One Hand Clapping

Improving the foxhole

This story in Stars and Stripes would seem to indicate that the U.S. Army is settling into Iraq for the long haul. That's a good thing, considering all that needs doing in this tough part of the world.

Engineers from the 1st Armored Division are midway through an $800 million project to build half a dozen camps for the incoming 1st Cavalry Division.

The new outposts, dubbed enduring camps, will improve living quarters for soldiers and allow the military to return key infrastructure sites within the Iraqi capital to the emerging government, military leaders said.

“The plan is for the camps to last five to 10 years,” said Col. Lou Marich, commander of the 1st AD engineers. “They will last longer if we take care of them.”

The largest of the new camps, Camp Victory North, will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo — currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War. Camp Victory North lies northeast of Baghdad International Airport, known to troops as BIAP.

Already the Army has spent about $300 million of the overall $800 million price tag, Otteson said. A similar construction project in the States would take two years, he said. Army planners expect to finish by March 15.

The rush to finish the camps places a huge burden upon the Army’s engineers. Yet work progressed steadily over the past few months.

The engineering mission is two-fold throughout the theater, said Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, the Army’s senior engineering officer. While engineers work to improve Iraqi infrastructure, others work to build better base camps, Flowers said.

Soldiers call the process “improving the foxhole.” Basically, troops always try to make living conditions better for themselves and forces that follow.

“That’s job one,” Flowers said. “Making sure our forces are taken care of as far as force protection and quality of life.”

"They like Bush, and they are not stupid"

Caroline Overington, New York correspondent for Australian newspaper The Age, has a few things to say about America today.

The Iraq war has cost the lives of about 500 American soldiers. Some would have you believe that this makes Iraq a quagmire. But the truth is, if Western nations have come to the point where 500 deaths is an unbearable war-time loss, then we should also say we are no longer prepared to fight wars, because about the same number of soldiers die every year, in peacetime.

Americans are not casual about casualties. Each and every one of the lives lost was precious to them.

America saved the Western world from communism. America saved Australia and, for that matter, France from a system that would stop you from reading this newspaper.

Americans support the war in Iraq and, by extension, Bush because they see it as part of a bigger picture. Like everybody, they now know that Saddam was not the threat they thought he was (at least, not to them) but they still think it was a good idea to deal with him, before he became one.

The price of freedom is high. You might think you would not sacrifice your life for it, but maybe you don't have to. After all, 20-year-old Americans are doing it for you, every day.

via The Age

Bush looks better now that the Democratic reply is on. Nancy Pelosi's unblinking, wide-eyed stare-into-the-camera delivery is just creepy. ("Please meet my captors' demands.") But judging from what she said -- and from the fact that every member of the CNN focus group, Democratic and Republican, thought the war was worth it -- I think that Ed Cone was clearly right to say that criticism of the war is approaching its sell-by date.

Posted by Alan at 11:38 AM

Kudos

The late Joan Kroc caught some grief from time to time as a typical liberal do-gooder, but this bequest to The Salvation Army -- America's best charitable organization -- is exceedingly well-deserved. Nicely done. What are you contributing?

The Salvation Army announced Tuesday that it is receiving the largest gift ever given to a charity -- a donation likely to exceed $1.5 billion from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's Corp.

Salvation Army officials say the exact size of the gift won't be known until administration of Kroc's estate is complete, which could take several months.

"We are obviously thrilled, but genuinely humbled by the exceptional generosity of Joan Kroc," said W. Todd Bassett, national commander of The Salvation Army.

"We recognize the deep sense of trust she has placed into our hands with this gift," he said. "Mrs. Kroc was a wonderful friend of The Salvation Army and we miss her. Her passion for children and families, and her hope for community peace will live on forever through this incredible gift."

Kroc's gift is the largest ever to a charitable organization, and ranks ninth overall in terms of gifts to nonprofit organizations.

AA for $$$?

The simile of the week is that, given the dramatic increases in federal domestic discretionary spending under President Bush, Republicans are spending money like drunken sailors. True enough. But an alert reader at Econopundit says this is grossly unfair... to sailors.

I don't think it's fair to drunken sailors to compare them with government. After all, a drunken sailor is spending his own money, not anyone else's.

VPOTUS speaks!

The VPOTUS isn't giving in, even when confronted daily with the Left's oddball gumbo of criticism of the Bush team: inept bumblers, clever neocon conspirators, lying frontmen for all-powerful global corporations, etc. Fortitude is a virtue

Vice President Cheney says he believes "the jury's still out" on whether Iraq had the chemical and biological weapons that were the Bush administration's justification for war.

"I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence," Cheney said in an interview with USA TODAY and the Los Angeles Times.

Cheney suggested that biological weapons are hard to find because they could be produced on short notice. "The stuff is perishable and doesn't last very long anyway," he said. But, he added, intelligence is "never perfect. It's rarely 100% complete."

He also seems serenely unconcerned about his nefarious image among the gullible as President Bush's puppeteer. Also good.

He's not worried about his image as the secretive sculptor of Bush policies as he takes a more public role in the campaign. "What's wrong with my image?" he asked with a laugh.

Cheney said he's effective working behind the scenes and doesn't believe voters will choose the next president based on running mates. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he said. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."

via USA Today

Mullah madness

The mad mullahs of Iran are still just that: mad. Iran is a gathering danger, and has been since the Islamists overthrew the Shah in 1979. Given their size and strength, armed confrontation is difficult to imagine, so containment may be the only option for now. A metastasis of democracy inside the Middle East -- nurtured in neighboring Iraq -- is probably the only hope for the longer term.

Iran has reneged on a promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment, making it likely the Tehran government will be under intense scrutiny when the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency next meets, Western diplomats and nuclear experts told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Tehran announced it had suspended uranium enrichment late last year, seeking to ease international concerns that it was trying to build nuclear weapons.

Diplomats told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that even key European nations who negotiated the deal with Tehran have started to question Iran's commitment because it appears to be using semantics — the meaning of the word suspend — to keep some of its nuclear enrichment program operational.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, last fall asked Iran to stop "enrichment-related activities." But while Tehran has stopped introducing uranium into enrichment equipment, it is still making and assembling centrifuges used to spin uranium into low-grade fuel for peaceful use or high-grade material, for weapons.

One possible spinoff: a higher probability of nukes in Saudi Arabia, which fears a nuclear-armed Iran that has not been content to mind only its own affairs.

Tracking polls

Site for political junkies RealClear Politics is providing ongoing access to various tracking polls for the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Looks like there is new data every 2-3 days.

Howie set back

Scrappleface was there as Howard ("Dr. No") Dean reacted in his usual thoughtful way to a humiliating political defeat Monday night in Iowa, where he spent two years campaigning.

With the characteristic charm that earned him the love and respect of roughly 18 percent of Iowa Democrats, presidential candidate Howard Dean bid the state farewell as he stepped onto his private jet tonight.

"Shut up, you gun-toting, God-fearing homophobes," Mr. Dean said to a cheering crowd of Iowa Democrats. "Your caucus is a meaningless exercise dominated by extremist special interests just like I said on Canadian TV years ago."

Sporting a manic grin, Dean did actually look like he was going to blow a blood vessel during his concession rant. Or ready to switch careers and try out for the WWF.

Win for the good guys

A leaked low-res military video that shows a violent engagement in Iraq is making the Internet rounds. Apparently it was shown on ABC News. The firepower is impressive; the result chilling and decisive.

Graphic video footage from the gun camera of a U.S. Apache helicopter provides a window into the rules of engagement that often determine life and death in Iraq.

The video, obtained by ABCNEWS, shows grainy images of three Iraqis on the ground handling a long cylindrical object that the helicopter pilots believe is a weapon. The pilots, from the Army's 4th Infantry Division, ask their commanders for permission to engage, then take the three men out one by one, using the Apache's devastating 30 mm cannons.

Anthony Cordesman, an ABCNEWS defense consultant who also viewed the tape, said the Apache pilots would have had a much clearer picture of the scene than what was recorded on the videotape. He also said they would have had intelligence about the identity of the men in the vehicles. "They're not getting a sort of blurred picture. They have a combination of intelligence and much better imagery than we can see."

As to whether the Apache pilots could have called in ground troops to apprehend the men, Cordesman said: "In this kind of war, wherever you find organized resistance among the insurgents, you have to act immediately. If you wait to send in ground troops almost invariably your enemy is going to be gone."

Army officials acknowledged that the 30 mm cannons used by the Apache gunners were far bigger than what was needed to kill the men, but said it is the smallest weapon the Apaches have.

Story via ABC News
Links to the MPEG video via National Security Blog

Upsets

If this holds throughout the night, the Democratic primary race was just turned over in a big way. Karl Rove will have to retune his reelection strategy. On to New Hampshire.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina appeared tonight to have turned their late surges in Iowa into dominant showings in the state's Democratic caucuses, the first actual electoral test in the 2004 presidential campaign.

With 62 percent of the 1993 precincts reporting, Mr. Kerry had 37 percent of the vote and Mr. Edwards had 33 percent. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, who was the early frontrunner in the state, had 18 percent. It was a particularly disappointing night for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who was running a distant fourth with 11 percent of the vote.

UPDATE: The numbers are holding up. Gephardt is dropping out. Jonah Goldberg at NRO's The Corner has the best early take:

For all of the talk of the "Old Democratic Party" versus the "New Democratic Party" the real lesson here is that neither Democratic Party did well. The Gephardt wing of manufacturing union types and, to a lesser extent, farmers crashed and burned. Gephardt's getting out of the race. The "new" Democratic Party of latte-drinking, internet savvy, Bush-hating, war-opposing, young people turned out to the polls but it didn't vote for their annointed representative either. Three-quarters of Caucus-goers were opposed to the war, but they overhwelmingly voted for 2 candidates who voted for it (though they outrageously voted against the $87 billion nation-building bill). There will be a great deal of spin about how Kerry and Edwards represent the centrist interests of a party looking to win instead of hate. Some of that spin is probably true. But the fact that the candidates who had the support of youngsters and union members did so poorly is also a sign that the traditional levers of the Democratic Party don't pull the machinery anymore.

French kiss-off

The personal story of Syrian human rights activist Nizar Nayouf is emerging, perhaps due to his recent disclosures about Syrian Baathist complicity in sheltering Saddam Hussein's looted financial assets and even weapons of mass destruction (as noted here and here earlier). Nayouf was tortured by Syrian security forces, and now he's being betrayed by the French government.

Despite his injuries Nayouf, an award-winning journalist, poet and human rights activist, remains committed to the cause that has guided his life for two decades: promoting a free and democratic Syria. Only now Nayouf has a new and surprisingly inhospitable base for his pro-democracy activities: Paris.

Nayouf was granted political asylum in France in July 2002 and fully expected his vocal opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime to be welcomed by his new hosts. After all, it was former French prime minister Lionel Jospin who, in 2001, urged Assad to release Nayouf so he could receive proper medical attention in France.

Assad, eager to strengthen Syria's European ties, quickly consented. But after a promising start, Nayouf's French experience quickly turned sour.

Despite repeated requests by Nayouf during the last 18 months, the French government has refused to grant him access to official documents that would allow him to travel freely and continue his human rights work. Moreover, upon asking French authorities last month for the political refugee passport he was legally granted in 2002 (and is due to him by French law), Nayouf was denied yet again and told, much to his surprise, that he "already had" a Syrian passport.

As a result, Nayouf remains confined to Paris, denied permission to attend Syrian human rights conferences, where he has often been invited as a featured speaker.

via the Jerusalem Post

Flash of character

Unexpectedly, even to himself, national security expert Ralph Peters is seeing stars over... Bill Clinton.

I never thought I'd give Bill Clinton a standing ovation. But last week in Qatar I did just that.

Our former president gave the most perfectly pitched, precisely targeted speech I've ever heard to a hall filled with Muslim intellectuals and officials. And they listened.

We all know that Bill Clinton can speak persuasively, of course. But in this case the message mattered. Clinton just may have been the only American who could have reached that unforgiving crowd.

He didn't pander. He made America's case and made it well. Beginning with a sometimes-rueful look at the progress his administration had failed to make and noting that the wars that plague the world are begun by men his own age or older, but paid for in blood by the young, he refused to direct one syllable of blame at the Bush administration. Accepted as a citizen of the world, he spoke as a convinced American.

Asked by an eager-to-Bush-bash delegate if he, Bill Clinton, would have behaved differently after 9/11, our former president said he would have followed an identical course, pursuing our enemies into Afghanistan and beyond. Queried about his position on Iraq, he stated that any disagreements he might have would be most appropriately expressed at home in the U.S., not before a foreign audience.

He could have made an easy score. Instead, he did the right thing. Clinton has become the perfect statesman.

via the New York Post
Tip via Outside the Beltway

Cash stash

Today brings more information about the shadowy connections between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Baathist regime in Syria. This report is sourced to a Syrian exile who earlier reported that Iraqi WMD are stashed underground in a remote part of Syria. Interesting.

Syria's Central Bank and the Medina Bank in Lebanon are holding at least $2 billion in cash, as well as gold bullion and platinum, that was smuggled out of Iraq, according to a letter written on the stationery of the Syrian army's intelligence department.

The letter says $1.3 billion was deposited in the Syrian Central Bank in an official "presidency" account, while another $700 million was placed in the Medina Bank. The document does not state the value of the gold and platinum, although it says these are also in the Syrian Central Bank.

The handwritten letter to a Syrian exile in Europe, which also bears what appears to be the official stamp of the Syrian army intelligence department, says the deal was struck not long before a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq early last year.

The document was sent to Nizar Nayouf, an exiled Syrian human-rights activist and past winner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Press Freedom Prize who is living in Paris.

via the Washington Times

The tragic cycle

Essential Victor Davis Hanson has the first commentary I've seen about President Bush's immigration proposal that is based on experience living side-by-side with illegal immigrants, not just airy political theory. He says it's a partial solution that might make things worse.

Instead of squabbling over piecemeal legislation in an election year, rolling amnesties or a return of braceros, we might as well bite the bullet and reconsider an immigration policy that worked well enough for some 200 years for people from all over the world. Reasonable advocates can set a realistic figure for legal immigration from Mexico. Then we must enforce our border controls; consider a one-time citizenship process for current residents who have been here for two or three decades; apply stiff employer sanctions; deport those who now break the law--and return to social and cultural protocols that promote national unity through assimilation and integration.

In the short term, under such difficult reform, we of the American Southwest might pay more for our food, hotel rooms and construction. Yet eventually we will save far more through reduced entitlements, the growing empowerment of our own entry-level workers (many of them recent and legal immigrants from Mexico), and the easing of social and legal problems associated with some eight million to 12 million illegal residents.

More importantly still, our laws would recover their sanctity. Without massive illegal immigration, Americans would rediscover their fondness for measured legal immigration. At a time of war, our borders would be more secure. And we could regain solace, knowing that we are no longer overlords importing modern helots to do the jobs that we, in our affluence and leisure, now deem beneath us.

New site up

John Little, well known for his sites Blogs of War and Eye on the Left, has something new going: National Security Blog. Check it out today.

The magic of the movies

The Rev. Donald Sensing saw the film Cold Mountain and found some of the depicted historical events so "repellant" that he did some research and found them to be... accurate. The home front in the Confederacy was often little less violent than the battlefield, it seems. Interesting reading, with some possible connections for my own family history back in NC.

Menwhile, James Joyner at Outside the Beltway notes that historical inaccuracy is indeed common in "historical" films, and a huge row among historians is already building over Ridley Scott's upcoming film about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven.

Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott was savaged by senior British academics yesterday over his forthcoming film, which they say "distorts" the history of the Crusades to portray Arabs in a favorable light. The $135 million film, which stars Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson, is described by the makers as being "historically accurate" and designed to be "a fascinating history lesson." However, academics — including Britain's leading authority on the Crusades, Jonathan Riley-Smith — attacked the plot of "Kingdom of Heaven," describing it as "rubbish," "ridiculous," "complete fiction" and "dangerous to Arab relations."

If you are interested in the general issue of how Hollywood has handled history in the past, a now out-of-print book is worth tracking down: The Hollywood History of the World by George McDonald Fraser. Fraser knows a thing or two about dramatizing history. He is the author of the brilliant Flashman series of picaresque historical novels, as well as the screenwriter of Richard Lester's two-part film of The Three Musketeers.

And speaking of Orlando Bloom, we saw The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King last night for the 5th time. It gains in profundity each time we see it, and is more "true" than 99% of the "historical" films to which we are subjected.

The numbers don't lie

Recent statistics show why the U.S. finds that acting "unilaterally" is necessary, whether we like or not.

Almost 100 countries have failed to enforce United Nations sanctions against the al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban.

Heraldo Munoz, the chairman of the committee overseeing sanctions, called for those countries to be named and shamed into taking steps. Mr Munoz, the Chilean ambassador to the UN, revealed the committee’s uphill struggle to implement the asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo during a briefing to the Security Council on Monday.

Only 93 countries have submitted reports on measures being taken to implement sanctions - less than half the 191 UN member states, he said.

The council shifted sanctions from the government of Afghanistan to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and remnants of the Taleban in January 2002, after a US-led force ousted the Taleban. But while 4,000 individuals linked to the two groups have been detained in over 102 countries, the UN list of individuals and entities subject to sanctions has only 392 names.

Awakened reptilian instincts

Victor Davis Hanson ponders the crucial role played by two of the deadly sins, Pride and Envy, in world events today, especially in Europe and the Middle East. His take on America's national personality is spot on, too, and he has some suggestions for American strategy in response.

The realization that we have not yet evolved past these baser impulses is critical in this war, since victory entails not merely the military defeat of our often tribal adversaries, but a careful combination of humiliating enemies while allowing credit to go to envious allies and the once defeated. "Hearts and minds" refers not merely to bequeathing good schools, utilities, and safety to Iraqis, but to restoring the pride of the Iraqi people. The trick is for Americans, who sacrifice lives and treasure, and are singularly responsible for the salvation of the Iraqi people, to ignore Arab ingratitude, callousness, and mean-spiritedness and allow them instead the sense of accomplishment that they saved, and are restoring, their own country.

At the risk of sounding monotonous, we cannot win in Iraq until Iraqis, not Americans, are on television — confidently summing up the reconstruction that we in fact are mostly responsible for. All the tiring shoe-shaking, fists in the air, banners, fatwas, and demonstrating we have seen in Iraq — not to mention the dead-end sniping and killing from a dying cabal of criminals — are not explicable just through political or economic gripes, but revolve mostly around wounded pride and a sense of disgrace.

As Mr. Bush has grasped, every time we have humiliated our enemies we have gained respect and won security. By the same token, on each occasion we have shown deference to a Mr. Karzai, the Iraqi interim government, and our Eastern European friends, we have helped to create security and stability. Apart from the model of our forefathers who crushed and then lifted up the Germans and Japanese, we could find no better guide in this war than William Tecumseh Sherman and Abraham Lincoln — in that order. The former would remind us that our enemies traffic in pride and thus first must be disabused of it through defeat and humiliation. The latter (who turned Sherman and Grant loose) would maintain that we are a forgiving sort, who prefer restored rather than beaten people as our friends.

Pinstriped fortitude

Well, here's an act of courage that will put panties in a twist throughout the diplomatic circuit. Huzzah for Zvi Mazel!

Israel on Saturday demanded that Sweden remove an artwork depicting a Palestinian suicide bomber displayed at a Stockholm museum, which was partially destroyed by Israel's ambassador to Sweden on Friday, Israel Radio reported.

The artwork, entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," consisted of a rectangular basin filled with red water on which floated a boat carrying a portrait of Islamic Jihad suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21 others in an attack at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on October 4.

Ambassador Zvi Mazel was among the guests at the opening of the Historical Museum's exhibition linked to an international anti-genocide conference to be held in Stockholm from January 26 to 28.

Public service SR radio news said Mazel furiously ripped out electrical wires attached to the artwork and threw a spotlight in the basin.

"This was not a piece of art," Mazel told SR. "It was a monstrosity. An obscene distortion of reality."

The Foreign Ministry said that the display was a violation of understandings between Israel and Sweden. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said the Swedish government had promised not to link the conference with the Middle East conflict.

"The exhibit that glorified the actions of a suicide bomber who murdered 22 people is a violation of that understanding, and if it is not removed, Israel will reconsider its participation in the conference," the ministry said.

via Haaretz

Waging war at the source

Austin Bay says the Global War on Terror is shaking the foundations of Islamic rule in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis know The War on Terror is an intra-Islam and Arabian Peninsula war writ large. The Saudis certainly understand the intersection of theology and psychological warfare, and are exploiting ideological-theological cracks in al-Qaida that are extremely difficult for the United States to leverage.

The London Times reported that Sheikh Nasser al-Fahd, one of al-Qaida's key religious backers, appeared on Saudi TV last November and denounced al-Qaida's attacks in Riyadh. Though jailed for issuing "inflammatory fatwas," he insisted that his comments were voluntary.

"Blowing oneself up in such operations (on Muslim soil) is not martyrdom," al-Fahd said, "it is suicide." Islamic law forbids suicide. He added that Islam forbids attacks on non-Muslims who go legally to Islamic countries -- meaning they are invited "guests" and, as legal visitors, should enjoy protection. The Times noted: "Although he raised no objection to attacks on America or other non-Islamic countries, his denunciation of bombings on Islamic soil known as internal jihad appears to have caught al-Qaida off guard."

Al-Qaida websites now confront al-Fahd with statements like, "The new strategy for us in our fight with the Americans is based on the expansion of the battlefield and the attrition of the enemy, who has spread his activities all over the globe."

Al-Qaida's response demonstrates more than theological argument, it is also an inadvertent admission that the U.S. strategy of returning the battlefield to the Middle East has worked. Waging the war at its source instead of in Manhattan has exposed Arab and intra-Islam quarrels.

Al-Qaida faces bad choices. In Iraq, al-Qaida infiltrators are unpopular foreigners. Attacking "soft targets" in the Middle East -- like the Ramadan revelers -- means killing Muslims and guests, further damaging pan-Islamic appeals.

The House of Saud also faces the choice of political evolution or potential revolution. A successful democratic government in Iraq will empower pro-democracy activists throughout the Persian Gulf. This time, saving The Kingdom may mean establishing a constitutional monarchy.

via the Houston Chronicle

ALA's shame - again

The American Library Association (ALA) has affirmed its shameful and cowardly stance towards Fidel Castro's repression of intellectual freedom, libraries and librarians in Cuba. As noted earlier, this is hypocritical in the extreme, given ALA's vociferous devotion to a universal Freedom to Read, which is supposed to mean more than shelter for the consumption of pornography. Infuriating.

The largest U.S. library association this week opted not to demand the release of private Cuban librarians jailed by Fidel Castro's government in the spring, despite voting to support an investigation of the incarcerations by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

At its national meeting in San Diego, the American Library Association, noting that individuals operating private libraries in Cuba consider themselves "political dissidents" not librarians, left out specific language calling for their release Wednesday.

"Today marks a tragic date in the history of the American Library Association," said Robert Kent, head of the New York-based advocacy group Friends of Cuban Libraries. "They failed to live up to their highest ideal, which is a support for intellectual freedom as a universal human right."

via the Washington Times
Friends of Cuban Libraries

McMars

The Mars Spirit Rover has already made a startling discovery in its first hours on Martian soil.

Erosion

Bill Gertz reports that officials believe an "eroded" al Qaeda must still be considered highly dangerous. The notion of a seriously weakened enemy doesn't seem consistent with the supposedly highly specific threats that caused the Orange Alert over the holidays, but the truth is we really don't know, and won't for a long time to come.

Al Qaeda's capability to conduct major attacks has "eroded significantly" as a result of the war on terrorism, but the terrorist group has not been destroyed, according to U.S. intelligence officials and security specialists.

More than two years after the September 11 attacks, al Qaeda "is battered, but they remain dangerous. They're still recruiting jihadists into the fold," said a U.S. official with access to intelligence reports. "Osama bin Laden and the group's dwindling top leadership are increasingly isolated from the organization's wider network," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Security specialists think al Qaeda, in large measure, has lost the ability to carry out major attacks that can kill thousands, utilizing a centralized command that, in the past, has ordered attacks from places such as Afghanistan. Instead, the group, which still operates in small clandestine cells, has become even more decentralized.

How many members the group has today is not known.

Larry Johnson, a former U.S. government counterterrorism official, said al Qaeda today probably has about 500 core members left over from its 2001 peak. "I think al Qaeda is significantly weakened from where they were," Mr. Johnson said. "They are trying to use the invasion of Iraq like they used the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan [to recruit], but it doesn't appear they're having great success."

Mr. Johnson said al Qaeda attacks in areas with large Islamic populations — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq — have cost the group important local support. The group has "the air of Hitler in his bunker" at the end of World War II, he said.

Ann on Wes

Favorite rhetorical bombthrower Ann Coulter goes after Wesley Clark. Hijinks ensue.

Democrats are so delirious about finding a general who is a pacifist scaredy-cat that no one seems to have bothered to investigate whether Wesley Clark is sane.

Fourth estate kicks in

Howard ("Dr. No") Dean has suddenly lost his big leads in the Iowa and New Hampshire tracking polls. Gifted political observer Peggy Noonan says it isn't just the candidates at work.

The press has kicked in and is playing a part in the drama. The journalistic establishment has become an anti-Dean mover. Tuesday's New York Times piece on the absent Mrs. Dean, for instance--that was a piece with a sting. They decided to front-page it six days before the caucuses. The morning network news shows and the cable news shows are full of Mr. Dean's gaffes, Mr. Gephardt's rise and Mr. Edwards's potential.

Why? It is true the press wants a race. They don't want to spend the next three months filing "Dean Wins Again" and "Why Kerry Failed to Ignite." But it's more than that. Reading between the lines and listening between the lines, it's hard to avoid the thought that reporters don't really like Mr. Dean. The last time a viable Democrat rose, in 1992, the columnists for the newsmagazines and profile writers for the newspapers loved Bill Clinton with a throbbing love. None of those columns are being written now. They don't love Mr. Dean.

This is not a shock. He seems as unlovable (unless you're a Deaniac) as he is improbable. But I suspect there's something else at work. I wonder if mainstream media aren't trying to save the Democratic Party from Mr. Dean. They know he's not a likely winner down the road. Boomer reporters who've been through the Clinton experience have sharp eyes. I suspect they're put off by Mr. Dean's Clintonian aspects, such as his tendency to dissemble. They're pushing Gephardt and Edwards and even Kerry. They may push Wesley Clark. But they're not pushing Dean.

The wrath of the terrorist

"The wrath of the terrorist is rarely uncontrolled. Contrary to both popular belief and media depiction, most terrorism is neither crazed nor capricious. Rather, terrorist attacks are generally as carefully planned as they are premeditated... the terrorist act is specifically designed to communicate a message. But, equally as important, it is also conceived and executed in a manner that simultaneously reflects the terrorist group's particular aims and motivations, fits its resources and capabilities and takes into account the 'target audience' at whom the act is directed. The tactics and targets of various terrorist movements, as well as the weapons they favour, are therefore ineluctably shaped by a group's ideology, its internal organizational dynamics, the personalities of its key members and a variety of internal and external stimuli." - Dr. Bruce Hoffman

A young Palestinian mother, feigning a limp and requesting medical help, blew herself up Wednesday at the entrance to a security inspection center for Palestinian workers, killing four Israeli security personnel and wounding seven people, the Israeli military said.

The bomber, Reem al-Reyashi, 22, said in video released after her attack that "it was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists." Ms. Reyashi left behind a son aged 3, and a year-old daughter.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, said this was the first time his group had dispatched a woman to be a suicide bomber. Some militant Palestinian factions have been reluctant to do so, and some Islamic groups have questioned whether it is permitted under Islamic law.

But when Sheik Yassin was asked why Hamas had decided to send a woman, he cited purely tactical concerns. "It could be that a man would not be able to reach the target, and that's why they had to use a woman," he said.

Ms. Reyashi, who came from a middle-class family in Gaza City, appeared in her video wearing combat fatigues, with an automatic rifle in her hands and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the desk in front of her.

"God gave me the ability to be a mother of two children who I love so," she said. "But my wish to meet God in paradise is greater, so I decided to be a martyr for the sake of my people. I am convinced God will help and take care of my children."

After the bombing, her husband was seen crying outside the family home. A relative said he had no knowledge of his wife's plans, Reuters reported.

Hamas, the Islamic movement, and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a faction loyal to the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, took joint responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Israel's killing of Palestinians.

via The New York Times

Yasir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his "efforts to create peace in the Middle East."

Big attack looming in Iraq?

Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz said in an interview on Fox News Channel that he's hearing disturbing reports of an imminent large-scale attack in Iraq, possibly involving chemical weapons.

What I have learned in the last 24 hours is that about three days ago in the northern part of Iraq, a convoy of trucks and jeeps and cars was brought across from Iran where some of the Kurdish Peshmergah -- these are these Kurdish rebels that are sort of like Mujahideen, if I may put it that way, from the old Afghan War.

They intercepted one of those trucks that were carrying a large warhead that had extremely sophisticated plastic -- C- 4 plastic explosives in it. And when the driver of that truck was put under interrogation, he then admitted that as many -- there were a total of 30 warheads that apparently were scheduled to come across.

One of them got caught, and 29 made it across somehow or the other. Of those 29, we are told now that somewhere between six and 12 of them may have, in fact, been laden with chemical explosives that would be then attached to a rocket of some sort inside Iraq that's already there in a separate convoy. And that those warheads would then be exploded over, for example, an encampment near the Coalition Provisional Authority or something like that.

Now, what alarmed me about this and the reason that I felt it was necessary to get this out as soon as possible, is because I have now heard three times in the last week, from separate sources that I have been talking to that something big is being planned for Baghdad. In which the idea that is being put forward is to kill as many as 3,000 to 5,000 people at one shot; something that would be similar to a World Trade Center type of attack. In that part of the world, the only way you could get that done is if you launched a massive chemical or biological attack.

The also-rans

As noted in today's press reports, the results of the purely symbolic Democratic "primary" in the District of Columbia are in:

Howard Dean won the nonbinding District of Columbia primary, more a voting-rights rally than a chance to express a preference for one of the major candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. Dean, the former Vermont governor, won Tuesday with 43 percent of the vote. Al Sharpton had 34 percent, Carol Moseley Braun 12 percent and Dennis Kucinich 8 percent. The other five major candidates did not participate.

Dave Kopel at National Review's blog, The Corner, correctly notes the only meaningful aspect of the results:

So faced with a choice between a black candidate who was a former U.S. Senator with a very liberal voting record, and a black candidate who is a racist hate-monger whose incited murder and made knowingly false accusations of rape, D.C. voters preferred the latter by about 3:1.

'nuff said.

History obscured

I'm not very familiar with the history behind the notorious 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the height of the Six Day War. It was definitely a tragedy: 34 Americans killed and over 170 wounded. Newly-released historical documents about this period are the occasion this week for a conference in Washington, DC, hosted by the State Department. Apparently things didn't go so well from a decorum point of view.

Survivors of one of the most hotly disputed incidents in American military history - the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty spy-ship in 1967 - on Monday accused the US authorities, past and present, of a cover-up in backing Israeli claims that it was a tragic mistake.

Emotions boiled over in the basement of the State Department as the Office of the Historian opened a public conference on the six-day Arab-Israeli war with heated debate over newly released intercepts from the archives of the secretive National Security Agency.

An immediate US Navy court of inquiry backed the Israeli claim that it had been mistaken for an Egyptian warship. The US accepted $12m in compensation.

While some historians have accepted this, survivors and a varied group of academics and former military officials insist the attack was deliberate.

"You're trying to whitewash it," one survivor shouted from the audience as Marc Susser, the State Department's historian, acted as moderator and sought to keep order, refusing to allow speeches from the floor. Even debate on the panel of invited historians descended into acrimony with one contributor accused of being an Israeli agent.

Joseph Lentini, a survivor who has spent the past 36 years researching the tragedy, told reporters he remained convinced that the attack was deliberate. He admits it is hard to understand why the Israelis would want to sink a ship of its closest ally at a time of war.

via the Financial Times

A quasi official point of view from the State Dept. is that it was all about "gross negligence." But a cover-up is alleged. Since Robert McNamara is all about confessionals these days, perhaps he'd care to shed some light on it.

Reviewing documents covering 36 years, amid a lack of consensus, a State Department official concluded Monday that Israel's attack on the U.S. spy ship Liberty during the 1967 Six Day War was an act of Israeli negligence. The United States also was negligent, the official maintained, for failing to notify Israel that the electronic intelligence-gathering ship was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast and for failing to withdraw the Liberty from the war zone.

James Bamford, an investigative journalist who has written about the incident, demanded further investigation "instead of people getting up here and giving their opinions."

"There were cover-ups," Bamford said, citing a signed affidavit by retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, who was a leader of a military investigation into the incident.

Boston said in the affidavit in October that then-President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had told those heading the Navy's inquiry to "conclude that the attack was a case of `mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

Boston, 80, who did not attend Monday's conference, said the Navy investigators were given only one week but still were able to amass "a vast amount of evidence, including heartbreaking testimony from young survivors."

Accusing Israel of a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and kill its crew, Boston said in a legal declaration in Coronado, Calif., that he was certain the Israel pilots knew the Liberty, which clearly displayed American flags and had markings in English instead of Arabic, was a U.S. Navy ship.

via ABC News

Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is personally incensed by the way the incident has been handled.

The men of the USS Liberty represented the United States. They were attacked for two hours, causing 70 percent of American casualties, and the eventual loss of our best intelligence ship.

These sailors and Marines were entitled to our best defense. We gave them no defense.

Did our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own? If so, why? Does our government continue to subordinate American interests to Israeli interests? These are important questions that should be investigated by an independent, fully empowered commission of the American government.

The American people deserve to know the truth about this attack. We must finally shed some light on one of the blackest pages in American naval history. It is a duty we owe not only to the brave men of the USS Liberty, but to every man and woman who is asked to wear the uniform of the United States.

Nuclear Metastasis

Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz is right to be deeply worried about the extent of Pakistan's efforts to proliferate nuclear weapons technology to the Islamic world.

Unfortunately, the plethora of revelations about Pakistan's activities is only the tip of the iceberg of a decade-long clandestine effort by unregulated elements within the country's nuclear, intelligence and military establishments to sell the "Islamic bomb" to other Muslim nations. At the heart of the effort was a dangerously motivated clique of former Pakistani intelligence chiefs, corrupt politicians, and Islamized Pakistani scientists, including Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who believed it was their moral duty to offer weapons of mass destruction to embattled Muslim states in the global Ummah (community of Islamic nations).

Their activities, in various stages of planning and implementation since the late 1980s, reached a zenith in the months leading up to the September 11 attacks. Key military and intelligence officials in Islamabad, later fired or laterally moved to less sensitive posts by Musharraf at Washington's urging, had come to the conclusion that the West, led by the United States, was hell-bent on the economic destruction of Pakistan for its robust nuclear weapons program, lack of democracy, military support for militants in Kashmir, and supply lines to the extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

These ambitious Islamists (wrongly) perceived that spreading Pakistan's nuclear wealth throughout the Ummah would secure both its economic future and place in history as the hub of the Muslim world's intellectual and scientific power. Their vision had multiple dimensions, including the sharing of knowledge, materials, and technologies to build ultra-sophisticated research facilities in other countries, and that is precisely what they repeatedly and aggressively did for over 15 years.

The evidence is now compelling that they succeeded in Iran and North Korea, and were far enough along in Libya to show their fingerprints. But where else was Pakistan's nuclear brain trust plying its trade and for what purpose?

via The Weekly Standard

Proliferation is certainly the medium- and long-term risk. However, given the recent assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, which seemed to be powered by insider information, hijacking of Pakistan's own nuclear arsenal may be the more immediate threat. Do the U.S. and/or India have a plan for securing the bombs rapidly if Islamic radicals seize control of the Pakistan government? We'll only know if Musharraf's time runs out.

Much ado...

Former Alcoa CEO and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has been trying to make a big splash with his "tell-all" disclosures for Ron Suskind's new book about the Bush administration, and subsequent interviews on 60 Minutes and elsewhere.

John Fund of The Wall Street Journal has him pegged in terms of motivation.

Mr. O'Neill may have been a team player during his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, but his tenure as the successful head of Alcoa, the aluminum company, seems to have instilled in him "CEO disease," the inability for someone who runs a large enterprise to adapt and subordinate a large ego to the interests of a group.

Far from being a truth-teller, Mr. O'Neill comes across in Mr. Suskind's book as a vengeful Lone Ranger, someone bitter because his advice was spurned but who stubbornly chose to stay in the job anyway. "He could have resigned quietly on principle," one White House aide told me. "Instead we had to push him out."

Mr. O'Neill may like to see himself as a contemporary Cyrus Vance, who in 1980 left as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State over principled disagreements on foreign policy. But instead he resembles Don Regan, the temperamental White House chief of staff who, after President Reagan fired him, went on to write a tell-all book embarrassing his old boss with revelations about Nancy Reagan's fondness for astrologers. The book made Mr. Regan look small and it didn't do much damage to Mr. Reagan's reputation. The same will be true of Mr. O'Neill's poison-pen recollections.

via WSJ's OpinionJournal

Power Line reports that the "smoking gun" document cited as proof of a sinister and unprovoked intention to invade Iraq and waved around last night on 60 Minutes was in fact something else entirely: a Cheney energy task force memo on the Middle East oil industry in general.

There is only one possible conclusion: Paul O'Neill and Ron Suskind are attempting to perpetrate a massive hoax on the American people.

The best response so far from the Bushies has been this barb from a proverbial unnamed source:

A senior administration official said O'Neill's "suggestion that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable. Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?"

Fact is, O'Neill was an unfocused washout as Treasury Secretary and his sourgrapes criticism means nothing. Michael Jackson will soon push this story into well-deserved obscurity.

Pro-freedom in France

Firebrand French libertarian (!) and activist Sabine Herold is interviewed on the Ayn Randian site The Atlasphere (which seems to be equally focused on Rand's philosophy and dating amongst the true believers...).

Among other topics, she discusses the pro-liberty movement in France, the meaning of individual responsibility, and the challenges to promoting liberty in her socialist country:

For one, the unions block any new reforms by going on the streets and demonstrating and blocking the whole country.

You also have the problem of a political class — people who have been in power for more than thirty years. For example, Jacques Chirac — he was a politician before I was even born. He has been living off the state longer than I'm alive. So, it's crazy.

And all these people, they're career politicians. But when you administrate a country, when you're a politician, you should have a wider view, and I think no one today has that. Of the major parties in France, there's the Socialist Party and the Union for a Popular Movement, both of which have produced nothing on an intellectual basis for more than twenty years.

So you can understand why French people become disinterested in politics. There are no ideas.

Tip via the omnisicient InstaPundit

Not so bad

The Portland, OR-based group that produces the BestPlaces web site has published its 2004 survey ranking America's most-stressed cities. They rank Tacoma the worst. Considering that Houston is the 4th largest city in the country, it's pretty good that we only rank #13 on this list. Overachievement!

Between international terrorism and a struggling economy, today's Americans are faced with more stress than ever. In this new study, America's favorite research gurus at Sperling's BestPlaces have identified the most and least stressful U.S. cities.

Which U.S. cities provide an environment that can help make our life more relaxed and enjoyable? Are there certain U.S. cities where residents regularly face particularly stressful conditions?

Our "Sperling Stress Index" is comprised of nine different factors which are associated with stress: unemployment rate, divorce rate, commute time, violent and property crime rates, suicide rate, alcohol consumption, self-reported "poor mental health", and number of cloudy days.

20 Largest Metro Areas
(Ranked in order from most stressful to least stressful)

1 - Tacoma, WA
2 - Miami, FL
3 - New Orleans, LA
4 - Las Vegas, NV-AZ
5 - New York, NY
6 - Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA
7 - Mobile, AL
8 - Stockton-Lodi, CA
9 - Detroit, MI
10 - Dallas, TX
11 - Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA
12 - West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL
13 - Houston, TX
14 - Fort Lauderdale, FL
15 - Riverside-San Bernardino, CA
16 - St. Louis, MO-IL
17 - Denver, CO
18 - Jacksonville, FL
19 - Jersey City, NJ
20 - Phoenix-Mesa, AZ

Second-class treatment

The Houston Chronicle has an interesting story on the discrepancies in training and equipment between regular forces and the National Guard and Army Reserve. Once again, we are confronted with the legacy of a decade of military downsizing that was supported by both Democrats and Republicans -- politicians who knew better but pretended otherwise.

National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers are fighting alongside active-duty troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but with Vietnam-era rifles, fewer bullet-proof vests, outdated radios and Humvees that lack armor plating, some officials said.

"You would expect the government to give you the best if you were going in harm's way, but the fact is the Guard is not getting the same equipment and training as the active-duty forces," said Mike Cline, executive director of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard. "The Guard and Reserve get what trickles down."

Richard C. Alexander, a retired U.S. Marine major general who heads the National Guard Association of the United States, a fraternal organization for Guard officers, said substandard equipment "is the reality of the situation in many cases." Asked how well the Pentagon had done in equipping the Guard, the retired general said, "On a scale of one to 10, maybe a five."

The war on terror arrived at the end of a post-Cold War downsizing of the military that intentionally put far more emphasis on using part-time troops than had been the case for at least a half-century. That is especially felt in the U.S. Army.

As the Army was reduced from 18 divisions to 10 in the last decade, an assumption grew that the Guard and Reserve would pick up any slack in times of regional, brush-fire wars.

The specific type of war in Iraq and Afghanistan -- fighting irregular forces while trying to maintain order and administer populations -- have strained active-duty forces to the breaking point. That's because in the post-Vietnam era, Pentagon leaders decided to transfer some military jobs almost entirely to reserve forces. That included military police and civil affairs, two of the types of soldiers most needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as places such as Kosovo and Bosnia.

Terrier power

Glad to learn that my achievement-oriented alma mater Wofford College has been in the news again during the past week, all for good things.

First, the governor-elect of Louisiana has named an alumnus to a key cabinet post.

Gov.-elect Kathleen Blanco named five key appointments to her Cabinet on Friday, narrowing to three the number of top department posts that remain undecided.

The governor-elect named Ann Williamson of Baton Rouge to lead the state Department of Social Services.

Williamson, who now serves as deputy secretary of the department, previously worked for Blanco in the lieutenant governor’s office as a special projects coordinator. She also served as an assistant director for the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

Williamson earned her bachelor’s degree from Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. She earned her master’s degree in social work from LSU. Both schools recently honored her as a distinguished alumna.

via The Advertiser (Lafayette)

Secondly, more recognition has come to the Wofford football program, which had a tremendous season.

Wofford head coach Mike Ayers was named the 17th winner of the Eddie Robinson Award tonight at the Division I-AA College Football Awards held in Chattanooga, TN on the eve of the I-AA national championship. The Robinson Award is presented annually to the top head coach in I-AA football.

Ayers guided a team that had lost 13 starters and 19 letterwinners from the 2002 squad, helping the Terriers finish 10-1 in the regular season with a perfect 8-0 Southern Conference mark. After an opening week loss at I-A Air Force, Wofford reeled off 10 straight wins to end the year, including key SoCon wins against Georgia Southern (20-14), Appalachian State (24-14), The Citadel (42-16), and Furman (7-6), among others. The Terriers became the first Southern Conference team since 1998 to finish with an 8-0 record in league play, and earned its first-ever I-AA playoff bid in the process. Wofford finished the season ranked No. 2 in the country, earned the third seed in the 2003 postseason field, and advanced to the national semifinals.

via The Sports Network

Black Hawk Down

Another story of courage and sacrifice has surfaced from Iraq, this time a Ranger's determination not to let anything stand in the way of service. We salute his strength and grieve with his family and his unit.

Ranger Aaron Andrew Weaver wasn't supposed to be serving in Iraq. The Army told him he couldn't go because he had cancer. The 32-year-old chief warrant officer had already been battle-tested, having survived the bloody 1993 ambush of American soldiers in Somalia recounted in Black Hawk Down.

But Weaver insisted on returning to a combat zone, and the Army relented, as long as he agreed to undergo regular medical exams. He was on his way to a check-up Thursday when the medevac Black Hawk helicopter crashed into a potato farm. Weaver and eight other soldiers were killed, after eyewitnesses said a rocket struck the aircraft.

"It's a brotherhood thing," said his father, Mike Weaver, his lips and hands trembling in grief Friday. "He had to be there."

In Iraq, Weaver flew observation helicopters for the 82nd Airborne, gathering information on the enemy and beaming it back to headquarters.

Mike Weaver said it's too soon to know when a memorial service will take place. Right now he's trying to arrange for his son Ryan, also stationed in Baghdad, to return home "so he won't get killed, too." But he doesn't regret Aaron Weaver's decision to go there. He's proud of it.

"He wasn't going to take advantage of a medical piece of paper. When you serve your country, putting yourself in harm's way is part of the job," his father said.

"But I'll tell you what, the world just lost one hell of a guy. He could have been anything he wanted, and he chose to serve his country."

via the Houston Chronicle

Rapping on Jesus

Rhetorical bomb-thrower Ann Coulter isn't too impressed with the Democratic Party's new talk about God and all.

When they were fund-raising, the Democratic candidates for president all claimed to be Jewish. Now that they are headed for Super Tuesday down South, they've become Jesus freaks. Listening to Democrats talk about Jesus is a little like listening to them on national security: They don't seem terribly comfortable with either subject.

To ease Democrats into the Jesus thing, the Democratic Leadership Council is holding briefings for Democratic candidates teaching them how to talk about religion. The participants were warned that millions of Americans worship a supreme being whose name is not Bill Clinton. As has been widely reported, the DLC gingerly suggests that Democrats start referring to "God's green earth."

The only Democrats who go to church regularly are the ones who plan to run for president someday and are preparing in advance to fake a belief in God.

She is particularly dubious about the doe-eyed statements of Howard ("Dr. No") Dean, and she has a few (well-deserved) bon mots for the Episcopal Church as well.

Though Dean is pursuing the Jesus thing with a vengeance, the results so far have been mixed. In Iowa last week, Dean said, "Let's get into a little religion here," and then began denouncing Christian minister Jerry Falwell. "Don't you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus?" I don't even know what Dean means by that. I am sure his audience doesn't.

Rapping with reporters about God on the campaign plane, Dean said, "(I)f you know much about the Bible, which I do" -- and then proceeded to confuse the Old Testament with the New Testament.

Dean illiterately claimed his favorite book of the New Testament was the Book of Job. (He said his least favorite was the Book of Numbers and then explained how he planned to balance the budget.) Having already complained to DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe about other Democrats attacking him, Dean recently said: "I'm feeling a little more Job-like recently." That's comforting. A few snippy remarks from the likes of Dick Gephardt and Dean thinks it's the wrath of the God of Abraham. Yeah, that's definitely the guy we want leading the nation in perilous times.

Dean's epiphanic religious awakening occurred over a bike path –- and that's his version of what happened. He was baptized Catholic and raised an Episcopalian, but left the Episcopal Church in a huff when he finally found his true religion: environmentally friendly exercise.

The Episcopals don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages -- it's much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments -- or "Moses' talking points" -- but hasten to add that they're not exactly "carved in stone." After Bush said that the most important philosopher to him was Jesus Christ, the Episcopal bishop in Des Moines, Iowa, C. Christopher Epting, pronounced the answer "a turnoff." So there isn't a lot of hair-shirt-wearing and sacrifice for the Episcopalians.

But the bike path incident was too much for Dean. A key tenet of the Druidical religion of liberals is non-fossil fuel travel. So Dean left the Church of the Proper Fork because the Episcopal Church in Montpelier hesitated before ceding some of its land for a bike path.

On CNN, Judy Woodruff asked in amazement, "Was it just over a bike path that you left the Episcopal Church?"

Dean: "Yes, as a matter of fact it was."

Dean waxed expansive on the theological implications of bike paths, saying: "I didn't think that was very public-spirited."

Why Mars?

The New York Times reviews reactions to the White House trial balloon about NASA's future here in "Space City," and includes this notable aside.

Last Saturday, more than 2,000 members of the Planetary Society founded by the astronomer Carl Sagan gathered at the Pasadena Convention center to watch the landing of the Mars rover.

In the back, in a wheelchair, sat the science fiction legend Ray Bradbury. The Rover, he said, should be the first step toward a manned exploration of Mars. "The robot's not good enough," he said, "It's a beginning. Real men have got to go because they can judge. A robot cannot judge. The moment we land on Mars, all the people of the world will weep with joy. It's not just America — all of us will be landing on Mars."

"Free Markets, Free People"

The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Freedom have continued their ten-year effort to calibrate economic freedom around the world. They note much progress but also many setbacks. Note that the U.S. is not number one.

Despite another year under the dark shadow of Islamist terrorism, the world remains on a path toward greater liberty, according to the findings of The 2004 Index of Economic Freedom released today.

The Index scores economic freedom in 10 categories, ranging from fiscal burdens and government regulation to monetary and trade policy. This year, the Index notes that despite an overall trend toward more economic freedom, a disturbing pattern of declining property-rights protection, detected over the past three years, continues world-wide.

Secure property rights help explain why Hong Kong and Singapore enjoy annual per capita incomes of better than $24,000 while Zimbabwe, where property rights have been trampled, has an annual per capita income of $559. Indeed, this correlation is but a subset of the wider conclusions shown in the Index. To wit, that the best path to economic development and rising living standards is the one paved with economic freedom.

The Index's most disturbing findings are in Latin America, where 11 countries improved their standing in the rankings but 13 declined. Venezuela and Argentina are among the 10 countries of the world showing the greatest decline in economic freedom. Indeed, Venezuelan liberty declined so much that the economy is now considered "repressed."

Countries ranked as "Free"

1 Hong Kong
2 Singapore
3 New Zealand
4 Luxembourg
5 Ireland
6 Estonia
7 United Kingdom
8 Denmark
9 Switzerland
10 United States
11 Australia
12 Sweden
13 Chile
14 Cyprus; Finland (tie)
16 Canada

via WSJ's OpinionJournal
Full rankings here

"We will tie down every lead"

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, speaking at a press Q&A Friday, didn't exactly debunk reports from earlier this week that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction may be stashed in Syria. Interesting.

Q Dr. Rice, a senior Syrian military intelligence official says that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, into Syria in February and March of last year, before the war started. He has documentation and cites three sites within the country, says he has maps and proof that it's there. Does the U.S. know that to be true? Does the U.S. believe that to be true?

DR. RICE: We're going to follow every lead on what may have happened here. I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead, and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen.

Q Can you press Syria to let you look at the sites?

DR. RICE: We have a number of issues that we'd like to talk to -- that we talk to the Syrians about, including the borders with Iraq and what may have happened in the past there and what may be continuing to happen there; Syrian support for terrorism in Damascus, particularly support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and their relationship with Lebanon in that regard.

And, clearly, any indication that something like that happened would be a very serious matter. But I want to be very clear, we don't, at this point, have any indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place, but we will tie down every lead.

Q But you wouldn't dismiss it, either?

DR. RICE: I can't dismiss anything that we haven't had an opportunity to fully assess.

via the White House

Open-court confession of cluelessness

Charles Krauthammer reflects on the statements by Howard ("Dr. No") Dean that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer," and sees smug ignorance on display.

The idea that we are not safer (a) because we are still losing troops and (b) because al Qaeda has not been extinguished, amounts to an open-court confession of cluelessness on foreign policy.

The first is the equivalent of saying that we were not safer after D-Day because we were still losing troops in Europe. In war, a strategic turning point makes you safer because it hastens victory, hastens the ultimate elimination of the hostile power, hastens the return home of the troops. It does not mean there is an immediate cessation, or even a diminution, of casualties (see: Battle of the Bulge).

The other part of the statement -- we cannot be safer because we are still threatened by terrorism -- is even more telling. It rests on the wider notion, shared not just by Dean but by many Democrats, that so long as al Qaeda is active, we are never any safer. This rests on the remarkable assumption that we have a single enemy in the world, al Qaeda, and that it and it alone defines "safety."

It is hard to believe that serious people can have so absurdly narrow a vision of American national security. The fact is that we have other enemies in the world.

Given the remarkable developments over the last year in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan, all due to the strength and audacity of the Bush administration, Krauthammer concludes:

From Libya to India, ice is breaking and the region is changing. In this part of the world, there is no guarantee of success. But if this is not progress -- remarkable, unexpected and hugely significant -- then nothing is.

Saying no to chaos

Courageous Ruth Voshell Stonesifer still thinks about the death of her son, Army Ranger Kristofor Stonesifer, two years ago in a helicopter crash in Pakistan, when she hears the American media gnash its teeth over restrictions on press coverage of the dignified return of casualties at Dover Air Force Base. And when she sees in-your-face coverage of casualties in Iraq today and the publicity given to the jubilation of our enemies.

It's good that Newsweek will publish her thoughts -- but will leaders in the media listen?

Our enemies know our cameras will record the celebration of our loved ones' deaths—and that this is behavior Americans cannot tolerate. They know such images can persuade our leaders to prematurely abandon their commitments, as they did in Beirut and Somalia.

The media are commercial enterprises—graphic pictures boost ratings and increase advertising revenue. The press has allowed itself to help our enemies by pandering to the worst instincts of audiences.

Meanwhile, the networks and the print media say that the Pentagon's 1991 ban on filming flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where bodies are customarily received, is an assault on the First Amendment. But my experience has led me to believe that the media are more interested in the shock value of pictures of large numbers of caskets than in paying tribute to individual soldiers.

After my son died, I discovered a journal among his belongings. In it he had written, "Freedom means having the ability to say no to chaos." The press is guilty of creating a feeling of chaos. Instead of showing the positive pictures that are circulated through the e-mail grapevine by military families—pictures of soldiers making Iraqi chil-dren laugh or rebuilding schools—it chooses images of our loved ones' bodies being defiled. In doing so, it hurts the cause of freedom, not just in Iraq, but everywhere in the world. Whether or not we agree with our nation's decision to intervene in Iraq, we should all want to treat our troops and their families with dignity.

But the media don't get it. Competitive greed is the only purpose I can think of for looping those horrific images on television, and for wanting to film the many caskets that come through Dover. The media's unrelenting focus on the shock of death may yield big profits, but it weakens our soldiers' efforts in Iraq and undermines the commitment of families whose sons and daughters, husbands and wives, serve their country with pride. The First Amendment may give the press the right to do it, but it doesn't say it has to.

NASA's future

President Bush has directed NASA to develop a genuine focus: manned flight, to the Moon and then beyond. The article has intriguing details, and we'll learn more when new federal budget details are unveiled over the next few months. Sounds like an huge improvement.

NASA plans to scrap its space shuttle fleet to pay for the agency's new plan to return to the moon and develop human space exploration systems, senior administration officials said.

The agency intends to return to the moon early next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore Mars and nearby asteroids, the officials said. Such endeavors would require a new generation of spacecraft, but in the interim, American astronauts would use Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules.

Along with retiring the shuttle fleet, the new plan calls for NASA to convert a planned follow-on spacecraft — called the orbital space plane — into versions of a new spaceship called the crew exploration vehicle (CEV). NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station project about the same time the moon landings would begin — starting in 2013, according to an administration timetable shown to UPI.

The first test flights of unmanned prototypes of the CEV could occur as soon as 2007. An orbital version would replace the shuttle to transport astronauts to and from the space station. However, sources said, the current timetable leaves a period of several years when NASA would lack manned space capability — hence the need to use Soyuz vehicles for flights to the station. Ariane rockets also might be used to launch lunar missions.

During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.

As part of its new space package, sources said, the administration will convene an unusual presidential commission to review NASA's plans as they unfold. The group would consider such factors as the design of the spacecraft; the procedure for assembly, either in Earth orbit or lunar orbit; the individual elements the new craft should contain, such as capsules, supply modules, landing vehicles and propellant stages, and the duration and number of missions and size of crews.

Sources said Mr. Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort.

via the Washington Times

Nightline

Apparently ABC News's Nightline is going to present a report tonight about the guns-drawn drug raid that cost a high school principal his job with Stratford High School in Goose Creek, SC. Should be interesting, both for the topic and to see how they handle the story.

From Nightline's daily e-mail newsletter:

A drug raid gone bad. Roll tape--police explode onto the scene with guns drawn. More than one hundred potential suspects are forced to the ground and searched by drug dogs. All are facing the walls or facedown on the floor, some with hands tied behind backs and others with hands behind heads. Sounds like a typical day for the D.E.A., or a major narcotics unit, or even an episode of COPS --not for a highly rated, suburban high school.

Many in the tight-knit community of Goose Creek, South Carolina wonder how this could happen here? Was it a case of an overzealous principal? Police misconduct? A necessary evil to combat drugs in schools? The story becomes even more complicated when you learn that the majority of these "potential suspects" were black students, who are the overwhelming minority at this school. Suddenly, the question turns to one of race and racism. You will see that in this community, the answers do not come easy.

UPDATE: The segment was pretty good; i.e., mostly fair and balanced. The principal was a popular and dedicated educator who just went over the edge in this case. There were no interviews with the Goose Creek police, which is a crucial omission. The show lost fairness when it concluded with an interview with "legal scholar" Professor Christopher Edley -- former Clinton advisor and a member of the ideological U.S. Civil Rights Commission -- who put on a very smooth veneer but just couldn't help slipping in words like "caste" and "apartheid."

More hometown security concerns

Reporters from the Houston Chronicle are continuing their driving tour of sensitive area facilities. Last month they wandered freely around the Port of Houston and the perimeter of the South Texas Project nuclear plant. Now they've gotten too close to areas of Houston's two major airports. Where will they probe next?

While automobiles entering the grounds of Houston's two major airports are randomly searched, and the flying public faces tighter terminal screenings during the nation's heightened terror alert, sensitive areas along the edges of Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports may well be vulnerable.

Earlier this week, a security industry consultant, who asked not to be identified for fear of financial retribution, took two Chronicle journalists on a tour of perimeters of both airports where, in most cases, only a chain link fence topped with barbed wire separated the group from the airports' aircraft operations area.

Of specific concern, said the consultant, are areas on the perimeter of Bush Intercontinental Airport where commercial cargo and in-flight food preparation companies are located, as well as areas near private hangars at Hobby Airport. Additionally, the consultant also was alarmed by the apparently small amount of security outside the Federal Aviation Administration's control tower at Bush.

via the Houston Chronicle

Secrets and lies

Thoughtful British journalist Melanie Phillips surveys the current obsessions with conspiracy theories in Great Britain and concludes "this country needs to lie down in a darkened room with a wet towel on its head."

She also tips us to a WorldNetDaily article that reports Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction do exist and are hidden in Syria.

A relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad is hiding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in three locations in Syria, according to intelligence sources cited by an exiled opposition party.

The weapons were smuggled in large wooden crates and barrels by Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, known for moving arms into Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions and for sending recruits to fight coalition forces, said the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria.

The party, based in Potomac, Md., regards itself as a secular body comprised of Syrians who want to see the country embrace "real democratic and economic reforms."

The nephew of Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, Assef al-Shaleesh, runs Al Bashair Trading Co., a front for the Assad family involved prior to the war in oil smuggling from Iraq and arms smuggling into the country. Al-Bashair has offices in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.

Interestingly, Israeli site DEBKA is reporting the same story and the same Syrian locations, but sourced to a dissident Syrian journalist.

Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are:

1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.

2. The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian airforce camp. Vital parts of Iraq’s WMD are stored there.

3. The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of the city Homs.

Najoef writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad’s cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.

If you can read Dutch, go here for the article in De Telegraaf.

Eyes like cold marbles

Veteran political campaigner and speechwriter Peggy Noonan has a good take on Howard ("Dr. No") Dean. Like blogger/pundit Andrew Sullivan, she wants a good, competitive political debate this year mostly because it will sharpen up the Republicans. I think her insights on Dean are better than Sullivan's -- he is coyly trying to have it both ways.

I do not know how Howard Dean will do in Iowa, but I am one of those who think the Democrats will nominate Mr. Dean, and so I would like to like him and be able to imagine that many others will. I also would like to like him because now and then he says something that shows promise. Yesterday when asked if he ever wonders what would Jesus do, he replied: "No." This was so candid, I loved it. In the same interview, when asked if his wife would join him on the campaign trail, he said, "I do not intend to drag her around because I think I need her as a prop on the campaign trail." Political spouses often are dragged around as props. It's not terrible to say so. It's refreshing.

But it is hard to like Howard Dean. He seems as big a trimmer as Bill Clinton, and as bold and talented in that area as Mr. Clinton. He says America is no safer for the capture of Saddam Hussein, and then he says he didn't say it. He floats a rumor that the Saudis tipped off President Bush before 9/11, and then he says he never believed it. When he is caught and has to elaborate, explain or disavow, he dissembles with Clintonian bravado. This is not a good sign.

He is not a happy warrior but an angry one. In the past I have thought of him as an angry little teapot, but that is perhaps too merry an image. His eyes are cold marbles, in repose his face falls into lines of mere calculation, and he holds himself with a kind of no-neck pugnacity that is fine in a wrestling coach or a tax lawyer but not in a president. We like our presidents sunny, easygoing and optimistic. They have access to the nuclear launch code, and we don't want them losing their tempers easily. Mr. Dean's supporters no doubt see him as optimistic, but optimists aren't angry.

via WSJ's OpinionJournal

Bomb hunting

More info is starting to come out about the holiday Orange Alert, including an intense hunt for possible radiological bombs.

With huge New Year's Eve celebrations and college football bowl games only days away, the U.S. government last month dispatched scores of casually dressed nuclear scientists with sophisticated radiation-detection equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags to scour five major U.S. cities for radiological or "dirty bombs," according to officials involved in the emergency effort.

The call-up of Department of Energy radiation experts to Washington, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Baltimore was the first since the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was conducted in secrecy, in contrast to the very public cancellation of 15 commercial flights from France, Britain and Mexico.

Details of the government's search for a dirty bomb help explain why officials have used such dire terms to describe the reasons for the nation's fifth "code orange" alert, issued Dec. 21 by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. U.S. officials said they remain worried -- more concerned than much of the public realizes -- that their countermeasures would fail.

Even now, hundreds of nuclear and bioweapons scientists remain on high alert at several military bases, ready to fly to any trouble spot. Pharmaceutical stockpiles to treat biological attacks were loaded on trucks at key U.S. military bases.

On the same day that Ridge raised the national threat level to orange or "high," from yellow or "elevated," the Homeland Security Department sent large fixed radiation detectors and hundreds of pager-size radiation monitors for use by police in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit.

Starting Dec. 22, the teams criss-crossed those cities, taking measurements 24 hours a day.

via the Houston Chronicle

Drivelmeister

Even a reviewer for The New York Times can't be fooled by the newest bit of pseudo-literary hogwash by David Cornwell, aka John le Carré.

"Absolute Friends," John le Carré's ham-handed and didactic new novel, is really three very different books.

It is an old-fashioned bildungsroman, tracing the sentimental and moral education of a typical le Carré hero as he is drawn into the shadowy world of espionage during the cold war and an even murkier world of terrorists and political operatives in the new millennium.

It is also a far-fetched action-adventure-thriller with nerve-racking cat-and-mouse games with double agents, a frightening reconnaissance mission and a bloody shootout with SWAT teams and special forces. And last and most disappointing, it is a clumsy, hectoring, conspiracy-minded message-novel meant to drive home the argument that American imperialism poses a grave danger to the new world order.

Cornwell, of course, is famous for such thoughtful geopolitical analysis as this from early 2003:

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent opinion poll tells us that one in two Americans now believes Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being threatened, bullied, browbeaten and kept in a permanent state of ignorance and fear, with a consequent dependence upon its leadership. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should, with any luck, carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

And this, from the same longwinded polemic:

To be an acceptable member of the Bush team it seems you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. I think I may be Evil for writing this, but I'll have to check.

What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Iran's, next door, is to possess the world's largest repositories of natural gas. Bush wants both, and who helps him get them will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.

Egad. I'm just thankful that he saved his new bit of drivel for after the holidays, just so that no well-intentioned relative or friend gave it to me as a gift. In earlier years, we might have expected better from the author of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People."

Columbia Memorial Station

NASA announced Tuesday that the Mars landing site will honor the fallen Columbia astronauts. The Mars Spirit Rover carried a commemorative plaque. That's a fitting tribute.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Spirit Rover in honor of the astronauts who died in the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed this weekend will be called the Columbia Memorial Station.

Since its historic landing, Spirit has been sending extraordinary images of its new surroundings on the red planet over the past few days. Among them, an image of a memorial plaque placed on the spacecraft to Columbia's astronauts and the STS-107 mission.

"During this time of great joy for NASA, the Mars Exploration Rover team and the entire NASA family paused to remember our lost colleagues from the Columbia mission. To venture into space, into the unknown, is a calling heard by the bravest, most dedicated individuals," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "As team members gazed at Mars through Spirit's eyes, the Columbia memorial appeared in images returned to Earth, a fitting tribute to their own spirit and dedication. Spirit carries the dream of exploration the brave astronauts of Columbia held in their hearts."

Additionally, the Washington Post reports that cameras on the Mars rover Spirit have already provided some unexpected news.

The composite image revealed a mysterious substance right at the rover's feet, which scientists described as a "strangely cohesive" clay-like material with alien textures. Spirit exposed the material when it dragged its collapsed air bags across the Martian surface to retract them after its Saturday night bounce-down.

"The way the surface has responded is bizarre," said lead rover scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managing the mission. "I don't understand it. I don't know anybody on my team who understands it. . . . It looks like mud, but it can't be mud."

The material was mashed and clumped, like something moist and viscous, and was broken away in pieces at some spots. Squyres said one of the Viking landers of the 1970s might have seen something like it elsewhere on Mars. One explanation, he speculated, might be that moisture had percolated from below the surface, leaving a residue of salt that acted as cement.

NASA flying high

NASA is reaping a public relations bonanza from the successful Mars landing. Good for them.

The Saturday landing of NASA's six-wheeled Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on the surface of Mars has become the most widely watched Internet event ever sponsored by the space agency.

By 11 a.m. EST today [Monday], the home page of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had received some 513 million hits during the previous 48 hours, as millions of people around the world watched the interplanetary mission's progress via the Internet. The actual landing took place just before midnight EST Saturday.

Last year, NASA stopped hosting its own Internet infrastructure and hired network hosting company Speedera Networks Inc., which can add capacity on demand as loads increase.

via Computerworld

NASA has a site address dubbed "M2K4.com" to showcase the projects to explore Mars. All in all, much more sophisticated web work than we're used to seeing from them. However, JPL has still had to take down their high-res imagery due to the demand.

Basic training

The U.S. Army continues to show its ability to learn and adapt to changing demands. Naysayers will undoubtedly portray this as evidence of a "lack of planning."

The Army is overhauling its basic training to help recruits survive the particular dangers of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The changes are some of the biggest since the Vietnam War, says Col. William Gallagher, who commands the basic combat training brigade at Fort Benning in Georgia.

''When soldiers arrive in Baghdad and get off the planes and into Humvees, they are immediately thrust into combat operations,'' Gallagher says. ''They have to go in with a mind-set that they will engage and kill the enemy on their first day in country.''

Among the changes the Army is making:

* More weapons training. Recruits will be taught to fire weapons other than the M-16, the standard rifle for foot soldiers. New troops will learn how to fire other weapons commonly found in the U.S. arsenal, including a variety of machine guns.

* New training on how to identify and counter remote-controlled bombs known as IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. Those bombs have killed dozens of soldiers in Iraq and are a weapon of choice for guerrilla fighters.

* Convoy tactics. For the first time, recruits will ride in convoys and face simulated ambushes. They will learn how to place sandbags inside vehicles to protect against bombs, grenades and machine guns.

* Urban combat. Soldiers will learn tactics for fighting enemies who blend in with civilians.

* Increased first-aid training. Officials say it is important for all soldiers to have better lifesaving skills, because troops are traveling in smaller groups and can be ambushed without a medic or doctor nearby.

via USA Today

Onward East

If authentic, this report would be dramatic evidence of the shift in American interests towards Eastern Europe -- and in Bulgaria of all places, former redoubt of Stalinism.

The United States will build a "Balkan anti-terrorism center" in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, the Bulgarian newspaper "24 hours" reported on Monday. The center, planned by US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), isscheduled to be completed and operational in the summer of 2004. It will focus on monitoring and detecting terrorist activities and provide information on terrorist threats to the United States and Balkan countries, the report said.

via Xinhua Online

The full-mooners fixate

Astute pundit David Brooks is starting to feel like "the whole world is becoming unhinged from reality," specifically regarding the Left's paranoid fantasies about a neo-conservative cabal controlling the Bush administration's foreign policy. He also notes perceptively the anti-Semitic sub-text surrounding much of the paranoia.

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish") travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.

It's true that both Bush and the people labeled neocons agree that Saddam Hussein represented a unique threat to world peace. But correlation does not mean causation. All evidence suggests that Bush formed his conclusions independently. Besides, if he wanted to follow the neocon line, Bush wouldn't know where to turn because while the neocons agree on Saddam, they disagree vituperatively on just about everything else. (If you ever read a sentence that starts with "Neocons believe," there is a 99.44 percent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue.)

Still, there are apparently millions of people who cling to the notion that the world is controlled by well-organized and malevolent forces. And for a subset of these people, Jews are a handy explanation for everything.

via The New York Times

Equal opportunity heroism

A native of South Carolina has become the first woman pilot killed in Iraq. Women have taken a lot of hits in this modern war.

Capt. Kimberly Hampton, 27, died Friday after her OH-58 Kiowa helicopter went down in enemy fire near Fallujah, her parents said Saturday. The other pilot on the helicopter was injured in the crash. Hampton also was the first woman from South Carolina killed in combat in Iraq.

Her parents took some solace in the knowledge that Capt. Hampton was doing what she had always wanted to do: fly.

Dale Hampton said Kimberly "was smiling real big, she was eager to get to Iraq and do what she was trained to do and she was very upbeat about taking command" as she deployed for Iraq from Fort Bragg.

"She was doing what she enjoyed doing. She was trained well, and she felt it an honor to serve her country," Ann Hampton said.

via The State

Weaker than the French?

Tony Blair could do better than hollow out his own navy during a time of war. Staunch ally though he's been, tactics like this show that his Labour Government is still not to be fully trusted.

The Royal Navy is to lose at least four destroyers in the next three months, taking the number of surface warships to below that of the French navy for the first time since the 17th century.

It will now have only 28 escort ships compared to the French navy's 32 and will no longer be able to mount major operations unless it is fighting alongside either the Americans or the French.

Four Type-42 destroyers are to be mothballed as part of a series of cuts over the coming months as the MoD struggles to keep within Treasury-imposed limits on its budget.

They are only the first of a number of cuts foreshadowed by last month's defence White Paper but will be a deeply demoralising blow for the Navy. At the height of its power in the mid-19th century it was the size of the seven next biggest navies combined and even as the US and German navies grew at the start of the 20th century it remained twice as large as its nearest rival.

via The Telegraph (UK)

Essence of the amoral enterprise

Military historian and classical scholar Victor Davis Hanson, writing prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein, says more toughness is required for America to fully comprehend the audacious scope of our effort in Iraq, the tough steps necessary to truly win the war on terrorism, the potential costs of victory, or the consequences of failure. A great essay -- read the whole thing.

We must acknowledge the nature of the wider war against terrorism, and of the dark times we are in. We of the postmodern age will lose many more of our own in this struggle, and must kill far more of our premodern enemies to achieve victory. The alternative to that depressing prospect is not a brokered peace but abject defeat, punctuated by more September 11’s.

Even apart from the toll in Israel and Iraq, all of the deadly terrorism since 9/11—against the synagogue in Tunisia, against French naval personnel in Pakistan, Americans in Karachi, tourists in Bali, Israelis in Kenya, Russians in both Moscow and Chechnya, and foreigners in Saudi Arabia, the suicide car bombings in Morocco, the Marriott bombing in Indonesia, the mass murder in Bombay, the killings in Turkey, and so forth—has been perpetrated by Islamic fanatics and directed at Westerners, Christians, Hindus, Jews.

In this respect, our efforts are better seen in comparison to World War II than by analogy to Panama or Serbia. Over 400 dead is a shocking figure if we are fighting a Noriega-type adversary; in a war to rid the world of the contemporary avatars of Nazism and Japanese militarism, it is proof of our competence so far but also, alas, only a down payment.

Contrary to myth, Americans can take casualties—but only if they know they are exacting a far greater toll on the enemy, and that they are on the offensive and on the way to overwhelming victory. This utter defeat of the Baathists and their terrorist supporters inside and outside the country is the task at hand. For good or ill, the peace in Iraq has been temporarily sidetracked from the political challenge of building a consensual society that will create the conditions inimical to both the ideology of political and religious extremism and its methodology of terror. But defeating Baathist diehards is no mere detour, and our efforts in that realm transcend the need to demonstrate to extremists and fanatics that they are in a war that they can only lose.

In an era of the greatest affluence and security in the history of civilization, the real question before us remains whether the United States—indeed, whether any Western democracy—still possesses the moral clarity to identify evil as evil, and then the uncontested will to marshal every available resource to fight and eradicate it. In that sense, our willingness to use unremitting force to eliminate vast cadres of proven killers, in Iraq and elsewhere, is a referendum on modern democracy itself.

Tip via One Hand Clapping

Guns drawn

The embattled principal of a SC high school has resigned in the face of withering criticism over police conduct during a drug raid last fall. Jeff Quinton at Backcountry Conservative had extensive earlier coverage of the original incident. It's tough to end up on the same side of anything as Jesse Jackson, and perhaps the principal wasn't to blame. But it's way over the top for police to enter a high school with guns drawn just to sniff around for drugs.

Education sure is hard work.

A high school principal announced his resignation Monday after the firestorm following a November drug raid in which police with guns drawn ordered students to the floor.

"I realized it is in the best interest of Stratford High School and of my students for me to make a change," George McCrackin said in a statement released by Berkeley County School District officials.

McCrackin had asked Goose Creek police to come into the school after receiving reports of marijuana sales on campus. Police said dogs sniffed drug residue on 12 book bags during the Nov. 5 sweep but found no drugs. No one was arrested but some students were handcuffed for a time.

The raid led to allegations of excessive force and racism because many of the students at the school during the early morning raid were black. Police have said they felt the tactics were needed to ensure the safety of the officers and other students.

via The State

"Mad mouth disease"?

With early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire now looming, Democratic pols are fretting about the unstable candidacy of Howard ("Dr. No") Dean. Political reporter John Fund says they have only themselves to blame.

If Mr. Dean wins both Iowa and New Hampshire it's hard to see how--short of a political gaffe of megaton proportions--he will be stopped from getting the nomination.

Such a gaffe is certainly possible. But what worries Democrats is that if he is the nominee Mr. Dean will make that megagaffe in the long eight months between the selection of a nominee and Election Day. "Reporters tend to put candidates into stereotypical boxes," says political analyst Stuart Rothenberg. "If someone gets a reputation for outrageous statements everything they say is viewed as a potential gaffe. Al Gore had the same problem when he developed an image as a serial exaggerator in 2000."

Mr. Dean's gaffes during just the last two weeks of December prompted party leaders to worry that a public impression of him as an undisciplined candidate was starting to set in...[leading] Democrats to worry that Mr. Dean was turning himself into a piñata for Republicans during the fall campaign.

What's in the tool box

Interesting page one Washington Post article today about a debate raging inside the U.S. military over how best to use our Special Operations forces to fight terrorists and other enemies around the world. Part of the debate is a relatively objective one over "best" solutions and part is driven by the ever-present competition between factions for favor in the eyes of leadership in Washington. As always, there are pros and cons to all sides.

Special Operations forces are divided into two distinct but complementary kinds of combat teams: those involved in direct action -- the "black" Special Mission Units such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six -- and those that support unconventional warfare, the "white" Green Berets and, on occasion, other SEAL platoons.

Although they are capable of killing or capturing terrorists, Green Berets and other "white" units traditionally work to win the trust of local villagers by living and eating with them and taking on their customs and garb. They are also called "force multipliers" because a few Green Berets can turn insurgent groups such as Afghanistan's Northern Alliance into a more lethal fighting force. Building such relationships takes time, but the payoff is the ability to solicit the kind of intelligence that enables operations.

But "Delta envy" now permeates the ranks, especially among younger soldiers who realize early in their careers that the "kick down the door approach" is what Washington wants, said one civilian advocate of unconventional warfare. "All they want to do is strike missions," he said.

The better policy, he recently told Rumsfeld's senior aides, is to focus more on counterinsurgency rather than assassinations and snatches.

Side note: some views of the WaPo page today showed a context-sensitive link to Gen. Wesley Clark's web site with his views on Osama bin Laden. Clever advertising on the part of the Clark campaign.

Crunch time

Veteran war correspondent Joseph Galloway says the next six months in Iraq are particularly crucial, and risky.

Both America and its enemies will have the same six-month window of opportunity beginning now and stretching to June 30. That's the period before the July 1 hand-over of control in Iraq to a new transitional government.

During that period, eight of the U.S. Army's 10 divisions will be on the move in the biggest rotation of soldiers since the end of World War II.

Four of those divisions will be withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan duty, rotating home for rest and refitting and retraining, while four other divisions and a Marine Expeditionary Force move into harm's way to pull their one-year tour of duty.

The enemy's window of opportunity is precisely that mass movement of American forces -- 130,000 soldiers leaving and more than 100,000 replacing them.

The roads and highways will be filled with American convoys -- prime targets for the improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades that kill Americans every day, although I would hate to be standing in the path of those convoys of soldiers and Guardsmen when they take the road that leads home. They will shoot first and ask questions later.

via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Space, above and beyond

It's been an interesting few days for those of us interested in space exploration and science.

NASA's Spirit Mars Rover landed safely last night and has already sent back images of the Gusev Crater landing site. You can check the Mars Exploration Rover Mission web site for ongoing updates.

Also, scientists in Australia unveiled a tantalizing analysis of a potential "galactic habitable zone" in our own galaxy.

One tenth of the stars in our galaxy might provide the right conditions to support complex life, according to a new analysis by Australian researchers. And most of these stars are on average one billion years older than the Sun, allowing much more time, in theory, for any life to evolve.

The concept of a "galactic habitable zone" (GHZ) for the Milky Way was first proposed in 2001. Now Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have defined a life-friendly GHZ using a detailed model of the evolution of the Milky Way to map the distribution in space and time of four major factors thought essential for complex life.

"We're looking at what we think are the most robust and conservative pre-requisites for life - but they are very, very basic," Lineweaver says.

The researchers conclude that a ring-shaped habitable zone emerged about eight billion years ago, roughly 25,000 light years from the core of the Milky Way. The zone has expanded slowly and includes stars born up to about four billion years ago. It encompasses close to ten per cent of all stars ever born in this galaxy.

Check out an animated movie of their theory of galactic evolution.

Jet setters at work

Mark Steyn considers the new-found interest of "the international community" (the U.N., European Union, etc.) in managing a trial for Saddam Hussein... and says no thanks. I think GWB would agree, but it remains to be seen if the Iraqi provisional government can be hoodwinked or not.

Up to the moment Saddam popped out of the spider-hole, the international jet set's line was that deplorable as Saddam's rule might be -- gassing Kurds, feeding folks feet-first into industrial shredders, etc. -- it was strictly an internal matter for the Iraqi people. The minute the old boy was in U.S. custody, the international jet set's revised position was that gassing Kurds, feeding folks into industrial shredders and so forth were crimes against the whole world and certainly not a matter for the Iraqi people. Instead, we need a (drumroll, please) United Nations-mandated international tribunal.

President Bush understands that the transnational establishment's interest in this case is not to pass judgment on Saddam but, by reasserting its authority, to pass judgment on America -- on its illegitimate war, illegal occupation, barbaric justice system, etc. The argument of the trannies is that only a Hague tribunal can confer ''legitimacy'' -- ''legitimacy'' being one of those great sonorous banalities that are at the heart of what's wrong with the international order, which, in the main, confers the mantle of legitimacy on a lot of ''illegitimate'' thugs.

To allow the transnational jet set to reclaim Saddam would be to reward them for their indifference to Iraqi suffering. Let's get on with it in Baghdad. A trial next summer, conviction in the fall, and (to forestall accusations it's all timed for the U.S. elections) execution deferred until a day or two after Bush's inaugural address in January.

Posted by Alan at 08:01 AM

Journalists at risk

Tough news this week for journalists. First, the grim roster of journalists killed in the line of duty during 2003 was released.

A total of 36 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This is a sharp increase from 2002, when 19 journalists were killed. The war in Iraq was the primary reason for the increase, as 13 journalists, more than a third of this year's casualties, were killed in hostile actions.

In fact, according to CPJ's statistics, the death toll in Iraq was the highest annual total from a single country since 24 journalists were killed in Algeria in 1995 at the height of civil strife between the government and Islamist militants.

In addition to the 2003 cases described in this report, CPJ continues to investigate four journalists who are missing and 12 whose killings may have been related to their professional work.

via the Committee to Protect Journalists

Also, insurgents and/or terrorists appear to have disguised themselves as journalists in order to close in on American troops in Iraq -- a very dangerous precendent for genuine reporters who may be looked at far more skeptically by the troops during engagements when shoot/don't shoot decisions are made in seconds.

Insurgents shot down a US military helicopter west of Baghdad today, killing one soldier, and attackers posing as journalists fired assault weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at American paratroopers guarding the burning aircraft, the military said.

US Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said enemy fire probably brought down the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior that crashed near Fallujah. Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division “are fairly convinced that it was enemy fire,” Kimmitt said.

Soon after US paratroopers securing the crash site were fired on with assault weapons and grenades by five men wearing black press jackets with “Press” clearly written in English, Kimmitt said.

He said it was the first time he had heard of assailants in Iraq posing as journalists.

The attackers fled in two cars and soldiers who did a sweep through the town, with helicopters circling overhead, tracked down one of the cars and arrested four “enemy personnel,” Kimmitt said.

Unconventional war zones are highly dangerous environments for journalists to practice their profession anyway, given the lack of a defined "front" and the difficulty in discerning friend from foe.

"Fire and Steel"

Steven den Beste has an interesting take on when and why America chooses to fight, how others in the world underestimate American resolve in general, and why many Europeans in particular can't handle it.

The historical pattern is that people who become comfortable also become complacent and decadent. It's happened many times in the past, and it's happened now in Europe. I think it was an easy mistake to assume it had also happened to us.

Indeed, since 9/11 there have been many in the world who have demonstrated that they still don't understand our national spirit, or understand that at the core we have not become European. In fact, when we began to demonstrate that fact, many tried to convince us we should, to no avail.

As events since 9/11 have shown, in much of Europe the fire in their souls has gone out, and the steel in their spines has been replaced by a yellow stripe. But they proclaim this as a demonstration of their superiority to us; our attitudes are atavisms, dangerous artifacts of a terrible past which they have now transcended. They claim to have gone beyond that to a new level of sophistication beyond our violent and primitive directness. They've found a better way, and don't understand why we don't agree with them or choose to follow them.

They think they have risen to an entirely new plateau of sensibility and sophistication. I think most Americans think they're rationalizing their own decadence and decline, if Americans even pay any attention to them at all.

Many in Europe have not embraced this self-deception and don't agree that Europe's new pusillanimity is a demonstration of virtue. There are those in Europe who understand us and agree with us. But for the rest, they'll never understand how we feel.

via USS Clueless

Crystal ball gazing

Prolific columnist Mark Steyn ("the one-man global content provider") had a late-year top ten list of things to ponder for 2004. For one thing (#5), he's growing impatient with the world's pesky tyrants:

A frequent criticism of the anti-war crowd this last year ran along the lines of: “The Americans are, like, totally hypocritical. If you’re going to topple Saddam, why not topple Mugabe?” To which the correct answer should be: “You’re right. But all in good time.”

Many of the horrors that lie ahead can be found at the intersection of wily dictatorships and freelance terror groups. So the US and its allies should be at the very least philosophically committed to regime change in all dictatorships. The delay between the fall of the Taliban and the fall of Saddam was a little too long: there should be an informal target of one tinpot thug per year, to be removed by whatever means are to hand.

However, despite all the progress made in 2003 and the promise of the new year, he reminds us that the sobering truth is we are still at war and big trouble is all too likely.

The only dark cloud is a very dark one: another massive slaughter on American soil. The terrorists don’t have to be brilliant, just lucky – as they were last time, when they wandered around sticking out like sore thumbs to gazillions of Federal and state officials sensitivity-trained not to notice behaviour that practically screamed “I’m a terrorist!”

Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, says that right now al-Qaeda types are probing for weak spots at American airports. Which pre-supposes that they’re already in the country. Which confirms pretty much that the first weak spot remains the US border.

On the whole, all the Federal agencies that failed so spectacularly on 9/11 are as bureaucratic, lethargic and inept as they were then. And no-one has been fired. One lucky break for a couple of Islamist boneheads, and the Dems and the media will be hammering Bush on why he let it happen all over again. It remains a melancholy fact that, for a US President, it’s easier to reform Iraq’s government agencies than America’s. I do not expect this situation to improve in 2004.

Tip via One Hand Clapping

Keeping faith

Christianity is burgeoning in China, creating a tense situation for the Communist Party, church leaders, and the faithful themselves. As always in a tyrannical society, even one that shows a gradual trend of increased freedom, distrust and fear color everything. Who has been compromised?

Christianity - in both the official and unofficial churches - is again gaining momentum in China, and is a source of some consternation for the party leadership. "Being Christian" is fashionable, with young people sporting crosses as a mild form of dissent, and others feeling the faith has a certain international cachet. But something more is at work. In many interviews, congregants say the deity they worship communicates, and has power in their lives, especially now when China is going through immense, jarring economic changes that upset older social contracts.

The rising evangelical movement in China is creating a complex and dynamic set of tensions, as individual longings challenge a state operating for a half century on principles of collective social order. Not only are there renewed government efforts to curb Christian churches, policies to stop Sunday schools, restrictions on the movement of pastors from one city to another, attempts to dilute theological content, and efforts to stymie new church applications with red tape, but tensions and suspicions have also been growing between official and unofficial "home church" Christians as well.

Estimates of Chinese Christians vary widely. The official figure is 15-20 million unregistered, 1.8 million registered. Some Christians with access to unpublished figures in Beijing say the number is 85 million unregistered, 5 million registered. A recent graduate of Nanjing Theological Academy, considered the center of official Protestantism, gives a figure of 60 million. Jason Kindopp, a visiting scholar at George Washington University says the figure is "at least" 30 million, and possibly 60 million.

via the Christian Science Monitor

Precision

Similar to an earlier story, another profile today of the U.S. Army's use of snipers in Iraq. These warriors are the ultimate in precision-guided warfare.

As the counterinsurgency grinds into its ninth month, the Army is increasingly relying on snipers to protect infantry patrols sweeping through urban streets and alleyways, and to kill guerrilla leaders and disrupt their attacks.

"Properly employed, we can break the enemy's back," said Sergeant [Randall] Davis, 25, who is from Murfreesboro, Tenn. "Our main targets are their main command and control elements and other high-value targets."

Soldiering is a violent business, and emotions in combat run high. But commanders say snipers are a different breed of warrior — quiet, unflappable marksmen who bring a dispassionate intensity to their deadly task.

Three days earlier, Company B walked into an ambush in downtown Samarra in which gunmen on motorcycles used children leaving school as cover to attack the patrol. Sergeant Davis, armed this time with an M-4 rifle, shot 7 of the 11 attackers that American commanders say died in the 45-minute skirmish.

"We don't have civilian casualties," the sergeant said of how he avoided the schoolchildren. "Everything you hit, you know exactly what it is. You know where every round is going."

via The New York Times

Freedom

With the global war on terror staying top of mind, events in east Asia seem more remote than ever. But courageous citizens in Hong Kong stirred themselves to use New Year's Day to demand more freedom and democracy from their Communist overlords in China.

Tens of thousands of shouting, sign-waving protesters marched from Hong Kong's Victoria Park to the city's main government building on New Year's Day, the latest in a series of mass demonstrations aimed at persuading China's Communist leaders to allow full democracy in this former British colony.

The march, which organizers said drew 100,000 people, five times more than they expected, was the largest protest in Hong Kong since July 1, when a half-million people filled the streets, embarrassed the city's Beijing-backed government and forced it to abandon a stringent anti-subversion bill favored by the Chinese leadership.

As in previous marches, the protesters appeared to represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong society and were remarkably orderly, following directions from police and leaving the park where they had gathered almost entirely free of litter. But there was nothing subdued about their message. The most popular chant of the day was, "Tung Che-hwa, step down!"

Some pro-Beijing politicians have argued that the confrontational tactics of the democracy activists -- and their success at winning elections -- has eroded the high degree of autonomy China granted the territory in 1997 and made Beijing more nervous about approving political reform here.

But Audrey Eu, a pro-democracy legislator who was handing out brochures during the march, disagreed. "I think the opposite is true," she said. "If we sit here and do nothing, Beijing is not going to do anything on democratic reform."

via the Washington Post

China's tyrants have kept things fairly low-key in Hong Kong, saving their wrath for Taiwan and any notions there of independence. Taiwan's president was their focus on New Year's Eve.

China condemned Taiwan's president on Wednesday for saying he was waging a "holy war" against the mainland, calling him immoral and accusing him of fanning anti-Beijing sentiment to win votes. The condemnation came on the same day that the president, Chen Shui-bian, signed a bill to allow referendums in Taiwan.

Tension has been simmering since Taiwan passed a bill in November allowing referendums, which China sees as a move toward independence. Beijing has threatened force if Taiwan declares statehood.

"We are resolutely opposed to any form of Taiwan independence," the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, said in a New Year's Eve speech. But he stopped short of repeating longstanding threats to invade Taiwan.

Rose Parade

Note for those with cable television: HGTV, Home & Garden Television, offers comprehensive and commercial-free coverage of today's Tournament of Roses Parade, live from Pasadena, California. The HGTV web site includes lots of details, like this profile of the Permian High School-Odessa High School Composite marching band from here in Texas.

Band members from Permian and Odessa high schools join forces in this 508-member composite band. Each high school has a marching band, jazz band, three concert bands and percussion ensemble. The band uniform features a red and white jacket with rose logo on the left pocket and "Tournament of Roses 2004" on the left sleeve.

Permian High School has received 45 straight years of Superior ratings in marching, concert and sightreading; in April it was named "Outstanding Band" at the Director's Choice Concert Band Festival in South Padre Island, Texas. Odessa High School has received 64 years of Superior ratings in the marching competition (the second longest string in the State of Texas); it also participated in the U.S.S. Missouri Performance in Honolulu in 2003, Magic Music Days parade at Disney World in Orlando in 2001 and Texas UIL State Marching Contest in 1996.

This is as opposed to the inane coverage on other networks during which you will see only a little of the parade itself, but lots of chatter and promotional garbage about the networks themselves. Enjoy!

Happy New Year

Hard to beat the visual style of Sydney, Australia for how to ring in the new year, but the New Year's Day message from President Bush is pretty good too.

The past year has been a time of accomplishment and progress. Working together, our citizens have made America a safer, more prosperous, and better country. In the New Year, we will build on these successes, embracing the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We have seen our brave men and women in uniform defend America and liberate the oppressed. We pray for their safety, and we are grateful for their service and the support of their families.

In the past year, millions of people have answered the call to serve their neighbors in need. Americans from every walk of life are building a culture of compassion by devoting their time and talents to help others. In the New Year, I ask all Americans to answer the call to bring hope to those who are less fortunate.

I encourage every American to give thanks to God for His many blessings and to reaffirm our commitment to peace and freedom around the world. Laura joins me in wishing all Americans a Happy New Year. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

- George W. Bush

Happy New Year 2

Mark Twain on New Year's Day, 1863:

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.