Petrified Truth

Saturn looming

NASA's Cassini-Huygens planetary probe should be passing through the rings of Saturn tonight. If all goes well, we'll have the first imagery in the morning. You can watch a live webcast from JPL.

As noted earlier this week, this is a risky moment, but there's much more to come.

This week, Cassini will pass through two of Saturn's outermost rings and sweep into the orbit of a planet that has been the subject of earthly speculation for nearly four centuries. It will be a tense moment for the scientists and engineers of the $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens Mission, more than 20 years in the planning.

Over the next four years, as the spacecraft flies in 76 planned orbits around the planet, scientists will study its curiously skewed magnetic field, gather the first close-up images of six of its iciest moons, and examine the wind-whipped, pastel-hued surface of the planet itself.

The highlight will come in December, when Cassini's passenger craft, called Huygens, will be deployed to probe Saturn's largest moon, which may bear unexpected clues to the origin of life on Earth.

At precisely 7:36 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, Cassini's main engine will fire for 96 minutes to send the 5,400-pound spacecraft flying between Saturn's "F" and "G" rings. There it will be captured by Saturn's gravity, achieve its first orbit, and begin its primary mission.

Meanwhile, a risky spacewalk outside the International Space Station paid off.

Determined to do better than last week, the international space station's two astronauts ventured back outside today on an unusually risky spacewalk and successfully replaced a bad circuit board.

Shouts of "hurray!" and "great!" emanated from space after American Mike Fincke and Russian Gennady Padalka learned their effort had paid off.

"Great job, you guys," Mission Control radioed.

"We're glad to be able to be of service," Fincke said.

It was a long and potentially dangerous haul to the repair location. Fincke and Padalka had to cross nearly 100 feet to get to the fried circuit breaker -- a grueling distance for spacewalkers over difficult terrain. Then they managed to pry off the cover for the row of circuit breakers; it was stiff and incredibly hard to move.

Last Thursday, they barely made it out the hatch when their spacewalk was aborted, just 14 minutes after it began. An oxygen-flow switch on Fincke's suit did not lock into the proper position and oxygen gushed out of his tank, prompting flight controllers to order the spacewalkers back inside.

Justice... and more?

A long-awaited day has come: Saddam Hussein and some of his worst cronies are expected to be put on trial by Iraq for a generation of brutal crimes against Iraqis and others.

Iraq's interim government assumed legal custody of former president Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top aides on Wednesday, beginning a protracted legal process to hold them accountable for rampant human rights abuses during the nearly 24 years Hussein was in power.

In the presence of an Iraqi judge at a detention facility, Hussein and the others were informed of their rights and told that they were now in the custody of the new government of Iraq.

The other Iraqis formally handed over included Ali Hassan Majeed, also known as Chemical Ali, who reportedly gave the orders to use chemical weapons against Kurdish separatists in the late 1980s. Hussein's two half-brothers, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan and Watban Ibrahim Hassan, and Hussein's personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud were also to be transferred to Iraqi authority. All were on the U.S. military's list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis and have been in captivity for at least six months.

Folks in the street seem to be pretty happy about it.

Everyone's hand shoots up in Majid's Barbershop when asked if Saddam Hussein should be convicted of crimes against humanity.

All 10 men in the Baghdad shop - three barbers, those getting a trim, and a bunch of friends and neighbors - are united in their pleasure that the case against Mr. Hussein is finally getting under way.

"This man is one of history's great war criminals,'' says Nihad Malika, shaving the head of a 6-year-old boy. "This is a great day for us, though his sentence won't come soon enough."

In a nation facing ethnic and religious fissures, a rampant insurgency, and dissatisfaction over the pace of reconstruction, Hussein's fate is one of the few issues Iraqis agree upon. Some remain loyal to Hussein's regime in the Sunni communities he favored. But most of the country still views his reign with loathing and horror. As such, his trial is likely to bolster the new interim Iraqi government as the most popular public act since the US drove him from power last year.

Always interesting (but eccentric) Israeli site DEBKA says Prime Minister Allawi has more than justice on his mind.

From the moment he assumed office, he became a prime target for assassins. His murder would provide a short cut for the Iraqi Baath and al Qaeda seeking to topple the Iraqi administration provisionally installed to assume sovereignty and shepherd Iraq to a democratic election. Allawi realized he needed some urgent life insurance, an ace in the hole for his survival.

What he has done therefore is to gain control of Saddam and his top 11 regime officials as hostages to guarantee his life. The insurgents will be given to understand that violence against the prime minister will be met with the fast trial and execution of a member of Saddam’s “dirty dozen.” It will therefore be in Saddam’s vital interest to keep his successor in good health.

As long as the insurgents attack American, British and Iraqi troops, the deposed dictator and his men will languish in prison without trial. This will give the new Iraqi regime a breathing space of “several months” to get to grips with the mighty task of bringing security to the country in time for elections, without looking over his shoulder all the time for an assassin.

Seems implausible, but who knows what's going on in the hall of mirrors known as Baghdad?

Deserted?

Now Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is being said to have deserted his unit prior to being captured by insurgents in Iraq.

The American Marine who kidnappers are threatening to behead deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, the New York Times reported today, quoting an unidentified Marine officer.

The officer, who spoke to the Times on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The explanation of Hassoun's capture came out Tuesday, the same day a roadside bomb ripped through a U.S. military convoy, killing three Marines and providing graphic evidence that the formal end of the U.S. occupation has not halted attacks on American forces in Iraq. Two Marines also were wounded in the blast, which occurred on a four-lane highway in the Rustamiyah district.

The officer told the Times that Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.

"It was very disturbing to him," the officer said. "He wanted to go home and quit the game, but since he was relatively early in his deployment, that was not going to happen anytime soon. So he talked to some folks on base he befriended, because they were all fellow Muslims, and they helped sneak him off. Once off, instead of helping him get home, they turned him over to the bad guys."

Hassoun, a fluent Arabic-speaker who had been living with his family in West Jordan, Utah, outside Salt Lake City, joined the Marine Corps to work as a translator.

His stateside brother says it doesn't seem right.

"To me it has no foundation. It's all wrong," Mohammad Hassoun told The Associated Press Tuesday night.

Hassoun's family in Salt Lake City continue to pray, and asked the same of the rest of the world, said their spokesman, Tarek Nosseir. The capture "is what has been destined upon us, and we accept it," he said.

Lowering our standard of living

Uh-oh.

"Howard Stern in 9 new markets, including Houston."

Defeating Sadr

Via the National Center for Public Policy Research, Spc. Joe Roche, serving in Iraq with the 16th Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Division, offers more details about the recent stunning success against tinhorn "cleric" Muqtada al-Sadr.

Sadr's Mahdi Army was backed by extensive foreign fighters and a huge amount support. Iran's formidable Al-Quds Army (named for the conquest of Jerusalem, Israel) directly assisted their attacks against us. They trained some 1,200 of Sadr's fighters at three camps they ran along the Iran-Iraq border at Qasr Shireen, 'Ilam, and Hamid. This was backed by what one Iranian defector to us has said was $70 million dollars a month given by Iranian agents to our enemies -- from which Sadr's forces were directly funded in just the past few months by up to $80 million more. The Iranian Embassy distributed some 400 satellite phones in Baghdad to Sadr's forces, while 2,700 apartments and rooms were rented in Karbala and Najaf as safe houses. Sadr's ability to influence the Iraqi people was further enhanced by 300 "reporters" and "technicians" working for his newspaper, radio and television networks -- persons who are actually members of the Al-Quds Army and Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

We also faced Chechen snipers in Sadr's forces who were being paid anywhere from $500 to $10,000, depending on differing accounts, for each American soldier they hit. One sniper hit five soldiers in less then a minute-and-a-half, killing one with a shot in the neck. These mercenaries were sending this money back to Al-Qaeda-allied guerrillas in Chechnya to fight the Russians.

We also have constantly faced Lebanese and Palestinian Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon mixed in the fighting. Their claim to fame for the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983 is something we have had to consider every day and on every mission.

We have defeated Sadr's uprising and dealt him a powerful blow that has signaled all potential would-be tyrants that the U.S. is serious. Contrary to the fudging news, Karbala, Najaf and Kufa have all been abandoned by the Mahdi Army. The local people turned on them, sometimes violently. Today local Iraqi forces secure those cities while the U.S. military is present to support them. Going to these cities was Sadr's ultimate move against us, and it was backed by a huge investment by his foreign allies. All that failed, and now he has retreated and is attempting to save face in politics. He offended the people of the cities his forces invaded, he offended the Iraqi people by claiming alliance with Lebanon's Hezballah and the Palestinian Hamas terrorist groups, and he has disappointed his foreign supporters who thought he would derail our mission here in Iraq.

Smackdown

All practicing journalists, and journalism majors, should read this by a Marine Corps reservist, now returned from Iraq. Firsthand knowledge, not second or third.

Since I saw [his] integrity up close, I haven't believed a word he writes, or any story coming out of the bureau he runs. You shouldn't, either.

Via the omniscient InstaPundit

Faith

"Iraqi militants" (terrorists to you and me) have apparently executed Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, a captured American soldier. "Militants" are also threatening to kill another captive, Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, USMC.

However, via Blackfive, a veteran of the 3/4 Marines has a warning for the thuggish captors:

To the terrorists currently operating in Iraq,

I see that you have captured a U. S. Marine, and that you plan to cut off his head if your demands are not met. Big mistake. Before you carry out your threat I suggest you read up on Marine Corps history. The Japanese tried the same thing on Makin Island and in a few other places during World War Two, and came to regret it. Go ahead and read about what then happened to the mighty Imperial Army on Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. They paid full price for what they did, and you will too.

You look at America and you see a soft target, and to a large extent you are right. Our country is filled with a lot of spoiled people who drive BMWs, sip decaf lattes and watch ridiculous reality TV shows. They are for the most part decent, hard working citizens, but they are soft. When you cut off Nick Berg's head those people gasped, and you got the media coverage you sought, and then those people went back to their lives. This time it is different. We also have a warrior culture in this country, and they are called Marines. It is a brotherhood forged in the fire of many wars, and the bond between us is stronger than blood. While it is true that this country has produced nitwits like Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Jane Fonda who can be easily manipulated by your gruesome tactics, we have also produced men like Jason Dunham, Brian Chontosh and Joseph Perez. If you don't recognize those names you should. They are all Marines who distinguished themselves fighting to liberate Iraq, and there will be many more just like them coming for you.

Before the current politically correct climate enveloped our culture one of the recruiting slogans of our band of brothers was "The Marine Corps Builds Men." You will soon find out just how true that is. You, on the other hand, are nothing but a bunch of women. If you were men you would show your faces, and take us on in a fair fight. Instead, you are cowards who hide behind masks and decapitate helpless victims. If you truly represented the interest of the Iraqi people you would not be ambushing those who come to your country to repair your power plants, or sabotage the oil pipelines which fuel the Iraqi economy. Your agenda is hate, plain and simple.

When you raise that sword over your head I want you to remember one thing. Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun is not alone as he kneels before you. Every Marine who has ever worn the uniform is there with him, and when you strike him you are striking all of us. If you think the Marines were tough on you when they were cleaning out Fallujah a few weeks ago you haven't seen anything yet. If you want to know what it feels like to have the Wrath of God called down upon you then go ahead and do it. We are not Turkish truck drivers, or Pakistani laborers, or independent contractors hoping to find work in your country. We are the United States Marines, and we will be coming for you.

I believe in the U.S. Marines. I just hope our leaders do too, and will let our warriors make the war that is needed.

I do think we can be confident that fewer live prisoners will be delivered to Abu Ghraib for the foreseeable future.

Out with the old, in with...

Yet another interesting analysis at Belmont Club, concerning the gathering irrelevance of the old NATO alliance and the emerging methods of dealing with 21st century military realities.

The US wants the alliance to face problems outside of Europe, notably in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. But it is largely locked in place, a hostage to Continental politics and a lack of means....

Some have derided the US coalition against terror, comprised of nontraditional names like Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Kazakhstan as a kind of pickup team fielded by a desperate America only because it couldn't get first-string Germany, France and Belgium to play. But this is unjust; it is not a temporary condition but a harbinger of a new state of the world. It's not that NATO has gotten smaller, just that the world has gotten bigger.

Having it both ways

P.J. O'Rourke was on C-SPAN's Book TV this weekend flacking his new book and explained why he's had "a nonpartisan grudge against John Kerry for 18 years."

It all had to do with threatened young data-entry clerks during a rigged election, with a delegation of American observers looking on in Manila. They needed some support...

About nine o'clock on Sunday night, [Joe] Conason and I were drinking in the bar of the Manila Hotel when a friend of mine from ABC News told us about the COMELEC defections. The workers who quit in protest were very young, in their teens. The 28 girls and 2 boys weren't really computer operators. They were doing data input. They were kids from poor families and very proud that they'd been to data input school. They didn't seem to be politically motivated and were at pains to describe themselves as unpolitical in a touching, if somewhat garbled, statement they read to the press at the NAMFREL-surrounded church. And they certainly were scared. But their professional dignity had been intolerably injured when the voting data that they'd input did not, as it were, outcome.

Joe and I actually sent Bea Zobel to get members of the international election observer delegation, headed by Colombia's Misael Pastrana and John Hume, from Northern Ireland. Before we'd gone to the bar, Joe and I had been at a press conference at the Manila Hotel, listening to Pastrana and Hume denounce vote fraud by Marcos.

But when Zobel arrived the only election observer she could find was Kerry, having a late dinner. Zobel was gone for a long time. She said Kerry was "curt" and refused to leave until he'd finished his meal and then only reluctantly returned to the church with her.

From my journal: "Gets there & never talks to Comelec girls. Boy is ball-less. Joe and I finally push forward & tell Kerry it was us (1 Dem. & 1 Rep.) that called for him (we also heard, Comelec girls wanted Observers called). That it was Joe & me seemed to make a big difference to Kerry. Who still did f---all."

What I meant by "seemed to make a big difference" was that Kerry's ears perked right up when he heard his name called by members of the press. His reaction was to turn to us and say, magisterially, "No interviews, boys." We explained that we had no interest in interviewing him and suggested that he provide some reassurance to the frightened conscientious objectors from COMELEC.

Now, with benefit of hindsight, I think I can tell you why Kerry didn't do so. He was caught in Kerry-ish calculation--an ambitious young senator on his first important bipartisan delegation with its delicate mission of neutrality. Cory Aquino was very popular. But so was President Reagan. Which way to have it? Why, have it both ways! So Kerry was firmly behind Pash Commit of Flips to Dem, up to a point.

Just as today Kerry is brave sailor/bold war protester; foe of Saddam/friend of Hans Blix; political underdog/entitled nominee; big government liberal/corporate tax-cutting conservative; rider of Harleys/marrier of Heinz; and, incidentally, still a real jerk.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, call your office

Apparently the Bush administration was not "lying" when it spoke of Iraq's interest in acquiring uranium from Niger, according to a report in the well-edited Financial Times in London.

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales - apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein's regime - were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be forgeries. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its earlier claim.

But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit and The Belgravia Dispatch

Truth or (no) consequences

Well, a consensus from some who were there seems to be building about Bill Clinton's memoir. Not that it will matter to him -- a sense of shame was never an impediment for the scoundrel from Hope.

A Harvard professor says Bill Clinton lied about him:

There are places Bill Clinton remembers in My Life—just not too well, according to Kennedy School of Government professor and Dunster House Master Roger B. Porter, who alleges that the former president fabricated a damning conversation between the two of them in his newly published memoir.

So does Monica Lewinsky.

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky scorned Bill Clinton's explanation that he had an affair with her "just because I could," and accused the former president of failing to correct the record and make it clear in his new memoir that their relationship was mutual.

Deluded Monica still can't accept that she was used from the start.

Miss Lewinsky said her relationship with Mr. Clinton had been mutual, "from the way it started, all the way through."

"My memories of it were much more positive. I think that I had enjoyed someone being so happy to see me, and certainly the gifts that were exchanged were touching."

Gennifer Flowers may file a lawsuit against Bubba.

“I have not yet read Mr. Clinton’s book, but you can bet that my Judicial Watch attorneys will. I have learned that Bill Clinton has repeated his lies about me, and I am sickened by his continued disregard for the truth. Bill Clinton pretends to be contrite, but he continues to bear false witness against his neighbor. He is a national disgrace.”

A former Prime Minister of Israel also begs to differ, oh so politely, when asked by Ha'aretz.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak, rejecting assertions by Bill Clinton that Barak bore major responsibility for the breakdown of Israeli-Syrian peace talks in January, 2000, said Sunday that the former president's account of the negotiations was based on "factual inaccuracies on the simplest of levels."

"Clinton is not lying" in the account in the recently published "My Life," Barak said. But he added that the president was absent from many of the discussions that preceded the breakdown in talks held in Shepherdstown, Virginia, and may have adopted reports given him by aides.

Saying that it was not his place to explain why there were inaccuracies, Barak said that "Clinton was not present in Shepherdstown for many of the Shepherdstown discussions."

Barak rejected out of hand the contention that he had based his stance on Israeli polls. "This is simply an urban legend," he said, adding that there were no polls showing similar results at the time.

Barak said the Clinton account was also inaccurate regarding the positions of his predecessor as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. "Netanyahu did not speak of returning to the international border line, rather a line that would leave a strip up to two miles wide," he said.

Ha'aretz tip via Backcountry Conservative.

Fighting the rock stars of grief

Debra Burlingame, who is tragically well-qualified to know, confirms that the 9-11 Commission has been a political shellgame from the beginning.

Among the activist leaders of 9/11 families' groups it is safe to say that Debra Burlingame - whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - is not a uniformly popular figure.

Ms Burlingame, a staunch Democrat, has become the first public 9/11 "dissident" - a vocal critic of the "blame game" being played over the al-Qaeda attacks - and an unlikely defender of George W Bush. For good measure, the outspoken former lawyer describes some of the bereaved 9/11 families as America's "rock stars of grief".

"I've practically been thrown out of meetings," she says. "They've gotten very angry with me. But I've decided it's very important that another voice is heard in the September 11 debate."

Most of all, Ms Burlingame is angry on behalf of those who made valiant, improvised efforts to avert the tragedy of September 11 and who are now, as part of a political agenda, "being told that their hard-fought but doomed efforts amounted to incompetence and poor judgment that cost lives". "The air-traffic controller in charge of my brother's flight did nothing wrong," she says. "He never went back to work and went into a deep depression.

"To me he's just as much a victim of 9/11 as my brother, as are other people like him.

"So to have a widow saying they could have done this, they should have done that is just unfair. And it is to place an intolerable burden of guilt on their shoulders."

Not all the bereaved relatives, she suggests, are so concerned with apportioning blame and "owning" the events of September 11. "I'm getting many many messages of support from relatives of 9/11 victims," she said. "Some of what I'm saying might be considered blasphemous by some, but people are telling me, 'Thanks for saying what you said.' "

According to Ms Burlingame, discussions over future memorials to victims have been constrained by demands from 9/11 activists for "politically correct" mourning. "The Ground Zero memorial will list all the names of those who died," says Ms Burlingame. "There was a suggestion made that the firefighters who died heroically doing their job should be acknowledged by stating their unit or engine. What was the response from the 9/11 groups? They said there can be 'no hierarchy of heroes'! Why can't we acknowledge what the firefighters did in trying to save lives? It's just nutty."

Attending the commission's sometimes rowdy hearings, which have been held in both Washington and New York, Ms Burlingame says it also became clear that the 9/11 Steering Committee, an umbrella organisation for the various relatives' groups, had a specific, partisan agenda.

The groups, she says, had been given valuable assistance and advice on lobbying by Left-wing organisations such as MoveOn.org, the wealthy website that backed Howard Dean, the former anti-war Democratic presidential runner. Its motive, she suggests, is political rather than humanitarian.

"The groups wanted to dictate how the commission was constituted, who the witnesses would be and what questions should be asked," she says. "They won't say it in public but I can tell you that in private, it is all about bashing Bush. They want to get Bush out of office and they are using 9/11 and the commission to try to ensure that happens.

Debra Burlingame in March 2004:

Whatever these 9/11 families may think of the president's foreign policy or the war in Iraq, I ask them to reconsider the language and tone of their statements. We should not tolerate or condone remarks such as those of the 9/11 relative who, so offended by the campaign ads, said that he "would vote for Saddam Hussein before I would vote for Bush." The insult was picked up and posted on Al-Jazeera's Web site. In view of the sacrifice our troops have made on our behalf, this insensitivity to them and their families suggests a level of self-indulgence and ingratitude that shocks the conscience.

George W. Bush says that his presidency is inspired by an enduring obligation to those who lost their lives on that brutal September morning. The images of that day stand as an everlasting example of our country's darkest day and finest hour. They are a vivid reminder of the strength and resilience of our great country. They belong to us all--including this president. Let the candidates make their own choices. I trust the American people.

Debra Burlingame in June 2004:

I am no longer angry at the Bush administration, or at any Americans for that matter. I'd read the Joint Inquiry and wept. I now knew that Chic's murder was a long time in preparation. In 1998, while on a trip to Africa, I stood in front of the American Embassy in Kenya just two weeks after it was blown to pieces. Little did I know that the men who did it had my dear brother's fate in the works, even as I stood there. No, I am no longer angry at any Americans.

After the hearings last week, I witnessed once again how the nation's media stake out a position, set it up in a box, the size and shape and color of which senior editors and producers have a bigger say in dictating than the reporters who are filling it, then rearrange the contents to conform with their version of the truth come what may. The hardworking commission staff presented a chilling tutorial about the history of al Qaeda and how it is currently constituted. We learned that Osama bin Laden remains intensely interested in nuclear weapons and "dirty bombs," that he has actively sought biological weapons material and shown an interest in the widely available industrial materials that are found in chemical weapons. We learned that Islamic jihadists rationalize the killing of Muslim children who are the collateral damage in their thirst for more blood and that they tell parents to be grateful that their children are martyrs in paradise. The media took this information--and there was more, far more--and stuffed it out of sight in the box called "Bush's Phony War in Iraq."

Some of the tenacious family members who started it all in that park in Washington were there last week. They are still angry, and who among us can say that they shouldn't be? But there is something wrong here. Upon hearing the voice of that duty officer asking a standard protocol question, "Is this real world or exercise?" with the kind of military-trained blankness crisis personnel are noted for, a few of them snorted with contempt. They mistook the calm demeanor of a professional with no use for prepositions for the clueless question of a fool. And that contempt, for all the people whom they feel contributed to a loss of life on the day their loved ones didn't come home, is what they carry around with them now. It mirrors what is happening, not just at the 9/11 Commission hearings, but in newsrooms across the country, this corrosive tendency to tear down our rescuers, our public servants, our heroes.

As the 9/11 Commission puts the finishing touches on its findings and recommendations due next month, I am steeling myself for the media's breathless rush to publish all the shocking revelations that show how incompetent we are as a nation. While I am skeptical of the commission's stated determination to keep politics out of its final report, I have no doubt whatsoever that with the presidential election just months away, those editors and producers who package the news will find it impossible not to do what they've done since Watergate changed the face of journalism: find a smoking gun, present it to the American people, and congratulate the effort as "what distinguishes us from our enemies." Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and his murdering tribe will sit back with satisfaction as they watch the infidels tear themselves apart.

Yes, let's have a debate, but let's stop this self-battering, which is weakening us in the only place where al Qaeda can never penetrate, the core of who we are. Instead of pulling together at such a crucial time to prevent even more lethal attacks in the future, we are displaying a divisiveness that energizes our adversaries. They know us better than we know them. Their strategic kills in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and beyond are aimed at breaking our resolve to root them out at home and hunt them down abroad before they can do us more harm. We will not win every battle, but we will only prevail in the war on terror when we unite, not as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans.

UPDATE: June 2005: Ground Zero has been Stolen

Iran cover-up

Further indications of Iran's swiftly evolving nuclear ambitions appear today in London's Telegraph.

Western intelligence officials are examining reports that Iran's Revolutionary Guards attempted to cover up a nuclear accident that occurred during the delivery of a secret shipment of weapons-grade uranium from North Korea.

The accident allegedly caused Teheran's new £260 million international airport to be sealed off by Revolutionary Guard commanders within hours of its official opening on May 9.

The first scheduled commercial landing at the airport - an Iran Air civilian flight from Dubai - was intercepted by two Iranian air force jets and diverted to Isfahan, 155 miles away, even though it was low on fuel. At the same time, trucks were placed across the runway to prevent other aircraft from landing.

The airliner's interception, which was ordered by the Revolutionary Guards, prompted an official complaint from Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO). "No regulation in the world permits threatening a passenger plane," it said in a statement.

Seven weeks later, the showpiece airport named after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, is still closed. All commercial flights are required to use the capital's ageing Mehrabad complex.

Iranian aviation officials, however, believe that Teheran wanted to cover up evidence of the previously unreported nuclear accident in 2002, linked to Iran's secret programme to build an atom bomb. Although the airport, 30 miles south of Teheran, was not ready to take commercial traffic until this spring, military flights have landed there for at least two years.

In December 2002, according to officials with access to the airport, a North Korean cargo jet delivering a consignment of nuclear technology, including some weapons-grade uranium, was being unloaded at night under military supervision. During the delivery, a container slipped and cracked on the Tarmac. All personnel in the vicinity were taken from the site and given thorough medical examinations.

Crews from the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) wearing protective suits were brought in to clean up the spillage. The scientists worked at the site for several days, staying indoors during daylight and working only in darkness.

They later determined that the site had been completely decontaminated, and Revolutionary Guards allowed airport construction to resume, confident that they had concealed the incident from the outside world.

Their attitude changed, however, after inspectors working for the United Nations-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uncovered evidence in June 2003 that Iran had secretly enriched uranium to weapons grade at the Kalaye electric centrifuge plant, on the outskirts of Teheran. Iran had previously denied having the necessary technology.

The Kalaye revelations embarrassed Revolutionary Guards' commanders, who are responsible for protecting Iran's secret nuclear facilities. The findings prompted the IAEA to intensify pressure on Teheran for a full disclosure on the extent of Iran's nuclear programme, which Iranian officials continue to insist is being developed for purely peaceful purposes.

Iranian aviation officials, who cannot be named for their own security, believe that the Revolutionary Guards ordered the closure of Khomeini International Airport in case the IAEA inspectors detected deposits of enriched uranium. The airport will remain closed until Russian nuclear experts can examine the site of the spill and make sure that no traces of the illegal shipment remain.

Note the ongoing involvement of Russian technical experts. What does Putin say to President Bush about that?

Hard times

Savvy pundit Jim Hoagland is worried, and rightly so, about the strategic aftereffects of a very difficult year in Iraq.

Military victory in Iraq was supposed to change the psychology of nations as well as the regime in Baghdad. "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America," President Bush said in his State of the Union message in January.

It is not working that way as the occupation of Iraq stumbles toward a nominal end on June 30. The purposes and durability of the use of American military power abroad are being more loudly questioned and more persistently stigmatized in the media, on domestic political hustings and at international conclaves today than they have been since Vietnam.

This is a growing problem for Bush as he heads toward Election Day. But the consequences of failure to create a psychology of victory by following Afghanistan with Iraq are far broader than Bush's fate at the polls. The souring of America on intervention abroad has major strategic implications for the United States and for the world.

The threshold for preventive war, for example, will be raised significantly for the immediate future. Intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and the intentions of dictators or terrorist gangs that seem to possess them are unlikely to be sufficiently clear to meet the standards for action demanded by the post-facto doubts and recriminations on Iraq. Intelligence analysis will become even more cautious and ambiguously stated to policy-makers. Vulnerability to surprise attack could grow again.

Unfortunately, Bush has compounded the confusion by prolonging Iraq's occupation and its aftermath, and blessing naked expediency in Baghdad, where the new prime minister is a long-time CIA asset who is accused in The New Yorker last week of having once been part of Saddam Hussein's execution squads.

Americans have lost sight of the mass graves of Iraqi Shiites, the genocide campaigns against the Kurds and the war crimes committed by the criminal Baathist regime that was overthrown a year ago. The benefits of fighting terrorist networks in the Middle East and thereby galvanizing the Saudi, Moroccan and other Arab regimes to take forceful action against their extremists are not described or seen clearly enough to counterbalance the abuses of Abu Ghraib or the problems of Fallujah.

The lack of fortitude in Washington is also notable as the American nomenklatura heads for the tall grass.

Instead, Washington is in the grips of an overlapping series of blame games geared toward influencing the November elections, ruining the reputations of rivals and obtaining or protecting jobs for the professionally ambitious and the ambitiously professional.

I think Hoagland is right to be concerned, but he overlooks in his column another root cause: the corrosive, savagely political opposition to the war effort by the Democratic Party, which has made it difficult, sometimes impossible for President Bush to take the hard steps that could lead to a faster, more decisive victory. (Not to mention the opportunistic enmity of many so-called "allies" abroad.)

Even so, the American military has performed so brilliantly that the Iraq campaign may yet succed in spite of all.

WMD used?

WorldNetDaily is reporting a mustard gas (i.e., WMD) attack in Baghdad.

A day after the head of the CIA weapons inspection team warned terrorists in Iraq are trying to get their hands on the Saddam Hussein regime's chemical weapons of mass destruction, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports the first attack with these weapons of mass destruction has been launched inside Baghdad's Green Zone.

Few details are available, including any casualties associated with the attack using mustard gas.

The sources say the munitions were old, but still potentially lethal.

"I think it's safe to say our little friends know where the cache is now," said one source sardonically.

Spiffy

New Bush-Cheney video: Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed.

(Windows Media format)

"Salty"

Vice President Dick Cheney enlivened the Washington scene this week by suggesting that two-faced Senator Patrick Leahy should attempt an act of anatomical improbability. Cheney told Neil Cavuto that he had no regrets.

CHENEY: I expressed my dissatisfaction for Senator Leahy.

CAVUTO: Over his comments about you and Halliburton?

CHENEY: No. It was partly that. It was partly — also, it had to do with — he is the kind of individual who will make those kinds of charges and then come after you as though he's your best friend. And I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my views of the — of his conduct and walked away.

CAVUTO: Did you curse at him?

CHENEY: Probably.

CAVUTO: Do you have any regrets?

CHENEY: No. I said it, and I felt that...

CAVUTO: So let me understand, he comes up, he sees you, Mr. Vice — he's all nice, shakes your hand. And then what do you do, let into him?

CHENEY: Explain my unhappiness with the way he conducted himself. Ppart of the problem here is, that instead of having a substantive debate over important policy issues, he had challenged my integrity. And I didn't like that. But, most of all, I didn't like the fact that after he had done so then he wanted to act like, you know, everything's peaches and cream.

And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And as I say, I felt better afterwards.

CAVUTO: What was reaction from the crowd?

CHENEY: Well, I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue.

The Washington Post printed the epithet without elision, no doubt for reasons of deep journalistic responsibility and fair-mindedness. They did feel compelled to explain their decision.

All of which ignores the real story of the week, which is that Dick Cheney is a robot.

He's back

Good news: Blogs of War has returned. Al Gore sends his regrets.

Contest of strategy and will

London's Telegraph says Thursday's well-coordinated attacks across Sunni Iraq weren't the work of "terrorists" per se, but were a well-planned Baathist counterattack.

The spate of highly co-ordinated terrorist attacks in Iraq yesterday displayed intelligence in every sense of the word. It had all the hallmarks of Ba'athist tradecraft, notably of the Special Republican Guard units that melted away during the Allied military operations of 2003. But far from being the work of "irrational" fanatics (who want to bring the country down in some vast Millenarian conflagration with the "Great Satan" of America), the latest act of evil-doing manifests a depressingly shrewd grasp of the dynamics of Iraqi society.

Consider, for a moment, those areas that got off comparatively lightly. The Kurdish zone was not heavily hit; much the same goes for the Shia strongholds. The targets, rather, were the Ba'athists' own predominantly Sunni Arab sectors. Far from seeking to plunge the country into sectarian war with the Shias and Kurds - as many American spokesmen believe - the insurgents seem now to be fighting mainly to tilt the balance within the Sunni Arab community.

This makes a certain sense in its own bleak terms. The Kurds have enjoyed effective autonomy for years and the Shias (who compose a majority in Iraq but a small minority in the Arab world as a whole) inevitably hope that they will now do better than under Saddam Hussein. The Ba'athists could not be sure of winning any conflict if they took on these forces directly.

A far more dangerous development from their viewpoint is the craving of the best elements in the Sunni Arab community - exemplified by the incoming president, Ghazi al Yawr - to break with the past. If they secure a permanent foothold, then all hope of a Ba'athist restoration is gone. But if the remnants of the ancien régime manage to intimidate the Sunni Arabs back into their clutches, a new set of possibilities opens up.

If the Saddamites become the "sole legitimate representatives" of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, then they will be able to lay far greater claim to the support of the Sunni majority in the Arab world as a whole. Via such proxies, the Ba'athists will then exert an even greater gravitational pull to tilt Western policy further in an anti-democratic and anti-Shia direction.

Writing earlier, Belmont Club sees the hand of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda instead, but the same strategic intent: control over the Sunni heartland.

From the looks of it, Zarqawi has brought in the Al Qaeda first team to derail the June 30 turnover to Shi'ite Iyad Allawi. But although he has quality, for his fighters are far better than Moqtada Al-Sadr's rabble, he has forgotten that the April upsurge of violence, which some had breathlessly hoped would signal the downfall of the US in Iraq, was only made possible by Teheran's decision to unleash simultaneous unrest in the south, in the hopes that a desperate America would pay any price for relief. But after the US calmly beat back both attacks, grinding Sadr down to a powder, it was no longer faced with a two-front war. There is now no way that the Shi'ites will allow the Sunni-backed Zarqawi to call the shots. The Sunni Saddam had lorded it over them once before; and neither the Kurds nor the Shi'ites will so easily let that happen again. A more attainable goal will be to prevent the emergence of any independent Sunni figure in the new government. Zaraqawi's methods are nothing if brutal. His elite forces have killed 66 Iraqis and 3 Americans in the Sunni triangle in the last 24 hours, a reminder that any Sunni who breaks with him should prepare to die.

Although both the Sunnis, the Shi'ites and the other interests like France, possibly fronted by the UN may form occasional tactical coalitions against America, their interests fundamentally conflict. Like bank robbers squabbling over the loot, they may decide to jointly resist the police but will knife each other at the earliest opportunity once the coast is clear. Only America can play the lone hand. Some observers believe that both Washington and Teheran are clearing the decks for final showdown over Iraq once the two weaker players are ousted from the game. Clearly the Shi'ite-Iranian theater is the decisive area of operations. The Sunni Triangle, however disgustingly Zarqawi's elite fighters behave, is the secondary front.

As an aside, one might remark on the extremity of the Jihadi effort in Iraq. They are sending their best team, the team that harried the IDF out of Lebanon to no good effect. US forces have quietly become very efficient, with chemical test kits to screen suspects for explosive residue, aircraft which electronically detonate IEDs, a steady drumbeat of raids on explosives factories and other operational advances. The enemy is still able to kill Americans, but not in any decisive numbers. But how will America use its capability to achieve a strategic result?

Calming

Bloated poseur Michael Moore claims President Bush froze, in an elementary school classroom filled with children on 9-11, when Andrew Card whispered to him that the nation was under attack. The school principal says otherwise.

Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticizes President Bush for listening to Sarasota second-graders read a story for nearly seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly.

"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"

Bush told the federal 9/11 Commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." Moore says Bush failed to take charge.

Tose'-Rigell, who was at Bush's side, did not hear what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered when he squeezed past her to tell the president of the attacks, but "I knew it was something serious."

"The president bit his lip and clenched his jaw," she said. "I didn't know what happened, whether it was something with his wife or children or something with the nation. I remember praying that God would watch over our school and protect our children."

She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day."

Tose'-Rigell said she plans to publish her account of the morning of Sept. 11 from pages she wrote in her journal following the attack. The principal said she didn't vote for Bush. "But that day I would have voted for him."

A good thing

This would raise our standard of living.

It's the news coffee-loving insomniacs the world over have been waiting for - scientists have discovered a naturally caffeine-free coffee plant.

A cup of decaf could soon taste as good as caffeinated thanks to an Ethiopian variety of Coffea arabica, which provides high-quality coffee for about 70% of the world market.

Scientists hope that by crossing the caffeine-free variety with commercial crops they can make natural brands that could be available in five years.

The barbaric future previewed

A "new Rwanda" is happening in Sudan, at the hands of its Muslim strongmen.

There, the government of Sudan and its proxy, the Janjaweed Arab militia, are attempting to crush a rebellion by Muslim Africans with the same vicious tactics they have used for years against Christian and animist opponents in southern Sudan. While negotiating a peace agreement with southern rebel forces, the government and its militia have killed, raped, kidnapped, bombed, enslaved, displaced, starved and burned countless innocent civilians in Darfur. U.N. officials have called this ethnic cleansing the "world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe."

Some 10,000 civilians have been killed. At least 130,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Chad. Over a million more have been internally displaced and are trapped by the militia in disease-ridden camps without adequate food or water. They face the imminent threat of starvation. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates another 300,000 or more could die.

An aid worker writes for the BBC:

As an aid worker specialising in health and nutrition, with experience in emergencies around the world, I came to Sudan prepared for a grim situation. But Darfur is by far one of the worst humanitarian crises I've witnessed.

The Wall Street Journal Europe says today that Darfur is a preview of "a world without U.S. intervention."

Once again the U.S. has been fighting a lonely diplomatic battle, isolated in the United Nations Security Council and considered as too aggressive in most European capitals. Only this time, with its troops already involved in two major military campaigns, America cannot solve the problem "unilaterally."

So, as if in a time warp, the African tribes in western Sudan, persecuted by their own government, are trapped in that pre-September 11 world so idealized by many critics of the Bush administration. In this world, nothing gets done unless approved by the U.N. or at least the Franco-German directorate that claims to speak for all of Europe. It's a world where the lowest common denominator dictates international policy. And where hundreds of thousands of refugees will likely die because countries such as Pakistan and Algeria, two current members of the Security Council, refuse to impose sanctions on Sudan, a fellow Muslim regime, even as it is engaged in the mass killing of Muslims. It's a world where Chinese and French business interests override any other considerations and "constructive engagement" is tried until the last refugee is dead.

In short, the horror of Darfur is an example of what the world looks like without America's credible military threat to intervene to preserve the international peace and security and to stop ethnic cleansing.

With the U.S. heavily committed elsewhere, the rest of the "international community" is demonstrably unwilling to end the atrocities. The same high-minded moralists who so decried American force-projection in the liberation of Iraq now prefer to sit on their hands and wait for the American cavalry to ride to the rescue.

While EU leaders saturated the airwaves with their expressions of "shock" over the Iraqi prisoner abuse, one has to turn to page 18 of their recent summit conclusions to find one small paragraph about Darfur. All they could muster was to express their "deep concern" regarding Sudan's "humanitarian crisis," as if what it is happening in Darfur is an act of nature or God rather than murderous, ruthless men.

It is fashionable these days to express distaste for American "unilateralism." But the unfolding catastrophe in Darfur offers a chilling view of what the alternative really looks like.

In other words, the world according to John Kerry, currently our most notable multi-lateralist. What a nightmare.

Clinton rewind

BBC has indeed posted a transcript of David Dimbleby's Panorama interview with Bill Clinton, and has a link here to watch the video.

DeMint on the cusp?

Conservatives will be watching the S.C. Republican primary results tonight. Congressman Jim DeMint, the apparent good guy in the race, had a strong lead (54% - 44%) over rival David Beasley in the last pre-election poll.

Blogger Jeff Quinton says he voted for DeMint. My mom said she was planning to do the same.

UPDATE: With 1,822 of 2,002 precincts reporting (91%), DeMint is leading handily: 59% - 41%. That's a win, seems to me. Now on to the general election in the fall.

Moore hung out to dry

Bloated poseur Michael Moore is poised for what he hopes will be a big opening this week for his pseudo-documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." We were unable to avoid a brief trailer during "Letterman" tonight; a full trailer is available via Yahoo! if you're into mental self-mutilation.

Genuine artist Ray Bradbury is still mad about Moore's cooptation of his title, but his irritation is nothing compared to the complete evisceration delivered by Christopher Hitchens. It's a matter of temperament: Bradbury is a gentleman; Hitchens is a warrior.

Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

"Titanic" as in iceberg?

As noted earlier, advance accounts say Bill Clinton lost it under persistent questioning by David Dimbleby in a BBC interview to be broadcast Tuesday in the U.K. BBC's Panorama has posted two video clips as teasers here, and it looks like the entire program may be archived here after a few weeks.

The snippets published so far are as self-serving as one would expect from surely our most narcissistic president.

Bill Clinton has said his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky came at a time when he was under huge pressure as president. He told the BBC that his "old demons" surfaced and led him into the affair.

The interview was recorded ahead of Monday's publication of Mr Clinton's autobiography, My Life.

"It happened at a time when I was angry, I was under stress, I was afraid I was going to lose my fight with the Republican Congress," said Mr Clinton.

"As I said, I was in this titanic fight for the future of the country, [emphasis added] and an inevitable fight with my old demons. So I won the public fight and lost the private one."

So, it took Newt Gingrich to get him to cave in to dem bad ole "demons?"

Mullah moves

Iran has today seized three Royal Navy patrol boats. That might be an indication of how unseriously Iran's despots take things like U.K.-sponsored IAEA resolutions against them and their nuclear ambitions.

Belmont Club says it is part of a new offensive and that the mullahs may think Tony Blair and George W. Bush are irresolute during the election season -- but also that it might turn out to be a bad bet.

If the British sailors are not forthwith released it suggests that the Mullahs see Blair and his American ally, George Bush, as reduced to impotence by domestic political forces and see an opportunity to humiliate them. The Mullahs should be careful about trying to replay history...

The problem with putting Tony Blair in the batter's box where Jimmy Carter struck out is that Blair will immediately realize how not to approach this problem. Jimmy Carter lost his job by scraping to the Mullahs and Tony Blair did not come this far to alphabetically precede Carter and Chamberlain in the dictionary of failures.

Asinine

Well, at 2:58 p.m. today, the Houston Chronicle posted an al-Reuters story that is headlined "9/11 panel links Iraqi officer to al-Qaida" and says:

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has been given new evidence that "a very prominent member" of al-Qaida served as an officer in Saddam Hussein's militia, a panel member said today.

Republican commissioner John Lehman told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the new intelligence, if proven true, buttresses claims by the Bush administration of ties between Iraq and the militant network believed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.

Lehman said the information, contained in "captured documents," was obtained after the commission report was written that stated there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

So, not having watched Meet the Press today because Tim Russert has been such an asshat recently, I check the transcript and find John Lehman quoted thus:

There's really very little difference between what our staff found, what the administration is saying today and what the Clinton administration said. The Clinton administration portrayed the relationship between al- Qaeda and Saddam's intelligence services as one of cooperating in weapons development. There's abundant evidence of that. In fact, as you'll soon hear from Joe Klein, President Clinton justified his strike on the Sudan "pharmaceutical" site because it was thought to be manufacturing VX gas with the help of the Iraqi intelligence service.

Since then, that's been validated. There has been traces of Empta that comes straight from Iraq, and this confounds the Republicans, who accused Clinton of doing it for political purposes. But it confirms the cooperative relationship, which were the words of the Clinton administration, between al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence.

The Bush administration has never said that they participated in the 9/11 attack. They've said, and our staff has confirmed, there have been numerous contacts between Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda over a period of 10 years, at least. And now there's new intelligence, and this has come since our staff report has been written because, as you know, new intelligence is coming in steadily from the interrogations in Guantanamo and in Iraq and from captured documents. And some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaeda. That still has to be confirmed. But the vice president was right when he said that he may have things that we don't yet have. And we are now in the process of getting this latest intelligence.

But in any case, it demonstrates the difficulty that we've had in this commission, because we're under tremendous political pressures. Everything we've come out with, one side or the other seizes on in this election year to try to make a political point on.

All of which brings out several thoughts, such as...

• The 9-11 Commission is indeed nothing but a a wasteful fraud and bad for our country. Or, as Jeff Jarvis said earlier:

The 9/11 Commission has perverted its work and, in my view, committed the unpardonable sin of politicizing 9/11 and turning the attacks of mudering terrorist nutjobs into a litany of things we did wrong, things that are our fault.

No, 9/11 is the fault of murdering terrorist nutjobs and the only solution to this is to hunt down and capture or kill every one of them we can find wherever we find them -- yes, even in Saudi Arabia, even in Iraq, even in Pakistan, even in New Jersey. I wish I heard the Commission giving us a few more suggestions about how to do that.

DeMint at The Beacon

S.C. Congressman Jim DeMint is running hard against former governor David Beasley for the Republican nomination in the fall's Senate contest. As always in the upstate, all roads lead to The Beacon.

Standing amid a crowd of biscuit-munching supporters at The Beacon on Saturday morning, U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint launched his last big campaign tour before Tuesday's runoff election.

The statewide campaign push for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, dubbed the "Sky's the Limit!" tour, is scheduled for 11 stops before a final appearance in Greenville on Monday night.

DeMint told supporters he feels optimistic about his chances. He said his poll numbers show him up 10 points over challenger and former Gov. David Beasley, with strong pockets of support in Charleston and Spartanburg.

The race has been marked by disagreement over issues of trade -- DeMint is a strong believer in international trade, while Beasley has said unfair trade practices are to blame for American job losses.

Though Roger Milliken campaigned for Beasley Thursday during a Beasley "meet and greet" in Spartanburg, DeMint said other manufacturers support his views.

"Most of the manufacturers in South Carolina rely on exports, and they know I'm right," he said.

Supporter Charles Snipes of Spartanburg said DeMint's personal characteristics impress him.

"I think he's an honest man, and I think he has integrity," Snipes said.

DeMint admitted he was working on just a few hours' sleep -- he had been up until 2 a.m. the night before -- but he hoped to recharge between stops, in the Coachmen motor home he had rented for the tour.

The motor home came equipped with a kitchenette, upholstered seating, a bathroom and a bedroom.

"I hope I can get some sleep," DeMint said.

We ate at The Beacon last month while back in S.C. on vacation. The food was still just as good as in college days and J.C. Strobel was still calling orders. The hot fudge sundae for dessert was about the best in the world.

A June 15 SurveyUSA poll of 527 "certain voters" shows a dead heat: Beasley 48%, DeMint 47% and 5% undecided.

Soldiery

The State profiles a pilot basic training program at Fort Jackson, S.C. designed to better prepare recruits, especially those going into support units, for actual combat.

Although the Army’s firepower proved overwhelming in the opening weeks of the Iraq war, commanders found soldiers in support units — most trained at Fort Jackson — lacked the skills to patrol streets, fight house-to-house or protect convoys.

Half of the soldiers now in boot camp will head to Iraq or Afghanistan in the next year.

“This is the time for them to train up before they’re deployed,” said Capt. Barry Carlson, commander of Delta Company, which completed the pilot program Thursday.

Many of the trainers in the pilot program also brought a sense of urgency. About half of the trainers in the pilot program were combat veterans, said Carlson, a veteran of Desert Storm and the Iraq war.

One of the lessons trainers tried to teach Delta Company’s troops was how to take the initiative and improvise. That is because in places like Iraq, there are no front lines.

Army units also operate with a smaller number of soldiers and sometimes can become isolated from each other.

The U.S. Army is taking its mission seriously, as noted by Gen. Peter Schoomaker in The Way Ahead.

Our Army is serving a Nation at war. This war requires that all elements of our national power be applied in a broad, unyielding, and relentless campaign. This campaign will not be short; it will require deep and enduring commitment. Our Army is a proud member of the Joint Force expertly serving our nation and its citizens as we continuously strive toward new goals and improve performance. Our individual and organizational approach to our duties and tasks must reflect the seriousness and sense of urgency characteristic of an Army at war. Our Soldiers and our nation deserve nothing less. This is not business as usual.

One of the elements of basic training is to learn The Soldier's Creed.

Oops

Apparently Bill Clinton is out of practice telling huge whoppers in public with a straight face.

Bill Clinton loses his temper with David Dimbleby during a BBC television interview to be broadcast this week when he is repeatedly quizzed about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the affair is genuine.

His outrage at the line of questioning during the 50-minute interview, to be broadcast on Panorama on Tuesday night, lasts several minutes. It is the first time that the former President has been seen to lose his temper publicly over the issue of his sexual liaisons with Ms Lewinsky.

The President initially responds to Dimbleby's questions by launching a general attack on media intrusion. When the broadcaster persists with the question of whether the politician was truly penitent, Clinton directs his anger towards Dimbleby.

Clinton captured

Reviewer Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times seems to catch the essence of Bill Clinton's self-serving new memoir.

As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton's much awaited new autobiography "My Life" more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words "In closing . . ."

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

In a minor aside, Kakutani also calls attention to Dan Rather's own take on the book (published by a CBS sister company), a statement that confirms yet again that Rather is an ignorant hack.

... Dan Rather, who interviewed Mr. Clinton for "60 Minutes," has already compared the book to the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, arguably the most richly satisfying autobiography by an American president....

Spiffy

That's not flash photography, mate. This is flash photography.

Focus

Blogger Frank J. has an unambiguous and sensible reaction to the brutal murder of American contractor Paul Johnson.

The different sides on the debate about terror reminds of a parody article from The Onion book Our Dumb Century. It was headlined:

Campaign '80

Jimmy Carter: "Let's Talk Better Gas Mileage"

Ronald Reagan: "Kill the Bastards"

Which Message Will Resonate with Voters?

Even in parody, Reagan had the right idea.

These people want us dead, and we don't need to try and win them over. We need to kill them.

Some will say that will only create more bin Laden's. Fine. We'll kill them too. Believe me, at some point they will run out. They point is, every time they push, we have to push back harder. Otherwise they will see weakness, and they will hit us harder and harder until we finally are forced to respond, and, if we act weak enough, they may one day hit us with something so devastating that we have no choice but to use the bomb against them.

We need to be one bold voice: We are America, and, if you try and stand between us and our safety, we will hurt you.

Burn, baby, burn

Sci-fi grandmaster Ray Bradbury is still angry with bloated poseur Michael Moore for his most recent act of blatant parasitism.

Ray Bradbury is demanding an apology from filmmaker Michael Moore for lifting the title from his classic science-fiction novel "Fahrenheit 451" without permission and wants the new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be renamed.

"He didn't ask my permission," Bradbury, 83, told The Associated Press on Friday. "That's not his novel, that's not his title, so he shouldn't have done it."

"Fahrenheit 451" takes its title from the temperature at which books burn. Moore has called "Fahrenheit 9/11" the "temperature at which freedom burns."

Bradbury, a normal human being, apparently doesn't grasp the depravity with which he's dealing.

Bradbury, who is a registered political independent, said he would rather avoid litigation and is "hoping to settle this as two gentlemen, if he'll shake hands with me and give me back my book and title."

Truth in the telling

JunkYardBlog has a campaign video ready to go, "Psycho Democrats." Right on.

Tip via Power Line.

Oil matters

So, American Paul Johnson has been brutally murdered by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Drudge has posted the gruesome photos for those who are so inclined [very graphic].

Despite the satisfaction that al Qaeda's big-talking ringleader himself was killed by Saudi security forces, the war inside Saudi Arabia continues to heat up. Intelligence consultancy STRATFOR says al Qaeda is applying pressure on a strategic weakpoint: Saudi dependency on Western technical expertise. The goal? Ruling the oil empire.

Al Qaeda has launched a multiphase war in Saudi Arabia. The militant group has mid-term operational goals and long-term strategic goals, with an endgame focused on ultimate control over one of the world's top oil producers.

The current phase of the war in Saudi Arabia is focused on getting Westerners out of the kingdom. The withdrawal of the foreigners accomplishes the goal of weakening U.S.-Saudi ties and leaving the energy industry fully in Saudi hands. Driving the Western infidels out of the kingdom would also serve as a powerful recruiting tool for al Qaeda.

Ousting Westerners also opens thousands of positions in the energy and defense industries, positions al Qaeda will hope to see filled with Saudis or other Muslims sympathetic to its worldview. Taking control of the energy industry would give al Qaeda global leverage.

The war is a guerrilla conflict with militant attacks focused on Westerners. The next phase, however, will see a shift. The militants will reorient the conflict to directly targeting Saudi authorities. They will also move to establish themselves as a legitimate and viable political alternative.

Belmont Club looks at the worldwide implications of terrorism's threat to our oil economy and notes that the U.S. is footing the bill everywhere.

The War on Terror may prove to be "all about oil" but not in the way the Peace Lobby means it. International energy security, to which the Europeans contribute industrial action, is premised on the "commons" of American-provided maritime security. It is being turned into a money machine through which the most atrocious regimes on earth can extort ever increasing amounts of political influence and wealth through a glorified protection racket by proxy.

All of which is strategic, complex, difficult... and wholly ill-served by the shallow, election-year prattling of John Kerry, who spent the week pushing a hike in the minimum wage and after-school daycare.

Solidarity's godfather

The free world lost another hero this week, someone less well-known in the U.S. than Lech Walesa but just as important. Remember the name of Jacek Kuron. He mattered.

The man who provided the intellectual inspiration for eastern Europe's first free trade union died yesterday, amid a welter of tributes from the heroes of the anti-Russian resistance movement.

Jacek Kuron, 70, the chain-smoking, denim-clad "Godfather" of Poland's Solidarity trade union, had been suffering from throat cancer.

The foremost intellectual of the anti-communist movement, Mr Kuron's influence over Lech Walesa was vital to the creation of the Solidarity movement and later to the 1989 "round table" talks between the union and the Communist Party, which ended the totalitarian era.

Mr Walesa, the former Solidarity leader, said yesterday that "without Jacek it would have been impossible.

"The unquestionable leader of anti-communist struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, there would have been no success or victory without him, without his intellect."

Mr Kuron served several jail sentences as well as two terms as Poland's labour minister after the collapse of communism.

It was to Jacek Kuron that Mr Walesa turned for guidance after climbing the fence of the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk on Aug 14 1980 to lead a strike that was to provide the catalyst to political revolution in eastern Europe.

9-11 fog and sandbags

So, the staff of the 9-11 Commission downplays the connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, despite extensive evidence to the contrary. And an eagerly gullible press turns this sentence...

We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

... into sweeping conclusions like this:

Already in question, President Bush's justification for war in Iraq has suffered another major setback.

An independent commission threw cold water Wednesday on the administration's insistent claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. That comes on top of the administration's failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Both ideas had been central ingredients of Bush's rationale for invading.

Well, Andrew C. McCarthy, the former chief assistant U.S. attorney who led the prosecution of the al Qaeda cell that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, reviews the evidence and begs to differ.

This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Among other crucial pieces of information, McCarthy reminds us of another sentence, this from the original 1998 (i.e., pre-Bush) U.S. indictment of Osama bin Laden:

In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.

Several things are clear. This story is far from told. The 9-11 Commission is a wasteful fraud. And, based on what was displayed in today's hearing, Bob Kerrey is a showboating ass.

Today is Bloomsday 2004

A century, and an age, ago -- on June 16, 1904 -- Leopold Bloom, a good man who never existed, spent an extraordinary 24 hours in Dublin, Ireland, and thereby birthed the modern novel. People around the world will celebrate this day as James Joyce's Bloomsday.

As noted last year in the Sydney Morning Herald:

There are many puzzles attached to James Joyce's Ulysses, not the least of which is its reputation of being unreadable. It might be the greatest novel in the English language, so it goes, but who can read it?

For those who can, there is no puzzle: Joyce's account of one day in the life of his antihero, Leopold Bloom, is as spellbinding as the entire history of Odysseus's journeys during the Trojan wars in Homer's Odyssey, on which it is loosely modelled.

The spell is first cast by Ulysses' virtuosic language. Rich in puns, invented words and literary and mythological allusion, it is like a new kind of "reading-music" playing in one's head, scored from some long-forgotten memory bank. Homer might have given us "the wine-dark sea", but Joyce gives us the deep, dark night sky, "the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit". Heavenspeech in the awkward, broken accents of earth, as one critic described it.

Or it could be his equally virtuosic use of stream-of-consciousness narrative, where characters' thoughts can begin each to their own self, then collapse and meld together into the storytelling, creating a multiple world of being and sensation. Whatever the spell's first cause, nevertheless it has sustained Ulysses' reputation as being the book that changed the novel forever.

The riddles of Ulysses - its allusions, meanings, characters - have kept scholars busy for the past 80 years since its publication in 1922; if Joyce has his way, they will for centuries to come. He claimed to have filled Ulysses with enough enigmas to keep "the critics busy for the next 300 years".

Listen to James Joyce himself read an excerpt from Ulysses, as recorded by Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co., and first publisher of the great book.

UPDATE:
Unfortunately, there is some scary Bloomsday news. Is nothing sacred?

The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, adding that it has the potential to render many phones virtually useless.

The French unit of the Russian security software developer Kaspersky Labs said that that virus - called Bloomsday - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating literary viruses that try to "show illiterate technophiles the power of the written word."

"I was really freaked out when I turned on my phone and found this convoluted narrative mess crawling across my screen," said Jack Clemson, a University of Washington student who owns one of the first known infected phones. ""Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed…" I was pretty sure that wasn't my girlfriend texting me about lunch."

Read more about the crisis...

... and find it's satire.

Israel losing a friend?

Ilan Berman says an important strategic shift is underway in another corner of the Middle East, and not for the better.

Since their start in the early 1990s, the military and defense ties between Ankara and Jerusalem have evolved into one of the Middle East's most important geopolitical alliances. But now, that strategic partnership has begun showing signs of serious strain. Angered by Israel's recent offensive against the Hamas terrorist organization, eager to boost ties with Europe and new regional allies, and responding to the demands of its core Islamist constituency, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have begun a unilateral rollback of strategic cooperation with Jerusalem.

This abrupt chill is indicative of a larger reorientation underway in Ankara. Since coming to power in late 2002, the Islamist AKP has put a premium on charting an independent foreign policy course. In practice, this has brought Ankara closer to historic regional rivals like Syria and Iran while cooling its relationships with both Jerusalem and Washington. At the same time, Turkish officials have begun concerted efforts to more closely align their country's foreign policy with Europe.

Tip via the American Foreign Policy Council

How much is caused by Islamism, and how much is caused by a need to align with anti-Israeli sentiment in the EU? Probably both.

Iranian troop movements?

Well, this is interesting.

Iran's state-run news agency IRNA quotes what it calls "an informed source" as denying a report in a Saudi-owned newspaper that says Iranian troops are massing on the border with Iraq.

The report in the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat, or "Middle East" newspaper, quotes what it calls "reliable sources" who say four Iranian battalions have moved to the southern border with Iraq. The sources say the troops are preparing to move into Iraq to fill a security vacuum if U.S. forces pull out after the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.

But IRNA quotes its source as saying the report is "fabricated and baseless" and is meant to help the United States continue its occupation of Iraq.

Asinine

So, on Flag Day no less, the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out an atheist's infamously dumb lawsuit against the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Reports al-Reuters:

An atheist's attempt to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance failed on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the constitutional question and ruled he could not bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter.

The ruling in one of the most important cases of the term was based on the technicality that Californian Michael Newdow could not bring the case because he did not have legal control over the now 10-year-old girl. It left open the possibility of future challenges.

The 8-0 decision by the justices overturned a controversial ruling by a U.S. appeals court in California that reciting the phrase amounted to a violation of church-state separation.

The ruling came on Flag Day and on the 50th anniversary of the addition of the words "under God" to the pledge. The U.S. Congress adopted the June 14, 1954, law in an effort to distinguish America's religious values and heritage from those of communism, which is atheistic.

Among other things, their ruling was yet another defeat for the infamously dumb Ninth Circuit Court in California, which is apparently the most overruled court in the nation.

Considered the nation's most liberal and oft-reversed federal court, its decisions have been struck down by the Supreme Court five times this year alone. The federal appeals court's rulings have so angered some that a number of congressmen once tried to abolish it.

The Ninth Circuit has issued a bevy of controversial decisions over the years, including allowing some religious groups to smoke pot on federal lands, prohibiting authorities from searching gas tanks at the U.S.-Mexico border and declaring that the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, only applies to states, not individuals.

And one member ruled that cross-dressers may constitute a persecuted class of people, making them eligible for asylum in the United States.

The Ninth Circuit links to a 1997 article that tries to prove otherwise. Unintentional hilarity ensues as the author states the obvious...

The Ninth Circuit--most maligned circuit in the country--fact or fiction? It is absolutely true that the United States Supreme Court accepted twenty-nine cases from the Ninth Circuit for review in 1997 and reversed twenty-eight of those decisions, affirming only one. The prior year, the Supreme Court reviewed twelve Ninth Circuit cases and reversed ten. In 1995, the Supreme Court reviewed fourteen Ninth Circuit decisions and reversed ten. During that period, no other circuit had so many decisions reversed or so high a percentage of reversals of cases accepted for review. The Supreme Court decided a total of ninety-one cases in the 1996 term, reversing sixty-five, affirming twenty-three, and otherwise disposing of three.

According to these statistics, the Supreme Court reversed ninety-six percent of the Ninth Circuit cases it reviewed in 1997, an all time high. All other circuits outside of the Ninth Circuit suffered a combined reversal rate of sixty-one percent.

... and then tries to say the numbers don't mean what they say, and so on.

In the year ending March 31, 1997, the Ninth Circuit decided 8701 matters. In the same period ending in 1996, the Ninth Circuit decided 7813 matters. In 1995, the Ninth Circuit decided 7955 matters. If one considers the number of Ninth Circuit decisions reversed by the Supreme Court against the total number of cases decided by the Ninth Circuit, an entirely different picture emerges. Under this analysis, the Supreme Court let stand as final 99.7 percent of the Ninth Circuit's 1996 cases. No circuit in history has decided so many cases, and no circuit in history has had so low a percentage of cases reversed.

The point is not that one statistic is right and that the other statistic is wrong, but that statistics can be deceiving and can be used to paint almost any picture one wants.

But isn't it just a bit odd that a case can go all the way to the Supreme Court for it to be determined that the plaintiff has no standing to even bring the case?

Otherworldly

Ronald Reagan and Star Trek: the Klingon connection.

When later asked... what he thought of the Klingons, Reagan replied with his customary wit: "I like them. They remind me of Congress."

Ray Charles, innovator

Now that the hot glare of President Reagan's funeral is fading, folks are marking the passing of Ray Charles. He was such a fixture for so long that it will take a while for everyone to weigh in. For starters, The New York Times has a comprehensive obituary.

Mr. Charles brought his influence to bear as a performer, songwriter, bandleader and producer. Though blind since childhood, he was a remarkable pianist, at home with splashy barrelhouse playing and precisely understated swing. But his playing was inevitably overshadowed by his voice, a forthright baritone steeped in the blues, strong and impure and gloriously unpredictable.

He could belt like a blues shouter and croon like a pop singer, and he used the flaws and breaks in his voice to illuminate emotional paradoxes. Even in his early years he sounded like a voice of experience, someone who had seen all the hopes and follies of humanity.

Leaping into falsetto, stretching a word and then breaking it off with a laugh or a sob, slipping into an intimate whisper and then letting loose a whoop, Mr. Charles could sound suave or raw, brash or hesitant, joyful or desolate, insouciant or tearful, earthy or devout. He projected the primal exuberance of a field holler and the sophistication of a bebopper; he could conjure exaltation, sorrow and determination within a single phrase.

They have a lot more, but the obit concludes with this passage.

In the interview earlier this year, Mr. Charles said that, having aged, he could sing only music that moved him in a way that he could not quite define.

"I guess I'm kind of a strange animal," he said. "What works for me is songs that I can put myself into. It has nothing to do with the song. Maybe it's a great song. But there's got to be something in that song for me."

Asked if most of his songs were not suffused with sadness, he shrugged and said: "To be honest with you, I sing what I feel, what I genuinely feel. That's it. No airs."

The Irish master of Celtic soul, Van Morrison, wrote about his love for Ray Charles in Rolling Stone just a few months ago.

Ray Charles is proof that the best music crosses all boundaries, reaches all denominations. He can do any type of music, and at the same time he's always true to himself. It's all about his soul.

His music first hit me when I heard a live version of "What'd I Say" on American Forces Network in Germany, which I used to listen to late at night. Then I started buying his singles. His sound was stunning -- it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing -- it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing.

As a singer, Ray Charles doesn't phrase like anyone else. He doesn't put the time where you think it's gonna be, but it's always perfect, always right. He knows how to play with time, like any great jazzman. But there was more to him than that voice -- he was also writing these incredible songs. He was a great musician, an amazing record maker, a great producer and a wonderful arranger.

There's a reason they called Ray Charles "the Genius." Think of how he reinvented country music in a way that worked for him. He showed there are no limitations, not for someone as good as he is. Whatever Ray Charles does, whatever he touches, he makes it his own. He's his own genre. It's all Ray Charles music now.

I always learn something listening to him. It's music that set a tough standard. For me, two albums that stand out are Ray Charles at Newport and Ray Charles In Person. Then there's Genius + Soul = Jazz with the Basie orchestra and Quincy Jones. And of course Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. There's so much to live up to -- these days, you almost have to go backwards to go forwards.

Recently I did a duet with him on one of my songs, "Crazy Love." It felt fantastic. I always loved his singing, but I also connected with him on a soul level. I just felt his emotion. People like Ray Charles -- and Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland and Solomon Burke -- defined what soul was for me. It wasn't just the singing -- it was what went into the singing. These were guys who put their souls on the line.

This music is way beyond marketing. This music is global, and its appeal is universal. Ray Charles changed music just by being himself -- by doing what he did and translating it to millions of people with the wide-ranging effect of his one-of-a-kind soul. That's his legacy. I think that the music of Ray Charles will probably outlive us all -- at least I hope that it will.

Author and pundit Stanley Crouch talks about how Ray Charles always, always went his own way, no matter what.

Charles maintained his position in our pantheon of the rightly honored because his importance did not depend on audience whims. While he may have benefited from a couple of trends in his long career, his talent allowed him to transcend the high tide of momentary public fixation that dooms so many careers in popular entertainment. He was one of the invincibles—there were always plenty of people in America, and the world over, who wanted to hear his distinct sound.

His sound was his own, even though he had begun as a Nat Cole imitator. (It is always stunning to realize that an original artist had to build his or her own style along the way.) Charles could raise the heat on the bandstand and in the audience by the nature of his beat and by his extreme tempo control, which he made clear with his version of "Drown in My Own Tears," so slow that every drop of skill in his fellow musicians had to be brought forward to keep from either dragging it down or rushing it out of frustration. In his classic "Baby, It's Cold Outside," with the incomparable Betty Carter, he created one of the finest examples of romantic give-and-take between man and woman that we have in American music. Then there were his versions of Tin Pan Alley standards that always simmered with his special kind of soul. He conquered country-and-western music, and he sang "America the Beautiful" as it had never been sung before, with power and irony. We don't even need to talk about rhythm and blues or the blues or his love of jazz. He had a full house of talent.

But perhaps what Ray Charles did with all of his authority was help make the country and the world as blind as he was. Charles was one of those special few who expands the democratic experience by proving that neither color nor a handicap mean that one is less a man or less a woman. We couldn't ask more of a person in 73 years. He used every second.

After the words have passed, there will always be the music and what is said to be an insightful autobiography -- maybe next on my reading list.

Rest in peace, soul man.

UPDATE: Funeral arrangements are beginning to be publicized.

A giant public memorial service is in the works for musical legend Ray Charles, which is expected to draw thousands of fans from all over the country and world.

The service is tentatively scheduled for next Thursday in Los Angeles, according to Charles spokesman Eric Raymond. A venue is still being selected. Family and friends will mourn the blues hero the following day, in a private, 10 a.m. ceremony at the First AME Church in his Los Angeles neighborhood.

Reality bites

Here we go. Gee, apparently "tough" draft resolutions of the IAEA, much beloved in the EU and the State Department, aren't enough to deter the Iranians.

Iran flatly rejected European demands to scale back further its nuclear programme yesterday, as its government insisted that the world must recognise that it had now become a nuclear nation.

Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, said: "We won't accept any new obligations. Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognised by the international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an irreversible path."

Last year Iran promised to suspend its uranium enrichment after a diplomatic drive led by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and his French and German counterparts, but it has dragged its feet over implementing the pledge.

Round up the usual handsets

Interesting story out of prison-country North Korea about last April's enormous train explosion. What is the significance of the fact that this reclusive and paranoid nation would allow such information to be disclosed, at least externally?

Officials investigating the devastating North Korean train explosion in April now believe that the blast was an assassination attempt on the country's leader, Kim Jong-il.

At the time, the secretive Communist state described the explosion in the border town of Ryongchon as an accident. Electric cables were believed to have ignited a cargo of explosive chemicals and oil.

Now, however, officials close to the investigation believe that a mobile telephone was used to detonate the train's deadly cargo of ammonium nitrate and fuel. The remains of a mobile handset, with adhesive tape attached, have been found at the scene of the blast.

They did, however, react in an entirely typical manner.

In light of the Ryongchon evidence, Pyongyang has banned North Koreans from using mobile telephones, hoping to prevent a repeat attack. The sudden decision, made a fortnight ago, dealt a severe blow to the state-owned mobile telephone operator, the only one in the country, which had just started to make a profit.

Kerry refused

This seems more like desperation than boldness -- and an indication of just how thin the Democratic bench really is.

John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has repeatedly and personally asked Sen. John McCain, the independent-minded Arizona Republican, to consider being his running mate, but McCain has refused, people who have spoken to both men said Friday.

Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, made his first direct overtures to McCain about three weeks after locking up the Democratic nomination in March and approached him again, in person or by telephone, as many as seven times, as recently as last week, according to one person who has spoken to both.

"It was always artfully phrased, but he asked him on several occasions to serve as his running mate," an individual told the New York Times. "He'd say, `I don't want to formally ask, because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?' or `I need you to do it,' or `I want you to do it.'

"It was always phrased in such a way as to give both men plausible deniability."

Kerry's overture, to the extent it encompasses more than political expediency, also reflects muddled utopianism: a somehow non-partisan presidency. Luckily, the object of his unwanted attention knows better.

The conversations have gone nowhere because McCain believes such a bipartisan ticket would not work and could weaken the presidency, informed sources told the Washington Post.

Perhaps one of the Clintons would accept, if either of those two somnambulists can be awakened.

Reagan service

The National Cathedral posted the Order of Service and the program of Service Music (pdf) for Friday's elegant, moving funeral of Ronald Reagan.

The stirring hymn heard during the departure of the casket following the service was in fact "The Mansions of the Lord," written in a traditional style by film composer Nick Glennie-Smith for the 2002 Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers. The hymn includes these lyrics by director Randall Wallace:

Toll the bells

Nicely done, in space.

The international space station crew paid tribute Thursday to former President Reagan, 20 years after he told NASA to build an orbital outpost with other nations.

During a brief memorial, the Russian and American aboard the space station rang a ship's bell 40 times in Reagan's honor. Traditionally, the bell is rung when crew members arrive or depart the space station.

"We the crew of the international space station join millions of others in mourning the passing of President Reagan, who helped tirelessly to bring the world closer together," said Gennady Padalka, the spacecraft's Russian commander.

Warrior to warrior

U.S. Marine Cpl. James Wright saluted the casket of former President Ronald Reagan in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday. Cpl. Wright lost both hands during the war in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star for valor.

Allies

Courageous Lech Walesa, who stared down both the Communist leaders of Poland and their Soviet masters with the active support of President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, knelt quietly by Reagan's bier. Walesa went on to become the first non-Communist President of Poland, and is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

For those who have forgotten, Walesa explains Poland's bond of friendship and gratitude with Ronald Reagan:

When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us.

I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let's remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.

I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them.

The people's verdict

Power Line notes something interesting about the long, exhausting lines of ordinary Americans who wish to pay last respects to Ronald Reagan.

The spontaneous outpouring of emotion on the occasion of President Reagan's death seems to me unprecedented for a former president in the modern era. In my lifetime, rightly or wrongly, I know that few noticed or cared when Dwight Eisenhower died in 1969, when Harry Truman died in 1972, when Lyndon Johnson died in 1973, or when Richard Nixon died in 1994.

During his eight years in office, President Reagan was the subject of a relentless campaign of disinformation and defamation by the left all over the world as well as by every major media outlet in the United States. Nevertheless, we now see, the magnitude of his accomplishments somehow imprinted itself on the consciousness of the country at large, if not on the arbiters of reputation and enlightened opinion.

Then compare and contrast the depth and authenticity of America's response to that of the media elite, here and here.

Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw work for different networks but agree one thing — coverage of Ronald Reagan's death has been excessive, they say.

"Even though everybody is respectful and wants to pay homage to the president, life does go on," Rather told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"There is other news, like the reality of Iraq," said the "CBS Evening News" anchor. "It got very short shrift this weekend."

Cheney's eulogy

Vice President Cheney delivered a moving eulogy about Ronald Reagan last night.

President Reagan once said, "I learned from my father the value of hard work and ambition, and maybe a little something about telling a story." That was the Ronald Reagan who confidently set out on his own from Dixon, Illinois during the Great Depression, the man who would one day speak before cameras and crowds with such ease and self-command. "From my mother," said President Reagan, "I learned the value of prayer. My mother told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God's plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best." This was the Ronald Reagan who had faith, not just in his own gifts and his own future, but in the possibilities of every life. The cheerful spirit that carried him forward was more than a disposition; it was the optimism of a faithful soul, who trusted in God's purposes, and knew those purposes to be right and true.

He once said, "There's no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying I am an American." We usually associate that quality with youth, and yet one of the most idealistic men ever to become president was also the oldest. He excelled in professions that have left many others jaded and self-satisfied, and yet somehow remained untouched by the worst influences of fame or power. If Ronald Reagan ever uttered a cynical, or cruel, or selfish word, the moment went unrecorded. Those who knew him in his youth, and those who knew him a lifetime later, all remember his largeness of spirit, his gentle instincts, and a quiet rectitude that drew others to him.

Seen now, at a distance, his strengths as a man and as a leader are only more impressive. It's the nature of the city of Washington that men and women arrive, leave their mark, and go their way. Some figures who seemed quite large and important in their day are sometimes forgotten, or remembered with ambivalence. Yet nearly a generation after the often impassioned debates of the Reagan years, what lingers from that time is almost all good. And this is because of the calm and kind man who stood at the center of events.

We think back with appreciation for the decency of our 40th president, and respect for all that he achieved. After so much turmoil in the '60s and '70s, our nation had begun to lose confidence, and some were heard to say that the presidency might even be too big for one man. That phrase did not survive the 1980s. For decades, America had waged a Cold War, and few believed it could possibly end in our own lifetimes. The President was one of those few. And it was the vision and will of Ronald Reagan that gave hope to the oppressed, shamed the oppressors, and ended an evil empire. More than any other influence, the Cold War was ended by the perseverance and courage of one man who answered falsehood with truth, and overcame evil with good.

Ronald Reagan was more than an historic figure. He was a providential man, who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him. And believing as he did that there is a plan at work in each life, he accepted not only the great duties that came to him, but also the great trials that came near the end. When he learned of his illness, his first thoughts were of Nancy. And who else but Ronald Reagan could face his own decline and death with a final message of hope to his country, telling us that for America there is always a bright dawn ahead. Fellow Americans, here lies a graceful and a gallant man.

Reagan funeral

If you, like me, have been at work during the day and cannot see television coverage, go to C-SPAN for extensive video coverage, both live and archival, of the funeral of President Ronald Reagan. C-SPAN offers the added benefit of no inane talking heads during solemn moments when quiet is much preferred.

Yahoo! News is keeping an extensive slide show of photographs. As well they should, the Washington Post is offering the best coverage among the print media.

Respect

It was very moving to see Baroness Margaret Thatcher pay her respects to Ronald Reagan tonight in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. She seemed to curtsy -- a gesture normally reserved for royalty.

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, who shared an unbending ideology and a deep friendship with Ronald Reagan, is to deliver a recorded tribute to the former president at his funeral on Friday, her office said Monday.

Lady Thatcher, 78, was forbidden by her doctors in 2002 to speak in public, following a series of small strokes that have left her in frail health. But several months ago, she recorded a 10-minute tribute on video to her old friend, and that tape is to be played at the funeral, "technicalities permitting," said Mark Worthington, her chief of staff.

She will also be there in person. "She is absolutely determined that nothing will stop her from traveling to Washington for the funeral," Mr. Worthington said. "She wanted to participate in a way that didn't pose an undue risk to her own health."

A decade ago, after Mr. Reagan announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, he asked Lady Thatcher - posterity very much on his mind - if she would speak at his funeral. She readily agreed.

"She was greatly honored," Mr. Worthington said. "But obviously time has moved on and her own health has not been robust in recent years."

The real Reagan

Ann Coulter has had it with liberal pseudo-fawning over a departed Ronald Reagan.

More enraging than their revisionist history of Reagan, is liberals' revisionist history about themselves. Now liberals claim they liked Reagan at the time. This is extremely believable -- aren't we all fond of someone who regularly exposes us as liars, cowards and hypocrites? It's just human nature.

In fact and of course, liberals loathed Reagan. Their European friends loathed Reagan -- the protests against our current president are positively anemic compared to the massive protests against President Reagan when he went to visit our dear "allies," whose sorry asses we spent billions of dollars defending against the Soviets for 50 years. Even the moderate Republicans currently trying to insinuate themselves onto Reagan's legacy weren't especially fond of Reagan at the time -- especially when attacking him publicly would get them invites to the tonier Georgetown cocktail parties. Only authentic Americans loved Reagan.

Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air traffic controllers -- and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about "welfare queens" and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and he enraged grim liberals when he warmed up his radio mike by saying, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

But now they're telling us Reagan was a "pragmatist." Well, not according to him. As he was wrapping up the Republican primaries in 1980 and moderate weenies in the Republican Party were trying to move him to the "center," Reagan said: "No, I'm not moving my positions any. ... I believe the same things that I've been speaking on for years, and I don't see any reason to change."

Thank God he didn't. Because Reagan lived, the world is a better place.

Field of dreams?

The people kept vigil and waited all night to pay their last respects to former President Reagan. A reader at NRO's The Corner says the scene was like a certain sentimental movie.

One scene I need to share was the entire night while waiting in a very long line, you could look around at the highway in the distance and all you could see were headlights of cars carrying people coming to see the President. It was a scene straight out of "Field of Dreams"... Even at 4am the line of lights continued.

Another reader says "the crowd is unbelievable."

The folks in front of my family were from Afghanistan, with the wife knowing very little English. This family, who had emigrated to the US in the early 90's, drove from San Jose (7 hours, in case you are wondering), as he felt Reagan had a hand in his achievement of freedom.

The crowd in general is a cross-section of Americana. There are people of every age, creed, color, and size.

Prediction: the size of the crowds in Washington, D.C. later this week will exceed all expectations.

Here in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry has declared Friday to be an official day of mourning.

Gov. Rick Perry today declared Friday, June 11, as an official day of mourning in remembrance of President Ronald Reagan and ordered that flags on all state buildings be flown at half staff for 30 days.

"The United States has lost one of its greatest presidents and Texas has lost one of its greatest friends with the passing of President Ronald W. Reagan," Perry said in an executive order honoring the memory of the 40th president.

Perry also encouraged Texans to pay their respects to the memory of Ronald Reagan on Friday through appropriate ceremonies in homes, businesses, public buildings, schools, places of worship or other suitable places for public expression of grief and remembrance.

To allow state employees to attend such observances, Perry directed state agencies, offices and departments to close on Friday and general government operations and services be maintained by a skeleton crew.

Tells a lot about the man

Ordinary Americans have confounded the conventional wisdom of the smart set once again.

Californians converged by the tens of thousands to pay their respects to former President Reagan, choking freeway traffic, waiting in lines for more than 12 hours and forcing surprised organizers to extend today's viewing period.

Some came in their Sunday best, while others looked ready to hit the beach in shorts and flip-flops. All fell silent at the first glimpse of Reagan's flag-draped casket.

"How blessed the whole world is that he held office for as long as he did," Navy Ensign Laurie Zimmet, 40, of Los Angeles, said early today. "As far as I'm concerned, he's the greatest president of the 20th century."

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library announced today that it had extended the end of viewing hours from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. "due to the overwhelming response."

Even with that extended closing time, people had to be in line by 3 p.m. for the shuttle buses that took them to the library from a gathering point at a nearby college, which closed to provide parking.

By 6 a.m. today, more than 40,000 people had gone through the library, said Duke Blackwood, the library's executive director.

But not everyone remembers Ronald Reagan so fondly. Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times notes:

Ronald Reagan's body is not yet mouldering in the grave, and already the tattered remnants of the counterculture are crying tears of baffled frustration that the passage of only a little more than a decade has begun to confer universal recognition of greatness on the 40th president of the United States.

The subterranean Internet sites where embittered lefties gather to trade their venomous toxins are aglow with incendiary hatred.

Matt Drudge is reporting that Bill Clinton has, naturally, turned the funeral plans into an exercise about himself.

Former President Bill Clinton has privately expressed anger he has apparently been left off the speakers list of Friday's Reagan State Funeral, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"President Clinton really held out all hope the funeral would be a nonpartisan event, like Nixon's was," a top Clinton source said on Tuesday morning. "He's angry and disappointed neither he nor President Carter have been asked to speak, as of yet."

On a much sweeter note, the Jelly Belly Candy Company has posted its own tribute to its most famous customer (scroll down).

In his own words: "You can tell a lot about a fellow by his way of eating jelly beans." -- Ronald Reagan

Noonan on the Gipper

Wise Peggy Noonan summarizes the life of Ronald Reagan very well, in terms both public and personal.

Ronald Reagan told the truth to a world made weary by lies. He believed truth was the only platform on which a better future could be built. He shocked the world when he called the Soviet Union "evil," because it was, and an "empire," because it was that, too. He never stopped bringing his message to the people of the world, to Europe and China and in the end the Soviet Union. And when it was over, the Berlin Wall had been turned into a million concrete souvenirs, and Soviet communism had fallen. But of course it didn't fall. It was pushed. By Mr. Know Nothing Cowboy Gunslinger Dimwit. All presidents should be so stupid.

He pushed down income taxes too, from a high of 70% when he entered the White House to a new low of 28% when he left, igniting the long boom that, for all its ups and downs, is with us still. He believed, as JFK did, that a rising tide lifts all boats. He did much more, returning respect to our armed forces, changing 50-year-old assumptions about the place of government and the place of the citizen in the new America.

What an era his was. What a life he lived. He changed history for the better and was modest about it. He didn't bray about his accomplishments but saw them as the work of the American people. He did not see himself as entitled, never demanded respect, preferred talking to hotel doormen rather than State Department functionaries because he thought the doormen brighter and more interesting. When I pressed him once, a few years out of the presidency, to say what he thought the meaning of his presidency was, he answered, reluctantly, that it might be fairly said that he "advanced the boundaries of freedom in a world more at peace with itself." And so he did. And what could be bigger than that?

Bang the Drum Slowly

Reagan at Normandy

President Ronald Reagan spoke twice at Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984.

Speech at Pointe de Hoc, June 6, 1984.

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine-guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your 'lives fought for life...and left the vivid air signed with your honor'...

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

Speech at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1984.

We stand today at a place of battle, one that 40 years ago saw and felt the worst of war. Men bled and died here for a few feet of - or inches of sand, as bullets and shellfire cut through their ranks. About them, General Omar Bradley later said, "Every man who set foot on Omaha Beach that day was a hero."

Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.

"Someday, Lis, I'll go back," said Private First Class Peter Robert Zannata, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. "I'll go back, and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves."

Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heart-rending story about the event her father spoke of so often. "In his words, the Normandy invasion would change his life forever," she said. She tells some of his stories of World War II but says of her father, "the story to end all stories was D-Day."

"He made me feel the fear of being on the boat waiting to land. I can smell the ocean and feel the sea sickness. I can see the looks on his fellow soldiers' faces-the fear, the anguish, the uncertainty of what lay ahead. And when they landed, I can feel the strength and courage of the men who took those first steps through the tide to what must have surely looked like instant death."

Private Zannata's daughter wrote to me, "I don't know how or why I can feel this emptiness, this fear, or this determination, but I do. Maybe it's the bond I had with my father. All I know is that it brings tears to my eyes to think about my father as a 20-year old boy having to face that beach."

The anniversary of D-Day was always special to her family. And like all the families of those who went to war, she describes how she came to realize her own father's survival was a miracle: "So many men died. I know that my father watched many of his friends be killed. I know that he must have died inside a little each time. But his explanation to me was, `You did what you had to do, and you kept on going."

When men like Private Zannata and all our Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy 40 years ago they came not as conquerors, but as liberators. When these troops swept across the French countryside and into the forests of Belgium and Luxembourg they came not to take, but to return what had been wrongfully seized. When our forces marched into Germany they came not to prey on a brave and defeated people, but to nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to bee free again.

We salute them today. But, Mr. President [Francois Mitterand of France], we also salute those who, like yourself, were already engaging the enemy inside your beloved country-the French Resistance. Your valiant struggle for France did so much to cripple the enemy and spur the advance of the armies of liberation. The French Forces of the Interior will forever personify courage and national spirit. They will be a timeless inspiration to all who are free and to all who would be free.

Today, in their memory, and for all who fought here, we celebrate the triumph of democracy. We reaffirm the unity of democratic people who fought a war and then joined with the vanquished in a firm resolve to keep the peace.

From a terrible war we learned that unity made us invincible; now, in peace, that same unity makes us secure. We sought to bring all freedom-loving nations together in a community dedicated to the defense and preservation of our sacred values. Our alliance, forged in the crucible of war, tempered and shaped by the realities of the post-war world, has succeeded. In Europe, the threat has been contained, the peace has been kept.

Today, the living here assembled-officials, veterans, citizens-are a tribute to what was achieved here 40 years ago. This land is secure. We are free. These things are worth fighting and dying for.

Lisa Zannata Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died 8 years ago of cancer: "I'm going there, Dad, and I'll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I'll see the graves, and I'll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I'll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let any one else forget. And, Dad, I'll always be proud."

Through the words of his loving daughter, who is here with us today, a D-Day veteran has shown us the meaning of this day far better than any President can. It is enough to say about Private Zannata and all the men of honor and courage who fought beside him four decades ago: We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

Thank you.

Farewell

President Ronald Reagan delivered probably his own best obituary when he gave to us his farewell address at the end of his second term. It's only fault is that it is too modest.

This is the 34th time I'll speak to you from the Oval Office and the last. We've been together 8 years now, and soon it'll be time for me to go. But before I do, I wanted to share some thoughts, some of which I've been saving for a long time.

It's been the honor of my life to be your President. So many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, but I could say as much to you. Nancy and I are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to serve.

One of the things about the Presidency is that you're always somewhat apart. You spent a lot of time going by too fast in a car someone else is driving, and seeing the people through tinted glass--the parents holding up a child, and the wave you saw too late and couldn't return. And so many times I wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass, and connect. Well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight.

People ask how I feel about leaving. And the fact is, 'parting is such sweet sorrow.' The sweet part is California and the ranch and freedom. The sorrow--the goodbyes, of course, and leaving this beautiful place.

You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the President and his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run. I see more prosaic things: the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, now and then a sailboat on the river.

I've been thinking a bit at that window. I've been reflecting on what the past 8 years have meant and mean. And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one--a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, 'Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.'

A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind. And, when I saw it, neither could I. Because that's what it was to be an American in the 1980's. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again--and in a way, we ourselves--rediscovered it.

It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination.

The fact is, from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow summits, from the recession of '81 to '82, to the expansion that began in late '82 and continues to this day, we've made a difference. The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created--and filled--19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership.

Something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some of this. It was back in 1981, and I was attending my first big economic summit, which was held that year in Canada. The meeting place rotates among the member countries. The opening meeting was a formal dinner of the heads of goverment of the seven industrialized nations. Now, I sat there like the new kid in school and listened, and it was all Francois this and Helmut that. They dropped titles and spoke to one another on a first-name basis. Well, at one point I sort of leaned in and said, 'My name's Ron.' Well, in that same year, we began the actions we felt would ignite an economic comeback--cut taxes and regulation, started to cut spending. And soon the recovery began.

Two years later, another economic summit with pretty much the same cast. At the big opening meeting we all got together, and all of a sudden, just for a moment, I saw that everyone was just sitting there looking at me. And then one of them broke the silence. 'Tell us about the American miracle,' he said.

Well, back in 1980, when I was running for President, it was all so different. Some pundits said our programs would result in catastrophe. Our views on foreign affairs would cause war. Our plans for the economy would cause inflation to soar and bring about economic collapse. I even remember one highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that 'The engines of economic growth have shut down here, and they're likely to stay that way for years to come.' Well, he and the other opinion leaders were wrong. The fact is what they call 'radical' was really 'right.' What they called 'dangerous' was just 'desperately needed.'

And in all of that time I won a nickname, 'The Great Communicator.' But I never though it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation--from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

Common sense told us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce less of it. So, we cut the people's tax rates, and the people produced more than ever before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been cut back and could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic program brought about the longest peacetime expansion in our history: real family income up, the poverty rate down, entrepreneurship booming, and an explosion in research and new technology. We're exporting more than ever because American industry because more competitive and at the same time, we summoned the national will to knock down protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home.

Common sense also told us that to preserve the peace, we'd have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons--and hope for even more progress is bright--but the regional conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease. The Persian Gulf is no longer a war zone. The Soviets are leaving Afghanistan. The Vietnamese are preparing to pull out of Cambodia, and an American-mediated accord will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops home from Angola.

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and turning away from the ideologies of the past. For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980's has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.

When you've got to the point when you can celebrate the anniversaries of your 39th birthday you can sit back sometimes, review your life, and see it flowing before you. For me there was a fork in the river, and it was right in the middle of my life. I never meant to go into politics. It wasn't my intention when I was young. But I was raised to believe you had to pay your way for the blessings bestowed on you. I was happy with my career in the entertainment world, but I ultimately went into politics because I wanted to protect something precious.

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the People.' 'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the People' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the People' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past 8 years.

But back in the 1960's, when I began, it seemed to me that we'd begun reversing the order of things--that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, 'Stop.' I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.

I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Nothing is less free than pure communism--and yet we have, the past few years, forged a satisfying new closeness with the Soviet Union. I've been asked if this isn't a gamble, and my answer is no because we're basing our actions not on words but deeds. The detente of the 1970's was based not on actions but promises. They'd promise to treat their own people and the people of the world better. But the gulag was still the gulag, and the state was still expansionist, and they still waged proxy wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Well, this time, so far, it's different. President Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has also freed prisoners whose names I've given him every time we've met.

But life has a way of reminding you of big things through small incidents. Once, during the heady days of the Moscow summit, Nancy and I decided to break off from the entourage one afternoon to visit the shops on Arbat Street--that's a little street just off Moscow's main shopping area. Even though our visit was a surprise, every Russian there immediately recognized us and called out our names and reached for our hands. We were just about swept away by the warmth. You could almost feel the possibilities in all that joy. But within seconds, a KGB detail pushed their way toward us and began pushing and shoving the people in the crowd. It was an interesting moment. It reminded me that while the man on the street in the Soviet Union yearns for peace, the government is Communist. And those who run it are Communists, and that means we and they view such issues as freedom and human rights very differently.

We must keep up our guard, but we must also continue to work together to lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust. My view is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him well. And we'll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening one. What it all boils down to is this: I want the new closeness to continue. And it will, as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and when they don't, at first pull your punches. If they persist, pull the plug. It's still trust by verify. It's still play, but cut the cards. It's still watch closely. And don't be afraid to see what you see.

I've been asked if I have any regrets. Well, I do.The deficit is one. I've been talking a great deal about that lately, but tonight isn't for arguments, and I'm going to hold my tongue. But an observation: I've had my share of victories in the Congress, but what few people noticed is that I never won anything you didn't win for me. They never saw my troops, they never saw Reagan's regiments, the American people. You won every battle with every call you made and letter you wrote demanding action. Well, action is still needed. If we're to finish the job. Reagan's regiments will have to become the Bush brigades. Soon he'll be the chief, and he'll need you every bit as much as I did.

Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs production [protection].

So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important--why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

And that's about all I have to say tonight, except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

America's Gandalf

Our family has gone from the sublime to the tragic today. At 2:00 in Atlanta we heard the gifted composer Howard Shore conduct the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus in his "Lord of the Rings Symphony." It was two hours of stunning, stirring beauty. Afterwards, we started the long road for home via I-20, not listening to the radio but to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

A reader has written to NRO's The Corner to say the following, which is both insightful and timely for us today:

This will perhaps sound cheesy, but I've always thought of Reagan as America's Gandalf. If you read the Silmarillion--and pay careful attention to passages about Gandalf in LOTR--you learn that Gandalf is a figure sent to bring hope, encouragement, and wisdom to Middle Earth as it faced it's Great Enemy:

“Other evils may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." --Tolkien, LOTR (Bk. V, Ch. 9, p. 190).

"They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." -- Ronald Reagan

Rest in peace.

Your tax dollars at work

Hard-nosed Michelle Malkin is all over the latest U.N. atrocity. Why Colin Powell continues to insist that we deal with these anti-American hypocrits is beyond me.

The United Nations and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists — literally. And American taxpayers are footing some of the bill.

Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations' Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with the agency's blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

AccessMiddleEast.org, a nonprofit global news monitoring service, posted the video (shot by a Reuters TV cameraman) on its Web site last week. To date, Access Middle East managing director Richard Bardenstein in Israel informs me, not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers.

International relief officials are in stubborn denial about the abuse of their emergency vehicles and hospital credentials by terrorists. They claim the videotaped May 11 ambulance-assisted attack was an isolated incident and that the driver was forced to transport the gunmen. But this ambulances-for-terrorists program has been going on for years. And "humanitarian" workers have been willing collaborators.

Watch the video.

Veterans talk back

Another salvo has been fired against the Kerry campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

A group of Vietnam veterans opposed to John Kerry's presidential campaign demanded Tuesday that he remove a photograph that appears in one of his television advertisements.

In Tuesday's "cease and desist" letter, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called on Kerry's campaign to stop what it said was the unauthorized use of the images of some of them in a 60-second biographical spot titled "Lifetime." The ad began running nationwide in early May.

The U.S. Navy photo in question depicts 20 officers, including Kerry, and was taken January 22, 1969, on the island of An Thoi in Vietnam. The ad shows only a portion of the picture -- not all of the men are visible -- and is displayed for two seconds.

But even the men who are not in the ad have a right to demand the picture not be used, said Alvin A. Horne, a Houston attorney who served on a swift boat in Vietnam in 1969-1970. He is giving legal advice to the group. Eleven of the 20 men in the picture oppose their images being used in the campaign ad, he said.

"The use of the 11 images in this political campaign wrongfully and incorrectly suggests their present endorsement of his candidacy for president of the United States of America," said the letter, which Horne wrote.

The group describes itself as a non-partisan, public advocacy organization and is led by retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann. Formed four weeks ago, it comprises more than 220 veterans from the naval units in which Kerry served in 1968-69.

Original statement via Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

Deservedly so

Three leaders were essential to ending the reign of Soviet communism and to the demise of an expansionist USSR: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.

President George W. Bush honored the Pope with the Medal of Freedom on Friday. Well done.

Your Holiness, thank you very much for receiving Laura and me, and our delegation. I bring greetings from our country, where you are respected, admired and greatly loved.

I also bring a message from my government that says to you, sir, we will work for human liberty and human dignity, in order to spread peace and compassion; that we appreciate the strong symbol of freedom that you have stood for, and we recognize the power of freedom to change societies and to change the world.

And so, sir, we're honored to be here. Perhaps the best way I can express my country's gratitude to you, and our respect to you, is to present to you the Medal of Freedom from America. And if you might allow, I'd like to read the citation attached to that honor:

"A devoted servant of God, His Holiness Pope John Paul II has championed the cause of the poor, the weak, the hungry, and the outcast. He has defended the unique dignity of every life, and the goodness of all life. Through his faith and moral conviction, he has given courage to others to be not afraid in overcoming injustice and oppression. His principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple communism and tyranny. The United States honors this son of Poland who became the Bishop of Rome and a hero of our time."

And so, on behalf of the American people, Your Holiness, I would be honored if you would accept our Medal of Freedom.

Sadly, Matt Drudge is reporting that President Reagan's medical condition has "suddenly worsened." The end of an era may be near.

Red harvest

Today is the 15th anniversary of China's bloody repression in Tiananmen Square of a nascent democracy movement. This autocratic regime hasn't changed much since then, as noted yesterday.

Fifteen years after the military opened fire on Chinese citizens, killing hundreds and putting an end to months of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, China's image has rebounded from international pariah to global economic force.

Yet the bloody crackdown that began late in the evening of June 3, 1989, and continued into the next morning hangs heavily over China's ruling Communist Party. The event is still so sensitive, and authorities still so fearful of allowing citizens the slightest bit of space for memorializing it, that they have rounded up scholars and activists in the last week and put them under house arrest or taken them out of Beijing. Public discussion of the incident is taboo.

Today, events provided further confirmation.

Chinese police kept Tiananmen Square free of demonstrators Friday, detaining at least 16 people while activists abroad marked the 15th anniversary of the deadly military attack on pro-democracy protesters and pressed their demands for political change.

Since the June 4, 1989, military assault that killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of demonstrators, communist leaders have made many changes demanded by the dissidents, including scrapping rules dictating where Chinese could work and whom they could marry. A decade of stunning economic growth has given millions of people new choices in life

But the closed, secretive ruling party that crushed the protests still permits no independent political activity and has jailed or driven into exile most of China's active dissidents.

Reporters saw 16 middle-aged men and women picked up Friday on the square in small groups and dragged to waiting police vans. It was not clear whether the detentions were related to the anniversary, but security forces had been trying to block public commemorations for people killed in the military crackdown.

The square was open to the public and hundreds of tourists with their children strolled under a light sprinkling of rain.

Though extra guards were on duty, security was relatively light compared with other politically sensitive dates. Troops from the paramilitary People's Armed Police dozed aboard two parked buses. Security agents in civilian clothes moved among the crowds.

An Associated Press photographer was briefly detained after photographing detentions on the square, and Chinese tourists who snapped pictures were forced by police to delete them from digital cameras.

In advance of the anniversary, Chinese authorities detained activists and relatives of people killed in 1989 or ordered them out of Beijing.

On Friday, broadcasts of CNN to hotels and apartment compounds for foreigners in the Chinese capital were blacked out repeatedly when the network showed reports on the crackdown.

A shroud of mystery still hangs over a key symbolic figure from that bitter day 15 years ago.

For many foreigners, he is Tiananmen Square's most recognizable figure, outshining even Chairman Mao Tse-tung himself -- whose body still lies in state at a far end of the vast public space.

Just after noon on June 5, 1989, the day after Chinese troops stormed the square to brutally crush a student political uprising here, a solitary protester engaged in a modern-day David vs. Goliath showdown: Clutching nothing but two shopping bags, he stood his ground before a column of oncoming tanks along the adjacent Avenue of Eternal Peace.

Captured by newspaper photographs and cable news footage, the tense standoff lasted several minutes, a seeming eternity to onlookers waiting for the tanks to overrun the man, before he was hustled from the scene by onlookers.

On the 15th anniversary of the government crackdown in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed, this lone dissenter's story remains the most enduring mystery of the violent confrontation.

Even today, no one knows whether he's dead or alive. Chinese activists and government officials say they aren't even sure of his name. After suddenly emerging to symbolize for the world the fierce power of the individual spirit in the face of martial rule, he vanished.

"For me, he represents the unknown soldier of the Chinese democratic revolution," said John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based human rights group. "What's so strange is that his act of bravery was conducted in plain view of the world. But other than seeing his act, we know so very little about him."

The news footage and photographs only showed him from the back.In 1999, on the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin was asked what had happened to the mystery man. He responded in English: "I think never killed." Jiang said government officials conducted their own search for the protester, checking morgues, prisons and computer registers, but could not find him.

But they could get no help from Chinese citizens themselves: No one in the country has ever seen the images. In fact, no ordinary Chinese beyond the protesters and soldiers involved even knows of the standoff. Even today, Chinese can't see the famous photograph, even on the Internet. Attempts to download the picture are blocked by the government.

Some believe the man endured months, or years, of political re-education. Others say he was hunted down and executed.

Remember him and all the others in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan who hunger only for freedom.

Gettin' down

I think President Bush and the new graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy were enitirely comfortable together during commencement earlier this week.

DeMint

On a bit of vacation in scenic South Carolina. In between dining often (well, gorging) on fresh garden veggies, pulled-pork BBQ (very different from Texas beef), home cooked seafood, and sticky lemon cake, can't help but notice a spirited political primary campaign among Republicans vying to run for U.S. Senate.

Four candidates are contesting for the Republican nomination, including former (i.e., run out of office) governor David Beasley, who is leading, followed closely by Congessman Jim DeMint, according to recent polls. DeMint seems like the best of the lot, so we'll have to wait to see if he can make a runoff and then win outright.

Commencement

President Bush delivered an optimistic, even stirring commencement speech to graduates at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

As we fight the war on terror in Iraq and on other fronts, we must keep in mind the nature of the enemy. No act of America explains terrorist violence, and no concession of America could appease it. The terrorists who attacked our country on September the 11th, 2001 were not protesting our policies. They were protesting our existence.

Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornet's nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do, suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? Would the terrorists who beheaded an American on camera just be quiet, peaceful citizens if America had not liberated Iraq? We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. And America has made a decision about these terrorists: Instead of waiting for them to strike again in our midst, we will take this fight to the enemy.

We are confident of our cause in Iraq, but the struggle we have entered will not end with success in Iraq. Overcoming terrorism, and bringing greater freedom to the nations of the Middle East, is the work of decades. To prevail, America will need the swift and able transformed military you will help to build and lead. America will need a generation of Arab linguists, and experts on Middle Eastern history and culture. America will need improved intelligence capabilities to track threats and expose the plans of unseen enemies.

Above all, America will need perseverance. This conflict will take many turns, with setbacks on the course to victory. Through it all, our confidence comes from one unshakable belief: We believe, in Ronald Reagan's words, that "the future belongs to the free." And we've seen the appeal of liberty with our own eyes. We have seen freedom firmly established in former enemies like Japan and Germany. We have seen freedom arrive, on waves of unstoppable progress, to nations in Latin America, and Asia, and Africa, and Eastern Europe. Now freedom is stirring in the Middle East, and no one should bet against it.

Burning

Sci-fi grandmaster Ray Bradbury is, well, fired up about poseur Michael Moore's latest anti-Bush screed, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Michael Moore is a screwed asshole, that is what I think about that case. He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission.

Battle for hearts and minds

Law professor Alan Dershowitz is very hot in recent days. His passionate defense of Israel during an address in the heart of anti-Israel Cal-Berkeley is very worthwhile, in particular his comments on the virulence of Noam Chomsky and others.

There is a clear effort on the part of those who want to demonize and de-legitimize Israel to win a struggle for the hearts and souls and minds of the next generation of American leaders. The generation educated at Berkeley, at Stanford, at the University of San Francisco, today's students at UC Santa Cruz. Students from all over the state of California and all over the United States. Fifteen to 20 years from now these will be the congress people, the senators. These will be the judges and business leaders. The President of the United States and international leaders as well. The goal is to make these people so knee-jerk anti-Israel that they will resemble typical French or most Western European leaders of today. That's the goal of the divestiture campaign. The leaders of the divestiture movement knew it couldn't work. Noam Chomsky knew it. He said he never believed in divestiture, yet he supported it. Why? Because it would cause students to be misled by the context of the petition, to believe Israel deserved to be singled out as a great human rights violator of the world.

So it is a struggle for the hearts and minds of the students.

Tip via Melanie Phillips

Myth and legend

Law professor and pundit Alan Dershowitz says the Geneva Conventions, written in a very different era, are now "part of the problem," and offers recommended changes.

The Geneva Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

The terrorist leaders - who do not wear military uniforms - deliberately hide among noncombatants. They have also used ambulances, women pretending to be sick or pregnant, and even children as carriers of lethal explosives.

By employing these tactics, terrorists put the democracies to difficult choices: Either allow those who plan and coordinate terrorist attacks to escape justice and continue their victimization of civilians, or attack them in their enclaves, thereby risking death or injury to the civilians they are using as human shields.

International law must recognize that democracies have been forced by the tactics of terrorists to make difficult decisions regarding life and death. The old black-and-white distinctions must be replaced by new categories, rules and approaches that strike the proper balance between preserving human rights and preventing human wrongs. For the law to work, it must be realistic and it must adapt to changing needs.

Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit, who rightly points out that "the Geneva Conventions have acquired a quasi-mystical status in the minds of some (most of whom haven't actually read them)...."

Appeasement is futile

The terrorist assault on the Khobar expatriate community in Saudi Arabia was another bold move to undermine the Saudi oil industry, which is dependent on foreign labor and expertise. Historian Victor Davis Hanson says in The Australian that the incident holds important lessons for the Saudi royal family and others inclined towards appeasement of fanatics.

The Saudi royals, like most autocracies in Jordan, Egypt and Syria, play a tired game well known in the West. To ameliorate increasing misery among the populace (unemployment in Saudi Arabia is more than 40 per cent while $US800billion [$1.1trillion] is held by the royal family outside the country), few Arab regimes embark on liberalisation, constitutional government, open markets, free speech, sexual equality or religious tolerance.

Instead, popular frustration in state-controlled media is carefully filtered and directed against the US and Israel - as if those in New York or Tel Aviv can explain why Saudi jobs are scarce or Egyptian water undrinkable. Direct aid to Islamic "charities", funding of hate-spewing madrassas and subsidising firebrand clerics were the old Danegeld that Saudi elites meted out to turn bin Laden's fury against us. And such triangulation worked, if we remember that 15 Saudi suicide killers struck on September 11, 2001 - and earned smug, though private, smiles among many in the kingdom.

But feeding monsters is dangerous. Now the emboldened killers have turned on their erstwhile own. If the Spanish appeasement directs predators elsewhere for a time in search of similar easy meals, so in contrast do the defiance and deterrence of other, quite different potential victims, who prove that they will fight rather than capitulate. After September11, it is not so easy to attack a US, UK or Australia that crafted increased vigilance and made it clear that they will strike back tenfold when hit.

In contrast, Saudi appeasement, coupled with little record of deterrence, invites opportunistic probes. Indeed, we will only see more of such assaults until the kingdom eradicates terror, turns with a fury on its own subsidised Islamic extremists - or capitulates.