Petrified Truth

What fresh hell is this?

Blogs of War has assembled a collection of useful links for the Democratic National Convention in Boston, including convention bloggers and Boston media. Go there for the latest info as a tiresome week unfolds.

"Requires constant supervision"

John Kerry wants veterans to act as very public supporters of his presidential bid.

Hundreds of military veterans have gathered here to express their support for Senator John Kerry as he prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination and, he hopes, to add credence to his assertion that he should replace President Bush as commander in chief.

One of the senator's crewmates from their Vietnam War days, the Rev. David Alston of Columbia, S.C., is to speak in prime time tonight about his combat service with Mr. Kerry. Convention organizers said Mr. Kerry's crewmates would be active here throughout the four days of the convention, which began this afternoon.

As noted earlier here and here, many of his former crewmates and fellow officers serving on the swift boats in Vietnam seem to disagree and have organized in opposition to his candidacy.

Senator John Kerry has made his 4-month combat tour in Vietnam the centerpiece of his bid for the Presidency. His campaign jets a handful of veterans around the country, and trots them out at public appearances to sing his praises. John Kerry wants us to believe that these men represent all those he calls his "band of brothers."

But most combat veterans who served with John Kerry in Vietnam see him in a very different light.

Check out the photo called "John Kerry's Band of Very Few Brothers."

Jihadist dreams

A lengthy New Yorker article by journalist Lawrence Wright looks at why jihadists have targeted Spain...

The Muslims who were expelled from Al Andalus took refuge mainly in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Some families, it is said, still have the keys to their houses in Córdoba and Seville. But the legacy of Al Andalus persisted in Spain as well. Up until the Victorian era, the country was considered to be more a part of the Orient than of Europe. The language, the food, and the architecture were all deeply influenced by the Islamic experience—a rival past that Catholic Spain, in all its splendor, could never bury.

“In modern Arabic literature, Al Andalus is seen as the lost paradise,” Manuela Marín, a professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, in Madrid, told me. “For Spain, the history of Al Andalus has a totally different meaning. After all, what we know as Spain was made in opposition to the Islamic presence on the peninsula. Only recently have people begun to accept that Islam was a part of Spain.”

Although many Spanish historians have painted Moorish Spain as something other than paradise for Jews and Christians, for Muslims it remains not only a symbol of vanished greatness but a kind of alternative vision of Islam—one in which all the ills of present-day Islamic societies are reversed. Muslim tourists, including many heads of state, come to Spain to imagine a time when Islam was at the center of art and learning, not on the fringes. “The Alhambra is the No. 1 Islamic monument,” Malik A. Ruíz Callejas, the emir of the Islamic community in Spain and the president of Granada’s new mosque, told me recently. “Back when in Paris and London people were being eaten alive by rats, in Córdoba everyone could read and write. The civilization of Al Andalus was probably the most just, most unified, and most tolerant in history, providing the greatest level of security and the highest standard of living.”

Imams sometimes invoke the glory of Al Andalus in Friday prayers as a reminder of the price that Muslims paid for turning away from the true faith. When I asked Moneir el-Messery, of the M-30 mosque, if the Madrid bombers could have been motivated by the desire to recapture Al Andalus, he looked up sharply and said, “I can speak of the feeling of all Muslims. It was a part of history. We were here for eight centuries. You can’t forget it, ever.”

... and how they use the Internet to spread their gospel of death. Very interesting.

To a large extent, [Gilles] Kepel argues, the Internet has replaced the Arabic satellite channels as a conduit of information and communication. “One can say that this war against the West started on television,” he said, “but, for instance, with the decapitation of the poor hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, those images were propagated via Webcams and the Internet. A jihadi subculture has been created that didn’t exist before 9/11.”

Gabriel Weimann, a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, has been monitoring terrorist Web sites for seven years. “When we started, there were only twelve sites,” he told me. “Now there are more than four thousand.” Every known terrorist group maintains more than one Web site, and often the sites are in different languages. “You can download music, videos, donate money, receive training,” Weimann said. “It’s a virtual training camp.” There are two online magazines associated with Al Qaeda, Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad) and Muaskar al-Battar (Camp al-Battar), which feature how-to articles on kidnapping, poisoning, and murdering hostages. Specific targets, such as the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, or FedWire, the money-clearing system operated by the Federal Reserve Board, are openly discussed.

Inadvertently inserted?

One would think this wrinkle in the Sandy Berger incident would be considered significant, but it seems to be getting only minimal attention.

Berger has acknowledged removing his handwritten notes taken during a review of classified documents. That's a violation of National Archives policy. And he says he mistakenly took the copies of the aforementioned memo, different drafts written by Bush-bashing anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke. Some of those copies remain missing.

But a new scenario has Berger, who only took notes on an initial visit last fall, placing material -- again, related to the millennium terrorists threats -- into the files on his second and third visits.

Don't say it

Politically incorrect truth suppressed again? Scholar David Selbourne just can't get his new book published.

A distinguished writer and academic has accused leading publishers of turning down his latest book because it is too critical of Islam.

David Selbourne, who has written more than a dozen books, and his literary agent suspect that publishers are shunning The Losing Battle With Islam because it could provoke anger from Islamic extremists and other critics.

Among the subjects covered in the book is the "negative impact" of actions by Muslims in recent decades. It suggests that Islam is not a religion of peace, balance and compassion, as many of its adherents claim.

The book also discusses the fatwa that was issued against Salman Rushdie, the novelist, by the Ayatollah Khomeini, after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Mr Selbourne writes of the "cruel bounty repeatedly offered for his [Mr Rushie's] head".

Six publishers, including Penguin, HarperCollins and Heinemann, have turned down the book in the past five months.

Feudalism

Very interesting story in US News & World Report about the failure of the last significant attempt at systemic reform of the "intelligence community:" a hard-charging team in the Office of the DCI, starting in 1996.

The problems were so many and so deep it was hard even to know where to begin. The budgetary and personnel systems were archaic and labyrinthine. Individual spy agencies resembled not so much modern corporations as feudal fiefdoms. Communitywide, there was only the most tenuous central authority, widespread duplication of effort, and secrecy bordering on paranoia.

The ODCI's top priorities?

...improving coordination and tasking, fostering cooperation and data sharing, standardizing security practices, and opening up and networking the community for the information age.

Iraq was just one example.

The more the team looked, the more dismayed they became. Basic questions seemed to have no answers. No one had any idea how many analysts or linguists worked in the intelligence community, what expertise they had, or where they could be reached. Gannon launched a survey, found more than 10,000 analysts spread across a dozen agencies, and began building a database. Nor had anyone done a worldwide survey of U.S. collection efforts. Allen took that on and found a completely disjointed, uncoordinated effort. Among the holes in the collection net: central Iraq. While U.S. intelligence listened in and surveilled Iraq's northern and southern no-fly zones, incredibly, no one in the entire U.S. intelligence community was looking at Baghdad and Saddam's strongholds. When the United Nations weapons inspectors left Iraq, America's intelligence services were virtually blind. On the sixth floor at Langley, Charlie Allen was shocked at how dependent America's spy agencies had become on the U.N. inspectors. "We had," he recalls, "almost nothing."

The details of the story are informative, but in the end the reform effort mostly failed. Why? "Leadership."

No one can be sure if the reforms pushed by the ODCI would have stopped the 9/11 or Iraq intelligence failures. But in both cases, a more open, more accountable, more fully networked intelligence community would surely have stood a better chance. "We did do a lot," says one former staffer, "but we could have done so much more had George [Tenet] backed us, or had we existed in a different structure, or had Congress given a rat's ass."

Clot buster

Max Boot has a prescription for a "sclerotic" CIA:

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to shut down the CIA and start from scratch. But that would be expensive and wasteful. Failing that, why not let the CIA continue with its routine tasks while creating a small, elite outfit with only one mission: to eradicate the Islamist terror network.

Call it OSS II. It would be free to recruit the best people from the CIA but also from the outside, whether from Wall Street investment banks or Muslim mosques in Detroit. It would seek the kind of people who don't want lifetime sinecures and offer them ample rewards — say $250,000 a year — to take risks that ordinary GS-10s won't.

And then it would unleash them with only one guideline: Get results.

Of course, it'll never happen.

The CIA may not know what's going on inTehran or Pyongyang, but it's all too plugged in to Washington. With its mastery of political infighting, the agency is well-placed to defeat any attempts at serious reform.

At least until the next 9/11.

Very similar comments have come in recent days from Belmont Club and Reuel Marc Gerecht. Both were equally dubious about whether such a bold development could come to pass.

Michael Ledeen says the 9-11 Commission's recommendations for changing the intelligence community are wrong-headed:

We need a smaller intelligence community, not a bigger one, because bigger means more homogenized. The Senate Intelligence Committee report complained about "group think," which is the inevitable outcome of a big community that has to agree on final language for finished intelligence. It would be far better, in my opinion, to let real specialists tell the policymakers what they think, and sign their names to their conclusions. That way, if an analyst successfully solved a problem, he could be rewarded. As things stand now — and the matter is even worse if the commission's recommendations are adopted — no one can be rewarded for original thinking, and bad analysis gets blamed on the whole organization.

In short, we should strive for competitive intelligence. Keep the boxes small, let them present their analyses and recommendations, and make the policymakers sort it out. The commission goes through the ritual pieties of keeping policy and analysis separate, but most of such talk is misleading, since every grownup knows that certain conclusions — say, that Iran supported the 9/11 operation — lead inevitably to certain policies — say, that "selective dialogue with Iran" is a joke.

Everyone in Washington is making policy all the time. Live with it.

At the end of the day, we need officials who are good enough to make the hard decisions, authorize risky actions, listen carefully to dissonance among the analysts and disagreement about proposed operations, and manage the whole thing while protecting civil liberties to the utmost. It won't be easy. If and when our guys get to that point, the structural changes they need to actuate are actually quite simple: They need a big-time purge, what the business world called "restructuring," leading to a smaller, leaner intelligence community where individuals are encouraged to think independently and act courageously.

It's leadership, stupid.

So not true

Wishful thinking strikes again, this time in the form of Osama bin Laden's supposed suicide. The pros at Sophos are on the job.

Experts at Sophos have warned computer users that a file posing as photographic evidence that Osama Bin Laden has killed himself is in fact infected by the Hackarmy Trojan horse.

Thousands of messages have been posted onto internet message boards and usenet newsgroups claiming that journalists from CNN found the terrorist leader's hanged body earlier this week, but that the photographs have not been officially made public as the USA wishes to verify it is Bin Laden. The messages point to a website where a file can be downloaded, purporting to contain photographs. In reality the file contains a Trojan horse which can allow hackers to gain remote control of an innocent computer.

Look at my agenda

President Bush spoke before the Urban League convention today. The preamble of his speech (i.e., the urban policy and Administration initiatives part) seemed to go on forever... more like a state of the union speech than a stump speech.

But the money part of his speech rocked. It's vintage Bush:

Ours is a solid record of accomplishment. And that's why I've come to talk about compassionate conservatism and what I envision for the future. I'm here for another reason. I'm here to ask for your vote. (Applause.)

No, I know, I know, I know. The Republican party has got a lot of work to do. I understand that. (Laughter and applause.)

You didn't need to nod your head that hard, Jesse. (Laughter.)

Do you remember a guy named Charlie Gaines? Somebody gave me a quote he said, which I think kind of describes the environment we're in today. I think he's a friend of Jesse's. He said, "Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant." (Laughter and applause.)

Now that was said a while ago. (Laughter.) I believe you've got to earn the vote and seek it. I think you've got to go to people and say, this is my heart, this is what I believe, and I'd like your help. And as I do, I'm going to ask African American voters to consider some questions.

Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted? (Applause.)

It's a fair question. I know plenty of politicians assume they have your vote. But do they earn it and do they deserve it? (Applause.)

Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party? That's a legitimate question. (Applause.)

How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete? (Applause.)

Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?

That's what I hope people ask when they go to the community centers and places, as we all should do our duty and vote. People need to be asking these very serious questions.

Does blocking the faith-based initiative help neighborhoods where the only social service provider could be a church? Does the status quo in education really, really help the children of this country? (Applause.)

Does class warfare -- has class warfare or higher taxes ever created decent jobs in the inner city? Are you satisfied with the same answers on crime, excuses for drugs and blindness to the problem of the family? (Applause.)

Those are legitimate questions that I hope people ask as this election approaches. I'd like to hear those questions debated on talk radio, I'd like it debated in community centers, in the coffee shops. It's worthy of this country for this debate to go forward and these questions to be asked and answered.

I'm here to say that there is an alternative this year. There is an alternative that has had a record that is easy to see. If you dream of starting a small business and building a nest egg and passing something of value to your children, take a look at my agenda. If you believe schools should meet high standards instead of making excuses, take a look at my agenda. If you believe the institutions of marriage and family are worth defending and need defending today, take a look at my agenda. (Applause.)

If you believe in building a culture of life in America, take a look at my agenda. If you believe in a tireless fight against crime and drugs, take a look at this agenda. If you believe that our men and women in uniform should be respected and supported 100 percent of the time, take a look at my agenda. (Applause.)

If you're struggling to get into the middle class and you feel like you're paying plenty of taxes, take a look at my agenda. (Applause.)

If you're a small business owner who is trying to expand your job base and are worried about excessive lawsuits, increasing taxes and over-regulation, take a look at this agenda. (Applause.)

And finally, if you believe in the power of faith and compassion to defeat violence and despair and hopelessness, I hope you take a look at where I stand. (Applause.)

You see, I believe in my heart that the Republican party, the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, is not complete without the perspective and support and contribution of African Americans. (Applause.)

And I believe in my heart that the policies and actions of this administration, policies that empower individuals and help communities, that lift up free enterprise and respect and honor the family, those policies are good for the nation as a whole. That's what I believe. And I'm here to thank you for giving me a chance to come and express those beliefs.

I'm proud to be with an organization that does so good, so much good for the American people. I'm honored that your Chairman would extend an invitation to me. Thanks for coming, and may God bless you and may God continue to bless the country. (Applause.)

It'll be worth watching the replays on C-SPAN (since this good stuff will probably not be shown elsewhere), especially to gauge the audience reaction.

UPDATE: Video is up at C-SPAN (Real format).

Doing Iran

The indispensible Charles Krauthammer has a must-read column today: "And how would the war critics have 'done' Iran?"

The Iraq war critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq.

Well, of course Iran is a threat and a danger. But how exactly would the critics have "done" Iran? Iran is a serious country with a serious army. Compared to Iraq, an invasion of Iran would have been infinitely more costly. Can you imagine these critics, who were shouting "quagmire" and "defeat" when the low-level guerrilla war in Iraq intensified in April, actually supporting war with Iran?

If not war, what then? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."

Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing on Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three — the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany — that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.

The result? They have been led by the nose.

The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time — rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction — instead of one.

The allure

Via Jeff at Backcountry Conservative comes news of the latest addition to American good eating: Krispy Kreme Frozen Blends, available in four flavors: Raspberry, Latte, Double Chocolate, and Original Kreme. Says Jeff:

The Original Kreme frozen blend was the closest thing to a Krispy Kreme doughnut I've ever had besides a Krispy Kreme doughnut. The whipped cream mixed in with the blend was the finishing touch that tasted just like the glazing on the doughnuts.

For the record, a 16 oz. Frozen Original Kreme delivers a hard-hitting 600 calories, 21 grams of fat, and 95 grams of carbohydrate.

Coincidentally, yesterday brought more knowledge that should be forbidden: a recipe for "Bill Nicholson's Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding with Butter Rum Sauce" was recently demonstrated and actually consumed by TV chef Paula Deen on her Food Network show. Take a look at these ingredients:

2 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)
2 (4.5-ounce) cans fruit cocktail (undrained)
2 eggs, beaten
1 (9-ounce) box raisins
1 pinch salt
1 or 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Butter Rum Sauce:
1 stick butter
1 pound box confectioners' sugar
Rum, to taste

As a diabetic, words are clearly inadequate to describe these foodstuffs; they are both hypnotically alluring and obviously deadly. What a country.

White flag time

Tony Blair is to be much admired for many things, but this insanity is definitely not one of them. Down the road, the question will be, "What were they thinking?" A loss of national security, indeed world security, is the result of purely political weakness..

Nearly a quarter of the RAF is to be axed, with the loss of more than 100 front-line aircraft, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said yesterday.

Overall, the Armed Forces will be reduced by a tenth in what the Tories described as "a political and moral betrayal". Many ships and tanks will be scrapped.

The RAF is to be cut from 53,800 personnel to 41,000 and will lose all 108 Jaguar ground attack aircraft. A fifth of its Tornado F3 fighter aircraft are to go, plus its base at Coltishall, Norfolk.

It will also lose nine of its Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft and the RAF Regiment's air defence capability.

The Royal Navy will lose 5,000 men and 15 vessels, including the Type 42 destroyers Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow, the Type 23 frigates Norfolk, Grafton and Marlborough and the hunter-killer submarines Spartan, Superb and Trafalgar.

The Army is to lose 5,500 men and more than 80 Challenger II tanks as part of a major restructuring in which all 19 single-battalion "famous names" will be subsumed into large regionally-based regiments, with the loss of four named regiments.

The only expansion is in special forces, with a second regular SAS regiment expected to be created to cope with the amount of work the SAS and SBS have been carrying out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Telegraph in London has it right:

With unconscious irony, Mr Hoon's obituary for the military is entitled "Delivering Security in a Changing World". He is in denial about our insecurity in a world that is changing for the worse. There is no clear recognition of the threat from rogue states, perhaps equipped with WMD, and no acknowledgement of the fact that troops went into action in Iraq without proper protection against such dangers - not to mention basic equipment such as desert boots and body armour.

It is fatuous for the Defence Secretary to pretend that these cuts have been driven by strategic rather than financial factors, or for the chiefs of staff to profess satisfaction. Soldiers, sailors and airmen would respect their top brass more if they had put up more resistance to the politicians.

But it is the Prime Minister who has let the Forces down most. At his command, they go to the ends of the earth to fight for Queen and country. He invokes their patriotism, but he is not prepared to pay for it. Under the guise of a strategic defence review, the Blair Government is conducting a policy of unilateral disarmament.

China stirs

Military exercises are underway in Taiwan, timed to match publicly Chinese drills for an eventual invasion of the island.

Taiwanese fighter jets practiced landing on a highway that was temporarily closed to traffic early Wednesday, a rare drill to prepare pilots for the possible bombing of air bases by China, officials said.

The island has not held such an exercise in 26 years, and it comes as China conducts war games that Beijing's state-controlled media have said are practice for a long-threatened attack on Taiwan.

Using the highway as a runway is part of Taiwan's series of annual war games, called the Hankuang, or Chinese Glory, said Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Shuey-sheng. Two French-made Mirage jets practiced landing, refueling, reloading and taking off on the road, he said.

One popular war scenario has China destroying Taiwan's air strips with short-range missiles and bombers. To deal with such a loss, the Taiwanese have designated several sections of highway as emergency runways.

On Tuesday, Taiwan's military urged the public not to worry about the large-scale military exercises China is holding this month on Dongshan Island, off China's southern coast. The military dismissed them as routine annual drills.

But China's state-controlled media have warned that one purpose of the drills was to discourage Taiwan from seeking formal independence. Some Taiwanese especially younger residents oppose unification with China.

A recent English-language article on the People's Daily Online Web site reported that the drills were a warning to "Taiwan Independence elements" that the Chinese military "is capable and confident in settling the Taiwan issue by military force."

(In case you didn't notice, China's Jiang Zemin recently warned that China plans to "recover" Taiwan by 2020.)

A recent STRATFOR analysis showcases strategic concerns that China may take advantage of our military focus on the Middle East. In their eyes, the recent visit to Beijing by Condoleeza Rice was about firefighting.

With the United States involved in a global war against Islamist jihadists, the last thing it needs at the moment is a crisis with a regional great power. For the past three years, the tendency of these great powers -- France and Germany included -- has been to give the United States a wide berth, confining conflict to rhetoric. But for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, there are signs that a crisis in relations between the United States and a regional great power, China, might be developing. The crisis might be prevented, or perhaps it will not actually rise to the level of a serious confrontation. But there is a new cloud on the horizon, and it needs to be taken seriously.

the correlation of forces has moved in favor of China of late. Several significant military improvements -- particularly concerning naval forces -- have been achieved: Russia has delivered two Sovremenny-class destroyers -- the Fuzhou and Hangzhou, which the Chinese refer to as "aircraft carrier killers." Since the United States is the only country in the neighborhood with aircraft carriers, that fact should be taken seriously. Two additional Sovremennys are on order, and all of them are armed with the SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles -- among the best in the world.

China also has produced a new type of attack submarine that U.S. defense and intelligence officials say their agencies had not realized was under construction. The submarine appears to be a hybrid of Chinese and Russian technology. It was spotted for the first time several weeks ago and has been designated by the Pentagon as the first Yuan class of submarine. A photograph of the completed submarine in the water at China's Wuhan shipyard was posted on a Chinese Internet site this week and -- according to the Washington Times -- was confirmed by a defense official as the new Yuan class.

This means two things. First, the Chinese intended for the United States to know about the new submarine. Second, U.S. intelligence estimates about China are questionable. The Bush administration has to be asking this: If the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency didn't know about the Yuan-class submarines until the Chinese posted pictures on the Internet, what else did they not know about? Just how much better are the Chinese than U.S. officials think? That was the effect Beijing wanted to have, and it succeeded.

The last thing the Bush administration needs now is a raging crisis with China. It would make the administration appear even less competent in its foreign policy management than it already does -- at a time when the war is creating real gaps in U.S. military capability. It is very hard to imagine that Washington has any reason, strategic or political, to want a crisis with China. Rice did not go to China to start a fire, but to put one out.

It follows from this that the administration is picking up intelligence that China wants a confrontation. Chinese leaders certainly have a reason to create a crisis, and the current military situation gives them a real opening that they would be foolish not to take advantage of. The timing is right. New equipment has not yet been integrated into Taiwan's arsenal, but China has deployed key weapons. The United States is not well positioned to support Taiwan indefinitely, but China can keep this up indefinitely, and has political reasons to do so.

We do not believe China is in a position to mount an amphibious assault. Its navy is not ready for such a task, and Taiwan is no pushover. However, a major crisis in the Taiwan Straits would set the stage for redefining Beijing-Taipei relations at a time when the United States has limited resources and an interest in bringing the crisis to a quick solution. It follows from this that Washington would try to appear as bellicose as possible with Beijing, trying to convince leaders there that the United States is ready for anything. Of course, the United States is not ready for anything, and the Chinese know it.

No matter how Washington postures, those carriers might be needed at any time in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea -- or even in the Mediterranean, if something happens in North Africa or Syria. The last thing the United States wants is to tie down its carriers in the Taiwan Straits. Which means that the Chinese are setting up a very tough negotiation. They have not yet defined what they want, but the United States is going to be hard-pressed to avoid paying the price for what it cannot afford: another crisis at the other end of Eurasia.

Indeed, as U.S. forces are stretched thinner and thinner in the jihadist war, other major regional powers will be thoughtfully considering the outcome of China's probe. The United States cannot afford to be weak, but it lacks the resources to be strong. That demands extremely creative diplomacy -- also known as the art of the bluff.

No rules in a knife fight

The Sandy Berger story keeps rolling and continues to get weirder. Few additional details have emerged (yet) about his actions, but the responses are becoming positively Machiavellian.

Predictably, the Kerry campaign has blamed the disclosure on the Bush administration.

Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign accused the Bush White House on Wednesday of disclosing the existence of a criminal investigation against former national security adviser Sandy Berger for political advantage.

The objective of such a leak, the Kerry campaign said in a political memo distributed by email, was to take attention away from a report to be issued on Thursday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The criminal investigation of Berger began last October but only came to light this week.

"The timing of this leak suggests that the White House is more concerned about protecting its political hide than hearing what the commission has to say about strengthening our security," the Kerry campaign said.

This quickly follows the jettisoning of Berger as an prominent advisor to the Kerry campaign, and is obviously intended to shift the focus from Berger's connections to Kerry and onto the White House. Pretty standard stuff and unlikely to impede the Kerry campaign's interest in seeing this story melt away.

However, today also saw Clinton apparatchik Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, dramatically raise the story's profile by filing a Freedom of Information Act request demanding any records of any discussion between the White House and the DoJ.

In light of the seriousness of the possibility that the Bush administration and the Department of Justice have politicized an ongoing investigation, it is imperative that this Freedom of Information request is responded to in an expedited manner.

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552 and the regulations of the Department of Justice, 28 C.F.R. §16.3, I am requesting copies of the following:

Any and all communications relating or referring to the investigation of Samuel ("Sandy") Berger, between, correspondence (including electronic mail) between, memoranda between, phone records of communications between, meeting notes and/or minutes of meetings between, on the one hand, any official or employee of the US Department of Justice AND, on the other hand, (i) the Executive Office of the President or any unit or office thereof (including but not limited to the Office of the Vice President); (ii) any official, employee, or representative of the Republican National Committee; OR (iii) any official, employee or representative of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign.

This request covers all documents created during the period from and including October 1, 2003 through and including July 20, 2004.

The mind reels at why McAuliffe would want to fan this flame, until we read an article today by Dick Morris discussing in detail the war between the Clintons and the Kerry-Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party.

Just as the Democratic Party in the later 1960s was dominated by the schism between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, so the party in this decade is likely to be mired in a split between the Clintons on the one hand and Ted Kennedy and John Kerry on the other.

The increasing tendency of the Kennedy-Kerry operatives to shut out the Clintons from the campaign highlights the Clinton conundrum: They desperately want Kerry to lose, but can't say so in public.

Bill Clinton's publication of his memoirs a few weeks before the Democratic convention was clearly a move to slow down Kerry's momentum. The book's timing forced Kerry to designate Edwards much earlier than is traditional, so as to stop the former president from hogging the spotlight. Kerry will probably pay for his premature selection in decreased viewership during his convention now that it is drained of any suspense.

The battle between Bill and Hillary in one corner and Kerry, Kennedy and Edwards in the other will become as bitter as the battle between Johnson and RFK. Cahill's bluntness in excluding Hillary from the speakers list — even though Kerry was forced to back off and let Hillary introduce Bill — is a signal that in this fight, no holds will be barred.

So, if this is already open warfare between the clans, maybe Terry McAuliffe's bizarre decision makes perfect sense: a way to damage Kerry at a critical moment, but all in the name of smearing the Bush administration.

Likewise, Clinton's own comments in defense of Sandy Berger hardly help his former advisor.

"We were all laughing about it on the way over here," Clinton said of the publicity. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe, but ... all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."

This is a defense during a time of war? However, Berger did go over to the Kerry camp, so he may be no favorite in Clintonville.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has decided to play hardball, as evidenced by today's announcement of a formal Congressional investigation.

“Like many Americans concerned about our national security, I look forward to learning more from the House Government Reform Committee’s investigation into the wayward actions by Sandy Berger. The American people deserve to know why Mr. Berger apparently skirted the law and removed highly classified terrorism documents, purportedly in his pants, from a secure reading room at the National Archives and then proceeded to lose or destroy some of them.

“How could President Clinton’s former National Security Advisor be so cavalier?

“Was Mr. Berger trying to cover-up key facts regarding intelligence failures during his watch?

“What happened to those missing documents?

“Whose hands did they fall into?

“What kind of security risk does that pose to Americans today?

“I know Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) will work to get the full truth of what really happened and help all of us better understand why Sandy Berger, a person who should fully understand the gravity and importance of sensitive national security materials, would operate with such overt negligence and apparent disregard for the law.”

Tough language, and yet another knife fight in the alley. The next hundred days will see much worse.

File under "P" for pants

The breaking of national security rules by Sandy Berger is passing strange, including this aspect: if the removal of classified documents was "inadvertent" and merely "sloppy," how then did it happen more than once?

Through his attorney, Lanny Breuer, Berger called his mishandling of documents "sloppy." He said that after reviewing stacks of papers, he had mistakenly placed them in his briefcase.

It is illegal to remove classified documents from the Archives.

Three government officials who have been briefed on the investigation said Berger was seen placing some of the material in his clothing. The officials declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

After one of his visits to the Archives last fall, one of the government officials said, Berger was alerted to the missing documents and later returned some of the materials. On subsequent visits by Berger, Archives staffers specially marked documents he reviewed to try to ensure their return. But the government official said some of those materials also went missing, prompting Archives staffers to alert federal authorities.

Berger said that after he was alerted about missing documents last fall, he returned those he could find. FBI agents later searched his home and office; it's unclear whether they found anything. A few documents are still missing, authorities said.

Implausiblity degrades into near impossibility. There's much more to this than meets the eye.

The future in flight

View and even purchase high-quality photos by Fred Bruenjes of the maiden flight of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.

Tip via Blackfive.

Over the edge into darkness

James Glassman sees a very disturbing pattern unfolding during this bitter election year.

What passes these days for the artsy-intellectual set in America has gone completely bonkers over the prospect of George W. Bush winning a second term as president.

Something must be done to prevent another Bush victory, and America's artistes are out to do it.

First, there was Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, a crude quasi-Marxist fantasy about the war in Iraq, filled with distortions but widely praised by reviewers. (Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, for instance, gave it two thumbs up, with Roeper explaining, "I've been angry at Bush's arrogance and incompetence, and I've despised his policies.")

Next, there was the July 8 fundraiser for John Kerry in New York, at which Whoopi Goldberg "fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia," as one newspaper put it. Paul Newman said that Bush's tax cuts were "borderline criminal."

Now, get ready for Act III. On Aug. 10, Alfred A. Knopf, America's most distinguished publishing house, is bringing out a novel by Nicholson Baker, winner of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award and a darling of the New York intelligentsia. Baker's bestseller, Vox, which Monica Lewinsky gave Bill Clinton as a gift in 1998, was about phone sex....

Baker's new book, called Checkpoint, eschews kinky sex for political murder. It is a long conversation between two men about assassinating President Bush. Yes, killing the sitting president of the United States.

One of the characters, named Jay, says of Bush, "He is beyond the beyond. What he's done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It's too much. It makes me angry . . . . I'm going to kill the .(expletive) . . . I'm going to assassinate the president."

Jay calls Bush "an unelected (expletive) drunken oilman" who is "squatting" in the White House and "muttering over his prayer book each morning." He says Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have "fought their way back up out of the peat bogs where they've been lying, and they're stumbling around with grubs scurrying out of their noses."

Jay then describes methods of murdering the president, including radio-controlled flying saws that are "ultra-sharp and they're totally deadly, really nasty." Other methods: a gun and a remote-controlled boulder.

Glassman's conclusion?

John Kerry may not be responsible for the rantings of the likes of Moore, Goldberg and Baker. But he could strike a blow for decency in America--and, coincidentally, help his own cause--if he would forcefully denounce the murderous hysteria in Hollywood and Manhattan. A candidate who lacks the moral integrity to take a stand against these mounting outrages doesn't deserve to be president.

Well, let's don't hold our breath waiting for that.

It's too bad a self-satisfied Nicholson Baker probably can't be arrested by the Secret Service for creating a threat against the President of the United States. But the next John Hinckley Jr. is just waiting for inspiration.

It appears that Alfred A. Knopf can be contacted here:

Knopf is a subsidiary of Random House, which is itself owned by the Bertelsmann Group of Germany.

Lunar dreams

Thirty-five years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, in a descent that was, unknown to us watching at home, barely controlled.

Emergency signals flashed within Eagle and one and a half seconds later on the consoles in Mission Control. No one expected a cry of danger. Not now.

At 6,000 feet above the moon a yellow light flashed at the two moon landers. Buzz's voice responded immediately as he called out numbers flashing on his flight panel and on the console before Steve Bales in the control center.

Bales was the guidance officer, and none of the controllers called him by his name. He was called by his acronym, “GUIDO.”

"Program alarm," Buzz snapped crisply. "It's a twelve-oh-two."

Twelve-oh-two. A warning that the ship's main computer was overloaded. So much was happening, so many performance signals were being generated that the computer could not absorb them all. It was a cry for help.

There was no panic. Everyone sensed an abort. A hellish maneuver that would explosively separate the upper ascent stage of the Eagle from the landing stage and squeeze every ounce of thrust from the ascent rocket to make it climb back to a rendezvous and docking with the command ship Columbia. All eyes were on Bales.

He stared at his console. Coded numbers told him instantly what was going wrong. The computer within Eagle was being overtaxed with data. The alarm was the result of executive overload.

Armstrong's voice was strong. "Give us the reading on that twelve-oh-two program alarm," he demanded.

"GUIDO?" Flight Director Gene Kranz shouted. Everyone hung on the edge of their seats.

Bales wanted more time.

Kranz didn't have time. Armstrong and Aldrin didn't have a single second to spare as they plunged toward the moon. Kranz stared at Bales. The flight director slammed a fist against his console.

Bales jerked in his seat. No time. No damn time.

"GO!" he shouted. He closed his mike, staring at his console. "Go, damn it," he said in a hoarse whisper only to himself.

Duke showed surprise. He didn't have time to wait, either. His words came forth immediately. "We've got, uh, we're GO on that alarm, Eagle."

Thirteen hundred feet above the moon's surface, Eagle began its final descent. Flames gushed downward as the craft slowed, and Armstrong gripped the hand controller in his fist, firm and strong, with a touch honed by years of flight in jets and rockets.

Armstrong needed to hand-fly the rest of the way.

Now it seems like it was only a dream. When will we go back?

NASA has a cool commemorative Flash site.
NPR remembers Apollo 11's "close call" and has other archival content.

The void

This seems to be getting surprisingly little attention in the U.S. media, but the signal for Tehran is clear.

Israel has completed military rehearsals for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear power facility at Bushehr, Israeli officials told the London-based Sunday Times.

Such a strike is likely if Russia supplies Iran with fuel rods for enriching uranium. The rods, currently stored at a Russian port, are expected to be delivered late next year after a dispute over financial terms is resolved.

An Israeli defense source in Tel Aviv, who confirmed that the military rehearsals had taken place, told the paper: "Israel will on no account permit Iranian reactors - especially the one being built in Bushehr with Russian help - to go critical."

Tip via Blogs of War, including a photo of Bushehr.

Meanwhile, President Bush continues his policy of public ambiguity about Iran, even when asked about the support provided by Iran for the 9-11 hijackers.

We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved. I have long expressed my concerns about Iran. After all, it's a totalitarian society where free people are not allowed to exercise their rights as human beings. I have made it clear that if the Iranians would like to have better relations with the United States there are some things they must do.

For example, they're harboring al Qaeda leadership there. And we've asked that they be turned over to their respective countries. Secondly, they've got a nuclear weapons program that they need to dismantle. We're working with other countries to encourage them to do so. Thirdly, they've got to stop funding terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah that create great dangers in parts of the world.

No, this has been an issue that I have been concerned about ever since I've been the President. As to direct connections with September the 11th, we're digging into the facts to determine if there was one.

An unwillingness to take a strong public stand against Iran, much less any direct action, has been more or less characteristic of every administration since Carter, with the exception of the foolhardy U.S. tilt towards Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war.

Amir Taheri says we just don't have a coherent Iran policy, but that maybe the election campaign will force the issue. Perhaps, but only if events accelerate even faster. Then it may be too late.

Because of its internal divisions, the Bush administration has not been able to develop a policy on Iran. While Bush has described the Islamic Republic as part of an "axis of evil," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has praised Iran as "a sort of democracy" that the United States must accommodate.

The presidential campaign might force the Bush camp to dispel the mental fog that has shrouded its thinking on Iran for almost four years. And that, in turn, could compel the Kerry camp to come up with more realistic ideas of how best to deal with a regime that, regardless of its merits and demerits, cannot be ignored in one of the world's most sensitive regions.