Petrified Truth

Samarra

A "major" attack is being launched right now against the Ba'athist hotbed of Samarra.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major attack against the insurgent stronghold of Samarra early Friday, securing government and police buildings in the city, the U.S. command said.

The offensive came in response to "repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces" against Iraqi and coalition forces, the military said in a statement. Its aim was to kill or capture insurgents in the city, 60 miles north of Baghdad

Along with U.S. troops, soldiers from the 202nd Iraqi National Guard Battalion and 7th Iraqi Army Battalion were taking part in the operation.

The statement provided no further details of the fighting. An earlier report by a cable news network said 2,000 rebels were believed to be holed up in the city and that tanks and jets were being used as troops took the city "sector by sector." Troops were clearing buildings and mosques, the report said.

This is good. And an excellent example of following the Commander-in-Chief's orders:

The best way to defeat them is to never waver, to be strong, to use every asset at our disposal, is to constantly stay on the offensive and, at the same time, spread liberty.

More, please. Faster.

First take

Post-debate thoughts:

• Jim Geraghty at Kerry Spot has three predictions. Here's #2:

Prediction Two: The Bushies will be a little down. Every time Kerry opened his mouth, conservatives thought of the eight different responses and attacks that they wanted to see, and Bush mostly didn't use them. Bush focused almost entirely on principles tonight, not policies.

Yeah, that feels about right.

UPDATE: Fox News has the transcript and video up.

Also, Blogs of War did some live-blogging.

The burden of history

Tonight is debate night in Miami. Ominously, it's also the 65th anniversary of Neville Chamberlain's infamous appeasement of Adolph Hitler and the hollow declaration of "peace in our time," as reported in 1939 by the BBC:

The British Prime Minister has been hailed as bringing "peace to Europe" after signing a non-aggression pact with Germany.

PM Neville Chamberlain arrived back in the UK today, holding an agreement signed by Adolf Hitler which stated the German leader's desire never to go to war with Britain again.

The two men met at the Munich conference between Britain, Germany, Italy and France yesterday, convened to decide the future of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

Mr Chamberlain declared the accord with the Germans signalled "peace for our time", after he had read it to a jubilant crowd gathered at Heston airport in west London.

After greeting members of the public at the airport, Mr Chamberlain appeared in front of another rejoicing throng on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen, and again later outside 10 Downing Street.

The British Prime Minister was forced to mobilise the Royal Navy four days ago when Germany announced it was building massive fortifications in Rhineland.

But the Conservative leader has always expressed his desire to find a peaceful solution to the Fuehrer's wish to create a new - and enlarged - German homeland in Europe.

Note the cheering throngs in a frightened Britain. Then millions died in the aftermath of that surrender to totalitarianism, all because the leaders of the democratic West chose the illusion of peace instead of the difficult and expensive reality of fighting back.

The American people should keep that painful anniversary, and the lessons of history, in mind tonight as they weigh their important choice. Unfortunately, there is no sign that John Kerry and his allies will do the same.

Mount St. Helens web cam

Check out the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam.

Related: Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

The real battle

Today's essential reading: Amir Taheri on the real struggle for Iraq.

The ultimate reason for terrorist movements' failure is the same that constitutes their raison d'etre: Individuals and groups choose terrorism because they know they cannot mobilize popular support.

The terrorist hopes to force history in his direction with the help of bombs and guns. He tries to substitute his will for the will of the people. While claiming to fight in the name of the people he is, in fact, excluding the people from the political process if only because "ordinary citizens" are not prepared to die, let alone kill, for abstract ideas.

So the "insurgency" in Iraq is going nowhere fast. It will be as roundly defeated as were its predecessors in so many other countries. The danger for Iraq's future lies elsewhere.

It comes, in part, from Americans who want Iraq to fail because they want President Bush to fail. Some 81 books paint the president as the devil incarnate; Bush-bashing is also the theme of three "documentaries" plus half a dozen Hollywood feature films. Never before in any mature democracy has a political leader aroused so much hatred from his domestic opponents.

Others want Iraq to fail because they want America to fail, with or without Bush. The bitter tone of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan when he declared the liberation of Iraq "illegal" shows that it is not the future of Iraq but the vilification of the United States that interests him.

Add to this the recent bizarre phrase from French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The head of the Figaro press group went to see him about the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq; Raffarin assured him they would soon be freed, reportedly saying, "The Iraqi insurgents are our best allies."

In plain language, this means that, in the struggle in Iraq, Raffarin does not see France on the side of its NATO allies — the U.S., Britain, Italy and Denmark among others — but on the side of the "insurgents."

Those who want Iraq to fail so that Bush and/or America will also fail are now focusing their energies towards a single goal: postponing elections in Iraq for as long as possible. To achieve that goal, they will stop at nothing.

Read the whole thing.

Three demands

Here's how to handle a hostage situation properly, via The Braden Files.

Political IEDs

Our own domestic insurgency: diehards inside the Central Intelligence Agency. Is Porter Goss tough enough to take them on?

It's become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush Administration look bad.

Their latest improvised explosive political device blew up yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, in a story proclaiming that the agency had warned back in January 2003 of a possible insurgency in Iraq. This highly selective leak... was conveniently timed for two days before the first Presidential debate.

Keep in mind that none of these CIA officials were ever elected to anything, and that they are employed to provide accurate information to officials who present their policy choices for voter judgment. Yet what the CIA insurgents are essentially doing here, with their leaks and insubordination, is engaging in a policy debate. Given the timing of the latest leaks so close to an election, they are now clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry. Yet somehow the White House stands accused of "politicizing" intelligence?

Our point here isn't to assail everyone at the CIA, which includes thousands of patriots doing their best to protect America. But clearly at senior rungs of the agency there is a culture that has deep policy attachments that have been offended by Mr. Bush, and these officials want him defeated. American voters need to understand this amid this election season.

Read the details.

• New York Times - Prewar Assessment on Iraq Saw Chance of Strong Divisions
• Robert Novak - Is CIA at war with Bush?
• Washington Post - Growing Pessimism on Iraq
• National Intelligence Council

Hostages freed; ransom paid

Their friends and families are much relieved, but life just got more dangerous for westerners in Iraq, especially women.

Two Italian aid workers held hostage in Iraq for three weeks were released by their captors yesterday amid reports that a $1m (£552,000) ransom had been paid to buy their freedom.

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, were handed to the Italian Red Cross in Baghdad after they were kidnapped by gunmen from the offices of their charity in the capital on 7 September.

Arriving in Rome on a military aircraft late last night, the two women appeared to be in good health. "It went well, we have been treated with a lot of respect," said Ms Torretta.

Dr Sabah Khadim, the spokesman for the interior ministry in Iraq, said the kidnappers' motive was always to extract a ransom. Italian newspapers, quoting reports from Kuwait, claimed that $500,000 was paid via intermediaries on Monday and the rest was to be paid yesterday. The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, spoke of "difficult" negotiations, and did not comment on whether a ransom had been paid.

The potential PR impact on the West of women hostages is enormous. Not only are kidnappings for ransom in Iraq likely to increase, but we should not forget earlier warnings that terrorist ringleader Musab Zarqawi has a related objective in mind.

Terrorists in the Abu Musab Zarqawi network in Iraq are specifically trying to kidnap an American female service member to further horrify the U.S. public.

Two senior defense sources said the word is being passed within the network on the importance of taking one or more women hostage.

"We have heard through intelligence channels that several extremist organizations are attempting to capture coalition servicemen and women," said a senior military officer in Iraq. "We have instituted additional force protection methods to thwart these attempts."

Another defense source said there is an "edict, either on paper or as an order," within terrorist networks to capture an American female service member.

Of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about 11,000 are women. They perform a variety of jobs, serving as drivers, medics, aviators, police and clerks. By law, they are banned from land combat, but they can still come into close contact with the enemy.

The defense source said Zarqawi's network apparently wants to further shock the Western world by kidnapping servicewomen and displaying them on videotape. Part of the terrorists' strategy is to cause so much bloodshed that President Bush loses public support for the war and is forced politically to bring the troops home.

Watch your backs.

The flip-flop inside a lie

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics compares and contrasts John Kerry's unequivocal 1997 statements in favor of confronting Saddam Hussein with today's "wrong war" rhetoric. Citing chapter and verse, he concludes:

So is it plausible for John Kerry to have believed in 1997 that Saddam was a grave threat requiring the use of significant, preemptive, and unilateral military force but to now - more than five years later and in a post-9/11 world - stand before us and argue the opposite? It is not.

John Kerry's own words both then and now damn him as a man who changes his beliefs and positions based on political expediency and nothing more.

Tip via NRO's Kerry Spot.

Actually, there is a bit more. The reason Kerry (and Clinton and Gore and many other Democrats...) felt utterly free to unleash such tough talk under a Democratic administration was that it was only empty blustering at the time. Ditto with tough talk at the halls of the U.N. When faced with the actual deed of taking real action, as Bush has done, these posturing politicians want nothing to do with it. Never have; never will. It's a flip-flop inside a lie.

Secret Plans

Meme alert: Bush's secret plans, according to the increasingly desperate John Kerry.

Why? Survey says: "Poll Shows Bush With Solid Lead".

President Bush heads into the first presidential debate with a solid lead over John F. Kerry, boosted by the perception that he is a stronger leader with a clearer vision, despite deep concerns about Iraq and the pace of the economic recovery, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll and interviews with voters in battleground states.

Bush's relentless attacks on Kerry have badly damaged the Democratic nominee, the survey and interviews showed. Voters routinely describe Kerry as wishy-washy, as a flip-flopper and as a candidate they are not sure they can trust, almost as if they are reading from Bush campaign ad scripts. But Kerry's problems are also partly of his own making. Despite repeated efforts to flesh out his proposals on Iraq, terrorism and other issues, he has yet to break through to undecided voters as someone who has clear plans for fixing the country's biggest problems.

The amoral blandness of multilateral deliberation

David Brooks has been watching the interminable and inconclusive "debate" about Darfur.

And so we went the multilateral route.

Confronted with the murder of 50,000 in Sudan, we eschewed all that nasty old unilateralism, all that hegemonic, imperialist, go-it-alone, neocon, empire, coalition-of-the-coerced stuff. Our response to this crisis would be so exquisitely multilateral, meticulously consultative, collegially cooperative and ally-friendly that it would make John Kerry swoon and a million editorialists nod in sage approval.

And so we Americans mustered our outrage at the massacres in Darfur and went to the United Nations. And calls were issued and exhortations were made and platitudes spread like béarnaise. The great hum of diplomacy signaled that the global community was whirring into action.

Meanwhile helicopter gunships were strafing children in Darfur....

Read the whole thing.

Blinders

Here's what we're up against.

The issue of foreign hostages in Iraq was examined this week on the most heated discussion programme on the Middle East's most-watched television station, al-Jazeera.

In the programme The Opposite Direction a fiercely anti-American political analyst, Talat Rumayh, faced off against an Iraqi politician, Karim Badr.

Mr Rumayh claimed that the kidnappers were Iraqi resistance fighters and compared the number of their victims to the thousands of Iraqis, who had been killed:

"Two thousand people have been killed since the beginning of the attack on Falluja, which was dismissed in one report, one line or just a couple of words... while we keep hearing about the hostages. It's the hostages and the terrorists, always the terrorists," he said.

Karim Badr responded by saying all Iraq was disgraced by the beheadings.

"We have to prove our humanity. I am addressing my brethren in Iraq: These are masked creatures that resemble humans, who I am certain are uglier than their deeds," he said.

"Is the killing of people and exploding cars in the streets an act of resistance? Is the kidnapping and murder of people in this manner an act of resistance? I am certain they do not represent the Iraqi conscience in any way at all."

Viewers were unmoved. In a phone poll 93% supported the kidnappings.

Via JihadWatch

Kitty Kelley neutered

Here's an amusingly brutal dissection of attack biographer Kitty Kelley's The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, authored by Sally Bedell Smith, who is herself no slouch at celebrity profiles.

To understand a Kelley book, it is necessary to crack the code of her technique. She is not so much a biographer as an illusionist who, for just long enough to get newspaper headlines, makes her audience believe she is actually sawing a body in two. Her cocaine allegations show the method she uses throughout the book -- relying on anonymous sources backed up with marginal sources who have names but no firsthand information about the allegations they are "confirming."

Kelley assumes all pretensions of a bona fide biographer, providing 35 pages of notes at the end of her book. This sort of documentation is supposed to prove to readers (and future scholars) that the author can back up new material with solid primary sources and support old material with authoritative secondary sources.

But instead of giving citations by key phrases and page numbers, Kelley only offers lists for each chapter -- a classic dodge when an author wants to blur exact sourcing. These maddeningly vague end notes are virtually useless as a result. The reader is supposed to take Kelley's word for it, despite the fact that the narrative bristles with hostility and resentment toward a family born to privilege.

Kelley claims to have interviewed nearly 1,000 people. But quantity matters far less than quality. Missing from her account are those sources who offer genuine insights and understand the subject deeply. Instead, she relies inordinately on acquaintances, disaffected distant relatives, aggrieved former spouses, political adversaries, disgruntled former business associates and an array of cameo characters who don't seem to be in a position to speak with authority. At times it appears as if Kelley flipped through a telephone book and asked random people what they thought of the Bushes. Beyond those who are named is a vast tomb of unknown sources, who supply wisps of rumor, innuendo and assertions masked as proof.

Likewise, versatile Ann Coulter ably demonstrates how to apply Kelley's biographical technique.

The New York Times review blamed Kelley's gossip mongering on "a cultural climate in which gossip and innuendo thrive on the Internet." Kelley has been writing these books for decades, so apparently, like the Texas Air National Guard, Kelley was on the Internet -- and being influenced by it -- back in the '70s. As I remember it, for the past few years it has been the Internet that keeps dissecting and discrediting the gossip and innuendo that the major media put out.

Curiously, all this comes at the precise moment that speculation is at a fever pitch about whether Kitty Kelley is in the advanced stages of syphilis. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: "Approximately 3 percent to 7 percent of persons with untreated syphilis develop neurosyphilis, a sometimes serious disorder of the nervous system.

Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, has found there is an "inter-relationship" between STDs and truck routes in Baltimore. I'm not at liberty to reveal the names of my sources, but there are three or four highly placed individuals in the publishing industry who say Miss Kelley or someone who closely resembles her is a habitue of truck routes in Baltimore.

While opinions differ as to whether Miss Kelley's behavior can be explained by syphilis or some other STD, people who went to Harvard -- and Harvard is one of the top universities in the nation -- say her path is consistent with someone in the advanced stages.

Amid the swirling dispute over her STDs, there is only one way for Kelley to address this issue: Release her medical records. As someone who would like to be thought of as her friend said anonymously: "For your own good, Ms. Kelley, I would get those medical records out yesterday."

Seems only fair.

Hamas leader taken out

The Mossad has been busy this weekend, taking Israel's war against Hamas to the streets of Syria's capital.

Israeli security sources confirmed on Sunday that Israel was involved in a car bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed a senior Hamas official.

"Some people lead dangerous lives," an Israeli official said in response to the assassination of Izz El-Deen Al-Sheikh Khalil.

Minutes after the assassination, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza immediately laid the blame at Israel's door, saying the assassination was "a cowardly crime by the Zionist Mossad."

The blast happened around 11 A.M. in the al-Zahraa area of Damascus. A member of the Hamas political bureau, Mohammed Nazzal, told the Associated Press in Cairo that a bomb had been planted in Khalil's car and it exploded as he tried to start it.

Israel Radio reported that the Khalil, 42, helped train Hamas' chief bomb-maker Yehiya Ayash, who Israel assassinated in January 1996 when it booby-trapped his cellular phone. Khalil is believed to be in charge of Hamas's military wing outside the Palestinian territories.

Israel expelled Khalil from Gaza to Syria in 1992 along with a large group of Palestinians.

Oddly, this assassination takes place against a backdrop of public reports that Syria, and perhaps other countries, have been hedging their bets against playing host to certain anti-Israel terror groups.

The assassination comes just days after the London-based Al-Hayat paper reported that the intelligence service of an Arab state has recently passed Israel extremely valuable information on the Hamas infrastructure in foreign countries.

According to the report, Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, also received detailed information on two Hamas leaders, Khaled Mashal and Mussa Abu Marzuk. The information reportedly included details of their places of residence, their pastimes and the type of food they eat.

The paper said that the information was handed over at the request of Mossad chief Meir Dagan following the August suicide attacks in which 16 people were killed in Be'er Sheva and which were claimed by Hamas.

In addition, according to recent reports from Damascus, the Syrian government has ordered the offices of Palestinian organizations operating in its territory closed.

Khaled al-Fahum, former chairman of the Palestinian National Council said the Syrian authorities have closed the offices of various Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, in recent days and in some cases have even cut their phone lines.

In a laconic statement, Syrian spokesmen told the daily Al-Hayat, "the Palestinian leaders are outside Syrian territory."

Syria's lack of support for Hamas is very likely tied to its alliance with Iran and Iran's proxy army, Hezbollah. Together, they are apparently actively engaged in a hostile takeover of the various Palestinian terrorist and paramilitary groups in the Occupied Territories. Their twin goals: war against Israel and a stronger mutual front against American influence in the region.

Syrian hand-off

Syria continues to play its very dangerous game, this time in cahoots with an old ally: Iran.

Syria's President Bashir al-Asad is in secret negotiations with Iran to secure a safe haven for a group of Iraqi nuclear scientists who were sent to Damascus before last year's war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Western intelligence officials believe that President Asad is desperate to get the Iraqi scientists out of his country before their presence prompts America to target Syria as part of the war on terrorism.

The issue of moving the Iraqi scientists to Iran was raised when President Asad made a visit to Teheran in July. Intelligence officials understand that the Iranians have still to respond to the Syrian leader's request.

A group of about 12 middle-ranking Iraqi nuclear technicians and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam's regime. The transfer was arranged under a combined operation by Saddam's now defunct Special Security Organisation and Syrian Military Security, which is headed by Arif Shawqat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law.

The Iraqis, who brought with them CDs crammed with research data on Saddam's nuclear programme, were given new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education and health certificates. Since then they have been hidden away at a secret Syrian military installation where they have been conducting research on behalf of their hosts.

Growing political concern in Washington about Syria's undeclared weapons of mass destruction programmes, however, has prompted President Asad to reconsider harbouring the Iraqis.

American intelligence officials are concerned that Syria is secretly working on a number of WMD programmes.

They have also uncovered evidence that Damascus has acquired a number of gas centrifuges - probably from North Korea - that can be used to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb.

Under the terms of the deal President Asad offered the Iranians, the Iraqi scientists and their families would be transferred to Teheran together with a small amount of essential materials. The Iraqi team would then assist Iranian scientists to develop a nuclear weapon.

Apart from paying the relocation expenses, President Asad also wants the Iranians to agree to share the results of their atomic weapons research with Damascus.

These plans are better evidence of Syria's (nefarious) strategic intent than PR gestures like its repositioning of military forces inside occupied Lebanon.

In fact, Syria would appear to meet all the qualifications for a spot on the "Axis of Evil" list, especially in light of earlier reports that it is helping Iran and al Qaeda to establish bases of operation in Lebanon. Risky business.

CBS News backs off

As noted earlier this week, Newsweek reported on yet another CBS News story involving forged documents, this time an exploration of bogus documents connected to the Niger yellowcake controversy. CBS was planning to make a wholly false connection to President Bush famous "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union speech, a connection proven to be untrue by two official investigations.

Now a newly gun-shy CBS says it will NOT air the story, at least not until after the election.

CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said today.

The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake.

CBS said no other reports on the presidential election have been affected.

It's too much to think CBS News has really backed off its relentless drive to defeat President Bush, but at least there is a certain line of self-humiliation beyond which they are unwilling to go. Maybe that's a bit of progress -- the rediscovery of some sense of shame would be healthy.

Subtitles

Here's a bit of laughter amid the tears:

• Uncle Rather (mp3 file). [via Chris Baker/950 KPRC]

Contemptible

William Kristol notes the recklessly combative conduct of John Kerry and his spokesmen this week during the visit to the U.S. by Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi.

Two days later, Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi spoke to a joint meeting of Congress. Sen. Kerry could not be troubled to attend, as a gesture of solidarity and respect. Instead, Kerry said in Ohio that Allawi was here simply to put the "best face on the policy." So much for an impressive speech by perhaps America's single most important ally in the war on terror, the courageous and internationally recognized leader of a nation struggling to achieve democracy against terrorist opposition.

But Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."

Is Kerry proud that his senior adviser's derisive comment about the leader of free Iraq will now be quoted by terrorists and by enemies of the United States, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East? Is the concept of a loyalty to American interests that transcends partisan politics now beyond the imagination of the Kerry campaign?

John Kerry has decided to pursue a scorched-earth strategy in this campaign. He is prepared to insult allies, hearten enemies, and denigrate efforts to succeed in Iraq. His behavior is deeply irresponsible--and not even in his own best interest.

There is some chance, after all, that John Kerry will be president in four months. If so, what kind of situation will he have created for himself? France will smile on him, but provide no troops. Those allies that have provided troops, from Britain and Poland and Australia and Japan and elsewhere, will likely recall how Kerry sneered at them, calling them "the coerced and the bribed." The leader of the government in Iraq, upon whom the success of John Kerry's Iraq policy will depend, will have been weakened before his enemies and ours--and will also remember the insult. Is this really how Kerry wants to go down in history: Willing to say anything to try to get elected, no matter what the damage to the people of Iraq, to American interests, and even to himself?

Mark Steyn reaches a similar conclusion.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

When I stated earlier, "steel yourself; the next sixty days will be unprecedented in political brutality," I was thinking mostly about the surety of scurrilous personal attacks on President Bush and the unthinking baying of the journalistic pack of hounds.

Today's question: how many ways can we find to say "despicable?"

Like Apaches

Robert Kaplan says the U.S. military is now operating in Indian country.

An overlooked truth about the war on terrorism, and the war in Iraq in particular, is that they both arrived too soon for the American military: before it had adequately transformed itself from a dinosaurian, Industrial Age beast to a light and lethal instrument skilled in guerrilla warfare, attuned to the local environment in the way of the 19th-century Apaches.

My mention of the Apaches is deliberate. For in a world where mass infantry invasions are becoming politically and diplomatically prohibitive--even as dirty little struggles proliferate, featuring small clusters of combatants hiding out in Third World slums, deserts and jungles--the American military is back to the days of fighting the Indians.

The range of Indian groups, numbering in their hundreds, that the U.S. Cavalry and Dragoons had to confront was no less varied than that of the warring ethnic and religious militias spread throughout Eurasia, Africa and South America in the early 21st century. When the Cavalry invested Indian encampments, they periodically encountered warrior braves beside women and children, much like Fallujah. Though most Cavalry officers tried to spare the lives of noncombatants, inevitable civilian casualties raised howls of protest among humanitarians back East, who, because of the dissolution of the conscript army at the end of the Civil War, no longer empathized with a volunteer force beyond the Mississippi that was drawn from the working classes.

His prescription? Not necesarily the same tactics used in the 19th century.

In Indian Country, the smaller the tactical unit, the more forward deployed it is, and the more autonomy it enjoys from the chain of command, the more that can be accomplished. It simply isn't enough for units to be out all day in Iraqi towns and villages engaged in presence patrols and civil-affairs projects: A successful forward operating base is a nearly empty one, in which most units are living beyond the base perimeters among the indigenous population for days or weeks at a time.

In Indian Country, as one general officer told me, "you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian-aid projects." Because of the need for simultaneous military, relief and diplomatic operations, our greatest enemy is the size, rigidity and artificial boundaries of the Washington bureaucracy.

Read the whole thing.

Jack Hensley

Jack Hensley's family needs your help. Make a contribution. Pass the word.

Allawi speaks

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi gave a moving address Thursday to the U.S. Congress.

I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed. Like almost every Iraqi, I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing. We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves, which stands as monuments to the inhumanity of Saddam's regime. Thousands of my Kurdish brothers and sisters were gassed to death by Saddam's chemical weapons.

Millions more like me were driven into exile. Even in exile, as I myself can vouch, we were not safe from Saddam.

And as we lived under tyranny at home, so our neighbors lived in fear of Iraq's aggression and brutality. Reckless wars, use of weapons of mass destruction, the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the financing and exporting of terrorism, these were Saddam's legacy to the world.

My friends, today we are better off, you are better off and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.

Your decision to go to war in Iraq was not an easy one but it was the right one.

There are no words that can express the debt of gratitude that future generations of Iraqis will owe to Americans. It would have been easy to have turned your back on our plight, but this is not the tradition of this great country, nor for the first time in history you stood up with your allies for freedom and democracy.

Read the transcript. View the speech via C-SPAN (Real).

John Kerry, passionate internationalist, could not be bothered to attend, but that did not stop him from accusing Allawi, who serves under daily assassination attempts, of lying.

Note: for the record, both Kerry and John Edwards missed the Senate vote on Porter Goss's nomination as DCI Director. Such a pair.

Cat Stevens fallout

Cognitive dissonance: savvy insider Mansoor Ijaz is really irritated at the deportation of Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens). Really.

Actions by US authorities in Bangor, Maine, where the United Airlines flight was diverted Tuesday, demonstrate the failure of American domestic and security policy, both tactically and strategically, to discern who the bad guys really are.

I have argued vigorously before on these pages and in other international media that our responsibility to stand up as citizens in a time of war and crisis takes precedence over enjoying the civil rights afforded us by the sacrifices of those who have given their lives so we can live free. But when the type of global citizenship displayed by Mr. Islam, which goes to the very heart of what humanity is about, is struck down by artificial and arbitrary implementation of US antiterrorism statutes, it's time to reexamine those laws, and to reexamine the license to practice of those who are charged with protecting our civil liberties.

Yusuf Islam is a beacon of light and hope in a sea of fear, chaos, and uncertainty that was extinguished this week out of fear and paranoia that seemingly have no end. If Mr. Ashcroft is willing to take Yusuf Islam off that plane, then next time he'd better be willing to take me off as well.

It is time to take back America's civil rights from those who would abuse it for their own narrow political agendas.

Yet multiple observers cite numerous examples why Yusuf Islam could legitimately be found on a watch list. Hmm.

It's impossible to reconcile from the outside. Meeting Mansoor Ijaz's demand may be the only way to resolve the dispute:

Either Attorney General John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge should make the evidence against Mr. Islam public and detail it sufficiently that all can see his sins in an objective light, or they should issue an official apology to the peace activist and explain how American laws got hijacked in such a cavalier manner.

As noted earlier, another unanswered question is: shouldn't the National Targeting Center be able to identify risky passengers before the planes take off?

A simple gesture

He's a good man, that President.

President Bush, after a campaign appearance in Bangor, held his plane on the tarmac when he heard an MD-11 carrying 292 Army reservists and National Guard members were about to refuel here. For the troops, grimly heading toward an 18-to-24-month assignment in Iraq, it was a welcome lift. For Bush, who has been accusing his Democratic presidential opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry, of demoralizing the troops in Iraq by criticizing the war effort, it was a chance to demonstrate his devotion to the troops.

"May God bless you all," the commander in chief said over the plane's public address system. "May God keep you safe." As he worked his way up and down the plane's aisles, posing for photographs, signing autographs and shaking hands, the happily surprised troops called out to him.

"That's my president, hooah!" shouted Sgt. Wanda Dabbs, a 22-year-old member of the 230th Area Support Group, a Guard unit from Tennessee. Others seconded her cheer.

Whatever their concerns about the dangers ahead, the troops on the plane were joyous when their commander in chief appeared. "I can guarantee you right now this is the best thing that ever happened to me in my lifetime," said Sgt. 1st Class Bill Freeman of the 230th, a Goodyear Tires worker in Tennessee and a Bush supporter.

Soldiers interviewed on the plane were stoic about their mission. Spec. Eddie Latham, a factory worker, called Bush "a great leader" but added: "I'm nervous to go to Iraq."

Most of the soldiers, dressed in desert camouflage fatigues, had cameras ready to take snapshots of Bush. The president, who donned a tie and suit jacket after his political rally, offered gentle smiles and words such as "I'm proud of you" and "thank you."

The charter plane carrying the soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., was scheduled to stop in Germany and Kuwait before the soldiers made their way into Iraq with their units: the 30th Brigade Combat Team, a Guard unit from North Carolina; the 414th Transportation Battalion, a reserve unit from South Carolina; the 230th, from Tennessee; and a few others.

Sgt. 1st Class Bobby Dailey, a Federal Express worker normally, was asked if the boisterous reception meant these were all Bush supporters. "We're commander-in-chief supporters," he clarified, and pointed out: "It ain't every day you land somewhere and the president gets on your plane."

As it happens, the troops were given absentee ballots just before they departed, and there were still some undecided voters on board as Bush worked the crowd. "I'm still balancing the issues. I'm not sure," said David Spence of the 230th, a machinist, when asked about the election. "I'd like to hear what he has to say."

But 2nd Lt. Roxana Pagan-Sanchez, of the 30th, pronounced herself solidly with Bush after she got to meet the president. "He told me he's proud of me," said the mother of a 12-year-old she left behind in Raleigh, N.C. "I'm so proud of him."

Moments later, the president departed for Washington, and the troops continued their journey to Iraq.

Just rewards

What a hoot:a trifecta.

Philippines still simmering

Here's fresh news from the Philippines (including a helpful map) about the War on [Islamic] Terror. The Philippines government isn't as successful as it would like everyone to believe.

A secret government report says Muslim guerrillas in the southern Philippines have hosted terror training camps for militant groups from Indonesia and Malaysia for at least seven years — a period when Southeast Asia was plagued by bombings that have killed hundreds of people, like the Bali nightclub attack in 2002.

The training lasted at least until 19 new members of Jemaah Islamiyah — the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group — finished in January, according to a copy of a government security assessment obtained Wednesday by the Associated Press.

The report discusses the training of foreigners from Jemaah Islamiyah and other extremist groups at the camps, regarded as a lifeline for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida following the destruction of its key training camps in Afghanistan.

U.S. and Australian officials have expressed deep concerns over persistent reports of such camps here, saying Jemaah Islamiyah could pass deadly skills to a new generation of militants capable of striking anywhere. A number of suspected Jemaah Islamiyah militants arrested in Southeast Asia have said they trained in the Philippines.

The Philippine government has acknowledged that foreign terrorists have trained in the south in the past, but officials say the camps have been broken up, thanks in part to military training and logistical support from Washington. The military says up to two dozen Jemaah Islamiyah members may still be in the south, but they're on the run.

Other military officers said on condition of anonymity that training continues at the camps.

Related:

• The Australian - Region's terrorists in secret alliance
• AP - Officials: Abu Sayyaf letter can help prove rebels' link with Jemaah Islamiyah
• Sun-Star (Philippines) - Philippine team to visit alleged JI training camps, Australia begs off
• U.S. Pacific Command - Combating Terrorism in the Philippines

Treason

Ralph Peters - retired Army officer, author and teacher - is HOT.

Imagine if, in the presidential election of 1944, the candidate opposing FDR had in sisted that we were losing the Second World War and that, if elected, he would begin to withdraw American troops from Europe and the Pacific.

We would have called it treason. And we would have been right.

In WWII, broadcasts from Tokyo Rose in Japan and from Axis Sally in Germany warned our troops that their lives were being squandered in vain, that they were dying for big business and "the Jew" Roosevelt.

Today, we have a presidential candidate, the conscienceless Sen. John Kerry, doing the work of the enemy propagandists of yesteryear.

Is there nothing Kerry won't say to win the election? Is there no position he won't change? Doesn't he care anything for the sacrifices of our troops in Iraq?

And if he does care about our soldiers and Marines, why is he broadcasting remarks that insist — against all hard evidence — that the terrorists are winning?

Has he seen the situation with his own eyes? I'll gladly tell him how to get there. I'll even be his guide. And he can smell what remains of Saddam's mass graves — with new ones still being discovered. He can taste the joy of freedom among the Kurds. He can see the bustling commerce throughout the country — despite the violence that alone makes headlines.

Above all, he could see the magnificent performance of our troops, their dedication and professionalism. And their humanity, their goodness.

But Kerry doesn't want to see those things. He's reverting to form. Just as he lied about our troops three decades ago, encouraging our enemies of the day and worsening the suffering of our POWs in North Vietnam, today he's pandering to a new enemy.

Imagine the encouragement the terrorists, insurgents and global extremists draw from Kerry's declarations of defeat, from his insistence that our efforts in Iraq and in the War on Terror have failed.

As he always does, Kerry slips in qualifiers. Of course, Iraq's important. And he'll fight terror, too. It's just that the Bush administration doesn't know how to do anything. A Kerry presidency would let us withdraw our troops, collect more allies, succeed where others have "failed" and win the hearts and minds of the whole, wide world.

Earlier this week, Kerry made a much-ballyhooed speech offering four generalizations about how he would fix Iraq. But there was no detail, not a single nut or a lonely bolt. And the current administration is already doing most of what Kerry suggested.

As for involving the French and Germans, the truth is that they'd do more harm than good. These are the corrupt cynics who made billions from the U.N. Oil-for-Food program while the Iraqi people suffered. The French kiss up to every dictator willing to wink in their direction. The German military barely exists — it's just an employment agency for uniformed bureaucrats — and the French military's sole competence lies in slaughtering unarmed black Africans.

As for the United Nations, any day now we'll see a huge banner hanging from its Manhattan headquarters: Dictators For Kerry.

Even if I detested everything about President Bush, I'd vote for him just to rub it in the faces of the Germans, the French and all of the tyrants rooting for the Iraqi people to slip back into despotism. We Americans choose our own presidents, and we don't take orders from Europeans or from any of Kerry's other Swiss boarding-school pals.

I think it's great that Kerry speaks fluent French. I wish he'd go to France where he could speak it all the time.

In an election year, our engagement in Iraq is a legitimate topic for sober debate. But Kerry isn't serious. All he does is to declare defeat. He certainly doesn't want to be al Qaeda's candidate, but he's made himself into their man through his irresponsibility.

If Kerry were insisting, without caveats, that we're going to stay the course and win, while backing up his criticisms with convincing details of how he would improve our efforts, that would be fine. But his mad claims of disaster and his inability to maintain a firm position unquestionably give aid and comfort to the enemy.

The terrorists and their allies already intended to increase the level of violence in Iraq before November. But Kerry's pandering has encouraged them to pull out all the stops. I wish it were otherwise, that our election process had more integrity, but the truth is that every roadside blast and car bomb in Iraq is meant to support John Kerry.

Meanwhile, Kerry has assembled the most despicable cast of has-beens and failed officials in campaign history. He's represented by the likes of Jamie Rubin — a Clintonite who so loved America that he moved to London, returning to our shores only to tell real Americans how we need to vote.

Putting Rubin on the talk-show circuit demonstrates how badly the Democratic elite is out of touch with the country it claims to represent. With his permanent sneer and his condescending snicker, Rubin represents nearly all that working Americans — and our troops — despise about today's Dems.

In 1944, the Democrats had FDR. In 2004, they've got the stretch-limo version of Mike Dukakis.

There was a wartime election in 1864, too. The Democratic Party's candidate, former Gen. George McClellan, ran on a platform that declared President Abraham Lincoln's policy a failure. The price of McClellan's rhetoric was a prolonged war and tens of thousands of dead Americans.

In 1864, the citizens of the North were steadfast. They rejected the Democratic Party's warnings of defeat and saved the Union. In 2004, the American people, North and South, East and West, need to reject the cynical lies of John F. Kerry and vote to support our troops and save Iraq.

Not gushy anymore

Historian Victor Davis Hanson was watching when President Bush delivered his very fine speech to the U.N. General Assembly this week.

What was the response to Mr. Bush's new multifaceted vision? He was met with stony silence, followed by about seven seconds of embarrassed applause, capped off by smug sneers in the global media. Why so?

First, the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes. Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience.

Second, urging democratic reforms in Palestine, as Mr. Bush also outlined, is antithetical to the very stuff of the U.N., an embarrassing reminder that nearly half of its resolutions in the past half-century have been aimed at punishing tiny democratic Israel at the behest of its larger,more populous--and dictatorial--Arab neighbors. The contemporary U.N., then, has become not only hypocritical, but also a bully that hectors Israel about the West Bank while it gives a pass to a nuclear, billion-person China after swallowing Tibet; wants nothing to do with the two present dangers to world peace, a nuclear North Korea and soon to follow theocratic Iran; and idles while thousands die in the Sudan.

Third, the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. A multibillion dollar oil-for-food fraud, replete with kickbacks (perhaps involving a company that his own son worked for), grew unchecked on his watch, as a sordid array of Baathist killers, international hustlers and even terrorists milked the national petroleum treasure of Iraq while its own people went hungry. In response, Mr. Annan stonewalls, counting on exemption from the New York press on grounds of his unimpeachable liberal credentials. Meanwhile, he prefers to denigrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," but neither advocates reinstitution of a "legal" Saddam nor offers any concrete help to Iraqis crafting consensual society. Like the U.N. membership itself, he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.

So Americans' once gushy support for the U.N. during its adolescence is gone. By the 1970s we accepted at best that it had devolved into a neutral organization in its approach to the West, and by the 1980s sighed that it was now unabashedly hostile to freedom. But in our odyssey from encouragement, to skepticism, and then to hostility, we have now reached the final stage--of indifference. Americans do not get riled easily, so the U.N. will go out with a whimper rather than a bang. Indeed, millions have already shrugged, tuned out, and turned the channel on it.

No one tell John Kerry. He would be heartbroken.

Wishful thinking

Secretary of State Colin Powell says Syria has "agreed" to work on securing its border with Iraq.

Syria agreed yesterday to step up cooperation with the United States and Iraq along the Iraq-Syria border, a major entry point for terrorists and money headed for the Iraqi insurgency.

The agreement — raising prospects for a thaw in U.S.-Syrian relations — was reached during a meeting between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara at the United Nations.

"We discussed ... their actions along the Syrian-Iraq border and the need for all of us to do more, and I think the Syrians are anxious to do more working with the coalition and especially, and more importantly, working with the Iraqi government," Mr. Powell told reporters after the meeting.

"It's a tough military mission and a tough political mission, but I sense a new attitude from the Syrians." he said. "But, of course, it all depends on actions, not just attitudes, so we'll be working closely with them."

He also praised Syria's plans to redeploy about 3,000 of its almost 20,000 troops in Lebanon from the outskirts of Beirut closer to the Syria-Lebanon border.

As noted earlier, this seems like the triumph of hope over experience. Ariel Sharon seems to agree.

Although Mr. Powell welcomed the Syrian troop movements out of the Beirut area, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remained deeply suspicious.

"We don't, at this point, see a change in Syria's position," he said on Israeli radio. "Syria is under U.S. pressure these days because it is helping Iraqi terrorists. ... They have an interest in taking steps that will take off or weaken the pressure."

Counter-terrorism's best friend

Public radio program Marketplace profiles the worldwide shortage of dogs suitable for explosives detection (Real). Big challenge: one cannot breed for the ability. Great story.

Note: it's also nice to hear about something on the show besides Abu Ghraib. After all, it's supposed to be "public radio's daily magazine of business and economics."

The media war

Brit journalist Melanie Phillips is disgusted by her industry and her profession both for burgeoning anti-Semitism and the larger campaign to surrender our own civilization. Iraq is the locus.

One of the most sickening features of the current media hysteria is the implication that the appalling atrocities now taking place in Iraq are the fault not of the butchers carrying them out but of Bush and Blair for starting the conflagration. But the reason British and American hostages are being taken and murdered is because the terrorists know that with every such death — and the more barbaric it is — the more the British and American media will not blame them but, obscenely, Blair and Bush and thus ratchet up the pressure upon them to quit Iraq and give up the defence against terror.

This is, indeed, working like a charm. Such is the media conflagration of lies, distortions, moral bankruptcy, prejudice and foaming hatred and hysteria directed at their own side that it becomes less likely by the day that Bush, let alone Blair, will feel able to take on Iran and Syria. Unless he does that, however, not only will Iraq be lost but the west might as well put its hands up now and wave the white flag. The jihadis are playing the west for suckers; and the arrogant, ignorant, bigoted media are playing their part to perfection.

Mary Mapes, call your agent

Preston Ledger has a strong point of view about 60 Minutes "producer" Mary Mapes.

What? Ms. Mapes went into journalism to promote something other than objective truth-telling? She wanted to “make a difference”? She’s a liberal? Shocker.

Of course, none of this is surprising because, unfortunately, Mapes is stereotypical. She is what the national press is: a fraudulent purveyor of fact and virtue. But the jig is up, and so is the reign of these previously unchallenged propagandists.

Wait, he has more.

Cockpit video most excellent

American Daughter has cockpit video of an F-16 taking out a collection of bad guys in the snakepit of Fallujah. Nicely done, everyone.

Tip via The Braden Files, which also posts an interesting take by Stratfor's George Friedman on how foreign leaders perceive, and mis-perceive, the presidential election.

Yellowcake fables

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report today that CBS News, in order to run the now-infamously bogus tale about George W. Bush's service, or lack thereof, in the Texas Air National Guard, bumped a story about "a more consequential forgery": the Niger yellowcake controversy.

A team of “60 Minutes” correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.

Although the edited piece never ended up identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

Although the Niger story may be less obviously laughable than the Bush/TANG fairy tale, it too is fraught with peril for scandal-hunting reporters. Even their primary source doesn't know what really happened.

Burba, who has twice been interviewed by the FBI but never gave up Martino’s name, said she had been cooperating with the CBS team on the story in hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter. But now, with the “60 Minutes” broadcast postponed, she is no longer confident that can ever happen. Meanwhile, she said she is fed up with Martino who has “lied” to her and provided contradictory accounts to other journalists.

“I’m disappointed,” she told NEWSWEEK. “In this story, you don’t know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. The sources have been both discredited and discredited themselves.”

Somehow it seem inevitable that undeterred 60 Minutes will run this story too, and be picked apart again. The problem: there's no evidence that the Bush administration used the forged documents as a reason for the "16-word reference." In fact, the U.K.'s Lord Butler found:

499. We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded.

503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

It will be interesting to see if CBS includes the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame angle, also revealed to be bogus, in its new report. This network is stretching hard to take down a sitting President.

Fighting censorship in Iran

The BBC reports "Iran's bloggers in censorship protest."

Hundreds of Iranian online journals have been protesting against media censorship by renaming their websites after pro-reformist newspapers and websites that have been banned or shut down by the authorities. Many of the websites, known as blogs or weblogs, have also posted news items from the banned publications on their websites.

The protest was started by blogger Hossein Derakhshan, a student at Toronto university in Canada.

He said he was delighted with the response. The hardline Iranian press has published a personal attack on him, he said, "which is proof that the authorities must be worried by the bloggers' protest".

Earlier this month, three reformist websites - Emrooz, Rooydad and Baamdad - re-appeared in a stripped-down form after having been blocked by the authorities. One of them moved the content of its site onto a blog as a means of getting around the block.

It is thought that the number of Iranians keeping blogs is now between 10,000 and 15,000.

However, some recent reports have now suggested that Iranian authorities are considering the creation of a national intranet - an internet service just for Iran - which would be separate from the world wide web. This would potentially mean that users would not be able to access anything the authorities do not want them to see.

But Mr Derakhshan said he and his fellow bloggers are working on a strategy to get around the intranet, using email subscription services.

For more background data and links to Iranian blogs, see also:

• Hossein Derakhshan - Editor - Myself
• Blogs of War - Hot Spot: Iran

Military draft talk only Democratic dirty trick

A bogus e-mail is circulating to college students in an attempt to convince them that the Bush administration is working stealthily to re-institute the military draft as early as next spring.

Betsy's Page has the scoop, including the fact that the only pending legislation concerning the draft is that filed by prominent Democrats purely as a wedge issue. Betsy's comment:

Sometimes I forget how duplicitous the Democrats are, but then they do something to remind me.

Happens each and every day. Related:

• Michelle Malkin - Scaring Up Dem Votes

UPDATE: More slippery talk about the draft by both John Kerry, Howard Dean, and others. Certainly not a coincidence.

Backing down

The Iraqi government blinks in its faceoff with terrorist ringleader Musab al-Zarqawi, which would seem to guarantee even more terror in the future.

Iraq's justice ministry says one of two female scientists held in US custody will be released on Thursday. It said the move was not linked to the demands of militants who have killed two Americans and threatened to kill Briton Kenneth Bigley.

Militants beheaded the second American, Jack Hensley, on Tuesday, according to a statement on an Islamist website. The kidnappers have demanded the release of all Iraqi women held in US-run prisons, without naming names.

The first US hostage, American engineer Eugene Armstrong, 52, was killed on Monday and 24 hours later the group claimed to have killed a second American, Jack Hensley. A decapitated body, thought to be that of Mr Hensley, has been found in Baghdad, but it has not been formally identified. Mr Hensley would have been 49 on Wednesday.

Ms Taha is said to have carried out top-secret work during the 1980s on germs that cause botulism poisoning and anthrax infections. A second woman, Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, "may be released soon", the Iraqi justice ministry said.

An Iraqi spokesman said Ms Taha's planned release was part of a review of her detention, adding she was no longer considered a threat to national security.

"The Iraqi authorities have agreed with coalition forces to conditionally release Rihab Rashid Taha on bail," said spokesman Noori Abdul-Rahim Ibrahim.

UPDATE: The U.S. says, "no way," according to news reports. Note that Prime Minister Allawi is in New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

The United States said Wednesday a high-profile Iraqi woman prisoner will not be released any time soon, knocking down a statement from a senior Iraqi official. Iraqi militants who beheaded two Americans have threatened to kill a Briton unless female detainees are freed.

After the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said there would be no immediate release of either of the two women in U.S. custody, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said there were no plans to free the detainees, disputing the earlier statement by his Justice Department that a decision was made to release one of them.

Allawi told The Associated Press that no release of prisoners is imminent, though his government has begun reviewing the status of its detainees, including the two female scientists known as "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax" for their involvement in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programs.

"We have not been negotiating and we will not negotiate with terrorists on the release of hostages," he said.

Posted by Alan at 05:35 AM

Facing the hive

President Bush's speech today before the U.N. General Assembly had many fine points, including this poignant section.

In the last year alone, terrorists have attacked police stations, and banks, and commuter trains, and synagogues -- and a school filled with children. This month in Beslan we saw, once again, how the terrorists measure their success -- in the death of the innocent, and in the pain of grieving families.

Svetlana Dzebisov was held hostage, along with her son and her nephew -- her nephew did not survive. She recently visited the cemetery, and saw what she called the "little graves." She said, "I understand that there is evil in the world. But what have these little creatures done?"

President Bush, who earlier took time to visit the Russian Embassy to pay his personal condolences to the Russian people, knows the meaning of the "little graves."

Via C-SPAN, watch video (Real) of the President's speech before the stone-faced representatives of the U.N. General Assembly, an institution which can only call to mind Obi-wan Kenobi's description of the infamous Mos Eisley spaceport:

Watch list action

Weird news: Yusuf Islam, formerly world-famous as singer Cat Stevens, was the cause of an airline diversion over the Atlantic today.

A plane bound for Washington from London was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as pop singer Cat Stevens — showed up on a U.S. watch list, federal officials said.

United Airlines Flight 919 had already taken off from London en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made between the passenger and the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

One official said Islam, 56, was identified by the Advanced Passenger Information System, which requires airlines to send passenger information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. TSA was then contacted and requested that the plane land at the nearest airport, the official said.

"He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds," said Homeland Security spokesman Dennis Murphy. He said the man would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

Question: shouldn't the National Targeting Center be able to identify risky passengers before the planes take off?

Confess you are a spy

Canadian journalist Scott Taylor was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq but eventually released. He filed an eye-opening report in the Halifax Herald. Read part one and then part two.

Taylor seemed to know what story he wanted from the beginning:

It was my intention to enter the city before it was shut down, then send reports about the civilian casualties and possible humanitarian crisis that would result from a major battle.

Things went wrong immediately, thanks to officials he thought could be trusted.

The sight of American-paid Iraqi police forces monitoring traffic seemed a good sign that things were still under control, despite the recent fighting. As I did not have an exact address for my previous contact, I approached a police checkpoint to ask for assistance. When I asked them to be taken to "Dr. Yashar," they recognized his name as a prominent local Turkmen official and eagerly nodded. A senior policeman was summoned and he instructed me and Zeynep Tugrul - a Turkish journalist who was serving as my translator and filing her own reports for Sabah, a daily national newspaper - to climb into a nearby car containing four masked gunmen. As we clambered into the back seat, one of the gunmen said in excellent English, "We will take you to Dr. Yashar - please do not be afraid."

I assumed these men were some sort of special police force - our own Canadian counterterrorist teams often wear ski masks - so I had no immediate cause for concern.

But as soon as we entered Tal Afar, I saw that the streets were full of similarly masked resistance fighters armed with Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). I suddenly realized we were in the hands of the resistance.

After being handed around to multiple "resistance" groups over a period of days and surviving several U.S.-led air assaults on nearby locations, he and his translator were tortured.

After my feet were cut loose, I was pulled upright and the interrogator handed me a pen and paper.

"You will write down all the websites you think might help to confirm that you are in fact a Canadian journalist," he said. I made some remark that I would have gladly done so without the beating, but my attempt at black humour was wasted.

I had been badly beaten, and as I walked out of the anteroom back into the main parlour, most of the Arab "pupils" had gathered to see my reaction. I tried my best not to let them see any weakness by pressing the pen hard against the paper so that they could not see my hands shaking. Taking the list of websites from me, the interrogator told me, "If this checks out, you'll live. If you lied, you die."

A few minutes later, I was ushered into an adjacent room, told to lie face down on the floor and a gun barrel was placed against the back of my neck. It was Zeynep's turn to be beaten, and as she cried out, the guard behind me repeated: "You can spare her the pain. Simply confess that you are a spy."

As I kept uttering denials, he spat on my head and said, "Only a dog would let a woman suffer like that!"

I thought to myself, "And what kind of animal would torture a woman?"

Well, that would be a terrorist, not just a "resistance fighter" or "insurgent." Many scary, interesting details in these articles.

Strategic withdrawal?

Columnist Robert Novak created a stir earlier this week when he reported that the Bush administration is preparing to cut and run on Iraq.

Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.

This prospective policy is based on Iraq's national elections in late January, but not predicated on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world. The United States would be content having saved the world from Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction.

Ali in Iraq was not impressed by Novak's punditry.

What does Mr. Novak know about Iraq and the decision makers in the USA? If his information about how decision makers in America are thinking, is similar to his information about Iraq, then I guess we are safe and there’s no need to worry.

NO Mr. Novak, you are WRONG and I’m being very nice here. This is not an adventure and this is not a neo-conservative dream. This is OUR dream. The dream of millions of oppressed Iraqis who saw what dictatorship can do and who were dying to witness a moment of freedom, to live a peaceful life, a life that carries hope and make dreams not that impossible, a life similar to yours, or is it too much to hope for? We had this dream before anyone heard about neo -conservatives.

I don’t believe what you say about the American administration Mr. Novak, but even if you were right, you can give up on your dream. We won’t give up on ours, and may God help us.

President Bush, speaking to the U.N. General Assembly today, didn't sound like he's planning to run away.

The work ahead is demanding. But these difficulties will not shake our conviction that the future of Afghanistan and Iraq is a future of liberty. The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat, it is to prevail.

The advance of freedom always carries a cost, paid by the bravest among us. America mourns the losses to our nation, and to many others. And today, I assure every friend of Afghanistan and Iraq, and every enemy of liberty: We will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains in eloquent detail why "strategic withdrawal" from Iraq would be a terrible idea and reminds us of the price that would then be paid.

Because such ideas are sometimes offered by the strategic establishment, and are couched in terms of our self-interest, many Americans may find them appealing — especially since the daily televised fare from Iraq is little more than fist-shaking militants full of ingratitude, if not hatred, toward the United States, mixed with RPGs and suicide bombings.

Yet leaving unilaterally from Iraq would be a tragic mistake. We have already done something like that before — many times. What rippled out afterwards was not pretty. American helicopters flying off the embassy roof in Saigon in 1975 gave us the climate for the Soviets in Afghanistan, Communists in Central America, and embassy hostage-taking in Tehran. Ignoring murders in Lebanon, New York, East Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, or lobbing an occasional cruise missile as tit-for-tat payback when terrorists harvested one too many expendable Americans abroad, ensured us September 11. In our loony world, losing credible deterrence (and we would) is an invitation for disaster — as bin Laden himself illustrated when he logically thought that the toppling of the World Trade Center would be followed by another Black Hawk Down American pullback.

Leaving Afghanistan to its own misery after the Soviet retreat, not going to Baghdad in 1991, turning boats around from Haiti, or quietly ducking out of Mogadishu all were less messy in the short term, but in the long term left even greater chaos. The ultimate wages were the Taliban, 350,000 sorties for over a decade above Iraq, the current mess in the Caribbean, and terrorist havens and worse in Africa. We forget how often in history a perceived stumble or the half-measure only emboldens enemies to try what they otherwise would not.

It is true that parts of Iraq are unsafe and that terrorists are flowing into the country; but there is no doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein is bringing matters to a head. Islamic fascists are now fighting openly and losing battles, and are increasingly desperate as they realize the democratization process slowly grinds ahead leaving them and what they have to offer by the wayside. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and others must send aid to the terrorists and stealthy warriors into Iraq, for the battle is not just for Baghdad but for their futures as well. The world's attention is turning to Syria's occupation of Lebanon and Iran's nukes, a new scrutiny predicated on American initiatives and persistence, and easily evaporated by a withdrawal from Iraq.

So by taking the fight to the heart of darkness in Saddam's realm, we have opened the climactic phase of the war, and thereupon can either win or lose far more than Iraq.

The challenge, as it has been since the beginning of this death struggle with Islamic nihilism, is how to prevail, assuming we have the will. That debate will intensify in the coming days, thanks to looming elections in both the U.S. and Iraq, and to the violent responses from our enemies. But there is no alternative to victory.

Ransom demands

American contractor Eugene Armstrong has been brutally executed by Jordanian terrorist Musab al-Zarqawi and his henchmen in Iraq.

Zarqawi is demanding the release of "women prisoners" held by the Coalition and the Iraqi government, a departure from the usual end-the-occupation demands. Which women would be of such a high value to this terrorist? The names have emerged.

The U.S. military says women are not held at the two prisons -- the notorious Abu Ghraib in Baghdad and Umm Qasr near Basra -- cited by the group known as Unification and Jihad but has acknowledged it is holding two female "security prisoners" elsewhere.

They are Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha Al-Azzawi Al-Tikriti, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a biological weapons researcher known as "Mrs. Anthrax."

There's no way those prisoners are being traded. Israeli site DEBKA claims to have the inside story.

The point of the spear in Afghanistan

Former Marine and U.S. Navy Secretary James Webb describes how he went recently to the farthest reaches of the Afghanistan front.

Camp Ripley offers neither the distractions nor the contradictions of Bagram. It is a place of wind and dust, sitting on an arid, empty plateau. The seriousness of the Marines’ mission permeates the air. At night the camp is eerily quiet and the darkness is nearly complete, interrupted only by green chem sticks marking pathways through the concertina wire and an occasional blue-lensed flashlight.

Struggling in the thick dust, we carry our gear from the airstrip to the small group of tents that mark Colonel McKenzie’s command post. Iron-gray Sgt. Maj. George Mason sits at a small table in the darkness, smoking a cigar as he converses in a near-whisper with another Marine. Rising to greet us, the New Jersey-born Mason hands us thin mats and gestures toward two nearby one-man pup tents, where we will stow our gear and sleep on the ground.

There is not one cot in the hundreds of tents that dot Camp Ripley’s moonscape. Colonel McKenzie and Sergeant Major Mason are testimony that the Marine Corps leads by example, sleeping on the dust-filled deck inside their own pup tents, no differently from the rest of their Marines.

The command operations center is a low-lit tent jammed with sophisticated computers. I learn that a recently arrived Army unit is in contact with guerrillas in the mountains to the east, not far from where the 22nd MEU’s Marines recently killed more than 100 enemy, including at least one Chechen. This largely unreported operation, the most extensive in Afghanistan in more than two years, has been overshadowed by events in Iraq and represents the farthest inland penetration by ship-borne amphibious forces in the history of the Marine Corps.

His journey was also very personal.

The message for Corporal Ramirez, carried so many thousands of miles by my son, is a letter from my daughter, Sarah. I have no need to read it to know the gist of what she said. This is the second time that Corporal Ramirez has deployed to Afghanistan in little more than a year. I have seen her struggle with the pain of these separations—forgoing normal college rituals, forcing herself to learn more about this proud oddity called the Marine Corps and this remote country that has the potential to so drastically alter her life. I have listened on the phone as her calmness descended into sudden tears when asking about news of casualties. Two days before my trip, I watched her celebrate her 21st birthday, an evening of forced gaiety with one glaring, remembered absence.

And yet, saying good-bye to Jose the next morning as a Black Hawk helicopter swoops in to take us back to Bagram, I know something else—that he and I, and so many others, cannot allow ourselves to feel unique in these emotions. Indeed, they are being repeated a hundred thousand times over, every day, among those who have been sent into harm’s way. My only wish is that the rest of America might somehow comprehend their depth and their intensity.

Syrian deal?

This is passing strange: reports that the U.S. is negotiating with Syria to secure that country's eastern border with Iraq, where terrorists have flowed freely to fight the Coalition.

The dire security conditions in Iraq have overshadowed many of the Bush administration's diplomatic priorities in Syria, prompting U.S. officials to focus their efforts here on enlisting the government's help in stabilizing the country's eastern border with Iraq.

The new appeal for greater Syrian cooperation on Iraq comes as the Bush administration is pressuring the four-year-old government of President Bashar Assad to end Syria's long-standing military presence in Lebanon, evict terrorist organizations from Syria and more closely monitor its banking system so militant groups cannot use it to launder money.

But in a meeting Sept. 11, Assad and a U.S. delegation led by William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, discussed those issues only briefly during more than two hours of talks, according to participants on both sides. Instead, according to participants, the meeting was dominated by U.S. concerns over Syria's desolate 450-mile border with Iraq, which Arab fighters easily cross on their way to fight American soldiers.

"This visit was driven by one thing and one thing only: Iraq," Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, who attended the meeting, said in an interview here. "They brought up their well-known list, and that took 10 minutes, then we brought up our list. But they came to discuss Iraq."

Given Syria's long track record in supporting, even hosting, anti-Israeli terrorist organizations, and deep suspicions that Syrian Ba'athists have eagerly cooperated with their Iraqi brethren to resist the final liberation of Iraq, it seems wildly improbable that Syria would cooperate with the U.S. Or could be trusted even it made such an agreement.

However, this announcement today may be related:

Syrian forces in Lebanon will start redeploying towards the Syrian border Tuesday, official sources in Damascus told UPI.

"This is official," said Imad Mustapha, Syria's ambassador to Washington, speaking from the Syrian capital. "Tuesday morning there will be a major redeployment of Syrian forces in Lebanon," he said by phone, adding this came about as a result of "having greater confidence in the situation."

"This move should please all parties," said Mustapha.

Asked how many troops were involved in the redeployment and to what positions the troops would move, Mustapha said, "It is too early to tell.

That's some understatement. Unfortunately, the Syrians may very well be the ones operating from a position of strength.

• DEBKA - Washington in Undercover Talks with Assad
• NPR - U.S. In Talks with Syria to Secure Iraqi Border
• Time - Cozying Up to Syria

Weasel words

So, Dan Rather and the suits at CBS News have decided to fold after all, but with a pack of weasel words instead of candor. The words "fake" and "forgery" never pass their lips. So much for journalistic "integrity."

CBS News claimed a source had misled the network on the documents' origins. The network pledged "an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken."

In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.

After spending weeks and months re-living 1971 and the Vietnam War (thanks to John Kerry and his allies), now we are re-living 1973 and the Watergate denials and coverups. Dan Rather and the management of CBS News have become the Nixon Administration. Such self-serving, carefully shaded non-apologies call to mind a vintage Nixon-era "modified limited hang out."

CBS's battered stonewall won't last (where did the documents come from, Dan?), but what hellish version of Peabody's Wayback Machine are we trapped in?

Unfit to lead in wartime

Months after the controversy erupted, the Houston Chronicle finally interviews local attorney John O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command and co-founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who says his fight with John Kerry is personal, not political.

Earlier this year, as he lay in the hospital recuperating from major surgery in which he donated a kidney to his ailing wife, John O'Neill had no aspirations to literary success or political prominence.

And if John Kerry had not a few weeks later surged to the front of the pack and in March sewn up the Democratic nomination for president, O'Neill may well have returned to his downtown Houston law practice and a comfortable life of relative obscurity.

But the possibility that Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran against whom O'Neill has held a personal grudge for more than 30 years, could possibly become commander-in-chief of U.S. forces was too much to stomach.

Six months later, O'Neill's legal career is on hold. He has co-written a book attacking Kerry's war record that tops the national best-seller lists, and he leads a group of angry veterans who have mounted an effective and well-funded campaign to discredit Kerry's Vietnam heroics and derail his bid for the presidency.

O'Neill and his organization, Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, are accused by Kerry and his Democratic supporters of acting as clandestine operatives for the Republican Party. They are funded in part by prominent Republicans. And they received legal advice from a lawyer in President Bush's campaign who has since resigned.

But O'Neill adamantly maintains his beef against Kerry has nothing to do with partisan politics and everything to do with the Massachusetts senator's fitness to lead the nation in war.

"If the president of the United States was not the commander-in-chief I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it (Kerry's candidacy)," O'Neill, 58, said in an interview last week. "The problem I have is the president of the United States does serve as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and I can't conceive of this guy commanding them."

After November, whatever the outcome of the election, O'Neill, a top-of-his-class graduate from the University of Texas Law School and a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, plans to slip back into the obscurity of his law practice.

"Thirty-three years ago, the debate I had with Kerry was a major event in my life and I had no desire after that to be in politics," O'Neill said. "I just went home and became politically anonymous, and that is exactly what I plan to do this time."

Oil for blood

Fox News ran an hour-long program Sunday night on the entirely corrupt Iraq "Oil for Food" program run by the United Nations. In short: Saddam Hussein and the U.N. lied; Americans died (and continue dying).

It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations.

Plus, some evidence suggests that some of the money ended up in the hands of potential terrorists who are opposed to the United States.

“I believe the U.N., parts of it, have been corrupt for years. But this went to a whole new level,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.

Shays is leading one of several Oil-for-Food probes by the federal government. The General Accountability Office has already pegged Saddam’s Oil-for-Food take at $10.1 billion. It could end up being a lot more.

Shays says Iraqis aren't the only victims -- Americans are too.

“We're talking about American lives that are being lost in an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq,” Shays said. If France, Russia, China and Germany had told Saddam it was time to back down and honor his commitments, Shays said it’s possible the United Stations may not have needed to go to war against Saddam.

But why did these countries really object to a second U.S.-led war against Iraq?

Some evidence suggests that those countries that said they were opposing the Bush administration on principle were actually making billions from Oil-for-Food.

“I think clearly, American blood is in the hands of a number of European countries, who could have put pressure on Saddam, who could've looked him in the eye and said, ‘the United States is coming in,'" Shays said. “And to me, some of the explanation clearly has to be the Oil-for-Food program.”

Shays added that there is a chance some of the insurgents now operating against the United States and the new Iraqi government are using Oil-for-Food money in their terror campaign.

“I think it's not only possible that insurgents are using Oil-for-Food money -- I think it's very likely,” Shays said.

The sordid history of this program is not a breaking news story, but Fox News is providing a valuable public service in making it even more prominent.

• Fox News "Raw Data" - recommended readings
• Claudia Rosett - Strip Poker
• Claudia Rosett - Drip, Drip, Drip
• Claudia Rosett - Oil-for-Terror
• William Safire - The great oil-for-food cash cow
• House Committee on International Relations - April 2004 Hearing (pdf)
• United Nations - Office of the Iraq Programme Oil-for-Food

Urban development

New Zealand actor Karl Urban, memorable in the role of Eomer in The Lord of the Rings, will take the lead in the film version of video game Doom.

Karl Urban, who played the assassin in "The Bourne Supremacy," will star in "Doom" for Universal Pictures. The video game adaptation is being directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and John Wells producing. "Doom" was written by Dave Callaham. Urban will play John Grimm, the leader of a special ops team that is at the center of the futuristic action-adventure film. When dealing with alien demons, he is forced to cross paths with the organization responsible for his parents' deaths. Production is slated to begin late next month, with an Aug. 5 release planned.

Bad news for (fictional) bad guys. Might, just might, be a thrill for blogger Rachel Lucas.

Chemistry lesson

Sunday's Washington Post reports on the trials and tribulations of a SC National Guard battalion preparing to leave today for Iraq.

The 635 soldiers of a battalion of the South Carolina National Guard scheduled to depart Sunday for a year or more in Iraq have spent their off-duty hours under a disciplinary lockdown in their barracks for the past two weeks.

The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out. Then there was an ugly confrontation between members of the battalion's Alpha and Charlie batteries -- the term artillery units use instead of "companies" -- that threatened to turn into a brawl involving three dozen soldiers, and required the base police to intervene.

That prompted a barracks inspection that uncovered alcohol, resulting in the lockdown that kept soldiers in their rooms except for drills, barred even from stepping outside for a smoke, a restriction that continued with some exceptions until Sunday's scheduled deployment.

The battalion's rough-and-tumble experience at a base just off the New Jersey Turnpike reflects many of the biggest challenges, strains and stresses confronting the Guard and Reserve soldiers increasingly relied on to fight a war 7,000 miles away.

A series of high-level decisions at the Pentagon has come together to make life tough for soldiers and commanders in this battalion and others. The decisions include the Bush administration's reluctance to sharply increase the size of the U.S. Army. Instead, the Pentagon is relying on the National Guard and Reserves, which provide 40 percent of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Also, the top brass has concluded that more military police are needed as security deteriorates and the violent insurgency flares in ways that were not predicted by Pentagon planners.

These soldiers will be based in northern Kuwait and will escort supply convoys into Iraq. That is some of the toughest duty on this mission, with every trip through the hot desert bringing the possibility of being hit by roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire.

They have their work cut out for them. Godspeed.

Iran's response

Here's what we get by following the style of diplomacy recommended so heartily by John Kerry.

Iran has defiantly rejected calls from the UN nuclear watchdog to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities. Tehran also vowed to block snap inspections of its nuclear sites if the issue is sent to the Security Council.

"Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment," chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani said.

"If they want to send Iran to the Security Council, it is not wise, and we will stop implementing the Additional Protocol," Mr Rohani told a news conference in Tehran after the decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Related: via the Institute for Science and International Security, background information and photos of Iran's Parchin nuclear development complex.

The long view

Mark Steyn reviews current hand-wringing over the degree of difficulty in Iraq today. His conclusion:

In two-thirds of the country, municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory. This summer the Shia province of Dhi Qar, south-east of Baghdad, held the first free elections in its history, electing secular independents and non-religious parties to its town councils.

The Kurdish North, which would be agitating for secession if real civil war were looming, is for the moment content to be Scotland. The Sunni Triangle, meanwhile, looks like being the fledgling Iraqi federation's Northern Ireland for a while to come.

That's a pity. But, if you can quarantine it, the difference between it and the rest of the country will become starker, month by month.

A few weeks ago, Prof Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, told Die Welt that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century". That seems demographically unavoidable.

Given that much of what we now know as the civilised world will be Muslim, it seems prudent to ensure that what is already the Muslim world is civilised. And, for those who say that Islam is incompatible with democracy, we might as well try to buck that in Iraq today than in France, Scandinavia and Britain the day after tomorrow.

More al Qaeda tip-offs

Here are more indications of al Qaeda cells in the U.S.

A Libyan hunted by Pakistan because of his senior role in the al Qa'eda terrorist network has taken charge of its sleeper cells in Britain and the United States, Pakistani intelligence officials believe.

Abu Faraj al Libbi, said to have taken over as third in command of al Qa'eda when his mentor, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured last year, has sent coded messages to "several" Islamic militants in Britain over the past 10 months, according to Pakistani officials.

Security officers who have interrogated recently captured militants say that Abu Faraj, who is now believed to be al Qa'eda's top operational chief, masterminded and financed assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf, the country's military ruler, last December.

They have now revealed that Abu Faraj, who was once Osama bin Laden's personal assistant, is also in frequent contact with al Qa'eda members and supporters abroad, particularly in Britain and America. They have identified two people - both of whom are in British custody - as recipients of coded messages from Abu Faraj.

Indespicable

Leftie asshat "protesters" tried to make a scene today at attorney John O'Neill's house in Houston. He wasn't even home and they managed to gather in less than impressive numbers to make only the usual empty-headed statements.

About 15 protesters gathered for two hours today outside the home of John O'Neill, a Houston attorney who co-wrote "Unfit for Command," a new book that questions Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service.

"Who in their right mind would attack a veteran who actually volunteered to go to Vietnam?" protester John Cobarruvias asked. "Attacking a veteran who went to war, who got shot at, is wrong."

O'Neill wasn't home Saturday because his daughter was getting married. In a statement, he said he thought it would have been more appropriate for protesters "to read the book and then engage in a civil debate over its contents."

"It is our experience that protests and book burnings occur not against books that are false, but against books that are true," the statement said.

The protesters chanted and carried signs reading "Not so swift liar lives here" and "AWOL liar Bush attacks veterans."

Three police officers kept the protesters on a public sidewalk in front of O'Neill's home in an upscale Houston neighborhood.

"They have done the most indespicable (sic) thing that a man could ever do and that is attack an American veteran," Cobarruvias said. "We are going to do whatever it takes within the law to stop this and if it means coming to this man's house and protesting him within the law, that is what we are going to do."

Mary Gwen Hulsey hung signs from a second story balcony of O'Neill's home, one of which read: "Unfit for Command is the truth. Believe it." She also tried to defend her friend of 25 years.

"John O'Neill only tells the truth," she said. "And he is not a Republican. He would be doing this if John Kerry were a Republican. He just feels John Kerry cannot ever be the commander in chief because of what he did in Vietnam and when he got back."

Related: Blogs of War noticed earlier the Internet planning for this impotent demonstration.

Military and overseas voting

The votes of American expatriates abroad are more important than ever in this bitterly competitive political year, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Americans living in Mexico and elsewhere abroad are likely to vote in record numbers in this year's presidential contest, according to U.S. government officials, expatriate groups and campaigners from both parties.

In some battleground states, political analysts say, both the Kerry and Bush camps see expatriate votes as critical.

"After seeing how Florida was decided with 537 votes in 2000, both sides are campaigning with the assumption that every vote counts," said Tobe Berkowitz, a political analyst and associate dean at Boston University. "They have stepped up the hunt for the absentee ballots."

Officials at the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the U.S. government office that handles overseas balloting, estimate that more than 6 million American citizens over the age of 18 currently live abroad. All have the right to cast absentee ballots in the last U.S. county where they lived, no matter how long ago that was.

In the 2000 presidential election, less than a third of such expatriates voted, according to Ellen Krankie, a spokeswoman for the program. But this summer, she said, Americans outside the United States have sent in a record number of applications for absentee ballots.

Recommended resources:

Association of Americans Resident Overseas
Federal Voting Assistance Program
Republicans Abroad
Tell An American To Vote
Texas Military/Overseas Voters
Top 10 Armed Forces Absentee Voting Tips

Plus-up now

Savvy Austin Bay says Uncle Sam needs to spread around some cash in Iraq to win hearts and minds. Makes a lot of sense.

Money is ammo in Iraq, and right now our troops on the ground are short-changed.

Pay attention, Bush administration and Congress: The specific program with the most effective bang-for-bucks is CERP, Commander's Emergency Response Program funds. The military needs a plus-up in CERP funds in Iraq and needs it now.

It always takes cash (or, more elegantly, economic power) to create, reinforce and sustain military power. In the final analysis, bricks — not bombs — win wars the way America wants to win and, frankly, needs to win in the 21st century. The brickwork of new infrastructure, the human cornerstone of an educated and entrepreneurial population — these foundations sustain victory in the War on Terror.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Ambassador John Negroponte asked for more CERP funds earlier this summer, but now it's September. On Monday, the administration "reprogrammed" $3.46 billion out of $18 billion budgeted for Iraqi reconstruction. Some of that must increase CERP funds. Here's a guess: $200 million channeled through CERP will have positive effects by December. The big infrastructure projects bankrolled by the $18 billion are necessary, but their payoff is three to five years away.

CERP fills that gap, and even small amounts can buy good will.

Our guys were doing that last year; why were they cut back? Answer: the inscrutable minds of Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority.

The project started with found money, the bundles of $50 and $100 bills that advance units found in Saddam Hussein's palaces as they rumbled into the country last spring, but was quickly expanded when front-line soldiers began reporting back that it looked like their best weapon in combating the insurgency. Between May and the end of October, about $80 million was spent.

But then the money ran out in the middle of October, and the casualties began to mount. There were both funding problems, and also concerns within the centralized Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad that it didn't have enough oversight of the program.

If the choice is "oversight" versus RESULTS, the choice would seem to be clear. Plus-up now.

Hotness?

A form of photoblogging: women choose between the two candidates.

Big media should say thanks

Humble bloggers get more respect (thanks to Dan Rather's idiocy), this time from writer Chris Nolan on PRI's Marketplace radio show. Give it a listen.

Related: Chris Nolan's Politics from Left to Right

Global warming twaddle

Right now Hurricane Ivan is pounding Mobile, Alabama, but it looks like New Orleans will be spared its doomsday scenario. Still, this violent storm will likely reshape the geography of the Gulf Coast.

Related note: last week British PM Tony Blair, riffing off the flurry of Atlantic hurricanes, tried to express deep thoughts about global warming. Very sensible Brit journalist Melanie Phillips has fisked his statement thoroughly. Her introductory comment sums it all up:

Tony Blair's speech on global warming was simply nonsense on stilts from start to finish.

Her conclusion:

Global warming is an enormous scam, the greatest scentific scandal of the latter part of the 20th century. Like many who may themselves even boast a string of letters after their name, the Prime Minister has made a complete ass of himself, as history will eventually record.

Read the whole thing to see what's between the bookends, and learn.

ABC plunges in the knife

ABC has used its flagship Evening News program to issue more body blows to Dan Rather and CBS News over their use of forged documents. Brian Ross was the on-air reporter and he's written up his report.

Two of the document experts hired by CBS News now say the network ignored concerns they raised prior to the broadcast of 60 Minutes II about the disputed National Guard records attributed to Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.

"I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter," she said.

Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.

"I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story," Will said.

But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush's National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.

"I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News.

A second document examiner hired by CBS News, Linda James of Plano, Texas, also told ABC News she had concerns about the documents and could not authenticate them.

"I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," James said. "And that's why I have come forth to talk about it because I don't want anybody to think I did authenticate these documents."

This is not an original thought, but is worth repeating nonetheless: at this point, the only plausible reason for CBS News to continue its stonewalling, in the face of both overwhelming evidence to the contrary AND widespread scorn, is to protect its source. The identity of the source must be immensely more embarrassing than the humiliation from the documents scandal itself. That's very interesting. So too will be the coming days.

Worst case scenario

With Hurricane Ivan bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the mayor of New Orleans and other officials issued a call for a voluntary evacuation on Monday.

The call by New Orleans city officials and those in the city's largest suburb, Jefferson Parish, fell short of a mandatory evacuation. But Mayor Ray Nagin and parish President Aaron Broussard both said the area faces strong winds and potential floods from Ivan.

"We're going to get hit," Broussard said during a news conference. "We don't know if were going to get a punch in the mouth or a kick in the knee. But we're going to get hit."

Mayor Ray Nagin got more specific Tuesday:

In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin declared a state of emergency and strongly recommended that residents evacuate immediately.... Nagin said that as of Tuesday morning there was a 22 percent chance that New Orleans would take a direct hit from Ivan.

"The city basically sits like a bowl and most of the city is under sea level ... so if we get a storm like Ivan to hit us directly" there could be 12 to 18 feet of water in the city, Nagin said. If people can't get out of New Orleans, the mayor said, they should do a "vertical evacuation."

"Basically, go to hotels and high-rise buildings in the city," Nagin explained.

Is Nagin being alarmist or overly cautious? Hardly. Back in 2000, USA Today published an analysis of the potentially catastrophic results of a direct storm hit on New Orleans. Ivan could represent an end-of-the-world scenario for the Crescent City.

New Orleans, a city of nearly 1.4 million people, sits below sea level, as much as 8 feet lower than water in nearby Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River and its delta, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This in effect creates a "bowl" that floodwaters can settle into, like water headed for a stopped-up drain.

To combat this unique problem, a system of levees surrounds the city to hold back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south, says Joseph Suhayda, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The levee that holds back Lake Pontchartrain is 15 feet high while the one guarding against the Mississippi River is 20 feet tall.

Suhayda says the 15-foot levee will protect the city from a minimum hurricane of Category 1 or 2 intensity and at best a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale.

"A slow-moving Category 3 or any Category 4 or 5 hurricane passing within 20 or 30 miles of New Orleans would be devastating," Suhayda says.

The storm surge — water pushed into a mound by hurricane winds — would pour over the Pontchartrain levee and flood the city. A severe hurricane could push floodwaters inside the New Orleans bowl as high as 20-30 feet, covering most homes and the first three or four stories of buildings in the city, he says. "This brings a great risk of casualties."

In this type of scenario the metro area could be submerged for more than 10 weeks, says Walter S. Maestri, Director of Emergency Management for Jefferson Parish, which encompasses more than half of the city. In those 10 weeks, residents would need drinking water, food and a dry place to live.

Besides the major problems flooding would bring, there is also concern about a potentially explosive and deadly problem. Suhayda says flooding of the whole city could easily mix industrial and household chemicals into a toxic and volatile mix. Coupled with an estimated 100,000 tons of sediment, a cleanup could take several months. In the worst case scenario, the mix of toxic chemicals could make some areas of the city uninhabitable. "It could take several years for the city to recover fully, economically, from a strong hurricane," says Suhayda.

UPDATE: Now the Associated Press files a similarly apocalyptic report, "Direct hit by Ivan in New Orleans could mean a modern Atlantis."

People floating through a polluted stew to treetops, competing with fire ants for a dry perch — a direct hit here by Hurricane Ivan could be that horrifying, Louisiana storm damage experts say.

Surveys show about 300,000 of the city's 1.6 million metro-area residents would choose to risk staying inside the city's ring of levees.

Much of town would be inundated for weeks, meaning the hundreds of thousands who evacuated or could be rescued would have to stay with friends, relatives or in sprawling temporary shelters to the north for weeks.

The rescue operation, meanwhile, would be among the world's biggest since World War II, when Allied Forces rescued mostly British soldiers from Dunkirk, France, and brought them across the English Channel in 1940, van Heerden predicted.

Via Donald Sensing, who reports that he noted such predictions back in 2002, find related info from NPR here and here, as well as American RadioWorks:

Basically, the part of New Orleans that most Americans—most people around the world—think is New Orleans, would disappear.

Suyhayda agrees, "It would, that's right."

Just pray that this thing spares New Orleans.

UPDATE: In August 2005, the worst case scenario is back, thanks to Hurricane Katrina.

No mere mouthpiece here

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, old-style liberal and a stalwart defender of the First Amendment, takes time out to defend Fox News Channel from its empty-headed critics.

I wonder how many of those clamoring to shut up Fox have actually watched the channel. To be sure, Fox houses an array of such bristling conservative commentators as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. But their hosts continually welcome direct, on-air combat with guests of vigorously opposing views. I've been on Mr. O'Reilly's show, and I didn't have to be carried out.

Moreover, having covered Congress and the presidency for more than a half-century, I rate Fox's Carl Cameron and Jim Angle as among the fairest and most illuminating broadcast correspondents on the beat. Also, Fox reporters in the field, around the world, are professional, resourceful journalists, not apparatchiks for the Republican Party.

Fox News is watched by more Americans, on many nights, than CNN. On the first night of the Republican convention, an average of 3.6 million viewers watched Fox, compared with 1.2 million CNN viewers. Fox continually trumps MSNBC. On three nights, Fox beat NBC, CBS and ABC. Its coverage does indeed appeal to conservatives, but not only conservatives. When I teach, I advise students to watch Fox from time to time, and judge for themselves. They might be quite surprised.

Stand with him now

Debra Burlingame kindly writes to call attention to a new website: 911FamiliesForAmerica.org.

Now she and other family members of the casualties of 9/11 have joined together to announce their solidarity with our President during a time of crisis.

We speak to you from the heart, as citizens from all across the country and every political stripe. We are Republicans and Democrats, “liberals” and “conservatives,” young and old. We are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters and friends. We speak out from a profound sense of obligation to those we have lost and to the country that we love. Guided by core principles, President Bush has steadfastly told us who he is, what he believes and what he will fight for. He is a caring and decisive leader who is not afraid to make hard choices to keep this nation safe, by keeping it strong. He has sent a clear message to America’s friends and foes that he will not waver in his resolve as the winds of political fortune change. He will not revert to the failed policies of the past which only served to whet the appetite of those who would destroy us. He will stand firm against our adversaries.

As Americans who have keenly felt the scourge of terrorism, we are inspired and energized to follow the President’s lead, to rise to the occasion and get the job done. We are deeply grateful to President Bush, who rallied this nation on that dark September day, who has earned our respect and confidence, and whose leadership we trust to steer this country on the right path.

Three years ago, George W. Bush stood with us and vowed that he would “Never forget.”

We stand with him now.

There's more.

Debra closed her e-mail, "Keep up the good fight." Those words apply much more to her and her compatriots. The rest of us can only try to help.

Saving New York City

Annoyed by harsh criticism of President Bush from former New York governor Mario Cuomo, Dick Morris explains how the Bush administration and the Patriot Act saved New York City from another terrorist attack.

In March of last year, federal intelligence officials reported to the NYPD that they had noticed significant "chatter" by al Qaeda terrorists about the Brooklyn Bridge. (Apparently, the name doesn't easily translate into Arabic.)

Under the terms of the Patriot Act, which the left criticizes, federal intelligence operatives were obliged to share their findings with the NYPD - precisely the kind of information sharing so little in evidence before 9/11. As a result, the department, under Ray Kelly's able leadership, flooded the bridge with police.

Federal intelligence officials then intercepted a communication to al Qaeda from an operative in New York that the operation against the landmark bridge was impossible because "the weather is too hot."

Bush's military and intelligence officials got a captive, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a top bin Laden deputy, to identify the terrorist assigned to blow up the bridge. Acting on the evidence they elicited from interrogations specifically allowed by the policies of the Bush administration, the NYPD closed in and arrested the terrorist, Iyman Faris, before he could act.

Faris' plans for the destruction of the bridge were chillingly detailed and coincided precisely with the findings of engineers employed by the NYPD to determine how one might go about destroying the 120- year-old landmark.

If the left had its way, we never would have arrested Mohammed or questioned him without his attorney or held him for any length of time. The information-sharing required by the Patriot Act would not have happened, and the bridge might today be a haunting memory along with the estimated 10,000 people who would have perished in the attack.

Standing firm

Free thinking Democrat Zell Miller has taken some strong hits from members of his party for his support of President Bush, including bitter criticism from an increasingly incoherent Jimmy Carter. Well, the former USMC expert rifleman isn't backing down one bit, as he explains in today's Wall Street Journal.

As I have said time and again, 9/11 changed everything. Everything, that is, except the national Democrats' shameful, manic obsession with bringing down a commander in chief. John Kerry has been wrong many times, but he's never been more wrong than in his failure to support our troops and our commander in chief in this war on terror.

So, my critics can call me a psychopath and fire spitballs at me and froth at the mouth when an ex-president sends me a nasty letter. That's the freedom of speech they all enjoy, courtesy of the American soldier.

But for David Gergen and this newspaper's Al Hunt, among others, to call me a racist was especially hurtful. For they know better. They know I worked for three governors in a row, not just one: Carl Sanders, Lester Maddox and Jimmy Carter. They knew I was the first governor to try to remove the Confederate emblem from the Georgia flag. And by the way, when I called each of Georgia's former governors to tell them what I was about to attempt, Jimmy Carter's first question to me was, "What are you doing that for?" Mr. Gergen and Mr. Hunt also know I appointed the only African-American attorney general in the country in the 1990s and more African Americans to the state judiciary than all the other governors of Georgia combined, including that one from Plains.

So, they can call me names and ridicule my angry demeanor all day long. But facts are facts. And the fact is, John Kerry has a long record of proposals to weaken our national security in a time of war. And I would never put my family's safety in those hands.

Crippled by history

Belmont Club invokes a brilliant historical analogy to explain the deeper significance of the blogosphere's swarming takedown of CBS News last week.

The CBS attempt to escape the kill zone and regain the offensive on the Bush National Guard story appears to have failed. By clutching the faked documents closer to the center of their story they may have effectively destroyed their own expose.

The real catastrophe for CBS is that Killian incident is probably not an isolated setback so much as proof that maneuvers which worked in the past can no longer be attempted with impunity. The equivalent of the longbow had arrived on the media scene. When the longbow was first deployed on the European battlefield, it was obviously a formidable weapon.

But it was long years before it was taken seriously. After all, mounted cavalry was the aristocratic weapon and the longbow that of the despised yeomen, the medieval equivalent of bloggers in their pajamas.

(Read the whole thing.)

At least the French at Agincourt recognized when they were defeated by Henry V's archers. CBS News increasingly resembles something more absurd: the crippled Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Armless, legless, and flailing, he continued to erupt with bravado while the world rode on by him.

JI on the move?

Just as we finish re-living the 9/11 atrocities, today brings new terror warnings via The Telegraph in London.

Fanatics from the Islamic terror faction blamed for last week's suicide attack on the Australian embassy in Indonesia are planning to hijack an oil tanker or freighter and turn it into a floating bomb, The Telegraph has learned.

United States intelligence has passed on warnings about the plot to launch an attack in the region's busy shipping lanes to several countries, including Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. They acted after intercepting communications between activists from Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a network linked to al Qa'eda.

The terrorists have been discussing plans to seize a vessel using local pirates. The hijacked ship would be wired with explosives and then directed at other vessels, sailed towards a port or used to threaten the narrow and congested sea routes around Indonesia.

Strong indications that Islamic extremists are planning a new wave of bloody attacks against Western targets also emerged in Pakistan where detained militants revealed that the latest al Qa'eda video tape was intended to be a trigger for fresh atrocities.

Prisoners captured in recent weeks have told their interrogators that last week's taped message from Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, was a signal for al Qa'eda cells that were already on standby.

This new report is consistent with earlier predictions last December and October.

The Strait of Malacca is recognized by experts as a key world oil transit chokepoint.

The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the shortest sea route between three of the world's most populous countries -- India, China, and Indonesia -- and therefore is considered to be the key choke point in Asia. The narrowest point of this shipping lane is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, which is only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest point. This creates a natural bottleneck, with the potential for a collision, grounding, or oil spill (in addition, piracy is a regular occurrence in the Singapore Strait). If the strait were closed, nearly half of the world's fleet would be required to sail further, generating a substantial increase in the requirement for vessel capacity.

Terrorists and pirates: an alliance of the ruthless.

• Study - Straits, Passages and Chokepoints: A Maritime Geostrategy of Petroleum Distribution (2004) [pdf]
• IMB Piracy Reporting Centre - Weekly Piracy Report
• Article - British naval chief warns of Al-Qaeda threat to shipping (Aug 2004)

Mushroom cloud in North Korea

Here's disturbing news from northeast Asia:

A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.

The Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified source in Beijing, said the explosion happened Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county blasted a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.

"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5 to 4 kilometers (about 2-2 1/2 miles) in diameter was monitored during the explosion," Yonhap quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul as saying.

North Korea was founded Sept. 9, 1948. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.

Experts have speculated that North Korea might use a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, though there was no immediate indication that Thursday's reported explosion was linked to Pyongyang's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Kim Hyong Jik is reported to hold a major missile base. North Korea, which has a large missile arsenal and more than 1 million soldiers, is dotted with military installations.

A smaller, but still catastrophic explosion in a train station last spring may have been an assassination attempt against North Korea's deranged dictator Kim Jong Il. This new very large blast is on another scale entirely.

A New York Times story filed just hours earlier may be connected, or might even have been superseded by events:

President Bush and his top advisers have received intelligence reports in recent days describing a confusing series of actions by North Korea that some experts believe could indicate the country is preparing to conduct its first test explosion of a nuclear weapon, according to senior officials with access to the intelligence.

While the indications were viewed as serious enough to warrant a warning to the White House, American intelligence agencies appear divided about the significance of the new North Korean actions, much as they were about the evidence concerning Iraq's alleged weapons stockpiles.

Some analysts in agencies that were the most cautious about the Iraq findings have cautioned that they do not believe the activity detected in North Korea in the past three weeks is necessarily the harbinger of a test. A senior scientist who assesses nuclear intelligence says the new evidence "is not conclusive," but is potentially worrisome.

If successful, a test would end a debate that stretches back more than a decade over whether North Korea has a rudimentary arsenal, as it has boasted in recent years. Some analysts also fear that a test could change the balance of power in Asia, perhaps leading to a new nuclear arms race there.

In interviews on Friday and Saturday, senior officials were reluctant to provide many details of the new activities they have detected, but some of the information appears to have come from satellite intelligence.

One official with access to the intelligence called it "a series of indicators of increased activity that we believe would be associated with a test," saying that the "likelihood" of a North Korean test had risen significantly in just the past four weeks.

UPDATE: CNN reports that the cloud is not a nuke, which is good news if true.

A large cloud that appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago was not the result of a nuclear explosion, according to a U.S. official. The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.

South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-yong said the government was aware of the reports and is checking them. "I have no information about the size of the damage of the explosion," he said on Sunday, according to Yonhap.

Chung also said he believed there was no correlation between the explosion and reports of North Korea preparing for a possible nuclear test.

None of North Korea's known nuclear sites are in the country's northernmost provinces.

Yonhap reported the explosion happened in Yanggang province along the Chinese border, the site of Yongjori Missile Base -- a large facility with an underground missile firing range.

Patriot Day 2004

The memories of September 11th will never leave us. We will not forget the burning towers, and the last phone calls, and the smoke over Arlington. We will not forget the rescuers who ran toward danger, and the passengers who rushed the hijackers. We will not forget the men and women who went to work on a typical day and never came home. We will not forget the death of schoolchildren who were on a school trip.

And we will never forget the servants of evil who plotted the attacks. And we will never forget those who rejoiced at our grief and our mourning.

- President George W. Bush, address to the FBI, September 10, 2003

There are those who might be tempted to think that if we would only pull back, if our country would only withdraw from this global struggle against extremists and let events abroad run their course, let those folks go about their business, that somehow the combat, the conflict, the ugliness on our TV screens and newspapers would go away, and that we could return to that more comforting time that preceded the September 11th attacks.

But if you think about it, that's not the way the world really was before September 11th. Consider the world of September 10th and before. Two Americans and six others stood on trial by the Taliban in Afghanistan for the crime of preaching their religion. The leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Massoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein -- by Osama bin Laden, Taliban's co- conspirator. An Iraqi newspaper put out by Saddam Hussein's son Uday called on European corporations to pressure their governments to break with the United States and Britain, so that the sanctions would be lifted.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis were bragging about having shot down a U.S. drone in late August. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz vowed that Iraq would inflict losses on the U.S. and Britain -- that were flying in the southern and northern no-fly zones. Our planes were being shot at every week. Libya's undeclared nuclear weapons program proceeded apace, with technologies and materials being supplied in part, at least, by a network -- a secret network headed by the rogue, A.Q. Khan, a man who also aided the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran and possibly others. All of this was before September 11th.

Closer to home, a man named Hani Hanjour and his associates checked into a Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia, about 20 miles from here, and they would board the American Airlines Flight No. 77 at Dulles the next morning. And in New Jersey, a young Todd Beamer postponed until the following morning a business trip to California because he and his wife Lisa had just returned from Europe and he wanted to spend an extra day with his children.

September 10th, 2001, was not the last day of world innocence. It was, however, the last day of America's lack of understanding of a worldwide extremist movement determined to terrorize, to defeat, to destroy civilized people everywhere.

It was the murder of so many and the destruction of so much in one morning on our soil three years ago that brought home what we're up against in this ongoing struggle.

As long as we continue our mission, as long as we work to change terrorists' way of life before they succeed in changing our way of life, as long as we avoid a return to the false comfort of September 10th, 2001, victory will come, just as it has in conflicts in the past.

For all of the enemy's ruthlessness -- and it is total, there is nothing they will not do, indeed there is nothing they have not done -- we have an enormous advantage. I say "we." I don't mean the people of the United States; I mean the people in the 85 or 90 nations across the globe that are cooperating in this effort, in this war against -- this struggle against extremism. And the advantage is that the great sweep of human history is for freedom. And that is on our side.

- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, September 10, 2004

Selected links:

Blogs of War - comprehensive roundup
Rhonda Byrd's The Blood of Heroes (via PoliPundit)
National Review 911 Archive
Rich Lowry - The Unfathomable Human Toll

Barnes discounted

Former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes (and major league John Kerry supporter) tells Dan Rather that he pulled strings to unfairly help a draft-age George W. Bush get in the Texas Air National Guard. Well, on Fox News tonight, veteran Texas politico Dick Armey, when he could get in a word over a hyped-up Geraldine Ferraro, said Barnes was well known in the state as an untrustworthy character.

Was Armey just being partisan? Hardly. An alert reader in Houston e-mails this:

I was in high school at the time but I remember every night on TV the Sharpstown scandal was the top of the news in 1971 & 1972.

I used to drive by the Shapstown Mall and see the building, renamed, renovated but it was a landmark, the Sharpstown Bank, a monument to greed and bribery
that brought down the careers of many Texas politicians.

When I heard the name Ben Barnes in relation to President Bush, I kept thinking...the Sharpstown crook? Must be someone else...nope, same guy. He has been submerged for 30 years and he pops up with this? Sad, very very sad.

For more information, inquiring minds can consult the authoritative Handbook of Texas concerning the "Sharpstown Stock Fraud Scandal," and read about the corruption involving "Lieutenant Governor Barnes, whose seemingly inexorable rise to political prominence was ended when his reputation was tainted by the scandal."

Texas went through one of its traditional and periodic governmental scandals in 1971-72, when federal accusations and then a series of state charges were leveled against nearly two dozen state officials and former state officials.... [T]he incumbent governor was labeled an unindicted coconspirator in a bribery case and lost his bid for reelection; the incumbent speaker of the House of Representatives and two associates were convicted felons; a popular three-term attorney general lost his job; an aggressive lieutenant governor's career was shattered; and half of the legislature was either intimidated out or voted out of office.

Ben Barnes's own daughter told WBAP radio in Dallas that her dad is not being truthful. You can listen to the audio (Windows Media).

Not the strong foundation on which smart politicians would build their attack strategy, is it?

Courting failure

Jeremiah returns: astringent Mark Helprin is back and he's still very disturbed by America's political class during a time of genuine crisis.

Three years after September 11, where do we stand?

Out of fear and confusion we have hesitated to name the enemy. We proceed as if we are fighting disparate criminals united by coincidence, rather than the vanguard of militant Islam, united by ideology, sentiment, doctrine, and practice, its partisans drawn from Morocco to the Philippines, Chechnya to the Sudan, a vast swath of the earth that, in regard to the elemental beliefs that fuel jihad, is as homogeneous as Denmark.

Too timid to admit to a clash of civilizations even as it occurs, we failed to declare the war, thus forfeiting clarity of intent and the unambiguous consent of the American people. This was a sure way, as in the Vietnam era, to divide the country and prolong the battle.

Neither the [9-11] commission, the president, nor the Democratic nominee has a clear vision of how to fight and defend in this war. Partly this is because so many Americans do not yet feel, as some day they may, the gravity of what we are facing.

Three years on, that is where we stand: our strategy shiftless, reactive, irrelevantly grandiose; our war aims undefined; our preparations insufficient; our civil defense neglected; our polity divided into support for either a hapless and incompetent administration that in a parliamentary system would have been turned out long ago, or an opposition so used to appeasement of America's rivals, critics, and enemies that they cannot even do a credible job of pretending to be resolute.

Like his essay noted last May, this should be read in its entirety. Not comfortable, just essential.

Russia-Israel alliance

Russia and Vladimir Putin have an important new ally in their escalating war against Islamic terrorists.

Russia is turning for help against terrorism to a country with long experience, signing a memorandum with Israel yesterday pledging the two countries will work more closely in fighting the scourge.

The increased sophistication of the terrorists in Chechnya and growing signs of an Arab role in last week's school attack in Beslan, Russia — where 120 victims were buried yesterday — appear to have overcome Moscow's concerns about offending its Arab allies by cooperating with Israel.

An Israeli spokesman said yesterday's memorandum with Russia aimed to "encourage in every possible way the development of broad bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation in fighting international terrorism."

Israeli radio said cooperation is expected to move quickly into operational areas, with exchanges of intelligence information, mutual visits by anti-terror teams and the joint development of models for dealing with different kinds of terror threats.

Russian authorities were reeling at the realization that the attack in Beslan had been planned for months and that the terrorists had been able to smuggle explosives into the school virtually under the noses of police, who had a station 200 yards away.

Other reports have suggested al Qaeda-linked terrorists may have taken charge of the Chechen insurgency, sidelining indigenous leaders such as fugitive Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. As many as 10 of those involved in last week's attack were Arabs, Russian officials said.

Israel has deep, if tragic, experience dealing with murderous fanatics, much of it very successful. And, contrary to the U.S. State Dept., Ariel Sharon doesn't seem to have called for the Russians to negotiate with terrorists, or those who have collaborated with them. This alliance should be interesting to watch. /font>