Petrified Truth

Puppy at the groomer

Here's how John Edwards keeps earning his moniker of "Breck Girl." Not 100% sure this will strike fear in the hearts of our terrorist enemies.

Bush in New Jersey

President Bush rocked the house Monday in New Jersey, where polls indicate he's within striking distance of the heavily favored Democratic ticket.

W had a lot to say about both the War on [Islamic] Terror and his increasingly irresponsible opponent. Excerpts:

The war on terror is a real war, with deadly enemies, not simply a police operation. In an era of weapons of mass destruction, waiting for threats to arrive at our doorsteps is to invite disaster. Tyrants and terrorists will not give us polite notice before they attack our country. As long as I'm the Commander-in-Chief, I will confront dangers abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.

My opponent has complained that we are trying to -- quote -- "impose" democracy on people in that region. Is that what he sees in Afghanistan, unwilling people have democracy forced upon them? We removed the Taliban by force, but democracy is rising in that country because the Afghan people, like everywhere, want to live in freedom.

No one forced them to register by the millions, or stand in long lines at polling places. On the day of that historic election, an Afghan widow brought all four of her daughters to vote alongside her. (Applause.) She said this -- she said, "When you see women here lined up to vote, this is something profound ... I never dreamed ... this day would come." But that woman's dream finally arrived, as it will one day across the greater Middle East.

The dream of freedom is moving forward in Iraq. The terrorists know it, and they hate it, and they fight it. And we can expect more violence as Iraq moves toward free elections. Yet, every day in Iraq, our coalition is defeating the enemy's strategic objectives. The enemy seeks to disrupt the march toward democracy. But an Iraqi independent electoral commission is up and running, political parties are planning campaigns, voter registration will begin next month -- and free and fair Iraqi elections will be held on schedule this coming January.

The violent acts of a few will not divert Iraqis and our coalition from the mission we have accepted. Iraq will be free, Iraqis will be secure and the terrorists will fail.

My opponent has a different outlook. While America does the hard work of fighting terror and spreading freedom, he has chosen the easy path of protest and defeatism. He refuses to acknowledge progress, or praise the growing democratic spirit in Iraq. He has not made democracy a priority of his foreign policy. But what is his strategy, his vision, his answer? Is he content to watch and wait, as anger and resentment grow for more decades in the Middle East, feeding more terrorism until radicals without conscience gain the weapons to kill without limit? Giving up the fight might seem easier in the short run, but we learned on September the 11th that if violence and fanaticism are not opposed at their source, they will find us where we live. America is safer today because Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting terrorists instead of harboring them. And I believe future generations of Americans will be spared violence and fear as democracy and hope and governments that oppose terror multiply across the Middle East.

Unfortunately, Senator Kerry does not share our commitment to victory in Iraq. For three years -- depending on the headlines, the poll numbers and political calculation -- he has taken almost every conceivable position on Iraq.

First, he said Saddam Hussein was a threat, and he voted for the war. Then he voted against funds for bullets and body armor for the troops he had voted to send into battle.

He declared himself an anti-war candidate. Months later he said that knowing everything we know now, he would have still voted for the war. Then he said the war was a "mistake," an "error," or "diversion." Having gone back and forth so many times, the Senator from Massachusetts has now flip-flopped his way to a dangerous position. My opponent -- my opponent finally has settled on a strategy, a strategy of retreat.

I have a record in office... And all Americans have seen that record. September the 4th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. It's a day I will never forget. Bernie might remember the workers in hard hats that were yelling at me and yelling at us, "Whatever it takes." A man grabbed me by the arm, just coming out of the rubble and he said, "Do not let me down." I have a responsibility that goes on. I wake up every morning thinking about how to make our country more secure. I acted again and again to protect the American people. I will never relent in defending our country, whatever it takes.

In a new term as your President, we will finish the work we have started. We will stand up for terror -- we will stand up for freedom. And on November the 2nd, my fellow Americans, I ask that you stand with me.

Apparently the crowd went absolutely crazy over Bush at the rally. It would be too sweet for words to see him snatch the Garden State out of the sweaty palms of the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

Syria's hidden hand

Here's an important article from the UK about what's powering the Iraqi insurgency: Ba'athist planners hiding in Syria.

A senior Baath party organiser and Saddam Hussein aide, Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, has been named by western intelligence officials as one of the key figures directing the Sunni insurgency from his hiding-place in neighbouring Syria.

The naming of Ahmed comes amid growing concern that hardline factions in Syria are providing protection for cells still loyal to the old Iraqi regime who were involved in organising the flow of money, people and material for fighters in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. This is despite Syrian moves to tighten up its border with Iraq after complaints from Washington and London that arms and foreign terrorists were crossing into Iraq.

The intelligence officials believe the activities of the Syrian-based former regime members - who quickly formed into cells after the fall of Saddam - may be a considerably more significant threat to the interim government of Ayad Allawi than the more widely visible activities of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been behind a series of beheadings and suicide bombings.

'The main organisational strength behind the insurgency is Baathist military intelligence types who enjoy safe refuge in Syria,' said one official. 'So although Syria has clamped down on the border, they have not done anything about the planners and organisers. We are talking about 20-50 people who have access to funds, who know how to organise and use existing networks and are adept at reforming into cells.'

The new assessment that former Baath party officials in hiding in Syria might, in reality, be more significant than Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, suggests an important change in emphasis in the understanding of the increasingly more violent insurgency.

Zarqawi, some officials now believe, could not survive 'if he was not tolerated and exploited by the old Baathists'.

The disclosure, however, that it is largely regime officials who are leading and funding the insurgency, tapping into a widespread discontent among many Iraqis, will raise questions again over whether the resistance is conforming in large part to a plan prepared before the fall of Baghdad.

'The idea that it was organised before the war is beginning to reassert itself,' says Dr Rosemary Hollis of Chatham House. 'There is a thesis that is gaining some currency with Arab nationalists that this definitely required a lot of preparation. There is also an increasingly long-term view, that they are playing a long game and, with a properly managed resistance, this is a conflict that can be won and that the Americans can be forced to go home.'

Read the whole thing for more details, but don't buy for a minute the notion that it's only "hardline factions" in Syria that are behind this. Syria's president, Bashar Assad, is surely playing all sides in the conflict for all they're worth.

Poodle

The National Rifle Association produces the best single-image ad of the presidential election campaign. Coming to a billboard near you, if you live in the right state.

George F. Will thinks the NRA's stance is important.

There are 170,000 precincts in America and the NRA says it has election volunteer coordinators in every one. Even on Manhattan's Upper West Side? In West Hollywood? Yes.

By Election Day the NRA will have sent out 15 million pieces of mail to susceptible men. And women. One in three women owns at least one gun. Hear them roar, in numbers too big to ignore.

Changing minds

A mocking anti-Kerry ad under development by the Club for Growth is a good 'un.

Tip via Power Line.

NYT fires a volley

One week after publishing Matt Bai's hagiographic profile of John Kerry (including Kerry's pretzel-logic reasoning about reducing terrorism to a mere "nuisance"), the Sunday New York Times Magazine does George W. Bush in 8,500 words or less.

Suskind's theme now? Why, President Bush is the nation's first religious fanatic to occupy the seat of power as commander-in-chief. In fact, Bush's sense of confidence, so valued by most ordinary Americans, is symptomatic of a kind of fundamentalist meglomania.

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.

The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House.

The nation's founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties of Europe's state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush -- both captive and creator of this moment -- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He has created the faith-based presidency.

Conveniently, Bush's God-drenched White House demands the utmost secrecy, so there aren't many named sources for Suskind's journalistic efforts.

The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. When I quoted O'Neill saying that Bush was like ''a blind man in a room full of deaf people,'' this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush's faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue -- public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House.

There is one story about Bush's particular brand of certainty I am able to piece together and tell for the record.

There's little genuine insight in this hatchet job, except an illumination of what the frightened smart set thinks of this decisive President. But read the whole thing anyway so you'll know what the carefully choreographed yattering from the Left will be about over the coming days.

I warned some weeks ago that what's to come "will be unprecedented in political brutality." Now we're down to the final dirty two weeks. It will get much worse as the President's enemies at home and abroad grow more desperate.

al Qaeda targets Musharraf?

Here's an interesting Reuters report on a possible shift in al Qaeda's tactics and therefore an explanation for recent mysterious violence in Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda appears to be using established militant groups and small cells for bloody attacks in Pakistan aimed at destabilising President Pervez Musharraf and thus the wider war on terror, analysts say.

In the past month, Pakistan has been rocked by a fresh wave of bombings of majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim gatherings that have killed nearly 80 people.

It has also seen its ties with its closest ally China tested by the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan in which one of the foreign hostages died.

Diplomats and other analysts believe al Qaeda cells are using Pakistan as a key battleground in its broader war against the United States and are exploiting long-standing enmity between Sunni and Shi'ite extremists to further this aim.

They say the government's failure to crack down on groups it has used for years as tools of policy in the divided Kashmir region and in Afghanistan has played into al Qaeda's hands.

Foreign militants have given a dangerous dimension to a sectarian rivalry that dates back to late 1970s military ruler Zia-ul-Haq, who nurtured Islamic groups to marginalise mainstream politicians and advance foreign policy objectives.

After Musharraf joined the U.S.-led war on terror he announced a ban on several militant groups, but some simply began working openly under new names, while others went underground.

The government has also failed to follow through on its vow to reform Islamic schools that are militant recruiting grounds.

Diplomats say the government appears reluctant to act because it feels it still needs the militants for their original purpose -- to advance policy aims, particularly against nuclear-armed rival India in the divided Himalayan state of Kashmir.

Pakistan rejects Indian charges that it has continued to assist guerrillas conducting a bloody war in Kashmir, but diplomats say that, even if it had stopped doing so, it did not yet feel ready to cut the militants completely adrift.

In the meantime, seeing Musharraf's peace moves with India and role in the war on terror as a threat to their existence, the militants have been doing all they can to end his rule.

Via Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters, who notes:

Musharraf wants to eat his cake and have it, too. He still has not learned the lesson that the US wants to teach rogue nations in this war: legitimate governments must cease using terror groups as proxies to fight wars, or else they cease being legitimate governments.

Some of Captain Ed's commenters disagree. What would Mansoor Ijaz say?

Desperate measures

Trying to exploit a highly personal reservoir of voter interest, John Kerry continued pandering today to the hopes of those who suffer from debilitating illnesses and tragic injuries.

By restricting stem cell research, President Bush has turned his back on this hope. He’s made the wrong choice to sacrifice science for extreme right-wing ideology. And right now, there is such possibility for treatments that could transform our lives – but because of the stem cell ban, they are still beyond our reach.... I believe that when it comes to our most promising research – there’s no such thing as false hope.

Christopher Reeve once remarked that “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” Together, we’re going to fight to make Chris’ impossible dream a beautiful reality. We’re going to once again say yes to science, yes to discovery, and yes to a new era of hope for all Americans.

The true character of using stem-cell research as a campaign wedge issue was violently exposed just two days ago by former physician Charles Krauthammer, wheelchair-bound himself but indomitable.

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

[T]he implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

Stem-cell research and the utterly false fanning of military draft fears among young voters (and their families) are only two of the scurrilous tactics now being employed by the Democrats.

Best of the best

In a book talk on C-SPAN, savvy White House correspondent Bill Sammon says George W. Bush's address at the National Cathedral on Sept. 14, 2001 may be the best speech Bush has ever given. President Bush has given more than a few such speeches, but Sammon may be right here.

Read the full text, courtesy of the White House archive.

We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who love them.

On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes, and bent steel.

Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read. They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life. They are the names of people who faced death, and in their last moments called home to say, be brave, and I love you.

They are the names of passengers who defied their murderers, and prevented the murder of others on the ground. They are the names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States, and died at their posts.

They are the names of rescuers, the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger over them, and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.

To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.

Our purpose as a nation is firm. Yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed, and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there is a searching, and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on Tuesday, a woman said, "I prayed to God to give us a sign that He is still here." Others have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those still missing.

God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own. Yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral, are known and heard, and understood.

There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers, that give us strength for the journey. And there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.

This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end. And the Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave. We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion; in long lines of blood donors; in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.

And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down sixty-eight floors to safety. A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burn victims.

In these acts, and in many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another, and an abiding love for our country. Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background.

It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight vigils, and American flags, which are displayed in pride, and wave in defiance.

Our unity is a kinship of grief, and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for. But we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America, because we are freedom's home and defender. And the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.

On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.

As we have been assured, neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, can separate us from God's love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.

God bless America.

Remember.

Mossad's new Most Wanted

Israel is re-focusing its counter-terrorism resources in the wake of the recent Sinai massacre.

The Israeli government has ordered the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, to make the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda members its top priority after last Thursday's Sinai attacks that killed at least 33 people, including at least 11 Israeli tourists.

According to The Sunday Times, the order to the Mossad to turn its attention from Palestinian groups to Al-Qaeda was given by Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, after Israeli intelligence sources said the size of the blasts suggested they were the work of al Qaeda network.

"This time Al-Qaeda hit our back yard," an Israeli security source was quoted as saying by The Times. "If we don't focus on them, next time it will be Tel Aviv. After four years of intifada we've succeeded in containing the Palestinian terror, but now we're facing a much more ruthless enemy we can't ignore any more."

When Mossad was presented with a list of priorities for the current year, Al-Qaeda was not on it. Its main efforts were instead to be directed at Iran's nuclear ambitions and the activities of Palestinian groups in Lebanon and Syria, the London-based paper added.

Venezuela under the boot

Observant Wall Street Journal correspondent Mary Anastasia O'Grady says Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez is moving inexorably to further crush any dissent against his hold over the country.

Súmate -- which in Spanish literally means "Join-up" -- is a nonpartisan Venezuelan NGO with a goal of strengthening the country's democracy. All of its educational materials, activities in defense of the electoral rule of law and sources of funds are public information. In its short two years of life it has become a leading voice for civic involvement. No wonder Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez wants to quash it.

Chávez has accused four Súmate leaders of treason. If convicted they face eight to 16 years in prison. Their crime, according to the president and his henchmen, is accepting funding from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan agency that promotes democracy abroad. Chávez sees the NED as an organ of his enemy, the U.S. government.

For several years now Chávez has been trying to pick a fight with the Bush administration by using hateful rhetoric. The administration, perhaps wisely, has largely ignored the noises coming from Caracas. But with four brave and innocent democrats accused of conspiring with the U.S. to overthrow the Venezuelan government, it's clearly time for a more vigorous U.S. policy. The Súmate four have acted in good faith and undoubtedly believed that the Free World would support their work.

Súmate's real crime has been its effectiveness in challenging Chávez's increasingly authoritarian rule.

Travesty

Indomitable Charles Krauthammer has had more than enough of the Kerry campaign's ravings about stem cell research, especially after comments by raffish John Edwards this week.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.

Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that.

As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.

Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.

So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.

This is an outright lie.

Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.

There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

There's more.

Tax cuts advocated

Here's new support for pro-growth economic policy. Not what Democrats want to hear.

Edward Prescott, co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Economics, told CNBC Tuesday President George Bush's tax cuts should have been bigger.

Bush has cut taxes at least once per year -- to the tune of $1.7 trillion -- since he has been in office, cuts Prescott described as "pretty small."

"Tax rates were not cut enough," Prescott said, adding lower tax rates have historically provided a greater incentive to work.

Reagan's 1986 across-the-board cut, Prescott said, lowered U.S. tax rates while collecting the same revenue. "In the early '90s the economy was depressed by the tax increase in '93 by about 4 percent, and it's right at that level now," Prescott said.

Freeing Iraq

Seeking more fair and balanced information about Iraq? Ever wonder what Iraqis themselves (other than the jihadists) are doing and thinking? Tired of the stranglehold of the mainstream media? Want to support the evolution of a free Iraq?

• Voices of Iraq - 150 video cameras distributed across Iraq for the Iraqi people.
• Untold Iraq - Iraqis in their own words.

Iran extends its reach

Here's new confirmation of a story first reported last March: the Iranian takeover of Palestinian terrorism. It's just one more indictment in the lengthening list of threats posed by this hate-filled and extremely dangerous regime.

Iran has taken control of many Palestinian terrorist cells from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, giving them funds and orders to attack Israeli targets, and even rewarding successful missions with "bonuses", according to a senior Israeli security source.

For many years, Iran has given money and ideological support to radical Palestinian groups, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for most of the Israeli deaths in the past four years of the Palestinian uprising.

But Israel believes that much of the Fatah-affiliated armed faction, calling itself the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has now come under Iran's sway, especially in the West Bank.

Scores of Palestinian attacks, accounting for roughly a third of the 98 Israelis killed so far this year, are believed to have been orchestrated by the Lebanese Hizbollah movement.

"Hizbollah is a finger of Iran's hand," the senior Israeli security source said. "In the past year we can see increasing Iranian influence in Palestinian attacks on Israel.

"The same people sometimes receive money both from Arafat's headquarters and from Hizbollah. If the attack succeeds in causing fatalities, they get a bonus from Hizbollah."

Another security source said Hizbollah rewards Palestinian cells to the tune of $5,000 (£2,900) for each Israeli killed.

Israel regards Teheran as its mortal enemy, and has every interest in presenting Iran as a dangerous state sponsor of international terrorism. But on the issue of penetrating Fatah, Israel is in unusual agreement with Palestinian leaders.

Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian "president" who has been confined to his Ramallah headquarters for more than three years, said this week that Hizbollah was trying to infiltrate Fatah.

He said Iran was financing radical Islamist groups, and denounced Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei.

The source said Hizbollah also channels funds to Islamic Jihad, and has tried to recruit a "fifth column" among Israeli Arabs, who formally enjoy full citizenship rights as opposed to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel believes that Hamas, the most active of the Palestinian armed factions, has refused to receive orders from Hizbollah, regarding itself as an important movement in its own right.

Instead, the Israeli security sources say that Hamas liaises directly with Teheran through Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence agencies.

Watching Syria

Expert journalist Claudia Rosett has again mined the Duelfer Report for more details about Saddam Hussein's double-dealing under the infamous U.N. Oil for Food program.

Today's findings: Syria was a major benefactor and arms supplier, even while occupying a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

For dirty deals done with Saddam Hussein, France and Russia may take the cake — but that’s just the beginning.

Packed into the Iraq Survey Group report from CIA chief weapons sleuth Charles Duelfer is news that there were some mighty big crumbs for many more countries that loudly defended Saddam during last year’s debates at the United Nations. For a taste, take Syria.

During the U.N. showdown over Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, Syria held a seat and had a vote on the U.N. Security Council. From that world platform, in February 2003 — a month before the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq — Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Shara pitched a high-minded plea that the only solution was not war, but yet more haggling by the UN: "We can achieve peace if we pursue it with determination and armed with political will."

Meanwhile, Syria was pulling in big bucks for arming not the United Nation's "political will" but Saddam himself.

The Duelfer report says that in that same month before the war, while Syria’s Al-Shara was arguing for "peace," Saddam’s government was signing contracts with a Syrian company owned by a relative of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad. The contracts were to buy "portable air defense systems, Kornet antitank guided missiles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), heavy machine guns, and 20 million machinegun rounds for delivery to Iraq," according to a former high-ranking Iraqi official.

In the case of those particular munitions, delivery was apparently interrupted by the U.S.-led coalition's overthrow of Saddam’s regime. But plenty of forbidden items had poured through Syria to Iraq already, including munitions that may still be killing coalition troops and Iraqi civilians. For the final two years of Saddam’s regime, Duelfer’s report explains: "Syria was Iraq’s primary conduit for illicit imports," handling contracts for $1.2 billion worth of forbidden goods and services, including weapons and military technology.

This burst of Iraqi-Syrian commerce was no freelance spree. It came under the auspices of a formal trade protocol, signed in 2000 between the regimes of Saddam and Assad — a flagrant violation of U.N. sanctions. Under this government-to-government agreement, Syria re-opened the Iraq-Syria pipeline, which became Saddam’s prime conduit for smuggling out oil, and over the life of the protocol helped bring Saddam about $2.8 billion in illicit income.

Syria’s dirty traffic with Iraq included deals with state-owned firms in fellow dictatorships such as North Korea (global retailer of the covert missile market) and Belarus (one of Saddam’s financing and procurement hubs in the former Soviet bloc). Within Syria, according to Duelfer, such business involved a number of firms run by cronies or relatives of President Assad and entailed "support from agencies or personnel within the government itself."

Syria also served as an illicit banker for Baghdad, with the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria laundering hundreds of millions in Saddam’s secret funds, and by some accounts channeling Saddam’s stash onward via a CBS subsidiary in Beirut, capital of Syria’s vassal state, Lebanon.

Saddam’s shady business with the Commercial Bank of Syria is all the more disturbing given that this past May the U.S. Treasury designated this bank as a conduit for "numerous transactions that may be indicative of terrorist financing," including "two accounts at CBS that reference a reputed financier for Usama bin Laden."

More details here.

For further confirmation as to where Syria's sympathies lie, look no further than this story today:

American troops stationed along Iraq's border with Syria are coming under increasing mortar attack from shells fired from Syrian territory, but it's unclear who's responsible, U.S. officers said Thursday.

The 82 mm mortar rounds have been fired at U.S. and Iraqi positions in and around Husaybah in the far west of Iraq's Anbar province, said Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

"Who exactly is firing these mortars, we do not know. But what we do know is that the point of origin of these rounds is on the Syrian side of the border," said Woodbridge, 39, of Brooklyn.

There has been no evidence linking the Syrian military to the attacks, he said. However, the Syrian military has the capability to determine who is launching the mortars and act against them, Woodbridge said.

Take it back

New word of the day: "whoop-tushie." As in, the can of what Lynne Cheney is going to open on an outrageously loose-lipped Elizabeth Edwards.

Bring. It. On.

Taking out bad guys

These comments about progress in the War on [Islamic] Terror are certainly encouraging.

President Bush's three-year-old strategy of fighting a multifront war on terror is stretching enemy forces thin and reducing their ability to mount attacks in Afghanistan, said U.S. officials and independent authorities.

Much of the debate in the United States has centered on U.S. forces being stressed in the global war. But military analysts are pointing to Afghanistan's near-violence-free elections on Saturday as an example of enemy forces being depleted to the point where they cannot sustain attacks.

The analysts also say some of the thousands of terrorists trained in Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps have gone to fight in other areas, such as Iraq, further stretching their capabilities.

"The terrorists are being used up, and they're losing hundreds a day in many cases," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a military analyst. "The administration has a low profile on that. But [the terrorists] are suffering severe casualties. That's why there was success in Afghanistan, Samara, and now you have negotiations in Fallujah and Ramadi." The Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are run, in part, by militants.

"The fact is the summer offensive we conducted that has been going on for the last six months has had a significant impact on terrorists trying to organize attacks that could have come about during the election," Gen. McInerney said. "There's just no question about it."

Robert Andrews, a former Green Beret and CIA analyst who advises the Pentagon on war issues, said he suspects "the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan are getting thinned out."

Meanwhile, DEBKA reports:

Large-scale US and Iraqi forces poised on battle readiness in offensive array Wednesday night around four Sunni Triangle hotbeds: Fallujah, Ramadi, Latafiya and Balad, awaiting order to launch major assaults.

Michael Moore (not)

Check out the new film that definitely won't be nominated for an Oscar: Fellowship 9/11.

One of the most controversial and provocative films of the year, Fellowship 9/11 is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's searing examination of the Aragorn administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events at Helms Deep.

Fellowship 9/11 shows us a Middle Earth kept in constant fear by "Orc Alerts" and lulled into accepting a piece of legislation, the Patriot Scroll, that infringes on basic civil rights.

Debate III

Debate take: hard to stay interested, after all the others, when the Astros are battling the Cardinals.

How about Kerry's first marriage?

Julia Stimson Thorne... was once married to John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Thorne and Kerry were married on May 23, 1970 and divorced July 25, 1988 (they had been separated for many years). They have two children together, Alexandra Kerry (born 1973) and Vanessa Kerry (born 1976).

When the couple met, Thorne was Kerry's best friend's sister.

On May 7, 1997, two years after his remarriage, Kerry publicly announced that he had requested an annulment from the Roman Catholic Church of his marriage to Thorne. Thorne vigorously opposed the annulment, but it was granted.

Oh yeah, he's a good Catholic alright.

Sounds like Bush is a winner. Hope people were watching this, not baseball.

Top secret

Israel's Ha'aretz says it knows where the U.S. keeps its secret prisoners from the War on Terror.

The Central Intelligence Agency runs a top-secret interrogation facility in Jordan, where at least 11 detainees who are considered Al-Qaida's most senior cadre are being held, Haaretz has learned from international intelligence sources.

Since the war in Afghanistan ended three years ago, reports spoke of these special detainees being held outside the United States, but no location was mentioned. A report on these prisoners issued Tuesday by the Human Rights Watch organization claims they are being held somewhere so secret that U.S. President George Bush asked the CIA heads not to report it to him.

It is not known where precisely in the Hashemite kingdom they are being held, but they are thought to be at a secret facility belonging to Jordanian intelligence or at a secret base. Their detention outside the U.S. enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods that are banned by U.S. law, and to do so in a country where cooperation with the Americans is particularly close, thereby reducing the danger of leaks.

The facility is so "secret" that Human Rights Watch and now an Israeli newspaper pretty much know where it is, who is there, and what's going on inside. Impressive.

Whatever the location, we can only hope that the interrogators have extracted useful information from the stygian depths of those prisoners' terrorist minds.

Chechens from Mexico

Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Times that our porous southern border may be the scene of a new security threat.

U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July.

The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.

A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.

"We don't know whether or not that report is true," this official said.

U.S. security officials have been concerned in recent months that al Qaeda or other terrorists are planning to enter the United States from Mexico.

Intelligence officials said a suspected al Qaeda leader who has been in the United States was spotted recently in Mexico. Officials believe Adnan Shukrijumah, whom the FBI wants for questioning, met with alien smugglers in Mexico and Honduras and was seeking ways to bring al Qaeda members into the United States. Shukrijumah was seen in August in the Sonora province of northern Mexico, officials said.

Since October 2003, authorities have arrested five Arabs attempting to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico.

Too much for Fleet Street

Read the Mark Steyn column spiked this week by The Telegraph in London. His too controversial topic: the murder of Ken Bigley by Islamic terrorists in Iraq, and the response of Great Britain's government.

By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.

If the FCO wants to issue advice in this area, that’s the way to go: If you’re kidnapped, accept you’re unlikely to survive, say “I’ll show you how an Englishman dies”, and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you’re a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you’re an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley’s word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.

The jihadists have become rather adept at devising tests customized for each group of infidels: Madrid got bombed, and the Spaniards failed their test three days later; the Australian Embassy in Jakarta got bombed, but the Aussies held firm and re-elected John Howard’s government anyway. With Britain, the Islamists will have drawn many useful lessons from the decadence and defeatism on display.

RIP, Ken

The Houston Astros win 12-3 over the Braves. Very sweet, especially just a day after the tormented death of Ken Caminiti. No one would have enjoyed the struggle and the victory more.

Related: Preston Ledger is pleased too.

Voter turnout and more

Savvy Michael Barone predicts the election will be all about turnout.

Some elections are about persuasion. This one is about turnout. In past presidential debates, candidates have tried to change peoples' minds and win over undecided voters. In this year's presidential and vice presidential debates, the candidates have tried to increase the enthusiasm of their base. The results have shown up in the polls, most vividly in those that don't weight the results to match the party identification of the last couple of elections.

There is also a difference in motivation on the two sides. Democrats are motivated more by hate--not too strong a word--of Bush than they are by positive feelings toward Kerry, the candidate they settled on quickly to avoid the electoral disaster they thought they'd face if they nominated Howard Dean. Republicans are motivated more--not by love, that is too strong a word--but by affection for Bush and for the way he has stood up under the attacks of his opponents and the media.

The balance of enthusiasm can change quickly, as we have already seen. And any significant shift could change the outcome of this election.

An outright wildcard is the effect of newly-registered voters. The registration effort this year has been massive on both sides.

A surge in voter registration that is setting records in the battleground states has led election forecasters to predict the largest increase in turnout in more than a decade.

With a little more than three weeks left before Election Day, election officials nationwide report that new voter registrations are still pouring in, boosting the number of registered voters in many states to levels never seen before.

Election officials say that the sharp rise in registration is to a large degree the result of a much more intensive grass-roots canvassing campaign by the Republican and Democratic parties and the campaigns of the two presidential candidates, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

"They have been very aggressive, the most aggressive that I've seen in my career," said Curtis Gans, who runs the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

The same political intensity that is driving voter registration to new highs likely will boost voter turnout as well, the analysts said.

Republican National Committee (RNC) officials said they have signed up more than 3 million new Republican voters. Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials said they have exceeded that number, but refused to give any statistics Friday.

The challenge in prognostication is that no one really knows what percentage of these new voters will show up, how they will vote, or if they will prove to be inept at the act of voting (as in Florida 2000), leading to widespread vote spoilage and subsequent allegations of voter suppression.

Journalist John Fund says the potential for both error and fraud is enormous.

[T]he nation's voting systems will be in no better shape this November than they were in 2000, when about 2 percent of all votes for president nationwide weren't counted for one reason or another, the vast majority because of voter error or outdated machines.

America's election problems go beyond the strapped budgets of many local election offices. More insidious are flawed voter rolls, voter ignorance, lackadaisical law enforcement and a shortage of trained volunteers. All this adds up to an open invitation for errors, miscounts or fraud.

Confusion and claims of fraud are likely this time around, especially if the election is as close as it was in 2000. Can the nation take another Florida-style controversy?

Indeed, we may be on the way to turning Election Day into Election Month through a new legal quagmire: election by litigation. Every close race now carries with it the prospect of demands for recounts, lawsuits and seating challenges in Congress. "We're waiting for the day that pols can just cut out the middleman and settle all elections in court," jokes Chuck Todd, editor of the political tip sheet Hotline. Such gallows humor may be entirely appropriate given the predicament we face. The 2000 election may have marked a permanent change in how elections can be decided, much as the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork changed, apparently forever, the politics of judicial appointments.

Election Day may be full of surprises. It's guaranteed to be full of controversy, much of it pre-manufactured.

CIA tries to influence the election

As explained earlier, elements within the CIA are fighting their own insurgency against the Bush administration. Here's more on the story from The Telegraph in London.

A powerful "old guard" faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such "viciousness and vindictiveness" in a battle between the White House and the agency.

John Roberts, a conservative security analyst, commented bluntly: "When the President cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences."

Relations between the White House and the agency are widely regarded as being at their lowest ebb since the hopelessly botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored exiles under President John F Kennedy in 1961.

There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes.

Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings.

The leaks are also a shot across the bows of Porter Goss, the agency's new director and a former Republican congressman. He takes over with orders from the White House to end the in-fighting and revamp the troubled spy agency as part of a radical overhaul of the American intelligence world.

Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages.

So not only are they trying to bring down an administration, they are warning off their own incoming director. A CIA housecleaning is long past due for reasons of competence alone, much less for political meddling.

John Howard wins

Here's outstanding news from down under.

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has claimed victory in the federal election, shortly after his Labor rival Mark Latham conceded defeat. With 70% of the votes counted, results indicate Mr Howard's Liberal-National coalition has won an easy majority.

Australia's 13m voters had a choice between Mr Howard, a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, and the younger Mr Latham, who opposed the intervention. Their endorsement of Mr Howard is a relief for others who backed the war.

A beaming John Howard told his supporters: "I am truly humbled by this extraordinary expression of confidence in the leadership of this great nation by the coalition."

Prolific John Ray in Brisbane makes an important point:

I can't help noting that, like Spain, Australians were attacked by Muslim terrorists just before the election. The attacks were not exactly comparable in that the attack on the Australian embassy in nearby Jakarta mainly succeeded in blowing up other Muslims but the attack did get big news coverage here nonetheless. And Australians had the same choice that Spaniards had -- a Leftist opposition that promised to get the troops out of Iraq pronto. But Australians are not Spaniards -- and it shows.

Quite right. Why is this so important to Americans? As Dr. Stephen Blank at the U.S. Army War College said in 2003:

U.S. Deputy Secretary Rich Armitage put it best back in July, when he said “Australia punches above its weight." For decades Australia has been a proven and reliable American ally. They are the only country to have fought alongside the United States in every major conflict since the First World War.

In the global war on terrorism, the Australians have been no less than strategic and operational trailblazers.

John Howard's leadership has been essential.

Tell us what you really think

The distinguished junior senator from Massachusetts was reduced to using sign language while under verbal fire from President Bush during the debate. This one means "Bring it on."

The plan man

John Kerry has a, you know, plan. In fact, lots of plans. And maybe a verbal tic.

• "I have a plan to put people back to work." • "I've proposed a plan..." • "My plan does a better job." • "Go to johnkerry.com. You can pull it off of the Internet. And you'll find a tort reform plan." • "I have a plan. I have a plan to lower the cost of health care for you. I have a plan to cover all children. I have a plan to let you buy into the same health care senators and congressmen give themselves." • "I have a plan that's going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early." • "And I have a plan that will take the catastrophic cases out of the system..." • "Do you have a plan? And I want to talk about my plan some more — I hope we can." • "... my health-care plan is not what the president described." • "The only people affected by my plan are the top income earners of America..." • "... you didn't hear any plan from the president, because he doesn't have a plan." • "I have a plan to cover those folks. And it's a plan that lowers cost for everybody..." • "That's why I have a plan for energy independence..." • "... small businesses are not affected at all by my plan." • "I have a plan that will help us go out and kill and find the terrorists..." • "I'll also have a better plan of how we're going to deal with Iraq." • "I have a plan to provide health care to all Americans..." • "I have a plan to provide for our schools..." • "I have a plan to protect the environment..."

Highly nuanced indeed.

Debate II

Live-blogging? Blogs of War is. Blogs for Bush, too.

Like ConsterNations, we'll be "sorta live."

10:08 Thought: conservatives really want to see Bush smoke this guy and won't be satisfied with less. However, for better or worse, the masses get to decide. Three and half weeks to go.

10:01 Consternations:

The president elevated his game to surprising heights, and John Kerry was left resting on the plateau he reached last week.

9:59 Fox: Kondrake and Kristol say Kerry won due to Bush's missed opportunities. Barnes: better for Bush; "at least tied."

9:58 Geraghty:

I like the heavily-overcaffinated, fired-up Bush a lot better than the Blinky McPursedlips we got the other night.

9:55 Hillary on Fox. Ewww.

9:45 Kondrake and Kristol lamenting Bush's failure to cite Kerry's opposition to the 1991 Gulf War. Good point.

9:43 Laura Bush is being treated like a rock star.

9:40 Chris Wallace on Fox News: "George W. Bush came to play."

9:38 Overall: much stronger performance by President Bush. Great job.

9:37 Bush gave an awesome closing statement. Smooth and eloquent.

9:29 Bush question: which of your decisions were wrong? Bush stands by his "big" decisions on war, etc. Kerry gets last chance to repeat all his old accusations.

9:26 Kerry totally waffles question on federal funding for abortion: he's against it but will fund it. Bush straight and direct: no funding.

9:20 Bush on Supreme Court nominees: Dred Scott case example of judicial activism. "Plenty of lawmakers in Washington already."

9:18 Bush gave heartfelt answer to stem cell question. The eyes of the young woman who asked seemed to by shining as she watched his answer.

8:58 Bush: keep the economy growing by keeping taxes low. On Kerry's tax and spend record: "You can run but you can't hide."

8:49 Good simple question about spending growth under Republican government. Uh oh -- Bush fudging the truth now about the deficit. It's NOT just caused by the recession, the war, and tax cuts. It's also the pigs feeding at the spending trough. But folks may not know that. Liberal Kerry can only talk about tax cuts for the rich... and now Enron. Stupid.

8:33 Bush: "You tell Tony Blair we’re going alone!" Slam.

8:30 Bush just used the word "facile." Correctly.

8:27 Question for Kerry: what would you do if sanctions fail to rein in Iran? Kerry is babbling about North Korea and Russian uranium stockpiles. Bush: Kerry's view is "naive and dangerous." Slam.

8:19 Bush point: the war on terror is more than Osama bin Laden. Indeed.

8:16 Both candidates are almost shouting. Odd.

Debate prep

It's Kerry vs. Bush II in about one hour.

By the way, Salaam in Iraq knows what he believes. I hope the President got to see this before going on stage.

And here we are, trying to organize elections, trying to control the security situation, trying to restart the reconstruction, able to talk, able to think, able to watch satellite T.V., use the internet, the mobile etc. – in short everything that we have been forbidden to do before. And without the slightest hesitation, we hail with Love and Gratitude our giant U.S. friend and his allies, standing with us shoulder to shoulder, braving the elements, braving death, calumny and hatred, shedding blood; to help us heal, to help us reach the shores of safety. And make no mistake, the campaign is winning and will achieve its objectives. Make no mistake; you have already created an allied nation in the very heart of the M.E. despite all appearances, which will produce all the long term benefits and consequences so many times reiterated by President Bush, to the ridicule and insults of the profoundly mistaken, of the profoundly hating.

America, stay the course - God, Decency, Honor, Hope and everything that is virtuous and right is on your side, beside the majority of the Iraqi people. America do not waiver, for you have never waged a more noble and just campaign in your entire history. America, we are winning, God’s willing, and Victory is coming sooner than many might think.

No better leader

It's safe to assume that little media attention will be paid to this op-ed in The New York Times by L. Paul Bremer, compared to the hoo-hah in response to his other recent comments. Excerpts:

In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I've made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it's important to put my remarks in the correct context.

In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush's Iraq policy.

This effort won't succeed.

The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.

Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.

A year and a half ago, President Bush asked me to come to the Oval Office to discuss my going to Iraq to head the coalition authority. He asked me bluntly, "Why would you want to leave private life and take on such a difficult, dangerous and probably thankless job?" Without hesitation, I answered, "Because I believe in your vision for Iraq and would be honored to help you make it a reality." Today America and the coalition are making steady progress toward that vision.

Terror to disrupt elections

Charles Krauthammer asks "Do the bad guys — the terrorists in their Afghan caves and Iraqi redoubts — want George Bush defeated in this election?"

Noting that some have attempted to scoff at the notion, the answer is obvious.

Of course the terrorists want Bush defeated. How can anyone pretend otherwise?

Why are we collectively nervous about terrorism as the election approaches? Because, as everyone knows, there are terrorists out there who would dearly love to hit us before the election. Why? To affect it. What does that mean? Do they want to affect it randomly?

Of course not. We know the terrorists' intent and strategy. We saw it on display in Spain, where a spectacular terror attack three days before the election set off the chain of events that brought down a government that had allied itself with the United States. The attack worked perfectly. Within weeks Spain, had withdrawn its troops from Iraq.

Last month, terrorists set off a car bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in the middle of a neck-and-neck Australian election campaign and just three days before the only televised debate between the two candidates. The prime minister, John Howard, is a staunch U.S. ally in both Afghanistan and Iraq. His opponent, Mark Latham, has pledged to withdraw Australia from Iraq by Christmas.

The terrorists may be medieval primitives, but they know about cell phones and the Internet and fuel-laden commercial airliners. They also know about elections. Their obvious objective is to drive from power those governments most deeply involved in the war against them — in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else. The point is not only to radically alter an enemy nation's foreign policy — as in Spain — but to deter any other government contemplating similar support for the American-led war on terror.

But Spain and Australia — Britain, with Tony Blair up for re-election next year, will surely be next — are merely supporting actors.

The real prize is America. An electoral repudiation of President Bush would be seen by the world as a repudiation of Bush's foreign policy, specifically his aggressive, pre-emptive and often unilateral prosecution of the war on terror, most especially Iraq.

It would be a correct interpretation because John Kerry has made clear that he is fighting this election on precisely those grounds.

Does this mean that the bad guys want Kerry to win? Michael Kinsley with his usual drollery ridicules the idea by conjuring up the image of bin Laden "as he sits in his cave studying materials from the League of Women Voters" deciding to cast his absentee ballot for the Democrats.

The point, of course, is that the terrorists have no particular interest in Kerry. What they care about is Bush. He could be running against a moose, and Osama and Zarqawi would be for the moose.

How to elect the moose?

Why we fight

Go read this before tonight's second debate between President Bush and his talkative challenger. Be reminded why we fight and understand the stakes, if you don't already.

Really. Go now and read to the end.

Blaming the good guys

As noted earlier, our good guys took out a bevy of bad guys late one night recently in Fallujah.

American Daughter has re-posted the cockpit video along with news that the British left-wing press is portraying the lethal strike as a deliberate daylight assault on civilians. Not a surprise, but check out the story before it crosses the Atlantic.

Failing the Global Test

Belmont Club applies John Kerry's vaunted "global test" to recent history: troop levels during the invasion of Iraq. Grade: F.

The US arrived in Baghdad in May, 2003 minus nearly half the mechanized force intended for the operation. The Fourth Infantry Division which was scheduled to attack downward from Turkey and sweep through the Sunni heartland never arrived in large part due to the opposition of countries like France in the Security Council....

The Fourth Infantry Division, at that time the most modern armored force in the Army, was not absent due to the "Pig-headedness? Ignorance? Hubris?" of Donald Rumsfeld. It was missing directly as a result of the machinations of those supposed to administer Kerry's Global Test to America in the United Nations, who were large part responsible for closing Turkey to the United States.

Exactly, and perfectly illustrative of what Kerry means by the "global test." Tailoring our international strategies to garner the approval of the likes of France would never be a way to do the right thing in the right way; it would be an elaborate public relations charade designed to cut off the possibility of having to act against dangerous states.

Veep contest

Vice-presidential debate quick thoughts:

Transcript and video via Fox News.

The real war

Despite the daily focus on headlines from Iraq, Michael Ledeen says Iran is the real linchpin in the War on [Islamic] Terror and that we ignore it to our own peril.

God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident. There are many battles ahead, and we may yet engage on the full battlefield. One thing is certain: There will be no peace in Iraq so long as the terror masters rule in Damascus, Riyadh, and Tehran. Those who attended closed discussions with the Iraqi defense minister a week ago heard a long list of evidence and cries of outrage against the murderous mullahcracy next door, and even though the leaders of the West — sadly including some of our own — continue to pretend that diplomacy may yet settle things in the Middle East, they cannot possibly believe it. This is a fight to the finish, still a zero-sum game.

The main problem remains the failure of vision, never more evident than in the first presidential debate. The president dismissed the question about Iran by talking only about the nuclear "issue," while Senator Kerry, incredibly, restated his belief that the same policy that failed to deter North Korea would somehow work with the Iranians. The president knows who the Iranians are, while the senator is an active appeaser. But neither was inclined to deal with the central issue, which is that the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Saudis are killing our men and women in Iraq, and we are playing defense, which is a sucker's game.

In the past week, the Iranian people have again taken to the streets in every major city in the country. The chatterers pay no heed, because there is only one zero-sum game that interests them, which is the election, and the election is about Iraq, or so they say.

Except that it isn't, really. It's about the war. The real war, the regional war, the war they are waging against us even if we refuse to acknowledge it.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, here's corroboration for the linkage:

The Interim Iraqi Interior Minister stated that armed Iranian agents have been arrested among rebels fighting in the city of Samarra. The Al-Hurriya TV aired footage of Falah Naqib who accused Iran of backing insurgents in this presently volatile region of Iraq.

Iraqi police have been patrolling the city, while U.S. troops and Iraqi Forces search houses for rebels and weapons caches. Military sources also confirmed that following extensive clashes between U.S. troops and the rebel militia, a large number of armed agents working for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) were arrested.

Naqib’s comments came after U.S. forces separately confirmed the arrests of 80 Iranian fighters who had posed as regular Iraqis.

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kazem also recently confirmed that the flow of Iranian arms and agents into Iraq was continuing. "The Iranian regime's declared policy contradicts the events that are taking place,” he said.

"In its comments, Iran speaks about the need to establish security in Iraq. What actually happens, however, is the complete opposite, so much that we arrest individuals every day coming with their weapons from Iran into Iraq," Kazem added.

Tips via NRO's The Corner.

Face the facts

John Kerry and his puppy are heard frequently yappng that "good jobs" are purportedly gone, and it must be President Bush's fault . We can expect verbiage like this during the vice-presidential debate tonight:

Jobs are shipped overseas, and the Bush White House says outsourcing is good for us.

George Bush is the first President to lose jobs in 72 years -- the first president since 1932, back to Herbert Hoover to lose jobs on his watch. And they say it's time to celebrate.

Wages are falling, medical bills are rising, and families can't send their kids to college and they tell us hey, don't worry, this is the best economy of our lifetime!

In fact, the only people George Bush's policies are working for are the people he chooses to help. They're working for drug companies. They're working for oil companies. They're working for HMOs. And they're certainly working for Halliburton.

John Edwards and I have a plan that offers a new choice for middle-class families. It's a four point plan that offers a new choice on jobs, health care, taxes, and energy independence. George Bush has a four word plan: more of the same.

Our plan starts by offering a new choice on jobs. We can continue to reward the corporations who are shipping our jobs overseas with big tax breaks, or we can fight for the middle- class by creating good jobs here at home.

We choose to create jobs at home.

Economist Robert Samuelson, no particular friend of the Bush administration, says the Democrats' overheated rhetoric is bunk.

There may be lots of reasons to vote for John Kerry over George Bush, but "job quality" isn't one of them. Kerry has been telling crowds that the country is "shipping jobs overseas and replacing them with jobs that pay you less than the jobs you have today." Ergo, job quality is going to the dogs. A few weeks ago I wrote that presidents have little power to influence job creation. The trouble for Kerry is that they have even less power to alter job "quality"—the nature of new jobs, how much they pay and how much security they provide. Presidents can't do much more than you or me.

I suspect that, in a narrow sense, Kerry's claims are half right and half wrong: half wrong because many jobs being lost abroad to other countries are actually low-skilled and low-paying (that's why they're lost); and half right because new jobs being created in this recovery may pay less than jobs lost—mostly for domestic reasons—in the recession and its aftermath. People who lose their jobs often have to take pay cuts to get new work; the latest BLS study finds a typical wage loss of about 7 percent. In a weak labor market, companies can also hire for a little less. Kerry's charge is plausible, though studies of recent job figures reach differing conclusions. But Kerry's broader message—the one intended to impress voters—is wrong.

He implicitly suggests that the U.S. economy under Bush can't create high-paying (a.k.a. "good") jobs. We heard a similar refrain in the 1980s when America was supposedly becoming "a nation of hamburger flippers." The story was wrong then, too. Whatever's happening now to wages mostly reflects the temporary effects of the business cycle. The false story survives because it embodies a popular myth: manufacturing jobs—which have declined—are high-paying, and "service" jobs—which are increasing—are not. In truth, average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers in both sectors are roughly similar.

Service jobs now account for more than four fifths of the total. If all were bad, we'd be a Third World nation. Even if all were bad, a president couldn't make much of a difference. A society's jobs reflect prevailing technologies, consumer tastes, population patterns, workers' skills and government policies. A president controls none of these. Even his influence over government policies is limited, and the effects of government policies are themselves limited.

Polling the troops

Military personnel haven't been impressed yet by John Kerry. Apparently they aren't buying the "band of brothers" schtick.

An unscientific survey of U.S. military personnel shows they support President Bush for re-election by a 4-to-1 ratio. Two-thirds of those responding said John Kerry's anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam make them less likely to vote for him.

In the survey of more than 4,000 full-time and part-time troops, 73% said they would vote for Bush if the election were held today; 18% said they would vote for Kerry. Of the respondents, 59% identified themselves as Republicans, 20% as independents and 13% as Democrats.

The survey was conducted Sept. 15-28 by the Army Times Publishing Co., which distributes the weekly newspapers Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times.

Army Times Publishing sent e-mails to more than 31,000 subscribers and received 4,165 responses on a secure Web site. The publisher cautioned that the results are not a scientific poll. Its readers are older, higher in rank and more career-oriented than the military as a whole.

Even so, experts who examined the survey results said they do not bode well for the Kerry campaign's efforts to woo the military, a traditionally Republican and conservative voting bloc. The Kerry campaign has highlighted his war record in an effort to burnish his credentials as a prospective commander in chief.

"You can't dismiss" the results, said Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who for years has studied the political leanings of the U.S. military. Feaver said it's unlikely that Bush will receive 70% of votes cast by military personnel. But the results suggest it will be difficult for Kerry to make substantial gains among a group that has strongly supported Republican presidential candidates in the post-Vietnam era.

Feaver said he suspects Kerry is losing support among those in uniform because he seems less committed than Bush to prosecuting the war in Iraq.

That would be correct.

French toast

Bundled with an analysis of the looming effort to take back the terrorist hotbed town of Falluja, always interesting Israeli site DEBKA also reports that French president Jacques Chirac, ever our diplomatic enemy, has been actively maneuvering to exploit the plight of two kidnapped French journalists being held in Iraq.

Unfortunately for Chirac, U.S. forces apparently interrupted his plans.

They got as far as buying the release of the two Frenchmen with a hefty payout to a Baath guerrilla group fighting in Fallujah. According to our sources, the deal was a package that also covered running the men out to Syria through one of the guerrillas’ smuggling routes.

However, when the American air force put paid to the scheme by raiding the departing convoy on its way to Syria, Paris disowned the Damascus forward command and accused the “unofficial negotiators” of doing more harm than good.

Had they brought it off, they would have delivered to Chirac four impressive objectives in his dispute with Bush over Iraq.

A. France would have shown the world it can outdo the Americans and the Allawi government in settling crises in Iraq by negotiating with insurgents instead of waging bloody war against them. This demonstration was intended to discredit Bush’s Iraq policies and hurt his re-election prospects.

B. Paris would not only have granted the Iraqi Baath guerrillas and their al Qaeda allies recognition as legitimate negotiating partners but also granted legitimacy to the illicit Syria-Iraq-Syria smuggling routes bringing men and arms to bolster the anti-US warfront in Iraq.

C. The purported transfer of the French hostages across the Iraqi-Syrian border was timed to coincide with the most promising US-Iraqi initiative thus far to co-opt Syria to a joint military effort for sealing that border to illegal and hostile infiltrations. This setback to Washington’s plans would have seriously delayed the final offensive to recover Fallujah from insurgent-terrorist control.

D. It would also have delivered a setback to US-Syrian relations as a whole, showing up factions of Syrian military intelligence as more than willing to pitch in on any anti-American actions. Washington would have had to accept that any deal with Damascus was full of dangerous holes.

By bombing the French-sponsored Baath guerrilla convoy on its way to Syria, American warplanes whipped these assets out of the French president’s grasp.

DEBKA's account would seem to be at least partially corroborated by a story from Agence France-Presse, wherein French authorities are getting exercised denouncing the "unofficial" bid to gain the hostages' release.

French Justice Minister Dominique Perben stepped Sunday into the acrimonious controversy over an unofficial bid to free two French hostages held in Iraq, accusing the freelance negotiator of lacking responsibility.

His comments were echoed by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin who warned that unofficial attempts could compromise negotiations for the release of the two men.

The operation has sown confusion and raised many questions over government efforts — in public and in secret — to free the two men.

Chirac on Saturday slammed the unofficial mission as "interference" while his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, said: "I want to hope that the parallel steps undertaken by a group in Iraq will not have consequences for the safety (of the men) and that they will not delay the moment of their release."

Newspapers were contemptuous of the mission's instigators: Julia, a 70-year-old UMP deputy who is vice president of an Iraqi-French Friendship Group and an Arabic speaker with ties to the Middle East; and his field man, a 45-year-old former French navy commando named Philippe Brett who belongs to an association that used to have links to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Julia, in the Syrian capital Damascus, later told journalists that a convoy meant to take the hostages out of Iraq had turned back before reaching the Syrian border because the US military had opened fire on it. US officials flatly denied the charge.

Doubts were raised over whether Brett was actually in Iraq. Julia said he met his associate in a Damascus hotel room before dawn on Saturday, despite the fact that the border is closed at night.

Julia left Damascus Sunday and was believed to be heading back to Paris via Lebanon but was not on the plane on which he was booked. Asked about his inconsistent assertions and his failed initiative, he told reporters: "My mission as a deputy is never finished."

French media, many of which have been publishing a daily vigil for the hostage journalists, were scathing of Julia's supposed operation — but also at the seeming "impotence" of the government.

They additionally highlighted curious developments that suggested Julia may have had a measure of official support.

Chief among those was the reported involvement of Laurent Gbagbo, the president of the former French colony of Ivory Coast.

Gbagbo's plane was used to transport Julia to Baghdad on Sept. 5, Le Monde reported. Another newspaper, Le Telegramme de Brest, said the plane was again used to fly a Moroccan man carrying a ransom to Amman.

Le Monde said, according to undisclosed sources in Paris, Brett had been a go-between for arms shipments to Ivory Coast, where a civil war broke out two years ago.

It also reported that France's ambassador to Syria, Jean-Francois Girault, held a long meeting with Julia early Friday, before the deputy affirmed that the hostages would soon be freed.

Le Journal du Dimanche speculated that Julia had been manipulated by the Syrian intelligence services as part of a plot by Damascus to punish France for backing a UN resolution condemning Syrian involvement in Lebanon.

Intrigues within intriques, no doubt. No hard feelings towards the hostages, but it's très drôle to think that the corrupt Jacques Chirac, exposed by Bill Gertz recently as having supported Saddam Hussein even beyond the start of the Iraq war, had his little scheme interrupted by the roar of U.S. warplanes.

A new greatest generation

Author, columnist, teacher Col. Austin Bay is mighty impressed with the performance of America's armed forces in Iraq and elsewhere.

A new greatest generation is emerging -- in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the other, less-publicized battlegrounds of the War on Terror.

Focused on the U.S. political cycle, America's press elites are missing the extraordinary story of the 19- to 35-year-olds who are winning this war. The detailed history of this new cohort of American and Free World leaders -- the people who will shape the 21st century -- is being written by themselves, chiefly on the Internet, via e-mail or Web logs

This is a battle-honed bunch with exceptional talent and motivation, young people with a mature balance of idealism and realism, youthful cool and professional competence.

I saw this cool and competence on every patrol and convoy I made this past summer in Iraq. I had the privilege of working with these "kids," inevitably chastising myself for referring to such able young adults as kids. Their comeback was always, "It's OK, sir. We know colonels are old."

Read the details.

SpaceShipOne wins the prize

They did it.

Human flight took a significant step forward today as the privately built SpaceShipOne flew into suborbital space for the second time in five days, apparently securing the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

With pilot Brian Binnie at the controls, SpaceShipOne rocketed to an unofficial height of 368,000 feet, setting a new altitude record for the craft and proving that private industry can build a viable vehicle for sending paying passengers to space.

"This is a milestone for humanity," said John Spencer, president of the Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles.

Debra Burlingame responds

A small group of Democratic activists and sympathizers among the thousands of 9/11 families have thrown their lot in with John Kerry. A credulous media has granted them de facto status as "the 9/11 widows," as if they represent the entire group.

Courageous Debra Burlingame, sister of Chic Burlingame (pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001) debunks the false impressions created by the carefully calibrated statements from "the 9/11 widows," aka "the Jersey girls."

Sen. Kerry begins many stump speeches these days by introducing these 9/11 widows to kind applause. As we enter the final leg of the presidential race, the Kerry campaign appears to have calculated that the war in Vietnam is not the war the American people want to talk about. And so, trading on their status as 9/11 family members associated with the 9/11 Commission, the Kerry campaign is deploying these September 11 widows on a nationwide tour to tell the American people that there is no connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. This declaration will come as a surprise to the folks who actually wrote the 9/11 Commission report. These widows may be speaking from the heart, but the Kerry campaign is not telling you the truth.

Anyone who has actually read the report would know that the 9/11 Commission had plenty to say about the connections between al Qaeda and Iraq, but because much of its findings were beyond the scope of its charter, important details went unstated in public hearings or were buried in the minutiae of the published narrative. Virtually every reporter I have spoken to has failed to answer this basic question satisfactorily: "Have you actually read the report?" The answer is almost always a sheepish "No." Those who have only given it a cursory scan may have missed the fine-print chapter notes where explosive information about names, dates, places, and conversations concerning the Iraq-al Qaeda connection are outlined in chilling detail.

As one of 150 9/11 family members who have signed an open letter strongly supporting the president's decision to prosecute the war on terror in Iraq, I would remind Americans who think the presence of weapons of mass destruction are the sine qua non for any pre-emptive war that the 19 terrorists who slaughtered 3,000 innocent men, women and children in a matter of minutes were sponsored by the Taliban, a backward regime that had neither WMD nor the technology to produce them. Saddam may not have had a hand in the plot that killed our loved ones, but American troops found ample evidence that he wishes he had, including the murals he commissioned for public display depicting airplanes exploding into the World Trade Center towers, but with this added conceit: One shows the planes painted in the colors of Iraqi airlines while Saddam's grinning portrait looms in the foreground in yet another.

For many 9/11 family members, the most compelling reason for putting an end to Saddam's dangerous regime can be found in the 9/11 Commission's pointed analysis on the subject of "imminent threats." As we forced ourselves to read through the voluminous material which explains in excruciating detail the disparate threads of the 9/11 plot, we were constantly mindful of the seemingly innocuous events which would ultimately prove critical to the cruel and brutal deaths of our loved ones. We understand the commission's dire warning and wish that our fellow Americans would listen closely: "Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier--but it then may be too late."

Rather than waiting until it was too late to prevent a fully materialized threat, President Bush acted. We believe history will support his courageous decision. We believe the president has demonstrated strength, consistency and a laser-like focus, sending a clear message to America's friends and foes that he will not waver in his resolve as the winds of political fortune change.

Optimism in the face of obstacles is not living in "fantasyland." It's courage.

The 9/11 widows traveling with John Kerry talk about their fear of a war with no end, but there are many of us 9/11 families who fear that John Kerry would turn this crucial historic opportunity into a losing war with no hope. We think George W. Bush got it right. We believe this is the right war, in the right place, at the right time. We think the good guys are winning.

Related:

• Fighting the rock stars of grief
• Statements at the Republican National Convention
• Stand with him now
• 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America
• Patriot Dreams Foundation
• Dorothy Rabinowitz - The 9/11 Widows: Americans are beginning to tire of them

Summit for everyone

Pundit Mark Steyn watched the first presidential debate and was underwhelmed by John Kerry's "style."

If John Kerry is so polished and eloquent and forceful and mellifluous, how come nobody has a clue what his policy on Iraq is? As he made clear on Thursday, Saddam was a growing threat so he had to be disarmed so Kerry voted for war in order to authorise Bush to go to the UN but Bush failed to pass "the global test" so we shouldn't have disarmed Saddam because he wasn't a threat so the war was a mistake so Kerry will bring the troops home by persuading France and Germany to send their troops instead because he's so much better at building alliances so he'll have no trouble talking France and Germany into sending their boys to be the last men to die for Bush's mistake.

Have I got that right?

Oh, and he'll call a summit. "I have a plan to have a summit. I'm going to hold that summit. We can be successful in Iraq with a summit. The kind of statesman-like summits that pull people together." Summit old, summit new, summit borrowed, summit blue, he's got summit for everyone. Summit-chanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. But, in John Kerry's world, there are no strangers, just EU Deputy Defence Ministers who haven't yet contributed 10,000 troops because they haven't been invited to a summit. And once John Kerry holds that summit all our troubles are over.

Having met him, I'm sceptical of Kerry's extraordinarily high valuation of his personal charm. But the notion that he'll be able to bring the French on board would seem to be at odds with Jean-Pierre Rafarin, the French prime minister's aside to a representative of Le Figaro the other day that "the Iraqi insurgents are our best allies". In a summit showdown between Chirac and Rafarin on the one hand and Kerry on the other, I bet on the Gallic weasels.

Second thoughts

Italians are now suffering buyer's remorse: they paid a million bucks to retrieve two women hostages in Iraq and now find out the "hostages" were on the side of the terrorists all along.

Italy's adoration of the "two Simonas", the women aid workers abducted in Iraq, began to sour yesterday, as the extent of their sympathy for the Iraqi fight against the allied occupation became clear.

In their first big interviews given since their release in return for a reported $1 million ransom on Tuesday, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, gave their backing to insurgents opposing the allied forces.

Miss Pari, when asked why she and her colleague had not asked on their return for the release of other hostages, said: "We didn't know there were any other hostages. No one told us about the British prisoner, nor about the Americans who were beheaded. I say that every life has to be saved, that the right to life is sacred everywhere.

"If you ask me about terrorism, I'll tell you that there is terrorism and there is resistance. The resistance struggle of people against an occupying force is guaranteed by international law."

The women's comments are likely to cause renewed anger in government circles, following their call soon after their release for Italy's peacekeeping forces to be withdrawn.

Tip via Gunner at Target Centermass, who notes:

When these two were first seized, I pointed out that an al-Jazeera article showed that these two had been specifically targeted. The reason was not immediately obvious. It now is — the terrorists knew they were potentially valuable as mouthpieces for Islamist villainy.

Homeland Security woes

There were two strikes against homeland security this week. First, an internal DHS study revealed big concerns about federal watch lists. This ongoing confusion is big.

The government's effort to consolidate federal agencies' 12 terrorist watch lists into one has all but failed, partly because the Department of Homeland Security has abandoned its responsibility to take the lead on the project, according to a report released Friday by the department's internal watchdog.

The report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, said the government's botching of the watch list assignment follows a disturbing pattern in the war on terrorism.

"In the years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, just as in the past, the government has continued to implement solutions in an uncoordinated manner," the report said. "The manner through which the watch list consolidation has unfolded has not helped the nation break from its pattern."

President Bush, Congress and many terrorism experts have for years considered the integration of the watch lists a crucial priority in the effort to identify terrorists as they try to enter the country, board airplanes and open bank accounts, and when they are pulled over for traffic stops.

Perhaps related: just a few weeks ago, a watch list failed to keep the former Cat Stevens off a trans-Atlantic airliner until mid-flight. Details in the Inpsector General's report: DHS Challenges in Consolidating Terrorist Watch List Information (PDF).

Second, the nation's third consecutive director of cybersecurity resigned abruptly.

The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned from the Homeland Security Department amid a concerted campaign by the technology industry and some lawmakers to persuade the Bush administration to give him more authority and money for protection programs.

Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec Corp., made his resignation effective Thursday as director of the National Cyber Security Division, giving a single's day notice of his intention to leave. He kept the job one year.

Yoran has privately confided to industry colleagues his frustrations in recent months over what he considers the department's lack of attention to computer security issues, said lobbyists and others who recounted these conversations on condition of anonymity.

As cybersecurity chief, Yoran and his division — with an $80 million budget and 60 employees — were responsible for carrying out dozens of recommendations in the Bush administration's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," a set of proposals to better protect computer networks.

Yoran's position as a director — at least three bureaucratic steps below Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge — has irritated the technology industry and even some lawmakers. They pressed unsuccessfully in recent months to elevate Yoran's role to that of an assistant secretary, which could mean broader authority and more money for programs.

This is not quite so important, but still of concern. The immediate risks of "cyber war" have been hyped over and over in recent years. (The Y2K non-event dealt a serious credibility blow to the whole idea.) But there are legitimate risks; DHS should be working on the issues; and it's a bad sign that DHS can't keep an executive. Both now-infamous Richard Clarke and his successor, Howard Schmidt, resigned in 2003.

Debate Follow-up

Seismic waves from the first presidential debate are still reverberating around the planet.

On the style front, more details have emerged about the two candidates' differing debate prep:

Fox News and correspondent Carl Cameron are looking more than a bit sheepish right now.

Earlier Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice.

Here's the offending script that was posted accidentally. Too bad it wasn't actually caught on film.

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

With the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.

Aides say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on women and abortion rights.

"It's about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do manicures," Kerry said.

Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

"I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

A "metrosexual" is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

Via a perturbed Josh Marshall

The stylish senator also made a big impact abroad.

In a tape aired on Al-Jazeera TV, Usama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, thanked Democrat presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry for the "great ideas he shared during last night's debate."

On the tape, still under analysis by the CIA, Mr. al-Zawahiri notes that Mr. Kerry's debate remarks were a "terrific brainstorming session for our associates who seek targets of opportunity to advance the cause of our peaceful religion."

Mr. Zawahiri said he appreciated the "virtual invitation" implied in the following statements by Mr. Kerry:

-- "The president hasn't put one nickel - not one nickel - into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems."
-- "The president - 95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected." [more]

American Future

Marc Schulman writes to say he has started a new blog: American Future. Interesting stuff; check it out.

Coming home from Iraq

The 3/11 U.S. Marines are coming home from Iraq and a 1st Lieutenant is grateful to the "e-mail family" that has supported him from afar. Via American Daughter, he summarizes their many accomplishments and has a message for the folks back home:

But more than just your personal support I am grateful for your support of the cause. Not everyone in America is educated enough to understand the full importance of what we are doing in this part of the world and I am so thankful that you all do. Freedom and liberty are fragile and America seems to be one of the only countries actively fighting to ensure that they do not perish from this earth. Your continued efforts at home are much needed in spreading the truth. Together we will win this fight and secure a better future for the whole world.

Watching Samarra

Wretchard at Belmont Club provides a close reading of press dispatches from the new joint U.S.-Iraqi Samarra operation and draws typically shrewd insights.

The fact that the First Infantry Division and the Iraqi Army were able to keep the approach of multi-battalion forces secret from the enemy in the heart of the Sunni triangle is one of the most impressive aspects of this operation. The insurgents were surprised in a stronghold where they could expect to enjoy every intelligence advantage. Nearly as impressive was the lightning seizure of the Shi'ite shrine by the 36th Iraqi Commando battalion.

Syria update

This was entirely expected.

Syria has not withdrawn its troops from Lebanon, as required by a resolution of the U.N. Security Council adopted earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday.

Syria has shifted about 3,000 soldiers formerly deployed south of Beirut, but it was unclear whether they have actually left Lebanon. In any case, Syria said about 14,000 of its troops remained in Lebanon, Annan said in a report to the 15-nation Security Council.

Other voices are being heard from within occupied Lebanon.

Backed by the fresh international pressure on Damascus, and angered over the vote in parliament, anti-Syrian voices are growing louder in Lebanon.

But Rami Khouri, editor of Beiruit's "Daily Star" newspaper, said divisions still run deep: "[There have been two types of] reaction here to the international, let's say, tension or intervention through the Security Council resolution. One group of people says this is unwarranted interference and it shouldn't happen, that the UN shouldn't get involved in an internal issue. And then you have other people who are very pleased and they're delighted that the world is putting pressure on the Syrians to change their policy in Lebanon. And there's two very different and very opposed perceptions of this."

But Farid Khazan said he believes the trend in Lebanon favors a Syrian pullout, a solution that is favored by Lebanese Christians. Khazan, a political scientist with Beirut's American University, said his country's economic and political situation is so bad that all its various factions now agree on the need for change.

Keep watching. Syria is a linchpin.