Petrified Truth

Happy Halloween

Via NASA: The Galactic Ghoul.

Via InstaPundit: the W-O-Lantern:

Today's highlights

Preston Ledger at ConsterNations notes John Edwards in Ohio, "turning on the smarm," and has his own instructions for the Jury.

Significantly, the Rev. Donald Sensing has returned to blogging after a hiatus. That's great news.

Running on fumes

Mark Steyn reviews the wreckage that is the Democratic Party as its ludicrous presidential campaign lumbers into the final stretch.

It's only a day or so now till the chad-dangling round of Campaign 2004 begins but, when the lawsuits are over and the bloodletting begins, serious Democrats need to confront the intellectual emptiness of their party, which Kerry's campaign embodies all too well.

The Dems got a full tank from FDR, a top-up in the Civil Rights era, and they've been running on fumes for 30 years. Their last star, Bill Clinton, has no legacy because, deft as he was, his Democratic Party had no purpose other than as a vehicle for promoting his own indispensability. When he left, the Democrats became a party running on personality with no personalities to run. Hence, the Kerry candidacy. Despite the best efforts of American editorialists, there's no there there.

Make their day

Gerard Baker, US Editor of The Times in London, says one factor stands out as a reason to support the re-election of George W. Bush.

[I]f I had a vote on Tuesday I would be voting to re-elect President Bush.

It is partly Mr Bush’s character. The perils of war really do demand leadership and moral clarity. It is partly, to be honest, the quality of his opponent. The more you see of John Kerry the more troubling the thought of his presidency becomes. Behind a lifetime of careful, calculated decision-making it is clear that he harbours a deep suspicion about the very idea of moral clarity in foreign policy.

It is partly what Mr Bush has done. Afghanistan is an infinitely better and less threatening place today than it was four years ago. Iraq, despite the catalogue of errors, is still heading that way.

But above all, in this oppositional sort of age, when it is often easier to be defined by what one is against rather than what one is for, I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Mr Bush’s re-election.

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe. Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else’s fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation’s morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression. Most of Belgium.

Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.

This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.

And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected.

Go on America. Make Their Day.

Tip via Oliver Kamm

Cronkite barks at the moon

As long suspected, Walter Cronkite has lost his ever-lovin' mind, given this transcript of his comments to CNN's Larry King in response to the new Osama Bin Laden video.

KING: OK, Walter. What do you make of this?

CRONKITE: Well, I make it out to be initially the reaction that it's a threat to us, that unless we make peace with him, in a sense, we can expect further attacks. He did not say that precisely, but it sounds like that when he says...

KING: The warning.

CRONKITE: What we just heard. So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principal subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the al Qaqaa explosive dump. Right now, that, the last couple of days, has, I think, upset the Republican campaign.

That is just pathetic, especially coming from someone who used to be the epitome, in the minds of many Americans, of serious journalism.

War criminal?

Carol A. Taber, self-described "Vietnam wife," sums up her feelings about John Kerry succinctly.

Unfortunately for me, I became aware of John Kerry in 1971 when he testified that he and my husband were war criminals. Like so much else Mr. Kerry says, that was only a half-truth; my husband was not a war criminal. John Kerry can speak for himself.

There's more.

Our friends hold their breath

Alaa in Iraq has an opinion about what should happen on Election Day next Tuesday.

And folks, just consider all those outside the U.S. What do they want?

I mean the absolute unanimity of choice of every enemy and hater of the U.S.; the Terrorists, the Salafis, the International rivals, the Envious etc. etc.

Then consider your real friends and allies, those who have stood with you and shed blood with you, and are willing to die for the common cause, whom do they want? Do you have any doubt about their preference?

My apology to the half of America who may disagree; and I address them with respect and fondness, but with pain in the heart. Do you really want to give satisfaction to the be-headers, kidnappers and child murderers; and the perpetrators of 9/11? Do you want to hear their savage shouts of victory? This is no reflection on the merit of your man. He may indeed be a paragon of virtue, but that does not change one little bit anything about the situation.

The most important factor in this struggle at the present time after the Will of God is your choice, your steadfastness and your resolve. Give the enemy the slap in the face and the great disappointment he deserves. You are the leaders; and all the lovers of freedom and enlightenment everywhere will take heart and charge with you with redoubled zeal, as they see your courage and defiance at the helm.

Go for it America, your friends are holding their breath and waiting, in anticipation, and yes, with anxiousness, and so are your enemies.

The plan man 2

In case this wasn't enough proof for you, listen here to learn that John Kerry has a plan. Tip via Tim Blair, one of whose commenters says:

This is a palindrome, it reads the same forward as backward:

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

This is not a palindrome:

A man, a plan, a sham, Kerry.

It means the same forward as it does backward...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

The Black Watch arrives

A famed Scottish unit is moving into place near Baghdad to allow the USMC to further prepare its anticipated assault on Fallujah. The decision is not universally admired.

The Black Watch ran into a series of terrorist bombs yesterday as it moved towards the "triangle of death" around Baghdad to take over from American marines due to join an assault on the rebel city of Fallujah.

Its base at Camp Dogwood, 20 miles west of the town of Mahmudiyah, also came under rocket or mortar attack as the troops moved in, a British military spokesman said.

The battle group and its vehicles were forced to stop four times by roadside bombs planted by insurgents determined to give it a bloody welcome, the spokesman said. No troops were hurt in the attacks.

One soldier was killed and three injured in a roadside accident shortly after the troops arrived, the Ministry of Defence said, but no hostile action was involved.

In e-mails seen by The Telegraph, a senior officer involved in planning the deployment called the move the "convoy of death", saying that it would be "10 miles long and an easy target for ambush".

The attacks served to underline the fears of senior officers in the regiment that Tony Blair's controversial agreement to the troops' deployment would make them the target of "every lunatic terrorist from miles around".

The Telegraph disclosed yesterday that in e-mails home a senior Black Watch officer had questioned whether the Prime Minister properly understood the risks involved.

Senior officers have been further angered by the "cynicism" of a Government willing to use the Black Watch to "backfill" for the Americans while preparing to abolish the regiment in an amalgamation of Scottish regiments.

Still, the regiment is confident as always.

The regiment was led into their final Sunday service before departure by bagpipes and drums playing the traditional Scottish song "Blue Bonnets Over the Border."

The troops' self-assurance was more than matched by their commanding officer, Lt. Col. James Cowan.

"There's been much sensationalist talk about the threat we will face," he said. "Frankly, this regiment beat Napoleon, beat the Kaiser and beat Hitler.

"For the Jocks of the Black Watch this is just the latest chapter in our history and another job to be done."

Related coverage at Blogs of War.

America's answer

If you aren't reading Belmont Club every day, you should be. Read it now for the bottom line on Osama bin Laden's new videotape.

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

Read the rest.

• Blogs of War - Aljazeera to Air New Osama bin Laden Video

Bomb threat against Bush Library?

Is there a terror threat against the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas? The FBI is checking out a hot tip.

The FBI is investigating a bomb threat made regarding the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University.

Someone who overheard a conversation about the bomb threat called a Crime Stoppers tip line, and that information was passed along to the FBI, said A&M spokesman Lane Stephenson.

"This is something that's not being taken lightly," he said.

FBI spokesman Bob Doguim said today that the agency, along with other participants in the Joint Terrorism Task Force and university police, has been investigating the case since Wednesday, when the Crime Stoppers tip was received.

"Someone called in with a concern that they had heard some individuals possibly planning to do some damage to the library," Doguim said.

Doguim said authorities are trying to track down the information received from the tipster. So far, none of it has been substantiated, he said.

KHOU in Houston featured the story in its broadcast Thursday night (Windows Media), including details about the apparent plotters being overheard talking about the threat in a restaurant. That seems unlikely -- surely genuine terrorists would be more circumspect. Nevertheless, the Bush Library would damn sure make an attractive symbolic target.

Overcoming amnesia

Charles Krauthammer notes that Americans do indeed have a choice between very different presidential candidates. No issue better illustrates the situation better than Afghanistan.

Americans have a deserved reputation for historical amnesia. Three years — an eon — have made us imagine that the Afghan War was easy and foreordained.

Easy? In 2001, we had nothing there. What had the Clinton administration left in place? No plausible military plan. Virtually no intelligence. No local infrastructure. No neighboring bases. The Afghan Northern Alliance was fractured and weak. And Pakistan was actively supporting the bad guys.

Within days of 9/11, the clueless airhead president that inhabits Michael Moore's films and Tina Brown's dinner parties had done this: forced Pakistan into alliance with us, isolated the Taliban, secured military cooperation from Afghanistan's northern neighbors, and authorized a radical war plan involving just a handful of Americans on the ground, using high technology and local militias to utterly rout the Taliban.

Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeating an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land with no history of democratic culture and just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

This is all barely remembered and barely noted. Most amazing of all, John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure — a botched operation in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he "outsourced" bin Laden's capture to "warlords" in the battle of Tora Bora.

Outsourced? The entire Afghan War was outsourced. How does Kerry think we won it? How did Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar fall? Stormed by thousands of American GIs? They fell to the "warlords" we had enlisted, supported and directed. It was their militias that overran the Taliban.

"Outsourcing" is a demagogue's way of saying "using allies." (Isn't Kerry's Iraq solution to "outsource" the problem to the "allies" and the United Nations?) And in Afghanistan it meant the very best allies: locals who had a far better chance of knowing what cave to storm without getting blown up.

Now, as always, the retroactive military genius says he would have done it differently.

As Kerry himself said on national television at the time of Tora Bora (Dec. 14, 2001): "What we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will" — i.e., not throwing American lives away in tunnels and caves in alien territory. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way."

Now, as always, the retroactive military genius says he would have done it differently. Yet in the same interview, asked about how things were going overall in Afghanistan, he said "I think we have been smart, I think the administration leadership has done it well and we are on the right track."

Once again, the senator's position has evolved, to borrow The New York Times' delicate term for Kerry's many about-faces.

This election comes down to a choice between one man's evolution and the other man's resolution. With his endlessly repeated Tora Bora charges, Kerry has made Afghanistan a major campaign issue. So be it. Who do you want as president?

The man who conceived the Afghan campaign, carried it through without flinching when it was being called a "quagmire" during its second week, and has seen it through to Afghanistan's transition to democracy? Or the retroactive genius, who always knows what needs to be done after it has already happened — who would have done "everything" differently in Iraq, yet in Afghanistan would have replicated Bush's every correct, courageous, radical and risky decision — except one. Which, of course, he would have done differently. He says. Now.

Fallujah is a cancer

Sounds like the "rat's nest" of Fallujah will see major action soon and the Marines are ready.

Iraq's government yesterday offered the leaders of rebel-held Fallujah a "last" chance to negotiate as an American military commander described the city as a cancer that had to be dealt with.

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, indicated that time was fast running out for those who were harbouring insurgents there. "This chance could be the last," he said in a statement, imploring "the leaders and notables of Fallujah to use it to find a political solution".

But with military preparations at an advanced stage and American officials suggesting a major offensive could begin next week, there appeared little hope of a deal.

"Fallujah is a cancer," said Maj Gen Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, who would lead any ground attack. "We can't have a sanctuary for the enemy and expect to make progress."

He said he had received no request from the Iraqi government to carry out military operations and offered no opinion on whether a peaceful solution was possible. "I don't know who they're negotiating with."

But he made clear that his men were ready for action in Fallujah. "It's a rats' nest but if we have to go in and clear it out we will." He urged the foreign elements in Fallujah and those loyal to Saddam Hussein's regime to come out and fight.

"We can take these guys on if they show their faces. Not a problem whatsoever. That's why they've resorted to the tactics they have [suicide bombings and landmines] because they know every time we face them we kill them."

Speaking in his headquarters at Ramadi, 30 miles west of Fallujah, he said the insurgents appeared to be preparing for battle. "There's some indications they are fortifying." Intelligence reports have suggested that elaborate booby traps have been laid.

Internal Iraqi pressures may well be contributing to the timing, including the fact that the recently massacred Iraqi National Guard trainees were primarily southern Shi'ites, according to Zeyad at Healing Iraq.

The soldiers were reportedly unarmed, dressed in civilian clothes and returning home on a bus from a training camp in Karakush. They were found systematically shot in the head with their hands tied in groups of 12 on the main road of Baladruz-Mandali-Badrah. Most of the soldiers were from the Wasit (Kut), Thi Qar (Nasiriya) and Maysan (Ammara) governorates, which prompted several (Shi'ite) tribal Sheikhs from these areas to issue threats of a large scale armed assault against (Sunni) tribes west of Baghdad to avenge the slain soldiers.

Sheikh Hassan Hatem Al-Ghadhban of the Bani Lam tribes in Kut and Ammara strongly warned tribes west of Baghdad from the consequences of providing aid and refuge to terrorists. He also mentioned that southern Iraqi tribes can easily mobilise an army of tribesmen to overrun Yusifiya, Mahmudiya and Fallujah, and that neither multinational forces nor the interim government can stop them from carrying out this threat. Another Sheikh from Bani Lam said that he can do nothing to prevent his angry tribesmen from taking revenge for their brothers and sons, while a spokesman for the Congregation of Southern Tribes, a Sheikh from the Rubaiy'a tribes in Kut, called on the government to intervene and put an end to these massacres or they would be forced to act by themselves.

This is the third time in 5 months that southern Iraqi tribes threaten military action against Fallujah and surrounding areas.

The pot is boiling.

CIA purge coming?

This Knight-Ridder story says new CIA director Porter Goss is moving to make changes at the agency. That may be a good sign; the CIA needs dramatic reform and staffing is the key, not structure.

Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials.

Goss, a former Republican congressman, has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said.

Goss, who was sworn in Sept. 24 to replace George Tenet, pledged during his confirmation hearings he would be a nonpartisan CIA director.

But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they were concerned by the partisan affiliation of Goss' team.

"If he has brought strongly partisan staff with him - and he has - that seems to call (Goss's pledge) into question," said another top official, who recently left the CIA.

A CIA spokesman, who asked to remain unnamed, said Goss has made no decisions on restructuring.

"We are not at the structural phase yet," the spokesman said. "These people ought to be given a little time. It's been less than a month since he's (Goss) been sworn in. That goes for some of the people he has brought with him."

He denied the reports up to 90 people will be ousted from their jobs, saying "I have heard no conversations to support any changes close to that number as of yet.

"It's kind of interesting that Mr. Goss was accused (in his confirmation hearings) of not being reform-minded enough" and is now being criticized for considering sweeping reforms of the agency, the spokesman added.

The charges of partisanship are absurd, if predictable. Only highly-trusted aides would come in with a new executive, and it's no surprise that Goss would have had few Democrats on his committee staff.

• CIA blocks distribution of study on 9/11 failures

No brainer

Here's video of The Choice, via The Daily Recycler and friends.

Blackfive has a photo in the same spirit.

Curt Schilling hits a home run

Boston Red Sox ace Curt Schilling slipped an unexpected pitch by ABC host Charlie Gibson yesterday morning: a presidential endorsement.

"And make sure you tell everybody to vote, and vote Bush next week."

Here's the Good Morning America video via The Daily Recycler.

Now he's hitting the campaign trail in New Hampshire with President Bush.

Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling will accompany President George W. Bush to his campaign stops in Manchester and Portsmouth on Friday.

Schilling urged viewers to vote for Bush on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program yesterday morning. The Bush campaign then quickly invited him to join the President in his final campaign visit to the Granite State, sources said. Schilling gladly accepted.

It is unclear if Schilling will be wearing his now-legendary bloody sock, which came to symbolize the Red Sox’ dramatic run to their first World Series title in 86 years. But don’t be surprised if he waves it to the crowd, or if the crowd waves mock bloody socks at him in appreciation of his courageous pitching performances during the playoffs and World Series.

In case you didn't notice at the time, in 2001 Schilling wrote a moving Open Letter following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Excerpt:

To those families that lost loved ones in the NYPD and in the FDNY, I can only offer our sincerest thank you. Please know that athletes in this country look to your husbands and wives as they may have looked at the men of our profession when they were young, as heroes, as idols, for they are everything every man should strive to be in life and they died in a way reserved only for those who would make the ultimate sacrifice for this nation, and for the freedom we oftentimes take for granted.

Words cannot heal your wounds, not even time will heal the wounds for those who have suffered loss this week. But other than money and blood, which I hope the players in MLB will be giving of both, it is all we have to offer.

We will step on the fields of Major League Baseball on Monday night, but please know that we are not doing this as an aversion to forget what happened on Tuesday. Nothing will ever make us forget that day. But we are doing so because it is our job, and I honestly feel that if you do have a chance to catch a few minutes of a game, and see every sports fan in every stadium stand for that initial moment of silence, and understand when we do so that we do so for you, and for your families. And in the seventh-inning stretch when this nation sings God Bless America, we do so because we can, because in this country men and woman have died so that we can continue on as a free nation, and we will be thinking of you then also.

Gutsy AND classy.

UPDATE: Schilling backed out of the campaign appearances and downplayed his ABC endorsement. Not so gutsy? Hmm, turns out Red Sox executives are MAJOR contributors to the Democrats. Maybe he got an offer he could not refuse.

High explosive lies

Following a detailed 12-point examination of just how implausible are the charges that the U.S. military allowed hundreds of tons of IAEA-tagged high explosives to be looted from the Al Qa Qaa complex in Iraq, Ralph Peters offers a pointed conclusion:

Sen. Kerry knows this is a bogus issue. And he doesn't care. He's willing to accuse our troops of negligence and incompetence to further his political career. Of course, he did that once before.

Tip via Outside the Beltway.

Additional note: Bill Gertz's report on Russian complicity in the disappearance of the high explosives prior to the American-led invasion comes with corroboration from the past: former Romanian spy chief Ion Mihai Pacepa's explanation in 2003 that Russian military intelligence was in Iraq to implement their Sarindar plan.

The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar," meaning "emergency exit."

Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.

The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals,Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war—Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.

Russians helped Saddam hide weapons

Now here is tomorrow's October Surprise of the Day, delivered hours early by Bill Gertz and The Washington Times.

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.

The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.

However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.

The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.

The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.

Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.

Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.

"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.

Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.

The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.

The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.

The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

Remember, the window of opportunity for all this was the time we spent fruitlessly wandering the halls of the U.N. seeking in vain for support and approval.

Related:
• GlobalSecurity.org - Al Qa Qaa Complex
• Syria's hidden hand
• Syria's hidden charms

A terrible thing

Increasingly indispensable Victor Davis Hanson reviews the verminous level of current political debate and asks a pertinent question: "Are things really really as ghastly as they appear this election year?"

Is our republic paralyzed with hate, about to experience a dreaded next stage of violence in the streets, akin to the last dark days of the Roman Republic when gangs stormed the forum? Not really.

There is a long history of similar American political invective. The elections of 1864 saw far worse slurs. Statesmen like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan were routinely decried as savages, baboons and senile. For all the current name-calling, no one has accused either candidate of fathering illegitimate children, turning the country over to the Pope, or being intoxicated while on the job -- standard election year slander of the past. There are no riots in the streets, as was common in 1968.

Yet the true nature of our loud divisiveness is rarely remarked upon. In the last three decades, there has been a steady evolution from liberal to moderately conservative politics among a majority of the voters, whether gauged by the recent spate of Republican presidents or Bill Clinton's calculated shift to the center. Now the House, Senate, presidency and the majority of state governorships and legislatures are in Republican hands. A Bush win will ensure a conservative Supreme Court for a generation.

In contrast, the universities, the arts, the major influential media and Hollywood are predominately liberal -- and furious. They bring an enormous amount of capital, talent, education and cultural influence into the political fray -- but continue to lose real political power. The talented elite plays the same role to the rest of America as the Europeans do to the United States -- venting and seething because the supposedly less sophisticated, but far more powerful, average Joes don't embrace their visions of utopia.

Elites from college professors and George Soros to Bruce Springsteen and Garrison Keillor believe that their underappreciated political insight is a natural byproduct of their own proven artistic genius, education, talent or capital. How then can a tongue-tied George W. Bush and his cronies so easily fool Americans, when novelists, actors, singers, comedians and venture capitalists have spent so much time and money warning them of their danger?

For all Sean Penn's rants, Rather's sermons, Michael Moore's mythodramas and Jon Stewart's postmodern snickers, America, even in times of a controversial war and rocky economy, is still not impressed. National Public Radio, "Nightline" and the New York Times are working overtime to assert their views in this philosophical debate; Jimmy Carter and Al Gore -- not George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole -- are fuming. Most Americans snore or flip the channel.

It is apparently a terrible thing to be sensitive, glib, smart, educated or chic -- and not be listened to, as we have seen from this noisy and often hysterical campaign among elites. That is the real divide in this country, and it is only going to get worse.

So, take some comfort, ye non-elites. But steel yourself against the outpouring of invective yet to come.

Al Qaeda election threat?

Here's the October Surprise of the Day, via Drudge.

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda.

ABCNEWS strongly denies holding the tape back from broadcast over political concerns during the last days of the election.

Read more.

If you're interested in yesterday's October Surprise of the Day, the "missing" Iraqi high explosives and the Kerry campaign's subsequent feigned outrage, the Kerry Spot at NRO seems to have comprehensive coverage, including this response from President Bush:

“After repeatedly calling Iraq the ‘wrong war,’ and a ‘diversion,’ Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons. The Senator used to know that, even though he seems to have forgotten it over the course of the campaign, but after all that’s why we’re there. Iraq was a dangerous place run by a dangerous tyrant who had a lot of weapons. We have seized or destroyed more than 400,000 tons of munitions, including explosives, and more than — thousands of different sites, and we’re continuing to round up more weapons everyday.

“I want to remind the American people, if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our 'global test.' Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would control all those weapons and explosives and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies.

“Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, 'we do not know the facts.' Think about that. The Senator's denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that's part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected."

Everybody's guessing

As noted earlier, even the political pros don't really know what's going to happen in this year's election. Now wily Dick Morris elaborates on a key question: what will all these newly-registered voters do?

The difficulties of accurately surveying presidential prospects have become ever more daunting with each new election cycle. The growing difficulties account for the wide fluctuations in survey data.

The main variant in the data relates to the likelihood of a person actually voting. With half of the potential electorate normally forsaking the franchise, pollsters have great difficulty in identifying who will actually participate and weeding out the real voters from those who will stay home.

Most turnout models developed in recent years are predicated on the relatively low turnouts in recent U.S. elections. In 2000, for example, only about half of those who were eligible actually cast ballots. Even in a "high turnout year" like 1992, just 53 percent of the voting-age population actually cast ballots.

But every indication is that this year's turnout will dwarf our recent experiences. With record numbers of new voters coming on the rolls and get-out-the-vote operations generously funded by "independent" political committees released from any effective controls by the so-called campaign-finance reform, participation is likely to soar. The massive funding of these supposedly non-partisan political committees has empowered massive drives to sign up new voters and to generate a high turnout.

The closeness of the 2000 election is generating new voters. With party feelings approaching fever pitch as the election nears and emotional issues like terrorism, gay marriage, recession and the like dominate the campaign, turnout seems likely to be very, very high.

The truth is, no modern pollster really has any idea what to expect if turnout reaches the high 50s or closes in on 60 percent.

There's no good way to estimate turnout — most people won't admit to not planning to vote.

And while there are models for the composition of the electorate at a 50 percent turnout, there is no data on a modern American election with a substantially higher turnout. Everybody's guessing.

Familiar and yet not

Belmont Club explains how a ruthless enemy is systematically losing the war in Iraq, despite temporary successes from a clever strategic fallback just prior to the war's start.

The battle began to go against them from the start. In essence, Ba'athist-terrorist coalition was unable to inflict the losses necessary to disrupt the organizational learning curve of the American forces. Unlike the conscript Soviet Army, the American Armed Forces were a professional force that retained its core of officers, NCOs and to a large degree, even their enlisted men. Forces were rotated out of Iraq largely intact, where they incorporated lessons learned into the training cycle in CONUS; and relieving forces were improved accordingly. In 1980s, the Al Qaeda and not the Soviet Army had turned Afghanistan into a training ground but in 2003-2004, it was the US Armed Forces and not the terrorists that were coming away with organizational memory. Simply not enough of the enemy survived to pass on their experience and simply too many American lieutenants left Iraq to return as captains.

One indication of the unfavorable trend faced by enemy forces face was the rapid transformation in US operations. It is interesting to compare Marine preparations to assault Fallujah in April 2004 with those apparently under way today, just months later. The Marine methods of April would have been instantly familiar to any military historian: hammer and anvil, seizure of key terrain; feint and attack. Today, many of the military objectives in the developing siege of the terrorist stronghold are abstract. They consist of developing a network of informers in the city; of setting up a functioning wireless network; of getting close enough for smaller US units to deploy their line-of-sight controlled UAV and UGV units to create a seamless operational and tactical environment to wage "swarm" warfare; of getting artillery and mortar units close enough to play hopscotch over everything the network decides to engage. To the traditional methods of warfare the Americans were adding a whole new plane which only they could inhabit.

Faced with a force increasingly familiar with Arabia, with deep combat experience, nearly unlimited technical resources and growing lethality, the enemy... can only hope to be saved by the bell.

"Saved by the bell" would the ascendancy of the anti-war Left, currently personified by John Kerry and his entourage of wrong-headed, do-nothing advisers. This war will only be "lost" at home.

As so often, read the whole thing, for insights into both today's conflict and the historical context.

Expanded force

Stratfor's George Friedman has thoughts on why and how the U.S. military will be vastly expanded, starting in 2005. Attention young adults: no, it will not be through a draft.

Since it is clear that the war will continue regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, it is time to focus on the single most important strategic issue facing the United States: the size and composition of the U.S. armed forces. Unless jihadist opposition throughout the Islamic world ends suddenly, which is unlikely, the war will continue for several years. The U.S. military, however, is in no position to continue fighting the war with current forces -- particularly Army and Marine forces. Therefore, something has to give. To be more precise, there will be a massive increase in the size of the U.S. military in 2005.

The force must be expanded. It must contain people who understand the commitment is extended and open-ended. It must contain people who will be trained in some specialties for a year, and then be available for deployment for years after that. The force must include young officers, as well as enlisted men. And these will be people who can readily get other civilian jobs. This cannot be a force of the failed.

It is one thing to risk your life. It is another to emerge impoverished from the experience. The soldier's job is to place himself between home and war's desolation. It is the homeland's job to reward a soldier for a job well done. It is the peculiarity and, to us, the charm of the United States that soldiers will indeed give their lives for their country out of patriotism -- but they expect their country to pay them for the risk.

There is an unpleasant tradition in our country of paying soldiers poorly. It is as if the United States intends to dare its troops to serve. There is another side to this -- a hidden contempt by businessmen and professionals toward those who would serve at that kind of pay. We know that the children of wealthy businessmen and professionals don't serve, but the deeper shame is the lack of respect the elite has for those people who do. Part of it goes back to the aristocratic tradition of the enlisted man as brute, but it also extends to officers -- there is a feeling that if these men and woman were any good, they would be selling bonds.

That is about to change with a vengeance. The United States will not institute a draft. The children of the elite will not enlist. The United States is going to lose its army in the coming year or so, or will face a revolt of the exploited in the ranks -- men and women trapped in commitments that are far more extensive than anyone expected, and whose lives are being thereby ruined. But there is a war on and it is not going to go away.

The United States will have to replace some of the existing force, will have to compensate the remainder for staying on and will have to induce others to join. These will be men and women prepared to sacrifice their lives if need be, but not their financial futures. Nor is it fair to expect them to do so. They will be fighting not only so that others might live -- but also so that others can make a pile of money while they serve.

No one wants a draftee on his flank, but those who will not serve must surely pay and pay big time. The idea that a captain leading a company in Iraq should make less than a successful professional in any other field is absurd. The idea that a senior IT technician at a brokerage or hospital should have a 401(k) while a sergeant working computers in Baghdad has to put in 20 years before he sees a nickel in retirement income, is obscene.

And, leaving moralism aside, it will not work. There is no way around an expanded force and there is, therefore, no way around vastly increased pay and benefits for the troops. This will mean either higher taxes or cutbacks in other areas. However, those who don't serve and don't send their children to serve are no longer going to be able to simply count on being protected by the faceless "others." There ain't no such thing as a free lunch -- and that goes for national defense, as well.

Something healthy will come out of this. For a country that fights as many wars as the United States does -- and it fights a lot of wars -- the idea that the profession of arms should be treated worse and paid any less than professions like the law or medicine is absurd. Soldiers do not deal with matters of less importance to Americans than lawyers and doctors. In the past, it was possible to get soldiers on the cheap. Those days are past. If the United States plans to have a military in two years, it will have to pay for it.

Read the whole thing, via The Braden Files.

Optimism wins

Learning something new: controversial and very brilliant military strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map, has a blog. Turns out he is a disappointed Kerry supporter and has concluded that the Kerry campaign is a loser.

[T]he Dems have made two fatefully bad choices in this election by choosing to focus on tactics (kill terrorists) and operations (defend America) instead of real strategy (beat the enemy to the finish line). They have selected downer subjects, where Kerry's sophisticated understanding of things actually works against him, leaving Bush to exploit the high ground, where his simplistic-yet-very-sincere delivery works like a charm.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the more optimistic candidate wins national elections, and despite the great mishandling of the Iraq occupation by this administration, ... their mindless alienation of allies around the dial, and the growing sense of strategic despair both have created throughout far too much of the U.S. military, Bush and his campaign have managed to seize the high ground of both grand strategy and an optimistic vision of the future, leaving Kerry and the Dems to mutter about how "we'd do it better if we had the chance."

Arguing methodology over content when it comes to grand strategy is a loser-plain and simple. On that score Karl Rove is kicking James Carville's ass, leading me to believe that the only way the Dems will reclaim the Clintonesque ability to push a Reaganesque sense of forward-looking optimism will be to move beyond Kerry's badly managed campaign and go with the other Clinton in 2008.

Tip via NRO's Kerry Spot

There's more, so read the whole thing. It's thought-provoking, as is always the case with Barnett.

Betrayal looming

Savvy Charles Krauthammer has been weighing carefully the words of John Kerry on foreign policy and draws the only possible logical conclusion: a sellout is coming.

He really does want to end America's isolation. And he has an idea how to do it. For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.

Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations? The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places like Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines.

Do not be fooled by the euphemism "peace process." We know what "peace process" meant during the eight years [of] the Clinton White House — a White House to which Yasser Arafat was invited more often than any leader on the planet. It meant believing Arafat's deceptions about peace while letting him get away with the most virulent incitement to and unrelenting support of terrorism. It meant constant pressure on Israel to make one territorial concession after another — in return for nothing. Worse than nothing: Arafat launched a vicious terror war that killed a thousand Israeli innocents.

"Re-engage in the peace process" is precisely what the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations have been pressuring the United States to do for years. Do you believe any of them have Israel's safety at heart? They would sell out Israel in an instant, and they are pressuring America to do precisely that.

Why are they so upset with Bush's Israeli policy? After all, isn't Bush the first president ever to commit the United States to an independent Palestinian state? Bush's sin is that he also insists the Palestinians genuinely accept Israel and replace the corrupt, dictatorial terrorist leadership of Yasser Arafat.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David 2000) it will never make peace.

The allies will appreciate that. Then turn around and say to them: We're doing our part (against Israel), now you do yours (in Iraq). If Kerry is elected, the pressure on Israel will begin on day one.

You know what to do on Election Day.

The most shocking thing

John O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command and Swift Boat Veteran, has given an interview with Kevin Aylward at Wizbang. Read the whole thing, but here's a stunning excerpt:

Aylward - On a personal level, what has been the most surprising or shocking thing that you've learned through this whole experience.

O'Neill - The level of depravity in John Kerry's soul. I knew of his post-war activities, but I believed some of the stories in the Brinkley biography. I had no idea he fabricated the Sampan event. There was a point in our 1971 debate when I pinned him down and he was forced to admit he had never personally seen atrocities committed. In the writing of Unfit For Command and gathering the stories of other Swift Boat veterans we learned of the Sampan event, of Kerry burning villages with his Zippo lighter, slaughtering animals, etc. It turns out the Kerry lied about every single bit of his Vietnam story.

John O'Neill affirmed earlier that his dispute with John Kerry is personal not political.

Billionaire blinders

OK, now it's personal.

USA Today has interviewed Teresa Heinz Kerry, inheritress and billionaire:

Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?

A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job — I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things. And I'm older, and my validation of what I do and what I believe and my experience is a little bit bigger — because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.

From Laura Bush's biography, via the White House:

Laura Bush was born on November 4, 1946, in Midland, Texas, to Harold and Jenna Welch. Inspired by her second grade teacher, she earned a bachelor of science degree in education from Southern Methodist University in 1968. She then taught in public schools in Dallas and Houston. In 1973 she earned a master of library science degree from the University of Texas at Austin and worked as a public school librarian in Austin. In 1977 she met and married George Walker Bush.

Teachers and librarians take note: the would-be First Lady of the United States either thinks your work is not a "real job" or thinks you are not yet "grown up." As my very polite mother said of THK two weeks ago, "She's just asinine. I can't imagine her as First Lady." Right on the mark, Mom.

Tip via NRO's Kerry Spot

UPDATE: THK backtracks.

Ashley's story

Earlier this year, President Bush went to Ohio and took time out to comfort a young girl.

In a moment largely unnoticed by the throngs of people in Lebanon waiting for autographs from the president of the United States, George W. Bush stopped to hold a teenager's head close to his heart.

Lynn Faulkner, his daughter, Ashley, and their neighbor, Linda Prince, eagerly waited to shake the president's hand Tuesday at the Golden Lamb Inn. He worked the line at a steady campaign pace, smiling, nodding and signing autographs until Prince spoke: "This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11."

Bush stopped and turned back.

"He changed from being the leader of the free world to being a father, a husband and a man," Faulkner said. "He looked right at her and said, 'How are you doing?' He reached out with his hand and pulled her into his chest."

Faulkner snapped one frame with his camera.

"I could hear her say, 'I'm OK,' " he said. "That's more emotion than she has shown in 21/2 years. Then he said, 'I can see you have a father who loves you very much.' "

"And I said, 'I do, Mr. President, but I miss her mother every day.' It was a special moment."

"The way he was holding me, with my head against his chest, it felt like he was trying to protect me," Ashley said. "I thought, 'Here is the most powerful guy in the world, and he wants to make sure I'm safe.' I definitely had a couple of tears in my eyes, which is pretty unusual for me."

Now we can learn more about Ashley's story.