Petrified Truth

Shark attacks

Thinking twice about going into the water after repeated shark attacks in Florida? Here's an expert resource from the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida: the International Shark Attack File.

Nice

Think nothing gets done in Washington? Congress can unite... to vote itself another pay raise. Feel better now?

The House on Tuesday agreed to a $3,100 pay raise for Congress next year to $165,200 after defeating an effort to roll it back.

In a 263-152 vote, the House blocked a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to force an up-or-down vote on the pay raise. Instead, lawmakers will automatically receive the raise officially a cost of living adjustment as provided for in a 1989 law that barred them from pocketing big speaking fees in exchange for an annual COLA.

Matheson was the only one of 434 House members to speak out against the 1.9 percent COLA, which will raise members' salaries in January.

A similar effort to block the raise could occur when the Senate considers its version of the bill. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has tried in the past to block it but has had no more success than Matheson did.

In a House riven by partisanship, raising members' pay is one of the few things Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agree on.

The annual debate on the members' COLA resembles kabuki theater: Both Democratic and Republican leaders guarantee sizable majorities of their members to block the effort, and they make sure there is not a clear-cut vote on the measure. None of the party campaign committees uses the pay-raise issue in campaigns.

Primevalism

Interesting: large areas of rural Europe are reverting to a "primeval" state and wolves are replacing vanishing human inhabitants.

Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, speckled with abandoned strip mines and declining villages, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. They multiplied so quickly that a second pack has since split off, colonizing a second-growth pine forest 30 kilometers further west. Soon, says local wildlife biologist Gesa Kluth, a third pack will likely form, possibly heading northward in the direction of Berlin.

Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany's wolves. Today, it's the local humans whose numbers are under threat. Wolf-country villages like Boxberg and Weisswasser are emptying out, thanks to the region's ultralow birthrate and continued rural flight. Nearby Hoyerswerda is Germany's fastest-shrinking town, losing 25,000 of its 70,000 residents in the last 15 years.

Such numbers are a harbinger of the future. Home to 22 of the world's 25 lowest-birthrate countries, Europe will lose 41 million people by 2030 even with continued immigration, according to the latest U.N. Population Division report. The biggest decline will hit rural Europe. As Italians, Spaniards, Germans and others produce barely half the children needed to maintain the status quo—and rural flight continues to suck people into Europe's suburbs and cities—the countryside will lose close to a third of its population, say both the United Nations and the EU. "It's a triple time bomb," says University of Lisbon demographer Nuno da Costa. "Too few children, too many old people and too many of the remaining young people still leaving the village."

Feeling

While we sit back and weigh the effectiveness of President Bush's words about Iraq, an alert reader at NRO's The Corner writes from the front line and speaks to a key concern about our commander-in-chief: is he not sensitive to the cost of this war?

The pain of having to give orders that result in the deaths of good men is second only to that of the family itself - except most families only face it once. Commanders face it again and again and again. Bush is a good commander, and he knows that pain exquisitely. Knowing that it must be done does not erase the anguished sense of responsibility. These fools worry about whether Bush feels my pain? I surely hope not. He has more than enough of his own and I wonder if they have the sense to feel his.

God bless him, but I surely wouldn't want his job.

Bush on Iraq

Ever useful C-SPAN already has (Real) video up of President Bush's primetime speech on Iraq.

The text of his remarks is here. Excerpt:

Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate.

Here are the words of Osama bin Laden: This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war. He says it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation.

The terrorists know that the outcome will leave them emboldened or defeated. So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to take.

We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who exploded car bombs along a busy shopping street in Baghdad, including one outside a mosque.

We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul.

We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who behead civilian hostages and broadcast their atrocities for the world to see.

These are savage acts of violence, but they have not brought the terrorists any closer to achieving their strategic objectives.

The terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi, failed to stop the transfer of sovereignty. They failed to break our coalition and force a mass withdrawal by our allies.

They failed to incite an Iraqi civil war. They failed to prevent free elections. They failed to stop the formation of a democratic Iraqi government that represents all of Iraq's diverse population. And they failed to stop Iraqis from signing up in large number with the police forces and the army to defend their new democracy.

The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom.

The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden.

For the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch.

Shelby Foote, RIP

Here's sad news: Shelby Foote has passed away.

Novelist and historian Shelby Foote, whose Southern storyteller's touch inspired millions to read his multivolume work on the Civil War, has died. He was 88.

Foote, a Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident, wrote six novels but is best remembered for his three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War and his appearance on the PBS series "The Civil War."

He worked on the book for 20 years, using a flowing, narrative style that enabled readers to enjoy it like a historical novel.

"I can't conceive of writing it any other way," Foote once said. "Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You can never get to the truth, but that's your goal."

"He was a Southerner of great intellect who took up the issue of the Civil War as a writer with huge sanity and sympathy," said Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, a friend and fellow Mississippi native.

Foote's soft drawl and gentlemanly manner on the Burns film made him an instant celebrity, a role with which he was unaccustomed and, apparently, somewhat uncomfortable.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" as No. 15 on its list of the century's 100 best English-language works of nonfiction.

Reading, he said, was as much a part of his work as writing.

After finishing his sixth novel, "September, September," in 1978, he took off three years to read.

He was a brilliant writer and a gifted raconteur -- there was no one better.

• The Mississippi Writers Page - Shelby Foote
• Booknotes - Shelby Foote (1994)

Nuclear threat continues

Need more to worry about? This risky situation just doesn't seem to be getting better. Why?

Four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and the U.S. Congress are showing signs of complacency about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack that could cripple a major city and shatter the economy, nuclear security experts said on Monday.

At a public forum sponsored by the former Sept. 11 commission, the experts said the government must do more to secure bomb-making materials worldwide, prevent proliferation, and promote international cooperation on security.

Panel members including former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat who once chaired the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, worried about the pace of efforts to secure nuclear stockpiles that are often poorly guarded in 40 countries, including former Soviet states.

"From my perspective, the terrorists are racing and we are somewhere between a walk and a crawl," said Nunn, who now leads a nonproliferation group called the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

He called on U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to accelerate U.S.-assisted nuclear security efforts in Russia and to overcome bureaucratic entanglements that have retarded progress in the effort.

Nuclear Threat Initiative
Lugar Survey on Proliferation Threats and Responses (pdf)

King Kong - first look

Here's the first trailer for Peter Jackson's King Kong, scheduled for December 2005. Looks awesome. Turn up the volume.

• King Kong official site
• Kong is King.net fan site

Chinese technology acquisition

The second part of Bill Gertz's series on Chinese military development is focused on how they acquire technology: in large part, from the U.S.

China is stepping up its overt and covert efforts to gather intelligence and technology in the United States, and the activities have boosted Beijing's plans to rapidly produce advanced-weapons systems.

"I think you see it where something that would normally take 10 years to develop takes them two or three," said David Szady, chief of FBI counterintelligence operations.

He said the Chinese are prolific collectors of secrets and military-related information.

The Chinese intelligence services use a variety of methods to spy, including traditional intelligence operations targeting U.S. government agencies and defense contractors.

Additionally, the Chinese use hundreds of thousands of Chinese visitors, students and other nonprofessional spies to gather valuable data, most of it considered "open source," or unclassified information.

China's spies use as many as 3,200 front companies -- many run by groups linked to the Chinese military -- that are set up to covertly obtain information, equipment and technology, U.S. officials say.

Recent examples include front businesses in Milwaukee; Trenton, N.J.; and Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Szady said. In other cases, China has dispatched students, short-term visitors, businesspeople and scientific delegations with the objective of stealing technology and other secrets.

But the problem of Chinese spying is daunting.

"It's pervasive," Mr. Szady said. "It's a massive presence, 150,000 students, 300,000 delegations in the New York area. That's not counting the rest of the United States, probably 700,000 visitors a year. They're very good at exchanges and business deals, and they're persistent."

Prince Bandar on his way out

NBC News is reporting that Saudi Prince Bandar, insider and longtime confidante of numerous U.S. presidents, may be quitting.

A senior western diplomat in Riyadh has confirmed to NBC News that Prince Bandar bin Sultan has tendered his resignation to Crown Prince Abdullah in recent days. “You can feel comfortable reporting that,” said the diplomat.

Bandar, the long time Saudi ambassador to the United States and a key figure in the Saudi decision to permit U.S. bases in the Kingdom during the Gulf War, resigned, said the diplomat because of recurring health problems, depression being the most significant.

There have been persistent reports of Bandar's battle with depression over the last several years. Bandar is also reported to have had problems with over use of antidepressants.

Bandar has played a key, personal role in developing and guiding Saudi Arabia's strange relationship with the U.S. This would be a significant behind-the-scenes change.

Summer fun

We daytripped yesterday to an afternoon concert at the International Festival-Institute at Festival Hill in scenic Round Top, deep in the heart of central Texas. The program by summer student artists was varied, exciting and fun. We may go back again next weekend for their Patriotic Concert on Sunday, July 3. The program looks fine: besides Copland, Ives, Gershwin and others, we can hear music by John Williams (The Cowboys) and Mel Brooks (The Producers).

After the music yesterday, we had a thoroughly enjoyable country French dinner at the Brazos Belle bistro in nearby Burton. Chef André Delacroix's kitchen was in good form.

On target

Gunner at Target CenterMass is celebrating his first year anniversary of blogging. Check out his site if you don't already know it.

China's military buildup

Bill Gertz starts a series of articles on the rapid and surprising build-up of China's offensive military capability.

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan.

The war fears come despite the fact that China is hosting the Olympic Games in 2008 and, therefore, some officials say, would be reluctant to invoke the international condemnation that a military attack on Taiwan would cause.

For China, Taiwan is not the only issue behind the buildup of military forces. Beijing also is facing a major energy shortage that, according to one Pentagon study, could lead it to use military force to seize territory with oil and gas resources.

Let's face it: China is preparing itself across the board for hardnosed global competition and at least regional hegemony. If that eventually involves offensive military action, they intend to be ready. And willing.

Thug vs. thug

The winner has been declared in Iran's presidential "election:"

The ultraconservative Tehran mayor won Iran's presidential runoff, the Interior Ministry announced today — a stunning upset by a man reformers fear will take Iran back to the restrictions of the Islamic Revolution.

The mayor was rolling toward a landslide victory. Figures indicated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could finish with more than 60 percent of the vote, said Mani Alizadeh, a campaign official for his more moderate opponent, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad, a 47-year-old former Republican Guard commander, has presented himself as a champion of the poor in a country where unemployment is as high as 30 percent. But he has also vowed a return to the rigid principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

That stance has sent liberals and business leaders rushing into the arms of Rafsanjani, an insider of Iran's theocracy.

While many reformers have been suspicious of 70-year-old Rafsanjani in the past, they were more afraid Ahmadinejad will crush the greater social freedoms and openings to the West won over the past decade.

James Joyner surveys U.S. press coverage and notes that the contest is being reported largely with a straight face, which is a problem: it ain't so.

Strangely, none of the reportage on the Iranian presidential "election" questions the validity of the outcome. Indeed, the press has treated this as if it were a Western election decided on campaign issues.

A reader approaching any of these stories without background knowledge would come away with a decidedly distorted view of reality.

Iran watcher Michael Ledeen saw it much more clearly yesterday.

I don’t know who will win, and it may well be that nobody knows. Iran today reminds me very much of the death struggle between Hitler and the SA, the brown-shirted thugs who led the Nazi "revolution." At a certain point Hitler knew they were a potential threat to his rule, and they were violently purged. Supreme Leader Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s Fuhrer, faces two possible outcomes: If Rafsanjani wins, he will have a certain amount of independence because of his vast wealth (accumulated in tandem with Khamenei) and his corrupt network of cronies and clients. If Ahmadinejad wins, he will have a certain amount of independence because of the support of the most fanatical killers in Iran, those from the Basij, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Quds Force, from which Ahmadinejad emerged. Khamenei may well judge that Ahmadinijad is the greater threat, and he may have ordered that Rafsanjani be declared the winner.

Please keep two basic facts in mind as this melodrama unfolds: Neither Rafsanjani nor Ahmadinejad has any intention of altering the basic structure of the Islamic Republic, nor of "liberalizing" Iranian society (the Reich was not notably more "moderate" after Hitler crushed the SA, was it?). Both are known murderers; one way of evaluating the outcome of today’s events is that the next Iranian president will be wanted for murder either in two countries (Ahmadinejad — Austria and Germany) or in just one (Rafsanjani — Germany). This is not a fight over the future of the country; it’s a power struggle within the tyrannical elite.

From our national standpoint, the outcome doesn’t matter, because Iran will continue to be the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism (did you notice, by the way, that MSNBC’s website laconically reported that the "management" of al Qaeda went to Iran after the liberation of Afghanistan?), and will continue to give its full support to the terror war in Iraq. Our leaders will still be forced, one fine day, to confront the mullahs or retreat from Iraq; there is no escape from this grim choice.

A dangerous cycle

Why is our political class leading the American public into losing its fortitude for winning the war in Iraq? Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains The Politics of American Wars.

[T]here was never much room for error in this war. We are not talking in this postmodern era in terms of a past Democratic president invading Latin America, interring citizens in high-plains camps, hanging terrorist suspects, nuking cities, or bombing pharmaceutical factories in Africa, but, at least from the weird present hysteria, something apparently far worse — like supposedly flushing a Koran at Guantanamo.

In a leisured and liberal society, it is very difficult in general for a conservative to wage war, because the natural suspicion arises — as a result of the conservative's tragic view of human nature and his belief in the occasional utility of force — that he enjoys the enterprise far more than a lip-biting progressive, who may in fact order more destruction.

Contrary to all recent popular wisdom, the war in Iraq is not a disaster, but nearing success. It has been costly and at times tragic, but a democracy is in place, accords are being hammered out with Sunni rejectionists, and the democratic reformist mindset is pulsating into Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf. This has only been possible because of the courage and efficacy of a much maligned military that, for the lapses of a small minority at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, has been compared to Stalin and Hitler.

If President Bush were a liberal Democrat; if he were bombing a white Christian, politically clumsy fascist in the heart of Europe; if al Qaeda and its Islamist adherents were properly seen as eighth-century tormenters of humanists, women, homosexuals, non-Arabs, and non-Wahhabi believers; and if Iraq had become completely somnolent with the toppling of Saddam's statue, then the American people would have remained behind the effort to dismantle Islamic fundamentalism and create the foundations to ensure its permanent demise.

Read the whole thing.

Bad moon rising

Kelo vs. City of New London: the liberal faction of the U.S. Supreme Court, with the help of swinger Justice Kennedy, endorses the absolute power of government to take property in the name of economic development. John at Blogs of War rounds up links and says:

Corrupt, cheaply bought, local officials now hold your family's future in their hands. This is the breeding ground of a revolution.

George F. Will notes the liberal thought process but also senses danger for conservatives.

The question answered yesterday was: Can government profit by seizing the property of people of modest means and giving it to wealthy people who can pay more taxes than can be extracted from the original owners? The court answered yes.

Liberalism triumphed yesterday. Government became radically unlimited in seizing the very kinds of private property that should guarantee individuals a sphere of autonomy against government.

Conservatives should be reminded to be careful what they wish for. Their often-reflexive rhetoric praises "judicial restraint" and deference to -- it sometimes seems -- almost unleashable powers of the elected branches of governments. However, in the debate about the proper role of the judiciary in American democracy, conservatives who dogmatically preach a populist creed of deference to majoritarianism will thereby abandon, or at least radically restrict, the judiciary's indispensable role in limiting government.

Rev. Donald Sensing has a prediction:

It’s not our homes that are most at risk despite this case. It’s America’s churches, synagogues and mosques.

If the purported intention of such property condemnation and seizure is increasing tax revenue, as Justice Stevens clearly believed it was, then there is no kind of building more vulnerable than a house of worship, for the simple reason that cities do not collect property taxes from houses of worship, nor any other kind of tax.

Furthermore, churches especially tend [to] occupy choice urban and suburban real estate because when towns were founded, one of the very earliest buildings to be erected was a church, almost always several churches of different denominations. In every city and town in America you will find churches sitting on what is now some of the most valuable land there.

Deterrence should be the first public response: any public official who chooses to exercise this newfound permission should be thrown out of office and made into an example by the voters.

Corsi to challenge Kerry

Nancy at American Daughter writes to say that she's posted an exclusive interview with Dr. Jerome Corsi, co-author of the 2004 election-year bestseller Unfit for Command. Interesting news: Corsi isn't finished with John Kerry.

I’m planning to actually establish residence in Massachusetts. I want to run against John Kerry in 2008 for the Senate. I’ve just formed an exploratory committee.

Read the whole thing, or listen to audio. Congrats to Nancy for a scoop.

Saudis in Iraq

It's important to know who the enemy is and is not. NBC News reports:

An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.

Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.

On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.

They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.

"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.

The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9 percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.

The U.S. military also says Saudi Arabia and Syria are the leading sources of insurgents.

Why do they go?

Saudis captured in Iraq say it's because of pictures on Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

"We saw the Americans massacring the Iraqis," says one Saudi prisoner in Iraq via translation.

Radical Saudi clerics urge them to go to Iraq to kill Americans.

"I read the communique of the 26 clerics," says another Saudi prisoner in Iraq.

ABC News has a related report.

As the number of suicide bombings in Iraq grows higher and higher, a top U.S. military intelligence official tells ABC News they are learning more about the true nature of the bombers.

According to Brig. Gen. John Custer, director of intelligence for U.S. Central Command, suicide bombers are "recruited on the Internet. They hear about the terrible atrocities perpetrated against the Iraqis in Iraq. They want to go and martyr themselves."

There have been more than 450 suicide bombings since August. The majority of the bombers are ages 18 to 25 and, with rare exception, male.

Officials say they know of only one suicide bomber who was Iraqi, with the others coming from countries that include Sudan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Custer says once interest is shown, an elaborate network run by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi secretly sends the potential bomber into Iraq.

The would-be suicide bombers, says Custer, are then "hooked up with facilitators, whether in their country or neighboring countries, and flown to a capital — Damascus, [Syria,] is a place we've seen associated with this."

They then move across the border using false passports, Custer says, and are held in safe houses.

Once in Iraq, according to Custer, they are repeatedly exposed to videos showing civilian casualties of U.S. bombings or the photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The indoctrination continues up until the moment the human bomber is given his suicide vest, bag, or vehicle.

Of course, it's being subsidized with petrodollars from your pockets and mine. Think about that the next time you fill up your gas guzzler.

Invertebrate behavior

Senate Dems held their line today, sending John Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador to the showers, barring a much-less-than-ideal recess appointment. One Republican crossed over and actually voted with the Democrats.

Senate Democrats blocked John Bolton's confirmation as U.N. ambassador for the second time Monday and President Bush left open the possibility of bypassing lawmakers and appointing the tough-talking former State Department official on his own.

The vote was 54-38, six shy of the total needed to force a final vote on Bolton, and represented an erosion in support from last month's failed Republican effort. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who voted in May to advance the nomination, switched positions and urged Bush to consider another candidate, while only three Democrats crossed party lines.

One would hope that the flow of federal dollars directed to the great state of Ohio would slow to a trickle.

Bob Dole's message

As noted earlier, I received a copy of Bob Dole's wartime memoir, One Soldier's Story. I finished it on a recent flight to and from Washington, D.C.

His painful tale of loss and recovery is eloquent, even if the language is (like his public speaking) plainspoken. Quintessentially Midwestern, the message is simple but profound: Make a life. Make a difference. You don't have to walk alone.

One of life's great milestones is when a person can look back and be almost as thankful for the setbacks as for the victories. Gradually, it dawns on us that success and failure are not polar opposites. They are part of the same picture -- the picture of a full life, where you have your ups and downs. After all, none of us can ever lose unless we find the courage to try. Losing means that at least you were in the race. It means that when the whistle sounded, life did not find you watching from the sidelines.

There certainly have been times over the years when I have grappled with the "why" questions. Why did this happen to me? Why just a few days before the war ended? The questions are unanswerable this side of heaven. It's taken me sixty years to come to grips with the toughest questions of life, and in some small way, this book is my answer.

But instead of wallowing in despair trying to figure out a dilemma for which I believe there is a much larger answer than I will ever know, I've chosen to focus on a different set of "why" questions.

Why waste time wondering what might have been? Why go through life feeling sorry for myself? Instead of asking "why me," why not do something to help others?

Why indeed. Bob Dole's courage is an example for us all.

Mentors stand in for Dads at war

Father's Day involves some special people around Camp Pendleton, CA.

On this Father's Day, it should be noted that about 60 percent of military personnel — about 838,000 — are fathers, according to the Pentagon.

More than 123,000 of these fathers are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The lives of their children, says Nancy Campbell, who works in Army family services, "are turned upside down."

Untold numbers of men and women — relatives, neighbors, other servicemen and women — have marched to the aid of these children as temporary mentors. They play softball and board games, help with homework, and try to ease childhood's troubles with a sympathetic ear until the return of the deployed dads — or, sometimes, moms.

Some join programs like the one run by Big Brothers Big Sisters inside three public schools at Camp Pendleton, the city-sized base north of San Diego. Other mentors step forward informally to help brighten a dark time for a child.

"I got to have some time with somebody," said 11-year-old Gage Black at an end-of-school pool party at Camp Pendleton. "I'm not so lonely."

His father, who was away in Iraq, has now returned — but expects to ship out again soon.

Gage's mentor, Lt. Col. Sam Pelham, knows more than a little about comforting children: he is a father of three and, as a reservist, has worked in civilian life as an elementary school teacher. As mentor, Pelham would often ask the boy how his family was doing.

"If he was tight-lipped, I'd let him be tight-lipped," said Pelham. "It was his hour, and I didn't direct any of it. I was his running mate, basketball teammate, whatever he wanted."

Texas National Guard fathers in Iraq feel the separation too.

Maj. Greg Chaney, 38, of Abilene, said he'll be thinking of his daughters, 13-year-old Chelsea and 1-year-old Chera today. But the pangs of being away from home will not be a new experience.

"June is typically a month that the Texas National Guard is training, so we usually spend Father's Day away from home," he said.

This year, however, home seems especially far away for soldiers from the Guard's 56th Brigade Combat Team, as they struggle with heat, tedium and danger in dusty camps across Iraq.

The brigade's commander, Col. Red Brown, said an effort is being made to make soldiers "feel in touch with their families" on this special day.

Almost all troops will be given a chance to talk with their families, and the brigade's chaplain is preparing a special service.

"He plans to make sure fathers are recognized and that they can express their appreciation for their families," Brown said. "The families are absolutely the unsung heroes in this."

The 56th Brigade Combat Team is about halfway through a yearlong deployment in Iraq. The unit activated last July and spent six months training at Fort Hood before heading to Iraq.

"There are 3,000 Texas soldiers here, and each one has a different story," said Capt. Richard Jinks, a public affairs officer with the unit. "This is the national guard. These are guys who used to work with you or the guy who lives next door."

It turns out Father's Day in America was first conceived to thank a veteran.

Mrs. John B. Dodd, of Washington, first proposed the idea of a "father's day" in 1909. Mrs. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart. William Smart, a Civil War veteran, was widowed when his wife (Mrs. Dodd's mother) died in childbirth with their sixth child. Mr. Smart was left to raise the newborn and his other five children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state. It was after Mrs. Dodd became an adult that she realized the strength and selflessness her father had shown in raising his children as a single parent.

The first Father's Day was observed on June 19, 1910 in Spokane Washington. At about the same time in various towns and cities across American other people were beginning to celebrate a "father's day." In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea of a national Father's Day. Finally in 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day.

So, here's to all the soldier dads and those who stand behind them. Thanks for all you do.

Strayhorn announces

The 2006 Texas governor's race should be, well, interesting. Whether it will be good interesting or train-wreck interesting remains to be seen.

With the Capitol as a backdrop and a scorching sun beating down, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn turned the political heat up on Gov. Rick Perry today, formally announcing as a challenger to his re-election.

Strayhorn, saying she will run against Perry in next year's Republican primary, wasted no time in attacking her new opponent.

"You know that Texans cannot afford another four years of a governor who promises tax relief and delivers nothing," she said.

"Now is time to replace this do-nothing drugstore cowboy with one tough grandma," Strayhorn told a cheering crowd.

Strayhorn can talk the talk alright -- now we have to decide if she can walk the walk. Perry has been an empty suit as governor, so the opportunity is there if she can top his organization. It's hard to imagine the Democrats as a major factor, so the Republican primary is probably the real contest.

Enervation

Questions about America's commitment in the War on Terror, and what is influencing that commitment, seems to be the issue of the moment.

Austin Bay is in Iraq touring the front lines and has the same thing on his mind.

I find that this return visit to Iraq spurs thoughts of America– of American will to pursue victory. I don’t mean the will of US forces in the field. Wander around with a bunch of Marines for a half hour, spend fifteen minutes with Guardsmen from Idaho, and you will have no doubts about American military capabilities or the troops’ will to win. But our weakness is back home, on the couch, in front of the tv, on the cable squawk shows, on the editorial page of the New York Times, in the political gotcha games of Washington, DC.

It seems America wants to get on with its wonderful Electra-Glide life, that September 10 sense of freedom and security, without finishing the job. The military is fighting, the Iraqi people are fighting, but where is the US political class? The Bush Administration has yet to ask the American people –correction, has yet to demand of the American people– the sustained, shared sacrifice it takes to win this long, intricate war of bullets, ballots, and bricks.

This is the Bush Administration’s biggest strategic mistake– a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9/11 produced.

PBS: Yes, but with strings

Wise Peggy Noonan makes the conservative case for federal funding of PBS, and how the network can continue to deserve it. She's exactly right. If you care about our culture, read the whole thing.

Conservative argue that in a 500-channel universe the programming of PBS could easily be duplicated or find a home at a free commercial network. The power of the marketplace will ensure that PBS's better offerings find a place to continue and flourish.

This I doubt. Actually I'm fairly certain it is not true. And I suspect most people on the Hill know it is not true.

We live in the age of Viacom and "Who Wants to Be a Celebrity," not the age of Omnibus and "Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts." A lot of Democrats think that left to the marketplace, PBS will die. A lot of Republicans think so too, but don't mind.

At its best, at its most thoughtful and intellectually honest and curious, PBS does the kind of work that no other network in America does or will do.

[S]ome great work [has come] from PBS's detachment from marketplace realities. And it has even been work--such as "The Civil War"--that helped our country by teaching our children the things they must know to go on to become adults who love their country. This, in the world we live in, is no small thing. It's huge.

Why, then, doesn't Congress continue to fund PBS at current levels but tell them they must stick to what they are good at, and stop being the TV funhouse of the Democratic Party? Nobody needs their investigative unit pieces on how Iran-contra was very, very wicked; nobody needs another Bill Moyers show; nobody needs a conservative counter to Bill Moyers's show. Our children are being raised in a culture of argument. They can get left-right-pop-pop-bang anywhere, everywhere.

PBS exists to do what the commercial networks should and won't. And just one of those things is bringing to Americans who have not and probably will not be exposed to it the great treasury of American art, from the work of Eugene O'Neill (again, ABC won't be producing "Long Day's Journey" anytime soon), outward to Western art (Shakespeare) and outward to world art.

And science. And history. But real history, meaning something that happened in the past as opposed to the recent present, with which PBS, alas, cannot be trusted.

Art and science and history. That's where PBS's programming should be. And Americans would not resent funding it.

It is true that if you tell PBS producers they are now doing a play series they will immediately decide to remount "Angels in America." How about a rule: It takes at least 50 years for a currently esteemed work to prove itself a work of art, a true classic. It proves this by enduring. Do plays that have proved themselves to be enduring contributions--i.e., art. Look to the permanent, not the prevalent.

PBS should be refunded, because it does not and will not exist elsewhere if it is not. But it should be funded with rules and conditions, and it should remember its reason for being: to do what the networks cannot do or will not do, and that somebody should do.

The Coming Saudi Oil Shock?

Have Saudi Arabia's oil reserves peaked through a combination of natural depletion and reservoir mismanagement? As noted earlier here and here, oil industry veteran and investment banker Matthew Simmons says "Yes" or at least "Maybe."

His controversial new book is finally out and the debate was featured in the Houston Chronicle.

Saudi Arabia says it has enough oil to keep the world happy for at least another 70 years.

But the closely guarded Saudi Aramco numbers that would back up that claim aren't available to outsiders. That worries Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons.

Simply put, Simmons doesn't think energy-intensive countries like the United States should take Saudi Arabia at its word. He contends that the country's official oil reserve count could be overstated and the kingdom's oil production could decline, throwing the world's supply-and-demand balance off-kilter and jacking up prices for years to come.

After parsing 235 technical papers from the Society of Petroleum Engineers written by state-owned Saudi Aramco's employees, Simmons says the kingdom's ability to produce ever-increasing amounts of oil looks bleak.

It's a theory he's been expounding on for more than a year. In an industry rife with double talk, Simmons' bold pronouncements that world oil production is peaking have earned him fans and foes alike.

His critics say Saudi Arabia has been a dependable oil source for the United States for decades, consistently stepping up as the world's swing producer to help calm energy markets and stabilize prices.

Even if state oil company Saudi Aramco has had a policy of withholding technical information, the math is there to back up the kingdom's claims, according to Sadad Al-Husseini, Aramco's recently retired head of exploration and production.

"We drilled, cored and logged numerous key wells in every active field and reservoir and surveyed the most significant oil fields with complete 3-D seismic coverage," wrote Al-Husseini, in a column for Oil & Gas Journal. "Over the years, these models have been updated annually and have confirmed our predictions of reservoir performance and our calculations of reserve and oil recoveries."

Simmons believes it could all add up to big trouble, although he's quick to call his book "a warning, not a certainty."

Listen and learn

Indispensable Victor Davis Hanson says we need to distinguish between myth and reality in the Middle East, and keep the pressure on.

This is all so strange.

Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.

Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture. Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.

The constant? A global distrust of Western-style liberalism and preference for deductive absolutism. So burn down a mosque in Zimbabwe, murder innocent Palestinians in Bethlehem in 2002, arrest Christians in Saudi Arabia, or slaughter Africans in Dafur, and both the Western Left and the Middle East's hard Right won't say a word. No such violence resonates with America's diverse critics as much as a false story of a flushed Koran — precisely because the gripe is not about the lives of real people, but the psychological hurts, angst, and warped ideology of those who in their various ways don't like the United States.

[T]he American public is tiring of the Middle East, its hypocrisy and whiny logic — and to such a degree that it sometimes unfortunately doesn't make distinctions for the Iraqi democratic government or other Arab reformers, but rather is slowly coming to believe the entire region is ungracious, hopeless, and not worth another American soldier or dollar.

This is a dangerous trend. Despite murderous Syrian terrorists, dictatorial Saudis, crazy Pakistanis, and triangulating European allies, and after so many tragic setbacks, we are close to creating lasting democratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq — states that are influencing the entire region and ending the old calculus of Middle Eastern terror. We are winning even as we are told we are losing. But the key is that the American people need to be told — honestly and daily — how and why those successes came about and must continue before it sours on the entire sorry bunch.

Numbed?

Daniel Henninger wonders if America is becoming numb to the global costs of terrorism, and losing its stomach for fighting a War on Terror.

Living in the U.S., one could make the cold-blooded calculation that 21,000 dead and 55,000 injured from all terrorist acts over 10 years is a drop in the bucket and that the war in Iraq has mainly increased the rate of death. This may be true. But if as many suicide bombs went off in Manhattan as have gone off in Israel, Manhattanites would have demanded martial law and the summary execution of suspects on street corners. Their greatest goal in life would not be, as it is now, the closing of interrogation rooms on Guantanamo but instead the erasure of terrorists hiding across the East River.

[O]ur own news coverage of [the] repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only "side" many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits.

Posted by Alan at 06:44 AM

Batman Begins

Saw Batman Begins last night: brilliant. Tough, fast, witty, exciting, very smart. Weakest link: Katie Holmes. As usual, Michael Caine is excellent. Christian Bale is almost perfect. We'll go back to catch more details.

Cave-in

Well, trembling librarians everywhere must be feeling good right now. Who knew they had such influence?

The House voted today to block the FBI and the Justice Department from using the Patriot Act to search library and book store records.

Despite a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 238-187 to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

The vote reversed a narrow loss last year by lawmakers complaining about threats to privacy rights. They narrowed the proposal this year to permit the government to continue to seek out records of Internet use at libraries.

Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law gives the FBI too much leeway to go on "fishing expeditions" on people's reading habits and that innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based on what they check out from a library.

That's 99.99% nonsense with only the tiniest likelihood of occuring. What's much more likely is this:

Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules on reading records are a potentially useful tool in finding terrorists and argued that the House was voting to make libraries safe havens for them.

The river war

Naval War College professor Mackubin Thomas Owens explains the current U.S. military strategy in Iraq. Very interesting -- read the whole thing.

No force, conventional or guerrilla, can continue to fight if it is deprived of sanctuary and logistics support. Accordingly, the central goal of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is to destroy the insurgency by depriving it of its base in the Sunni Triangle and its "ratlines" — the infiltration routes that run from the Syrian border into the heart of Iraq.

One ratline follows the Euphrates River corridor — running from Syria to Husayba on the Syrian border and then through Qaim, Rawa, Haditha, Asad, Hit and Fallujah to Baghdad. The other follows the course of the Tigris — from the north through Mosul-Tel Afar to Tikrit and on to Baghdad. These two "river corridors" constitute the main spatial elements of a campaign to implement U.S. strategy.

The U.S. strategy in Iraq is limited by a number of factors: the U.S. forces available, Iraqi politics and the time it is taking to create a competent Iraqi military. But the ongoing river campaign indicates that America has chosen to go on the offensive, taking advantage of the success in Fallujah to deny the insurgents respite. The high operational tempo is intended to rapidly degrade the rebels' lines of communication at both ends of the two river corridors, while killing and capturing as many of the enemy as possible.

But while military operations have weakened the insurgency, military means alone cannot defeat an insurgency. That is why it is necessary to bring the Sunnis into the government. Recent evidence suggests that the steps so far have already begun to drive a wedge between the Sunni and the foreign jihadis who have come to fight for Zarqawi.

President Bush is taking hits in the opinion polls and media as the public frets about the war (and other issues). What the American people want and need is a sense that we're not just sitting back helplessly allowing casualties to pile up, but instead are on the offensive and making progress. Paying a price to win is one thing; paying that same price to stand still or lose is another thing entirely.

The administration and the Pentagon should be telling their own story much more effectively. But that's been a weakness of this presidency since Day One.

Kerry moment

The Senate Finance Committee gave preliminary approval yesterday to CAFTA. In the reassuring knowledge that some things are eternal, one couldn't help but enjoy this related news:

Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, assured his colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee yesterday that he was for free-trade agreements before he was against the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

"I have voted for every single trade agreement. I am not a protectionist," Mr. Kerry said as lawmakers debated CAFTA.

"Even in the campaign last year, when there were enormous pressures not to, I voted for Chile, Singapore and Australia," he said.

Congressional records, however, indicate he did not vote at all on the free-trade pacts. The three were approved without his support.

From Russia with Love

Here's yet another tentacle thrown off by the ever-widening Oil for Food scandal: possible Russian complicity, via The Wall Street Journal (subscribers only).

The alleged role of the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow in helping Baghdad exploit the United Nations' oil-for-food program has emerged as a new flash point in already rocky U.S.-Russian relations.

In the three years before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, say former employees of the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow and American investigators, cash deliveries were funneled through the embassy as part of an elaborate kickback scheme to Saddam Hussein's government, paid in return for lucrative oil contracts under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program.

The main question facing investigators is whether the scheme took place with the active cooperation of the Kremlin or was simply part of the murky and often corrupt business climate that has flourished in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. The intermingling of Russia's government and business spheres -- many companies are either formally state-owned or under the unofficial control of powerful political or military figures -- is making the issue more difficult to resolve.

Patriot Act creates strange allies

Last weekend we enjoyed watching on C-SPAN when Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) abruptly adjourned a House Judiciary Committee hearing on renewal of the Patriot Act. The issue that day was the fact that Democrats and their utopian friends from Amnesty International, et.al., wanted to hold forth endlessly on conditions at Guantanamo Bay, not talk to specifics of the Patriot Act itself.

The controversy continues as some on the Right join forces with their usual enemies on the Left to try and derail the Act's renewal. Paranoia runs deep.

Conservative groups have found common ground with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union in their opposition to the USA Patriot Act and pledge to wage a high-profile fight against it, claiming even its renewal is shrouded in secrecy.

Former Rep. Bob Barr, who led conservative efforts to impeach President Clinton, is leading a group called "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances" that is focused exclusively on opposing the renewal of the Patriot Act.

The effort also has the enthusiastic support of three of the most influential conservatives in Washington, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, David Keene of the American Conservative Union and Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum.

But not all conservatives agree with some of the movement's biggest names. The Heritage Foundation has given its full-throated support to Mr. Bush's version of the law.

"Bob Barr is going to cast aspersions that only true conservatives think ill of the Patriot Act," said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior legal research fellow at Heritage. "I'll put it this way: Ronald Reagan would be for the Patriot Act. And I know that because his former attorney general, Ed Meese, is for the Patriot Act."

Mr. Rosenzweig said the Patriot Act "has all the checks and balances on police authority that has been around for years," and that its greatest feature is how it allows intelligence agents and the FBI to share the intelligence they gather.

"That is absolutely essential," Mr. Rosenzweig said. "Everyone realizes that except for Bob Barr."

News from Iraq

There's plenty of tough news from Iraq, but don't forget to take in some of the encouraging news as well. Arthur Chrenkoff rounds up three weeks worth of often-overlooked reports, including this admonishment:

"You can't fix in six months what it took 35 years to destroy." These words, spoken by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq's first democratically elected Prime Minister in half a century, should be inscribed in 3-foot-tall characters as a preface to all the reporting from Iraq. Sadly, the underlying reality all too often seems to escape many reporters caught in the excitement of "now."

Power Line posts a front-line note from "Major E.," who is also concerned about public perception.

Yes, we are winning. Yes, it is bloody. But our mission is moving forward and the enemy's mission must constantly adapt to the pressure we are putting on them, and their tactic of killing more civilians is making the public more supportive of us, and less so of them.

The insurgents have fought to break the will of the troops and have failed. They have fought to break the will of the Iraqi people and failed. They will continue to attack both fronts, but there remains another strategic front that they are now targeting more and more. The insurgents, in my opinion, are now seeking to break the will of the American people.

To do this, they are using more car bombs which make great sound-bite visuals on television, but while the weapon is sometimes tactically effective it is strategically irrelevant.... These tactics cannot stop our mission here from moving forward, unless the frequency and manner in which they are reported makes the American people think we are not winning or that it is not worth the sacrifice.

Please do not let that happen. This is worth the fight.

Operation Desecration another media crock

A Republican senator cracked under media pressure this week, possibly presaging a bigger cave-in by the Bush administration.

Sen. Mel Martinez said the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects — the first high-profile Republican to make the suggestion.

“It’s become an icon for bad stories and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio,” Martinez said Friday.

Reality, please: inimitable Mark Steyn takes on those who cry "Gulag!" about the detention of terrorists and terrorist hangers-on at Guantanamo Bay.

When three times as many detainees "desecrate" the Koran as U.S. guards do, it seems clear that the whole Operation Desecration ballyhoo is yet another media crock and the Organization of the Islamic Conference and all the rest are complaining about nothing.

Nobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America's being flayed as the planet's No. 1 torturer for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners' co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques and Qurans than the Pentagon ever does, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned in the home country of many of the prisoners, where respect for other faiths is summed up in the headline, "Seven Christians Released In Saudi Arabia On Condition They Renounce Private Religious Practice."

That was in the British Catholic newspaper, the Universe, last week, by the way. Sadly, no U.S. newspaper found room for the story due to pressures of space caused by all the "Al-Qaida Press Secretary Denounces Insufficient Respect For Koran By Rumsfeld" front page splashes. But sure, go ahead, close Gitmo and wait for the rave reviews from the media -- right after the complaints that it's culturally insensitive to rebuild the World Trade Center when it's the burial site of 10 revered Muslim martyrs.

Guantanamo will be remembered not as a byword for torture but for self-torture, a Western fetish the jihad's spin doctors understand all too well.

Car bombs get more dangerous

The enemy in Iraq is proving to be very adaptable, especially with the critical help of a nearby sanctuary.

The car bombs killing troops and civilians in Iraq have grown more sophisticated as insurgents gain training and financing across the border in Syria, defense officials say.

The officials estimate that improvised explosive devices (IEDs), both roadside and car-borne, now account for 50 percent of all daily attacks, or "contacts," in Iraq.

When the IED attacks began in full force in late 2003, most bombs were made of artillery and mortar shells. But lately, the coalition is discovering more sophisticated bombs made of a mix of explosives, some of which include penetrating warheads to kill people inside buildings.

At the Pentagon, an Army-led task force is working to come up with ways to defeat the systems, but so far the insurgents are finding new technologies and tactics to stay one step ahead.

"There's not going to be a silver bullet," said one defense official assigned to the problem. "It's going to be a combination of technology, jammers and intelligence to find the bomb makers."

One problem, this source says, is that some of the financing to buy bomb parts and bomb-making training is going on in Syria, effectively giving the terrorists a sanctuary.

"We know they are training in Syria because they have no threat of being picked up," said the official, who asked not to be named.

The suicide car bombings are considered the work of foreign jihadists, most of whom enter Iraq through Syria. "We believe all of them are foreigners, not Iraqis," a second defense official said.

The jihadists are recruited by al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born terror chief Abu Musab Zarqawi. They train in Syria and Iraq, then are assigned missions.

A recent casualty from Texas was only a few hours away from coming home. That makes the tragedy even harder.

A day before he was scheduled to return from Iraq, Army Sgt. Roberto Arizola Jr. was killed when a device exploded near his vehicle in Baghdad.

Arizola, 31, of Laredo, was killed Wednesday by the roadside bomb. He had been a border patrol agent in Laredo before being sent to Iraq.

"We just can't believe it was his last day there," said his mother, Cecilia Arizola. "He was a good person."

Cecilia Arizola remembered her son as a loving father and husband who liked to play video games and sports with his 7-year-old son. His wife, Monica, and the rest of his family had postponed a birthday party for his son until he returned home.

NASA - Rocking the house

Is a NASA housecleaning on its way? Insiders tell the Washington Post it's coming soon. Are the leakers trying to forestall the changes or shape the decisions to preserve themselves and their internal allies?

New NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin has decided to replace about 20 senior space agency officials by mid-August in the first stage of a broad agency shake-up. The departures include the two leaders of the human spaceflight program, which is making final preparations to fly the space shuttle for the first time in more than two years.

Senior NASA officials and congressional and aerospace industry sources said yesterday that Griffin wants to clear away entrenched bureaucracy, and build a less political and more scientifically oriented team to implement President Bush's plan to return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them to Mars.

The moon-Mars initiative has put severe pressure on NASA's budget, forcing Griffin into a difficult balancing act -- trying to build quickly a next generation spaceship without crippling programs ranging from Earth observation satellites and aeronautics research to maintaining the Hubble telescope.

At the same time, the sources said, Griffin wants to restore NASA's glamour, reasserting the engineering and science leadership that has been eroding since the Apollo era. To this end, the sources said, he is willing to oust as many as 50 senior managers in a housecleaning rivaling the purge after the 1986 Challenger explosion.

Real toughness is between the ears

Vice President Cheney spoke to an audience in Tampa at the conclusion of Southern Command's International Special Operations Forces Week. Here's part of what he said.

Above all, in your patience, and endurance, and devotion to your missions, special ops remind us of the importance of vigilance. We have a long war ahead of us, and our enemies are waiting for us to let our guard down. But we will not relent in this effort, because we have the clearest possible understanding of what is at stake. Looking across this room, I see the diversity of our planet, but an identity of interests. None of us wants to turn over the future of mankind to tiny groups of fanatics committing indiscriminate murder and plotting large-scale horror. And so we must direct every resource necessary to defending the peace and freedom of our world, and the safety of the people we serve. That's the commitment of the United States that we've made to ourselves and to other nations. And with good allies at our side, we will see this cause through to victory.

The writer Tom Clancy once said of special ops forces, "Real toughness is between the ears, not in the biceps. You've got to see them to believe them." That really captures the idea. It is difficult to put into words the intensity of your training, the hazards of your hardest assignments, and the speed of thought and action that are needed at the tip of the spear. You are the ones who can go into unfamiliar territory and become part of the environment -- preparing battle spaces, learning languages and cultures, building relationships, and picking up intelligence. Special ops are the ones who hunt down, engage, kill and capture enemies, yet also set up hospitals, call in humanitarian aid, and help villages to become self-sufficient -- leaving behind you men, women, and children who feel gratitude for your kindness and good will for our country.

Special ops, it's been said play every role from warrior to physician to diplomat to engineer. And at times you have to switch from one role to other in the blink of an eye.

In this time of testing for our world, many in the military have faced long deployments -- and because special ops go so far forward, you very often go without regular contact with home or family. It's also in the nature of your business that the best work goes unrecognized until years after the fact, if ever. And we may never know all the grief that has been spared because of you. I can only say, with complete certainty, that your efforts are paying off -- and today all of us live in a world made safer by your actions.

Bob Dylan: The Never-Ending Tour

Bob Dylan, living personification of "iconoclast," has essentially been on the road since 1988. What's he doing, and what drives him? It's not what you want, but what you need.

The place was the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort, and it was an odd rock 'n' roll show. But it was the kind of show and the kind of site that Bob Dylan has increasingly made his own.

Mr. Dylan, 64, plays big cities, of course. (In April he played five nights in Manhattan.) But more and more, he is choosing stranger settings: state fairs, corporate events, urban street fairs and casinos (from Indian casinos like the Turning Stone in Verona, N.Y., and the Soaring Eagle to more traditional ones in Las Vegas and Reno). He is now in the middle of his second summer barnstorming tour of minor-league baseball fields, like the Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, Fla., with Willie Nelson in tow.

Mr. Dylan may be in the final phase of his long and iconoclastic life as a star, and for it he has chosen a very long and very iconoclastic tour: 1,700 shows and counting, beginning in 1988. Caught in an artistic crisis then, he decided to defibrillate his career and go back on the road. Accompanied by a small combo, he reintroduced himself to fans, sporting a lean energy and a commitment to exploring his nonpareil song catalog. He shows no signs of slowing down, though he has lately replaced the guitar he has played for more than 45 years with a keyboard, causing speculation that back problems might be responsible for the switch. (Through Mr. Dylan's publicist at Columbia Records, his management said playing keyboards was "just his musical preference" and declined to comment otherwise for this article.) Mr. Dylan has turned his act into one of the weirdest road shows in rock. He rarely speaks to the crowd, and when he does, his remarks are often gnomic throwaways. ("I had a big brass bed, but I sold it!") He plays some of his best-known songs, but often in contrarian, almost unrecognizable versions, as if to dampen their anthemic qualities. He highlights recent compositions more than most of his 60's coevals, but these, too, are delivered as highly stylized, singsongy chants. He strives to play as many kinds of places as possible, even playing successive nights in different theaters and clubs in large cities.

In other words, Mr. Dylan seems to have developed an unparalleled commitment to sharing his art, but only on his own very specific terms.

These shows have none of the strict choreography of the modern rock concert. Major touring acts will charge hundreds of dollars for a tightly scripted performance, with one or two opportunities for spontaneity. By contrast, Mr. Dylan's small ensemble plays confidently during each set's few anchors, but watches somewhat warily during the rest of the show, as Mr. Dylan decides which part of his huge repertory to sample next.

"He would do anything from old folk songs, Civil War-era songs, up to standards," said the guitarist G. E. Smith, who played with Mr. Dylan at the start of what has become known as the Never-Ending Tour. "I remember once, we were playing in Hollywood, and he played 'Moon River.' "

Check out tour schedules and set lists or listen to live performances and rare recordings at BobDylan.com.

Dana Elcar, RIP

Sadness: character actor Dana Elcar, best known as Pete Thornton on "MacGyver," has passed away.

Actor Dana Elcar, a familiar face on dozens of TV shows but best known as co-star of the action series “MacGyver,” a role he kept even after going blind, has died at age 77, his agent’s office said Friday.

Although hardly a household name, Elcar was instantly recognizable to U.S. audiences for his roles in dozens of shows spanning more than four decades, often playing good-guy authority figures.

In addition to frequent guest appearances, he was a regular on such series as “Baretta” opposite Robert Blake, “Baa Baa, Black Sheep” with Robert Conrad, and most notably, “MacGyver,” which starred Richard Dean Anderson as a rugged, clever crime fighter.

On “MacGyver,” which debuted in 1985 on ABC, Elcar played Anderson’s supervisor and friend, Peter Thornton, the director of field operations for the fictional Phoenix Foundation.

Elcar went blind from glaucoma a few seasons into the show, but his affliction was written into his character, and he remained on the show until the end of its run in 1992.

"Liberalism to cancer patients: Drop dead"

Wall Street Journal deputy editor Daniel Henninger decodes the Supreme Court decision against state laws on medical marijuana.

The Supreme Court's liberal bloc--Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer--ensured Monday with the support of Justices Kennedy and Scalia that people sick from cancer treatment will have to think first about a house call from the federal drug police before using marijuana to relieve their symptoms.

Liberalism to cancer patients: Drop dead.

Meanwhile, dissents on behalf of medical marijuana were written by Sandra Day O'Connor, a cancer survivor, and Clarence Thomas, whose nomination was fought by recreational pot users.

Medical marijuana sounds simple. Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy often endure extreme nausea, and many say that smoking marijuana during chemo makes it bearable. Many of us know sober folks who have done this. So why is this a Supreme Court case? Because this is America, where nothing is so simple that it can't be turned into a federal case.

If the Court's four liberals had ruled in favor of state laws allowing medical marijuana, which federal law forbids, that precedent would have helped conservative efforts to reduce federal clout in other areas, such as environmental authority in the West. Thus Justice Stevens wrote that the Controlled Substances Act, a Nixon-era law, "is a valid exercise of federal power, even as applied to the troubling facts of this case." Liberals with cancer should take solace in knowing they will be vomiting to save th