Petrified Truth

Hurricane Katrina targets Louisiana

With Hurricane Katrina bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the mayor of New Orleans is preparing to call for a voluntary evacuation on Sunday.

Low-lying Louisiana parishes called for evacuations Saturday and Mississippi declared an emergency as Hurricane Katrina appeared to be taking aim at the region while gathering strength over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico.

"This is not a test," New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said at a news conference. He said he would probably ask people to leave at daybreak Sunday, and said the Superdome could be pressed into use as a shelter of last resort for people who do not have cars.

Louisiana and Mississippi were making all lanes northbound on Interstates 55 and 59 beginning Saturday afternoon for evacuees.

Katrina was a Category 3 storm with 115 mph sustained wind Saturday, but the hurricane center said it was likely to get stronger over the Gulf, where the surface water temperature was as high as 90 degrees. It could become a Category 4 storm, the center said.

"Right now, it looks like Louisiana is in line for a possible direct hit," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "It does not bode well for southeastern Louisiana."

Last year, when New Orleans seemed threatened by Hurricane Ivan, the mayor warned:

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

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

Katrina may not match the fury of Ivan, which ended up missing New Orleans. But the thought is sobering. Back in 2000, USA Today published an analysis of the potentially catastrophic results of a direct storm hit on New Orleans. A Category 4 storm could represent an end-of-the-world scenario for the Crescent City.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press filed a similarly apocalyptic report in 2004, "Direct hit by Ivan in New Orleans could mean a modern Atlantis."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's just pray that Katrina spares New Orleans.

• Wizbang
• Outside the Beltway
• Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute
• PBS - NOW - The City in a Bowl

Cleaning up the neighborhood

Here's some good news from Iraq, reported with apparent reluctance by the Associated Press.

U.S. warplanes launched multiple airstrikes Friday against a suspected "terrorist safe house" in the western Anbar province, destroying the building where up to 50 militants were believed to be hiding, the U.S. military said.

Coalition ground forces were alerted by local residents that a number of members of the terror group Al Qaeda in Iraq had gathered in an abandoned building northeast of Husaybah, near the Syrian border about 200 miles west of Baghdad.

"Iraqi citizens reported that approximately 50 terrorists were in the building at the time of the airstrike" which occurred at 4:40 p.m., the statement said.

The "known terrorist safe house" was destroyed by Marine F-18D Hornets using a combination of precision-guided bombs and rockets, it said. There were no immediate reports of the number of casualties inflicted by the attack.

Tip via Ranting Profs

Mayhem in Mosul

If you haven't already, read Michael Yon's eyewitness account (with photos) of hand-to-hand combat in Mosul -- before, during, and after. Gripping.

Kurilla was running when he was shot, but he didn't seem to miss a stride; he did a crazy judo roll and came up shooting.

BamBamBamBam! Bullets were hitting all around Kurilla. The young 2nd lieutenant and specialist were the only two soldiers near. Neither had real combat experience. AH had no weapon. I had a camera.

Seconds count.

Kurilla, though dowm and unable to move, was fighting and firing, yelling at the two young soldiers to get in there; but they hesitated. BamBamBamBam!

Kurilla was in the open, but his judo roll had left him slightly to the side of the shop. I screamed to the young soldiers, "Throw a grenade in there!" but they were not attacking.

Quiet but strong

Watching polls that show dropping support for the war in Iraq, Daniel Henninger notes the emergence of a "quiet majority" of Americans who are unwavering, and active, in their support of America's military.

Any politician aspiring to the presidency who gets the call wrong on the Iraq war may find himself in the ditch George McGovern dug for his party in 1972--with 37.5% of the vote. Perhaps the reason Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden aren't jumping in front of Cindy's parade is that as a matter of species survival they're required to keep an ear to the ground. And you know what, the times really have changed since Vietnam.

Richard Nixon, amid a similar low ebb of popularity with Vietnam, gave a famous speech in 1969. This was the year after the Tet offensive, which caused Walter Cronkite's famous Hagel-like throwing in of the towel. In that speech Nixon described a "great silent majority" in America. The idea, of course, was that the daily media attention commanded by the antiwar movement was missing a class of Americans who sat home seething at the behavior of the protesters.

Today, because of the Internet, no one has to seethe in silence, as wired activists in both parties proved in 2004's high-tech election, and now. But it may be that the current infatuation with anti-Bush, anti-Iraq sentiment is again missing a political current flowing beneath the surface of the news, just as the media missed the silent majority 40 years ago and the values voters in the 2004 election.

I would call this faction the Quiet Majority. These people are organized and they are pro-active. But they pass beneath our politics unnoticed because they're about something deeper than TV face-time. There is a large number of groups that have organized in the past three years solely to support the American troops in Iraq.

The message boards some of these groups maintain make clear that troops are aware, in detail, of antiwar activity. Again, this isn't Vietnam. They have news access. If the Democratic left does levitate another antiwar movement, it won't be the unanswered opposition of the Vietnam years. The counter-opposition will draw numbers from these pro-troop groups. They, too, are Internet-linked. They are better informed than most people, they are committed, and they are articulate. And they have stories to tell.

Does this add up to millions of pro-Iraq voters? Who knows? But the quiet, mostly nonpartisan, pro-G.I. activism of these people has put them closer to the reality of the war--its pain, its losses, its successes and kinships. My guess is their kind of support is what the troops on the front want most now, rather than having to sit along the Euphrates River wondering if Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold and the Rolling Stones are going to pull the rug from under them over the next two years.

65 percent non-solution

The apparently well-organized effort to convince Texas voters that hundreds of "independent" school districts statewide should be forced into a one-size-fits-all straightjacket continued today with the publication of an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle.

Peggy M. Venable and her political pressure group contend that this "tough pill" is needed to rein in rampant waste in schools.

While education lobbyists clamored for as much as $6 billion to $8 billion more in education funding, the citizen group Americans for Prosperity in Texas believes that more money won't fix the problem. One symptom of the system's problems is fiscal mismanagement of existing education dollars.

Even the school finance lawsuit currently before the Texas Supreme Court has left taxpayers questioning how our education dollars are being spent. While school districts are using millions of tax dollars to sue the state for more tax dollars, the court heard that Socorro Independent School District justified a waterslide by claiming it lowered dropout rates.

SISD is a good example of misguided spending priorities. In addition to a waterslide, it has as many nonteaching staff as teachers and its "acceptable" academic rating isn't really acceptable to parents and taxpayers.

When is a waterslide considered to be educational? When it teaches us how education dollars are being wasted. And while property taxes are escalating, this is no time for public schools to be squandering dollars.

Their "simple concept" sounds very appealing, initially.

The reform students, teachers and taxpayers need is "the 65 percent solution."

This simple concept directs 65 percent of the existing education spending into the classroom, which includes all credit courses and enrichment programs.

The move from 60.4 percent to 65 percent seems like small change. How much difference can 4.6 cents make? This small change will add up to big change in our schools. It would put $1.6 billion more a year into Texas classrooms without a tax increase.

The initiative has tremendous support. Polling found 77.5 percent of Texans surveyed support the 65 percent requirement on school districts; 91 percent support it after learning it would put an additional $1.6 billion into Texas classrooms without a tax increase; and 89 percent said they were more likely to support a candidate that supported the 65 percent requirement.

A survey by the Tower Institute conducted in January found 63 percent would consider increasing the percentage of money spent in the classroom, without any additional dollars added to the system, to be an increase in public education spending.

Did their surveys tell taxpayers that the 65 percent "solution" won't pay for nurses, guidance counselors, speech therapists, school libraries, buses for rural students, or preventive maintenance on school facilities?

While we ponder these weighty questions, it's useful to know more about the participants in the debate. What is the self-described "citizen group" Americans for Prosperity, battling waste and excessive spending?

Americans For Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFPF believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFPF educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits.

As a tax-exempt 501(c)(3), AFPF is required to file disclosure statements with the IRS, which can then be analyzed. What kind of role model are they for fiscal prudence?

That's educational.

Go sit in the corner

Apparently embarrassed by his abject failure to enact anything like school finance reform all year, Texas governor Rick Perry showed himself to be a public education dunce on Monday.

Blaming the Legislature for inaction during two failed special sessions, Gov. Rick Perry today ordered the state education commissioner to restrict how much Texas schools can spend outside of direct classroom expenses.

Under Perry's executive order, districts will be required to spend no more than 35 percent of their budgets on non-classroom expenses such as transportation, school lunches and administration. The limit will be phased in over several years in a program to be designed and implemented by Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley.

"While the Legislature is now out of session for now, the need for school reform is not," Perry said, speaking at an Austin teacher supply store. "And I want Texans to be assured, even though the Legislature did not act, I will. People have demanded reform, they have been promised reform, and I intend to deliver reform using the full constitutional authority of the executive branch."

The executive order follows the Legislature's failure to enact similar proposals.

More informed observers realized immediately the folly of our empty-suit-in-chief.

Critics argued that the proposal would strip districts of local control and would hinder discretion of school administrators. Richard Kouri, a lobbyist for the Texas State Teachers Association, called the move an attempt to divert attention from the Legislature's failure and "away from inadequate funding of public education and talk more about what we can do with efficiency.

"Everyone's for efficiency, but it's not going to fix the problem that our public education system is underfunded and it's not going to fix any of the issues outlined in the court case," Kouri said.

After accounting for debt and capital improvements, the amount of money spent outside of classrooms is relatively small, said Linda Bridges, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers.

"If you took a list and say, Governor, what do you want to stop doing? Do you want to stop having school security? Do you want not to have school nurses?' " Bridges asked. "If these are the things we want to take away to put more money in the classroom, then we have to ask ourselves who's going to do these jobs because they have to be done."

So now you know who'll deserve the blame when school buses don't run, buildings aren't maintained, school libraries are shuttered, and bands don't march. Not every "non-classroom" expense is wasteful.

This governor needs a vocabulary lesson. Let's use a cutting-edge educational tool, like Webster's dictionary, and look up the keyword in this common Texas phrase: "Independent School District."

Main Entry: 1 in·de·pen·dent Pronunciation: "in-d&-'pen-d&nt Function: adjective 1 : not dependent: as a (1) : not subject to control by others : SELF-GOVERNING (2) : not affiliated with a larger controlling unit b (1) : not requiring or relying on something else : not contingent (2) : not looking to others for one's opinions or for guidance in conduct (3) : not bound by or committed to a political party.

Once upon a time, Republicans said they stood for smaller, local government, where accountability is highest, vs. state and federal high-handedness. Rick Perry has forgotten that completely, at whose behest is still not clear.

The Texas PTA recently claimed credit for derailing crazy notions of "reform" during the various legislative sessions in Austin this year. Here's a chance for electoral challenger Carole Keaton Strayhorn to make an alliance and topple our inept chief state executive.

UPDATE: Perry's big idea may not even be constitutional.

[S]ome school officials view the order as an unfunded mandate and said it might result in cuts to security for urban campuses and to bus service for rural districts at a time of record fuel costs. They also fear losing control over local tax dollars that provide more than 60 percent of the $33 billion public school system.

And Austin lawyer Buck Wood, a longtime expert on education law, said only the Legislature — not Perry or the Texas Education Agency — has authority to implement such a major policy change.

"These executive orders are not worth the paper they're written on. He might as well have issued a press release," said Wood, who represents a group of school districts suing the state for increased funding.

Here's a first take on what's covered, and what's not.

A definition of direct classroom instruction set out by the National Center for Educational Statistics will serve as the model, he said. Under that definition, expenses such as athletics and fine arts would meet the standard, but money spent on teacher training would not.

...

School officials say the spending mandate could lead to cuts in areas not included in the definition of classroom expenses, including school security, curriculum development, libraries, counseling and other social services.

"Teachers are the front line, but the front line has to have support troops," said Sarah Winkler, an Alief ISD school board member.

If libraries aren't classrooms, then why are Texas school librarians required to be certified and experienced as classroom teachers?

Keeping the flame of faith alive

Youth from Europe and around the world turned out in massive numbers this week to celebrate their Catholic faith and to see the new Pope.

More than 1 million Roman Catholic young people who had camped out overnight in an enormous field welcomed Benedict XVI on Sunday for the concluding Mass of his four-day trip to Germany, his first foreign travel as pope.

As he began his homily, calling on the pilgrims and visitors to World Youth Day to make wise use of the freedom God had given them, the sun broke through the thick, gray clouds.

“Freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness so that we ourselves can become true and good,” he said.

He said there is a “strange forgetfulness of God,” while at same time the sense of frustration and dissatisfaction has led to a “new explosion of religion.”

“I have no wish to discredit all the manifestations of this phenomenon. There may be sincere joy in the discovery,” he said. “Yet, if it is pushed too far, religion becomes almost a consumer product. People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it.”

“But religion constructed on a ‘do-it-yourself’ basis cannot ultimately help us. Help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus Christ.”

Some Christian youth couldn't travel, but still risked their lives to show their faith.

More than 1,000 Roman Catholic youths gathered in Baghdad to celebrate World Youth Day and ask for the pontiff's blessing "at this most difficult time for our country," the Vatican said Saturday.

Pope Benedict XVI, who is in Germany for the Catholic youth festival, received the Iraqi youths' message "with joy and commotion," the Vatican said.

The Iraqi Catholics also were joined by several Orthodox youths in a Baghdad cathedral Friday and sent their "affectionate greetings" to counterparts in Cologne, Germany, where Benedict has been celebrating the festival.

"We have gathered to know our Lord and to ask what he wants of us at this most difficult time for our country and for us," the youths said in their message. "We are bearing in mind the exhortation of Jesus: 'Courage, do not be afraid.'"

That's impressive.

Our greatest enemy?

Nasty neighbors: here's a recent report in Time, based on a leaked military intelligence report, detailing Iran's campaign against the U.S. effort in Iraq.

The U.S. Military's new nemesis in Iraq is named Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, and he is not a Baathist or a member of al-Qaeda. He is working for Iran. According to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by TIME, al-Sheibani heads a network of insurgents created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Over the past eight months, his group has introduced a new breed of roadside bomb more lethal than any seen before; based on a design from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizballah, the weapon employs "shaped" explosive charges that can punch through a battle tank's armor like a fist through the wall. According to the document, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr City district and "in another country" and have detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone.

Since the start of the insurgency in Iraq, the most persistent danger to U.S. troops has come from the Sunni Arab insurgents and terrorists who roam the center and west of the country. But some U.S. officials are worried about a potentially greater challenge to order in Iraq and U.S. interests there: the growing influence of Iran. With an elected Shi'ite-dominated government in place in Baghdad and the U.S. preoccupied with quelling the Sunni-led insurgency, the Iranian regime has deepened its imprint on the political and social fabric of Iraq, buying influence in the new Iraqi government, running intelligence-gathering networks and funneling money and guns to Shi'ite militant groups--all with the aim of fostering a Shi'ite-run state friendly to Iran. In parts of southern Iraq, fundamentalist Shi'ite militias--some of them funded and armed by Iran--have imposed restrictions on the daily lives of Iraqis, banning alcohol and curbing the rights of women. Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, including Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have tried to forge a strategic alliance with Tehran, even seeking to have Iranians recognized as a minority group under Iraq's proposed constitution. "We have to think anything we tell or share with the Iraqi government ends up in Tehran," says a Western diplomat.

Perhaps most troubling are signs that the rising influence of Iran--a country with which Iraq waged an eight-year war and whose brand of theocracy most Iraqis reject--is exacerbating sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites, pulling Iraq closer to all-out civil war. And while top intelligence officials have sought to play down any state-sponsored role by Tehran's regime in directing violence against the coalition, the emergence of al-Sheibani has cast greater suspicion on Iran. Coalition sources told TIME that it was one of al-Sheibani's devices that killed three British soldiers in Amarah last month. "One suspects this would have to have a higher degree of approval [in Tehran]," says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. The official says the U.S. believes that Iran has brokered a partnership between Iraqi Shi'ite militants and Hizballah and facilitated the import of sophisticated weapons that are killing and wounding U.S. and British troops. "It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously, from Iran have been found in Iraq," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week.

How real is the threat? A TIME investigation, based on documents smuggled out of Iran and dozens of interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi intelligence officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies, reveals an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq that began before the U.S. invaded. In their scope and ambition, Iran's activities rival those of the U.S. and its allies, especially in the south. There is a gnawing worry within some intelligence circles that the failure to counter Iranian influence may come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies, if Shi'ite factions with heavy Iranian backing eventually come to power and provoke the Sunnis to revolt. Says a British military intelligence officer, about the relative inattention paid to Iranian meddling: "It's as though we are sleepwalking."

Bill Gertz reports on Donald Rumsfeld's muted response.

Iran is continuing to supply weapons to insurgents in Iraq with the goal of creating an Islamist government, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

"I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside the country," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on his way to visit Paraguay earlier this week. "They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there.

"And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone what to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld made his comments Tuesday in response to a question about a Time magazine report based on a military intelligence document. The Pentagon yesterday released a transcript of his remarks.

Michael Ledeen sums it all up:

Instead of devoting hours of prime time coverage to the ravings of a broken mother, our media would do better to ask this administration why, four years after 9/11, it still has no Iran policy.

Perhaps, although one cannot say more than that, we are paying more attention. First came the announcement that American forces in Iraq found a cache of Iranian weapons, and had also captured a truck with shaped explosives entering Iraq from Iran. Then, talking to journalists on his plane during a South American swing on August 17, Rumsfeld said that U.S. forces have found Iranian weapons in Iraq "on more than one occasion over the past couple of months."

And so? These are straws in a very strong wind, and they will be blown away unless President Bush, Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld, and Security Adviser Hadley at long last craft a serious policy to bring the terror war to bear on Tehran, as the president should have demanded on 9/12. The list of proven Iranian actions in the terror war against us is a very long one.

A father's grief, but more

Today's must-read, by Ronald R. Griffin:

I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me.

I grieve with Mrs. Sheehan, for all too well I know the full measure of the agony she is forever going to endure. I honor her son for his service and sacrifice. However, I abhor all that she represents and those who would cast her as the symbol for parents of our fallen soldiers.

Read the whole thing.

Iran rising

Iran seems impervious to what European diplomats thinks are alluring incentives to rein in its nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal points out the obvious reasons why.

President Bush says the world is "coalescing around the notion" that Iran must be barred from getting nuclear weapons. But two factors -- soaring oil prices and chaos in Iraq -- are giving Tehran new muscle in its diplomatic standoff with Europe and the U.S.

Iran's role as both an oil producer at a time of record prices and as a player in the politics of neighboring Iraq have made it trickier for the Bush administration to get tough on Tehran in the nuclear showdown. The administration has threatened to seek United Nations sanctions against Iran in the fall if the country refuses to accept international oversight of its nuclear program.

For their part, Iran's leaders seem to sense their advantages. In recent weeks, they have made clear they believe they have plenty of leverage and are less vulnerable to economic pressures from the outside.

Iran pumps around 3.5 million barrels a day, or about 4% of global oil production. It is the second-largest producer of oil in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has the world's second-largest natural-gas fields. Analysts are divided over whether Tehran would openly use its energy leverage in a diplomatic standoff, if only because the Iranian government is so dependent on oil revenue.

Officials in Tehran, however, have suggested that they might move to crimp tanker flows through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, which would have far-more-serious consequences. Around 15 million barrels of oil a day, and a large percentage of the world's gas supplies, flow through Hormuz. The Energy Department calls the strait "by far the world's most important oil chokepoint."

"We have told the Europeans very clearly that if any country wants to deal with Iran in an illogical and arrogant way...we will block the Strait of Hormuz," said Mohammad Saeedi, a spokesman for Iran's Center for Nuclear Energy, which runs the country's nuclear facilities and uranium-enrichment program.

Fareed Zakaria makes similar observations.

Two things are very expensive in international politics, the game-theorist Thomas Schelling once observed: threats when they fail and promises when they succeed. President Bush appears to be headed on a path that could teach him this lesson. Last week he responded to Iran's decision to resume work on its nuclear program by asserting that "all options are on the table" to stop Iran's nuclear development. He also implied that were Israel to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities, the United States would support it. Unfortunately, these are hollow threats, unlikely to have much effect other than to cheapen America's credibility around the world.

There's no larger problem in the world, and no apparent workable strategy from the administration.

Tides

Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon made a brief but important statement earlier this week, explaining his rationale behind the abandonment of Israel's settlements in Gaza: inexorable demographics.

Gaza cannot be held onto forever. Over one million Palestinians live there, and they double their numbers with every generation. They live in incredibly cramped refugee camps, in poverty and squalor, in hotbeds of ever-increasing hatred, with no hope whatsoever on the horizon.

It is out of strength and not weakness that we are taking this step. We tried to reach agreements with the Palestinians which would move the two peoples towards the path of peace. These were crushed against a wall of hatred and fanaticism.

The unilateral Disengagement Plan, which I announced approximately two years ago, is the Israeli answer to this reality. This Plan is good for Israel in any future scenario. We are reducing the day-to-day friction and its victims on both sides.

He had some words for those who might see this dramatic step as a sign of weakness.

The IDF will redeploy on defensive lines behind the Security Fence. Those who continue to fight us will meet the full force of the IDF and the security forces.

Now the Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terror organizations, dismantle its infrastructure and show sincere intentions of peace in order to sit with us at the negotiating table.

The world awaits the Palestinian response – a hand offered in peace or continued terrorist fire. To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they chose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever.

Disengagement from Gaza is fraught with risks. Whether it is seen by history as right or not depends on what happens next.

Predators on patrol

A squadron of Predator drones is coming to the Houston area, to be stationed at Ellington Field.

Ellington Field will become the new home of 12 pilotless Predator aircraft, bringing 450 more jobs to the air base, Gov. Rick Perry announced this morning.

The addition of the Predators should serve as a strong message to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that Ellington has a crucial role in guarding the Houston area and the Texas coast, Perry and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay said at the base today.

The unmanned aircraft will be attached to the Texas Air National Guard, whose 147th Fighter Wing at Ellington has been slated to lose its F-16 fighters.

Perry said the Predators will play a major role in patrolling the Texas coast. They also will be used in helping to stem the tide of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, DeLay said. The Coast Guard also has expressed interest in using the aircraft.

The Predators are expected to be operational by summer 2006, Perry said. The system allows crews to keep planes in the air for at least 12 hours at a time.

Look forward to more details about exactly how these powerful devices will be used. Aerial patrols of the highly vulnerable Port of Houston and Houston Ship Channel would be helpful.

• General Atomics Aeronautical Systems - Predator
• Gov. Rick Perry - Press Release
• GlobalSecurity.org - Ellington Field
• Houston Airport System - Ellington Field

Elvis remembered

Today is the 28th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I heard about it while browsing in a bookstore near Five Points, in Columbia, SC, while "back home" on a family visit. My charming wife-to-be didn't really understand then why it was so significant. Maybe I didn't either. Maybe we still don't.

Critic Greil Marcus once described the complex, mysterious, protean King of Rock & Roll this way.

There's something about Elvis that a single ethnic or racial identity cannot contain. So you have a figure who is, at least in the common imagination, Christian and not Christian; part Pagan, because of the nature of his music, but devout; black and white; and in terms of the way he looks and moves, male and female, masculine and feminine. You have a figure who breaks down if you fix him narrowly.

Then you add to that the way he looked, how gorgeous he was, and the way he sounded, with a seductiveness, a thrill that threatened to break out at any time that really no singer had ever had before, and you have a mystery that nobody can solve. But you also have a figure that everybody can recognize, everybody can relate to, maybe with hate and fear, maybe with love and envy and desire. No one can be indifferent. This is not the sort of person who comes along very often.

This is not sociology. This is someone who comes along and becomes a mirror for all of our desires and our fears, someone to whom we can all connect on very basic levels, whether negatively or positively. He is a fulcrum of American culture, regardless of how cheesy, tiresome, redundant, and repetitious the idea or the reality of Elvis Presley becomes. He will always reemerge as a way to talk about who we are and how we got here. He'll always be around.

The Polish Pope

Last night we watched the made-for-TV movie, Karol: A Man Who Became Pope, on the Hallmark Channel. Based on the book Stories of Karol: The Unknown Life of John Paul II, it was really a quite excellent production - intense, dramatic, and well-grounded in historical details.

Related: Showing his quality

Bush library contest

USA Today sizes up the race for the George W. Bush presidential library.

In the competition to be the home of the George W. Bush presidential library and museum, communities and colleges across Texas are working every angle they've got. The prizes they're competing for are considerable: prestige, tourist dollars and jobs.

Seven colleges or universities and the city of Arlington have until Sept. 15 to submit proposals for the library. They were asked to spell out how they'd raise $200 million to build it and what sorts of facilities they envision.

Bush recently mentioned offhandedly to a Los Angeles Times reporter that he plans to do some sort of faith-based work when he leaves Washington. That goal seems to fit with two of the hopeful institutions: SMU, which proclaims its religious affiliation in its name, and Baylor, a Baptist school.

Dallas and SMU would be more convenient for us personally. At any of the universities, it will be amusing to watch the vituperative reactions from leftist faculty.

• Texas A&M - George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
• Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
• U. of Texas - Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum

VJ Day

Today is the 60th anniversary of Victory in Japan Day, when Imperial Japan announced its surrender to end World War II. The BBC reported it this way in 1945:

Japan has surrendered to the Allies after almost six years of war.

There is joy and celebration around the world and 15 August has been declared Victory in Japan day.

The end of war will be marked by two-day holidays in the UK, the USA and Australia.

After days of rumour and speculation, US President Harry S Truman broke the good news at a press conference at the White House at 1900 yesterday.

He said the Japanese Government had agreed to comply in full with the Potsdam declaration which demands the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur will receive the official Japanese surrender, arrangements for which are now under way.

Later, in an address to a crowd that had gathered outside the White House President Truman said: "This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor. This is the day when Fascism finally dies, as we always knew it would."

But he warned that the task of creating a lasting peace still lay ahead.

At midnight, the British Prime Minister Clement Atlee confirmed the news in a broadcast saying, "The last of our enemies is laid low."

He expressed gratitude to Britain's allies, in the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand, India, Burma, all countries occupied by Japan and to the USSR. But special thanks went to the United States "without whose prodigious efforts the war in the East would still have many years to run".

Last week, Newsweek published a decent article about the Pacific War: "War without Mercy," a title which certainly describes that harsh, costly campaign.

A willingness to die is nothing new in warfare. Men have given their lives and commanders have willingly sacrificed their men since they were fighting with stones and spears. But no nation has ever intentionally, methodically sacrificed its soldiers on the scale of Japan in World War II, and no nation has ever responded more purposefully or with such overwhelming force as the United States. Americans remember World War II as the Good War and its veterans as the Greatest Generation. But especially in the Pacific, where America was up against an island empire that refused to give in short of death, it was a brutal, vicious war.

Thanks in part to the film "Saving Private Ryan" and a series of moving anniversary celebrations, Americans tend to focus on D-Day and the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule. But a bloodier, more brutal battle was fought at Okinawa between April and June 1945, and that engagement, which cost some 12,000 American and 200,000 Japanese lives, was a mere skirmish compared with the carnage that would have been wreaked by an invasion of Japan, scheduled to begin in the fall.

Don Dencker, an Army infantryman who carried a mortar on Okinawa, was shocked to see that the captain played by Tom Hanks in "Private Ryan" wore his captain's bars on his helmet at D-Day. At Okinawa, says Dencker, "we stripped our insignia, including the red crosses on medics." Captains and medics just made for more tempting targets. "It was a war without mercy. It was kill or be killed—no prisoners," Dencker, now 80, recalls to Newsweek. "Our chaplain carried an M-1 rifle, and he used it."

Japan apologized again today for its crimes.

Japan's leader apologized for Tokyo's wartime colonization and invasions on the 60th anniversary of the country's surrender on Monday, after other Asian nations marked event by honoring their dead and demanding compensation for their losses.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged that Japan would never forget the "terrible lessons'' of the war, and expressed his ''deep reflections and heartfelt'' sorrow for the damages.

The anniversary of Japan's surrender - Aug. 15, 1945 - inspired commemorations across Asia on Sunday and Monday, including a rare joint event by North and South Korea.

Koizumi, in a written statement marking his second apology for the war to Asian neighbors this year, recognized the suffering his nation inflicted. "Our country has caused great damages and pain to people in many countries, especially our Asian neighbors, through colonization and invasion.''

He added: "We will not forget the terrible lessons of the war, and will contribute to world peace and prosperity.''

Later, many Japanese held a moment of silence as Emperor Akihito and other officials gathered to express sorrow and pledge to work toward peace.

Millions died or suffered unspeakably. Many have not forgiven Japan to this day.

"I can accept the fact that the young generation of Japanese is not to blame. It was their fathers and grandfathers. But until they own up, they'll always be a pariah nation,'' said 84-year-old Baden Jones, an Australian.

He was among former POWs who honored fallen comrades at a ceremony in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, Sunday where many of the 12,000 prisoners who died building Japan's jungle railway were buried.

VJ Day brought an enormous sense of relief around the world, especially for the weary troops poised to begin the bloody assault of Japan itself.

If you are ever in central Texas, plan to spend at least a half-day visiting the National Museum of the Pacific War, also known as the "Nimitz Museum," in scenic Fredericksburg. It not only provides excellent museum exhibits but also collects and displays a large variety of personal items (letters, medals, souvenirs, mementos, etc.) donated by Pacific War veterans and their families. It's both educational and moving.

Still holding back

Wretchard at Belmont Club isn't optimistic right now about the West's ability to prevail in our prolonged struggle against the implacable expansionist elements within global Islam.

While Islamist leaders have grasped the situation in the broadest strategic outlines, Western political systems continue to conceive the problem in the narrowest possible terms. The enemy consists of a few troublemakers within the 'Religion of Peace'; the war is confined to Iraq, or at least to that portion of the Sunni Triangle where most fighting takes place; the legitimacy for any force consists solely of denying Saddam Hussein arsenals of weapons of mass destruction under UN resolutions. Lawyers wrangle over whether it is appropriate to commingle intelligence investigations with criminal probes. Great Britain asks whether it is allowed to expel those sworn to destroying it.

Historically, most catastrophic defeats -- at Gaugamela or France in 1940 -- have not been consequent to inferiority in arms but to infirmity of concept. Defeat occurs first of all in the mind. By that standard the Global Caliphate is well on its way to imposing its will on Western politics which is intent, like some demented person, on rearranging objects on a green baize table.

Point - Counterpoint

An article by Jason Apuzzo last week garnered extensive publicity on talk radio and elsewhere for his denunciation of Hollywood's plans for a raft of new, anti-patriotic films.

Slow to awaken after the 9/11 attacks, Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy.

Hard to believe? Here's the pitch: with box-office numbers trending down, studio executives are suddenly greenlighting movies they can describe to shareholders as 'controversial' or 'timely.' Whether the films are anti-American or otherwise demoralizing to the war effort is apparently immaterial. Its appetite whetted by "Fahrenheit 9/11"'s $222 million worldwide gross, Hollywood thinks it's found a formula for both financial security and critical plaudits: noxious anti-American storylines, bathed in the warm glow of star power.

However, Jonathan V. Last at Galley Slaves is suspicious... of Apuzzo's motives and facts.

Sounds pretty dreadful, doesn't it? And it would be, if Apuzzo's descriptions were on the level. But it isn't clear that they are.

There is no doubt some truth to the worry about the sympathies of Hollywood filmmakers--I'm the guy who wrote the story two years ago about their unwillingness to do movies based on the war on terrorism. But Jason Apuzzo isn't a particularly reliable guide to the industry and his alarmism about a fleet of movies specifically designed to "sympathize" with our enemies seems, at best, overwrought.

More than a catfight? We'll have to wait and see what hits the big screen.

Taken to the woodshed

George F. Will delivers a combined history lesson and rhetorical spanking to public nuisance Jimmy Carter, who apparently clings to the baseless notion that he lost the 1980 presidential campaign because Will purloined a debate briefing book.

The role of ex-president requires a grace and restraint notably absent from Carter. See, for example, his criticism of America when he is abroad, as in England two weeks ago. Having made such disappointing history as president, Carter as ex-president should at least refrain from disseminating a historical falsehood.

So strong, however, is the human impulse to believe comforting myths, Carter probably will continue to promulgate the fiction that I gave Reagan the utterly unimportant briefing book, thereby catalyzing the 1980 landslide. But to be fair: As a candidate, Carter promised only that as president he would never tell a lie, thereby leaving himself a loophole for his post-presidential career as a fabulist.

Bampots all

The funeral service this week for former British cabinet minister Robin Cook apparently had plenty of strange touches, demonstrating that, even in death, the Labour Party is still incorrigibly leftist and intellectually incoherent.

Robin Cook would have appreciated the irony of his own funeral service. Yesterday, in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh — the High Kirk of Scotland — he was given a Christian send-off, with the congregation joining in the 23rd Psalm and the anthem pleading for God’s mercy. Yet Mr Cook had been an avowed atheist, who would, in the normal course of events, have steered well clear of organised religion.

This was a highly political funeral as well as a Church of Scotland affair. Outside a crowd of remarkable size had gathered behind the barricades along the Royal Mile, to bid farewell to a politician of high principle. Inside, row upon row of this ancient church were filled with ministers, MPs, Members of the Scottish Parliament, trade unionists and party stalwarts.

[P]erhaps the most moving moment of the whole service came when the Scottish fiddler Aly Bain and accordionist Phil Cunningham electrified listeners by playing the Internationale. It is not every day that you hear the Communist anthem played in a cathedral, but by the end of it most of the congregation was humming the tune in the background — an extraordinary sound.

There was, of course, one noted absentee. In the normal course of events, no one would have dreamt of drawing attention to Tony Blair’s decision not to attend. But in the normal course of events, no one would have dreamt of asking John McCririck, the Channel 4 racing commentator, to deliver an address. The idea had been for him to speak about Mr Cook’s love of racing. Instead he launched an attack on the Prime Minister, accusing him, from the pulpit of the cathedral, of “ petty vindictiveness” for staying away, and contrasting his absence with Baroness Thatcher’s appearance at Sir Edward Heath’s funeral. There was an almost audible groan from the congregation as he spoke. “There is a time and a place for that kind of thing,” one MP said. “And this is not it.” “What a bampot,” muttered another (bampot being a peculiarly Scottish word for idiot.)

It's reminiscent of the blended memorial service and political rally staged by friends and family of the late U.S. senator Paul Wellstone.

Linked to Wizbang Carnival of the Trackbacks XXIV.

Natural class

While musing about the state of politics in general, Peggy Noonan notes the achievement of Laura Bush as an exemplary First Lady.

A word on Mrs. Bush. Everyone knows she is popular and admired, but I don't think it's been sufficiently noted that Laura Bush, in almost five years as first lady, has never made a mistake. She has not struck a false note or made a single misstep. This is remarkable. And our country has never seen anything like it.

It is as if she were born to be first lady--easygoing, gently humorous, demure, ladylike. It takes enormous reserves of emotional discipline to sustain graciousness, to do the job right, to so disarm the press with what must be called, vulgarly but inescapably, natural class.

She has never embarrassed our country. Of how many leaders or their spouses can that be said?

Well done. Well and amazingly done.

Agreed. Maybe it's related to the fact that she's the first librarian in the White House.

Potency

A liberal think tank is concerned about the conservative advantage in the blogosphere.

Liberal activist Web loggers have made major advances on the Internet, but they remain far behind their conservative adversaries among the top 250 political blogs, according to a study by a Democratic think tank.

In a detailed report on the political power being wielded by bloggers, who have become a potent force in national and state campaigns, the study found that while liberals have "a decided advantage" over conservatives among the top 40 blogs (24-16), "conservatives hold a whopping 133 to 77 advantage" among the next 210 blogs.

The study said this was "a serious problem that progressives must confront," if they are going to overcome the conservatives' advantage at the local level.

"An edge among small, local political blogs also means an edge in small, local, political races. While progressives may have a marked advantage in overall blogosphere discourse, it could also be argued that conservatives are taking a decisive lead in the sort of targeted blogging that will provide them with real, tangible benefits ...," the report says.

New Politics Institute: The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere

Taming the Beast

News flash: CNN has done something right for Houston and cancer patients. Tune in Sunday night to see the results.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta says he's wanted to do a story on cancer survivors for a long time. But it was not until last year, while visiting Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, that he knew from where that story would originate.

"I called (M.D. Anderson president) Dr. John Mendelsohn and as he was talking, two things struck me," CNN's medical correspondent said. "One, he said this is a happy place, which is exactly the opposite impression people have of a cancer hospital. Second, he said a large percentage of the employees at this hospital are former patients, which said two things: One, they lived, and two, that they work at the place where they almost died."

With the cooperation of M.D. Anderson staff and volunteers, family members of patients and, most of all, the patients themselves, Gupta's story becomes reality this weekend. Thanks to that extraordinary access, CNN Presents: Taming the Beast: Inside the War on Cancer (7 and 10 p.m. Sunday, CNN) succeeds in painting a modern-day picture of cancer and the exceptional people — caregivers and patients — fighting the war on that disease.

Gupta and a CNN team swooped into Houston more than a half-dozen times over the past year, accumulating hundreds of hours of video for Sunday's one-hour report, visiting with warriors who have defeated cancer or tirelessly fought it for many years.

Related:

• CNN Presents
• M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

Is the patient awakening?

Self-described Muslim refusenik Irshad Manji asks why the West has so embraced the "theocracy of tolerance" and notes that Tony Blair is starting to fight back.

As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as a strength — even a form of cultural superiority (though few will admit that). Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished.

Paradoxically, then, the more we accommodate to placate, the more their contempt for our "weakness" grows. And ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we'll need to be less tolerant. Or, at the very least, more vigilant. And this vigilance demands more than new antiterror laws. It requires asking: What guiding values can most of us live with? Given the panoply of ideologies and faiths out there, what filter will distill almost everybody's right to free expression?

Neither the watery word "tolerance" nor the slippery phrase "mutual respect" will cut it as a guiding value. Why tolerate violent bigotry? Where's the "mutual" in that version of mutual respect? Amin Maalouf, a French-Arab novelist, nailed this point when he wrote that "traditions deserve respect only insofar as they are respectable — that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women."

Harry everywhere

Weird news: Harry Potter is a new favorite among... terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.

Harry Potter's worldwide popularity is so broad-based that it has become favorite reading for Islamic terror suspects at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Lori, who for two years has overseen the detention center's library, said J.K. Rowling's tales about the boy wizard are on top of the request list for the camp's 520 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, followed by Agatha Christie whodunits.

"We've got a few who are kind of hooked on it. A couple have asked if they can see the movie," said Lori, a civilian contractor who asked that her last name not be publicized.

Detainees may not peruse the bookshelves at Camp Delta, which is stocked with more than 800 books other than the Koran and with family-values movies. Instead, a staff of three librarians load up a book cart and go cell to cell.

The titles are not all sorcery and murder mysteries. There is, for example, "Sahih Bukhari," a book of sayings and deeds by the prophet Muhammad compiled by the early Arabic scholar Muhammad bin Ismail Bukhari.

"We had someone from the Joint Staff [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] come down who is a Middle East Islamic specialist and gave recommendations," Lori said.

The library bans certain book categories, such as ones that deal in political thought.

"We try to keep people calm and not incite riots," Lori said.

We await words of protest from the swags at the American Library Association over this new incidence of book banning.

Peter Jennings dead at 67

Longtime news anchor Peter Jennings succumbed to lung cancer yesterday.

Peter Jennings, the suave, Canadian-born broadcaster who delivered the news to Americans each night in five separate decades, died Sunday. He was 67.

Jennings, who announced in April that he had lung cancer, died at his New York home. A smoker until about 20 years ago, Jennings once said he relapsed under the pressure of Sept. 11, 2001, but later quit again.

Charles Gibson announced the death of his colleague on ABC television just after 10:30 p.m. CDT.

As noted earlier, most such victims don't survive this deadly disease. Don't ever smoke. If you do, just stop, whatever it takes.

Iran arms the Iraqi terrorists

Here's more direct evidence that Iranians are supporting the Sunni death squads in Iraq in their war on U.S. troops.

Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran and shipped in from there, United States military and intelligence officials said Friday, raising the prospect of increased foreign help for Iraqi insurgents.

American commanders say the deadlier bombs could become more common as insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons themselves in Iraq.

But just as troubling is that the spread of the new weapons seems to suggest a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.

Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle's armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.

Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran. But one senior military officer said "tens" of the devices had been smuggled in and used against allied forces, killing or wounding several Americans throughout Iraq in the past several weeks.

"These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we've seen," said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate in