Petrified Truth

Odysseus found

The home of a hero of the ancient world has been located, disproving yet again those who belittle the texts of antiquity as works of mere imagination.

For almost 3,000 years, its location has been a mystery, but classical scholars around the world are now convinced that a British businessman and amateur archaeologist with a passion for Homer has found the island of Ithaca, home of the Greek hero Odysseus and the site of his palace.

Many thought that the island existed only in the imagination of the Greek poet Homer and in his epic, the Odyssey. Certainly his description of it did not match the Ionian island now called Ithaca, but, after following a detective trail of literary, geological and archaeological clues, scholars led by Robert Bittlestone, a management consultant, have identified Paliki, an area of Cephalonia, as the site.

Classicists have been overwhelmed by the compelling evidence.

James Diggle, Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University and co-author of a book on the discovery, said that almost all of the 26 locations that Homer described in detail can be identified today in northern Paliki and its neighbourhood.

The topography of Homer’s island fits the area “like a glove”, he said.

Paliki was once a separate island. Since Homer’s day, earthquakes triggering massive landslides had filled in a narrow sea channel that separated it from the island of Same — modern Cephalonia, the setting for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

Professor Diggle said: “Some 3,200 years after the events that are described in the Odyssey, ancient Ithaca has at last been discovered — a discovery which will revolutionise our understanding of the ancient world and is of profound importance to our understanding of the origins of western civilisation.”

Scholars and archaeologists had been baffled by Homer’s description of Ithaca: “Around are many islands, close to each other,/Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos./Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea/Towards dusk [ie West]; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun [ie East].”

Today’s Ithaca lies to the east of the other islands, not to the west, and it is not low-lying but mountainous. Scholars therefore came to the uneasy conclusion that Ithaca must have come from the poet’s imagination.

However, after field trips to western Greece and computer analysis of literary, geological and archaeological data, the use of the most advanced satellite imagery and 3D global visualisation techniques developed by NASA, Mr Bittlestone found up to 70 clues leading to Caphalonia.

Related:

• Video (Windows Media) via UK's Channel 4
• Odysseus Unbound - the book
• Odysseus Unbound - the website

Rita's sour aftertaste

Our decision NOT to join the mass evacuation of the Houston area during the Hurricane Rita scare is looking better and better. The Houston Chronicle is beginning to total up the cost in human lives of the gridlock.

A 2-year-old Houston girl crushed beneath the wheels of a pickup; a Sugar Land man and his two young children fatally pitched from their overturning car near Madisonville; a 92-year-old La Marque woman dead after losing consciousness while stuck in highway gridlock — Hurricane Rita's tales of sorrow rolled in Wednesday as the death toll climbed.

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week's hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

One day before the expected announcement of a state-county-city task force to examine the problems that plagued the exodus, which doubled or tripled the travel time between Houston and other Texas cities, Mayor Bill White conceded, "I don't think the evacuation should be a disaster in itself."

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, whose wife spent more than 12 hours in a U.S. 290 traffic jam, called for a careful review of the evacuation. "People are downplaying the fact that people died in the evacuation and that is not right," he said. "Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That's the question we need to consider."

Osama bin Laden's fate

Fred Burton of Austin-based STRATFOR says the search for Osama bin Laden is more complicated that we might think.

The question of bin Laden's fate is not an easy one for the White House. On the one hand, the American public both wants and needs the psychological closure that news of bin Laden's capture, punishment and death would bring to the wounds of 9/11. Four years on, however, the search for the world's most wanted man ostensibly still continues, and the issue of his whereabouts -- or even whether he is alive or dead -- is still being actively debated inside the Beltway and at the highest levels of federal intelligence agencies. On the other hand, there is no strategic value for the United States in producing bin Laden's corpse for the masses, which would instantly turn him into an icon for potential jihadists everywhere, or even in pressing too hard for his capture, which would saddle Washington with responsibility for having him tried and still render him an icon.

Given these realities, the best possible strategy for the Bush administration is the one it appears to be pursuing: to hand off responsibility for dealing with these issues to some other country. This leaves al Qaeda to grapple with the problem of having to prove bin Laden's continued existence -- or else answer the question, which might begin to grow in the minds of its own global Islamist audience, of why he seemingly has abandoned the flock.

...

As we have noted, the Bush administration has been propping up the Pakistanis to take the lead in the hunt for bin Laden. Now, if Washington believes bin Laden to be alive and within reach, it would not trust the Pakistanis to lead the charge, nor would it share the most sensitive bits of intelligence on the matter even with allies. The Americans would go it alone -- though they probably would not seek to leave the impression that they were ultimately responsible for bin Laden's demise, for the reasons noted above. However, if the Bush administration believes bin Laden is dead, thrusting responsibility for the search to Islamabad certainly doesn't hurt, and it provides several political dividends. For one thing, it keeps the heat on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to flush out other, less iconic al Qaeda leaders, but does not overtly humiliate Islamabad in the process.

The ball, then, would seem to be in al Qaeda's court. Unless they can paint bin Laden as having been martyred by infidel Western forces, creating an icon around which the Islamist public can rally, it is in the group's interest to generate perceptions that bin Laden is alive as the titular leader of the vanguard jihadist movement. Al Qaeda is losing strength as a strategic force, and being able to produce bin Laden might, on a psychological level, help buoy the movement.

But the group has done nothing to enforce this perception in almost a year. The silence from Washington on bin Laden's fate is perfectly logical; why al Qaeda remains silent is a mystery.

Is Bin Laden Dead?
By Fred Burton

The tone of U.S. and Pakistani diplomats has shifted -- suddenly and markedly -- in the perennial discussions about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

The Americans, normally quite vocal about pressing their demands in the war on terrorism, have now sounded an extremely deferential note toward Islamabad. In an interview last week with the editorial board of Time magazine, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Pakistani military s "probably"
better suited than American forces to conduct the search for bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials, who long have been believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan, along the Afghan border. Rice then proceeded to contradict a great many of her Bush administration colleagues in saying that Pakistan, which has long stymied efforts to capture bin Laden, actually has every incentive to do so -- and that its failure to deliver his head on a platter to Washington is quite understandable given the difficult terrain.

Not to be outdone, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf told Time that he hopes bin Laden eventually will be captured "somewhere outside Pakistan [b]y some other people."

While Musharraf's frankness on the matter is a little surprising, his sentiment certainly is not. For four years, the search for bin Laden has been a political hot potato that Musharraf -- squeezed on one side by the United States and on the other by domestic Islamists who would come unleashed if foreign forces operated on Pakistani soil -- dared not touch. Nothing would be better, in his eyes, than for bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (and whoever else might be hiding in Pakistan) to obligingly move off and become someone else's problem.

Rice's statements are rather more interesting, since they could be interpreted in several different ways. First, one could argue that she was using reverse psychology. In her rather sweet defense of Pakistan's performance in the search for al Qaeda leaders, Islamabad doubtless will get the message that the Bush administration wants him found and killed yesterday -- or else. Second, her discussion might have been a move by the White House -- whose standing with the American public has been damaged by the ongoing war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- to pre-empt further criticism over its failure to find and, in every sense of the word, annihilate bin Laden.

By planting the seed that responsibility for bin Laden ultimately lies elsewhere, the Bush administration begins to wash its hands of a question that, despite being on the minds of the public, serves no purpose for the United States to engage.

The question of bin Laden's fate is not an easy one for the White House. On the one hand, the American public both wants and needs the psychological closure that news of bin Laden's capture, punishment and death would bring to the wounds of 9/11. Four years on, however, the search for the world's most wanted man ostensibly still continues, and the issue of his whereabouts -- or even whether he is alive or dead -- is still being actively debated inside the Beltway and at the highest levels of federal intelligence agencies. On the other hand, there is no strategic value for the United States in producing bin Laden's corpse for the masses, which would instantly turn him into an icon for potential jihadists everywhere, or even in pressing too hard for his capture, which would saddle Washington with responsibility for having him tried and still render him an icon.

Given these realities, the best possible strategy for the Bush administration is the one it appears to be pursuing: to hand off responsibility for dealing with these issues to some other country. This leaves al Qaeda to grapple with the problem of having to prove bin Laden's continued existence -- or else answer the question, which might begin to grow in the minds of its own global Islamist audience, of why he seemingly has abandoned the flock.

Though we cannot state categorically that bin Laden is either alive or dead, the view that he may "be no more" has taken root within U.S. intelligence agencies, where officials note that the al Qaeda leader -- whose health was questionable even before the Sept. 11 attacks -- might have died from wounds sustained in the Afghanistan conflict, kidney failure or some other natural causes, or a combination of these factors. Access to quality medical care, including the dialysis machine we believe he needed, would be quite hard to come by while fleeing Predator drones and hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, even if doctors or medical supplies were available and could be retained for a price.

Al Qaeda's own videotapes have borne witness to bin Laden's physical deterioration -- or at least they did, until he stopped appearing in them about a year ago. The last seemingly fresh video footage of bin Laden was issued in September 2003, when he appeared noticeably gaunt while walking through a mountainous area with al-Zawahiri. In an audio tape accompanying that footage, the two men referred to the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But bin Laden was not portrayed again on video until late October 2004 -- and then in such apparent good health that the date of the footage was called into question.

Since the video of September 2003, al-Zawahiri has emerged as the most prominent figure in al Qaeda releases. Bin Laden's voice was heard on a handful of audio recordings, but even those have now fallen off: He last was known to speak in December 2004, praising an attack against the U.S. consulate in Jeddah that occurred Dec. 6.

In reviewing the chronology of al Qaeda releases, it also is noteworthy that al-Zawahiri has begun exhorting followers during the past year to continue their jihad despite the fate of al Qaeda's leaders. In an audio issued Sept. 9, 2004, he states: "You, youth of Islam, this is our message: If we die or are detained, continue the path after us, and don't betray God and his prophet, and don't knowingly betray the trust." Less than a month later, in a video released Oct. 1, he repeated the message, saying, "If we are killed or taken prisoner, continue the path after us. . . . It's the era of Muslim resistance, after the [Arab] governments submitted to the Zionist occupant. We should learn the lessons of Chechnya, Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine."

Of course, such statements are entirely in keeping with al Qaeda's goal of sparking a grassroots movement within the Muslim world. But given the other factors, there is the intriguing possibility that al-Zawahiri's remarks on death and capture were made at a time when bin Laden himself might have been dying nearby.

Absent a body, there is plenty of room for speculation on such matters. But the facts are these:

* Bin Laden has not been known to move or speak since December 2004.

* He has been replaced in both video and audio recordings by al-Zawahiri, who has issued a handful of statements this year alone.

* No U.S. or foreign government agencies have claimed credit for bin Laden's death.

Having said that, we would argue that it is in al Qaeda's tactical interest to keep bin Laden "alive" in the public's mind -- or at least not to acknowledge his unspectacular or completely natural death -- since that ties up military and intelligence resources and diverts attention away from any operational planners who might still be capable of carrying out attacks.

From the U.S. point of view, it must be remembered that intelligence agents are interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who served as bin Laden's chief tactical commander. Though he was captured in March 2003, he would be perhaps the best-positioned of all the al Qaeda operatives captured thus far to give reliable information about bin Laden's possible hideouts (though not, after so much time, the location of bin Laden himself). Every nook and cranny he could name in South Asia would be scoured by CIA shadow teams -- but, so far, there is no reason to believe they have found anything.

Now, it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility that the United States actually did succeed, somehow, in killing bin Laden -- perhaps with a missile fired from a Predator in Afghanistan -- and the corpse, if it was ever found, might have been unrecognizable. Intriguingly, no one has claimed to have any forensic evidence that logically could be expected in such an event -- which indicates to us that either no corpse was ever found or the forensic evidence was inconclusive. There is a third possible argument -- that the government has conclusive evidence of bin Laden's demise and has somehow hushed it up -- but we find this exceedingly difficult to believe. As anyone who has ever worked inside the Beltway can tell you, there are no secrets in Washington -- and certainly none that juicy that could be kept quiet for long.

Speaking from a purely domestic perspective, for the moment, there is nothing to stop the Bush administration from claiming at any time that bin Laden is dead, which would certainly score PR points with the public. But barring any forensic proof to back up its words, that would be a risky move. The White House already has a credibility problem, having claimed the existence of WMD in Iraq, and there would be no way to prevent anyone from whipping out some dated video footage of bin Laden that would make the administration look foolish. Given the number of American conspiracy theorists who argue that the United States attacked itself on Sept. 11, the question of who in the world would believe such a claim about bin Laden doesn't weigh favorably for the White House.

Rather, logic argues that it is better, both strategically and tactically, to say nothing and allow perceptions to persist that bin Laden, terrorist mastermind and financier, is still "out there," rather than try to force a PR victory on the issue, even if that was the Bush administration's style. And there is no compelling reason for this president, who cannot seek re-election, to pander to the mercurial polls.

Returning to the political exchanges now occurring in the media, we see new clues as to Washington's thinking. As we have noted, the Bush administration has been propping up the Pakistanis to take the lead in the hunt for bin Laden. Now, if Washington believes bin Laden to be alive and within reach, it would not trust the Pakistanis to lead the charge, nor would it share the most sensitive bits of intelligence on the matter even with allies. The Americans would go it alone -- though they probably would not seek to leave the impression that they were ultimately responsible for bin Laden's demise, for the reasons noted above. However, if the Bush administration believes bin Laden is dead, thrusting responsibility for the search to Islamabad certainly doesn't hurt, and it provides several political dividends. For one thing, it keeps the heat on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to flush out other, less iconic al Qaeda leaders, but does not overtly humiliate Islamabad in the process.

The ball, then, would seem to be in al Qaeda's court. Unless they can paint bin Laden as having been martyred by infidel Western forces, creating an icon around which the Islamist public can rally, it is in the group's interest to generate perceptions that bin Laden is alive as the titular leader of the vanguard jihadist movement. Al Qaeda is losing strength as a
strategic force, and being able to produce bin Laden might, on a psychological level, help buoy the movement.

But the group has done nothing to enforce this perception in almost a year. The silence from Washington on bin Laden's fate is perfectly logical; why al Qaeda remains silent is a mystery.

This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com.

© Copyright 2005 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.

Sunni Arabs fearing Shiite emancipation

Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University writes eloquently about the profound changes being wrought one agonizing step at a time in the Middle East.

It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites--and of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the Arab world. We have overturned an edifice of material and moral power that dates back centuries. The Arabs railing against U.S. imperialism and arrogance in Iraq will never let us in on the real sources of their resentments. In the way of "modern" men and women with some familiarity with the doctrines of political correctness, they can't tell us that they are aggrieved that we have given a measure of self-worth to the seminarians of Najaf and the highlanders of Kurdistan. But that is precisely what gnaws at them.

An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted them in the idle hope that they would be spared the wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its mission, brought along with its military gear a suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of George Bush's ideology, dwarfed them.

...

We have not always been brilliant in the war we have waged, for these are lands we did not fully know. But our work has been noble and necessary, and we can't call a halt to it in midstream. We bought time for reform to take root in several Arab and Muslim realms. Leave aside the rescue of Afghanistan, Kuwait and Qatar have done well by our protection, and Lebanon has retrieved much of its freedom. The three larger realms of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria are more difficult settings, but there, too, the established orders of power will have to accommodate the yearnings for change. A Kuwaiti businessman with an unerring feel for the ways of the Arab world put it thus to me: "Iraq, the Internet, and American power are undermining the old order in the Arab world. There are gains by the day." The rage against our work in Iraq, all the way from the "chat rooms" of Arabia to the bigots of Finsbury Park in London, is located within this broader struggle.

He also makes this point about the forces of opposition to change:

Unreason, an indifference to the most basic of facts, and a spirit of belligerence have settled upon the Arab world.

That's a description that applies as much to the political Left in this country and in Europe as it does to reactionary forces in the Arab world. And it is holding back everyone, everywhere, in significant ways.

Chill wind blowing

The offshore oil & gas industry and America's economy are facing some tough numbers and difficult decisions thanks to multiple hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico.

As of Sept. 25, the US Minerals Management Service reported 666 platforms and 92 rigs evacuated in the Gulf of Mexico, with shut-in production of 1.5 million b/d of crude and 8 bcfd of natural gas. That amounts to all of the normal crude production and 80% of the natural gas production from the gulf. By comparison, at its peak Katrina shut in 95% of the oil and 85% of the gas production in the gulf, much of which had not been restored before Rita struck 3 weeks later.

Moreover, the cumulative amount of production lost since Aug. 26 when Katrina first threatened oil and gas operations in the US sector of the Gulf of Mexico totaled 33.3 million bbl of crude and 157 bcf of natural gas through Sept. 25.

Rita was the fifth storm to disrupt gulf production this year. Hurricane Dennis disrupted production of 5.29 million bbl of oil and 23.3 bcf of gas; Tropical Storm Cindy, 312,127 bbl of oil and 1.7 bcf of gas; and Hurricane Emily, 240,024 bbl of oil and 1.58 bcf of gas.

"Although demand destruction from lost industrial consumption has offset shut-in production from the gulf, we believe this will only occur in the interim," said Ronald J. Barone, a managing director of equity research with UBS Securities LLC, New York. "As Louisiana begins to rebuild, we expect consumption to increase, eventually approaching pre-Katrina levels. However, we expect 1-1.5 bcfd of production (2-3%) to be permanently lost. Given that demand for natural gas has already begun to outstrip production, a 2-3% decline in production could have a long-term upward impact on pricing."

In addition, Barone said, industry officials and regulators are now looking into the safety of LNG terminals. "Many are concerned about the ability of LNG facilities to withstand a natural disaster and, for that matter, about having so much gas infrastructure concentrated in the gulf in the event that the unthinkable happens," he said. "Some feel that having LNG terminals in other areas such as the Northeast [US] and California would make more sense."

Would you believe...?

Actor Don Adams, star of a wildly popular (and a personal favorite) TV series in the 1960s, has walked through the secret doors for the last time.

Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s TV spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," has died. He was 82.

As the inept Agent 86 of the super-secret federal agency CONTROL, Adams captured TV viewers with his antics in combatting the evil agents of KAOS. When his explanations failed to convince the villains or his boss, he tried another tack: "Would you believe ... ?"

It became a national catchphrase.

Smart's beautiful partner, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon, was as brainy as he was dense, and a plot romance led to marriage and the birth of twins later in the series.

"He had this prodigious energy, so as an actor working with him it was like being plugged into an electric current," Feldon said from New York. "He would start and a scene would just take off and you were there for the ride. It was great fun acting with him."

Adams was very intelligent, she said, a quality that suited the satiric show that had comedy geniuses Mel Brooks and Buck Henry behind it.

"He wrote poetry, he had an interest in history ... He had that other side to him that does not come through Maxwell Smart," she said. "Don in person was anything but bumbling."

"Get Smart" debuted on NBC in September 1965 and scored No. 12 among the season's most-watched series and No. 22 in its second season. "Get Smart" twice won the Emmy for best comedy series with three Emmys for Adams as comedy actor.

Like other actors of his generation, he had a vital but little-known dimension to his life.

In 1941, he dropped out of school to join the Marines. In Guadalcanal he survived the deadly blackwater fever and was returned to the States to become a drill instructor, acquiring the clipped delivery that served him well as a comedian.

The line at the trough forms

Speaking of post-hurricane price gouging and looting... Here are the newest demands from the "leaders" of Louisiana.

Louisiana's congressional delegation has requested $40 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire nation, or 16 times the amount the Corps has said it would need to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane.

Louisiana Sens. David Vitter (R) and Mary Landrieu (D) tucked the request into their $250 billion Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, the state's opening salvo in the scramble for federal dollars.

The bill, unveiled last week, would create a powerful "Pelican Commission" controlled by Louisiana residents that would decide which Corps projects to fund, and ordered the commission to consider several controversial navigation projects that have nothing to do with flood protection. The Corps section of the Louisiana bill, which was supported by the entire state delegation, was based on recommendations from a "working group" dominated by lobbyists for ports, shipping firms, energy companies and other corporate interests.

The bill would exempt any Corps projects approved by the commission from provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. It would also waive the usual Corps cost-sharing requirements, ensuring that federal taxpayers would pay every dime.

With the public eager to help Katrina's victims, President Bush and Congress have already approved $62.3 billion in spending for the Gulf Coast. But some budget hawks are grumbling about the impact on the deficit; the Louisiana delegation's $250 billion bill would cost more than the Louisiana Purchase under the Jefferson administration on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Contraflow blues

What we suspected was in fact true: there was no prepared plan to establish contraflow lanes on major hurricane evacuation routes out of the Houston area.

The biggest problem in Houston's painful evacuation last week was that perhaps a million people, almost half of those who left, ran from the wind. To make matters worse, the regional evacuation plan was missing a key element — pre-planned contraflow lanes that are a part of virtually every other hurricane-prone city's evacuation strategy.

From Corpus Christi to Norfolk, Va., most vulnerable cities have pre-set plans to run their highways in one direction only, headed out of town, said Brian Wolshon, a civil engineer at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center.

Wolshon gave a presentation on the subject at Houston's TranStar traffic management center two years ago, but found that officials were reluctant because Houston's freeway grid is much more complicated than other coastal cities.

"I don't think they really took it seriously," he said.

State and local officials changed their minds early last Thursday in the face of a historic traffic jam. But it was too late, and the one-way freeways that eventually opened on Interstate 10 and Interstate 45 didn't relieve drivers' 20-hour nightmares.

...

Harris County and the city simply didn't have them in their official emergency plans, and much of the lane mileage ultimately freed for evacuee traffic was outside their jurisdictions.

Once it became apparent that something had to change to get people moving at the height of the evacuation, the city and county asked about 2:30 a.m. Thursday for the state to open the lanes.

With no regional or state plan in place, officials scrambled to make it happen.

It's absurd that this wasn't part of the established plan; citizens must follow up and ensure officials work this out.

That said, Texas showed its can-do ability when the time came to improvise.

First, they had to determine how and where to redirect traffic. Then they had to make sure it was safe. About 10 hours later, with a long, snaking line of idling evacuees waiting, southbound lanes on I-45 were reversed. Contraflow on I-10 opened later. TxDOT looked at opening both sides of U.S. 290, but decided it would be impractical because the highway has so many entry points.

In all, state officials say, about 400 miles of highway were switched more than a day before the hurricane landed. About 100 highway barriers were needed to block opposing highway entrance ramps to make sure there weren't head-on collisions. The Department of Public Safety had to send 1,300 troopers to southeast Texas, more than a third of its force. An army of local police also helped.

Tuff enough?

The Houston Chronicle reprints an investigative journalism piece from the Mobile Register on whether or not offshore oil & gas structures in the Gulf of Mexico are built to withstand strong storms and wave damage.

In the days after Katrina, as hundreds of oil-producing platforms remained off line — and some continued to leave a conspicuous trail of petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico — federal officials insisted to Congress that they were doing everything they could to make this infrastructure stable during hurricanes, designing platforms to withstand Category 5 storms.

But federal and industry documents obtained by the Mobile Register show that the latest design criteria for offshore oil and natural gas platforms require only that these structures withstand winds and seas typical of a borderline Category 2/Category 3 storm, well below the Category 4 and 5 winds that affected Gulf oil fields at least four times in the last five years.

Under the latest International Building Code, a model adopted by many states and localities, beach houses on many of the Gulf's barrier islands would be constructed to withstand stronger winds than is required by the design criteria for offshore platforms.

The implications of platform design decisions extend beyond the oil drilling industry, and include the gasoline price spikes since Katrina and the spreading oil slicks emanating from multiple platforms in the Gulf.

Last week, federal officials released reports of at least 64 spills associated with Gulf platforms after Katrina.

"For these platforms and other critical facilities, I'm really surprised that people would put that type of investment out there without more consideration," said Lawrence Twisdale, an expert in hurricane impacts and risk assessments for Applied Research Associates in Raleigh, N.C.

In the past year, several hurricanes with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour or greater have damaged platforms in the Gulf.

According to a Shell Web site, Ivan destroyed seven platforms in September 2004 and damaged 26 others. Katrina destroyed at least 46 platforms last month and significantly damaged another 16, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

Many other platforms could not operate following Katrina because of pipeline ruptures and other problems throughout offshore oil fields.

The Katrina damage seems to speak for itself.

Given the harsh, but ordinary, January weather I once saw long ago when visiting a gigantic, rock-solid gas production complex in the North Sea (the Frigg field, now being decommissioned, it's clear that the industry knows how to build very strong structures. It's a matter of assessing risk and making investments appropriately, not a particularly difficult engineering challenge.

Katy update

All is getting back to normal here in Katy following 72 hours of Hurricane Rita preparation, watching, waiting, and hassle. No milk or bread at our local Randalls this morning, and the parking lot of our HEB was so crowded that I didn't even try to check there.

It was good to get our HCODT (Houston Chronicle On Dead Trees) today. The Web is great, but I still like newsprint as well. Sarcasm has made its return, courtesy of comedians-in-residence like Ken Hoffman.

So ... why were there power outages in cities like Bellaire, where the wind hit maybe 35-40 mph? Reliant needs to name stadiums less, and fix its equipment more.

I knew the hurricane was a no-show when my satellite TV signal never went out. Usually, I can tell it's drizzling in Conroe when my television goes blank in Houston.

And how come fuel trucks couldn't make it to Houston, but Tom DeLay and Sheila Jackson Lee had no problem getting here? The wrong bags of gas got through.

Did four different TV stations need to be doing 24-hour hurricane coverage without even a commercial break? After a while, I couldn't tell the difference between Dave Ward and Tom Koch and those two idiots in the drive-through at Sonic....

CNN interviewed a pop culture professor from Syracuse University and asked him to comment on TV news going berserk with Hurricane Rita coverage. He said, after Katrina, it was to be expected.

That's why Channels 2, 11, 13 and 26 stayed on around the clock, even though nothing was really happening. Nobody wanted to be the first to blink. It was a contest, who cares more about Houston?

If one of the stations had gone back to regular programming, it would have been the first 100 percent rating in the history of Houston television.

Katy gets it done

As noted earlier, Katy ISD and the City of Katy jumped into action to shelter Hurricane Rita refugees when they were stranded on I-10. Now Houston Chronicle correspondent Judith Hindman files a more complete report. Excerpts:

Katy's emergency shelter at the Leonard E. Merrell Center closed late Saturday morning as the last of the people and pets who were stranded along the Katy Freeway drove away, courtesy of donated gasoline.

Katy Mayor Doyle Callender estimates at least 1,100 people stayed at the center Friday night while the storm raged ashore along the Texas-Louisiana border.

Callender said the city asked the Texas Department of Transportation for fuel for the evacuees.

"But we never saw any fuel from the state," he said.

So Callender and other officials found an alternate fuel source. He declined to say who donated the gasoline.

KISD Superintendent Leonard Merrill, however, said a "small amount" came from the school district.

Merrell, for whom the center is named, said many of evacuees had pets with them and 70 to 80 animals were housed in the nearby L.D. Robinson Pavilion, which is used for the annual Katy Independent School District's FFA livestock show.

"A couple of dogs had litters of puppies overnight," Merrell said.

The evacuated pets also included four horses, iguanas, snakes, rabbits and several kinds of tropical birds.

He said the Katy Christian Ministries and local volunteers provided at least three meals and a continuous supply of liquids.

Because most of the evacuees were stranded along the interstate, local officials used school buses, police cars and ambulances to transport them to the center.

"We swept the area several times," said Marc Jordan, Katy's administrative director of emergency medical services. He said they even transported people who were outside the Katy city limits.

Merrell said the evacuees included 46 people from mental health facilities whose buses were stranded on I-10. He said those evacuees were housed in a separate room on the second floor.

"If we knew people needed help, we tried to help them," he said.

Small town; big heart.

Not like them

Interesting to note the number of officials from Houston, Harris County, and the State of Texas all stating variations on the same theme over the last few days of storm-driven crisis: Texas is not like Louisiana and/or New Orleans.

Case in point: Houston's cautious response vs. this nonsense from a freshly-reflooded New Orleans:

Mayor Ray Nagin said Saturday that he hoped to resume a plan to move residents back into neighborhoods that remained relatively dry, including the city's business district.

Last week, Nagin delayed plans to allow some residents to return after it became clear that Rita posed a serious danger and federal officials warned of the problems that could face residents coming back to the city. He said Saturday that the latest storm had postponed recovery efforts by another three to five days.

"What I hope to do is very systematically repopulate the city," he said during a news conference, adding that he thought the dry districts would eventually support a population of between 250,000 and 300,000.

"I have no idea what's beyond that because the houses stayed in water for so long," he said.

He said he wanted residents of the Algiers neighborhood, which has electricity and water, to start returning as early as Monday or Tuesday, following with other ZIP codes.

"We're talking about people who are mobile. We're not asking people to come back who have a lot of kids, a lot of senior citizens," Nagin said. "That's going to be the reality of New Orleans moving forward."

Can't stay away

All indications are that residents are heading back to the Houston area in significant numbers, despite official requests not to do so.

Hoping to beat gridlock as over 2.5 million evacuees try to make their way back to Houston and the Gulf Coast, thousands have begun their journeys home.

What they didn't wait to find out: Most schools, including the Houston Independent School District, will remain closed until midweek so everyone doesn't rush back at once, and authorities have mapped out a plan to bring home residents region by region.

Houston-bound traffic was at a standstill by noon on I-10 just outside of Columbus as cars from San Antonio met up with people driving in from Austin. The snarl prompted many to pull off the highway, examine maps and consider alternate routes.

This is the cunning plan from TxDOT.

Breezin'

Power is still fluctuating here at Bedlam Manor, so only painfully slow dial-up via the laptop is safe. Here are a few news tidbits, via the Houston Chronicle:

The Chron has done a good job throughout this crisis. Their blogs have been updated regularly.

Watching, waiting

Power continues to flicker off and on. Heard a huge bang a few blocks away, which was probably a transformer losing its mind. We'd strongly prefer not to lose power -- it's just a sweaty hassle. Made a big pot of coffee just in case.

It'll be interesting to see when markets will re-open and when their deliveries will resume.

Morning after

Awakening to a gray morning. Winds are much more blustery, a bit of rain is falling, some limbs are down in the backyard, and power is flickering (wires touching briefly out there somewhere).

The Houston Chronicle reports widespread outages in the region.

More than a half million homes and business were without power in the greater Houston area because of Hurricane Rita's high winds and lightning, power company officials said early today.

Efforts to fully restore electricity will not start until wind gusts subside. A full restoration may take weeks, said Patricia Frank, spokeswoman for CenterPoint Energy.

The highest number outages were reported in Kingwood, Humble, Galveston and Baytown.

CenterPoint serves 1.9 million customers. The outages included 390,000 customers in Harris County, 50,000 in Chambers County, 41,000 in Galveston County, 30,000 in Fort Bend County and 18,000 in Brazoria County.

CenterPoint planned to begin a damage assessment with a aerial survey by helicopter on Saturday. The company was prepared to dispatch more than 4,000 crews to begin repairs once wind speeds and water levels decline.

High winds, broken tree limbs, other kinds of flying debris, and lightning from thunderstorms associated with the hurricane, caused most of the damage.

Thomas McCann live-blogged into the early morning hours. He writes to say he's been very impressed with CNN's Anderson Cooper and NOAA's Max Mayfield.

High pressure

Conditions are still quiet here in Katy, west of Houston - gusty winds and light rain. Dunno if we will get more from Rita or not.

Eric Berger at the Houston Chronicle reports that we can thank our unseasonably hot September weather -- or, more precisely, the high pressure system that caused the heat wave -- for the blessing of avoiding a direct hit.

At a time of year when the city normally welcomes its first cool front, the weather has simply been dreadfully hot.

How warm?

The temperature at George Bush Intercontinental Airport reached a staggering 100 degrees Thursday, shattering the old record by 4 degrees.

Turns out the heat was good for something. It saved our city.

Forecasters had thought the high pressure system dominating Texas — a common summer feature that yields warm, clear days and droughts — would weaken, allowing Rita to come storming through Texas.

But the state's high pressure system was butted up against another such system along the upper Gulf Coast, stretching across the southeastern United States.

That high pressure system turned out to be the one that weakened, steering Rita away from the middle of Texas' coast toward Louisiana.

"The Texas high just didn't weaken as anticipated," said Jill Hasling, president of Houston's Weather Research Center. "We got lucky."

Looks like things will stay docile tonight. Time for sleep.

KISD helps out

KPRC-TV reports that Katy Independent School District has opened its Leonard E. Merrell Center as a shelter for those fleeing Hurricane Rita. Staff include KISD employees and volunteers from Katy Christian Ministries.

A follow-up report on KPRC-TV mentioned that City of Katy officials are involved as well.

Linked by Thomas McCann and Michelle Malkin.

Sundown

While Rita starts pounding Louisiana, our winds are gusting to about 35 mph. This pic shows an interesting sky over Katy as the sun sets.

Welcome

Almost forgot to note: Petrified Truth was linked to yesterday by The Times in London. Many thanks to correspondent Sam Knight and a big Texas welcome to hundreds of British and European visitors today.

Floating

Updates:

Frank Billingsly, meteorologist on KPRC-TV (who has performed brilliantly this week), is starting to think that Rita's eye may make landfall in southeastern Louisiana. That would mean I need to water my lawn tomorrow... and we will be VERY pre-prepared for the next storm. Or the thing will wander back this way. Who knows?

Rita moves in

All indications are for Hurricane Rita to make landfall tonight northeast of Galveston, probably near Beaumont/Port Arthur (motto: "We Take the Hit for the Good of Houston").

Spare everyone in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana a prayer.

Space Station remote control

Here's interesting Hurricane Rita news from NASA.

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston closed at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday due to the threat posed to the Houston-Galveston area by Hurricane Rita. The center will not reopen until the storm threat has passed.

Johnson Space Center is the home to NASA astronauts and is responsible for their training. Johnson's Mission Control Center directs all space shuttle missions and manages all activity onboard the International Space Station.

Primary flight control of the station has transitioned to the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolev, outside Moscow. As usual, a group of NASA flight controllers is positioned at the Russian control center to assist with operations. Also, an advisory group of flight controllers will provide operations assistance from a remote location. All station systems are operating normally, and the crew has been informed of the plans.

Related:

• Energia - S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation
• Baikonur Cosmodrome

Second guessing already

Hurricane Rita hasn't landed, but second thoughts and finger-pointing at local officials and local media have already started due to the evacuation gridlock. For example, Eric Berger ("SciGuy") at the Houston Chronicle is pretty level-headed, despite his own family getting caught up in it, but some of his commenters are piling on the "hype" generated by non-stop media coverage.

It would be a bitter irony if the storm changed course and hit us directly after all.

Industry at risk

The Wall Street Journal has a nice map of the Gulf Coast oil refining and petrochemical facilities in the path of Hurricane Rita.

Ready, set...

Today's to-do list:

Reality gap

Our esteemed governor, pausing from his empty-headed efforts to micromanage our local public schools (thank you, Rita), has issued a heartwarming statement.

Gov. Rick Perry today requested that media make the following public announcement:

As Texas coastal areas continue to evacuate, many Texans are experiencing traffic delays and gridlock on major routes leaving Houston. Texans are urged to stay calm and patient. Those who are evacuating have done the right thing by leaving well before Hurricane Rita makes landfall.

[blah, blah, blah...]

Those who are about to run out of gas should pull to the side of the road. Fuel trucks are being positioned along major evacuation routes, including I-45, I-10 and U.S. 290 to get fuel to those who are low or out.

Again, Texans are urged to stay calm and patient as they evacuate.

However, the state's preparation seems to be lacking in important details.

The Texas National Guard plans to depart Austin at daybreak on Friday with two 5,000 gallon tankers to deliver gasoline to motorists stranded on major highways along the Hurricane Rita evacuation route.

The trucks will depart Camp Mabry with a law enforcement escort in search of motorists in need of gasoline along U.S. 290, Interstate 10, U.S. 59 and Interstate 45, said Chief Master Sgt. Gonda Manconda, a National Guard spokesman.

A site in Sealy on Interstate 10 where hundreds of motorists are stranded without gasoline was a high priority destination, said Manconda.

“As they see vehicles that are stopped because they ran out of gas, they will be able to service those vehicles,” said Manconda. “I don't know how long it will take to get to catch all of those folks on the four highways.”

Manconda said the National Guard attempted to begin the emergency fuel distribution earlier, but found the nozzles on the tankers were too large for civilian automobiles.

“They had to be flown in from San Antonio,” Manconda said of the smaller nozzles. “I don't know why we didn't have the right ones.”

Meanwhile, the governor's hair is still perfect...

Hurricane Rita update

The latest storm track forecast shows landfall is likely northeast of Houston, more towards the Beaumont/Port Arthur area. That would good for us, with diminished wind and rain. Tornados will be a threat anywhere in the region.

Hurricanes routinely veer off the projected path; Katrina moved 25 miles hours before landfall. We'll be watching the news closely.

Tragedy

BREAKING NEWS: A bus full of elderly evacuees from our area has been consumed by fire south of Dallas. The TV images are horrific. WFAA in Dallas is there.

An intercity passenger bus carrying evacuees from Hurricane Rita was destroyed by fire on Interstate 45 in Wilmer early Friday, killing at least one person and injuring a number of others.

All northbound lanes of the highway and the service road were shut down at Mars Road, leading to a backup of three to four miles.

One motorist told News 8 he saw what appeared to be an explosion before flames engulfed the bus.

Emergency officials said at least one person was killed and more than a dozen others were being treated for injuries. Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas was prepared to receive some of the victims.

There was no information about the extent or nature of injuries to passengers or the bus driver.

Aerial video shows drivers stuck behind the accident site on I-45 are driving across fields to try to get around the scene. Jeez.

Now KHOU in Houston reports:

“There were 45 souls on the bus ... at this point we believe we have about half accounted for,” Dallas County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Don Peritz. He said early indications were that a mechanical problem caused the blaze and that passengers’ oxygen tanks caught fire.

The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a 17-mile backup on a freeway that was already heavily congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. By early Friday morning, the bus was reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell, surrounded by numerous police cars and ambulances.

“The early indications are this is a mechanical issue,” Peritz said. “The driver did survive the accident. It’s my understanding he went back on the bus several times to try to evacuate people.”

UPDATE: Media now reports at least 20 dead. God rest their souls. Unfortunately and inevitably, there will be more casualties before this storm passes.

Houston pride

Here's the Houston we know and love: as noted earlier, at 7:00 tonight Houston's mayor and county judge called for volunteers to help distribute water to stranded evacuees. Well, according to KPRC-TV, hundreds of volunteers started showing up within minutes.

Distressingly, news reports also indicate that motorists are now setting up makeshift camps on the side of the road at various locations on I-10 west of Houston. Katy Mills Mall is one location. Although officially closed, that enormous, windowless structure might end up as an impromptu shelter before this is done.

Trouble

Stunning: Houston mayor Bill White and Harris County judge Robert Eckels are on live TV announcing an effort to relieve stranded motorists trying to evacuate through the Houston area. MAP vans, Metro buses and Harris County Citizen Corps volunteers will deliver "tens of thousands of bottles" of water and provide "shelter."

Neighbors, the authorities need to clear the roads now. If motorists are stranded 24 hours from now, we're looking at the equivalent of New Orleans.

Rita and your wallet

Check out the American Petroleum Institute's chart (pdf) of the refining capacity at risk from Hurricane Rita. Between that and Gulf Coast chemical plants, the economic impact may be huge.

The storm could also have serious economic and environmental consequences for chemical manufacturers on the Texas coast. More than 160 plants in Texas are in the potential path of the storm, according to the American Chemistry Council. Roughly half the nation's chemical-production capacity is in the region.

Texas is home to 26 refineries, representing more than a quarter of the nation's crude oil processing capacity. Of those refineries, 17 are in cities along the coast.

Watching Rita

The latest Rita storm track forecast is still holding for landfall somewhere northeast of Houston, targeting Beaumont and Port Arthur. That's (relatively) good for us on the west side of Houston. However, Frank Billingsly on KPRC-TV is now talking about the loop-back scenario and invoking the deadly memory of Tropical Storm Allison. Ugh - that slow, wandering storm dropped 38" of rain in some areas and caused billions of dollars of damage.

Tens of thousands of citizens are still stuck in huge traffic jams on area highways, both major and minor. One reporter says traffic is crawling from Houston almost to San Antonio.

The sheer massive scale of the traffic problem is demonstrating the degree of difficulty public officials and ordinary citizens face when confronted with a serious evacuation. Some painful lessons are being learned the hard way. Is it too soon to predict accusations of lack of preparation? Trust me, it's coming, fully deserved or not.

Just like this accursed storm.

Neighborhood report

Just got back from one last grocery/pharmacy run. Our local Randalls supermarket was relatively calm, but had nothing in the way of bread or water (OK for us - we're stocked up). Their gas station was shut tight. We picked up something for dinner to cook while we have power and to go with our bottle of opened wine. Also got some final Rx refills.

Nice thing: everyone in line was trying to accentuate the positive and be neighborly - lots of conversation.

Sweet & sour Rita

Here's possible good news on the projected landfall of Hurricane Rita from Weather Underground's Steve Gregory :

[T]he new GFS 12Z model run continues to show landfall further east - now along the TX./LA border. This dramatically increases the potential storm surge threat for southwest LA, while reducing the threat to Galveston. Whether or not this is just a 'flip-flop' in the track evolution is simply unknowable -- but the initialization data shows the high pressure ridge to the north weakening as forecast by the GFS, and I'm inclined to believe it. Accordingly, from my perspective, the highest probability; for landfall, lies from near High Island, Texas (about midway between Galveston and Port Arthur) eastward to Cameron, LA.

Here's Steve's bad news forecast:

Beyond the issue of the actual landfall point -- for the past 2 days, the global models have been forecasting the re-development/intensification of the high pressure ridge over the central U.S. -- and then expands it towards the Gulf coast. What this means, is that after Rita moves inland Saturday morning, it will gradually slow down, then stall out over west central Louisiana - and then is forecast to drift SOUTHWESTWARD towards Houston by Monday. This type of motion would lead to extreme rainfall totals across much of Louisiana and the east-southeast areas of Texas following landfall. Tremendous, life threatening flooding could result from portions of Louisiana southwestward to the Houston area. Storm rainfall totals could easily exceed 20" in some locations.

This is not going to be over anytime soon.

Stuck

Fox News is reporting that Texas Homeland Security is asking the Pentagon to deliver gasoline to motorists stranded in the 100-mile traffic jam. Apparently many people who can are turning around and going back home before they use all their fuel.

Unbelievable.

More Rita

According to morning TV news, traffic in the region is still completely horrorshow. Aerial shots of I-10 West near Highway 6 show dozens of stalled, overheated, out-of-gas vehicles and citizens standing around. Gridlock seems total. TxDOT is just now starting to implement plans for contraflow on the main evacuation highways -- way too late.

John at Blogs of War says he's prepared to hold out for a month. Hope it doesn't come to that.

Prefer my Rita without salt

Well, around here it's been Hurricane Rita 24x7 and it's only getting worse.

Eric Berger, the Science Guy blogger at the Houston Chronicle said tonight:

The current track for Rita is just about as bad as you could imagine for the Houston-Galveston area.

Unless the storm turns south or north in the next 24 to 48 hours we are set up for a truly horrific event. I am not going to sugar-coast this, my friends. If the storm comes ashore as forecast, it would essentially be the worst-case scenario...

Stay or go, wish us luck and send a few prayers up to the Big Guy -- we're going to need it.

Arthur Conan Doyle - murderer?

Could this be true? Surely not. But a grisly exhumation may hold the answer.

High on Dartmoor, the bleak landscape made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Hound of the Baskervilles, another mystery is brewing, one that might have baffled Sherlock Holmes himself.

This is the strange case of the famous author and the dead journalist, and it is Conan Doyle who stands accused of crimes most foul: plagiarism, conspiracy and murder. This week a group of scientists and amateur detectives formally applied for permission to exhume the body of Bertram Fletcher Robinson from a grave in Ipplepen, on the edge of Dartmoor, to establish, by forensic testing, whether he was poisoned.

The team, led by the author Rodger Garrick-Steele and Paul Spiring, a scientist, claims that Fletcher Robinson, a journalist and aspiring writer, was the unacknowledged author of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that Conan Doyle arranged to have him poisoned five years after the book was published to avoid exposure as a fraud.

Hurricane Katrina - what worked

Lou Dolinar, former volunteer firefighter and a retired reporter, takes a look at what went right in the response to Hurricane Katrina. It's more than just looking for the "good news angle"; there are interesting implications here.

Good guys include volunteers, local first responders, National Guard helicopter crews from around the nation, the Coast Guard, and the Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries. They all took initiative.

With body recovery teams in New Orleans finding far fewer than the expected 10,000 to 25,000 dead, despite the flooding of 80 percent of the city, it is time to ask: What went right?

Largely invisible to the media's radar, a broad-based rescue effort by federal, state and local first responders pulled 25,000 to 50,000 people from harm's way in floodwaters in the city. Ironically, FEMA's role, for good or ill, was essentially non-existent, as was the Governor's and the Mayor's. An ad-hoc distributed network responded on its own. Big Government didn't work. Odds and ends of little government did.

[O]ne explanation why the rescue operation flew below the radar of the media: Individual federal and state units were not coordinating their efforts overall. There was no central clearing house for information on rescue efforts. What looked like a hurricane relief breakdown was in fact a press release breakdown.

Read the whole thing.

Easy answers, difficult circumstances

Here's straightforward counsel on Iraq from The Times in London:

The issue now, regardless of the debate over the original decision to depose the Baathist regime, is whether democracy in Iraq is a cause deemed worthy of support, one to be treated with indifference, or even despised as an exercise in “liberal imperialism”. The stakes, which were already very high, have been raised by the public declaration of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his “al-Qaeda in Iraq” that they intend to conduct an “all-out war ” against the Shia majority (and by implication the Kurdish minority as well). This sadistic boast has been followed by a savage and shameless campaign of suicide bombings.

Al-Zarqawi’s vow should render the ethical and political debate about Iraq more straightforward. Those who insisted that the Iraqi “insurgency” was home-grown can hardly maintain that stance when it is being championed by a Jordanian national in the name of a group established by a Saudi-born fanatic. Those who contend that these extremists are best seen as nationalists aggrieved by the Western presence in Iraq cannot truly sustain that claim when they explicitly call for civil war. Those who cling to the notion that the zealots have somehow been alienated from the political process and have to be appeased cannot, surely, fail to observe their glorification of violence.

Conflict within Iraq may well prove harder to create than al-Zarqawi and his ilk have calculated. The Shia community has been extraordinarily resilient in the face of intense provocation. The response of all sections of Iraq to the recent tragedy of a stampede that killed almost a thousand people in Baghdad has been an important and touching reminder of the spirit that does hold Iraqis together regardless of their ethnic and religious differences.

It has been said by some this week that as far as American and British policy toward Iraq is concerned, there are “no easy answers”. The reality is that there is an easy answer — staying the course until democracy has been embedded in Iraq — but it involves difficult consequences. Idle chatter about “exit strategies” and a timetable for a withdrawal is not only a distraction from the task in hand, it is damaging. The issue is not whether one favours war in Iraq, but peace for Iraq. That peace will only be won if democracy takes hold and terrorism is defeated.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Movie

Looks like AOL Moviefone has a new trailer (including a full-screen, high-res version) for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie, opening on November 18. Looks brilliant.

Constitution Day

Today is the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution and has been duly designated as Constitution Day, thanks to the efforts of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Byrd, who is fanatically devoted to our brilliant founding document (even if often dunderheaded about what it actually means), pushed through a law requiring schools that receive federal funds to teach something about the Constitution on or near this date.

Lots of teachers and students around the country took up the challenge with relative ease.

At numerous schools, that meant watching broadcasts of talks by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer on the Constitution, or a debate on "free speech in the digital age" at the National Archives in Washington.

Elsewhere, teachers and students re-enacted the debates of the founding fathers, or followed lesson plans put out by civic groups.

But colleges seemed to have the most fun complying with the law.

A professor at Wesleyan, in Connecticut, set the Bill of Rights to music.

Wittenberg College in Ohio offered a year of free pizza to the winner of a Constitution essay contest, and served "presidential pierogies" and "patriotic pasta" in the cafeteria.

Boston University organized a panel on peer-to-peer file sharing featuring a producer named DJ Cheap Cologne.

Other schools planned their activities next week.

Marlboro College in Vermont was organizing a samba parade of faculty dressed as articles and amendments.

In Helotes, Texas, just outside San Antonio, a dozen or so seniors at Sandra Day O'Connor High School were given pocket-sized Constitutions before watching their school's namesake justice and Breyer discuss the document's importance.

Afterward, teacher Shari Stubbs' students debated this week's federal court decision that the Pledge of Allegiance use of the words "under God" violates the First Amendment.

"If we're not making them do something, how can it be unconstitutional?" said student Wesley Smith, opposing the court's decision.

Resources:

• Book Moot has reading recommendations for kids.

Tony Snow cancer update

Tony Snow explains the good side of dealing with colon cancer.

Winston Churchill once noted that there is nothing quite so thrilling as being shot at without effect. One can say much the same thing of grappling with cancer, with one difference: When a bullet passes, you know it. When cancer passes, you have to wait at least five years to mop your brow in relief.

Still, the last few months -- my time of surgery and chemo -- have been the happiest and most thrilling of my life. They have confirmed lessons that seem at once too good to be true, and too important and vital not to be.

Nothing makes one feel more alive than the prospect of death and the requirement that one fight for the things that give life its richness, meaning and joy.

Seven months into my little adventure, I love my wife and children more than ever; relish my work more than I could have imagined; and feel joy that I cannot begin to describe. I also have some street credibility when it comes to counseling cancer patients.

Inhuman

Here's a clear picture of what our troops and the Iraqi army are fighting in Iraq.

Army Col. H.R. McMaster is a soldier-scholar who once advised Gen. John Abizaid, the top Middle Easter commander, on how to wage war in Iraq. Col. McMaster now is in the heat of that battle himself. For the past several weeks, he has led the campaign to retake the border town of Tal Afar.

Col. McMaster appeared in the Pentagon this week via a video hookup to describe how his 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, joined by 3rd Iraqi Army Division, routed most of the extremists.

But it was his description of how the enemy occupied their safe haven that got the most attention. Col. McMaster told of beheadings, gunshot killings, a booby-trapped dead child and kidnappings. "This is the worst of the worst in terms of people in the world," he said. "To protect themselves here, what the enemy did is they waged the most brutal and murderous campaign against the people of Tal Afar. ... The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents."

Col. McMaster said his men killed scores of the enemy in a series of firefights up and down the tight streets of the crossroads between Syria, where insurgents train, and the critical northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

"These Iraqi soldiers are brave," he said. "They're courageous. They're building capabilities every day."

Col. McMaster said soldiers captured some associates of lead terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi.

"They are some of the worst human beings on the face of the Earth," he said.

"There is no really greater pleasure for us than to kill or capture these particular individuals."

Katrina talk

Good address to the nation tonight by President Bush. He sounded positive, detailed, action-oriented, and open about earlier fumbles. (We'll see if he's serious about fixing the huge holes in preparedness.) Shrewd political gunslinger Dick Morris, interviewed on Fox News Channel, said it was a very important speech and he was impressed.

C-SPAN has the video (Real). Read the transcript via the White House.

Our cities must have clear and up-to-date plans for responding to natural disasters, and disease outbreaks, or a terrorist attack, for evacuating large numbers of people in an emergency, and for providing the food and water and security they would need. In a time of terror threats and weapons of mass destruction, the danger to our citizens reaches much wider than a fault line or a flood plain. I consider detailed emergency planning to be a national security priority, and therefore, I've ordered the Department of Homeland Security to undertake an immediate review, in cooperation with local counterparts, of emergency plans in every major city in America.

I also want to know all the facts about the government response to Hurricane Katrina. The storm involved a massive flood, a major supply and security operation, and an evacuation order affecting more than a million people. It was not a normal hurricane -- and the normal disaster relief system was not equal to it. Many of the men and women of the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States military, the National Guard, Homeland Security, and state and local governments performed skillfully under the worst conditions. Yet the system, at every level of government, was not well-coordinated, and was overwhelmed in the first few days. It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.

Four years after the frightening experience of September the 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I've ordered every Cabinet Secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We're going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people.

PoliPundit noted something both interesting and unexpected in the Astrodome afterwards. (Tip via the omniscient Instapundit.)

What Katrina changed

Peggy Noonan has some useful thoughts on Hurricane Katrina and President Bush.

It was the assumption of Republicans and others that in this, the age of emergency, the managerial competence and constitutional seriousness of the Bush administration was on the case, on the job and taking care of business. But FEMA was stacked with hacks. This has been absorbed by people and will linger as an issue.

...

Mr. Bush is famously flinty. I sometimes think of what a friend said of him years ago: There are two misconceptions about Mr. Bush; one is that he's dumb, and the other is that he's sweet. He puts great emphasis on personal loyalty, and personal loyalty is important. But when that preference becomes a governing ethos, you wind up surrounded only by loyalists. His father wound up surrounded by tennis players. This doesn't help you govern.

It's important, five years into a presidency, for a president to remember he's probably no longer fully surrounded by aides who knew him when he was first running for governor and walking around in his shorts practicing speeches. The people who work for him now first saw him as a Time magazine cover. This can be fun--it's a relief to awe someone when the rest of the world is beating your head in--but again, it doesn't help govern.

Mr. Bush probably needed a humbling experience. He just got one. May he absorb, understand, keep the helpful lessons, ignore the unhelpful ones, and waste no time being mad. And may he reach out to some old wise heads on the Democratic side who can give him a read on how his honest critics view him.

American music - Texas style

Iconoclastic, Grammy-winning Texas musician Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown has died after being forced to flee from Hurricane Katrina. A Gulf Coast original, he'll be missed.

Andrew Dansby at the Houston Chronicle discussed his life and times.

He was an elderly black man and a nimble, long-fingered guitar virtuoso. So, of course, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown was pegged as a bluesman. He was a bluesman the same way that Willie Nelson is just a country singer, described that way by a consumer culture reliant on lazy, easy description.

Brown's music was always better felt than described, anyway. It was a swinging bully of a style, with no good graces for genre.

Friends say it reflected his persona.

"There's such a strange attraction to the unrepentant," said blues singer Delbert McClinton, "and he's sitting at the top of the list, boy. The first time I met him was at a festival in Bogalusa (La.) in the early '70s. He's got his baby girl in one arm and a bullwhip in the other; popping away. Right away, I thought, 'I like this guy.' "

Brown, 81, died Saturday after fleeing his Slidell, La., home hours before Hurricane Katrina smashed it down to the foundation and destroyed an unofficial museum that housed more than a half-century of musical instruments and relics from his extraordinary career.

He was weakened by lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease. The cancer was diagnosed last fall, and it was met with typical Gatemouth stubbornness. He passed on treatment and defiantly continued to perform (including an appearance at this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival) and smoke his pipe.

"The guy played all the way up to the end," said ZZ Top's Dusty Hill. "I can dig that. What else are you going to do? You've got to go with the feeling. And that was Gatemouth."

He was born in Vinton, La., and his family moved to Orange when he was young. His father played guitar and fiddle, and Brown would learn to play those instruments and several others including harmonica, viola and mandolin.

The only predictable thing about Brown's style is that it would bear the indelibly varied stamp of the Gulf region of his youth, swinging effortlessly from the simmering shuffle of Texas blues to the uptempo musics of Louisiana.

"Down around Houston, you hear a different kind of blues," Hill said. "You get the Louisiana thing, you get some of the R&B thing. It's a different country blues than you hear in Mississippi and that part of the Delta. Who knows what it is. Wherever you are raised, it shows in your playing, in your style, like it does Gatemouth's."

Related:

• Official Site - Gatemouth
• Alligator Records - Biography
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Ill wind blowing, but which way?

Newton Emerson watches America from the Emerald Isle:

As the full horror of Hurricane Katrina sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if this is the end of George Bush's presidency. The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that every copy of the US Constitution was destroyed in the storm. Otherwise President Bush will remain in office until noon on January 20th, 2009, as required by the 20th Amendment, after which he is barred from seeking a third term anyway under the 22nd Amendment.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term will not still be damaged in some terribly satisfying way.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term consists of repealing the 22nd Amendment. Otherwise, with a clear Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, he can carry on doing pretty much whatever he likes.

As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the Republican Party itself will now suffer a setback at the congressional mid-term elections next November.

The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that...

Finish reading it here.

G'day mate

Here's Arthur Chrenkoff's latest, and perhaps last, round-up of good news from Iraq.

I have no doubt that good news will continue to come out of the Middle East and Central Asia, but a change in my work circumstances unfortunately prevents me from chronicling it in the future. The trend has been set, however, and I'm sure others will rise to the task of filling the news void and redressing the media's negativity.

I do not know how Iraq and Afghanistan will look in five or 10 years, but I hope for the best. If, despite the horrendous problems and the enormous challenges, both countries manage to make it through and join the international family of normal, decent and peaceful nations, it will be all due to the amazing spirit and commitment of the majority of their people, and to the crucial help of the coalition members, their soldiers and their citizens. If that does indeed happen, many will wonder just exactly how these two countries, seemingly only in the news when the blood flows, have ever managed to get there. But you, having read these roundups, will not be surprised.

The new Nazism

Tony Blankley takes the threat of Eurabia to the front pages.

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

We cannot afford to lose Europe. We cannot afford to see Europe transformed into a launching pad for Islamist jihad.

While we in the United States and Europe have vast resources for protecting ourselves, we have thought ourselves into a position of near impotence.

Beyond the growing number of Muslims committed to terrorism is the threat from the Islamic diaspora's growing cultural and religious assertiveness -- particularly in largely secular Europe, where Muslim cultural assimilation has not occurred.

It is beginning to dawn on Europeans that the combination of a shrinking ethnic-European population and an expanding, culturally assertive Muslim population might lead to the fall of Western civilization in Europe within a century.

This phenomenon, called Eurabia, is viewed with growing fatalism both in Europe and in America.

More.

Four years later

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

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

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

Valuable resources:

All but forgotten?

Status of the war on terror: Mark Steyn seems about right on.

On this fourth anniversary we are in a bizarre situation: The war is being won -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, the broader Middle East and many other places where America has changed the conditions on the ground in its favor. But at home the war about the war is being lost.

When the media look at those Bush approval ratings -- currently hovering around 40 percent -- they carelessly assume the 60 percent is some unified Kerry-Hillary-Cindy bloc. It's not. It undoubtedly includes people who are enthusiastic for whacking America's enemies, but who don't quite get the point of this somewhat desultory listless phase. If the "war" is now a push for democratization and liberalization in Middle East dictatorships, that's a worthy cause but not one sufficiently primal to keep the attention of the American people. You'd have had the same problem in the Second World War if four years after Pearl Harbor we were postponing D-Day in order to nation-build in the Solomon Islands.

Four years ago, I thought the "war on terror" was a viable concept. To those on the right who scoffed that you can't declare war on a technique, I pointed out that Britain's Royal Navy fought wars against slavery and piracy and were largely successful. Of course, since then we've had the shabby habit of presidents declaring a "war on drugs" and a "war on poverty" and, with hindsight, that corruption of language has allowed Americans to slip the war on terror into the same category -- not a war in the sense that a war on Fiji or Belgium is a war, but just one of those vaguely ineffectual aspirational things that don't really impinge on you that much except for the odd pointless gesture -- like the shoe-removing ritual before you board a flight at Poughkeepsie. The "war on terror" label has outlived whatever usefulness it had.

And, as the years go by, it becomes clearer that the war aspects -- the attacks in New York, Washington, Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, London -- are really spasmodic flashes of a much more elusive enemy. Although Islamism is the first truly global terrorist insurgency, it shares more similarities with conventional terror movements -- the IRA or the Basque separatists -- than many of us thought four years ago. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: the IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. That's what the Islamists have bet.

Only a tiny minority of Muslims want to be suicide bombers, and only a slightly larger minority want actively to provide support networks for suicide bombers, but big majorities of Muslims support almost all the terrorists' strategic goals: For example, according to a recent poll, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. That's a "moderate" Westernized Muslim: He wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he's a "moderate" because it's not such a priority that he's prepared to fly a plane into a skyscraper.

As with IRA killers and the broader Irish nationalist population, these shared aims provide a large comfort zone in which terror networks can operate. And it enables the non-violent lobby groups to use the terrorists -- or the threat of terrorists -- as part of a good cop/bad cop routine. Thus, the Islamic lobby groups pressure governments to make concessions to them rather than to the terrorists -- even though both elements share the same aims. You can pluck out news items at random: In London, a religious "hate crimes" law that makes honest discussion of Islam even more difficult; in Ontario, the moves toward sharia courts for Muslim community disputes; in Seattle, the introduction of gender-separate, Muslim-only swimming sessions in municipal pools. The 9/11 terrorists were in favor of all these things.

So four years on we're winning in the Middle East and Central Asia, floundering in Europe and North America. War is hell, but a war that half the country refuses to recognize as such staggers on as a very contemporary kind of purgatory.

It can be done

Hurricane Katrina isn't the first catastrophic flood, and New Orleans isn't the only major world city below sea level. Holland has lessons to share.

Many Dutchmen, shocked by the devastation caused in the U.S. by Hurricane Katrina, were reminded of what happened to our own country more than 50 years ago. On Feb. 1, 1953, the southwestern part of the Netherlands was struck by a flood of biblical proportions. The Dutch levee system collapsed in 500 places. There was nowhere to hide. More than 1,800 people drowned, together with tens of thousands of cattle and other animals. Some 4,000 houses were destroyed, and 40,000 were severely damaged. About 100,000 people had to evacuate, out of a population of around 12 million.

The Dutch had suffered catastrophic floods before, but the deluge of 1953 was a different kind. Just consider that twice as many people were killed in the flood as during the infamous German bombing of Rotterdam in 1940. The nation was stunned. Older Dutchmen from the southwestern islands still get tears in their eyes when they talk about how they lost loved ones during what is simply called "the disaster."

The Dutch reaction was: Never again. The government decided to give the southwestern and most vulnerable part of the country the best possible protection. Eleven massive dams, sea walls and sluices were created in waters that sometimes look more like a sea than a river....

This complex system of dams and barriers--called the Delta plan--is a technological achievement comparable maybe in its complexity and ambition to the American Apollo project that put a man on the moon. After all, the Delta plan was designed to protect the Netherlands from flood conditions that happen only once every 10,000 years! New Orleans, on the other hand, was protected only against hurricanes that occur every 50 years. The total cost of the Delta plan, which began in 1953 and was only completed a couple of years ago, amounted to $5 billion....

Quite remarkable was the absence of naming and shaming. Nowadays, the Dutch Parliament routinely holds inquiries, but after the flood of 1953 all political parties (except for the Communists) stressed that it was not useful to look for "scapegoats," as one leading politician of those days called it. The disaster was, according to one member of the Dutch government, an "act of God."

It took 30 to 40 years before researchers concluded that the big flood was also partly man-made. Dikes had been neglected, flood gates that should have been closed remained open, civil servants who were warned by the meteorological service slept through the storm--there was a general lack of both local and national leadership.

A notable exception was the royal family. Within one day of the disaster, Queen Juliana and her mother, Queen Mother Wilhelmina, visited drowned areas, wading through the water with rubber boots. Many who had lost everything recounted in newspaper stories how important these symbolic gestures were. Even the left-wing newspaper Het Vrije Volk wrote: "The queen is everywhere these days. . . . Just by being there she gives hope."

Reaching high

Interesting: the football team from my alma mater Wofford College (student body = about 1,150) takes on the powerful West Virginia Mountaineers tonight. WVA and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette both wonder: who are these guys?

To a man, the Mountaineers all week continually repeated the mantra about defending the wingbone offense of Wofford College, about taking seriously a Division I-AA opponent and about playing assignment football.

But what if the assignment is identifying tonight's foe?

Where's Wofford? "I have no idea," returner-receiver Vaughn Rivers confessed with a smile. Answer: Spartanburg, S.C.

What's Wofford's nickname? "Don't have a clue," tailback Jason Colson said. Answer: Terriers.

Wofford comes to 60,000-seat Mountaineer Field having played in front of 5,371 Saturday at Gibbs Stadium, the facility it shares with Spartanburg High School. No worries, the Terriers have played large venues in recent years: Air Force, Maryland, Clemson, South Carolina. Heck, the team's last foray into West Virginia was a 29-27 loss to Randy Moss and Marshall in 1998. It's just they lost them all.

That, of course, raises the question: Why play West Virginia? Why play up a level?

"You play these games because, No. 1, it helps your program from the monetary standpoint," said Ayers, the Wofford coach whose program thrives on a $250,000-plus guarantee from such a road contest. "But it also helps your program with your kids seeing another level, seeing them reach and try to rise above that next level to compete and win. We'll have a group of kids who, when they get off the bus, folks, quite frankly, won't recognize them as football players. But, I promise you, they'll play and compete."

The Terriers aren't pushovers; two years ago their unusual program made it all the way to the Division I-AA semi-finals but lost to Delaware. WVA may be a step too far, but it's good exposure. Play strong.

UPDATE: West Virginia 35, Wofford 7. Back to I-AA.

Salvation Army warns donors

One of the very best charitable organizations working tirelessly to help Hurricane Katrina victims is having to combat bad guys misusing its good name.

The Salvation Army in Houston warned donors this week not to be fooled by a fraudulent scheme involving a Florida-based Web site using the agency's name to obtain donations via e-mail on behalf of Katrina victims.

The e-mail claims to be sent by the Salvation Army's national headquarters and asks for donations through money transfers, mail or a credit card.

Donors are asked to send money transfers or mail contributions to a man at a Palm Bay, Fla., address not affiliated with the Salvation Army.

"If they're going to make online donations, they should do it through our online site only," said Jincy Kunnacherry, marketing manager for the Salvation Army in Houston. "The Salvation Army doesn't send out e-mails asking for donations."

The attorney general's office recently issued a warning about schemes seeking to bilk good-hearted people.

Among the suspected bogus Web sites identified thus far are katrinahelp.com, katrinaclean up.com and katrinarelief.com.

"They're looking for all the ways people may be vulnerable," said Paul Bresson, FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C.

Here's the real Salvation Army site. If you haven't already made a contribution, now would be a good time.

Help from south of the border

Best line of the week, via NPR's Robert Siegel:

Here's a lede you haven't heard in more than a century and a half: a column of the Mexican army moved north into Texas today and headed for San Antonio.

Listen to NPR's report.

Here are more details.

Mexican Army troops encamped last night on a field at a former U.S. Air Force base, setting up a mobile kitchen and large tents to sleep in, part of a plan to spend up to a month in San Antonio to help evacuees of Hurricane Katrina.

This morning, they were expected to begin helping at KellyUSA where many of the evacuees are sheltered. With generators providing power and a couple satellite dishes for communication, the nearly 200 soldiers are part of a historic military convoy.

They traveled from Mexico City on to U.S. soil for the first time in 159 years, receiving a hero's welcome from small groups of onlookers who lined the highways and streets as they passed.

Honking car horns, "bienvenidos" signs and cheering people wrapped in or waving Mexican flags welcomed them to San Antonio.

The convoy includes two mobile kitchens that can feed 21,000 people a day, three flatbed trucks carrying mobile water treatment plants and 15 trailers of bottled water, blankets and applesauce.

Aces high

Some officials and bureaucrats may have been (or still are) paralyzed by the impact of Hurricane Katrina, but here's an example of how military, Guard, and private volunteers worked hundreds of miracles without hesitation. Via Austin Bay.

From every direction and in about 15 to 45 second intervals, helicopter after helicopter continued to land right next to us. It was a mix of Army Blackhawks, Coast Guard helicopters as well as Marine and Army. They were joined by what must have been 15 “Flight for Life” helicopters from hospitals all around the Southeast. I saw Miami, Arkansas, and many other names painted on the sides. This was not normal operations. These pilots were practically landing and taxiing on top of each other. They came in fully loaded with sick personnel. Many right from the rooftops. One New Orleans Airport fireman took on the duty of aircraft marshaller and marshaled in choppers left and right. The helos would unload and then take right back off. It was not uncommon for a helicopter to be on the ground less than two to three minutes and then blast back off. We were basically parked in the triage area. These helicopters were immediately met by ground personnel who helped the people off the helos and if they couldn’t walk, they put them on a stretcher or just carried them.

What makes it so extraordinary is when I realize that these ground personnel were just the airport workers, airline employees, cart drivers, fireman, and then the staff of all the emergency teams. It was amazing. They were not necessarily trained for the jobs they were/are undertaking. They just stepped up to the plate and did it. The tower and ground controllers were coordinating airplanes and helicopters like they had never imagined in their most terrible nightmares and were doing a very good job of it.

There were literally so many helicopters coming in and out of the triage area that I do not understand how the tower guy could see through them all to control the planes once they landed.

Read the whole thing.

Who's knocking on the door?

Here's an intriguing mystery from the shadows of northeast Asia.

Perpetrators are using Web sites in China to breach computer networks in the Department of Defense (DoD) and other U.S. agencies, according to U.S. officials.

While classified systems have not yet been breached, officials are concerned because bits of information pieced together can provide an enemy with useful windows into the U.S. government's methods, U.S. officials told the Washington Post.

Government officials characterized the scope of the hacks, which have been occurring for the last few years, as "surprisingly big," according to the Post. The perpetrators are also trying to hack into the State, Energy and Homeland Security departments.

Officials at the Pentagon are reportedly torn about whether the attacks are the result of a Chinese government campaign to spy on government databases, or the work of other hackers using Chinese networks to cloak the origins of the attacks.

It may be China, and/or it may be certain neighbors.

It's been more than a decade since the first breathless warnings were issued from Seoul: According to South Korean information security experts, the hard-line communists of North Korea in 1994 were busily training a cadre of superhackers at the totalitarian state's Automated Warfare Institute.

The South Koreans dubbed the school Mirim College, saying that techno-warfare was of particular interest to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The North Koreans would almost certainly team with a better-established and more technologically advanced partner in their efforts, it was predicted. In the immediate wake of the warnings, South Korea and its Western allies waited for the cyber-attacks to begin.

They never did. Many in the business of computer security have pointed out that it seems unlikely that a country that has difficulty keeping its lights on and its populace fed would pose much of a threat to critical technology infrastructure. Mirim College still gets the occasional reference in the Korean tabloid press, but the lack of any substantial malicious activity took much of the edge off the fear of an organized corps of trained enemy hackers.

That was until late last week. A mix of reports and rumors began swirling about persistent and substantial attacks on U.S. government computers, especially the more than 5 million machines at the Department of Defense, coming from computers within North Korea's last significant communist ally, China.

The Chinese government has issued stern denials in the wake of the report, but the ongoing attacks on the DOD's networks, especially considering their Asian origin, begs the question: Has a graduating class of North Korean hackers begun working through China, as the South Koreans predicted 11 years ago?

According to officials in Seoul, there should now be between 600 and 1,000 elite hackers—chosen from among the North Korean Army's brightest—with skills that range from virus writing to compromising networks to thwarting weapons guidance systems.

As South Korean analysts have always known, the North Koreans have the skill, even if they lack the infrastructure themselves to do much cyber-damage. The North Korean .kp top-level domain remains barely used, and the handful of active North Korean Web sites are hosted mostly in China. North Korea does have a fairly robust government intranet, however, and its software developers have become skilled enough to engage in outsourcing work for South Korean and Japanese enterprises.

So, the recent rash of cyber-attacks on our government networks could indeed be the work of the North Koreans, with or without the help and knowledge of the Chinese.

Finding Katrina evacuees

Here's something helpful for Hurricane Katrina assistance: web portals to support finding dislocated people.

Two major Web search companies, Lycos.com and Yahoo.com, have assembled aggregated, fully searchable Web pages that allow people to simultaneously search numerous disaster sites for information on family members, friends and victims who may have been injured or displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Using the specially assembled pages -- Lycos' Search for Missing Persons and Yahoo's Katrina People Finder -- site visitors can type in a person's name and quickly find out if it has been added to survivors' lists, missing persons' databases or to one of dozens of other disaster and emergency information Web sites.

UPDATE: Well, here's a twist that's no real surprise. Dumb and pointless, but not a surprise.

Enter Microsoft Corp.

The company this week unveiled a new site, called Family Safe, which the agency plans to transition to from its current site on redcross.org.

But the problem is, Microsoft is using technology that makes it impossible for Yahoo's or anyone else's site to crawl it, causing gripes and grumbles among Microsoft's competitors.

"We would love to work with the Red Cross Family Safe site, but because of the way the site is built, it doesn't allow our site to search it," Kelly Delaney of Yahoo said.

"They are all so wrong"

Two days before the bitter anniversary of 9/11, Mark Helprin tries to warn, again, against shallow, short-erm thinking about national defense. We ignore the lessons of history at our peril.

Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal. Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.

When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

...

[T]he legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.

Parenthood

Peggy Noonan has been observing the Hurricane Katrina maelstrom and thinking about the kids and the responsibilities of the adults in their lives.

The stories that pierce my heart involve the terror of children. And the one that hit me the most was the story of the 6-year-old boy found wandering over a bridge with six younger children. Most of the kids were too young even to know their names. The 6-year-old was carrying a 15-month-old infant. They were taken in and cared for by strangers, by nurses; and ultimately all their parents were found. But we forget the terror of children. Adults, even the dimmest of them, can calculate and think up strategies, even if they're bad ones. They can feel and know it's a feeling. But with young children it's all impressions, they can't think it through. They have a natural, primal will to survive, but beyond that they're helpless, it's all wet and cold and the way momma's face looked when the radio said everyone's leaving.

One of the things I have been thinking about is how children take their cues from the adults around them. If the adults are enraged and screaming, children become scared and learn that the way to respond to frustration and pressure is with screaming and rage. If no one's in charge, children can tell. If no one is leading, children can tell. If no one is caring for them they infer they aren't worthy of care.

It is hard to be a parent at any time, but to be a parent in a life-or-death crisis is brutal. It is hard to give children what they need when you're overwhelmed yourself. It's hard, when you're afraid, to talk to children gently and listen to them, really hear them, so you can figure out what they're really telling you when they ask a surprising or seemingly illogical question. It takes patience not to work out your frustration or terror or pessimism on them, but to show instead forbearance, or frankly fake it if you have to. And to show optimism and faith--"We'll be OK, don't you worry"-- because optimism and faith can become a habit, they are communicable, and the habit of optimism and faith allows children to trust life, to enter it steadily and have confidence in it.

It is exhausting being a parent under trying circumstances. It is probably the hardest thing in the world. But on such things nations rise and fall, endure or falter.

And no one says thank you, or rather no one has videotape of your heroism and replays it in a loop. But for parents in the Superdome and Astrodome, for parents living with children in somebody's spare room, for parents in a motel room crammed with three generations of a family, from the old and frightened to the young and colicky--for those who lost everything and yet are still functioning as parents--well, please consider this a small salute from far away. A small attempt to recognize, and honor. You're saving a country, too.

Little big man

Here's a fine example of courage under fire, from a small hero.

In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of evacuees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he said his name was Deamonte Love.

At the rescue headquarters, the children ate cafeteria food and fell into a deep sleep. Deamonte gave his address, his phone number and the name of his elementary school.

He said the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building.

Read the whole thing.

Gold rush?

The New York Times expresses grudging admiration for Houston's commercial reaction to the economic disaster wreaked on New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.

Perhaps no city in the United States is in a better spot than Houston to turn Hurricane Katrina's tragedy into opportunity. And businesses here are already scrambling to profit in the hurricane's aftermath.

Oil services companies based here are racing to carry out repairs to damaged offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; the promise of plenty of work to do sent shares in two large companies, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, soaring to 52-week highs last week. The Port of Houston is preparing for an increase in traffic as shippers divert cargoes away from the damaged ports of Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans.

Owners of office space here are witnessing a surge in leasing as New Orleans companies, including that city's oldest bank, scramble to set up new headquarters in Houston, helping to shore up its sagging property market. With brio that might make an ambulance-chaser proud, one company, National Realty Investments, is offering special financing deals "for hurricane survivors only," with no down payments and discounted closing costs.

All this, of course, is capitalism at work, moving quickly to get resources to where they are needed most. And those who move fastest are likely to do best.

Meanwhile, even small businesses and cheap hotels are benefiting from the population surge, which could total up to 250,000 people. Some hardware stores have sold out their entire supply of gasoline cans and generators to people preparing for an eventual return to the devastated region.

"It feels like the only things left in south Louisiana are snakes and alligators," said John E. Olson, co-manager of Houston Energy Partners, a hedge fund that operates out of a skyscraper downtown. "Houston is positioned for a boom."

Help your neighbors

Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said it all: "This is our tsunami."

Contribute to Hurricane Katrina relief:

Then log your contribution.

Offshore production damage still a mystery

The Wall Street Journal reports that hurricane damage to vital deepwater oil & gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico may be extensive, but that companies are having difficulty reaching the sites by helicopter.

Efforts to assess damage from Hurricane Katrina to the deep-water Gulf of Mexico platforms has been significantly slowed because helicopters are having troubling refueling at sea, leaving the giant platforms out of reach, said a senior official with a company involved with the damage-assessment and -repair effort.

The situation has been compounded by the destruction of helipads in Venice, La., forcing companies to depart from a back-up facility 150 miles to the west.

The status of these giant platforms is vital to oil and natural gas production in the gulf. According to the federal Minerals Management Service, about two-thirds of oil and one-third of natural gas comes from these floating behemoths.

Without helicopters, companies have relied on fly-by observations from fixed-wing aircrafts of their platforms, some of which are up to 180 miles from the shoreline in 10,000 feet of water. This visual inspection yields very little information about how much damage the platforms suffered and when they can restart.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Royal Dutch Shell PLC's Mars platform suffered extensive damage, including the collapse of its drilling rig. The entire above-sea section might need to be rebuilt and it could take a year to return it to operation. By itself, Mars, which cost $1 billion for the platform and associated wells, produces about 10% of the oil and gas from the gulf.

Related:

• U.S. Minerals Management Service - Gulf of Mexico status reports

Heroes

Read how an emergency crew from Exxon-Mobil's Baton Rouge refinery selflessly answered the call to rescue trapped residents of New Orleans and saved more than 1,500 people before being driven off by violence.

Robert Davidson, assistant fire chief at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baton Rouge refinery, had mobilized an emergency crew to respond to any problems that might crop up at the massive refinery as Hurricane Katrina rampaged across the region.

But the call for help he received last Tuesday morning came from the Louisiana State Police, as officials began to realize the immensity of the rescue effort needed to save thousands of people trapped in flooded homes across New Orleans. "They asked us to help rescue people, that there were people all over New Orleans that needed any kind of help," said Mr. Davidson.

Exxon last week became one of dozens of ad hoc rescue teams frantically pulled together from government agencies, local companies and civilian volunteers. With little guidance, they were dispatched to fan out across the city, pluck people off rooftops, hack them out of attics, and haul them from the swirling, filthy waters of the flood. "It was not what we were designed to do," Mr. Davidson said of his team of 11 Exxon workers, including two emergency medical technicians, who responded to the appeal.

Mr. Davidson's team quickly assembled four boats – two 28-foot flat-bottom, barge-like crafts and two 18-foot skiffs – and met state officials at the edge of the flood waters about 3 p.m. Tuesday. A quick scan of the horizon showed stranded people everywhere, screaming and waving from rooftops in a neighborhood where flood waters had risen 15-feet deep, leaving only the roofs of many houses exposed.

As the Exxon crew steered their boats into the flooded community, they began to hear the muffled screams of people trapped inside their homes, begging and crying for help. Steam would rise out of the holes Mr. Davidson' chopped to pull people from sweltering attics. Many were weak from dehydration and heat exhaustion. Grateful to be rescued, they told horrific tales of flood waters rising so quickly Monday that their houses were submerged within an hour.

By the number of people needing rescue, it was clear that most of the residents in some neighborhoods had not evacuated. As they climbed into Mr. Davidson's boat, they told him they had been confident they could make it through the hurricane in their homes. And they did, he said. "After the hurricane was over, they went outside and everything was fine. Then the levee broke and it was too late to get out."

The Exxon team stayed within sight of each other, navigating through unfamiliar streets of the submerged city. They criss-crossed a densely populated area on New Orlean's east side, ferrying 35 to 40 people at a time in each boat and dropping them off on dry ground near Interstate 10, where they waited for transportation to the SuperDome or Convention Center.

The team found large groups gathered in churches and multi-story school buildings. They came across about 60 deaf children huddled inside a school for the deaf with only two adults watching over them. "They were terrified and couldn't communicate with us," said Mr. Davidson. "They were scared at first to get on the boats. They didn't know who we were or where we were going to take them."

After 24 hours, the exhausted team stopped to take an hour nap in the boats, then began again.

By Wednesday night after dark, the city had descended into lawlessness, with gunfire erupting all around the rescuers. As the Exxon team's leader, Mr. Davidson decided to quit the rescue effort to protect the lives of his crew. "It just broke our heart when we had to leave," he said. "There were a lot of people there still. We had gotten most of those in the attics we could. I'm sure there were some we didn't find."

The 11 men returned to Baton Rouge, but remained on standby hoping security would improve enough for them to return. It never did. All told, Mr. Davidson believes his crew was able to rescue about 1,500 people. He never knew most of their names, but now he sees some of them in news photos and television coverage of the evacuees in shelters. "It's amazing to see their faces and know they made it somewhere safe," he said.

Even so, "The whole team just wishes we could have done more."

Pork is not preparation

Mark Steyn articulates what many are now realizing: Hurricane Katrina was the first major test of the nation's ability to respond to a major attack after 9/11; it just happened to be from a storm, not terrorists. Our score is not a passing grade.

One thing that became clear two or three months after "the day that everything changed" is that nothing changed -- that huge swathes of the political culture in America remain committed to a bargain that stiffs the people at every level, a system of lavish funding of pseudo-action. You could have done as the anti-war left wanted and re-allocated every dollar spent in Iraq to Louisiana. Or you could have done as some of the rest of us want and re-allocated every buck spent on, say, subsidizing Ted Turner's and Sam Donaldson's play-farming activities. But, in either case, I'll bet Louisiana's kleptocrat public service would have pocketed the dough and carried on as usual -- and, come the big day, the state would still have flopped out, and New Orleans' foul-mouthed mayor would still be ranting about why it was all everybody's else fault.

Those levees broke; they failed. And you think about Chicago and San Francisco and Boston and you wonder what's waiting to fail there. The assumption was that after 9/11, big towns and small took stock and identified their weak points. That's what they told us they were doing, and that's what they were getting big bucks to do. But in New Orleans no one had a plan that addressed levee failure, and no one had a plan for the large percentage of vehicleless citizens who'd be unable to evacuate, and no one had a plan to deal with widespread looting. Given that all these local factors are widely known -- New Orleans is a below-sea-level city with high crime and a low rate of automobile ownership -- it makes you wonder how the city would cope with something truly surprising -- like, say, a biological attack.

Oh, well, maybe the 9/11 commission can rename themselves the Katrina Kommission. Back in the real world, America's enemies will draw many useful lessons from the events of this last week. Will America?

John at Blogs of War, who's been working as a volunteer, might agree.

Rules aren't everything

It was just a matter of time before the Red Cross would show its witless side, this time in Central Louisiana.

[S]ome of the refugees and those who have helped them are frustrated with the Red Cross and its intractable bureaucracy, its tendency to look to the rule book before taking a step, whether it be registering evacuees for shelters and getting help from sorely needed volunteers.

Also, the Red Cross-mandated migrating of evacuees from small shelters to large is ripping some from the small venues where they feel safe to much larger ones where people are placed hundreds to a room with no privacy and a shortage of bathrooms.

Leann Murphy, CEO of the American Red Cross of Central Louisiana, said her agency is in "crisis mode," they're doing the best they can and that she understands the frustrations of evacuees and volunteers alike.

Just walk in the Red Cross' command central on Jackson Street, and one encounters a house almost mad: volunteers dodging each other, cellular phones' different tones sing, a closed door for a much-needed private moment.

But the enormity of the crisis, the influx of refugees (on Saturday the number at approved Red Cross shelters in Central Louisiana was 6,000, with thousands more staying elsewhere), doesn't seem to bring a change in Red Cross procedures.

That same self-centered consolidation of evacuees is happening here in Houston.

The Red Cross is valuable, even vital, but their efficiency pales compared with, say, The Salvation Army.

Doing God's work

Here's an update on The Salvation Army's efforts for Hurricane Katrina relief. As usual, they're way out front.

The Salvation Army continues to help bring aid and comfort to those affected by Hurricane Katrina, launching one of the largest emergency disaster services relief efforts in the organization's 125-year history. Mobile kitchens and canteens serving in the Gulf Coast region are focused on providing the most precious commodities needed right now - food and water.

"The victims just want basic life sustenance. They're in shock. Everything they've worked for all of their lives is gone," said Major Dalton Cunningham,
divisional commander for The Salvation Army in the Alabama, Louisiana and
Mississippi Division.

The region-wide gasoline shortage has created a crisis of its own. "Our canteens are providing much needed food and water to the victims, but we're running out of gas and there simply is just no gas available south of Hattiesburg, Mississippi," Cunningham said.

Relief efforts are extending throughout the entire southeastern United States. More than 150,000 Katrina refugees are receiving shelter, food and water at Salvation Army facilities from Texas to North Carolina. The mobile kitchens are capable of serving more than 500,000 meals per day.

"We ask that everyone everywhere pray for vision and wisdom for us to serve people the way God wants us to serve them, that the resources and people will be available, and that we can get into the affected areas to serve," Cunningham said. "This is going to be the largest response to a disaster in our history."

The Salvation Army asks people who want to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina to visit http://www.salvationarmyusa.org or call 1-800-SAL-ARMY or visit any Wal-Mart or Sam's Club. Monetary donations are needed to meet the victims' most immediate needs. A $100 donation will feed a family of four for two days, provide two cases of drinking water and one household cleanup kit, containing brooms, mops, buckets and cleaning supplies.

Here are some important details:

Due to the fact there are no facilities to store goods and the response is now a Federal Homeland Security event, individually donated goods would not be able to enter the disaster site without proper authorization from the government. Please do not endorse such drives in your community at this time. The Salvation Army is currently not seeking In Kind donations from the general public.

Large donations in bulk that can be transported from corporations and businesses are needed. Companies can call 1-888-363-2769.

Houston's non-plan for emergencies

Hurricane Katrina should be teaching our local and regional officials important lessons. The Houston Chronicle reports on some alarming lapses in planning so far. It seems that all the details are being left to the Red Cross.

As more than 100,000 Hurricane Katrina victims poured into the folds of America's fourth-largest city, this national emergency forced even the most storm-savvy among local leaders to realize Houston's hurricane playbook may need an overhaul.

"There was no emergency plan for the destruction of one of America's largest cities immediately to our east. Not the federal, state and local level," Houston Mayor Bill White said. "I don't think, incidentally, that it's principally a local responsibility for doing that plan, nor am I finger-pointing.

"If someone here had forecasted the destruction of New Orleans, then I'd like to join your church."

Despite a flurry of hurricane preparedness in this state in the past year after Texas officials watched four hurricanes pummel Florida in 2004, serious gaps in the overall evacuation plan continue to exist, experts say. And this week's transfer of Katrina victims into semi-permanent housing at the Astrodome highlighted how sheltering options during a disaster have to be reassessed.

Until this week, little public attention was paid to the city's dryly titled "City of Houston Emergency Management Plan," which barely refers to semi-permanent housing options.

"Evacuees normally return to their homes as soon as the danger has passed. Hence, most shelters are closed quickly and returned to normal use," the plan reads. Neither the Astrodome nor any other specific facility is referenced as a place to house evacuees.

"Sheltering may include congregate sheltering or the use of commercial facilities, such as motels and hotels, as shelters for individuals or families," the plan states. "Shelters are intended as a safe haven from impending disaster and/or short-term emergency housing until disaster victims can return to their homes or locate alternate housing after a disaster. Whether before or after a disaster, shelters will be located in safe areas and will provide appropriate services."

The plan doesn't get much more specific than that, nor is it much more specific about food, for example:

"ARC (American Red Cross) through agreement will: Provide emergency food."

Houston, which hasn't been affected by a Category 4 storm since 1961, never expected to face the kind of long-term housing needs such a storm would present.

"Our plan does not have designated shelter areas," said Dennis Storemski, Houston's chief of emergency management. "The city doesn't necessarily plan for that. The Red Cross is responsible for shelters. The Red Cross is the shelter component. FEMA will come in and figure out the long-term housing."

Houston, more than 50 miles from the Gulf, sees itself as an evacuation destination, not a direct target for evacuations. Historically, that's not been an unreasonable assumption.

"Houston is not New Orleans," Storemski said. "I can't imagine having to evacuate the city of Houston."

But that scenario is not out of the realm of possibility, said Carla Prater, associate director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University.

"It doesn't take much in Houston, it doesn't take a hurricane. It takes a bad thunderstorm. It's a real serious problem," Prater said of the threats posed by severe weather.

Houston sits on layers of concrete with few escape routes for excess water.

One good hurricane strike in Galveston could send floodwaters up its bayou system through the 55-mile-long ship channel that connects Galveston Bay to Houston.

"That's very real," Prater said. "Not a pretty thought."

Related:

If Texas officials don't have a finished strategy in place, the City of New Orleans apparently has an unused plan to spare.

Welcome to Houston

An unfortunate Hurricane Katrina refugee underwent a rite of passage to become an official Houstonian today.

An evacuee who was reportedly listening through headphones and looking at the ground while walking toward the Astrodome was struck by a Metro light rail train this morning, officials said.

The unidentified man, in his late 40s or early 50s, apparently didn't see the dropped crossing arms or blinking caution lights or hear officers screaming at him as he tried to walk across the tracks at Fannin and Naomi around 11:30 a.m., said Metro spokesman George Smalley.

"He walked right into the path of the train," Smalley said. "You don't ever want this to happen to anybody. But it's especially painful to someone who's already gone through such trauma."

The man was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital, where he was being treated for an injured spleen and other non-life-threatening injuries, he said.

The integrated energy disaster

Energy expert Daniel Yergin assesses Hurricane Katrina's impact on the U.S. energy sector, the economy, and our understanding of national security.

Man's technical ingenuity has collided with nature's rage in the Gulf of Mexico, and the outcome has been an integrated energy disaster. The full scope will not be understood until the waters recede, the damage to platforms and refineries is assessed, and the extent of damage to underwater pipelines from undersea mudslides is determined. Yet what has happened is on a scale not seen before, and the impact of the price spikes and dislocations will roll across the entire economy. Even as we confront the human tragedy, the consequences will also force us to think more expansively about energy security, and to focus harder on a matter which other events have already emphasized: the need for new infrastructure and investment in our energy sector.

What makes it an integrated crisis is that the entire energy supply system in the region has been disabled, and that the parts all depend upon each other for recovery. If the next weeks reveal that the losses are as large as some fear, this would constitute one of the biggest energy shocks since the 1970s, perhaps even the biggest. Unlike the crises of the '70s or the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990-91, this does not involve just crude oil: It includes natural gas, refineries and electricity.

....

Katrina's shock underscores a transition in the idea of energy security. For three decades, the operating concept was "1973 Vintage": In response to the 1973 embargo and then the Iranian upheaval, it focused on securing the flow of crude, primarily from the Middle East, and coping with any disruption. The SPR was created in the mid-'70s for 1973 Vintage reasons (although the idea of such a reserve had first been bruited by President Eisenhower after the Suez Crisis). Its proponents, focused on another Middle Eastern crisis, never thought that its second major use (the first being in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis) would be for domestic disruption.

But a host of developments--from terrorism to the California power crisis to the East Coast blackout to Katrina--have emphasized a return to what might be called the World War II model of energy security, assuring the security and integrity of the whole supply chain and infrastructure, from production to the consumer. (The gravest energy threats during World War II were when Nazi U-boats came close to cutting the tanker pipeline across the Atlantic that supplied U.S. military forces). This more expansive concept of energy security requires broader coordination between government and the private sector; more emphasis on redundancy, alternatives, distributed energy and backup systems; planning and pre-positioning of vital supplies ("strategic transformer reserves" for electric substations); and methods that can quickly be applied to promote swift market adjustment. As with the August 2003 blackout, this crisis underlines the need for modernization and new investment in the energy infrastructure that supports our $12.4 trillion economy. A strong push in this direction may come from the new energy legislation, rather than from the idea of "energy independence."

A great precept of energy security was laid out by Churchill when, on the eve of World War I, he converted the Royal Navy from (Welsh) coal to (Persian) oil. "Safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone," he said. In other words, diversification of supply sources expands the margin of security. Margaret Thatcher gave us an equally sturdy dictum: "The unexpected happens. You had better prepare for it." Disruption on the scale of Katrina was never anticipated, neither for the gulf's energy complex nor for the larger tragedy that unfolds. And hurricane season is not over. From now on, a hit of this scale will not be unexpected. But what else is out there? That is a question for the world's entire energy supply system. For surely, somewhere, the unexpected is brooding, and waiting to happen.

Work out

John at Blogs of War worked last night almost until dawn as a newly-minted volunteer, helping Hurricane Katrina refugees at Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center. And he's going back for more. Way to go, John. Way to go, Houston.

There wasn't much in the way of coordination but it also really wasn't needed. There were probably 30 volunteers by that point (1am) and everyone was working their asses off and just doing anything they could to help. The hardest work of the night came when we realized that we were being crowded out by bottled water donations and decided to move hundreds of cases to a wall about 100 yards away. 10 of us spent the next hour tossing and stacking cases of water around without rest. It was one hell of a workout. Similar work would follow when we decided to restructure the donations area (with thousands of pounds of clothing, food, toys, etc) and prepare for breakfast at 6:30

People were rolling up as late as 4am with truckloads of food, clothing, toiletries, toys, and other donations. Many of them were working class people who had driven to Wal-Mart or Target and loaded up on hundreds of dollars worth of deodorant, toothpaste, water, and other necessities. The generosity was amazing. I also noticed that once they unloaded their donations most of them parked their cars and joined us for the hard work inside. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed working with those people.

So now I'm home. I'm changing clothes, getting comfortable shoes, doctoring a huge blister, and I'm going back up to help them prepare for what will surely be a more chaotic day.

A thousand words

Here's one way to deter looters.

Salvation Army on the front line

NPR reports on how workers from The Salvation Army arrived in a devastated area of Mississippi within a day of Hurricane Katrina, and how they're still the only ones helping.

Hank Williams is a Salvation Army employee who distributes food and water to shelters in Hattiesburg, Miss. Along the way, he spreads a much-needed cheering up with his energy and positive attitude.

Support their work here.

Thinking dark

It's hard to add anything to the bleak news from New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast afflicted by both a deadly storm and now the worst aspects of human nature. The dramatic facts, presented with courage and skill by local and national media at their finest, speak for themselves.

As usual, Peggy Noonan finds something to add.

Last week I said that this is the wrong time in history to move forward with the wholesale closings and consolidation of military bases throughout the U.S. Terrorism was on my mind, but the incredible tragedy on the Gulf Coast is giving us a new gulf war, one in which we must help an entire region get back on its feet after being leveled by an ancient foe, the hurricane, and what is happening there right now in New Orleans and Mississippi seems tragically illustrative of the fact that local military presence can be crucial in times of grave national emergency.

The importance of local presence is not only practical but also psychological and symbolic. As I write I am watching CNN, which is showing a truck carrying half a dozen soldiers speeding into downtown New Orleans. Good. Thugs are looting and shooting there. Local police are overwhelmed and unable to restore order, and there was Tuesday's report that some law enforcement officers had actually joined in the pillaging. At a time like this the presence of U.S. troops can make all the difference.

I hope Congress and the president are watching, and I hope what they see will have some impact on their decision about whether go forward with or rethink the base closings. It is not wrong to want to save money, rid a highly bureaucratized system of redundancies, and modernize. But timing is everything. We are at an odd time. This is no time for a wholesale shift or a radical retrenchment. They should leave the military base system where it is. They should look to New Orleans for proof of how important a local military presence can prove to be, even in dramas caused not by man but nature.