Petrified Truth

Guiding light

Metamaterials: how to become invisible.

65 percent nonsense

The counter-productive handiwork of our blow-dried Texas governor rolls on: school libraries, counselors, and nurses both will and will not count as "instruction" under his "65-percent" rule.

Texas schools can now count spending on nurses, counselors and libraries as instructional expenses. Sort of.

Rules released Friday by the Texas Education Agency split in half a new requirement that schools spend 65 percent of their budget on instruction.

One part, to be phased in over three years, follows the U.S. Department of Education's definition of instructional spending, which does not include money spent on nurses, counselors or libraries.

The other part, effective this coming school year, includes spending on nurses, counselors and libraries among instructional expenses.

The result is that there will be two standards to define instructional spending. Schools will be expected to put 65 percent of their money toward instruction under both definitions within three years.

An earlier version of the rules, which allowed spending on libraries but not nurses or counselors to be treated as instructional expenses, was modified in response to public comment, state officials said.

Under the rules, instructional expenses also include teacher salaries and spending on textbooks and some activities, such as sports.

As noted before, a nonsensical school-finance and accountability framework that counts football as unquestionably "instruction," but not libraries and counselors, is absurd and disingenuous.

When will someone with legal standing please challenge this "executive order" in court?

Moral imbecility

Charles Moore in London's Telegraph reacts to recent comments about Israel from someone who should know better.

Sir Peter Tapsell is, if the phrase is not a contradiction in terms nowadays, a distinguished backbencher. He first entered the House of Commons in 1959. Noted for his grand manner, he is the longest-serving Tory MP.

At foreign affairs questions in Parliament on Tuesday, Sir Peter rose. He wanted Margaret Beckett to tell him whether the Prime Minister had colluded with President Bush in allowing Israel to "wage unlimited war" in Lebanon, including attacks on civilian residential areas of Beirut. These attacks, he added, were "a war crime grimly reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in Warsaw".

What is happening in Lebanon? After the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and the firing of hundreds of rockets against its people from across the Lebanese border, Israel is trying to crush the Hizbollah fighters who have perpetrated these acts. In doing so, it has also killed civilians. Some 500 people have died in Lebanon as a result.

What was the "Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter in Warsaw"? There were many, of course. But Sir Peter was probably referring to the events of April-May 1943. The Nazis had earlier deported 300,000 Polish Jews to Treblinka. As news of their fate reached Jews in Warsaw, they decided to revolt against further round-ups. For about a month, they resisted. They were subdued: 7,000 of them were killed and 56,000 were sent to the camps.

Sir Peter surely knew this, yet he chose to speak as he did. Here is a man who has been in public life for more than 50 years (he was an assistant to Anthony Eden in the general election of 1955), and yet he compared Israel's attack to the most famous genocide of the 20th century. What possessed him?

I ask the question, not because I am interested in Sir Peter - he is not an important figure in the current debate, though he may differ on this point. I ask, rather, because his remark seems to me a symptom of a wider unreality about the Middle East, one that now dominates. It tinged the recent Commons speech by William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary. It permeates every report by the BBC.

You could criticise Israel's recent attack for many things. Some argue that it is disproportionate, or too indiscriminate. Others think that it is ill-planned militarily. Others hold that it will give more power to extremists in the Arab world, and will hamper a wider peace settlement. These are all reasonable, though not necessarily correct positions to hold. But European discourse on the subject seems to have been overwhelmed by something else - a narrative, told most powerfully by the way television pictures are selected, that makes Israel out as a senseless, imperialist, mass-murdering, racist bully.

Not only is this analysis wrong - if the Israelis are such imperialists, why did they withdraw from Lebanon for six years, only returning when threatened once again? How many genocidal regimes do you know that have a free press and free elections? - it is also morally imbecilic. It makes no distinction between the tough, sometimes nasty things all countries do when hard-pressed and the profoundly evil intent of some ideologies and regimes. It says nothing about the fanaticism and the immediacy of the threat to Israel. Sir Peter has somehow managed to live on this planet for 75 years without spotting the difference between what Israel is doing in Lebanon and "unlimited war".

As well as being morally imbecilic, this narrative is the enemy of all efforts to understand what is actually going on in the Middle East. It is so lazy.

The Inner Light

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation have often voted The Inner Light as one of, if not THE, best episodes ever, and I've always agreed. Now here are comments by screenwriter Morgan Grendel about how it came to be, and what might have been:

The journey form pitch to script was arduous -- I brought some version of this story to the producers seven times before it was even approved as a story in development. But what each incarnaton had in common was a "mental probe" of some sort that beamed experiences directly in to the recipient's head. Originally, it was a riff on the Fuji blimp -- a 30th century adverstising tool, which Picard and crew didn't realize at first. The tale grew in richness as the "blimp" became a probe whose purpose was to pass along the memory of this dead civilization.

As a huge Beatles fan, I thought it would be fun to name this episode after an obscure B-side track -- and (I thought this was obvious) "Inner Light" (I dropped the "the" for the screen title) captured the theme of the show: that Picard experienced a lifetime of memories all in his head.

Incidentally, I later pitched a sequel to this episode that I think fans would have liked to see....

Tip via Trek Today.

Botheration

Now the illegal immigrant issue is more personal after being sideswiped on the way home today by a Hispanic female motorist with no drivers license or insurance. She spoke no English, except the bogus claim that "My hoosband ees a police," which she tried on both me and the good men of the Bellaire Police Dept., to no avail.

And so it goes.

Pretenses

Mark Steyn observes that certain of the reigning powers in the Middle East may, just may, be waking up to the whirlwind they've created: an ascendent Iran.

Until the remarkably kinda-robust statement by the G-8 and the unprecedented denunciation of Hezbollah by the Arab League, the rule in any conflict in which Israel is involved -- Israel vs. PLO, Israel vs. Lebanon, Israel vs. [Your Team Here] is that the Jews are to blame.

But Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: It's finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the "Palestinian question" has helped deliver Gaza, and Lebanon and Syria, into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist Entity. Cairo and Co. grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in decade out that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella. The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.

AEI's Michael Rubin talks about the same thing today.

It may be tempting to think that acceptance of Israel is in the air. But such optimism is unfounded. There is no change of heart in Riyadh, Cairo or Kuwait. Saudi princes still finance Palestinian terror. Rather, the recent Arab tolerance toward Israel's predicament and condemnation of Hezbollah signal recognition of a greater threat on the horizon. Wadi Batti Hanna, a columnist in Iraq's Arab nationalist al-Ittijah al-Akhar daily, put it bluntly when, on July 15, he asked, "How long will the Arabs continue to fight on behalf of Iran?"

... Most Arabs perceive Israel as small. Egypt--home to one of every three Arabs--has enjoyed a cold peace with Israel for more than a quarter-century. Gulf states, on the whole, would rather make money than directly fight Israel. While they do not like Israel's existence, Jerusalem presents no threat. Not so Tehran. A giant with 70 million people, Iran is no status quo power. Its ideological commitment to export revolution is real. Across Lebanon and the region, Arab leaders see Hezbollah for what it is: An arm of Iranian influence waging a sectarian battle in the heart of the Middle East.

The enemy of my enemy may be, for a while, my friend. That's not much of basis for success, but we'll need to take it.

Infiltration?

OK, just color me naive: I hadn't considered this aspect of the evacuations from Lebanon. But "Spook86" at In From the Cold has. How about officials in our government?

The first waves of western "evacuees" from Lebanon have begun arriving in the United States and Europe, raising serious--and legitimate--questions about how many Hizballah operatives might be in their midst....

At this point, I'm not proposing the prolonged internment of American evacuees returning from Lebanon. But profiling techniques should be used on the returnees, to help identify those which might pose the greatest risk. And, those evacuees should be placed in some sort of detention facility until they can be fully screened and carefully vetted. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration shows no sign (at least publicly) of taking such an aggressive stand. While profiling works, political correctness has made it a dirty word. And the ACLU would file suit at the mere suggestion that high-risk returnees might be detained.

The state without a state

Scholar Fouad Ajami offers a sophisticated analysis of the dilemma facing Lebanon today.

[T]he Lebanese have been given to feuds among themselves, and larger players have found it easy to insert themselves into that small, fragile republic. Now the Lebanese have been given yet again a cautionary tale about what befalls lands without sovereign, responsible states of their own.

In an earlier time, three decades ago, Lebanon was made to pay for the legends of Arabism, and for the false glamour of the Palestinian "revolutionary" experiment. The country lost well over a quarter-century of its history--its best people quit it, and its modernist inheritance was brutally and steadily undermined.

Now comes this new push by Damascus and Tehran. It promises nothing save sterility and ruin. It will throw the Lebanese back onto a history whose terrible harvest is well known to them. The military performance of Hezbollah, it should be apparent by now, is not a performance of a militia; nor are unmanned drones and missiles of long range the weapons of boys of the alleyways. A formidable military structure has been put together by the Iranians in Lebanon. In a small, densely populated country that keeps and knows no secrets, Hezbollah and its Iranian handlers have been at work on this military undertaking for quite some time, under the gaze of Lebanese authorities too frightened to raise questions.

The Mediterranean vocation of Lebanon as a land of enlightenment and commerce may have had its exaggerations and pretense. But set it against the future offered Lebanon by Syria, and by Tehran's theocrats seeking a diplomatic reprieve for themselves by setting Lebanon on fire, and Lebanon's choice should be easy to see.

Very informative - read the whole thing.

Hezbollah's next steps

Stratfor expert Fred Burton warns that counter-terrorism authorities around the globe should be watching NOW for what Hezbollah terror cells may do next.

There is a distinct possibility that, with the heavy strikes launched against Hezbollah over the past week -- far worse than that visited upon the group in the 1994 attack against Ein Dardara -- Hezbollah might consider ordering reprisals against pre-selected Israeli or Jewish targets in various places around the world. If that hypothesis is true, it is logical that Hezbollah operatives would be working now to update and execute their existing attack plans. An important part of that process would involve additional surveillance of targets -- to ensure that nothing had changed since the last round of surveillance was completed and that no recent security countermeasures have been added that could thwart the plan as written.

This activity is likely under way, regardless of whether a "go" order has been issued. Given that Hezbollah has been known to use "off-the-shelf" plans, its operatives worldwide could be expected to update strike plans during times of heightened tensions -- a form of contingency planning, if you will.

Thus, it stands to reason that Hezbollah operatives would be actively conducting surveillance at this moment. During periods of surveillance -- which come during various stages of an attack cycle -- operatives must commit certain kinds of acts that make them vulnerable to detection. If a potential target set can be determined, specific industries or businesses -- as well as diplomatic targets and Jewish nongovernmental organizations -- can set up appropriate security practices and countermeasures to mitigate their risks.

In sum, law enforcement personnel and corporations and managers who are responsible for the security of a facility or person that conceivably might be targeted by Hezbollah should find countersurveillance and surveillance detection assets especially valuable during the next several weeks.

As we have noted, Hezbollah has a global network that stretches into South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Given the situation unfolding along the Israeli-Lebanese border, we believe that, should the organization choose the path of terrorism -- the traditional weapon of a weak foe against a much stronger opponent -- Hezbollah would strike at Israeli targets abroad.

Related: Blogs of War - Hezbollah in America

Hezbollah: Gaming Out a Threat Matrix
By Fred Burton

Over the past week, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has hit Hezbollah hard. The militant group's headquarters building in southern Beirut, Lebanon, has been utterly destroyed and its command-and-control network, training camps and arms-storage depots have been struck repeatedly in bombing raids. Israel's air campaign is geared toward dismantling Hezbollah and crippling its ability to conduct military operations targeting Israel in the future.

Should the Israelis invade Lebanon and begin to systematically eradicate Hezbollah on the ground, Hezbollah likely would stand and fight for a time, but there is little chance it would prevail in a toe-to-toe military confrontation against IDF. Its only realistic chance for long-term survival would be to adopt the strategy used by Saddam Hussein's forces following the U.S. invasion: Fade into the woodwork and launch an insurgency.

Such a campaign would take Hezbollah back to its roots: During the early 1980s, it operated as an insurgent organization. Should this occur, it is entirely possible Hezbollah also would return to the tactics it used at that time (which, by the way, also have been used by insurgents in Iraq): bombings, assassinations and kidnappings.

However, the difference between the Hezbollah of the early 1980s and the Hezbollah of today is that over the decades -- as it matured into a political party with a powerful militia -- it also planted roots far afield. The organization today has an international network of cells, which have carried out bombings and other attacks far beyond the Middle East in the past. If history serves as a guide, those cells conceivably could be called upon again to take action.

We must be clear on this point: We are not predicting any imminent attacks by Hezbollah forces in the West or in other parts of the world. Whether such strikes would be in the group's interest -- or whether they would be permitted by Iran, which has trained and maintained close contact with the commanders of Hezbollah's military wing -- remains a matter of serious debate. There are very good arguments as to why Iran would refuse to authorize such attacks at this time, or even attempt to dissuade Hezbollah from mounting them, as it considers its own position and ambitions within the region and the wider Muslim world. There also are plausible arguments that Hezbollah, which has a long history of acting on motives of retribution and revenge, might not be held in check by the Iranians. Some of these are strategic questions, the answers to which may be determined by events that are still in play.

There are, however, some things that can be known definitively. One of these is that Hezbollah has used -- and appears to maintain -- an "off the shelf" model of operational planning. This means that hypothetical targets are selected and initial surveillance conducted without any violence necessarily ensuing. The advantage of such a planning model is that it allows the group to strike hard and fast once a "go forward" decision has been made. The disadvantage, however -- and this is key -- is that pre-existing plans must, by necessity, be dusted off (however briefly) and surveillance must be updated before an actual strike takes place. And it is during this stage that cells become most vulnerable to detection.

If there is any strength in logic (and we believe there is), logic dictates that, with the situation unfolding along the Israeli-Lebanese border, Hezbollah units overseas likely are updating surveillance on potential targets now -- whether any decision to move against those targets has been made or not.

Hezbollah: The Network

Any discussion of potential targets, however, must first take into consideration the shape of Hezbollah's global network: where it has presence, what it considers to be high-value operations and where there are targets it can afford to strike.

Hezbollah has received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from its patrons in Iran and Syria, but it also brings in millions of dollars from a significant business network that spans much of the globe.

Hezbollah has a long-standing and well-known presence in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where the U.S. government estimates it has earned tens of millions of dollars from selling electronic goods, counterfeit luxury items and pirated software, movies and music. It also has an even more profitable network in West Africa that deals in "blood diamonds" from places like Sierra Leone and the Republic of the Congo. Cells in Asia procure and ship much of the counterfeit material sold elsewhere; nodes in North America deal in smuggled cigarettes, baby formula and counterfeit designer goods, among other things. In the United States, Hezbollah also has been involved in smuggling pseudoephedrine and selling counterfeit Viagra, and it has played a significant role in the production and worldwide propagation of counterfeit currencies.

The business empire of the Shiite organization also extends into the drug trade. The Bekaa Valley, which it controls, is a major center for growing poppies and cannabis; here also, heroin is produced from raw materials arriving from places like Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle. Hezbollah earns large percentages of the estimated $1 billion drug trade flowing out of the Bekaa. Much of the hashish and heroin emanating from there eventually arrive in Europe -- where Hezbollah members also are involved in smuggling, car theft and distribution of counterfeit goods and currency.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government has targeted the financial networks of Hezbollah along with those of al Qaeda and other groups. Federal authorities have had some success in locating and seizing Hezbollah assets, and several Hezbollah suspects have been arrested in North Carolina and Michigan; nevertheless, the flow of illicit funds has not been completely stemmed. There are indications, however, that these efforts have cut into the profitability of Hezbollah activities in North America and South America and rendered the organization more dependent on nodes in places like West Africa.

For the most part, the cells beyond the Middle East are used as financial assets, but they also can be called upon to assist Hezbollah's military wing in conducting militant operations. For example, the Bangkok, Thailand, node assisted in the preparations and logistics for the 1988 hijacking of Kuwait Airways Flight 422, which was hijacked shortly after it departed Bangkok. Likewise, the node in the tri-border region in South America was called upon to aid in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

It is noteworthy that these operations were assisted by the local Hezbollah infrastructure (and Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, through the Iranian embassies in Bangkok and Buenos Aires) but were not actually conducted by them. To provide plausible deniability, the actual attack teams in the past generally were deployed from outside the targeted country.

Serious Strikes, Personal Motives

Following Hezbollah's 1983 strikes against the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, a closely related Shiite organization in Kuwait carried out a series of attacks -- including a truck bombing targeting the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. Kuwaiti authorities later arrested and convicted 17 Shia for involvement in that plot. This group became known as the "Kuwaiti 17" or the "Dawa 17." Among its members was Mustafa Youssef Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law of senior Hezbollah operative Imad Mugniyah, who has been described alternately as the head of Hezbollah's security apparatus, as the group's chief of intelligence and as its chief of special operations.

Securing Badreddin's freedom became a personal cause for Mugniyah, who directed Hezbollah's military wing to undertake a rash of operations for that end. These operations often involved Hezbollah resources outside of Lebanon. Demands for the freedom of the Dawa 17 became standard in Hezbollah's hijackings and other activities. (Badreddin escaped from prison after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.)

This pattern of personally motivated strikes continued. Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi in February 1992 was followed by the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in March -- immediately after the end of the 30-day mourning period. And in July 1994 -- after the IDF had killed dozens of Hezbollah members in a strike against the organization's Ein Dardara training camp -- Hezbollah struck again at Jewish targets overseas, with the vehicle bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and the attacks, eight days later, against the Israeli Embassy in London and a Jewish charity in north London.

The pattern of attacks is noteworthy now, in light of recent Israeli efforts to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Whether an unsuccessful attempt would be sufficient, in Hezbollah's thinking, to have set the clock ticking for a reprisal is not yet clear.

"Off The Shelf" Planning

After the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, a team of experienced U.S. post-blast investigators was dispatched to assist the Argentine government with its investigation. One of their key findings was that, due to the short lapse between the assassination of Musawi and the attack on the embassy in Buenos Aires, the target likely had been selected in advance and most of the operational planning was done well before the operation was authorized. Then, when the "launch" order was sent, the attack plan was quickly updated and executed.

Observation of known Hezbollah operatives since that time, by U.S. and allied government agencies, has affirmed that this appears to remain the organization's preferred method of operation. In the 12 years since its last overseas attack, Hezbollah operatives have been seen conducting surveillance in many parts of the world (including the United States) -- at times, triggering arrests -- but no attacks have ensued. Therefore, it is believed that these operatives have been carrying out preliminary operational planning for hypothetical, future attacks. It is believed that the leadership of Hezbollah's military wing has a large selection of "off-the-shelf" plans that it can choose from should it decide to mount attacks anywhere in the world. In all probability, targets for "off-the-shelf" plans already have been mapped.

Using the Buenos Aires and London attacks as a gauge, it is believed that Hezbollah is able to carry out strikes within four to five weeks, once a decision to carry out an attack has been made.

Implications

There is a distinct possibility that, with the heavy strikes launched against Hezbollah over the past week -- far worse than that visited upon the group in the 1994 attack against Ein Dardara -- Hezbollah might consider ordering reprisals against pre-selected Israeli or Jewish targets in various places around the world. If that hypothesis is true, it is logical that Hezbollah operatives would be working now to update and execute their existing attack plans. An important part of that process would involve additional surveillance of targets -- to ensure that nothing had changed since the last round of surveillance was completed and that no recent security countermeasures have been added that could thwart the plan as written.

This activity is likely under way, regardless of whether a "go" order has been issued. Given that Hezbollah has been known to use "off-the-shelf" plans, its operatives worldwide could be expected to update strike plans during times of heightened tensions -- a form of contingency planning, if you will.

Thus, it stands to reason that Hezbollah operatives would be actively conducting surveillance at this moment. During periods of surveillance -- which come during various stages of an attack cycle -- operatives must commit certain kinds of acts that make them vulnerable to detection. If a potential target set can be determined, specific industries or businesses -- as well as diplomatic targets and Jewish nongovernmental organizations -- can set up appropriate security practices and countermeasures to mitigate their risks.

In sum, law enforcement personnel and corporations and managers who are responsible for the security of a facility or person that conceivably might be targeted by Hezbollah should find countersurveillance and surveillance detection assets especially valuable during the next several weeks.

Mapping Potential Targets

As we have noted, Hezbollah has a global network that stretches into South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Given the situation unfolding along the Israeli-Lebanese border, we believe that, should the organization choose the path of terrorism -- the traditional weapon of a weak foe against a much stronger opponent -- Hezbollah would strike at Israeli targets abroad. Historically, the group has had much greater success with attacks in the developing world -- where weapons and materiel were readily available -- than in more industrialized and secure regions like Europe. The size differential between the vehicle-borne bombs employed in 1994 in Buenos Aires (where Hezbollah was able to purchase explosives commercially) and the smaller device operatives were forced to use in London (where explosives were difficult to obtain) is quite dramatic.

Additionally, authorities in places like the United States and Europe will be stepping up their monitoring of known and suspected Hezbollah members -- thus mitigating the risks of attack in those regions relative to the risks in the developing world.

Also arguing against a Hezbollah strike in North America is the severe backlash the group could expect to its financial operations. Key business hubs, such as the trade in illicit diamonds in West Africa, also would need to be protected.

Therefore, the risk of a Hezbollah strike logically would be greatest in other parts of the developing world, where the overall backlash to the organization's networks would be less severe. Again, this argument assumes that Hezbollah both will find it necessary to strike out at foreign targets and is not restrained by either of its state sponsors. Should that be the case, however, logic argues against another strike in Argentina; with Hezbollah already having attacked there twice, security would be stiffened. Instead, strikes might come in nearby countries like Paraguay (where Hezbollah suspects were arrested while casing the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Asuncion, in 1998) or Brazil.

Beyond South America, there are other countries that have strong ties to Israel -- such as South Africa and Kenya -- which also present themselves as potential targets. These are sufficiently removed from Hezbollah's lucrative diamond business in West Africa to be safe for action, and they are target-rich environments. The same argument applies to Bangkok as well, where Hezbollah has conducted operations before.

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

© Copyright 2006 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.

Stand with our partner

Andrew McCarthy is right on.

Israel’s war against Hezbollah is a watershed in the war on terror. As long as we understand that it’s not just Israel’s war. And it’s not just against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is Iran. It is Iran’s wholly owned proxy warrior. It is fighting Israel. It is an enemy of the United States, because its master, Iran, is an enemy of the United States. This is our war. The same war we finally engaged five years ago.

Glenn Beck's History of the Middle East

How did it come to this? Here's a guide for the perplexed: radio/TV host Glenn Beck summarizes the History of the Middle East in a Couple of Minutes.

Facing the virus

Iran continued its war-by-proxy against Israel today with a Hezbollah barrage of rocketry targeted against Haifa, resulting in scores of casualties.

What to do? Mark Steyn looks at the long and futile history of "Great Man" diplomacy and our collective unwillingness to confront Iran's bloody hands.

The forces at play in the Middle East are beyond the Geopolitical Friars' Club. The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian "moderates" who've been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult? Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.

Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran's land borders with the Zionist Entity. They're "occupied territories" but it's not the Jews doing the occupying. So you've got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don't get Larry King's salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get.

...

During all the time the Great Men were shuttling back and forth, a kind of toxic globalization occurred: The Palestinian "movement" (insofar as there ever was a genuine nationalist movement) became infected and eventually annexed by hard-core Islamism and the Palestinians' most depraved terror techniques were exported to every corner of the world. You can build a "security fence" in the region, but what we might call Palestinianism has leapt the psychological fence and incubated in radicalized Muslim communities worldwide: It's not just Palestinians but also Yorkshiremen who now blow themselves up on public transit. What's happened in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and elsewhere is that the weaknesses of those polities were exploited by Iran and others through various client groups and a potent ideology that's really a virus.

That's a much more cunning and effective strategy than sending a fellow in a suit to concoct a plan in his name. We need to learn from the Iranians. We need to wage war on the ideology, because until we do, the reality is that the Middle East's fetid "stability," its demography, its remorseless nuclearization and proxy militarization all favor Israel's and our enemies.

Iran steps forward

Here's an escalating dimension to yesterday's successful and deadly attack on an Israeli ship off the coast of Lebanon: contrary to early reports, the ship wasn't struck by a drone, but by an Iranian C-802 anti-ship cruise missile (technology provided by China) . That puts Iran squarely out front with Hezbollah.

Four Israel Navy sailors were reported missing after an Iran-manufactured C-802 missile hit the ship. Initially, the army was not certain whether a missile or explosives-laden drone hit the vessel on Friday night.

DEBKA in Israel reports more details:

[M]ilitary sources reveal that the warship was struck from Beirut by an Iran-made C-802 shore-to-sea missile of the Silkworm family. Weighing 715 kilos, with a range of 120km, the missile is armed with a strong anti-jamming capability, which lends it a 98% success rate in escaping interception.

The Israeli ship is armed with an advanced Barak anti-missile system, which may have missed the incoming missile. Israeli military planners must now look at the vulnerability of the navy following the appearance of the first Iranian C-802 missiles....

Shortly before 20:00 hours Friday, Hizballah launched a pair of land-to-sea C-802 missiles against the Israeli ship from the coast of Beirut. The trajectory of the first was adjusted to a landing amidships from above. It missed and exploded in the water. The second was rigged to skim the water like a cruise missile. It achieved a direct hit of the Ahi Hanit’s helicopter deck, starting a fire. The ship began to sink, as Nasrallah said, and would have been lost were it not for the speed and bravery of crewmen who jumped into the flames and doused them before the ship exploded and sank.

Can Hezbollah really operate such weapons without hands-on Iranian support?

UPDATE: Apparently not:

A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Elite Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior Israeli intelligence official said.

One sailor was killed and three were missing.

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.

The official added that the troops involved in firing the missile are from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an elite corps of more than 200,000 fighters that is independent of the regular armed forces and controlled directly by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

How far this all goes, this time, depends a lot on what Iran is trying to accomplish: making mischief or getting ready for a full-scale confrontation with Israel (and America).

Iran's dirty hands

This is remarkably clear journalism from the New York Times, of all places. It's become so unexpected.

The expansion of the Gaza crisis into southern Lebanon, confronting Israel with a conflict on its northern and southern borders, has demonstrated that the central issue at stake is regional, not local.

For Israel the issue is not simply the Palestinians and their actions, including the rocket fire into Israel. It is the broader problem of radical Islam — of Hamas, as a part of the regional Muslim Brotherhood, and of Iran, a serious regional power with considerable influence on Syria, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the military wing of Hamas.

While Israel and the United States still hope that Hamas, which is a largely homegrown Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, will respond to the responsibilities of elected leadership and moderate its rejection of Israel to bring a better life to its people, they have no such hopes for Iran.

Iran’s president has famously denied the Holocaust and made countless provocative statements about Israel. But even before his election, Iran committed itself to undermining any prospect of real peace between Israel and the Palestinians through proxy forces like Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad.

Iran is also considered to be the main sponsor of Khaled Meshal, the exiled Palestinian leader of Hamas’s political bureau and the man widely considered to be in charge of Hamas’s secretive military wing — which was instrumental in carrying out the seizure of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, touching off the latest explosion.

Justice

Here's good police work on display: authorities in Michigan have nabbed the two psychos who murdered a girl in Fort Bend County just days ago.

Two suspects in the death of a Sugar Land teenager were arrested today as they tried to enter Canada, the Fort Bend County sheriff said.

Fort Bend County authorities earlier today had charged the two 18-year-old men with murder in the death of the girl, whose body was found Monday in a shallow grave in a muddy field.

They deserve the same fate as another twisted criminal who finally got what he deserved yesterday.

Half a decade

Charles Krauthammer returns to the very bad Hamdan decision by the Supreme Court, with some historical perspective.

Our big wars, 1861, 1941, 2001 — and the war on terror ranks with the big ones — have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war....

What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say to the president: Time's up. We gave you a half-decade of emergency powers, but that's as far as we go. From now on, the emergency is over, at least judicially, and you're going to have to operate by peacetime rules.

Or as Justice Anthony Kennedy, the new Sandra Day O'Connor, put it, Guantanamo (and by extension, war-on-terror) jurisprudence must henceforth be governed by "the customary operation of the Executive and Legislative Branches." This case may be "of extraordinary importance," but it is to be "resolved by ordinary rules."

All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely idea, except that al-Qaida has other ideas. The war does go on. One can sympathize with the court's desire for a Harding-like restoration to normalcy. But the robed eminences are premature. And even if they weren't, they really didn't have to issue a ruling this bad.

They declared illegal Bush's military tribunals for the likes of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. First, because they were not established in accordance with congressional authority. And second, because they violated the Geneva Conventions.

The first rationale is an odd but fixable misreading of congressional intent. The second is a grotesque and unfixable misreading of the Geneva Conventions.

Besides just illustrating the need for better judges, it's also another consequence of Iraq. The lack of decisive victory (vs. the wars of 1861 and 1941) on that crucial front in the War on Terror, opens the door for both bad thinking and loss of nerve. Victory, on the other hand, erases most sins and errors.

Sparks fly

July 4th fireworks:

Bad guys: North Korea fired at least three missiles today, possibly six (as reported just now on Fox News). John at Blogs of War has lots of coverage. Useful commentary on NRO's The Corner:

According to early reports they fired two SCUDS followed by what may have been their long-range test missile. If this was the case the SCUDS were clearly meant to draw fire from our missile-defense systems. Then the long-range missile reportedly failed in flight. It would be great if we actually took it down, but in-flight failure doesn't help the North Koreans in their drive to intimidate the world.

Fourth of July 2006

Today is Independence Day. On this day in 1776, fifty-six courageous patriots affixed their names to Thomas Jefferson's bold Declaration of Independence, an obviously treasonous document under British colonial rule. We still owe them a debt of thanks.

John Adams was wary, but hopeful, in letters written to his wife Abigail after the decision was taken on July 2nd.

I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.

Everyone should read the full text of the Declaration at least once per year; there's no better day than today. Note, among other things, the numerous references to God.

PBS has a rich website to accompany its A Capitol Fourth program, broadcast live tonight from Washington, D.C. Included are remarks from several American Presidents, among them Franklin D. Roosevelt in the dark days of 1942:

"For 166 years this Fourth Day of July has been a symbol to the people of our country of the democratic freedom which our citizens claim as their precious birthright. On this grim anniversary its meaning has spread over the entire globe--focusing the attention of the world upon the modern freedoms for which all the United Nations are now engaged in deadly war.

"On the desert sands of Africa, along the thousands of miles of battle lines in Russia, in New Zealand and Australia, and the islands of the Pacific, in war-torn China and all over the seven seas, free men are fighting desperately--and dying--to preserve the liberties and the decencies of modern civilization. And in the overrun and occupied nations of the world, this day is filled with added significance, coming at a time when freedom and religion have been attacked and trampled upon by tyrannies unequaled in human history.

"Never since it first was created in Philadelphia, has this anniversary come in times so dangerous to everything for which it stands. We celebrate it this year, not in the fireworks of make-believe but in the death-dealing reality of tanks and planes and guns and ships. We celebrate it also by running without interruption the assembly lines which turn out these weapons to be shipped to all the embattled points of the globe. Not to waste one hour, not to stop one shot, not to hold back one blow--that is the way to mark our great national holiday in this year of 1942.

"To the weary, hungry, unequipped Army of the American Revolution, the Fourth of July was a tonic of hope and inspiration. So is it now. The tough, grim men who fight for freedom in this dark hour take heart in its message--the assurance of the right to liberty under God--for all peoples and races and groups and nations, everywhere in the world."

At the National Archives, you can learn more about the Declaration, including a Flash section that lets you see your name join those of the Signers onscreen.

Just for online fun: American Sketchbook (includes music).

Heroes

Stars and Stripes issued a special edition recently: Heroes - A Nation Honors Valor in the War on Terror.

For more than four years now, American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been fighting the war on terror. While politicians and pundits argue the merits and demerits of strategy and prosecution, the military man or woman has been slugging it out, every day, with a foe who is often unseen.

Day after day, they move among the chaos in Afghanistan or Iraq, trying to build bridges, to deliver supplies, to do as they have been asked to help build a stable society where there was none.

They move among the people, wanting to trust but knowing they cannot. They endure dust storms and boredom punctuated by moments of fury, and months of long, sleepless nights away from their loved ones.

Many have died or been maimed. And many, living and dead, have met the test of fear and violence with uncommon valor.

Amazingly typical is the story of "Sgt. Pepper."

When he saw the RPG headed toward him, Army Staff Sgt. Jason Pepper’s first instinct was to push his men out of the way.

“They were young guys, and they had families and their whole life ahead of them, too,” the 28-year-old from the 16th Engineer Battalion said. “I protected them because it was the right thing to do.”

...The ambush site was a tight corridor — as they looked to their left, one of their own tanks pulled up close and partially blocked off their field of fire. Pepper said as he turned around to cover the other direction, he saw an insurgent fire another RPG.

Instinctively, he dove into soldiers closest to him, knocking them behind a tank and out of the explosive’s range. The two men suffered only some bumps and bruises as the round exploded.

As he stood to return fire, a remote bomb planted in a tree detonated just a few feet away. The blast caught him full force.

The only sign that Pepper was still alive was the air bubbling through the blood covering his nose.

Read them all. And then say "Thanks" in every way you can.

Hot air

Richard S. Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, says we shouldn't buy into Al Gore's global warming hype.

Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is over." That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place.

So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists--especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce--if we're lucky.

Conservative lunacy

Battle-hardened educator Rod Paige addresses the dumb notion du jour about school finance, which, being dumb, has been naturally embraced by our own blow-dried and empty-headed Texas governor.

Dumb liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen, and during my time as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District and as the U.S. secretary of education I battled against all sorts of progressivist lunacy, from whole-language reading to fuzzy math to lifetime teacher tenure. Today, however, one of the worst ideas in education is coming from conservatives: the so-called 65 percent solution.

This movement, bankrolled largely by Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, wants states to mandate that 65 percent of school dollars be spent "in the classroom." Budget items such as teacher salaries would count; librarians, transportation costs and upkeep of buildings would not.

The only drawback is that such laws won't actually make schools any better, and could make them worse. Yes, it's true that education financing is a mess and that billions are wasted every year. But the 65 percent solution won't help. The most likely outcome is that school officials will learn the art of creative accounting in order to increase the percentage of money that can be deemed "classroom" expenses.

More ominously, it will tie school leaders' hands at a time when they need more freedom to innovate. Things we should be stressing, such as teacher training, online content to supplement lessons and after-school tutoring, would not fall under "classroom expenses."

ALA still ducking on Cuba

The American Library Association last week became the first large national group to hold a convention in flood-ravaged New Orleans. As usual with ALA, highlights and lowlights were hopelessly intermingled, notably in one event: a muddled keynote address by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, someone who ought to be smarter and savvier than she actually is.

Addressing the opening general session of the biggest convention to come to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright mildly chided the American Library Association on Saturday for what critics consider its feeble condemnation of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's assaults on intellectual freedom in his nation. But she won her loudest applause for oblique slaps at President Bush.

The thrust of Albright's speech, like that of her new book, "The Mighty & the Almighty," was that religion has long been, and will remain, a flashpoint in international affairs that can quickly turn bloody. But before warming to that theme, she reminded her listeners that freedom should not be taken for granted at home or abroad.

"Cuba is a country where basic freedoms have been denied," Albright said, including the Caribbean island on a list of notorious human rights violators such as North Korea and Syria.

Attempts to condemn Castro's imprisonment of independent librarians and burning of books have been defeated at past ALA conventions, so for Albright -- who became the nation's first female secretary of state during the Clinton administration -- to criticize the Cuban regime before the group was potentially explosive. But she did not dwell on the history of the organization's attitude toward the Castro regime....

The ALA's unwillingness to criticize publicly a governmental act against what in the United States would be considered core rights infuriated some intellectuals across the political spectrum. Among them was Andrei Codrescu, a New Orleans writer and commentator who excoriated the ALA's position at a later convention.

Similarly, journalist Nat Hentoff wrote several columns in The Village Voice, a New York weekly paper, that were sharply critical of the ALA directors' stance. Eventually, in 2004, Hentoff renounced the Immroth Memorial Award for Intellectual Freedom that the ALA had bestowed on him in 1983 "for courageous and articulate advocacy of the First Amendment." He said the ALA's attitude toward Castro made a mockery of the award.

Saturday night, however, Albright said the organization should be proud of whatever anti-Castro stance it took, and then quickly turned to a call for lifting the United States' economic embargo against Cuba.

Her audience at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, numbering in the thousands but impossible to count in the dark hall, applauded. The crowd also cheered her attack on the controversial provision of the Patriot Act that allows the government to review citizens' library activity, as well as her criticism of those she said question the patriotism of people who speak out against the Iraq war.

So, a smart-aleck intellectual and a leftie jazz critic, as well as sci-fi grandmaster Ray Bradbury, are more muscular advocates for freedom than an experienced Secretary of State. Unfortunately, not a surprise.

Activist librarian Robert Kent, crusading leader of Friends of Cuban Libraries, shared the following over-the-top reaction from a Castro mouthpiece to Albright's soft-sided criticism.

PRESS RELEASE The Friends of Cuban Libraries July 1, 2006, FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION

Cuba Attacks Albright for Speech to Library Group

The June 30 issue of Librinsula, a weekly magazine published in Havana, contains an article by Cuban National Library director Eliades Acosta attacking Madeleine Albright for a speech she delivered on June 24 at the American Library Association conference in New Orleans. Acosta serves as Cuba's spokesperson on library issues.

In her speech at the New Orleans conference, former Secretary of State Albright called on libraries to be "laboratories for freedom" and defended the right of Cubans to loan books and to open independent libraries free of government control.

Some observers believe Albright's June 24 comments implicitly criticized the ALA for failing to condemn the Castro government's repression of a citizens' movement to establish libraries offering public access to uncensored books. Many of the independent libraries founded in Cuba have been raided by the secret police. According to Cuban court documents, the existence of which has not been acknowledged in ALA reports on the situation, among the library books seized and ordered to be burned in Cuba are classics such as George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. About a dozen of the Cuban librarians, condemned to 20-year prison terms, have been named as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.

Critics of the ALA, such as the Friends of Cuban Libraries organization, charge that the ALA's governing Council has inattentively approved reports by ALA committees, allegedly controlled by a pro-Castro faction, which ignore library repression and book burning in Cuba. Some ALA members accuse the independent librarians of being agents of the CIA.

When Madeleine Albright's turn to speak came at the New Orleans conference, "this bitter and elegant woman" charged Eliades Acosta, spoke in a manner she had allegedly cultivated during her period as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she reportedly delivered speeches with a "scornful grimace, in the style of Betty Davis [sic]."

Albright's speech before the ALA, Acosta charged, was intended to "convince American librarians, traditionally friendly toward their Cuban colleagues, that they should 'convert their institutions into laboratories for freedom.'" While discounting Albright's criticism of the Bush administration, dismissed by Acosta as "a hypocritical fig leaf designed by Versace," the author said Albright then "launched directly toward her objective: a call to support the misnamed 'independent libraries', a delicious euphemism with which the CIA has denominated this particular version, in the Imperial style, of the battle of ideas [to overthrow the Castro government.]"

Acosta also charged Albright with a commercial motive for delivering her speech at the ALA conference in New Orleans: "Waving her pedigree as an anti-Communist Czech emigre, Ms. Albright concluded her performance by making astute propaganda for her latest book [on religion and politics] before an audience which has, among its other functions, precisely the task of acquiring books.... I leave it to the readers' sagacity," continued Eliades Acosta, "to imagine the manner in which this pious personage concluded her speech, elevating her eyes toward heaven, as if her well-coifed head, the pride of Washington hair stylists, were surrounded by the divine splendor of a halo, exactly as appears in the paintings of El Greco."

"Ms. Albright failed to achieve her objective," concluded Eliades Acosta, which was allegedly "to poison relations between Cuban and American librarians, despite having employed all of her histrionic skills in the New Orleans theater. There was no change whatsoever made in the traditional position of the ALA toward Cuba." Outside of the hall where Albright delivered her speech, Acosta noted approvingly, members of the ALA's "Radical Reference" group handed out leaflets denouncing the Clinton Administration's ex-Secretary of State as a war criminal.

Apparently even a half-hearted punch can hurt a bit when it hits a guilty spot.