Locked On and Tracking

2006-09-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

E.J. Dionne -- Spinning in his Alternate Universe

The Washington Post's soft-spoken liberal in this column reminds me of a classic Star Trek episode in which Captain Kirk and his landing party are beamed to a parallel, and opposite universe due to an ion storm-induced transporter malfunction.

Dionne selectively "cherry-picks" his supporting anecdote contending conservatives blasted Clinton failures to catch/kill Osama bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 while insisting Bush get a pass for his failures.

Dionne seems to forget that Democrats in the Florida "electoral chad-esty" fallout viewed Bush as an illegitimate president, a dunce, "Shrub", "Dubya", hick, smirker, strutter, stem cell research non-funder, tax-breaker-for-the-rich, etc. The tone for Democrats when it came to Bush was set in those months leading up to 9-11 when it came to Bush. They hated the man pre 9-11 and hate him post 9-11.

Dionne forgets that the Dem-proxy mainstream media was doing their heavy-lifting for them.

ABC's late anchor extraordinaire Peter Jennings sarcastically wondered where Bush was when the American people needed him. And that was on the very day the planes brought down the towers, the sun had not even set that terrible day. Not to mention the Cheney "secret location" jokes and quips.

Dionne contends that partisanship melted away in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, but can he really write this without a queasy, uneasy feeling boiling up in his gut telling him he might be overestimating the "non-partisanship"? Yeah, the Dems sang "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps with their GOP collegues, but beyond that --- what?

Sure the Dems voted for Bush to go after the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida, but even then you could tell they weren't really into this scary war-thing. But to not go after the new enemy would have been political suicide for the Democrats. America was spoiling for a fight.

Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh earns Dionne's ire. In Dionne's opinion, it was Limbaugh that started the partisanship back up:

But not everyone was nonpartisan. On Oct. 4, 2001, a mere three weeks and a couple of days after the towers fell and the Pentagon was hit, there was Rush Limbaugh arguing on The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page: "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency.''

Rush Limbaugh is a member of the media, not a Republican politician, Dionne should know that intellectually -- it's apples and oranges. Rush is correct in his statement. There was a catalogue of terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Clinton's watch. Clinton's law enforcement approach didn't work, Clinton missed his chances and that should be explored. Bush has done something different -- I don't think our forces have to wait on some legal "finding" to have the authority to put a Hellfire missile right into Osama's headress if they get the chance.

Dionne defends Clinton's outburst by analysing the former president's mood and physical reaction to Chris Wallace's simple question, "why didn't Clinton get bin Laden when he had the chance?"

And so Clinton exploded. My canvassing of Clinton insiders suggests two things about his Fox News outburst. First, he did not go into the studio knowing he would do it. There was, they say, a spontaneity to his anger. But, second, he had thought long and hard about comparisons between his record on terrorism and Bush's. He had his lines down pat from private musing about how he had been turned into a punching bag by the right. Something like this, one adviser said, was bound to happen eventually.

Nowhere in this paragraph, aside from asserting that Clinton had his "lines down pat", does Dionne explore what Clinton actually said. Sure the former president got angry and nasty, and though that is a story --- it's not the story. What Clinton said in his theatrically-animated response to the simple question is what is really relevant to the issue. Curiously, Dionne isn't interested in exploring that. Nor were any of the prior interviewers or subsequent to the Fox talk.

But sober moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton's record on terrorism.

Dionne fails to mention that its was the Clinton cronies' screaming bloody murder and trying to get out ahead of the revelations that made Clinton's questionable terror fighting history depicted in the movie"Path to 9-11" into a big story. Dionne also fails to mention that the movie doesn't make the Bush administration look any better.

I guess Dionne had no trouble with that.

2006-09-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

Jonah Makes a Salient Point

NR's Jonah Goldberg makes a great point:

After 9/11, there were voices on the left warning that an attack on Afghanistan would only perpetuate the dreaded "cycle of violence." Today, Democrats tout their support of that "good" war as proof they aren't soft on terrorism. Fair enough, I suppose. But guess what? That war made us less safe too - if the measure of such things is "creating more terrorists." A Gallup poll taken in nine Muslim nations in February 2002 found that more than three-fourths of respondents considered the liberation of Afghanistan unjustifiable. A mere 9 percent supported U.S. actions. That goes for famously moderate Turkey, where opposition to the U.S. ran three to one, and in Pakistan, where a mere one in 20 respondents took the American side.

In other words, before Iraq became the cause celebre of jihadists, Afghanistan was. Does that mean we shouldn't have toppled the Taliban?

2006-09-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

Somebody Has to Say This - And Say it Loudly

From the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger via Real Clear Politics:

It is difficult to imagine that the U.S. soldiers in Iraq would regard the political debate back home as measuring up to the seriousness of what they do every day. How would you like to roll out of your bunk in al Anbar province, Mosul or Baghdad on a Sunday morning and read across the top of the local U.S. paper that everything you've done in Iraq for three years has merely made the terrorism threat worse? You just might lose heart a notch, a dangerous thing when fighting a war.

But at this late stage of the campaign, Iraq-as-failure has become the central narrative in the Democrats' strategy.

Those Democrats who did get elected channeled their energies into denouncing the Bush antiterror programs and backing the Lamont Insurrection. So there's a problem with the current hand-the-war-to-us strategy: Their hearts and minds really aren't in it. They don't want the war.

Well said.

2006-09-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

How Long Will it Take?

Might take a while since the BBC only "briefly" shows the severed head of "Mo".

Drinking from Home via LGF.

2006-09-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

Palestinian Peace Overture

From Reuters.

2006-09-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

AP Spin Control For Dems

The AP spins the Democratic position on terror by attacking the GOP:

WASHINGTON - To Republicans defending their House majority, a bill to validate President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is as much about luring Democrats into voting against it as it is about enacting a law.

Using "warantless wiretapping program" instead of "terrorist surveillance program" is the tip-off that this is all spin. "Luring" Democrats into voting for it or against it is the choice Democrats have. Just like they had a chance to raise the minimum wage a few weeks ago but did not.

It's not some dirty political trick to get your opponent on the record about serious issues.

The House was scheduled to vote Thursday night on a bill by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., that would set a legal framework for Bush's warrantless wiretapping program between people on U.S. soil making calls or sending e-mails and those in other countries.

Either this is sloppy reporting, or laziness, or more than likely an attempt to spin the issue. Reading this, one would surmise that only outgoing calls or e-mails from the U.S. can be surveilled.

But with Congress giving Bush the other half of his September anti-terrorism agenda - a bill setting conditions on how terrorism suspects are to be detained, interrogated and tried - Republicans shifted from lawmaking to campaign mode.

Is this news in the form of a wire report, or an opinion piece?

"Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists," Hastert said in a statement. "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan. "

Shot back Pelosi: "I think the speaker is a desperate man for him to say that. Would you think that anyone in our country wants to coddle terrorists?"

Democrats opposed to almost every piece of legislation involving the treatment of terrorist detainees on the basis of a Democrat-percieved lack of rights for the terrorists. Democrats favor Geneva Convention protections for terrorists who are "unlawful enemy combatatants" no matter what the liberal wing of the overreaching Supreme Court said in its Hamdan decision. They haven't opposed the legislation because there were too many rights granted terrorists in it.

In the next passage the AP makes Hastert's point:

More broadly, they (Dems) argue the legislation reflects the White House's willingness to fight the war on terrorism at the expense of civil and human rights.

There you have it.

A Democratic majority in either House would set the balance right, Democrats say. "In 40 days we can put an end to this nonsense," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

I suppose the AP doesn't feel the good senator is in campaign mode with thia statement.

A federal judge in Detroit who struck down the warrantless surveillance program turned aside a government request for an indefinite stay Thursday. U.S. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the government could have a week to appeal.

The Carter- appointed judge whose opinion in the case was berated as banal and unthoughtful.

It also appears there is a conflict of interest between the Honorable Judge Diggs and the ACLU. The ACLU was a party to the trial.

2006-09-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

BBC

For a news agency that was instrumental in coordinating clandestine Allied communications in Nazi occupied Europe during World War II, the BBC has been unhelpful in the war on terror.

A quick perusal of their "headlines" came up with this:

Senior militant 'killed in Iraq'

The quotes around the 'killed in Iraq' I believe is a qualifier in the BBC's view and it should be suspect.

British forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda fugitive in a raid on a house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, security sources say.

Officials named the dead man as Omar al-Farouq, a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in South East Asia.

The BBC feels that it must be placed in quotes because they basically don't trust what the British military says.

Then the BBC still follows the cherry-picked Times NIE leak meme:

Iraq war fuels terror - US report

The Iraq conflict has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic militants worldwide, declassified parts of a US intelligence report say.

The war has helped recruit "supporters for the global jihadist movement," the National Intelligence Estimate says.

Further down you find the relevant passage that basically says if Iraq is abandoned as the Bush administration opponents here and abroad contend the jihadis win and the West loses:

He (BBC's Justin Webb) says the White House can point to a finding that "should Jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on".

Here the BBC leaves off two words from the end of the quote following "carry on" they are: "the fight". Why were the words "the fight" left off? "Carry on" could mean anything. Sloppy or intentionally misleading?

This is in line with what the president says about the need to stay the course in Iraq.

Beyond this, there's no analysis by the BBC. Only back to the meme:

"The Iraq Jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives," the document says.

The actual NIE also says this in the same passage as the above quote:

...perceived jihadist success there (Iraq) would inspire more fighters to continue the
struggle elsewhere.

Why was that very important piece of information left out?

It doesn't fit the "Iraq Disaster" template the BBC ascribes to, hopes for, and no doubt is trying to bring about anyway it can.

The BBC gets it wrong again:

The leaked excerpts from the report were first published by the New York Times on Sunday.

There was no leaked excerpt, only a quote from an unnamed official paraphrasing an excerpt.

The BBC discredits itself with partial and sloppy reporting.

And jihad encouragment.

2006-09-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

News from the Front

Al-Qai'da Escapee killed in Basra, Iraq by British forces.

Baghdad Mosque Houses Weapons Cache.

Iraqi Progress on Military and Political Fronts

There is progress and there are things happening out there the MSM won't report.

2006-09-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Poll

Found this via the Corner.

Overall 94 percent have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings.

There's more here.

2006-09-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

A Trip Over to the Dark Side

Let's see what's going on over on the most-talked-about-and-thoughtful-lefty-blog-out there: DailyKos:

Gallup: Bush to blame for Bin Laden, not Clinton
by kos
Wed Sep 27, 2006 at 07:44:16 AM PDT

Gallup:
The recent firestorm over former President Bill Clinton's culpability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was fueled on Tuesday when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contrasted President Bush's efforts to pursue al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with Clinton's efforts. Clinton has strongly denied various suggestions that his administration missed key opportunities to kill bin Laden and left the Bush administration without a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. However, Bush -- whom Clinton says did nothing about al-Qaeda for the first eight months of his presidency -- has the bigger image problem with Americans on the issue.
According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured. A majority of Americans say Bush is more to blame (53%), compared with 36% blaming Clinton.

Of course, partisanship plays a role in the answers. 71 percent of Republicans are too stupid too realize that Bill Clinton hasn't been in office the last six years and blame him rather than the guy currently in office. You know -- the one that talks a big game but hasn't delivered squat.

Yes, such inspiringly intellectually insightful brilliance from kos himself.

2006-09-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

Iranian Lies

From the Iranian news agency Fars:

Saddam Visited by Bush
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Informed sources said that US President George W. Bush has called on the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during a recent visit to Baghdad.

The source said that during the one-hour meeting, the two sides have discussed ways of increasing violence in Iraq.

Obviously targeted towards the shi'a of Iraq.

Incredible.

2006-09-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

NIE Declass Redux

Here's the report.

One can find good and bad within. Both sides can spin what they want. The timing of the leak that brought about the declassification was undoubtedly an attempt to derail any Bush-generated GOP momentum going into November's elections. Declassifying and releasing the Key Assessments is effective pushback against the New York Times leak story.

Remember: this is a snapshot from April 2006. Zarqawi was still alive and doing his best to spur sectarian violence between shia and sunni.

United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of
al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations; however, we judge that al-Qa’ida will continue to
pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist
organization.

Some good news, but this really isn't anything new. Bush has been hammering this almost daily.

We also assess that the global jihadist movement—which includes al-
Qa’ida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells—is
spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.

Again, who is surprised. Plots foiled in Germany and Britain point to this.

Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority
nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such
progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the
vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement and continued pressure on al-Qa’ida,
could erode support for the jihadists.

So the estimate here proposes that more "responsive governments" would alliviate "some of the greivances jihadists exploit", but the caveat is "in majority Muslim nations" . But then, here's this:

The jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests.
Extremist networks inside the extensive Muslim diasporas in Europe facilitate
recruitment and staging for urban attacks, as illustrated by the 2004 Madrid and
2005 London bombings.

In essence, living within liberal Western European democracies, extremists are still aggreived enough to attack their adopted countries and "Western interests". So it doesn't matter if the jihadis reside under repressive middle eastern governments or live in liberal Western European democracies --- jihadis will form networks and attack. For us it's pretty much a catch-22.

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and
operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the
struggle elsewhere.

Okay, on to Iraq. The Dems should pay attention to the highlighted passage: "percieved jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere". The Democrats should really look at what this says. "Percieved jihadist success" is another way of saying U.S. "percieved defeat" in Iraq. For many reasons, the Democratic Party has invested itself in the "perception" of U.S. defeat in Iraq. The MSM has followed suit in it's reporting. One only has to look at the polls to see that the American public has been effected by the negativity and hyperbolic comparisons to the U.S. experience in Vietnam.

No matter how much it is denied by both the Democratic Party and the MSM, Iraq is central to the war on terrorism. If only one thing gleaned from this document becomes undeniable --- success in Iraq is key in the war on Islamic terrorism and premature withdrawl from this front will worsen the situation worldwide.

And again, these are the things President Bush has been hammering away on at almost every press conference and speech --- to the scoffs of the MSM and the Democrats.

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep
resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for
the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves,
and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry
on the fight.

Here's the celebrated leak -- the first sentence, curiously the second sentence was not leaked. What the New York Times didn't want their readers to know was the second sentence --- Iraq is very important to both our efforts in combatting the jihadists and the jihadists efforts in portraying the U.S. as the "paper tiger" bin Laden spoke of many years ago. Our success in Iraq is directly linked to the global effort in fighting the jihaddists. Again, "perception" is used. The MSM has not reported thoroughly (some could argue: at all ) the successes in Iraq, but have gone on ad nauseum about mistakes and "percieved" failures.

The report makes it clear: perception is everything. Defeatist rhetoric and hyperbole are encouraging the terrorists. And that is coming from the Democratic Party and the MSM.

No wonder Nancy Pelosi wanted that special closed session in the House to talk this over yesterday.

2006-09-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Adapt and Overcome

The old military mantra "adapt and overcome" is evident in this development found on StrategyPage.

September 26, 2006: The U.S. is buying 3,874 CREW (Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare) systems. Cost is about $21,000 each. What's special about this batch of jammers is that they are portable, and can be carried by infantry patrolling on foot. Deliveries will continue through the end of 2008. These jammers are to disable IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that are increasingly being used against foot patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan. CREW will jam cell phones, as well as a number of other wireless devices used for IEDs.

Undoubtedly, this will save lives.

2006-09-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Clinton Tirade Apologist

John Dickerson writing for Slate:

Bill Clinton has provided us with this week's partisan sorting mechanism. If you are a right-winger, you see his outburst over charges that he didn't do enough to kill Osama Bin Laden as an overheated act of public ass-covering. You're also likely to react to his criticisms about the Bush administration by rushing to the inevitable safe ground: sex jokes.

No, conservatives have gone after the withering substance of Clinton's arguements and at the same time marvel at just what an ass the man made out of himself.

And made it clear he should re-read Richard Clarke's book again before using it as his only source of defense.

2006-09-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton Revealed

The rumours all these years were true. Former Democrat President Bill Clinton has a side to his personality that can best be described as "dark".

I saw the Wallace interview on Fox News Sunday without any foreknowledge that many had with the early release of the transcript and was blown away by Clinton's behavior. Clinton simply lost it, and in the course of losing it --- Clinton lied.

And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn't do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. --- Bill Clinton

Uh, when did this happen? I don't remember hearing the name of Osama Bin Laden until after the African embassies were bombed in 1998. And I believe at the time, Clinton's obsession was more of a political nature --- saving his presidency from the Lewinsky fallout in the media and impeachment. If Clinton had been obsessed with bin Laden before Lewinsky, why was the Saudi radical still on the loose. Obsessed?

Clinton had a chance to get bin Laden from the Sudanese government in 1996.

Here's Clinton on the matter in a 2002 speech:

So we tried to be quite aggressive with them. We got - uh - well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan.

And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again.
They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

It is clearly evident that Clinton thought in terms of law enforcement when it came to bin Laden. What did this thinking get us?

But wait, Clinton later said he was wrong about this.

That's the way it is with Clinton, the truth is never solid. It changes depending on conditions. It depends on what "is, is".

Back to the latest truth-steering. Clinton with his filibustering of the "interview", Wallace never had a chance to ask him about this or really anything else. Clinton's hateful outburst and personal attack upon Wallace, even after Wallace conceded to the former president "hindsight is 20/20", really is indicative of how sensitive Clinton is concerning his legacy.

Clinton's over-the-top outburst may have filibustered Chris Wallace's time but, Clinton's remarks and statements will be disseminated in the blogosphere for some time to come. John Kerry could teach him a thing or two about that.

Update: Byron York finds more inaccuracy in Clinton's outburst.

2006-09-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

NIE Declassed

Read this opening paragraph from MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday announced that he will declassify parts of the National Intelligence Estimate, which reportedly concluded that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism.

Not true. The report, which was not even quoted in the GreyLadyDown leak story, may refer to an increase in numbers of "terrorists" but who is to say whether they are the hardcore al Qaeda types or amatuerish wannabees. I doubt the report concludes with just this "conclusion".

The paragraph is misleading in the least. One has to read several paragraphs down to find this:

Democrats have used the report to bolster their criticism of Bush’s Iraq policy. The administration has claimed only part of the report was leaked and does not tell the full story.

Now the Dems are in panic-mode and need to find new talking points. Pelosi asks for a closed session to go over the soon-to-be-declassified NIE to cover their butts.

I thought the Dems didn't like "cherry-picked" intel.

It's a sad shame that both sides have to play politics with national security issues with troops in the field. But Administration opponents in the CIA have forced the president to declass the entire report to set the record straight.

And I guess we'll know the truth soon.

2006-09-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

It's Fiskin' Time:

In the San Antonio Express News, Mansour El-Kikhia complains of the "open season" on Muslims, by conservatives, evangelicals and by extension the Bush administration. El-Kikhia goes out of his way to leave liberals out of the mix, evidently they have some immunity in the whole Islam vs. Everyone Else thing and this was only cooked up by conservatives needing a bad guy to take the place of the Soviets.

Let's pull apart this babble like a country-style barbeque rib.

When is this open season on Islam and Muslims going to end? Not anytime soon; any astute observer of international politics can see that.

The faith is vilified because it serves the needs of so many important actors on the international scene.

Let's see, islamic facists started the fight. Sorry we're engaging in combat those who would murder us indiscriminately by the hundreds or by their preference --- by the thousands. And it's not about the vast military/industrial complex, it's about planes plowing into buildings in the name of the "faith".

First, to a large number of conservative Americans and, by extension, the Bush administration, Islam has come to represent a threat more potent than communism.

Well, we might agree here.

The key difference between the Islamic facist threat and the Soviets is that the Soviets never wantonly killed thousands innocent Westerners in their office buildings while they sipped morning coffee.

The Iranian Islamic theocracy obsessively seeks a Cold War threat --- the nuclear bomb. Iran isn't calling itself the "Islamic Republic of" for because it sounds catchy. The president of Iran believes he has a duty in seeing the 12th imam return following an apocolypse. Militant islamists have no problem killing themselves if the take a few infidels with them. In fact, they are promised they will go to paradise, complete with 72 virgins and all the Bud Light they can drink.

Intense religious ferver+ apocolyptic vision+petro dollars+nuclear weapons+no value placed on human life, the "infidel" or their own= a threat much greater than Soviet Communism. The godless Soviets could be deterred by mutal assured destruction, Islamic terrorist groups/governments have no such deterrent. They welcome their own deaths if "it pleases Allah".

There is no Islamic entity to pose a threat to the United States comparable to the Soviet Union; hence one had to be created. First, it was al-Qaida, but it soon became apparent that it was too small to make a viable opponent, resulting in the attempted links to Iraq and Iran that proved to be false.

A nuclear armed Iran --- whose official position on the United States as "the Great Satan" with ballisic missiles that have the reach of 1, 500km or better perched in the geographic region that holds most of the world's oil supplies are a threat, no matter how much Howard-Dean- kool-aid the author has drunk.

Second, there are Israel's leaders, who agree with Huntington's position. The rise of Islamic fundamentalist groups that challenged their treatment of Palestinians necessitated a campaign to convince Americans that Islam is the single threat to the United States.

The author loses all credibility here and proves that he should not be taken seriously on this subject. His thesis of the "Jewish Cabal" conspiracy is laughable and part of the problem, not part of the solution he wishes us to believe he seeks.

Third, a new security industry has emerged to piggyback on this issue. It is a multibillion-dollar industry that will not go away anytime soon. Indeed, this week, Boeing won a multibillion-dollar deal from the Department of Homeland Security for a virtual security fence on America's southern border to augment a proposed physical barrier.

Properly securing our borders is probably something that was inevitable even without 9-11. Could it be the "Jewish Security Industry Cabal" the author fears.

Americans are scared, and the government is playing on that fear to achieve its goals.

Americans are not "scared", they are informed. Americans know there is an enemy. Americans saw with their own eyes what sick people could do in the name of their religion that early-September morning. The Bush administration takes the threat seriously. Sorry. What goals does the author speak of? More laughable conspiracy? Americans would rather be watching football than fight against the jihad.

Finally, the Bush administration had been operating in an amoral vacuum.

However, the vacuum was filled last week when Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's words depicting Prophet Mohammad and Islam in a negative manner. Benedict's apology repudiated the act, but not the quote.

Regardless of how "outraged" the children of Islam may be by the "quote", it is essentially accurate, as the reaction of Muslims to the pope's quotation demonstrated. One does not complain of inaccuracy by proving the "inaccuracy" to be true by action.

The Koran tells Muslims that neither Jews nor Christians will accept them until they follow their ways. The pope's words seem to confirm that.

I'm not a student of the Koran, but I'm a westerner who would submit to the author that Jews and Christians would "accept" Muslims if they stopped trying to kill Jews and Christians and other Muslims.

But the impact of his words will have a profound effect on Christian-Muslim relations for many years and will ensure the simmering of anger and hate in both communities.

There was no Christian "hate" for Muslims that was detectable prior to 9-11, and there is no wide-spread Christian "hate" post-9-11 either. People do come to resent those that would and do slaughter them indiscriminately. If the author doesn't realize this, he is either willfully ignorant or blinded by his own bias.

Benedict should have repudiated the actions of the Bush administration for bringing the world closer to calamity by instigating a global religious and cultural war — not add fuel to the fire that is liable to burn us all.

Muslims, in the guise of al Qaeda intensified the war in 2001, a war that was publicly declared by al Qaeda leader and Muslim Osama Bin-Laden in 1996. The Islamist al Qaeda engaged upon the U.S. in attacks in 1993, 1995,1998, and 2000. In 2001 after the most devastating Islam-inspired attack, in a reversal of past passivity, the Bush administration engaged the enemyon the battlefield.

The author's views, so skewed and misinformed, are a clear indication that the war on Islamic facism willbe a long one, because in his eyes there is no blame to be shouldered by the militant and extremist followers of Islam. And he is probably considered to be a moderate.

2006-09-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

A Larger Army Needed

I agree with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Frederick W. Kagan on the need to increase the size of the Army. Our worldwide concerns are too varied and too many to continue at the current manning levels and simply hoping for the best.

Deployments to Iraq are for the most part one year. Many soldiers and Marines are doing two or even three deployments since the Iraq war began in 2003. The effect this is having on service personnel personal lives will effect overall unit readiness.

The Defense Department seems more concerned with cutting costs than in expanding to a sustainable fighting force capable of taking on the "two theatre" scenario with hopes of success. Right now we have a little over a fifth of the army in Iraq. We have a strong cadre in South Korea facing a large and aggressively trained North Korea. What would happen if Syria and Iran decide to move simultaneously with the N. Koreans and Hugo shuts off his oil exports to the U.S.?

If the ground force services are stretched to having to deploy the same units over and over again to Iraq and Afghanistan in a largely constabulary role we are stretched --- I wouldn't go so far as to saying we're stretched to the breaking point, but I will say we are stretched more than we need to be. And if DOD is not planning for such catastrophic events, then they might be called derelict. Such nightmare scenarios could happen and if they do and we haven't the manpower to defend our country and its interests.

In the Gulf War of 1991 which I was in there were over 500,000 men in the field for that conflict. Even though there were coalition partners shouldering the burden there in the Saudi sands, this number --- 500,000 is the total number of personnel in the Army of 2006.

That should inform you of just where we are.

2006-09-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

Ahmadenijad's U.N. Speech

The speech --almost utterly ignored by most in the MSM, who fell in love with Hugo Chavez's diatribe.

Powerline looks at some bloggers who "decoded" the Iranian president's speech.

2006-09-23T06:09:00.000-07:00

Islamic Tolerance

AP:

The "pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). ... If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences," it said.

"Jihad is waged to rid an area, state, or the world of oppression, violence, cruelty, and terrorism, and bring peace and relief to the people. History is full of incidents where Muslims waged jihad to provide relief to people of many faiths, especially Jews and Christians," it said.

Jihad's sole tactic is terrorism.

As Rush Limbaugh would say, "How do you negotiate with a people who's starting point is your death."

2006-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

Hugo Chavez's GOP Campaign Tour

Moron, anti-American, Maxist, Castro wannabe Hugo Chavez continued his GOP re-election tour today. But it wasn't Chavez's comments and macabre insulting of George W. Bush that is the story. The real story is how the Democrats, who are closer to Chavez ideologically and rhetorically, are now outraged, outraged, they say when Comerade Hugo lambasts Bush.

This is comical. Chavez is only saying the same things in Spanish that the Democrats Pelosi and Rangel have been saying in English --- for almost six years. Maybe that's why they're upset. Hugo's upstaging them.

Here's Dick Durban in 2005, via Captain's Quarters.
Mr. Durbin said, "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

Ted Kennedy's remarks in 2004:
"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?'" said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."

Democrats sure sound more like Chavez to me.

But what is truly funny in a disturbing way is the disingenousness of Dems defending Bush from Chavez's attacks and then the MSM touting the Dems defense of Bush as some heroic stand for "what is right" when the Dems have said much more virulently hateful things about Bush for almost the last six years. It is truly a Danse Macabre between Hugo and the Dems.

2006-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

File This Under "Yeah, right"

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the Sept. 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,”’ Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark.”

Is this the same Iraq War opponent and Beltway gossip Richard Armitage that let Plameout fester for nearly three years?

If this is true, why did this not come out until now? Surely, had this actually occured, someone hostile to the Bush administration at the State Department would have outed this a long time ago. The 2004 campaign would've been a perfect time. The claim itself is illogical from a military point of view. Musharraf must feeling the heat from pope-hating Muslim extremists in Pakistan, and he is trying for political cover by distancing himself from the United States claiming that he was bullied into U.S. cooperation with ousting the Taliban gangsters.

It is inconcievable what Musharraf claims.

Ah, "60 Minutes"....that explains it.

Now, one can bet on the MSM drumming this up to attack Bush and the GOP as complete and utter warmongering "Genghis Khans". The Dems might make hay with this, but they will make hay at their own peril should this third hand account fall apart at the seams. It will be interesting to see just how desperate the MSM and the Dems are about their apparent fading chances of seizing control of one or both houses of congress this November.

Who will be the first Dem to come out and latch on to this story? What will Armitage say? His boss at the time -- Colin Powell the former Secretary of State? Will one of Bush anonymous opponents at the State Department become a Musharraf claim supporter as an "unnamed source" for the New York Times?

At the very least, this story puts Bush on the defensive. The president has been pushing the agenda and the news as of late and the Dems really need some ammo. The MSM will carry some of the water unless Armitage comes out and flatly denies ever having made the comment. But then who will take his word for it?

Here is another story on this from the AP via CNN's website.

He(Musharraf) is scheduled to meet on Friday at the White House with President Bush and then see Bush again next week in a three-way meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Ol Pervez is goin' 'ave some 'splainin' to do.

Later in the story:

Julie Reside, a State Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the reported conversation between Armitage and a Pakistani official.

"We are referring all questions to Mr. Armitage," she said.

It's in your court Dick.

2006-09-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

U.N. "Anti-Torture Chief" Reports on Gitmo Detainees...

.....and talks about Iraq, though he's never set foot there!

Nowhere in this story is there anything about detainee treatment at Gitmo, not a word, nothing!

Why?

Could it be that those terrorists at Gitmo are really being treated better than some of the soldiers defending this country on the battlefield?

We'll never know, because if it might be good news for Bush it won't be reported. There must be not torture at Gitmo, but we better find some torture somewhere!

2006-09-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

Agreement

There aren't any details about the actual agreement on detainee policy in this AP story which goes out of it's way to find a political angle.

The controversy has handed critics of the president’s conduct of the war on terror election-year ammunition.

Not really. The Dems have no plan for anything other than casting a blind eye towards the entire GWOT situation and attacking Bush at every turn. McCain, Warner and Graham were providing political cover for idealess Dems on the whole issue. Now that cover is gone.

In fact, it turns out there was no political calculation on the timing as was earlier charged by the Dems when the president held his press conference concerning the detainees that were being moved to Gitmo.

The former officials said the CIA interrogators' refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished.

Doesn't sound to me as if the devious Karl Rove had anything to do with the timing from that sentence.

Update: Here's another story with more detail.

2006-09-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Japan Moving Away from Pacifism

The LA Times today looks at Japan's increasing movement toward a robust military in response to it's neighbors' looming threats and challenges.

However, Japan's shift away from its pragmatic pacifism will continue to be slow and incremental. And that is good for the U.S. It will give Washington time to think through whether it prefers a Japan that will fight side by side with U.S. forces throughout the world, or a Japan that can better reassure its neighbors that it is not remilitarizing.

Why should Japan be compelled to "reassure" it's neighbors? This isn't the era of Gekkokujo. China is rapidly ramping up both the technical capabilities and overall numbers in its military and the North Koreans are boasting of a nuclear weapons capability and firing birds all over the skies. Why on earth does the author hold to the obsolete notion that a robustly armed Japan threatens it's neighbors when rearmament efforts by Japan would clearly be from deterrent-driven rationale? Only rhetorically and disingenously could Japan's neighbors "feel threatened".

I believe Washington under George Bush's leadership will welcome a robustly-armed Japan in the Western Pacific. Besides Australia, what friends does the U.S. possess in that region?

I believe the author wants to hold on to the past doctrinal pacifism for Japan and views the Western Pacific region with blinders on. Germany has moved forward from its past, it is time for Japan's fleets to patrol the oceans joining the U.S. in enforcing the peace and freedom of the seas.

2006-09-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Novak on the Bolton Senate Scorecard

Robert Novak explores the senate's mood concerning recess-appointed U.N. Ambassador John Bolton renomination to the post he has served for the last year.

Lincoln Chafee (RINO -RI) seems to be the sticking point, even though Chafee supported Bolton the last time around. This time, even the arguably most blindly partisan member of the Dem caucus Chuck Shumer is on board.

2006-09-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

California will sue car makers for their pollution problem. I lived in California for 6 months, that's all I could take.

California's attorney general on Wednesday sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota, for damages related to greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's part of a strategy to address global warming," Attorney General Bill Lockyer told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The goal of this one is to hold these automobile manufacturers accountable for the monies taxpayers are spending to address these harms."

Surreal.

But it's okay to spend taxpayer monies in pursuit of ridiculous, frivolous and unprovable lawsuits.

I wonder if he will sue the drivers of these cars, or the gas stations that provided them with fuel, hell --- why not spark plug manufacturers. All could be culpable if we follow this moronic logic.

Another reason to not live in California.

2006-09-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

No headline.

I'll let this post stand for itself. Mario Loyola from NRO's Corner.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez's Speech at the U.N. [Mario Loyola]

And what a spectacle it was. What will go down as the most famous line was, as I remember it, "Yesterday the devil [President Bush] was here, in this very place. It still smells like sulfur." He then dramatically made the sign of the cross, adding blasphemy to insult. Later, in a "press conference" he conducted largely in order to keep enjoying the sound of his own voice, he referred to President Bush as "Mr. Sulfur" — in Spanish, a frankly stupid alliteration on the letter "S."

The White House responded only to say that the comments were not worth responding to. I do not agree. A latter-day Mussolini just referred to the President of the United States as "the devil" — to general applause, laughter, and merriment in the General Assembly of the United Nations — an organization we created to make the defeat of fascism permanent in our world. By insisting on the universality of the Organization, and not insisting on any standards for membership, President Harry Truman bequeathed a pulpit of "unique legitimacy" to our worst enemies, to mock us and incite the world against us, from right in the middle of our greatest city.

Pretending like this is not worth responding to smacks of submissiveness. In Latin America, being dignified and soft-spoken only makes you look like a pushover. Chavez is a devious charlatan and a talented idiot, a danger to himself and his country more than to us, and the President should say so.

Boldface is mine. I'll have more on the Chavez speech fallout, or at least scrutinize the MSM's coverage of it.

2006-09-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

More NATO Troops to Afghanistan

NATO is getting the troops they needed.

Romania and Poland have contributed. Canada and Britain have augmented.

It is time to consider a new alliance. The old NATO alliance is full of non-commital nations with no stomach for combat period.

2006-09-20T16:36:00.000-07:00

Al-Jazeera in the U.S.?

Abigail Lavin in the Weekly Standard explores mega Arab news channel Al-Jazeera's plans on coming to America with an English broadcast version.

Analysts wonder about issues of congruity between the English and Arabic versions of Al Jazeera, and where AJI will come down on polarizing issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iraq war. Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is sharply critical of the very idea of an English version of Al Jazeera. In terms of how closely the channel's content mirrors that of its Arabic counterpart, Carmon feels that AJI is caught between a rock and a hard place. He says that, "if they copy the Arabic version . . . into English, then they will be committing suicide. Because the whole world will see what role Al Jazeera is playing in making the Muslim world extreme."

I disagree. For Americans to actually see the the anti-American/Western/Israeli propaganda uncut and uncensored might just wake us up fully to what is being shouted from the mountaintop and lapped up by the masses over there. Al-Jazeera, because of it's slick production gives creedence to these radical views and thereby awards legitimacy in Muslim eyes. Americans should know what is being said and believed about them in the Arab world.

Who knows, maybe Arabic version/English language Al-Jazeera can communicate the threat of radical Islam better than the Bush administration? Perhaps the Democrats might ease off the hyperbole a little too?

2006-09-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Powerline Responds to AP

Powerline has drawn fire from the AP concerning photos taken by an AP stringer Bilal Hussein that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

Here are the photos:

Follow all the links in the Powerline stuff to get the full scoop. I'm just acting as a resonating chamber here.

2006-09-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

NBC's Brian Williams Interviews Ahmadenijad

Brian Williams the anchor for the NBC Nightly News interviewed Iranian president Ahmadenijad shortly before the Iranian leader was to speak before the U.N. General Assembly.

Here's the transcript.

Needless to say, the interview is a puff piece trying to convince the American people that concerns over Iran's nuclear program are overblown. Even when Williams asks the relevant questions concerning Iran's nuclear program, Ahmadenijad rambles immaterially on about world peace and who has the bomb and who has used the bomb in the past. The president of Iran sounds like an American San Francisco middle-schooler indoctrinated by Haight-Asbury parents at a Jackson Browne "No-Nukes" concert.

And while they were on the subject, why did Williams not question the good president about Iran violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty?

But Williams had time for this:

Williams: Mr. President, this is not a matter of great concern, this next question, but we have gotten used to seeing you in the tan jacket with the zipper. Today, you are dressed differently. Is that jacket a symbol of your standing or upbringing in Iran?

Ahmadinejad: No. It depends on which one I'm more comfortable wearing. And it of course depends on my colleagues and friends, too. I knew that you were going to wear a suit, so I decided to wear this jacket.

Williams: Excellent.

Williams almost confronts Ahmadenijad on his "wipe Israel from the map" statements, but the goes for the Holocaust denial stuff citing that it "frightenened" some people.

I'll let Williams in on a little secret, it wasn't Ahmadenijad's ignorantly stupid Holocaust denials, it was his call to exterminate Israel while working feverishly to have the means to do so that has so many people frightened. It's almost as if Williams catches himself midquestion:

Williams: There is something you said that upset and scared a lot of people. It upset a lot of Jews in the United States and around the world when you called the Holocaust a myth.

All the same, Ahmadenijad should be called to account for his Holocaust denials. But being stupid isn't going to kill anyone, and so there's no real tangible threat from Holocaust deniers. Having a nuclear weapon to finish the job the Third Reich started is the real threat, especially when looking at Ahamdenijad's statements about Israel.

It would have been more interesting and enlightening if Williams had asked Ahmadenijad if he thought Israel had a right to exist in peace and if Iran had given the green-light to Hezbollah to attack Israel during the summer war.

Williams could have asked if Iran supplied the anti-tank missiles and Katyusha rockets to the "resistance". He could have asked if Iran is actively engaged at opposing the U.S. efforts at stabilization in Iraq by helping Shia militants in targeting Sunnis.

Perhaps Mr. Williams could've done a little more research before his interview.

2006-09-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

McCain's Stance on Interrogation

Rich Lowery in NRO takes Arizona Senator John McCain and Co. -- as he calls them-- to task for opposing the Bush Administration's attempt at defining the vague language of the Geneva Conventions Article 3.

The redefinition is required by the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hamden case earlier this year in which the Court said that terrorists (unlawful enemy combatants) are to be given the same considerations under Geneva as lawful enemy combatants.

The majority of the Court apparently viewed Article 3 in a vacuum as Article 4 clearly states what constitutes the requirements for an enemy combatant to be considered lawful. By describing the conditions that must be adhered to for a combatant to be considered lawful, Article 4 by default defines what is to be considered an unlawful enemy combatant.

The particular passage in Article 3 causing all the fuss is:

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

An outrage to personal dignity varies from person to person, culture to culture. The same with humiliating and degrading treatment. The vagueness of this is what requires in my opinion to be defined.

McCain's arguement that attempting to re-define this passage in Article 3 would put our soldiers at risk should they be captured by hostile forces. Those forces could use the "redefinement" of Article 3 to treat our people badly as they see fit.

I would ask Senator McCain one question: How many nations, both Geneva signees and non-signees, with which the United States has been at war with actually followed Article 3?

Nazi Germany?
Imperial Japan?
North Korea?
North Vietnam?
Saddamist Iraq?
Insurgents in post Saddam Iraq?
Al Qaeda?

How many soldiers has our strict and unquestioning compliance with Article 3 saved from outrages of personal dignity? How many lives were saved?

None Senator.

2006-09-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Bush, Before the U.N. General Assembly

President Bush gave a speech in the U.N. General Assembly today calling for unity in quelling the troubled regions of the world, especially the middle east and the Sudan.

The speech is here.

“To the people of Iran,” Mr. Bush said. “The United States respects you. We respect your country. We admire your rich history, your vibrant culture and your many contributions to civilization.”

“You deserve an opportunity to determine your own future, an economy that rewards your intelligence and your talents, and a society that allows you to fulfill your tremendous potential,” Mr. Bush said. “The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation’s resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons.”---quoted from the NYT.

Bush still seeks a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear weapons program including sanctions the U.N. Security Council must approve, but Jacques Chirac of France is being French.

Iran's Ahmadenijad will speak later.

Love this:

The US administration refused to issue visas to all Iranian reporters as well as a number of the president's entourage in defiance of all international rules and regulations.

Kind of like Iran seeking nuclear weapons in defiance of the U.N. nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

But first up was Kofi -- King of the Planet.

From Reuters:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a farewell address to global leaders on Tuesday, depicted a world divided by an unjust economy, contempt for human rights and a failure to make peace in the Middle East.

Annan's "Unjust economy"= Reality -- free-markets

Annan's "Contempt for human rights"= Reality ---The United States defending itself against those who seek to murder its citizens

Annan's "Failure to make peace in middle east" = Reality---Israel defends itself against attack by those that seek Israel's destruction

Not seeking to call on terrorists to stop terrorizing, killing, murdering, maiming....Annan scolds:

Annan said fear of terrorism had made many people feel insecure but warned that should not be used as a pretext "to abridge or abrogate fundamental human rights."

In other words, Annan sees no real threat in terrorism, just an overreaction by those nations subjected to it.

President Bush, always gracious, even to those who actively sought to undermine his soverign right to protect this country:

At a luncheon for world leaders, President George W. Bush toasted Annan for his compassion, decency and quest for peace.

"We need to toast the fact that you're a hard worker. For those of you who've had the honor of taking a phone call from Kofi Annan, you know that he's not always calling from the same address," Bush said, to laughter.

"We need to toast the fact that he is a decent, honorable man. And we need to raise our glasses to 10 years of extraordinary service and be thankful that a man such as Kofi Annan was willing to stand up and serve the cause of justice and peace," the president said.

2006-09-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Thailand Coup

Thailand's government has been taken over by the army for the first time in 15 years. This will no doubt be a fluid story for quite a while.

2006-09-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Muslim Outrage and the Pope

Another percieved slight has set the Muslim ablaze with outrage. In a recent academic lecture the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor's remarks concerning Islam. The media insufficently reported the context of the remarks here in the West and the always-ready- to -stoke- the- flames Arabic press totally mischaracterized the Pope's words. The Muslims have responded by attacking churches, killing nuns and calling for the Pope's death.

In other words, doing exactly as the 14th century Byzantine emperor described in the year 1391--- whom the Pope quoted in his lecture.

Anne Applebaum responds in the Washington Post.

Graylady Down attempts to cover for the extremists.

2006-09-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hitchens Blasts Dems Senate Intel Report

Christopher Hitchens fills in blanks curiously not included in the Senate Intelligence Committee report widely- reported on by the MSM.

Hitchens is indispensible in getting at the truth in an atmosphere of half-reporting and outright exclusion of inconvinient facts by the MSM concerning the Saddam/Niger/yellow cake story.

The tactic for the liberal MSM has been confuse and obscure concerning this story, while at the same time hyping the Plameout non-conspiracy.

Future historians will judge the behavior of the current MSM and compare today with the yellow journalism of the past. Only this time, the reporting is being conducted under the banner of "objectivity" which in itself is almost laughable on its face.

2006-09-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

WSJ's Bret Stephens onWhy Liberals Won't Fight

In an excellent op-ed today, Mr. Stephens wonders why liberals won't fight Islam to defend their core principals.

Here's a puzzle: Why is it so frequently the case that the people who have the most at stake in the battle against Islamic extremism and the most to lose when Islamism gains--namely, liberals--are typically the most reluctant to fight it?

I would add to Mr. Stephen's comments; liberals so dislike and hate Bush that they fail to see the threat that militant Islam poses to Western society. They see the Global War on Terror merely as "Bush's War". Liberals are either not paying attention to our enemy says, or dangerously dismiss it as "extremist rhetoric" --- the same line of thinking that led to 9-11-01.

Either way, liberals and Democrats have proven with their words and actions, they can not be trusted to protect the nation in this time of peril because they are unserious and consumed with blind hatred of Bush to recognize the very real threat the enemy poses.

2006-09-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

NATO Completes Ops in Southern Afghanistan

Here's the story from the AP.

Curiously, you have to read futher down in the story to find out what had been accomplished in the operation.

Lt. Gen. David Richards, head of the 20,000 NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said the insurgents had been forced to abandon their positions and reconstruction and development efforts would soon begin in the volatile former Taliban heartland, he said.

He said the insurgents had "suffered significant casualties" and "had no choice but to leave."
Alliance officials have said more than 500 militants were killed during the two-week-long operation, centered mainly in Panjwai, Pashmul and Zhari districts in southern Kandahar province.

In the second paragraph the writer covertly seeks to deligitimize any NATO claim of a successful conclusion to the op by citing Taliban attacks "elsewhere" in the country. Why not report on attacks within the NATO operational battlespace? By not reporting whether there is or is not, it's left to the imagination of the success in the NATO op and unless you read the story in its entireity you can't draw a fully informed conclusion.

While not overtly saying the op wasn't successful, the piece is still constructed curiously, and in my opinion, at the very least seeks to downplay the success of the NATO op.

2006-09-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ollie Argues For Battleships

In October of 1987 after completing the Navy's Firecontrolman Class "A" school in Great Lakes Illinois, I and a large majority of my classmates received our orders to our first sea command ---USS Wisconsin (BB-64).

Many of my shipmates were disappointed. They were wanting to go to the newer, high-tech ships armed with the Aegis fire control system, or maybe a carrier with all its "Top Gun" flash. But not me. I was thrilled. A World War II buff from elementary school age, being assigned to the Wisconsin was like a dream come true.

The Wisconsin, we found out was being re-activated and due for re-commissioning in October 1988. She was at Ingalls Shipyard being worked on. The Navy sent us to Norfolk Naval Station for training prior to being assigned to the oppressive humidity and heat of south Mississippi. I had a digital watch die in that humidity and never got to use the world wide time zone feature for real.

The Mk 38 Gun Fire Control System is the fire control system for those 16 inch guns that everyone loves. The actual equipment is old, some World War II technology and some dates back to the Korean War. But it all works just fine.

Colonel North being a Marine, is understandably supportive of having the Iowa class battleships in the fleet to provide naval gunfire support for amphibious operations. I've watched those 16 inch rounds impact the beach from the perspective of the turret rangefinder --- a huge kind of binoculers. You can actually see the shrapnel erupt from the blast of impact.

But, unfortunately the time of the modernized battleship has passed. There are many reasons.

In today's Navy, there are very, very few ships active that use the same kind of fuel as the Iowas -- maybe a few aged support ships and auxiliaries. Though they have long-legs, the Iowas are asset-prohibitive --- there would have to be attached to a battleship group (SAG -- surface action group) a tanker dedicated to fueling the battleship exclusively.

Though the 1980's configured Iowas boasted having 4 Vulcan Phalanx mounts capable of 3000 rounds of 20mm per minute as a missile defense, in today's naval combat environment wouldn't be capable of defending the ship against multiple anti-ship missile salvoes that would be fired at it. There would have to be attached a anti-air platform, this spreads the fleet thinner than it already is. In my time, there were nearly 600 ships in the Navy. There are less than 300 today.

The effective range of the 16inchers is around 20 miles, so that limits the space the ship can operate in. While that may seem like a long distance it really isn't. Consider the distance some of those mach9 ASM's can cover in a matter of seconds. And the potential enemy could mine the area forcing the fleet to commit unarmed sweepers to clear the area before the Iowas could enter. Not very efficient.

It takes a lot of manpower to man up the ship. It's normal complement is 1500. Most of these guys are used to man the 16 and 5 inch ammunition loading positions. That's a lot of payroll.

Though the reasons are logical for arguing against reactivating the battleships, if the Navy should ever ask, I'd be back to serve in a heartbeat.

There's nothing quite like being a battleship sailor.

FC2 Stone
Spot One Supervisor
FM Division
USS Wisconsin BB-64 (Plankowner)

2006-09-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Real "American Gulag"

From the New York Post.

Why don't stories like this appear in other MSM outlets? We hear so much about flushed Korans, and the hyperbole of "torture" when it comes to Gitmo. Why don't we hear about attacks on the guards by the al Qaeda creepazoids? How much anti-war disinformation and filtered selective-information is being fed to the American people.

The MSM stands tall for the First Amendment to the Constitution but when it comes to the truth, the whole truth, they are AWOL.

It is a disservice to the nation.

2006-09-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Noonan on Dems and Bush

Peggy Noonan writes in OpinionJournal:

The Democrats' mistake--ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush--is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They've been sucker-punched by their own animosity.

"The Democrats now are incapable of answering a question on policy without mentioning Bush six times," says pollster Kellyanne Conway. " 'What is your vision on Iraq?' 'Bush lied us into war.' 'Health care? 'Bush hasn't a clue.' They're so obsessed with Bush it impedes them from crafting and communicating a vision all their own." They heighten Bush by hating him.

One of the oldest clichés in politics is, "You can't beat something with nothing." It's a cliché because it's true. You have to have belief, and a program. You have to look away from the big foe and focus instead on the world and philosophy and programs you imagine.

Mr. Bush's White House loves what the Democrats are doing. They want the focus on him. That's why he's out there talking, saying Look at me.

Because familiarity doesn't only breed contempt, it can breed content. Because if you're going to turn away from him, you'd better be turning toward a plan, and the Democrats don't appear to have one.

Which leaves them unlikely to win leadership. And unworthy of it, too.

2006-09-14T10:43:00.001-07:00

Iran Watch

China has publicly called on Iran to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the same day as Ahmadenijad calls for "new conditions". Whatever "new conditions" means.

China and Russia have been the most reluctant nations with permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran over it's blooming nuclear program. China and Russia both have veto power on the Security Council and both have selfish reasons for protecting Iran. China gets a great deal of their oil from Iran and the Russians are both selling arms and contributing significantly to the Iranian nuclear program.

It could be that Ahmadenijad (and those shadowy mullahs) have coluded with China to try and ratchet down the bellicosity of the situation.

Maybe U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has talked with Chinese behind the scenes to move Iran towards a diplomatic solution. If so, another reason for Bolton supporters to force Democrats to allow a floor vote on Mr. Bolton.

Oil prices snapshot.

2006-09-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

2006-09-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

From the "Are You Freaking Kidding?" File:

Saddam wasn't a dictator according to the chief judge in his trial.

"I wonder why this man (the witness) wanted to meet with me, if I am a dictator?" Saddam asked.

The judge interrupted, "You were not a dictator. People around you made you (look like) a dictator."
"Thank you," Saddam responded, bowing his head in respect.

But, there is an explaination after all:

A Shiite Muslim with 25 years experience, al-Amiri was a member of Saddam's Baath party and served as a judge in a criminal court under the former leader's regime. He heads the five-judge panel that will decide the fate of Saddam, a Sunni Muslim.

I hope the verdict is a majority of the five.

2006-09-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Poland Steps Forward

Poland comes up with 1,000 troops for the Afghan Front.

Thank you.

Though they will not be available until next February, at least Poland is standing up with it's allies in the war on Islamic fascism.

2006-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Lebanon/Hezbollah Shellgame

Lebanonese Prime Minister tells Hezbollah to keep their arms and heavier weaponry hidden from view. AP via Yahoo News.

Out of sight, out of mind:

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's prime minister vowed Thursday that his army will confiscate any weapons it encounters in southern Lebanon, ...

"We want this area to be under the army's and the Lebanese state's control. The army has all the authority to ban any armed appearances and confiscate those weapons," Saniora said.

But is Hezbollah part of the state of Lebanon or not?

Saniora said the troops would not actively hunt for hidden Hezbollah arsenals, but he made clear his Western-backed government would no longer allow the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah to dominate the south.

Hezbollah's senior political officer in southern Lebanon, Sheik Hassan Ezzeddine, on Thursday defended the presence of guerrillas near the border with Israel.
"The resistance (Hezbollah) is part of the fabric of these towns and villages and it is present on its territory and among its population," Ezzeddine told The Associated Press. "Hezbollah is there to defend Lebanon's rights. It is a legitimate right for any people whose territory is under occupation."

Okay, but look closely here:

However, Hezbollah legislator Hassan Fadlallah acknowledged his group targeted civilians in Israeli cities, saying it was a response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

"We do not deny that we have bombarded Israeli cities, settlements and infrastructure. But this was always a reaction," he said in an interview by telephone with Al-Jazeera. "It was a natural reaction. When a state is invaded, it must defend itself."

Unless the state is Israel, responding to the Hezbollah incursion of Israel's U.N. approved border, Israeli soldiers are killed and some kidnapped from their border posts. Hezbollah calls this self-defense.

How can good-faith negotiations be held with people with such a twisted view of reality?

2006-09-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Novak Clarifies Armitage Role

Robert Novak let's the cat fully out of the bag concerning former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's role in the Plameout kerfluffle. Via RealClearPolitics.

Novak is not very happy about Armitage's depiction:

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

This one paragraph, in not- so- subtle terms, describes Armitage as less than forthcoming with the truth and confirms the increasingly comical Wilson as a liar. This should be the final nail in the Plameout coffin.

An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president's lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the Left.

2006-09-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

Dems Go After Whitman

Democrats go after former Bush EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman over 9-11 air quality during the cleanup.

At hearings last week in New York, Whitman was the most frequent target of lawmakers who charged that ground zero workers were not protected as they worked to clear the pile of toxic debris.

But this is good:

Former Sept. 11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean, also a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said it was troubling that the Democratic congressmen"would misuse the heroic service of thousands for their political gain in an election season."

Here is the reply by those astute lawmakers:

The congressmen _ New York Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner and New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. _ said the health of their constituents, and not politics, was their concern.

My question for these non-politically motivated Democrat lawmakers is: Where have your concerns been for the last 5 years?

2006-09-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

Democrat Leaders Push for Media "Balance" on National Security

Senate Minority leader Harry Reid and and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have sent letters to the major networks demanding that Democrat positions on national security be given equal time.

Demogogues anyone?

2006-09-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm a Cynic

But could the Iranians be playing around with diplomacy to try and slow the drop in oil prices by interjecting a little uncertainty into the markets despite what their oil minister says?

With oil dropping on word:

On Wednesday, Iran's oil minister said the country would not use oil exports as a bargaining chip during its standoff with the United Nations over its nuclear program. Iran's plans to keep oil flowing eased some lingering worries in the market about supply threats - worries that have dwindled so much that crude prices have fallen nearly 19 percent over the past two months.

Maybe the postponment of the talks at the very last minute are an attempt to make up for the remarks of Iran's oil minister to get crude prices up again.

Maybe I'm a cynic.

2006-09-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

Abbas Seeks Revival of "Roadmap"

From the Washington Post, it seems Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is eager to get back on track with President Bushs' 2003 plan for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

The writer glances over the main "roadblock":

But neither the Palestinians nor Israel met their initial obligations, and the plan never got off the ground.

The Palestininans never stopped attacking Israel and the Israelis never stopped defending themselves is what she really should say.

Later, in early 2006 the Palestinians elected the terror group Hamas to govern the territories. Hamas was asked to rescind its pledge to destroy Israel, disarm and recognize Israel's right to exist. They have done neither. Western aid was then cut off to the Palestinians following Hamas' intransigence; aid that accounts for the vast majority of cash that keeps the Palestinians afloat because the Palestinian economy is basically nil. More than likely this is the main motivation for all of this "roadmap" talk. The Pals need cash.

Hamas isn't out of the picture though despite "mass resignations":

Government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said the ministers handed their portfolios to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader. The next step would be Haniyeh's resignation. Abbas would then pick a candidate to form a new government _ probably Haniyeh.

When the "Hamas leader" gets to pick the cabinet, you can be sure Hamas will maintain control and until Hamas renounces violence, disarms and recognizes Israel's right to exist --- things they are unlikely to do --- it will be business as usual. I hate to be so pessimistic, but we've been down this "road" many times before.

2006-09-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

NATO Troops Not Forthcoming

This is the military coalition that faced down the Soviet Red Army?

Britain has contributed over 5,000 troops to the NATO mission, while the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France have also sent sizeable forces.

Okay, let's see. U.S., Germany, Canada, the Dutch, Italy, France, U.K. all have troops in the Afghan fight.

These do not: Spain, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece, Turkey. I'm not including the former East-Bloc satellites because the earliest they joined was in 1999 and so they can be given a pass. But I'd wager they have more of a stomach than the nations listed in boldface above.

Unimaginable. Unforgivable. Especially considering:

Less than 24 hours after the (Sept.11) attacks, NATO invoked for the first time Article 5 of the Washington Treaty - its collective defence clause - declaring the attacks to be an attack against all NATO members. The Alliance subsequently deployed aircraft and ships in support of the United States.

I guess maybe these nations changed their minds about invoking Article 5. I guess it sounded good around 9-11-01, but in actual practice some "allies" don't have the stomach for a fight.

I suppose the Soviets can come on back because the West was never really serious about fighting terrorism and maybe they weren't serious in combating the Soviets either.

Maybe the Poles should have a bigger place at the NATO supper table.

2006-09-12T16:30:00.001-07:00

Anbar Province

A "leaked" classified intelligence assesment has found it's way to the media --- the Washington Post's Thomas "fiasco" Ricks to be precise.

He begins:

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western al Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

Ricks has been a long-time military corespondent and use of the word "secret" should be taken at face value. There are four levels of "classification" in the military -- "unlimited release" is the lowest level, "classified", "secret", and highest of all "top secret". A "leak" of a secret document by military personnel is serious business. It is amazing to me that at a time of war, military members are willing to expose military secrets for political purposes. This isn't coming from the lower enlisted ranks standing post at Entry Control Points, this has to be coming from comissioned officers driving a desk somewhere in the rear with the rest of the gear.

I guess the support and defend the Constitution part of the Oath of Enlistment has a new subparagraph "depending on who is in the White House".

"I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report. Like others interviewed about the report, he spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the document's sensitivity.

No that's not quite right. The Defense Department official is worried about his ass going to prison should he be named confirming what is in a document classified secret. I believe that my characterization is a bit more accurate than "Fiasco" Ricks. If the DoD minion was concerned about "the document's sensitivity" he would be answering Ricks question with "I cannot confirm or deny the existance of such a document".

Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made.

I would like to ask "Fiasco" Ricks just what his definition of "progress" in Iraq is. It's funny, when there is actual measurable progress like the turnover of the first Iraqi army division to the democratically elected Iraqi government, the fact there are over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers currently in the training pipline is just some Bush-neocon pipedream or an illusion of progress. It is as if Bush skeptics like "Fiasco" Ricks keep moving the "progress-bar" further down the track. Every measurable step in progress is reported as a "yeah, but".

It (the classified secret intelligence report) is provoking intense debate over the key finding that in Anbar, the U.S. effort to clear and hold major cities and the upper Euphrates valley has failed.

Well. it has only failed if we quit. Let's look at Anbar province and those major cities.

Anbar province covers an area of 30,000 square miles and is clearly the largest province in Iraq. Ramadi, the province capital has 400,000 citizens, Fallujah 200,000 citizens. Even Saddam had trouble here:

Anbar, with Ramadi and Fallujah in particular, is known for its inhabitants' strong tribal and religious traditions. Allegedly, former President Saddam Hussein was constantly wary of the volatile nature of the area. Most of the inhabitants of the province are Sunni Muslims from the Dulaim tribe. fr. Wikipedia.

If Saddam had trouble surely we have trouble.

Anbar covers 30,000 square miles. According to this report:

There are about 30,000 U.S. forces in Anbar, which also includes restive cities such as Ramadi and Haditha and borders countries which such as Jordan and Syria which have in the past served as infiltration points for foreign insurgents.

I was only an enlisted man in both the Army and the Navy, but I can do the math. You cannot "clear and hold" 30,000 square miles of territory bordered by a hostile Syria and possibly hostile Jordan with at a minimum 600,000 hostile people in it with 30,000 troops. At best you can have one soldier or Marine for every square mile. The US Marines are good, but not that good. It will take more troops.

But according to NBC news, it's the Iraqis to sort out at a later date.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday there has been some military and economic progress in Anbar, but for the first first time, it appears the U.S. military is preparing to concede a large piece of Iraq to the enemy and leave it entirely to the Iraqis to eventually sort it out.

This is exactly what the Democrats have been wanting, Iraqis to solve their own problems not only in Anbar but problems in the entire country. It will be interesting to follow the fallout.

2006-09-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

Anbar Province

A "leaked" classified intelligence assesment has found it's way to the media --- the Washington Post's Thomas "fiasco" Ricks to be precise.

He begins:

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western al Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

Ricks has been a long-time military corespondent and use of the word "secret" should be taken at face value. There are four levels of "classification" in the military -- "unlimited release" is the lowest level, "classified", "secret", and highest of all "top secret". A "leak" of a secret document by military personnel is serious business. It is amazing to me that at a time of war, military members are willing to expose military secrets for political purposes. This isn't coming from the lower enlisted ranks standing post at Entry Control Points, this has to be coming from comissioned officers driving a desk somewhere in the rear with the rest of the gear.

I guess the support and defend the Constitution part of the Oath of Enlistment has a new subparagraph "depending on who is in the White House".

"I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report. Like others interviewed about the report, he spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the document's sensitivity.

No that's not quite right. The Defense Department official is worried about his ass going to prison should he be named confirming what is in a document classified secret. If the DoD minion was concerned about "the document's sensitivity" he would be answering Ricks question with "I cannot confirm or deny the existance of such a document".

Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made.

I would like to ask "Fiasco" Ricks just what his definition of "progress" in Iraq is. It's funny, when there is actual measurable progress like the turnover of the first Iraqi army division to the democratically elected Iraqi government, the fact there are over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers currently in the training pipline is just some Bush-neocon pipedream or an illusion of progress. It is as if Bush skeptics like "Fiasco" Ricks keep moving the "progress-bar" further down the track. Every measurable step in progress is reported as a "yeah, but".

It (the classified secret intelligence report) is provoking intense debate over the key finding that in Anbar, the U.S. effort to clear and hold major cities and the upper Euphrates valley has failed.

Well. it has only failed if we quit. Let's look at Anbar province and those major cities.

Anbar province covers an area of 30,000 square miles and is clearly the largest province in Iraq. Ramadi, the province capital has 400,000 citizens, Fallujah 200,000 citizens. Even Saddam had trouble here:

Anbar, with Ramadi and Fallujah in particular, is known for its inhabitants' strong tribal and religious traditions. Allegedly, former President Saddam Hussein was constantly wary of the volatile nature of the area. Most of the inhabitants of the province are Sunni Muslims from the Dulaim tribe. fr. Wikipedia.

If Saddam had trouble surely we have trouble.

Anbar covers 30,000 square miles. According to this report:

There are about 30,000 U.S. forces in Anbar, which also includes restive cities such as Ramadi and Haditha and borders countries which such as Jordan and Syria which have in the past served as infiltration points for foreign insurgents.

I was only an enlisted man in both the Army and the Navy, but I can do the math. You cannot "clear and hold" 30,000 square miles of territory bordered by a hostile Syria and possibly hostile Jordan with at a minimum 600,000 hostile people in it with 30,000 troops. At best you can have one soldier or Marine for every square mile. The US Marines are good, but not that good. It will take more troops.

But according to NBC news, it's the Iraqis to sort out at a later date.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday there has been some military and economic progress in Anbar, but for the first first time, it appears the U.S. military is preparing to concede a large piece of Iraq to the enemy and leave it entirely to the Iraqis to eventually sort it out.

This is exactly what the Democrats have been wanting, Iraqis to solve their own problems. It will be interesting to follow the fallout.

2006-09-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Numbers

If this is true it is an incredibly stupid thing to do.

At some point, idiots who make such decisions to artificially make the situation seem better than it actually is should be fired. We do not need Clintonian "is" definition-types making decisions when dealing with such serious issues; there are none more serious than reporting on a combat-zone where U.S. servicemen(women) are serving.

There is so much hyperbole and disinformation swirling around Iraqi Front it's a wonder anyone can trust what anyone is saying.

2006-09-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

Armitage Now Added to Plame Civil Suit

I guess the Wilson's needed to butress their case in some way. Grasping at straws these two. This whole thing is becoming such a parody. The Wilson's extended 15 minutes are way over.

The funny thing is in the story by NBC producer Joel Seidman where he quotes Armitage:

Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says.

Now he says he made a terrible mistake in revealing Plame's employer at the time. Artmitage says, "Oh I feel terrible. Every day, I think I let down the president. I let down the Secretary of State. I let down my department, my family and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson."

"I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative," he says.

Apparently, NBC producer Seidman uses the same exact Armitage quotes in his September 12th, 2006 story as a September 7th, 2006 "CBS Exclusive" without citing the credit to CBS. I don't know if this is ethical or not. Maybe there is a statute of limitations on "exclusivity".

2006-09-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn on "Blue-State Patriotism"

In another great piece, Mark Steyn let's them have it!

Anyway, by paragraph two the prof's on to the burning of Pequot Indian villages in the 1630s and by paragraph three the massacre of natives in the Philippines, and by paragraph six Zinn's objecting to "the entrance of the United States into the slaughter fields of the war in Europe in World War I" -- an inelegant formulation that makes it plain that it's not just that in this or that way America is screwing up the world, but that America itself is one great ongoing screw-up and has been since 1630. Hard to see what's patriotic about viewing your nation as a 400-year mistake.

2006-09-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Nice to See the "Old Girl"

I was part of the 1988 re-commisioning crew of this ship in the photo from Defenselink imagery, USS Wisconsin BB-64. Seems that the Navy is using it for some new selection Chief Petty Officer training. The Whisky is currently in Norfolk Va. as a museum.

I served in FM Division from 1987 to 1989 as a main battery gun system firecontrolman, starting as a turret 2 computer operator and ending up supervisor of main battery director forward Spot 1 when by some miracle I recieved promotion. Spot 1 is the highest "grey" part of the ship visible in the photo and was responsible for directing those huge rifles so prevalent in the photo.

I was 23 years old. Those were the days.

2006-09-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

Not So Fast

In this Weekly Standard piece, Tom Joscelyn points out that the Dems on the Senate Intelligence Committee did some cherry-picking of their own to attempt (yet again) to debunk al Qaida-Saddam ties....and they even take Saddam at his word.

Amazing.

Again, Democrats are not serious when it comes to national security. The are simply just not.

2006-09-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

Defining Victory Down

In this Washington Post piece, Pakistani Ahmed Rashid contends that Islamic terrorists are winning by merely surviving and improving tactics and strategy that befuddle the technologically dependent U.S. and NATO forces arrayed against them.

The definition of hyperbole:

Imagine an Arab guerrilla army that is never seen by Israeli forces, never publicly celebrates victories or mourns defeats, and merges so successfully into the local population that Western TV networks can't interview its commanders or fighters. Such was the achievement of Hezbollah's 33-day war against Israeli troops, who admitted that they rarely saw the enemy until they were shot at.

This is utterly and completely misleading as it is equally ignorant of history. The "Arab guerilla army" merges into the local population not because of any masterful strategy, it "disappears" because there is no army in the classic sense and it wears not uniforms but civilian attire. This "army" hides amoung civilians, intentionally targets civilians and had six years to dig tunnels caves and bunkers into rocky and hilly terrain. There is no major unique, tactical or strategic accomplishment here, there is only the cowardly acts of an "army" that by all accounts should be called to account for its war-crimes. Most times in war the advancing forces do not see the defenders until the defenders open fire. This tactic is almost as old as war itself, certainly the most common defensive strategy of the 20th and 21st century. The Washington Post editors that publish this pap should crack a history book or two.

2006-09-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

9-11 Remembrance Roundup

Here are some of the best:

Mario Loyola from NRO.

Steven Stalinsky from NRO on Arab and Iranian media reaction to 9-11.

Jed Babbin in The American Spectator.

James Piereson from RealClearPolitics.

Christopher Hitchens in OpinionJournal.

Washington Times Editorial.

2006-09-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

"Ten Reasons Why Islam(ists) can Win"

Found this perusing RCP.

1) The first is the extent of political division in the non-Muslim world about what is afoot. Some reject outright that there is a war at all...

Yep, I'll agree to that. Just what it will take to convince the lefty loons that it's their fight too is unknown. But one can predict with absolute certainty it will take costly loss for them to wake up and smell the Birkenstocks.

Divided counsels have also dictated everything from “dialogue” to the use of nuclear weapons, and from reliance on “public diplomacy” to “taking out Islamic sites”, Mecca included.

I know of no serious debate in which anyone has proposed the use of nuclear weapons and "taking out Islamic sites". Perhaps the author has, but he gives too much creedance to such wrongheaded views and by extension prolongs the conflict by giving such ridiculous agitprop voice in this publication.

2) The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a “religion of peace” nor a “religion hijacked” or “perverted” by “the few”. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to “share a common set of values” with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself.

"As things stand" are the most important 3 words in this passage the totality of which is a stunning indictment of the "true" nature of Islam. The West is currently divided between those that recognize the threat of radical Islam and its enablers and those self-haters who see through the prism of political correctness and the haze of moral-relativism no threat at all. Until the West unites, Islam will "win". It all comes down to "do the Islamists love their children more than they hate us" because once united, the West will ultimately win.

3) Indeed, the third reason why Islam will not be defeated, as things stand, is the low level of Western leadership, in particular in the United States...

The United States, and Great Britain to a lesser extent Australia are the only Western nations engaged in the struggle and therefore recognize the threat posed. No other Western power can bring itself to even recognize the threat much less provide leadership. George Bush's attempt at bringing democracy to the Islamic middle east is not a completed story at the time of this writing. Afghanistan and Iraq are still works in progress and to deem them failures because Muslims cannot accept the concept of democracy because they are Muslims is ridiculous and racist.

Moreover, to Islam’s further advantage, it has led most of today’s “progressives” to say little, or even to keep silent, about what would once have been regarded as the reactionary aspects of Islam: its oppressive hostility to dissent, its maltreatment of women, its supremacist hatred of selected out-groups such as Jews and gays, and its readiness to incite and to use extremes of violence against them. Mein Kampf circulates in Arab countries under the title Jihadi.

Further proof that the core weakness of the West is the willingness of unserious leftist "progressives" who harbor deep-seated resentment of their own nations and themselves and see in Islam the reverential "noble savage". This is due to the failing education system cirriculum of mass PC indoctrination by "progressive" elites who see the "war" as "Bush-lied people-died". This illustrates itself in the cacophony of university professors promoting wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories surrounding the 9-11 attacks blaming Israel and/or the President of the United States. This unhinged view is commonly shared by the most-rabid western "progressives" and the Muslim world fed by a dominant and lying media.

It's not that "progressives" are remaining silent to Islam's human rights abuses, it's the fact that "progressives" share talking points with the islamists thereby enabling them and prolonging the "war".

6) The sixth reason for Islam’s growing strength is the vicarious satisfaction felt by many non-Muslims at America’s reverses.

Anti-Americanism finally rears its ugly head to such a degree that, and let's face it, most of Europe and American left, including a leftist news media, actively support defeat because of an all-absorbing hatred of one man -- George W. Bush. This fact speaks volumes on the character of leftists world wide.

7) The seventh reason lies in the moral poverty of the West’s, and especially America’s, own value system. Doctrines of market freedom, free choice and competition — or “freedom ’n’ liberty” — are no match for the ethics of Islam and Sharia, like them or not. Yet in the “battle for hearts and minds” the US First Cavalry Division saw fit to set up “Operation Adam Smith” in Iraq to teach marketing skills, among other things, to local entrepreneurs. There can be no victory here. Or, as Sheikh Mohammed al-Tabatabi told thousands of worshippers in Baghdad in May 2003: “The West calls for freedom and liberty. Islam rejects such liberty. True liberty is obedience to Allah.”

The author here bashes American morals yet gives no evidence or even indication as to what he's talking about. Comparing modern concepts of "market freedom", "free choice" and "competition" to the 7th century barbarism of Sharia law? The ice cream shops in Baghdad are packed this time of year.

) The next indication that Islam’s advance will continue lies in the skilful use being made of the media and of the world wide web in the service both of the “electronic jihad” and the bamboozling of Western opinion by Muslim spokesmen.

It's not so much that the Western media is bambozzled by "Muslim spokesman" it is Western media is so completely invested in opposing George W. Bush and his policies at every turn and have come to actively and unchallengingly embrace the lies of the Islamist line. Much as this piece does.

9) The ninth factor guaranteeing Islam’s onward march is the West’s dependency on the material resources of Arab and Muslim countries.

No doubt about it. Take away oil from the equation and the islamists herd goats.

10) Finally, the West is convinced that its notions of technology-driven modernity and market-driven prog- ress are innately superior to the ideals of “backward” Islam. This is an old delusion.

Ah, the reverance for the noble savage. Beheadings, honor killings, amputations of limbs for petty crimes, the death penalty for rape victims and those that might defend themselves from rapists, public stonings....yes, they are all superior to freedom of the press, freedom of speech and all other civil liberties that enable one to pursue an individual dream in Western liberal democracies. Islam is backward, firmly rooted in the barbarity of the 7th century. The only thing feeding it are petrodollars, and the only thing encouraging it is unhinged western "progressive" self-loathing.

2006-09-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

Since the Last Post was on Star Trek...

I found this TimesOnline piece via NRO's The Corner and just had to take issue with an obviously uniformed, anti-American agenda driven twit. There, I said it.

Mess with Trek and America simultaneously at your own peril.

Thanks to a process of osmosis from perennial reruns, Star Trek has propagated the belief that it is proper to interfere in other societies, that it is America’s duty to assume the role of (inter-)world policeman, and to correct the errant ways of other cultures — for their own good.

Wrong. Had the writer of this drivel even spent a moment watching the show or analyzing the philosophy contained within the show(s) he would have run across a concept called The Prime Directive.

The Prime Directive was a rule specifically put into place to prevent starship crews from interfering with indigenous cultures on the worlds that they encountered, especially those cultures which were not as technologically advanced as the United Federation of Planets. This storyline was explored many times.

When there was interferance or contact usually it was to stop mass murder or bloody war and it was usually after a very painful decision-making process. Maybe the writer believes that cultures have an inherant right to genocide. One could surmise that the author might.

Here the author attempts to talk about the PD, but he doesn't explore it much more than this:

Then what of the show’s celebrated “prime directive”, that the explorers should never interfere in alien civilisations? The problem here is that the prime directive is blatantly and persistently violated.

Sometimes, sometimes not. Usually only in the case of the abovementioned genocide, or slavery, or war. Usually the "scandalous" Captain Kirk and crew were trying to prevent genocide, slavery and war. Again I guess the writer feels this is a bad thing.

Star Trek represented not the ethos of mutual, egalitarian co-operation, but of multinational interference firmly under the leadership of Americans.

This is just camoflaged America-hating and that's all that needs to be said. I guess if the writer existed in the Trek universe he be a blame-humanity/human species self-hating type too.

2006-09-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

Still the Best Captain the USS Enterprise Ever Had

Pointless, and a little mean-spirited, this piece is a little harsh on Wiliam Shatner. But this gives me an excuse to post a photo of James T. Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise.

Eat your heart out Jean-Luc.

Via Drudge.

2006-09-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

Armitage Speaks on Plameout

Former Deputy Secretary of State in the first Bush administration and original Plame leak source, Richard Armitage speaks with CBS about the kerfluffle. And now it is special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald who may have some 'splainin' to do.

Key point of interest: CBS national security correspondent David Martin asks the wrong question:

When asked if he feels he owes the Wilsons an apology, he says, "I think I've just done it."

Amazing, absolutely amazing. What about an apology to the n'er to be frog-marched Karl Rove, Mr. Martin?

2006-09-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

Is it Safe?

This isn't Laurance Olivier in the film Marathon Man, but the Power Line guys hit it on the head answering the Democrats led by "dim demogogue Harry Reid" on the question: Are we safer now than before 9-11-2001?

2006-09-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

Clueless in Seattle

Syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman could have saved The Seattle Times the news print taken up by her column just writing: "All is lost! We're Doomed! Nobody Likes Us Anymore!" Heck the Times could have recouped the cost it incurred for the day to carry her column by running the latest Starbucks ad.

Goodman writes:
But here is something I never imagined five years ago: that America would lose our status as the good guy in the struggle against terrorism. I didn't imagine that our government would squander the righteous role won for us the hard way by victims falling from the Twin Towers and firefighters racing to their deaths.

In Goodman's distorted leftist world view, America as Victim is somehow a badge of righteousness, unfortunately she isn't alone in this delusion. Many on the left, included elected Democrats in Congress believe this as well --- it is more important to be liked by the "world community"or have their sympathy than to be alive and defending yourself. Also, someone should inform Goodman that it is much easier to become a victim than to fight back against those that ruthlessly endeavour to make you a victim. Fighting back and protecting yourself is much harder. And the firefighters on 9-11 weren't rushing to their deaths...they were rushing to save others lives.

Goodman remembers the good ol' days:
Al-Qaida was a uniter, not a divider. After the attacks, the whole world seemed to be on our side, with the single, memorable exception of Palestinians dancing in the streets. Some 200,000 Germans marched in solidarity. Flowers arrived at our embassies. Even the reflexively anti-American newspaper Le Monde proclaimed, "We Are All Americans."

Ah yes, to have those Old Europe-types loving us in our bewildered misery. Those were the days weren't they? We as Victim U.S.A. could wallow self-conciously in our grief and self-flagellate on our "selfishness" and our lack of "concern for the Islamic world". Never mind those pesky Palestinians, they are under "brutal" Israeli "occupation", they warrant a pass for they know not what they do.

Goodman's indictment:
We went from the Twin Towers to Abu Ghraib, from civil defense to civil war, from innocent passengers to soldiers in Haditha. We blew it all on Iraq. In one poll, Europeans now find us more of a threat to world stability than even Iran. In a survey of 14 countries, none of them believes that removing Saddam made the world safer. And in Iraq itself, only 2 percent of the people now believe we invaded to liberate them from tyranny while 76 percent think we did it "to control Iraqi oil." Imagine that.

Abu Ghraib, Haditha, soldiers......the ugly, evil Americans actually fought back against those that sought to destroy their way of life and kill their people and preempt those who might join the fight on the side of our enemies. How dare they?

Goodman is horrified that a poll reveals hamstrung Europeans see us as more of a threat to world stability than islamic terrorism. Maybe this poll result illustrates Europeans were less with us than they would have liked us to realize in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 even as the bombs explode, their citizens die and terrorist plots are uncovered in their midsts. The fact that 14 countries feel that the world was safer with a Stalinist-style dictator who happily fed his citizenry into paper-shredders, gassed entire villages, invaded two neighboring countries and filled killing fields with hundreds of thousands of said Iraqi citizenry, shows that 14 countries have a very tenuous grasp on reality. Given the lies and pro-terrorist propaganda of the number one news outlet in the middle east -- al Jazeera, no wonder Iraqis have the misguided oil view they have, especially when the American news media and one of the main political parties in the U.S. spout the same line and feeding the same illusion to Americans, Iraqis, and the world as a whole.

Goodman:

In his run-up to the fifth anniversary, the president is trying to shore up the connections between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism as cannily as he tried to connect 9/11 to Saddam. "The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," he told one friendly audience.

Goodman follows the Democratic talking point of "do not connect Iraq and GWOT". Is it really so hard for liberals like Goodman to see that it is all one confrontation. Even al Qaida has stated that Iraq was the central battlefield against the west. Bin Laden's rationale for attacking the U.S. has been that the U.S. was a "paper tiger" not having the stomach for a real fight even citing Vietnam and Somalia as evidence of our weak stomach.

Emphasizing the seriousness of the conflict is not a Bush political calculation, as Goodman and other defeatist liberals hope to characterize it. It is reality. Stabilization of the Iraqi nation is a keystone in the war, and the attempt to differentiate between the fight in Iraq and other fronts in the war combating terrorists is a Democratic and liberal anti-war political calculation. A political calculation that is clear evidence the Democrats aren't serious in confronting terrorists because incredibly, they really don't see a "war" and the threat Islamic facist terrorists and their state sponsers pose to our people.

Goodman asks: What if victory in the war on terror does not depend on victory in the war in Iraq?
What if the Iraq war undermines and distracts us from the efforts against terrorism?

These are complete non sequiturs. An Iraq that crumbles into a chaotic failed nation will surely become a haven for terrorist organizations and perhaps a client of the world's leading terrorist-supporter, near nuclear Iran, giving the Islamic Republic control over another 10 percent of the world's oil reserves in addition to their own. Not something to even contemplate if one is serious in combatting our enemies.

As for the second question Goodman poses, I have a little secret I'll clue her in on. Engaging the terrorists on the battlefield is never a distraction from "efforts against terrorism". By even asking this question, Goodman reveals she views Iraq in a vacuum. It's the same kind of thinking so prevalent during the pre September 11, 2001 period of "world stability" that led to the devastating attacks of that terrible day.

For bin Laden, the ideological struggle is between "believers" and "infidels." For Bush, it's between freedom lovers and Islamic fascists.

For bin Laden and his ilk, the ideology is "believe or die" as in "death to the infidels" calling on all muslims to rise up and "kill Americans wherever they find them". For Bush, Ms. Goodman, it's a struggle between the civilized, modern world of the 21st century and 7th century murderers who behead captives for video cameras and murder indiscriminately innocent people wholesale ultimately hoping to engulf the world in a fundamentalist caliphate ruled by sharia law....or haven't you been paying attention? We are still the good guys compared to our enemies.

In the global village, lasting, peaceful victory depends in large part on who wins the struggle over the moral story line, over right and wrong, innocence and guilt.

Does only the victimhood immediately following 9-11 satisfy this requirement, Ms. Goodman? Does the putting women's underwear on a captured terrorist's head somehow trump beheadings of helpless captives, suicide bombings of innocents or crashing passenger-filled airliners into occupied buildings?

It's no wonder that Americans are uneasy on this fifth anniversary. More than two-thirds think the country is going in the wrong direction and that we will not win the war on terrorism in the next 10 years.

Considering that the Bush-hating mainstream media along with the defeatist and intellectually-bankrupt Democratic party hyping every reverse, trumpeting every outrage either real or imagined and downplaying/ignoring any event that may indicate progress -- constsntly beaten over the head with this, no wonder Americans might be uneasy. A booming economy that is statistically at full-employment gets no coverage while the Valerie Plame media-driven non-scandal is everywhere...that is, until the truth finally comes out.

President Bush said this was going to be a long war, only those serious about it realized that from September 12 2001 on.

2006-09-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

It is a War on Islamic Facism

Victor Davis Hanson via Real Clear Politics lays out the case for "Islamic Facism", properly characterizing the enemy the free world faces. Or at least those in the free world who are paying real attention. As always, VDH nails it right on the head.

2006-09-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

Newt....

....sounding Presidential.

2006-09-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

Progress

The Iraqis are taking more and more control over their own country. Now the Iraqi military is beginning to stand up and be counted. There's still "a ways" to go. An army doesn't sprout overnight despite Democrat contentions to the contrary.

For all those who say there is no progress in Iraq. Yes, there is.

But, as always with any news of progress, the story concludes with details of continued violence to take any sheen off good news that might come out of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

2006-09-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

Bolton Vote Blocked

Embattled Lincoln Chafee (RINO-RI) acts as democrat by blocking the Senate vote on current U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton saying he "needs more time". What a clown. It's not like Bolton hasn't been doing the job for almost 2 years already. What are you going to find out between now and election day Sen. Chafee that you don't know already?

John Bolton is probably the most effective U.N. ambassador the U.S. has had in Turtle Bay since Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the U.N. ambassador during the Reagan years.

What the U.S. needs in the limp-wristed U.N. is a no-holds-barred type of diplomat ready willing and able to aggressively pursue vital U.S. interests in the world body, especially with the stakes as high as they are now with Iran and N. Korea.

Now is not the time for a senator who contends he is a Republican to play personal politics with U.S. foreign policy. Bush is still President until 2008 and he should be able to have the team he wants in place.

Chafee is an unserious embarassment.

2006-09-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

"The Path to 9-11" Brouhaha

Amazingly, Clinton administration officials are taking issue with their portrayals in the upcoming ABC mini-series "The Path to 9-11" which is based in part on the 9-11 Commision report.

A “terribly wrong” miniseries about events leading to the Sept. 11 attacks blame President Clinton’s policies, former Clinton administration officials said in letters demanding that ABC correct it or not air it.

So, what are the former Clinton adminstration cabal contending? That they indeed caught or killed Osama bin-Laden? Are they contending these pre-9-11 attacks that happened on Mr. Clinton's watch were responded to in any concrete and effective way. History of the period does not bear this contention out. This just looks like old-fashioned Clinton damage control. No doubt allies at ABC will comply with Willie's request. And why should anyone trust what Clinton says anyway.

But in a statement released Thursday afternoon in apparent response to the growing uproar, ABC said, “No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible.”

That's an admission that ABC will change the content to save Clinton and his minions embarrassment in my opinion. One would surmise the final editing of this program should have been completed a long time ago. "The Path to 9-11" is being shown Sunday night and Monday night commercial-free, so there's no editing to be done that has to do with advertisments. At the very least, ABC is wavering to spare Clinton embarrassment. Why? I wouldn't think networks usually schedule programs for broadcast unseen in final form. The shooting script had to be approved before the thing was greenlighted by the production company before shooting even began in the first place. I don't think there was any secrecy about the script because the subject matter is part of the historical record. It will be interesting to see if there is any fall-out because of this "Clinton Outrage".

It's well-known that the series of al-Qaida attacks on U.S. personnel and facilities leading up to 9-11 took place during the eight years of Clinton's presidency and that is subject the mainstream news media has been loathe to explore with any real detail or any tough questions for the last five years.

Contrast the media/Dem outrage to ABC's "The Path to 9-11" with the reaction to this pillar of unarguable truth-telling work of filmaking.

And this was the reward.

But where's the outrage over this from the Clintonistas or anyone in the MSM?

2006-09-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

NATO Needs Reinforcement

NATO is requesting reinforcement for its operations in the south of Afghanistan. Apparently the Taliban are standing and fighting. That's not a bad thing because they can be more easily defeated in a straight up fight.

Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer criticised some member states for, in his view, not doing enough.

Who isn't doing enough? The BBC, apparently from its story, didn't ask.

2006-09-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

This Is Pretty Stupid

If the Army is truly doing what NBC is reporting, let's scream it from the top of the mountain. This is the kind of protectionism that will get people killed. If the Raytheon system turns out to be a better system when it comes online in 2011 then let's make the switch. But until then, the Israeli Trophy system that works now should be used in the field as soon as possible.

A potential drawback of this system is its incorporation on U.S. armored vehicles, i.e. power requirements for the radar, actual mounting on say the composite armor of an M1 tank, and the collateral damage to bystanders when the thing fires at the incoming anti-tank missile or RPG. It seems that the projectiles fired at the incoming anti-tank missile are equivalent to the shot fired from a shotgun. In an urban environment, with crowded streets, there could be unwanted civilian casualties.

I'm sure that if this system were indeed mounted on U.S. vehicles and Iraqi civilians were injured or killed by its operation, the NBC story would be about those Iraqi civilians killed by it, questioning whether it was worth the innocent deaths to protect some DoD harware and its occupants.

One key fact that NBC reports, but doesn't do much with is the very low percentage of deaths attributable to RPG's out of the total losses in Iraq --- 103. IEDs account for many more. Perhaps that is where DoD's focus is, as it should be.

2006-09-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Reaction to Bush's Gitmo Speech

President Bush's speech here.

ABC reacts.

Key: Many detainees were given the legal status of "enemy combatant," which includes both lawful enemy combatants and unlawful enemy combatants.

Surely the detainees will be considered "unlawful enemy combatants" when their status is further disseminated.

But this is weird: ...granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Unlawful enemy combatants should not be given protections under Geneva. Perhaps it is only certain provisions that will be adhered to mostly along the most basic humanitarian lines.

Here is the line everyone has screamed that the U.S. is in violation of Geneva (italics are mine):

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.

But here's the very next line that seems to void (in the case of our terrorist enemies) the above (italics are mine):

They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

It would seem to me that terrorist organizations, Al-Qaeda et al. have not accepted or applied the Convention so that voids our adhereance to them in dealing with terrorist detainees.

Here is the text from article 4:

Article 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

Terrorists by their very nature tactically are not lawful combatants and are not privleged to protections under Geneva. But we will extend to them the protections now because we feel we've gotten as much information out of them as we can.

We have this to thank, for better or worse. At the time it was wrongly judged a "defeat" for Bush, I took this as the Supreme Court saying that there needed to be new legislation -- a law that grants this power in the face of the enemy of today. Seems as if the President has been doing just that.

2006-09-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Fareed Zakaria on Ahmadenijad

Zakaria plays down the threat of Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad by going literally for a comparison of present-day Iran and Nazi Germany 1933-1945, particularly targeting the 1938 "appeasement period" in which Germany took the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia with the complicity of the Western Powers. But in so doing, Zakaria plays up the military power 1938 Nazi Germany much beyond the reality of its actual power at the time calling Germany's army the "mightiest" in the world. "Mightiest", by what definition Mr. Zakaria? A small point of contention granted, but Zakaria's misleading use of the word mightiest must be challenged.

By most if not all historical accounts and opinions, Germany was ill-prepared for war in 1939 when the Wehrmacht crossed the Polish frontier. It was the tactics and the overall offensive-mindedness employed by the Wehrmact -- Blitzkrieg--that doomed the Polish army -- a Polish army that was almost equal in numbers of troops (yet to be mobilized due to western interference) to the Germans. No one uses the term "mighty" when describing the Polish Army of 1939.

"Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The outbreak of a general war in 1939 took the German military leaders by surprise; the Army that marched triumphantly into Poland was one constituted not for war but for peace, and had still to be reorganised into a well-equipped, well-trained instrument of aggression." --- from The German Army 1933-1945 by Matthew Cooper

It was the German's use of surprise air strikes against Polish airfields and the rapid advance of massed German armor that eventually surrounded most Polish units in massive "caldron battles". German infantry units then easily reduced these pockets and defeated the Poles. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland effectively ended Polish resistance.

Zakaria does not make it clear why he believed the Wehrmacht penultimate because his use of "mightiest" is too vanilla. Tactically yes, the Germans were tops. In manpower and materiale? No way. Zakaria perpetuates myth here.

In terms of just numbers of infantry divisions and sheer numbers and armor quality both the French Army and Soviet Red Army (largest in the world at the time) outnumbered and outclassed the Germans. It was the outmoded doctrinal tactics of the French along with their unwillingness to fight that ultimately doomed them. If the French had crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany in 1939 while the German army was invested in the east trying to subdue Poland, it would have put Hitler in a "mighty" bind and perhaps derailed his conquest of Poland by having to move back west to confront a French threat to the German industrial heart --the Ruhr. What Hitler counted on was the unwillingness of France to do anything while he gobbled up the Polish state. An unwillingness we are seeing eerily here in 2006, by the way, no matter what Mr. Zakaria might say to the contrary.

In fact, if France had made any belligerent move towards Germany during the latter's re-occupation of the Rhineland years before, Herr Hitler had expressed orders to his forces to scamper back across the Rhine bridges . Not exactly what one might expect the "mightiest" army in the world headed by the Nazi Fuhrer to do in light of such an event.

Hitler's biggest fear was the massive Red Army of the Soviets which outnumbered the Germans heavily in every imaginable category -- men, planes, tanks. It was not until after the fall of Warsaw when Poland was partitioned by Germany and the Soviets that Hitler lost his fear of the Red Army when his generals reported on the poor state of the Red Army due to the Stalinist purges of the senior Soviet officer corps. The Soviet debacle in the USSR-Finnish conflict later that year gave Hitler the confidence that all he had to do was "kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come down." Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 severely, and eventually, fatally underestimating the manpower and materiale Stalin could muster.

"Mightiest" army in the world 1938? No way, Mr. Zakaria.

Zakaria writes:

The historian Bernard Lewis warned a few weeks ago that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could be planning to annihilate Israel (and perhaps even the United States) on Aug. 22 because it was a significant day for Muslims.

Actually, it was Ahmadenijad who warned that the "skies would light up" on August 22nd. And actually, because no one took the rhetoric of Hitler seriously in the 1930's, people are taking Ahmadenijad seriously in 2006 when he threatens to "wipe Israel from the map" and is working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons to have the capability to do just that.

Zakaria:

Most serious estimates suggest that Iran would need between five and 10 years to achieve even a modest, North Korea-type, nuclear capacity.

And so that makes everything okay, Mr. Zakaria? Well, I'm relieved.

The great debate in the 1970s was between the CIA's wimpy estimate of Soviet military power and the neoconservatives' more nightmarish scenario.

Neoconservatives in the 1970's? Strange, I heard that term for the first time during the current presidency. I ask Mr. Zakaria, does he think the Soviets had enough nuclear-tipped ICBM's to destroy the U.S. and western Europe several times over during this period or was that all part of the neo-con Bush-lied propaganda too? I can only assume the events October 1962 was an military-industrial complex conspiracy and overreaction in Mr. Zakaria's view as well.

And then there was the case of Saddam Hussein's capabilities. Saddam, we were assured in 2003, had nuclear weapons—and because he was a madman, he would use them.

Always ready to take a swipe at Bush, Zakaria fails to mention that it was conventional wisdom all through the halcyon 1990's that Saddam had WMD programs. I don't recall anyone "assuring" us he had nukes in particular in 2003, in fact the Iraq nuclear program was downplayed by the intelligence community and the administration. Again, Zakaria picks and chooses his words carefully, this time trying to minimize the Saddam WMD threat by using "nuclear weapons" instead of WMD of which he had used chemical weapons on both the Iranians and his own people.

We feared Saddam's use of and possession of WMD because he was a murderous madman and he'd used them before, Mr. Zakaria. We could not allow Saddam, wiggling out from underneath U.N. sanctions and taking advantage of the corruption rampant in the U.N. Oil-For-Food program to arm terrorists with his WMD; the programs which Saddam was at any moment ready to begin manufacture the moment the spotlight came off of him. There were enough violations of 16 U.N. resolutions by the Iraqi regime to justify finishing Saddam off once and for all and end the threat of Iraqi WMD getting into the hands of Osama and his ilk. If Zakaria can't see this he either isn't looking or is being intellectually dishonest.

He (Ahmadenijad) has gone from being an obscure and not-so-powerful politician—Iran is a theocracy, remember, so the mullahs are ultimately in control.

And we are supposed to be reassured by this? Don't take the Iranian president seriously because the real bad guys are really in charge? Mr. Zakaria fails to grasp that concept Ahmadenijad serves at the pleasure of those same mullahs that obsessively seek nuclear weapons. Nothing happens in Iran without their approval.

....to a central player in the Middle East simply by goading the United States and watching Washington take the bait. By turning him into enemy No. 1, by reacting to every outlandish statement he makes, the Bush administration has given him far more attention than he deserves.

Something Neville Chamberlin would never be accused of when dealing with Hitler pre-1939. Iran seeks to be the player in the Middle East by obtaining nuclear weapons and compelling nuclear proliferation throughout the entire middle east, Mr. Zakaria. Don't you think that would be a bad thing?

If we could contain the Soviet Union, we can contain Iran. Look at your calendar: it's 2006, not 1938.

There's a huge difference here Zakaria is blind to. The Soviets had something to lose, they feared nuclear annihilation. The USSR valued life over death and had no apocalyptic "visions" that they saw themselves being the primary catalysts. The Soviets did not see the United States as a "Great Satan" and did not call for the deaths of all capitalists.

The Iranian president and those shady mullahs hiding behind the curtains pulling the strings do call for these things and it is they who will have their fingers on the launch buttons of nuclear weapons probably sooner than Zakaria's "experts"believe. If we continue to pay attention to unrealistic appologists like Mr. Zakaria who profess great knowledge of the past yet are obviously lacking the understanding of the past to learn from it.

Update: Perhaps Mr. Zakaria sould read this also.

2006-09-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter"

There was no one out there that was a bigger advocate of the animals that were generally avoided and feared by humans. It is a shame that Steve Irwin is no longer with us. Without his advocacy, the Australian salt-water crocodile might be close to extinction. Irwin brought these creatures to our living rooms and with his ebbulliant and sometimes "crazy" antics endeared himself to many around the world. It will be hard to find someone who can fill his shoes.

2006-09-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

One Shot One Kill

Although not a primary objective of the test, the kill vehicle intercepted the warhead and destroyed it. This was the first intercept with an operationally configured interceptor.
Boeing

This system would be something to work on.

I was a Terrier (SM2-ER) fire control technician in the Navy and a Patriot type FC in the Army (MOS14E), oh if only to be 20 again......

It seems to me from the description that the kill vehicle has active homing, meaning it basically has its own radar to track the target. If it's semi-active, then there is one heckuva FC (fire control) radar on the ground. The fact that this bird accomplished everything it set out to do and even included a sucessful intercept of an incoming bird says I'll sleep a little better tonight.

Kim Jong, Mahmoud you guys have a nice Labor Day.

BZ Boeing.

2006-09-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

Annan In Syria

Does anyone actually believe this?

This is almost comical:

DAMASCUS, Syria - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria would step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.

Someone tell Kofi that it was the Syrian pipeline that Iranian arms passed to Hezbollah in the first place. And that it's almost a certainty that the totalitarian al-Pencil-Neck Assad regime's "border guards" had something recognized in the real world as an "active role" in the arming of Hezbollah in the first place.

At what point does Kofi Annan reach absurdity?

2006-09-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

VDH -The Man

His National Review column is up.

Nobody does it better.

2006-09-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

If the Washington Post is saying Plameout.....

Particularly salient: Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson.

Sweet.

2006-09-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Sums it Up Well

D.C.'s paper of record.

2006-09-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Another Dumb Kaplan Column

Kaplan:

If, as he also said, terrorism takes hold in hotbeds of stagnation and despair, then you must also ask the president why he hasn't requested tens or hundreds of billions of dollars for aid and investment in the Middle East to promote hope and livelihoods.

I believe Mr. Kaplan, the President might have been referring to Palestinian terrorists where we have done exactly what you advocate. You decide what the result has been.

Yet the president hasn't done any of those things, nor has anyone in his entourage encouraged him to do so.

That's because a terrorist organization has ascended to the Palestinian government: Hamas. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and will not refute violence, disarm and recognize the right of Israel to exist. Because of this intransigence Hamas don't get our bucks. Why would we fund a terrorist group that attacks our ally in the region Mr. Kaplan?

Osama Bin Laden is not Hitler or Stalin. Baghdad is not Berlin. Al-Qaida and its imitators don't have the economic resources, the military power, or the vast nationalist base that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union had.

That's correct, Mr. Kaplan. Bin Laden doesn't rule a nation within sovereign borders, but he inspires the populations of nations in numbers that dwarf the Third Reich or Stalin's Soviet Union and Muslims in our own Western countries are inspired to attempt mass killings on their own countrymen. That's more reach than Hitler or Stalin had. One could argue that should Bin Laden and his ilk the same chance the Fuhrer and the Comrade Marshall had, the Uber-Jihadi would probably exterminate and/or enslave many millions more free people than Adolf and Uncle Joe combined.

And there's the glaring mismatch between the president's gargantuan depiction of the threat and the relatively paltry resources he's mustered to fight it.

Thank you "Peace Dividend".

He has said, over and over, that his predecessors' infatuation with stability is what caused the festering stagnation and resentment that bred the terrorists who mounted the attacks of Sept. 11. "Years of pursuing stability to promote peace had left us with neither," Bush said this morning. That's a matter of debate.

Okay, let's debate:
1983 Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing --- Reagan's response:Withdrawl

1993 World Trade Center Bombing --- Clinton's response: Law Enforcement

1995 Khobar Towers Barracks Bombing --- Clinton's response: Nothing
1998 US Embassy Bombings --- Clinton's response---Launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at Sudanese aspirin factories and empty terror camps. Result: The press forget about Monica for about a week.

2000 Cole hit --- Clinton response: Nothing

Middle East: Stable

Americans: Dead

However, Bush will not be able to rally this assistance as long as he makes statements like, "We will take the side of democrats and reformers throughout the Middle East." To the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and others, that sounds as if Bush would take the side of people who want to overthrow their regimes.

Actually, it's the Bin Laden terrorist types that seek to overthrow these regimes, not those clamoring for democracy. Basically what Bush is saying to the leaders of Kaplan's laundry list "keep the status quo at your own peril". Kaplan conviniently misses noting Bush-urged reforms that have taken place (with varying degrees of effectiveness i.e. Egypt) within the very nations at the hands of the leaders. But there has been change in a democratic/civil right direction.

To pursue a sound policy in the Middle East, to impede civil war and worse, would require Bush to shift gears—to drop his rhetoric on spreading some abstract concept of freedom (at least as a centerpiece) and to resume the long-standing pursuit of stability. Such a shift may be too humbling for Bush to endure. And so, as long as he keeps giving speeches on the war in Iraq and the war on terror, the cognitive dissonances will buzz ever louder.

And get us another 9/11 down the road as the past pusuit of "stability" has proven, Mr. Kaplan. To do the same thing over and over and expect a different result is by definition madness. And just plain DUMB.

Update: George Schultz agrees.

2006-09-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Slate's Kaplan: Clueless

Here is the real problem with the left. They simply have a worldview that doesn't mesh with reality. Especially wartime reality.

Yeah, I know, that's not all that surprising a revelation. It's one thing to argue about Medicare reform or Social Security trust funds, but it's an entirely different animal when the left takes on the subject of war and foreign enemies. They simply don't get it. Somehow, they're out of their league when the stakes are the highest -- there are none higher than when a nation is at war. When bullets start flying, a doctoral thesis detailing the impact on society of Maya Angelou's poetry cannot really be considered a credible credential. I'm not implying that Mr. Kaplan has such a credential, but I'd bet he knows someone who does and that a comparison of their thoughts with Mr. Kaplan on GWOT would be pretty much interchangable.

These educated liberals when discussing World War II probably never get beyond the allied "overbombing" of Dresden in February of 1945, Japanese-American internment camps and the use of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They probably acknowlege the Holocaust and give a grave nod to D-Day because they saw "Saving Private Ryan" and were moved by the film. Maybe they're upset with the Japanese incoming prime minister because he vows to continue visiting yearly a shrine to the Japanese war dead that includes the names of 14 convicted war criminals.

But that's about it. A degree in military history doesn't rank highly among liberals like, say -- women's studies or environmental science. It's arguable that liberals may have a better grasp on the details of homelessness, child abuse, and poverty than conservatives --- who are most likely busy trying not to become the victims liberals specialize in.

War is a conservative enterprise. We, as Americans, go to war to preserve our national soverignity, our people and our way of life as in the Civil War or War of Independence. Or we fight to free a people from the tyranny of others as was done in Kuwait in 1991, France and the rest of Europe 1941-1945, Kosovo in 1999 and Vietnam 1962-1973. Essentially saving one's self, whether as a nation, collective of nations, is a conservative exercise by definition.

Liberals have trouble identifying an enemy much less giving full recognition to the enemies motives. Most of the time, they cannot even think in terms of "enemies". The reflex tendency of liberals when actually confronted with an enemy is to "take time-out" or "talk", "negotiate" till the enemy becomes our friend. All good moral and high-minded concepts...that is, until the bullets begin flying and it is either kill or be killed.

This is the type of conflict we find ourselves in today. This war on terrorism, or more accurately, our war with Islamic extremism, or even better yet -- our war with Islamic fascism has been going on at least in the current incarnation since the 1993 truck-bombing of the World Trade Center. It continued with the 1995 Khobar Towers barracks bombing, the simul-bombing of our African embassies in 1998, the suicide small-boat attack on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole in 2000 and culminated in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. 9/11 was consensually seen as a turning point in American history. So much so was the devastating effect of this attack, that many politicians and influential news-media personnel repeatedly told us that life in the United States of America was never again to be the same.

Five years down the road we seem to have forgotten all that. Perhaps even sooner than the eve of the five-year anniversary of that dreadful day. Maybe it was the day Howard Dean became seriously considered for the Democrat nomination for president in 2004 was the tipping point all that was forgotten by the left. Or perhaps it was the day the Iraq Survey Group declared that there were no great stockpiles of WMD in Saddam's Iraq. In any case, the American left: Democrat politicians, the mainstream press and the reflexively anti-military Bush-robbed-2000 crowd and even some conservatives have forgotten the post-September 11 "life in America had changed forever" mantra.

Now, our enemies, al-Qaeda (the Dems sole enemy in this war it seems) in particular in the form of audio and video tapes released to the world media by al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden parrot Democrat talking points in their condemnations of "Bush's America". Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, the sewage spilling into London's streets from the neighborhood mosques, these are not enemies. They are simply poor, America-oppressed noble peoples resisting our imperialism and our regional proxy Zionist state ally.

For all these condemnations by the left of the war on our enemies, for all the citing of mistakes of the war (name a war without mistakes) and the politics surrounding the war, for all the personal attacks on the Bush administration and the President in particular, the left has no real alternative to what we are doing right now. They only say they will do better. In the 2004 presidential race Massachussetts senator and Democrat candidate John Kerry announced that he had a plan. Well, we're still waiting to hear it. Mr. Kaplan claims he's heard of no Democrat emphasizing law enforcement over military action. I've got one: John Kerry during the 2000 campaign.

The Democrats insist that the war to stabilize and secure the sovereign and democratically elected government of Iraq is a failure, complete and utter. They cite as reasons for this conclusion: the death and suffering of the Iraqi people, the sewage in the streets, the lack of electricity below "prewar levels" and so on. A liberal and Democrat infested news media do their best to highlight the "futility" of the war in Iraq by hyping these while at the same time ignoring or downplaying any advancement for our, and by definition, the Iraqi people's aspirations and progress towards peace and prosperity in that nation.

Democrats and their media allies expect the Iraqi army to be fully manned, trained, and equipped in mere months when starting from scratch. It will take years to have a competent army capable of protecting the people of Iraq. Liberals cannot grasp this concept. Armies are not formed in by popping civilians into microwave ovens for a minute or two. It takes a long time, years really, to fully train one man. Multiply that by tens of thousands. It takes even longer to train an officer corps to lead these men. Multiply that by thousands. Then add in the x-factor that there are terrorists blowing recruits up as they sign on and maybe their families at home or at market. Then add in the cynicism broadcast daily over al Jazeera and the BBC. In this environment, it's a wonder that there is anyone willing to wear the Iraqi Army uniform.

The fact that they are in real numbers is proof of real progress.

With what they say, the liberal left in America betray their true feelings. They do not feel as if we are at war. Yet at the same time they assure us of their sanguinity in their ability to fight it. They view George W. Bush as a greater threat to world peace than suicide bombers, beheaders, and those that would crash passenger-filled aircraft into buildings.

And they want to be taken seriously.

2006-08-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

This Looks Like an Interesting Perspective

This is a first installment of what may be a very interesting series of pieces on life inside Iran from TIME.

Two days later, a gleaming new counter arrived outside the bakery. The baker was remodeling, and as far as he knew, there had been no massive delivery of grain to Lebanese Shi`ites. But as is so often the case in such matters, the truth is almost less relevant than what becomes the prevailing belief. That people so readily accepted that their government would forsake their daily loaf for a distant Islamic cause just speaks to the overwhelming bitterness these days in Tehran. Most people are convinced the government is spending outrageous sums on the Lebanese, and ever since the Iranian government declared a "victory" for the militant group Hizballah, rumors of what the Lebanese are 'getting' have been flying. Free SUVs? Plasma televisions? Nothing seems out of the question. Nightly news broadcasts that Iranians watch on their illegal satellite dishes have shown Hizballah doling out thick stacks of cash, courtesy of Iran. "Did you see the cash? They're giving each family ten thousand dollars!" one of my relatives phoned to tell me.

Somewhere in here there's an angle to be used to seperate the people of Iran from the regime, it should be used to get them the truth as much as possible.

2006-08-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

This Won't Make the News

Charlie Gibson, Bob Scheiffer and Brian Williams won't be covering this tonight I'm sure.

Why? No Americans died. That's why.

But I'll bet there's something on this guy.

2006-08-31T12:33:00.000-07:00

NewsFlash: Drinking Heavy Water Cures Cancer and AIDS!

According to Iraninan Nuclear Chief.

This ridiculous statement(s) does two things:

1) It shows that the nuclear program in Iran must be under some domestic pressure because the Iranian people do not want a military confrontation with the Western powers and so the Iranian officialdom must try to justify its obsessive pursuit of nuclear technology and capability by coming up with reasons (no matter how inane it seems) to justify the program other than illuminating the lightbulbs of the Islamic Republic.

2) It shows just how desperate the Iraninan regime is in its pursuit that it would make such completely absurd statements.

The conflict is coming, be ready...

2006-08-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Paul Hackett: Angry Ex-Marine

They say that there are no ex-Marines. The saying goes there are only Marines, whether currently serving or having served on active duty ---once a Marine always a Marine. In the instance of the angry young man Paul Hackett, former Democratic candidate for Congress, and his performance on the "O'Reilly Factor" last night, he has earned the moniker of an undeniable "ex-Marine". Hatefulness is not a Marine Corps value.

Here is the link to video.

Hackett calls Dan Senor "unterfuhrer", an SS rank designation of Nazi Germany. This little line calls into question his judgement and his credibility as someone who should warrant being taken seriously. The fact that this angry punk was so close to becoming a member of the Congress of the United States should shame the Democratic party or cast them in the same unserious light as the foll Hackett. There are methods of debate and disagreement that at the very least are dignified and thoughtful. Hackett's performance is proof he is neither. The fact that Dan Senor is the son of a Holocaust survivor should earn Hackett persona non grata and an end to his 15 minutes of fame. Let's see if it does.

Serious news networks should reconsider booking him for future shows unless they want their own credibility called into question anymore than that credibility has been recently.

2006-08-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

Rumsfeld and the AP

AP gets it wrong AGAIN.

At least this time DoD returned fire.

2006-08-30T17:32:00.000-07:00

Our Chinese and Russian "Allies"

Arming Iran with the very best.

It's high time for the American government to say that these nations have only the worst interests in mind for the United States and that the Cold War is really not over, it's only been in remission the past few years.

Russian anti-tank missiles and Chinese anti-ship missiles in the hands of Hezbollah now this.

Interesting to see how these two permanent members of the UN Security Council vote on the question of sanctions on their ally Iran. It is amazing to me that these two countries have seats on a body that is supposed to promote "security" throughout the world and actively arm the most unstabilizing nations and organizations in the world.

The American left likes to demonize the "military-industrial complex" of the US but I guess their comerades in Russia and Red China get a pass.

2006-08-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Annan's Resolve

Asks Israel to end blockade of Lebanon.

"Resolution 1701 is a fixed menu," he (Annan) said. "It's not a buffet where you choose and pick. We have to implement it in its entirety."

If only Kofi Annan's resolve was as strong in enforcing UN resolution 1559.

2006-08-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

More Glowing Reviews

Our Iranian enemy glorified once more.

Seeing Ahmadinejad up close, you appreciate that he is a formidable politician. He played the roomful of 150 journalists like a master performer. He has the look of a bantamweight fighter -- compact and agile, punching well above his weight. He's quick on his feet, answering a broad range of questions, including some critical ones about the Iranian economy, but he came away unscratched. He speaks more softly than you expect, making jokes and, on this occasion, avoiding some of his usual anti-Israel bombast. But the hard edge is never far. His eyes can twinkle one moment and then suddenly become dark as night. My strongest feeling at the end of his performance was: He may be cocky and eccentric, but don't underestimate him.

Sounds a lot like Bill Clinton, at least the part about playing the roomful of journalists part. Amazingly there was no substance in this story than how smooth Ahmadinijad "performed". So what was the point of the piece? One up Mike Wallace?

Did anyone challenge the "masterful politician" on his Holocaust denial with a question?

To David Ignatius: Adolph Hitler was a "masterful politician" as well. He was also underestimated to the tune of 60 million lives lost.

The unpredictable factor in this game of brinksmanship is Ahmadinejad. In another defiant move, he laid out a radical vision of an Iranian new world order. The United Nations Security Council is an outdated relic of the post-World War II era and should be abandoned, he said. On the nuclear issue, "no one can stop us.'' He challenged President Bush to a live debate and seemed certain he would come out the winner.

Tomarrow Aug. 31 is the deadline for Iran to respond to the UN Security Council. Ahmadenijad must be feeling some pressure or he wouldn't have called for the abandonment of the UN, either that or he's "triangulating" much as the Boy from Hope did in the 1990's.

Challenging Bush to a debate is silly, it shouldn't even be considered serious by Ignatius. More style over substance.

It's coming, be ready......

2006-08-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

A Swipe at the Blogs

Although I'm a serious newbie at blogging, I've been reading them for a while beginning by following John Kerry's Vietnam career during the Swift Boat revelations.

After watching blogs evicerate the Massachusetts patrician's "reporting for duy" campaign for the White House in 2004 and then seeing Dan Rather humbled and brought down by the "fake but true" Bush national guard story. This guy misses the key to the story....the blogs he decries as ineffectual are all left-wing loony tune types.

2006-08-30T13:55:00.000-07:00

Israeli Defense Force Lebanon AAR

More details are coming out of Israel about the recent summer campaign against Hezbollah.

Key points:

Halutz claims that he ordered the Northern Command already back in March to begin preparing for an escalation with Hizbullah in the summer of 2006. In June, the Northern Command held a massive exercise during which it drilled scenarios following the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hizbullah, including a massive invasion into Lebanon.

Halutz is the IDF's Chief of Staff currently having his stock dumping timed just after the abduction of some of his soldiers by Hezbollah. The fact that Israel trained for the exact operation that was eventually decided upon is important. The "massive invasion" was only a facet of the training that took place. And the IDF's performance was sub-par according to many military commentators. It makes one wonder how much emphasis on the "massive invasion" the training consisted of and what was that training's quality. Based on the difficulties encountered by the IDF incursions into Lebanon proper, recon was sorely lacking. Even minimally. "Massive invasions" require good recon.

It was in these parts south of the Litani that Hizbullah's elite Nasser Unit was waiting with thousands of troops and functioning command and control centers in underground bunkers, spread out in some 130 villages, laying mines, ambushes and just sitting and waiting for the Israeli tanks to come rolling in.

Hezbollah's defensive emplacements have not gotten the attention they deserve. The IDF was facing an enemy dug in much as the Japanese Army was in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Okinawa is the better parallel.

Hezbollah, like the Japanese, had prepared extensive tunnel and bunker complexes throughout southern Lebanon with clear fields of fire along the avenues of advance the IDF would have to take to manuever in the rocky hills. A key difference is that Hezbollah was well-supplied and well-armed and waiting.

On Friday August 11, the United Nations Security Council convened and approved a French and American-backed cease-fire resolution. Despite the decision, the IDF pressed forward with its invasion and in some of the fiercest fighting during the war, 12 soldiers and some 80 Hizbullah gunmen were killed as a tank column suffered numerous hits from Hizbullah-fired anti-tank missiles as it tried crossing the Saluki Stream.

This is indecisive leadership. It is poor leadership. People die when led poorly into battle. This bridgehead should have been secured by infantry and the crossing unopposed by Hezbollah anti-tank missile teams.

The anti-tank missiles were not only lethal against tanks, as in the battle of the Saluki, but were also effective when fighting against the IDF's infantry forces, such as during the fighting in the village of Dbil, not far from Bint Jbail, where nine reservists were killed August 9 when a building they occupied was hit by missiles and collapsed.

The firing of ATGM's at infantry is an indicator of poor firing discipline or fright on the part of Hezbollah. Sure it can be marginally effective against troops taking cover in unhardened positions like the building, but tactically it is unsound because when fired these missiles give away your position inviting response. There were many cases of Hezbollah firing ATGM's at IDF infantry in the hills.

The war is certainly not at sea.
That is what the Navy thought until the fateful night of July 14 when an Iranian C-802 radar-guided missile struck the INS Hanit patrolling off the coast of Beirut. The Navy is in the midst of an internal investigation into the attack, in which four soldiers were killed, with the main questions surrounding a decision by commanders not to activate the Barak anti-missile system, designed to intercept incoming missiles like the C-802.

The C-802 is also known as the "Silkworm". This bird was much discussed when I served aboard USS Macdonough DDG-39 during the Gulf War as a AN/SPG-55B Mod. 9 fire controlman.

The fact that the Israeli naval ship was not at a state of readiness speaks to either arrogance or neglect, or both. It is completely inexcusable for them to be caught so flat-footed. Again, people died. The story is not yet fully out and I'll keep following as the AAR's come out.

Here's why the IDF ship got lucky when hit by the Silkworm.

I don't buy the statement that the Lebanese shore radar "tracked" the Israeli ship. More than likely this was a low-power search radar to give range and bearing to the target. The C-802 is an active homing bird with it's own transmitter. No matter how old the Silkworm is, it's still nasty

2006-08-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

This is the Enemy

From the horse's mouth.

I find it curious that Ahmadenijad would extend a hand of friendship to Germany citing the Holocaust-denial line as the primary rationale contending that Germany unfairly suffered at the hands of the Allied Powers at the end of World War II because of "hyped" Holocaust reporting. In Ahmadenijad's rationale, somehow a kinship-in-suffering exists between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Germany. Germany suffers for having caused the Holocaust; Iran (and most of the Muslim world presumably) "suffers" because of the establishment of the democratic nation of Israel. And so with this in mind, Ahmadenijad surmises that Germany join with Iran in an alliance against the victors of World War II and that is curious.

Is Ahmadenijad hurting for allies? Is he just trying to stir the pot of the Western Democracies? Probably more the latter than the former. I believe this guy really enjoys, much as his ally Chavez of Venuzuela, poking at the US or our allies in any way they can whether effectively or not. And this appears to be telling as far as his psychology no matter what Mike Wallace says.

It seems that Chavez and Ahmadenijad must play up the threat to their regimes by the West, or more specifically, the US. In Chavez case the threat is imagined, in Iran it is real, or should be.

In the end, the letter of proposal to Merkel of Germany is curious if it is actually a serious attempt to peal the German nation from the Western Democratic alliance into one with Iran. If the Iranian regime actually believes this it is a window into their delusion. And a peek at the danger a regime with this thought process armed with nuclear weapons poses.

More reasons.

2006-08-26T11:27:00.000-07:00

Global Warming Update

This is why global warming doomsayers should not be taken seriously --- you cannot blame everything from too many hurricanes to too few hurricanes to glaciers are receding, no, now their growing because of global warming.

The Earth is 4 billion years old and has gone through massive shifts in climate throughout all without man and the Ford F-150 being the perpetrators.

To think that in the mere wink within a wink of that 4 billion years that man's presence and man's activities have impacted the global climate equivalently is balderdash.

The planet is going through the same natural cycles it always has no matter what the chattering classes may say, the sample of data they use is too small on the geological time scale to even be considered enough to draw a conclusion.

2006-08-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Prediction: This Guy is Toast

If everything about IDF Chief of Staff Gen.Dan Halutz is true. This guy deserves a toasting out of the IDF even before screwing up the Summer War.

2006-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Came across this in Real Clear Politics.

While I agree with the author's view of the tactics being employed by our Islamic enemies, I don't agree with the premise that the West is not capable of winning against those that would employ such tactics.

What gets lost in all the Halliburton Hoopla Detest Bush Defeatism is the fact that our enemies are using our own Law of Land Warfare against us.The Law of Land Warfare was devised to make war more "civilized". Therefore, by definition, we are basically fighting war criminals. If the author contends that this war criminality is a new tactic, he is wrong.

Soviet partisans who fought the German Wermacht in World War II from the gates of Moscow in 1941 to the River Oder on the Polish-German border in 1945 could be considered by today's standards "war criminals". The Soviet partisans were comprised as both civilians and isolated soldiers in civilian clothing and uniform left behind as the German tide flowed eastward in 1941. The partisan war was one mainly on the supply train of the German army. It consisted of hit and run raids and acts of sabotage, mainly on the poor system of Soviet rail lines and almost non-existant road network. The effect on the German war machine was a great hindrance on actual operations and source of anxiety to the German high command. Entire divisions were detailed out to deal with the partisan problem for most of the war in the east.

The partisans did target Russian civilians who were either friendly with the Germans or who might have given them aid even if it were at the bayonet tip and the Mauser muzzle. The Germans in turn eradicated whole towns and villages if the populations were suspected of aiding the partisans.

For all the comparisons to the Soviet partisans of old, the Islamic facists (I'll use the word the author seems to ridicule even in the face all apparent evidence of it's accuracy) do not inhabit the hinterland wilds of Iraq as the Soviet partisans did in Russia. The "insurgent" lives in the population centers and blend in almost to the point of invisibility with the populace. The "insurgent", "militiaman", "martyr" need only leave his AK-47 behind and take a break from jihad to hit the local tea house for a little R and R and some web-surfing on Uncle Sam's dime.

One could argue that to pry the enemy from his camoflage and simultaneously perhaps kill him and his cohorts is to bomb out of existance his towns, cities, and villages leaving him possibly amoung the survivors wandering about the desert in search of Oxfam hand outs -- drain the terrorist sea, so to speak. Politically or humanely possible? No way. Within the West's capability? Certainly. So it is not tactic but the exploitation of our own humanity the enemy uses against us. Because we have rightly no stomach but for the lowest civilian casualties, we cannot engage the enemy with our full fire power. It's not that the West can't, it's that we won't.

If our humanity and laws governing our military actions are vulnerabilities to be exploited, perhaps we should tame this somewhat if it is victory that we wish to achieve.

Second Fallujah is an example. In that battle the US Army and Marines cleared that hotbed of "insurgent" activity and we have heard very little coming out of that town since it was cleared in 2004. In the battle we took to the enemy and defeated them, house to house, building to building -- conventional Western military tactics on the urban battlefield defeated the enemy once he was exposed by taking away his human shield of Fallujah's population. The author should be aware that just because you cannot see the enemy clearly, you are not defeated. It simply means that you must look harder in order for you to take the fight to the enemy and you must have the stomach for it to achieve victory.

linkhttp://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_09_11/cover.html

Eleanor Clift Smackdown

2006-08-26T06:35:00.000-07:00

The McLaughlin Group shrill commentator and Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift proves again she just don't get it. This column appears on MSNBC's Newsweek special political commentary here.

Clift seems obsessed with trying to portray the president as "fear-mongerer" when actually all the president is cautioning about is what will happen (to Iraqis) if US troops prematurely leave Iraq and the Sunni and Shia really go after each others throats. If the dems sole worldly wish is to pull the US military presence from Iraq resulting in that nation falling into murderous chaos -- a chaos which the jihhadi extreme would undoubtedly exploit and ensure nuke-seeking Iranian hedgemony over another 10 percent of the world's crude oil supply.

I particularly find her blaming of Bush for Iran's flowering nuclear program so indicative of the thoughtlessness so virulently rampant of today's left. What about China and Russia, don't they deserve some responsibility Ms. Clift? You know there were bad things in the world before Bush took office.

Get this passage:

Bush’s original sin was to politicize U.S. intervention in Iraq. He used the war to transform an aimless presidency into one of Churchillian dimensions, and now that it’s all turned sour, he has nothing to fall back on.

An aimless presidency? By late-March of 2003 when the US invaded Iraq, Mr. Bush had endured and corrected the Clinton recession with tax relief and taken down the Al Qaeda haven of Taliban Afghanistan. And most of all, united the nation in the aftermath of the horrors of 9/11 -- horrors that one had to go back to December 1941 to find any equivalent --- an equivalent that led the US to enter a world war. I don't know for sure, but those accomplishments don't seem "aimless" to me.

Clift again:

To achieve stability in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post and author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” (Penguin 2006), says U.S. forces can expect to stay for 10 to 15 years, on top of the three they’ve already been there. “And that’s the optimistic scenario,” he says.

If we'd followed the Clintonian policy of "keeping Saddam in his box" the US military would have been inclined to maintain their presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a deterrent to Saddam much longer than the 12 years (1991 to 2003) that they'd already been there. But I guess that little fact is somehow lost on Clift. And somebody please tell Eleanor that all that while, the Iraqis were constantly firing at our fighter jets maintaining the No-Fly Zones. Yeah, that Thomas Ricks, the same guy who recently proclaimed on CNN that Israel was allowing Hezbollah to rain Katyushas down on their cities to maintain some kind of positive PR in the Summer War.

“Presidents care about whether people support their policies,” Bush said in response to stion. “Of course I care.” But he added, leaning into the podium and eyes blazing. “I’m going to do what I think is right and if people don’t like me for it, that’s just the way it is.”

Yes Eleanor, Bush is not Bill Clinton. Bush realizes his responsibilities to protect the nation are more important than whether you like him personally or he govern depending on whether if his poll numbers are up or down. As much as you might not want to remember November 2004, the fact remains that this president was re-elected following the same policy you castigate him for today -- leaving Iraq stable and as close to democratic freedom as that country can stand. The public may be falling away from Iraq due to relentless trumpeting of bad news, but the president said this was the Long War and so it is. And you know what, with his recent support for Israel against Hezbollah and his tough talk, that recent rise in his approval numbers might be just bear fruit come this November.

Eventually the Democratic Party will have to come up with real ideas.