Marlowe: world politics and the war on terror

Anbar tribes turn against al Qaeda

2006-11-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hearts and minds in Ramadi

Excerpt:

While the world's attention has been focused on Baghdad's slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.

A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda's reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi's battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

Ramadi has been the insurgency's stronghold for the past two years. It is the conduit for weapons and foreign fighters arriving from Syria and Saudi Arabia. To reclaim it would deal a severe blow to the insurgency throughout the Sunni triangle and counter mounting criticism of the war back in America.

Sheikh Sittar and US commanders believe that the tide is turning in their favour. 'Most of the people are now convinced that coalition forces are friends, and that the enemy is al-Qaeda,' the 35-year-old Sheikh claimed in his first face-to-face interview with a Western newspaper.

Bill Roggio has more

Excerpt:

The Anbar tribes' turn against al-Qaeda has developed significantly since the end of the Anbar Campaign late last year, which swept al-Qaeda and the insurgency from the major towns and cities west of Ramadi. Over the past year, the majority of the tribes have denounced al-Qaeda and formed alliances with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces operating in the region. Numerous 'foreign fighters' have been killed or captured by the tribes. The tribes are working to restore order, and are providing recruits for the police and Army, despite horrific suicide attacks on recruiting centers. These attacks have not deterred the recruiting, but in fact have motivated the tribes to fight al-Qaeda.

The Anbar tribes have also taken an active role in fighting al-Qaeda. In March, several tribes and Sunni insurgent groups formed the Anbar Revenge Brigades to hunt al-Qaeda operatives in western Iraq. At the end of the summer, 25 of the 31 Anbar tribes banded together and created the Anbar Salvation Council to openly fight al-Qaeda, and pledged ?30,000 young men armed with assault rifles who were willing to confront and kill the insurgents and criminal gangs.?The Council has killed and captured numerous 'foreign fighters' and has provided hundreds of recruits for the police and Army, despite horrific attacks designed to terrorize new volunteers.

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Iraq on verge of civil war?

2006-11-02T08:16:00.000-08:00

Maybe not, says Gateway Pundit, after actually reading the report.

Excerpts:

Iraqi security forces continue to develop into a capable force and continue to take the lead. On Tuesday in Ramadi, the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Brigade of the 7th Iraqi Army Division assumed responsibility in its area of operations.

This now makes 90 Iraq army battalions in the lead. In total today, there are six of 10 Iraqi army divisions in the lead, 30 of 36 Iraqi brigades, and 90 of 112 Iraqi battalions in the lead. And we operate in support of them. All across Iraq, we continue to see an increasingly capable Iraqi security force continuing to take the lead...

The New York Times claims Iraq is close to a civil war. But if you notice the colored symbols in the leaked document there are no critical (red) indicators of this. So how does the New York Times get civil war out of this leaked document?

I say:

Wishful thinking at the senile gray lady, perhaps. Many allege the Times is deliberately trying to demoralize us by propaganda. Like Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw, that sort of thing. All *I* dare claim for certain is they're not telling their readers the truth, and that they have a very suspicious pattern of leaks.

Also, I've yet to see anyone define the phrase "civil war in Iraq" in a way that clearly differentiates it from the state of affairs under Saddam.

While we're on the subject, here's Tech Central Station on nation building - when it works, and when it doesn't.

Excerpt:

After MacArthur finished in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the American policy community missed the fundamental difference between his strategic approach of nation building and our technocratic approach in Europe. We have consistently adopted Marshall's model of state building when faced with a collapsed state. But dollars and ballots (and certainly not bullets) cannot build a viable state without the laws and a civil society on which to anchor it. In my earlier piece I said that the state is the "...apparatus of a nation" and states often fail because they are not based on a true nation. A successful modern state must be grounded in a viable nation. There is no other way.

I say:

By this definition, there is no such thing as the nation of Iraq, and there never was. But if we do it right, we can easily build an Iraqi Kurd nation and an Iraqi Shia nation. We're most of the way to the first one already. Plus, there's a good chance these two nations will form a federation to keep the Ba'athist trash of the Sunni Triangle in their place.

Consider this the fallback plan. I'd have preferred this as plan A, but Dubya doesn't listen to me, and the Democrats haven't got any plan at all. That is, unless you count giving up as a plan.

Another excerpt:

True, a "propinquity principle" may take hold after a long period of time as in Iraq where there are three very disparate communities.

I say:

Hardly a sure thing, but not as faint a hope as Schaefer seems to think, considering the news I pointed to above. Free Iraq is a nation now... sort of.

At least four-fifths of it is.

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Science says colonialism benefits the colonized

2006-10-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

Here comes the science!

Excerpts:

The reason it's hard to resolve this question is that we have no controlled experiments comparing otherwise similar places with different sets of legal and economic institutions. In new research, James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote, both of Dartmouth College, consider the effect of a particular aspect of history?the length of European colonization?on the current standard of living of a group of 80 tiny, isolated islands that have not previously been used in cross-country comparisons. Their question: Are the islands that experienced European colonization for a longer period of time richer today?

...Feyrer and Sacedote's key findings are that the longer one of the islands spent as a colony, the higher its present-day living standards and the lower its infant mortality rate. Each additional century of European colonization is associated with a 40 percent boost in income today and a reduction in infant mortality of 2.6 deaths per 1,000 births.

By itself, the relationship between longer colonization and higher living standards could arise either because European contact raised living standards or because European explorers colonized the most promising islands first. The authors cleverly reject the latter possibility by noting that the sailing of the day relied on wind, which meant that islands located where wind is weak were "less likely to be discovered, revisited, and colonized by Europeans."

...The authors also compare the experiences of separate Pacific islands with eight different colonizers: the United States, Britain, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, Japan, Germany, and France. Their verdict is that the islands that are best off, in terms of income growth, are the ones that were colonized by the United States?as in Guam and Puerto Rico. Next best is time spent as a Dutch, British, or French colony. At the bottom are the countries colonized by the Spanish and especially the Portuguese.

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The truth about the Tet offensive

2006-10-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Well, Tet is in the news again now, since Bush gave that interview. You've seen plenty of spin on this one, and you'll see plenty more. So let me point you to some scholarly counter-spin, courtesy of Peter Braestrup.

Excerpts:

The Tet offensive of 1968 must surely be regarded as one of history's chameleon campaigns. When the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops assaulted targets throughout the Republic of Vietnam at the end of January 1968, they expected to trigger an uprising of the South Vietnamese people against their government. Despite some spectacular early successes, the attacks failed. The South Vietnamese did not embrace the cause; thousands of sappers, assault troops, and cadres met their deaths before overwhelming allied counterattacks; and the insurgent infrastructure was so decimated at the end of the fighting that no large enemy offensives could be mounted for four years...

Misconception: The offensive was a victory for Hanoi. The press corps, it is now clear, was stunned by the initial Tet attacks, many of which occurred in Saigon. When the allies met some initial reverses, the press reacted by emphasizing the enemy's successes. As the weeks wore on and military intelligence clearly indicated defeat for the insurgents, the press still interpreted the offensive as a "psychological victory" for the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army, who "held the initiative," "decide who lives and who dies... which planes land and which ones don't," who were unconcerned with losses, and could "take and hold any area they chose." There was little objective analysis of the many enemy failures or of the severe toll that allied counterblows exacted from the enemy...

Misconception: The characteristic American response was to destroy city districts and villages with overwhelming, indiscriminate firepower... Some reports from Saigon indicated the city was a giant scarred battleground; from the air, however, reporters could see that 95 percent of the city was relatively unharmed...

The effects of these errors of fact and interpretation in the United States were pronounced. The impact appeared less in opinion polls than in the minds of Washington policy-makers. Because the press had ignored earlier cautions expressed by military leaders, the public was "jolted into gloom and foreboding," and a "credibility gap" emerged. In Congress and the bureaucracy, criticism became vocal, reflecting the "disaster" themes portrayed in the press and on TV. The embattled President announced the bombing halt and withdrew from the Presidential campaign.

How could the press err so greatly in its Tet coverage with such impact on the nation? There is no simple answer to the question. Braestrup dismisses the idea that newsmen as a group were ideologically opposed to the war. Rather, the Tet coverage represents the institutional defects or flaws in the gathering, interpretation, and dissemination of news in Vietnam and the United States at the time of the offensive...

SUMMING up the impact of the press, Braestrup argues that the Tet reporting was an extreme case of crisis-journalism. The result was a "portrait of defeat" for the allies because "the special circumstances of Tet impacted to a rare degree on modern American journalism's special susceptibilities and limitations." Braestrup's final chapter is a discussion of how the susceptibilities and limitations are unchanged, with a warning that a similar crisis could repeat the errors of Tet.

I say:

The mainstream media are no more reliable now than they were then. If anything, they've gotten worse. But here's two things that have changed since then: people are less liable to believe what they see on the evening news, and people have alternatives on the Web.

Also, Bush is no Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was a classic bully type who backed down in the end. He jabbed his finger in faces, he blustered, he bluffed, and when Cronkite turned on him, he caved. Bill Clinton is much the same in the clinch, including the finger jabbing. (We saw that when he got Queeged on Fox.) Bush has a very different style, and he doesn't cave to his critics.

I see every modern war as Groundhog Day. We'll keep fighting the Korean War over and over again, at different times and in different places, until we get it right. The key to getting it right? Following through. I think our current president has the stomach to follow through. I can't say the same for most of his critics.

And no talk about trying to prevent a larger war. It can't be done, at least not via containment, diplomacy and "police actions." The next world war has been pending for about 60 years now. Every world war is the unfinished business of the one before it. The sooner you deal with it, the less nasty it will be. The more you try to avoid it, the worse it is when it comes. Neville Chamberlain never grasped that. Truman came close to grasping it, but he couldn't bring himself to make that final leap of logic. MacArthur feared it, and dreamed of banning war, but then he came to his senses.

The coming world war has been delayed far too long. Consequently, it will be very, very bad when it comes. It will probably be nuclear. Pacifism won't prevent it. Diplomacy won't prevent it. Containment and limited war alone won't prevent it. Our best bet for avoiding world war is to cut off aid and trade to the anti-democratic regimes of the world, and let them implode. That's how we won the Cold War - barely. We can greatly improve the chances if we just follow through on whatever Groundhog Day wars arise. It might work, it might not. But nothing else has a chance.

And whatever happens, we can't count on mainstream news to watch our backs.

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North Korea: how it came to this

2006-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

There are three standard complaints coming from Bush opponents regarding the Kim regime and its nukes. One is that Bush ought to have attacked North Korea instead of Iraq, because North Korea presented more of a threat. Another is that Bush should have tried more diplomacy. The third is that the regime of North Korea has a right to develop nuclear weapons in order to defend itself against its bellicose enemies (such as Bush.)

These assertions contradict each other. They can't all be true. But they can all be false.

Let's take the first one. When G.W. Bush took office, it was very nearly certain that North Korea already had nuclear weapons. They were very close to having them during the crisis of 1994. Bill Clinton, who was occupying the Oval Office at the time, decided to take his lead from Jimmy Carter, a former president whose whose foreign policy had been arguably treasonous. They came up with a negotiated settlement, which the Kim Jong Il government promptly violated with impunity. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming this mess on Clinton's foreign policy. Bill Clinton didn't *have* a foreign policy. I'm blaming it on his *lack* of foreign policy. He outsourced this crucial decision, to a man whom it would be charitable to call a fool.

By the time Bush came into office, attacking North Korea would, in all likelihood, have led directly to a regional nuclear war. Kim didn't yet have the missiles to reach the United States, but he had South Korea and perhaps Japan held hostage. We did not yet have a missile defense. We've just barely got the beginnings of one now, and no thanks to the Bush haters.

How about assassination? Well, that's supposedly illegal or something. I know Bill Clinton recently said on TV that he had tried to assassinate bin Laden. Oliver North (remember him?) got on Clinton's case for violating - or rather claiming to have violated - a bunch of executive orders against that sort of thing. Well, I'll have to take Clinton's side on that one. The executive orders make no sense to me. Does anyone know what the reason was for them in the first place?

(Not that I actually believe the wagging finger when he says he really, really tried to take the bastard out. But the point is, he's right when in implying that he ought to have done so.)

That said, it's not easy to "take out" people like Kim Jong Il. You see, you have to get to him first. And he owns half of an entire country, which he's turned into his own personal fortress. With nukes that work, and missiles that might or might not work.

Is there another option? Diplomacy? Diplomacy means nothing without the credible threat of force to back it up. Diplomacy without credibility is nothing but bluffing followed by capitulation. And the Clinton-Carter act had thrown away our credibility. Also, Clinton's "sunshine" policy, together with an epidemic of Stockholm syndrome, had weakened the resolve of our closest democratic ally in the region.

The only possible use for diplomacy would have been as a delaying tactic, while we worked on BMD and getting our troops safely away from the DMZ. Which is more or less what Dubya did. Meanwhile, Kim was working on his long range missiles, as he was going to do anyway. It was a classic arms race, weapons vs countermeasures. The race is in the final stretch now, with no clear winner.

All in all, this is the best that could have been hoped for from diplomacy post 1994. Diplomacy is not some magic pixie dust that makes all difficulties evaporate if you just sprinkle enough of it. It doesn't work that way. Never did.

Now, about the final complaint. North Korea needs to defend itself? To anyone who's ever actually heard of North Korea, this idea is absurd on its face. First off, what is the North Korea that needs to defend itself? A large piece of real estate in east Asia? How are we supposed to threaten a chunk of the earth's crust? Not even H-bombs will obliterate a geographical feature of that size. Well then, what? The people of North Korea? North Korea is not a democracy. The people living there do not have a stake in this, and it's not them we're concerned with. The population of North Korea are nothing but hostages and slaves for the Kim regime, eating grass to survive because their Great Leader won't let them have proper food. Anyone who tries to escape this socialist paradise, gets dragged home by a wire through her skin.

So just what is this North Korea that is defending itself? Nothing more than Kim Jong Il and his henchmen. A twisted little man with an Eraserhead hairdo and a penchant for mass murder, plus his homies.

Now that we've properly defined our terms, does this man whom we call North Korea have a right to defend himself and hold on to what is in his grasp? Well, in order to have the right to defend oneself and one's possessions, one must first have the right to exist and to possess these possessions. Morally speaking, does Kim Jong Il have these rights? I think not.

By the way, there's a phrase for the sort of thinking that would presume the Kim regime has as much or more right to exist than does a free country such as the United States, Japan or South Korea. It's called moral equivalence. And it's morally indefensible. Just to stress this point, let me give you an excerpt from the Times of London:

The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand ' the soft part between thumb and forefinger ' with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

'She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,' the soldier later told his relative. 'Then they dragged her away.'

Such stories are circulating widely among Chinese on the border, where wild rumours of an American attack on nuclear test sites have spread fears of a Chernobyl-type cloud of radiation and sparked indignation at the North Koreans. 'I've heard it a hundred times over that when we send back a group they stab each one with steel cable, loop it under the collarbone and out again, and yoke them together like animals,' said an army veteran with relatives in service.

I say:

This is the sort of thing the Left are defending. Never mind sleep deprivation at Gitmo. *This* is cruelty. The real thing.

Just how do the Left sleep at night?

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The squandered goodwill myth

2006-09-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Anne Applebaum sets things straight

Excerpt:

But it's also true that this initial wave of goodwill hardly outlasted the news cycle. Within a couple of days a Guardian columnist wrote of the "unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population". A Daily Mail columnist denounced the "self-sought imperial role" of the United States, which he said had "made it enemies of every sort across the globe".

That week's edition of Question Time featured a sustained attack on Phil Lader, the former US ambassador to Britain - and a man who had lost colleagues in the World Trade Centre - who seemed near to tears as he was asked questions about the "millions and millions of people around the world despising the American nation". At least some Britons, like many other Europeans, were already secretly or openly pleased by the 9/11 attacks.

And all of this was before Afghanistan, before Tony Blair was tainted by his friendship with George Bush, and before anyone knew the word "neo-con", let alone felt the need to claim not to be one.

The dislike of America, the hatred for what it was believed to stand for - capitalism, globalisation, militarism, Zionism, Hollywood or McDonald's, depending on your point of view - was well entrenched. To put it differently, the scorn now widely felt in Britain and across Europe for America's "war on terrorism" actually preceded the "war on terrorism" itself. It was already there on September 12 and 13, right out in the open for everyone to see.

I say:

I ran into it myself on Kur05hin, the days after 9-11. Sickening. It's one big part of why I refuse to give an airborne fornication what the "world" thinks of us. It's also why I oppose member moderation of posts. Member moderation is a mechanism for mob censorship. And I can tell you exactly what mob will exercise it.

Some people just aren't worth trying to make friends with. The cost is too high, the benefit too low, and the result far too transitory.

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No Saddam al-Qeada link?

2006-09-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Not so fast, says Weekly Standard

Excerpts:

The committee's staff made little effort to determine whether or not the testimony of former Iraqi regime officials was truthful. In fact, Saddam Hussein and several of his top operatives--all of whom have an obvious incentive to lie--are cited or quoted without caveats of any sort...

Hijazi admitted to meeting bin Laden once in 1995, but claimed that "this was his sole meeting with bin Ladin or a member of al Qaeda and he is not aware of any other individual following up on the initial contact."

This is not true. Hijazi's best known contact with bin Laden came in December 1998, days after the Clinton administration's Operation Desert Fox concluded. We know the meeting happened because the worldwide media reported it. The meeting took place on December 21, 1998. And just days later, Osama bin Laden warned, "The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders decision to attack Iraq. It is the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill them."

THE MEDIA HAS ALSO BEEN QUICK to cite the report's conclusions concerning Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's relationship (or lack thereof) with Saddam's regime. But once again the committee's staff overlooked much contradictory evidence. The report concludes, "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."

The staff cites debriefings which support this conclusion, but do not give any weight at all to testimony which runs counter to it. For example, the Phase I Senate Intelligence report noted that a top al Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah "indicated that he heard that an important al-Qaida associate, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, and others had good relationships with Iraqi intelligence."

Zubaydah's testimony has since been further corroborated by a known al Qaeda ideologue, Dr. Muhammad al-Masari...

A cursory examination of Zarqawi's cell in Iraq reveals that many of his top operatives were once Saddam's military and intelligence officers. It appears, therefore, al-Masari's testimony should be taken seriously.

Yet, neither Abu Zubaydah's nor Al-Masari's statements are given any weight by the committee.

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Washing their hands of the Plame affair

2006-09-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's recently been revealed that Plamegate was a fraud perpetrated by the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. He knew all along that war doubter Armitage was behind the leak, but he pretended he had the goods on someone more in support of the Iraq intervention. So he cooked up the whole scandal. The New York Times and Washington Post were making hay of it. Now they're trying to distance themselves from it.

I don't suppose we'll see an apology from the mainstream media for this witch hunt. But let's never forget. And never let them live it down.

See, this sort of thing is why people don't trust the news anymore.

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Things are going just awful in Iraq!

2006-05-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not that bad, according to Amir Taheri

Excerpts:
For someone like myself who has spent considerable time in Iraq - a country I first visited in 1968 - current reality there is, nevertheless, very different from this conventional wisdom, and so are the prospects for Iraqs future...

Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.

The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraq - in 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990 - long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape...

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television sets - and we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home...

A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina...

A third sign, this one of the hard economic variety, is the value of the Iraqi dinar, especially as compared with the regions other major currencies. In the final years of Saddam Husseins rule, the Iraqi dinar was in free fall; after 1995, it was no longer even traded in Iran and Kuwait. By contrast, the new dinar, introduced early in 2004, is doing well against both the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rival.... the new Iraqi dinar has done well against the U.S. dollar, increasing in value by almost 18 percent between August 2004 and August 2005...

My fourth time-tested sign is the level of activity by small and medium-sized businesses. In the past, whenever things have gone downhill in Iraq, large numbers of such enterprises have simply closed down, with the countrys most capable entrepreneurs decamping to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Turkey, Iran, and even Europe and North America. Since liberation, however, Iraq has witnessed a private-sector boom, especially among small and medium-sized businesses.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as numerous private studies, the Iraqi economy has been doing better than any other in the region. The countrys gross domestic product rose to almost $90 billion in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), more than double the output for 2003, and its real growth rate, as estimated by the IMF, was 52.3 per cent. In that same period, exports increased by more than $3 billion, while the inflation rate fell to 25.4 percent, down from 70 percent in 2002. The unemployment rate was halved, from 60 percent to 30 percent...

Finally, one of the surest indices of the health of Iraqi society has always been its readiness to talk to the outside world. Iraqis are a verbalizing people; when they fall silent, life is incontrovertibly becoming hard for them. There have been times, indeed, when one could find scarcely a single Iraqi, whether in Iraq or abroad, prepared to express an opinion on anything remotely political. This is what Kanan Makiya meant when he described Saddam Husseins regime as a republic of fear.

Today, again by way of dramatic contrast, Iraqis are voluble to a fault. Talk radio, television talk-shows, and Internet blogs are all the rage, while heated debate is the order of the day in shops, tea-houses, bazaars, mosques, offices, and private homes... Moreover, a vast network of independent media has emerged in Iraq, including over 100 privately-owned newspapers and magazines and more than two dozen radio and television stations.

I say:
It's the fault of those damn evil Americans.

Oh, and did you hear? They've formed a democratic government now.

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I admit it. Iraq's a quagmire.

2006-05-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's time for al Qaeda to cut and run

Excerpts from captured al Qaeda document:

1. It has been proven that the Shiites have a power and influence in Baghdad that cannot be taken lightly, particularly when the power of the Ministries of Interior and Defense is given to them, compared with the power of the mujahidin in Baghdad. During a military confrontation, they will be in a better position because they represent the power of the state along with the power of the popular militias. Most of the mujahidin power lies in surprise attacks (hit and run) or setting up explosive charges and booby traps. This is a different matter than a battle with organized forces that possess machinery and suitable communications networks. Thus, what is fixed in the minds of the Shiite and Sunni population is that the Shiites are stronger in Baghdad and closer to controlling it while the mujahidin (who represent the backbone of the Sunni people) are not considered more than a daily annoyance to the Shiite government. The only power the mujahidin have is what they have already demonstrated in hunting down drifted patrols and taking sniper shots at those patrol members who stray far from their patrols, or planting booby traps among the citizens and hiding among them in the hope that the explosions will injure an American or members of the government. In other words, these activities could be understood as hitting the scared and the hiding ones, which is an image that requires a concerted effort to change, as well as Allah's wisdom...

4. The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other word, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the American and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them. This policy dragged us to the type of operations that are attracted to the media, and we go to the streets from time to time for more possible noisy operations which follow the same direction.

This direction has large positive effects; however, being preoccupied with it alone delays more important operations such as taking control of some areas, preserving it and assuming power in Baghdad (for example, taking control of a university, a hospital, or a Sunni religious site).

At the same time, the Americans and the Government were able to absorb our painful blows, sustain them, compensate their losses with new replacements, and follow strategic plans which allowed them in the past few years to take control of Baghdad as well as other areas one after the other. That is why every year is worse than the previous year as far as the Mujahidin's control and influence over Baghdad...

When and if a Sunni units from the National Guard are formed, and begin to compete with the mujahidin and squeeze them, we will have a problem; we either let them go beyond the limits or fight them and risk inciting the Sunnis against us through the Party's and the Committee's channels.

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"The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig...

2006-04-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

and from pig to man again, but it was already impossible to say which was which"

Excerpt:

Later he said to Gates: "I admire what you have achieved at Microsoft," Hu said.

"Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I'm a friend of Microsoft," he said.

"Also, I am dealing with the operating system produced by Microsoft every day," he added, amid laughter.

"I certainly look forward to the extension of your cooperation with China," Hu said.

Hu also said he would certainly welcome a further increase in Microsoft's investment in China.

"I'd also like to take this opportunity to assure you, Bill Gates, that we will certainly our words in protecting intellectual property rights," Hu said.

Gates responded: "Thank you, it's a fantastic relationship. And if you ever need advice on how to use Windows, I'll be glad to help."

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"Bush Lied! (TM)" is in trouble.

2006-04-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

The Big Meta-Lie is slowly crumbling

Excerpts:

In a surprising editorial, The Washington Post deviated from the conventional anti-Bush media position on two counts. It said President Bush was right to declassify parts of a National Intelligence Estimate to make clear why he thought Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. And the editorial said ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson was wrong to think he had debunked Bush on the nuclear charge because Wilson's statements after visiting Niger actually "supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."

In the orthodox narrative line, Wilson is the truth-teller and the Bush is the liar. But Wilson was not speaking truthfully when he said his wife, Valerie Plame, had nothing to do with the CIA sending him to Niger. And it obviously wasn't true, as Wilson claimed, that he had found nothing to support Bush's charge about Niger when he (Wilson) had been told that the Iraqis were poking around in that uranium-rich nation.

Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee, Wilson said that the former prime minister of Niger told him he had been asked to meet with Iraqis to talk about "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries. Everybody knew what that meant; Niger has nothing much to trade other than uranium...

The Butler report confirmed that Iraqi officials had visited Niger in 1999, and the British government had several different sources insisting that the purpose was to buy uranium. But it added, 'the evidence was not conclusive that Iraq had actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.'"

I say:

The politics of truth, indeed. The tactic used against Bush here is known as "poisoning the well." Call the other person a liar, repeat it over and over, shrilly, in the hopes of drawing attention away form the fact that *you* are the liar. It works, but it's not foolproof. If and when the facts get out, you will be looking like human filth.

The facts are coming out, far too slowly. Part of the problem is the mainstream media are suppressing them. Most of the problem is the administration isn't pushing hard enough on getting the facts out. So now they're making Iraqi documents publicly available now, for anyone to translate. Open source translation. A good idea, but why wasn't this done two years ago?

Oh, and a hint of what's to come. Excerpt:

According to Laurie Mylroie, page 6 of the document is a memo from the command of an Iraqi air force base asking for volunteers for suicide missions:

In the Name of God the Merciful The Compassionate

Top Secret

The Command of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

No 3/6/104

Date 11 March 2001

To all the Units

Subject: Volunteer for Suicide Mission

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

Air Brigadier General

Abdel Magid Hammot Ali

Commander of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base

Air Colonel

Mohamad Majed Mohamadi.

I say:

If this is for real, it deserves front page coverage. If not, fairness demands it receive the same treatment as that National Guard memo, from the same people who championed that memo. But never mind. The blogosphere will follow through.

Oh, and, lest I forget, Here's Hitchens on Zahawie

Excerpt:

A NATO investigation has identified two named employees of the Niger Embassy in Rome who, having sold a genuine document about Zahawie to Italian and French intelligence agents, then added a forged paper in the hope of turning a further profit. The real stuff went by one route to Washington, and the fakery, via an Italian journalist and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, by another. The upshot was - follow me closely here - that a phony paper alleging a deal was used to shoot down a genuine document suggesting a connection.

Latest flash: General attacking Rumsfeld once sang a different tune.

Excerpt:

Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni - the most prominent of the retired generals attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - now says that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, "What bothered me ... [was that] I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD."

But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress "Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region," adding, "Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions ... Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months."

I say: note the careful wording. It's not a flat-out self contradiction. What he's doing here is varying his standards, playing keep away with the burden of proof.

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Iraq quagmire - the real score thus far

2006-03-20T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hype vs reality at Gatewaypundit

Excerpts:

* Medact Global Health: "A more contained conflict could cause half a million deaths and have a devastating impact on the lives, health and environment of the combatants, Iraqi civilians, and people in neighbouring countries and beyond."
Actual Results: Antiwar Iraqi Body Count says that 35-37 thousand deaths including bank robbers...

The harsh truth: Before the War in Iraq, Saddam was filling his mass graves and keeping state hired rapists on his payroll. In those 20 years about 5% of the people of Iraq were killed or mysteriously disappeared. The red area in the graph above shows the estimated average deaths in Iraq under Saddam Hussein from 36 average deaths per day from mass grave discoveries, to 137 deaths per day from a different source. The yellow area shows estimated total fatalities since the beginning of the War in Iraq from Iraq Body Count, an antiwar website...

* Madeleine Albright observed... "It has long been obvious that the Bush administration lacks a viable plan for success in Iraq. The hardest political job - drafting a constitution acceptable to all factions - has not even begun..."

Results: Iraqi Constitution drafted and accepted by 78% of the voters.

I say:

Iraq Body Count has been called out before for using extremely questionable sources. They wear their agenda on their sleeve. They will do anything they think they can get away with to *overestimate* casualties.

Tacitus

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Civil war in Iraq?

2006-03-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

There's an awful lot of hysteria about civil war or potential civil war in Iraq. Well, I'm not overly concerned. Why not? Three reasons.

1. Those who are actually in Iraq are saying it's not a big deal.

2. No one is defining the term "civil war" in such a way as to distinguish from the past three or four decades of Iraqi history.

3. A unified Iraq is not mandatory.

Let me elaborate on these...

1. Those who are actually in Iraq are saying it's not a big deal: Here's an example

Excerpt:

I'm trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

I say:

There was some extra fear for a while there in parts of Baghdad. Various Iraqi bloggers reported it. But that was about it.

2. No one is defining the term "civil war" in such a way as to distinguish from the past three or four decades of Iraqi history: Let's look at the definition of "civil war."

Excerpt:

1. A war between factions or regions of the same country.

2. A state of hostility or conflict between elements within an organization: 'The broadcaster is in the midst of a civil war that has brought it to the brink of a complete management overhaul' (Bill Powell).

3. Civil War The war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865. Also called War Between the States.

4. Civil War The war in England between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists from 1642 to 1648.

I say:

Okay, which of these could conceivable apply to any situation in Iraq?

1. How do you define country in a way that both makes sense *and* applies to Iraq? A nation or state? Well, it's certainly a state, whether the terrorists like it or not. It has well defined, albeit very arbitrary, political boundaries. And there has been violent armed conflict, even genocidal armed conflict, within those borders almost as long as this nation has existed as such. So why worry about a civil war starting where there already is one, and has been for practically forever?

2. Well, there are some fallings out between al Queda and the former members of the regime. Is that a bad thing? For whom?

3. Well, Iraq is not part of the United States, so this one can't apply.

4. Nor is Iraq part of England, at least not at this time.

3. A unified Iraq is not mandatory: Everybody saying we've got to keep Iraq unified to avoid trouble in the future, and to teach these savages how to get along with those of other religions, or at least other denominations of Islam. Den Beste took this position.

I say a unified Iraq would be a nice bonus, but it's *not* mandatory. The Kurds and the Shia Arabs are able to come to agreement. that's four-fifths of Iraq right there. And the remaining fifth? These are the bastards that have kept Iraq in civil war (or whatever) lo these many decades! If they can learn to play nice, well and good. If not well... as Kos once said, screw `em.

What's the worst case scenario here? Four-fifths of Iraq are building themselves into a democratic nation. The remainder is suicide bombing and generally just acting out because their empire got taken away from them after they'd been abusing it. Kind of like Israel and the Palestinians. That's not great, but it's way better than anything this four-fifths of Iraq has ever experienced. And Israel's having good results with their wall. Wall up the Sunni Triangle and occupy it with Iraqi (Kurd and Shia Arab) troops. Problem, er, contained.

I'm a progressive, not a perfectionist. Real, solid progress in Iraq is good enough for me. Especially since so many odious people are upset over it.

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

"No Saddam teror link" update

2006-01-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

Stephen Hayes has the story thus far

Excerpts:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis...

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

I say:

The truth is slow to get its boots on. But the lies are evaporating even now, ever so slowly.

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Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/22//iraq.terrorism.html#20060107

Video from site of recent massacre in Communist China

2005-12-11T13:50:00.000-08:00

The blogosphere comes through

Excerpt:

Today Chinese officials came out and defended firing on innocent protesters in Dongzhou Village last Tuesday, December 6, 2005 where (they claim) three protesters were killed. Dongzhou villagers, however, claim that the death toll is much higher with as many as 70 protesters shot dead by authorities. China reported today that authorities have arrested the local official who ordered governmnet forces to shoot and kill the land reform protesters last week.

More from CNN

Excerpt:

Such incidents have alarmed communist leaders, who are promising to spend more to raise living standards in the poor countryside, home to about 800 million people.

By the government's count, China had more than 70,000 cases of rural unrest last year. Protests are growing more violent, with injuries on both sides.

President Hu Jintao's government has made a priority of spreading prosperity to areas left behind by China's 25-year economic boom. But in many areas, families still live on the equivalent of a few hundred dollars a year.

I say:

Gee, isn't it nice of them to be so concerned about the people they're gunning down?

Y'know, I don't think this idea of economic prosperity leading to increased liberty is working. I think maybe it's supposed to work the other way around.

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Joe Lieberman reports from Iraq

2005-12-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

Not following the script

Excerpt:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

I say:

Not all Democrats put partisanship politics and ideology ahead of truth, decency and the future of freedom. Not all.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Lieberman could have beaten Bush in 2004. But the Democrat voters wouldn't give him a chance. They wanted electability. Unfortunately, they had no idea what constituted electability. Typical blue state shallowness. They bought a coiffure in a swift boat, and turned down a President.

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White Phosphorus, hype vs reality

2005-11-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

Well, one of the resident America hating s***theads at ZIWETHEY is ranting about this, even though it's been debunked for a while now. So I guess I'd better draw attention to it.

So, here's a link

Excerpt:

On the anti- side, of course, you have accusations that WP is a "chemical" weapon or an "illegal" one. It's not.* WP was heavily used in the Second World War by the Allies, including Canada, against both Germany and Japan**, for exactly the same reasons and missions it's being used now. But yes, a WP artillery shell is a bad thing to have land near you... not nearly as bad as a regular high-explosive artillery shell of the same size, but certainly the next worst thing.

The job of those opposed would be much harder, of course, if the pro- side had any more of a clue what they were talking about. The State Department's retracted statement, that WP was "fired into the air at night," is classic. It should go without saying that using a smoke shell to try to light up a dark sky would be a failure... I guess only the State Department could confuse phosphorus with magnesium, which is what real illuminating rounds are made of.

*I've seen a lot of people claiming that the 1980 Incendiary Weapons protocol of Geneva forbids the use of white phosphorus against civilians. It does not. It forbids the use of "incendiaries," and specifically excludes weapons like WP where the incendiary effect is a secondary effect of smoke production (incendiary weapons by definition are those weapons designed to create fires... WP occasionally will start fires, but it's not very reliable in that role... generally it just creates a lot of smoke). Whether the U.S. has signed it or not is irrelevant.

I say:

So many big lies, repeated so often and so shrilly by the true believers. It's hard to keep up. (I think that's behind Bush's poll ratings these days. He hasn't been heard from enough lately.) It's not enough to debunk a lie once. You have to get the debunking out there, everywhere the lie has been. And when the lie re-e,erges, you have ot debunk it *again*, until the poor beleagered audience is sick of the repetition. Only then is the lie truly dead. Helping the truth get its boots on is a hell of a job. But in the meantime, it's a contest to see which side can call the other side a liar more shrilly. What sort of person agrees to fight such a contest? Hint: you don't necessarily get a choice about it, unless you can change the nature of the game.

But it will all come out in the end, because we are slowly changing the nature of the game. Get the facts out... the confirmed evidence, the peer review of the blogosphere, and - slowly but surely - the lies will be driven back, and then obliterated. Never before in history has the natural advantage of lies been so weak. The old centralized means of disseminating alleged information - the mainstream media, the lecture halls - are on their last legs. The Internet is the closest thing ever to a level playing ground, where lies and truth meet on comparable terms, and *all* the facts come into play. Determine what the truth is, and you will know who the real liars were. And those who gleefully spread the lies... never let them live it down. There is no learning without memory. And memory must be without mercy. For until the liars pay a price, there will no end of lies. Todd Blanchard, you are a liar, and will always have been a liar. The slanderers of the good are by nature beyond guilt, but they are only temporarily beyond shame. Time will shame them all.

There's also a shameful Martin Rowson cartoon captializing on this white phosporus slander. It's really sad to see what Rowson has become. He was always a Left-winger, but there was a time, long ago, when he had some wit and cleverness. Now he's just a hack for hatred. I still love his take on The Wasteland. His drag queen Tiresias always made me giggle. I wish he'd do more work that entertaining, but I'm not holding my breath.

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/iraq.html#20051126

Losing hearts and minds in the Middle East

2005-11-13T09:52:00.000-08:00

The bombs are bombing

Excerpts:

AFTER years of al-Qaeda terror attacks in which thousands have been killed, many of them Muslims - the people they wish to recruit - voices of dissent are starting to be heard in the Middle East.

As moderate Muslims dare to protest at daily death tolls, even the prospect of one of Osama bin Laden's most feared cohorts, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, being handed over is being discussed.

Faced with the unprecedented outburst of fury among Muslims over its latest atrocity, al-Qaeda's concern about reaction in the Middle East was evident last week when it came the closest yet to an apology.

It offered an "explanation" for one of worst attacks to hit Jordan in modern history, in which suicide bombers turned wedding parties into scenes of destruction, killing at least 60 people and injuring 96 at international hotels in Amman...

Al-Qaeda's volte-face was caused by an unprecedented emotional outpouring of anger against the terrorist organisation in Jordan. On Thursday thousands of Jordanians protested across the country to denounce the head of the al-Qaeda terrorist group in Iraq, Zarqawi, America's most wanted enemy. They marched through Amman chanting: "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!"

There were even larger demonstrations on Friday after the weekly midday mosque sermons in Amman and at a mass funeral for victims. "We came to support our nation and our unity," said Ibrahim Haniya, 22, who marched with a group of friends. "These bombers didn't differentiate between Muslims, Christians or Jews. They were against the world."

"The country is experiencing solidarity," said Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Amman. "On the TV, on the radio, everyone is condemning the attacks in the strongest terms, including the Muslim Brotherhood, to show their solidarity with the rest of the population."

Diplomats say a key question is whether al-Qaeda has over-reached itself. "They have clearly been stung by the reaction on the streets in Jordan," said one diplomat with knowledge of the region.

I say:

Terrorism has always been a PR ploy. The point of terorrism is to terrorize. If your victims aren't terrorized, you've not only failed, but you've made yourself new enemies.

Meanwhile in Indonesia

Excerpt:

The head of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization condemned suicide bombings on Sunday, and warned that terrorism was hurting the reputation of Islam as well as making life difficult for its followers.

The remarks by Hazyim Muzadi will cheer proponents of Islamic moderation in the world's most populous Muslim nation, where some clerics resist denouncing terrorism for fear of being seen as subservient to the United States.

I say:

Coalitions are made by the recognition of a common enemy. I see a coalition brewing against Islamist terrorism, one that will include most Arabs and Muslims.

When this thing started at the Munich Olympics, it was mainly against the Jews. Then it expanded into an attack against Western civilization in general. Payback for the "tragedy of Andalusia" as bin Laden so memorably put it. Talk about your sore losers. Gradually, because of a hangover of Soviet influence, it became a jihad against America in particular.

While Clinton was taking up space in the Oval Office, terrorist attacks against the US were met with half measures or ignored altogether. The enemy grew ever bolder; the attacks got bigger, and finally came 9-11, with nearly three thousand innocents slaughtered.

The trouble with terrorism is that different people react to it in different ways. The cowardly are terrorized, and seek to appease the terrorists. Those with spines just get pissed off. Al Qaeda's big mistake on 9-11 was not grasping the fact that Clinton was gone, that Bush was a different sort of man, and the American people were getting fed up.

They can't change their strategy now. It's too late. Besides, terrorism is all they know. So they slaughter for all its worth, and hope it starts working again. It worked in Madrid. But it's not working anywhere else.

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/politics.world.html#20051113

Iraq quagmire update

2005-10-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

First, a look at the Syrian border

Excerpts:

Col Davis: The information on the creation of the Desert Protect Force is accurate. Coalition forces are working to reach out to the tribal groups to provide for security and enlist new members in the Iraqi Army. Currently there are no Iraqi police units in the AO at this time. Since June, there are an increasing number of Iraqi Army brigades being incorporated into the fight in the RCT-2's area of operation as well. The Iraqi troops are magnificent in their initiative, courage, determination, will to fight and their knowledge of the culture and language is instrumental to establishing security in the region...

Col Davis: There are three levels of enemy in our area of operations - AO Denver. First there are the independent tribal fighters operating in this barren region who are traditional smugglers and are wrapped up in an assortment of criminal enterprises. There are the Baathists hardliners, the former regime elements that are fighting to rid the area of an American presence and are looking to return to power. Then there are the al Qaeda jihadist who are not interested in the stability of the region, but only interested in killing Iraqis and Americans, establishing their Islamist Caliphate and terrorizing the local population.

These various groups will work together or fight each other on any given day. The jihadists are not predominant in numbers but are providing the bulk of the leadership, the financiers that fund the terror activities and the technical knowledge of the insurgency. This area of Iraq is complex. Generations have been conditioned by Saddam to be survivalists and will do what is needed to survive. When the people become convinced we will remain to provide security and services, they cooperate with us. They hate the foreign fighters; they despise them for what they have done to their families and their towns and cities...

Saddam never controlled this region of Iraq. It is very tribal and fiercely independent. He sent in the army to kill and intimidate the population. He established two tribes in the region: the Salmanis and the Karabilah tribes, to further his goals and counter balance existing dominating tribes. The Iraqis out west, particularly in Haditha are well educated and are able to provide for their own needs. They have operated this way for centuries and can do so again with the proper security environment. We have a simple equation we use out here:

Presence = Security = Stability = the environment for self governance...

Bill: Do you think domestic elements of the insurgency would be willing to lay down their arms and enter the political process, or are they too indebted to al Qaeda?

Col Davis: al Qaeda in Iraq will not lay down their arms to enter the political process, and they must be eliminated. They are vermin. We focus our efforts on destroying their networks and hunting the leaders, financiers, technical experts, and facilitators.

There is a possibility that the Sunni moderates can reach out to the Former Regime Elements / Baathist and encourage them to join the political process. But many of these FREs may not be willing to cooperate in power sharing...

Bill: What is the morale of the Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen fighting in Anbar?

Col Davis: Sky high. There will be down days as are to be expected but the morale is high. I can clearly differentiate between Vietnam and today; I'm old enough to still hold my draft card. We have an all volunteer force that joined to serve their nation. They know the enemy they face is a threat to the United States, and want to fight them here and not back in my home town in New York or elsewhere, in the U.S.

And now, a look at the new Iraqi defense forces

Excerpt:

October 30, 2005: After two years of work, the Iraqi Sunni Arabs are seeing their worst nightmare come true. And that is an Iraqi army and police force that can do the job, and is not led by Sunni Arabs. For generations, Iraq was dominated by Sunni Arabs because Sunni Arabs held most of the leadership posts in the army and police. Kurds and Shia Arabs were often the majority of the troops and beat cops, but they nearly always took orders from a hierarchy of Sunni Arab supervisors and officers. The Sunni Arabs knew that the management and leadership skills necessary to run an army or police force were not easily acquired. It took years of training and experience. There was no way the Kurds and Shia Arabs could quickly replace those Sunni Arab officers and NCOs. Thus Sunni Arab terrorists would drive out the foreign troops, especially the deadly Americans, and, then the Sunni Arabs would take over again. But then something very, very bad (for the Sunni Arab takeover plan) happened. Battalions and brigades of Iraqi troops began to show up, commanded by Kurds, Shia Arabs, and some turncoat Sunni Arabs, that could do the job. Currently there are 207,000 Iraqi soldiers and police that are trained and equipped for operations. There are sufficient leadership to deploy 120 army and police battalions for combat operations. About three dozen of these battalions are well enough led to undertake security operations without American supervision.

Every week, these Iraqi battalions undertake more operations, each raid or cordon and search operation providing the Iraqi officers and NCOs with more practical experience, and confidence that they can do the job...

And here's more

Excerpt:

"There has been enormous progress with the Iraqi Security Forces over the course of the past 16 months in the face of a brutal insurgency," Gen. Petraeus said later at the Pentagon. "Iraqi security-force readiness has continued to grow with each passing week."

He added, "To be sure, few of these units are candidates for the 1st Marine Division or the 101st Airborne right now. However, they have come a very long way in a relatively short period of time."

Gen. Petraeus also noted that the forces are attracting more Sunnis, who ruled Iraq under dictator Saddam Hussein and have been reluctant to involve themselves in the nation's postwar political structure.

The general said that since imams issued a fatwa this year saying it was the duty of male Sunnis to join security forces, more than 4,000 have signed up over the course of only a few months.

Gen. Petraeus acknowledged at a Pentagon press conference that "there was a Sunni Arab retention and recruiting problem" last year. In fact, officials told The Washington Times that Iraqi units in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province were made up almost exclusively of Shi'ites and Kurds.

But today, Gen. Petraeus said, Iraqis have fought alongside Americans to capture the northwestern city of Tal Afar and are doing the same with U.S. Marines along the Syrian border to rid towns of militants.

In case you just can't stomach all this good news, here's a grim milestone to take note of.

Excerpt:

The anti-war movement has rallied around Etta Mae Hanberg, whose son was killed in Italy early this year. She gave a speech prior to the ceremony here last night:

"It is insane that there are so many people living and working in the White House that are responsible for war crimes, high crimes and misdemeanors and other crimes against humanity and they are wandering free to enjoy their lives and live fat off of their war profits. We will probably be arrested for exercising our rights to freedom of speech and freedom to peaceably assemble."

"Besides asking him for What Noble Cause did he kill 250,000 of our wonderful and brave young people, I would also like to ask Franklin Delanodamngood Roosevelt what he is sacrificing. Is he even sacrificing a good night's sleep? Is he sacrificing his future with his child? He is not sacrificing anything. He and his cabal of warmongering crooks are asking us Americans to give up our lives and our children's lives for his lies and mistakes and I am sure the grim milestone is barely causing a blip in their souls. Franklin Delano Rosenfeld, the syphillitic Dutch Jew, and his wealthy buddies don't even have to pay more taxes for the horror in Europe or to rebuild Houston and Galveston [referring to last year's devastating hurricane, about which the White House and the War Department have suppressed almost all news], which is another Rosenfeld horror."

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

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... P&CA

Free Iraq is a nation now

2005-10-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

After all these decades, a fully legitimate government
Excerpt:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Election results showing Iraqis have ratified a new U.S.-backed constitution by a large margin are accurate and should be trusted, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

Speaking after Iraq's Electoral Commission released final results showing 79 percent approval for the constitution in the October 15 referendum, Carina Perelli said the balloting process adhered to the highest standard.

"Yes, it has been audited, controlled. It has been done really in a very professional way," Perelli, head of the U.N. team providing technical assistance to the Iraqi government, told reporters.

"The result is accurate. It has been checked according to the processes that we all follow when we have elections."

Iraqi officials had earlier said they were auditing early results which indicated more than 90 percent of voters backing "Yes" in certain areas, leading some opponents of the charter to question whether the results were being fixed.

I say:

Well, if the UN admits it, it must be true.

All sarcasm aside, this is better than I had hoped for. The trouble with this process, as I saw it, was it required the approval of the Sunni Arabs. This was the same group who, under Saddam Hussein, waged constant war against the rest of this arbitrary chunk of the old Ottoman Empire, as well as neighboring nation states. This is the same part of the country that harbored the Ba'athist dead-enders the press calls 'insurgents." Why should the former oppressors have any say in the affairs of their rcently freed victims?

Well, I didn't think it was worth it. But Stephen Den Beste was more sanguine.

Excerpt:

If the new government ends up totally dominated by the Shiite majority, and if they in turn use it to repress the Sunnis, then it would be seen elsewhere in the region as "the new boss, same as the old boss". Political backlash by Shiites against the Sunnis in response to that bombing would therefore have been a major victory for al Qaeda. Violent attacks against Sunnis by Shiites would have been frosting on the cake.

Fortunately, saner heads among the Shiites recognized the attack for what it was, and strongly discouraged such a response.

I say:

He was right, and I was overly pessimistic. This is one case where I'm happy to be proven slighly wrong. Only slightly, because most of the SUnnis voted against it. The vast (78 percent) majority that approved it was the *rest* of the country. That is, the former victims. But here's the thing: enough Sunnis voted in favor to get over the hurdle. So all's well that ends well.

This won't stop the terrorism of the insurgency, at least not instantly. Remember, these people are dead enders. They have no option but to fight to the death. Their fearless leader is on trial for his life. They're surrounded by enemies of their own making. In the past they've had help from al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups. That's getting harder to find lately. Now their own people - the Sunni Arabs - have deserted them. Where can they go? Syria, maybe. But Assad has his own problems right now.

So there will continue to be terror attacks, until the insurgents are exterminated. Yes, exterminated. Already, Iraqi soldiers have been working with Americans to chase the murderers to the Syrian border and beyond. Now that Iraq has a fully, unquestionably legitimate government of its own, expect Iraqis to take an ever greater role. That means our boys come home. Not all at once. Gradually, over the years. Not that this will make the "anti-war" crowd happy. The ones screaming for "our boys" to come home were trying to prevent them from finishing their job. For them to come home having done the job is the last thing they'll want to see. Ramsey Clark and the Workers' World Party nomenklatura will be beside themselves.

There are two kinds of appeasement: when the non-evil appease the evil, and when the evil appease the victorious good. The first always ends in disaster. The second comes about when we eschew the first. The Sunni Arabs are now trying to appease the other 80 percent of Iraq, by giving up the Ba'athists as a sacrifice. So much for loyalty. It serves the purposes of decent people to accept their surrender. But they'd better behave themselves from now on.

I've pointed out many times that there is no such thing as the Iraqi people. And at the time I said it, it was true. But with the high turnout and relatively low violence of this ratification vote, I'm starting to think that this is changing. We may be witnessing the birth of a national identity. This arbitrary chunk of a defunct empire is finally becoming a nation. And it happens to be a democracy. How about that. A democracy where once there was only genocide and corruption, and strategically located to spread freedom throughout the region. The despots of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia now sit uneasy upon their thrones.

And there's nothing the haters of democracy can do about it. They've already tried everything they could think of - lies, murder, corruption, more lies, more murder. None of it worked. Now there's nothing left to try.

Oh, and here's another burn, for the Bush haters: history is going to give Dubya the credit. And history will remember all who opposed him on this. For the rest of your lives, people will ask you *why*. I wonder if you'll have a good answer.

For now, your best bet is to lay on the sour grapes with a trowel. Maybe use the mention of Islamic law, together with a heap of exaggeration and hysteria (you guys are so good at that!) to make some fears of theocracy. Give us the old "Just You Wait!(TM)" that was such a great stall in the past. It won't help much at this point, but it's all you've got. So go for it.

Keep shouting "quagmire! Quagmire!" while your betters just go right on draining the swamp.

Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

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Al Qaeda looks for soft spots in LA and Melbourne

2005-09-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

Using some f***wit kid of California to deliver the latest threat

Excerpt:
"Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, God willing. At this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion," the tape warns. "We are Muslims. We love peace, but peace on our terms, peace as laid down by Islam, not the so-called peace of occupiers and dictators."

I say:
We're not counting on restraint or compassion from you guys. Don't worry about that. And we know you love the peace of the grave, which we will offer to you at every opportunity.

Do they think that Los Angeles will cower before this threat like frightened children and declare Wahhabi sharia law tout de suite? Do they really think Angelenos are that craven, that spineless, that decadent? Well, they may be right about that. But the inhabitants of La-La Land do not speak for the country as a whole.

Blue staters are rather childish by red state standards. We don't much respect the limousine left or their fashion serfs. They're children. But they're family. They're like our wayward nephews that didn't get raised right and fell in with the wrong crowd. We slap them around a lot because they're such dumbasses, but we'll kill anyone who tries to harm them. So don't mess with them. That's *our* job.

Excerpt:
In response to the threats against their city, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the city's police department released a statement this morning. They admitted to Los Angeles being a target of terrorism, but said there are no known, credible threats against the city and labeled the tape an instrument of al Qaeda propaganda.

I say:
Been there before. Granted, the odds are against them pulling off any particular attack, including this one. But they keep trying, and the law of averages is not on our side. (Remember, 9/11 was not the first attempt on the World Trade Center.) That's why we have a Global War On Terror.

Excerpt:
"Don't believe the lies of the liars at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street," Gadahn insists.

I say:
Channeling Al Franken here? By the way, Al's no doing too well these days. He and the rest of his Air America bunch may just end up in the clink.

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Keeping the United Nations out of the picture

2005-08-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Iran is way off the reservation, and the UN are doing nothing about it. They've threated to break the seals - backing off only after US pressure - they're refining uranium, and they feel no need to apologize to anyone. Why should they? It's just the UN and the EU after all.

The question is implied: what are you gonna do about it?

Meanwhile, it turns out that Iran has been supplying the Sunni "insurgency" in Iraq with bombs that can do serious harm to troop carriers. This on top of their support for al Sadr and similar lowlifes. And their last election was a blatant fraud, in which no one was allowed to run that the people might have wanted to vote for. The pro-democracy movement in Iran is waiting for us to do something. With a little support from us, the students will rise up and overthrow the mullahs. Without it, they probably won't risk it. (The Kurdish part of Iran is already rising up. But the Kurds have had more success in the past than Shia Arabs.)

But first, the United Nations. We lost precious months in 2003 waiting for the UN to shove its hypocrisy and follow up on its own resolutions. That never happened, and it never would have. Part of the reason for that was always obvious: the UN is a hopeless institution. The more detailed reason has emerged over the past few years: the oil for food scandal. France, Russia, Germany and China were all bought and paid for by Saddam, and Kofi's little Turtle Bay debating society helped negotiate the deals.

So now Bush has sent John Bolton to the UN as our ambassador, over some worthless Senators' filibuster, as a recess appointment. Detractors object that Bolton is obnoxious and has no respect for the UN, and is therefore a bad choice for this post. I grant the premise, but why what logic does the conclusion follow? That is precisely the sort of man we want to send there right now. The point is to send a message: get your s**t together, you snivelling corrupt bastards, and damn quick. Who better than Bolton to send that message? John Bolton is a living human rebuke. Here's hoping they take him to heart.

So now Kofi Annan is talking all nice and promising reforms, while praying that Volcker's investigations never reach him. But we've been here before. Remember Boutros-Boutros Ghali? Rwanda? Any reform of the UN, short of taking it all apart, coming up with a new charter, and sticking the old name on it to confuse the limousine left, will fall short of what's needed.

The UN is *consitutionally* incapable of doing any real good in the world. It's corrupt and feckless by design, not accident. It's built on the premise that if you get a bunch of powerful people together who have no shared values in common at all, and have them talk at each other, their various disagreements can be sorted out. It simply doesn't work that way. All the problems that can be solved by talking or threatening get solved long before they reach the UN level. The problems that reach the UN are the ones that can't be solved by talking or (empty) threats. There's no way the UN can accomplish anything with what it's given to deal with. Where would it even begin? By the time this less than august body even gets a chance to speak, there's no longer anything left to say.

So what do they do instead? They emit meaningless resolutions, skim graft off of charities, run interference for mass murderers, and make sleazy backroom deals to keep the mud peoples down. Maybe new reforms will put a stop to all this, but I doubt it. And even if they do, what good purpose will the UN serve?

Slowly, but surely, the world is facing up to this. John Bolton and the Volcker investigation will surely help the process along. But Bolton's job now is to make his job obsolete. We need to clear the UN out of the way so we can put up something better in its place. Almost anything would be better. But I'm specifically thinking of a treaty organization of democracies, acting to protect and extend freedom and human rights throughout the world, by whatever means avail. No thugocracies need apply. If your people don't get a vote, neither do you.

(And no, the European Union is not going to do the job. Never did - Balkans - never will. In fact, it's got its own problems these days.)

For now, the UN crowd is on the ropes. Distracted. Humiliated. Scrambling for a way to justify their existence. They never could do any good, but now they're temporarily incapable of doing harm. That's good enough, for the moment.

It clears the way for us to deal with Iran.

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Spoiled rich suicide bombers

2005-07-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

Class warfare, Islamist style

Excerpts:

When you read reports that the Muslim terrorists who bombed the London Underground may have gotten together for a pre-attack whitewater rafting trip in Wales, you realize that this is a very particular enemy ? and one that is recognizable to students of history.

This is the revolt of the privileged, Islamic version. They have risen so far, so fast in the dizzying culture of the West that they have become enraged, disoriented and vulnerable to manipulation.

Their spiritual leader is the son of a Saudi billionaire, who grew up with big ideas and too much money...

Reading some of the London bombers' biographies, you realize the depth of their cultural confusion: "Shahzad Tanweer, 23, came from one of Beeston's most respected families," wrote The London Independent about one of the July 7 bombers. And according to The Washington Post, he had just received a red Mercedes from his dad.

This is not Patty Hearst or the Weather Underground - it's a far more deadly revolt of privilege. But people who were students in the 1960s will remember the phenomenon: The kids from elite public and private schools who went to college, felt guilty about their comfort amid a brutal world, and joined the Progressive Labor Party to ally with oppressed Third World workers. There is a cult aspect to this jihad - an extreme version of the logic that has always drawn disaffected kids to self-destructive behavior...

According to Vincenzo Oliveti in his fine study of the Salafists, titled "Terror's Source," their religious teaching casts aside the traditional canon - the "Sunna" that make up Sunni Islam - in favor of a have-it-your-way smorgasbord. A favorite saying of the Salafists, according to Oliveti, is nahnu rijal wa hum rijal, which he translates loosely as "We are all men so why should we accept that anybody knows better than us?"

What will stop this revolt of privileged Muslims? One possibility is that it will be checked by the same process that derailed the revolt of the rich kids in America after the 1960s - namely, the counter-revolt of the poor kids. Poor Muslims simply can't afford the rebellion of their wealthy brethren, and the havoc it has brought to the House of Islam. For make no mistake: The people suffering from jihadism are mostly Muslims...

I say:

And Muslims are increasingly getting fed up with the terrorists. Even in places where the government has long used the West as a scapegoat. Isalmofascism is showing its true face and losing support thereby.

No wonder the Left love these murderous lunatics. It's a filial recognition. "Hey, we're all spoiled rich neurotic f***wits here!" But our brand of these a**holes mostly just run interference for mass murderers. These guys *are* the mass murderers.

The rich are arrogant at best, and frequently insane. The trust fund kiddies are the worst - no contact with reality at any point. And the poor are largely powerless. Besides, the poor as such don't constitute a clearly identifiable class with a single value system. Salvation lies with the middle class. Long live the bourgeois revolution!

Oh, and a shout out to our freedom loving brethen being repressed in Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Myanmar and elsewhere. Keep the faith, and don't let the bastards grind you down. Uncle Sam and friends will bail you out in time.

Likewise the Dalits, and the Muslims in Gujarat. The current administration's policy on India reeks of realpolitik, but we'll get it right eventually. The Iraqi Kurds and Shia Arabs also had to wait, but not in vain.

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London: The Pakistani (and Saudi) Connection

2005-07-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

Stephen Schwartz spells it out

Excerpt:
Western academics and journalists are often at pains to distinguish between the Jamaatis and Wahhabism, which is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. But differences in theological details, although they do exist, are secondary; mainly, the Saudi Wahhabis hold to a deceptive alliance with the Western powers, while the Jamaatis were always frontally anti-Western. The Jamaatis study in Saudi Arabia and share with the Wahhabis a murderous hatred of Muslims who do not conform to their ideology, considering those who reject their teachings to be apostates from Islam. They regularly massacre Shia Muslims, in particular, in Pakistani cities. They also completely reject participation by Muslim immigrants in the political and social institutions of Western countries in which they live, and they consider suicide terror legitimate. Pakistan has very few energy resources, and the Saudis have used cheap oil to support Wahhabi infiltration. In the system of radical Islam, if Saudi Arabia may be compared with the former Soviet state, Pakistan could be a parallel to the former East Germany.

For these reasons, the identification of four British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin as the perpetrators of the London atrocity comes as no surprise to those who have been paying attention to these matters. The seething, ferocious rhetoric heard in Pakistani Sunni mosques, at Friday services every week in outlying cities such as Leeds, is far more insidious, as the London events may show, than the antics engaged in by Arab loudmouths like the Syrian Omar Bakri Muhammad, the hook-handed Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Masri, or the bogus Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, all of who mainly perform for non-Muslim media attention.

Social marginalization and underemployment of second generation ethnic Pakistani youth in Britain may be cited as a cause for the extremist appeal among them; but the constant drumming of the Jamaati message from the pulpit is much more significant. It is interesting to hear first-generation Pakistani Sunnis in Britain claim shock and surprise at the presence of terrorists among them. Pakistani Islamist radicalism dominates British Islam much as the "Wahhabi Lobby" in America monopolizes the voice of the Muslim community on our shores.

I say:
But it's traditional these days to blame the victim. Shouldn't the British ask themselves why?
Excerpt:
It is also becoming clear that the government thought the British public would turn on their Muslim neighbors if it were told the truth. The police themselves have contributed to the myth that the real problem now facing us is not Islam, but Islamophobia. There have been a handful of incidents since last Thursday, but certainly nothing that could be called a backlash.

Yet the desire to prove that London's Metropolitan Police is not Islamophobic has created grotesque examples of political correctness. Scotland Yard is contributing $15,000 of taxpayers' money to enable a Swiss Islamist academic who is a recognized apologist for terrorism, Tariq Ramadan, to address a conference of young Muslims in London next month, despite knowing full well that Mr. Ramadan had been banned from America.

The result of this bad faith between the government and the governed is quite serious. Now that at last we know who and what we are up against, we are no longer sure that the authorities are on our side. The police protect Islam - I saw two constables standing guard outside the local mosque yesterday morning - but they are powerless to protect the rest of society against the Islamists. Exhorted to be vigilant, people fear accusations of Islamophobia if they voice their suspicions. It is so much easier to blame the Iraq war or the Americans or the Israelis than to face the horrific truth: that we now have a fifth column, nameless, faceless, and utterly ruthless, dedicated to transforming Britain into an Islamic republic.

I say:
Appeasmement policies made it easier for these bastards to posion the minds of young and impressionable Brits. But meanwhile, our tough stance on terror worldwide seems to be yielding results

Excerpt:
Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some key Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released today.

In a striking finding, predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle East and Asian countries also shared to "a considerable degree" Western nations' concerns about Islamic extremism, the survey found. Many in those Muslim nations see it as threat to their own country, the poll found.

I say:
And since someone's bound to bring it up, here's a roundup of Saddam links to al Qaeda.

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Rule Brittania

2005-07-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

First, for those who believe in polls, this.
Excerpt:
The response of Tony Blair and his ministers to the attacks has clearly boosted the standing of both. Early this year, twice as many people said they were dissatisfied with Mr Blair as Prime Minister as said the opposite. In the aftermath of Thursday's bombings, Mr Blair's approval rating has flipped from negative to positive for the first time in five years.

Moreover, the bombings have failed - despite Mr George Galloway's best efforts - to undermine support for the British presence in Iraq. The proportion wanting British troops brought home quickly has fallen and the proportion who now want Britain to retain its close ties with the US has risen. The section of the chart headed "Assessing performance" tells a story of which Britons can be proud.

A massive 95 per cent of YouGov's respondents believe that on Thursday London's emergency services responded either magnificently (71 per cent) or very well (24 per cent). More than two thirds, 71 per cent, give comparably high marks to the Prime Minister and his Government.

Only Britain's intelligence services - for obvious reasons - fare less well. A third of YouGov's respondents, 33 per cent, accord their performance an equally high rating.

As figures in the chart show, virtually the whole nation, 90 per cent, applauds Londoners' courage and calm under fire and Tony Blair's satisfaction rating has shot up from a mediocre 32 per cent at the beginning of this year to a creditable 49 per cent now.

That said, people are far from sanguine about the future. Almost everyone, 92 per cent, reckons that another terrorist attack on a British target is now either "very likely" (45 per cent) or "fairly likely" (47 per cent).

However, the proportion fearing that they themselves or a close family member or friend might be killed or injured in such an attack has not risen significantly. People have clearly thought for a long time that a terrorist attack was probable, but most people evidently have no intention of changing the way they live.

I say:

What polls like this measure is the froth of sentiment. They don't directly measure the underlying substance, but they do give a hint at it, if you interpret them correctly. What we have here is the immediate emotional reaction of everyday Englishmen. In time, the readings will regress toward the mean. But what's significant here is the *direction* of the twitch. These people are not cowed, and they know that the ones to blame for terrorism are the terrorists.

The law of averages dictated that sooner or later London would suffer an Islamist terrorist attack. Every major city will, sooner or later, unless we destroy Islamism before they get around to all of them. Now we know how the people of England will react.

In terms of numbers killed, this may not compare to 9/11 - in fact, each of these terror attacks is less bloody than the last, as the enemy's ability to attack us seems to decline - but this isn't the point. the point is, they intended to terrorise the English, and it looks very much as if they have failed.

Our mother country is a tough old bird, and she still has some fight in her.

Finally, if you don't something just a bit sappy, here are some graphic expressions of defiance from around Europe. I especially like the kid on the tank.

Sadly, there are some commentators in the UK berating their antiterror security for not preventing this. You can't prevent a terrorist attack by way of security provisions. You can only delay it. The only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to destroy terrorism as such. This is *not* a law enforcement problem. This is a clash of civilizations. Fight it as such. And fight to win.

Defense is not enough. Think counterattack. Destroy the cultures of ignorance and repression that breed these monsters. Replace the United Nations with an infrastructure designed to extend and preserve democracy and human rights by force of arms. (And no, human rights does not mean coddling unlawful combatants.) Ram democracy down the throats of Asia, Africa, South America, until the whole planet is free. Then we can relax.

Imperialist, you say? Whatever. I prefer to think of it as our internationalist work. Spread the revolution.

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North Korea nuke timeline: the Clinton years

2005-05-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

A summation of a timeline from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, plus details from other sources. Note the repeated failure of diplomacy - meaning appeasement - to achieve adequate concrete results during the Clinton years. At best, it delayed the Hermit Kingdon's acquisition of nuclear weaponry by a few years, and even that much presumes you take a lot on faith. Is this Clinton's fault? Only in the sense that he was enough of a dilettante to trust in mere diplomacy in the first place.

Note also the repeated United Nations resolutions, and their singular lack of effect. Saddam Hussein was not the first to treat the UN's express will with utter contempt.

February, 1993: North Korean regime denies IAEA access to several suspected nuclear weapons sites.
North Korea stonewalls and blusters while evidence accumulates that they are developing nuclear weapons.

March through September, 1993 IAEA repeatedly threatens to bring the issue before the UN Security Council. Statements by Communist China undermine this threat.

July, 1993: Bill Clinton, to soothe South Korean fears, asserts that American ground troops and the US Navy will serve to deter North Korea from any attack on South Korea.

October, 1993: IAEA General Assembly passes a resolution against North Korea. Secret negotioations begin between North Korean regime and the United States government. Team Spirit milatiry maneuvers with US and South Korean forces used as a threat/bargaining chip.

November, 1993: United Nations General Assembly passes resolution against North Korea.

December, 1993: North Korea agrees to allow partial access to its declared nuclear facilities, and may not check IAEA seals. Bill Clinton declares this inadequate. North Korea then offers an expansion of inspections in exchange for a further round of talks. US and South Korea accept this.

January, 1994: Agreement is reached that North Korea will allow access to declared sites in exchange for cancellation of Team Spirit.

February, 1994: Norh Korean negotiators renege on unconditional inspections. Intelligence sources declare that the Yongbyon reactor is intended purely for plutonium separation. Eurochemic and Russia implicated in furnishing the technology.

March, 1994: IAEA detemines that Yongbyon will be online by end of year. Inspectors are shut out of sections of reactor.

April, 1994: north Korean regime calls for direct talks with United States. Hans Blix insists on access to two undeclared sites. North Korea refuses.

May, 1994: North Korea begins removing spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon reactor, thus destroying evidence. United States threatens to seek a UN Security Council resolution.

June, 1994: Hans Blix explains to the Security Council that there is no way of knowing whether the removed plutonium is being used to create nuclear weapons, the evidence having been irretrievably lost. IAEA suspends techincal aid to North Korea. North Korea relinquishes IAEA membership. Kim-Il-Sung promises Jimmy Carter he will allows some inspections and cameras at Yongbyon, that the FUEL RODS will not be reprocessed, and that the reactor will not be refueled. (Jimmy Carter had publicly voiced his opposition to any sanctions against North Korea.) Bill Clinton calls for sanctions, while John McCain and other Republicans take him to task for having done too little to prevent the situation.

July, 1994: Kim Il-Sung dies, and rule of the country passes to his son, Kim Jong-Il.

October, 1994: United States and North Korea arrive at Agreed Framework, by which the United States gives North Korea many concessions, including two light water reactors, fuel oil, and other economic assistance, in exchange for North Korea honoring past agreements with the IAEA. This seems to include the IAEA verifying the fate of the spent FUEL RODS.

November, 1994: United Nations approves the Agreed Framework. With a small team of inspectors, IAEA confirms that North Korea has halted operations at Yongbyon and at Taechon.

January, 1995: In defense of the agreement against critics in Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Defense Secretary William Perry asserts that North Korea had been five months away from a nuclear weapon, and that this deal would prevetn the spent FUEL RODS from being used to that end.

March, 1995: IAEA asks to be permitted to inspect the spent plutonium FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

Spetember, 1995: IAEA sends a team of inspectors to North Korea. IAEA General Conference calls on North Korea to cooperate and preserve intact all evidence. Hans Blix speaks of unresolved concerns, mostly about the spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

October, 1995: North Korea denies IAEA permission to inspect the FUEL RODS.

November, 1995: UN General Assembly passes another resolution.

January, 1996: North Korean regime says it agrees to cooperate with inspectors.

March, 1996: Hans Blix reports that North Korea is not cooperating with inspectors.

May, 1996: David Kyd reports that North Korea still isn't cooperating with inspectors with regard to the spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

August, 1996: IAEA safeguards report states they can't verify what happened to the FUEL RODS.

September, 1996: Hans Blix says that the IAEA is still unable to verify. North Korea openly refuses to give the IAEA "any information whatsoever."

March, 1997: Hans Blix declares that talks have stalled.

June, 1997: IAEA says it is still unable to verify, etc.

March, 1998: North Korea reiterates its refusal to cooprate with inspectors.

April, 1998: North Korea unseals the Yongbyon reactor for "maintenance purposes.:

May, 1998 : US and South Korea state that the IAEA has confirmed that the seals remain in place at Yongbyon.
July, 1998: US GAO report says that North Korea has not allowed the IAEA to install monitoring equipment.

August, 1998: North Korea launches Taepo Dong 1 missile into Japanese air space.

September, 1998: North Korea pledges to resume packing its spent FUEL RODS rods properly, after CIA reported it was hiding them in unsuitable containers. US government sources say that North Korea is complying.

November, 1998: IAEA calls on North Korea to re-open nuclear sites for inspection.

December, 1998: North Korea denies access to suspected underground nuclear reactor at Kumchang-ni. Bil lclinton offers North Korea more food aid. This food aid reportedly is diverted to the North Korean Army.

March, 1999: IAEA officials report that critical parts of the Yongbyon reactor have been missing since 1994. (What was that about all seals being in place?)

(Note: Many estimate that North Korea has had a nuclear weapon since about this time frame. Remember those FUEL RODS?)

June 2000: Two Koreas summit. North and South agree to rebuild railroads in DMZ. United States easessanctions against North Korea.

References:

Monterey Institute: IAEA-North Korea: Nuclear Safeguards and Inspections

World Affairs: Clinton, Korea, and Presidential Diplomacy

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Making the right enemies

2005-05-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson takes a close look

Excerpts:

In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

The United Nations has sadly become a creepy organization. Its General Assembly is full of cutthroat regimes. The Human Rights Commission has had members like Vietnam and Sudan, regimes that at recess must fight over bragging rights to which of the two killed more of their own people. The U.N. has a singular propensity to find flawed men to be secretary-general - a Kurt Waldheim, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or Kofi Annan. Blue-helmeted peace-keepers, we learn, are as likely to commit as prevent crimes; and the only thing constant about such troops is that they will never go first into harm's way in Serbia, Kosovo, the Congo, or Dafur to stop genocide. Even worse, the U.N. has proved to be a terrible bully, an unforgivable sin for a self-proclaimed protector of the weak and innocent - loud false charges against Israel for its presence in the West Bank, not a peep about China in Tibet; tough talk about Palestinian rights, far less about offending Arabs over Darfur. So U.N. anti-Americanism is a glowing radiation badge, proof of exposure to toxicity.

The EU is well past being merely silly, as its vast complex of bureaucrats tries to control what 400 million speak, eat, and think. Its biggest concerns are three: figuring out how its nations are to keep paying billions of euros to retirees, unemployed, and assorted other entitlement recipients; how to continue to ankle-bite the United States without antagonizing it to the degree that these utopians might have to pay for their own security; and how not to depopulate itself out of existence. Europeans sold Saddam terrible arms for oil well after the first Gulf War. Democratic Israel or Taiwan means nothing to them; indeed, democracy is increasingly becoming the barometer by which to judge European hostility. Cuba, China, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah - not all that bad; the United States, Taiwan, and Israel, not all that good. Personally, I'd rather live in a country that goes into an anguished national debate over pulling the plug on a lone woman than one that blissfully vacations on the beach oblivious to 15,000 elderly cooked to well done back in Paris.

Mexico, enjoying one of the richest landscapes in the world, can't feed its own people, so it exports its poorest to the United States. Its own borders with Central America are as brutal to cross as our own are porous. Illegal aliens send back almost $50 billion, which has the effect of propping up corrupt institutions that as a result will never change. Given its treatment of its own people, if the Mexican government praised the United States we should indeed be concerned.

America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet - the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India - would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England.

Think about it. When Europe orders all American troops out; when Japan claims our textbooks whitewash the Japanese forced internment or Hiroshima; when China cites unfair trade with the United States; when South Korea says get the hell off our DMZ; when India complains that we are dumping outsourced jobs on them; when Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians refuse cash aid; when Canada complains that we are not carrying our weight in collective North American defense; when the United Nations moves to Damascus; when the Arab Street seethes that we are pushing theocrats and autocrats down its throat; when Mexico builds a fence to keep us out; when Latin America proclaims a boycott of the culturally imperialistic Major Leagues; and when the world ignores American books, films, and popular culture, then perhaps we should be worried. But something tells me none of that is going to happen in this lifetime.

I say:

When the feckless, the cowardly and the evil all hate you, you must be doing something right.

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Rubbing it in - a Kurdish president of Iraq

2005-04-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

In days gone past, Saddam Hussein ruled the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. Through brutal genocidal wars, he kept the other 80% of the population of Iraq down and out. Thanks to George W. Bush and a coalition of the willing, this is done with. There's a troublesome 'insurgency' of dead enders making a great deal of trouble and making ever more enemies. There's a guy nmaed Moqtada al-Sadr who tried to take over after Saddam fell, and is now just trying to stay alive. And there's a democratically elected government in Iraq.

To those of us who hate tyranny and love democracy, this is a satisfactory situation. To those who love tyranny and hate democracy, it's a disaster. Those those who shouted "Quagmire? Quagmire!" every step of the way, it's the latest in a string of embarrassments. All they have left is the hope of a repeat of the Tet Offensive secnario in Iraq. And that's not likely to happen. The pieces aren't in place here at home to make that work again. Maybe that's the kind of trick that you can only pull once.

I have to admit I may have been wrong about one thing. I thought it was a bad idea to maintain the fiction that Iraq as a nation means anything, and that it makes no sense to speak of "The Iraqi People" as if there really is such a demographic group. I was against trying to through these peoples together against their will. I was for balkanizing the region into three sections - a nation for the Kurds, a nation for the Shia Arabs, and an occupied zone for the Sunni Arabs for who have been creating all the trouble for several decades now.

Well, Iraq is intact as a nation state with its same old borders, but with an entirely new form of government. And it looks like it just might work. The Shia Arabs and the Kurds are getting along just fine. That's four fifths of the population right there. The remaining fifth is every bit as unhappy, and with every bit as much bad grace, as I would expect. But they're vastly outnumbered now, and those they formerly oppressed seem competent to handle them.

On April 7th,Jalal Talabani was sown in as the duly elected President of Iraq. The interesting thing is although the Shia Arabs outnumber the Kurds three to one, the men they collectively chose is a Kurd. The election went smoothly, and they managed somehow to form a government, and everybody's happy except the dead-enders in the Sunni Triangle. Oh, and of course the sympathizers of those dead-enders. But really, who cares about them?

Oridnarily, I don't gloat at the misfortune of others. But in this case, the losers are such despicable, evil people that I can't help but indulge myself. Their loss is humanity's gain. To rejoice at this good news in any way is to gloat implicitly. May as well be frank about it.

First, let's gloat at Saddam Hussein's expense.
Excerpt:
In an effort to prove to Saddam - who still claims to be Iraq's legitimate leader - that his regime was finally gone, the jailed ex-President was furnished with a television to watch the parliamentary vote at a US top-security prison at Baghdad Airport.

"I decided that Saddam and the 11 others [jailed regime leaders] will watch it on the television," Bakhtiar al-Amin, Iraq's interim Human Rights Minister, said. "There will be a place in jail for Saddam and the 11 to watch the TV to understand their time is finished."

Now, an illustration of just why we call them "dead-enders"
Excerpt:
A man who was an intelligence officer in the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein committed suicide after news that Jalal Talabani was sworn in as President of Iraq.

Captain Hatem Ahmad al-Shallal shot himself in the village of Daqouq, 60 kilometres south of Kirkuk, the source quoted al-Shallal's relatives as saying.

The officer had been "in an abnormal hysterical state" since Mr Talabani was sworn in as President last Thursday.

"He could not accept the idea of a non-Arab as President of an Iraqi state," the source quoted the relatives as saying.

Finally, let's watch the hypocrites at Common Dreams squirm and whine through quotes from cherry-picked proxies.
Excerpts:
"I call it canned democracy offered by America, or even worse and more dangerous, the forbidden fruit that the devil tempted Adam with."
...
"This is a farce, everything is pre-ordained and pre-arranged before lawmakers convene," said Jarba, who, as a chief of the Shammar tribal confederation which straddles Iraq's ethnic divide, was elected as an MP for the Shiite alliance even though he is Sunni.

I say:
You can't please everyone. But fortunately there are some people not worth pleasing, and the rest you *can* please. The Left are beside themselves. That Ba'athists are offing themselves. And al Qaeda are currently eating their own in Saudi Arabia.

Who could ask for anything more?

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Communist China since Tienanmen Square

2005-03-29T17:22:00.000-08:00

1989: Li Peng (beleived to have ordered Tienanmen Square massacre) and others oust moderate Zhao Ziyang. Li Peng's power begins to decline.

1991: Government of Taiwan ceases to claim to be sole legitimate government of China.

1994: Deng Xiaoping's last public appearance

1997: Economic crisis in Communist China. Deng Xiaping dies. Jiang Zemin advocates publicly held stocks. James A. Dorn or the Cato Insitute argues that free trade will bring democracy to China. "Trade policy and human rights policy should not be yoked." Hong Kong ceded to Communist China. Human rights violations continue in Tibet. Free China Movement founded.

1998: Li Peng replaces reformer Qiao as Premier. Henry Rowen predicts economic reforms will likely lead to democracy

1999: Falun Gong banned. Members sent to re-education camps. Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui abolishes Taiwan's "one state" policy.

1999, February: Political prisoner Gao Yu released prior to UN human right meeting, promptly re-arrested afterward.

1999, April Amnesty International documents gross human rights violations in Xinjiang Uighur province.

1999, July: "One China, One Taiwan" Resolution introduced in US House. Estimated 50,000 Falun Gong practioners arrested, sent to labor camps

2000: Li Peng and other hardliners return to power. Hu Changqing executed.

2001: Communist Party Internal Report Reveals Spread of Unrest

2001, January: BBC reports Falun Gong detainees died in custody after being beaten.

2002: China releases Ngawang Sangdrol in advance of Zemin's visit to George W. Bush. Hu Jintao becomes chairman of party. Hu Jintao permits politically connected businessmen to obtain Communist Party membership.

2002, August: China's head jailer Du Zhongxing denies there are any political prisoners in China.

2003: Spread of SARS blamed on China's secrecy. Minxin Pei still predicts economic progress will lead to democracy, after "a profound economic and political crisis." Hu Jintao becomes president.

2003, July: Mass protest in Hong Kong over new anti-subversion law. Hu Jintao vows to promote "socialist democracy"

2004, March: Beijing issues a white paper on 50 years of human rights progress in China. All recent examples of progress therein concern strictly economic rights.

2004, April: Beijing rules that Hong Kong may not freely elect their own leaders

2004, July: Huge protests in Hong Kong over Beijing's interference in local elections.

2004, September: Hu Jintao says western style democracy is a "blind alley", commits to one party rule. Police arrests 36,000 dissidents and petitioners.

2004, October: China releases political prisoner Kang Yuchun just before EU delegation arrives to discuss human rights.

2004, December: China tests ballistic missile submarine

2005, February: China releases information on 52 political prisoners prior to meeting with UN Human Rights Commission.

2005, March: Chinese military buildup assessed as threat to U.S.. China approves military force to conquer Taiwan. US abandons a UN resolution criticizing China after China releases Rebiya Kadeer. President Hu Jintao named world's 4th worst dictator by Parade Magazine (down from 3rd in 2004.) Hu Jintao takes control of Military Commission. China restricts publication of news on the Internet, and increases regulation of news reporters and editors.

Reference sites:
The history of dissent and human rights
in the People's Republic of China
Deng Xiaoping's and Recent Chinese History

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Kyrgyzstan!

2005-03-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

Gezundheit.

Excerpts:

At least 10,000 pro-democracy protesters stormed a police station and forced workers to flee a governor's office in Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, a government spokesman said, in the biggest demonstration since allegedly fraudulent elections last month.

The government said it was ready to negotiate with the protesters who have demanded President Askar Akayev's resignation.

"We hope there will be no further violence," presidential aide Abdil Seghizbayev said.

Opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev said talks would only be possible if Akayev himself sits down at negotiating table.

"All other lower level negotiations will be just a waste of time," he said.

Police fled to the roof of their station, firing shots into the air to deter the stone-throwing protesters in the southern city of Jalal-Abad, regional government spokesman Orazaly Karasartov said...

The riot was the latest in a string of nationwide protests sparked by the Feb. 27 parliamentary elections in which President Akayev's allies fared overwhelmingly well. Critics claim the vote and a subsequent runoff election were marred by widespread abuses.

Europe and the United States said the polls were seriously flawed, a charge denied by the government.

Sunday's riot came a day after police forcibly evicted demonstrators from the governor's office in Jalal-Abad and another government building in the city of Osh. More than a dozen people, including three police officers, were injured and more than 200 demonstrators were arrested, police and civic activists said.

Protesters were still occupying five other state buildings in southern and western districts.

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Communist China after Mao - up through Tienanmen Square

2005-03-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

1976: Mao Zedong dies. Deng Xiaoping takes over. "Gang of Four" arrested. Chines Gulag system ("laogai") remains intact.

1977: Deng announces the Four Modernizations.

1978: Hua Guofeng reveals Ten Year plan for the Four Modernizations. With the Joint Communique on Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Jimmy Carter normalizes relations between US and Red China, at the expense of Taiwan.

1979: Congress passes Taiwan Relations Act to counter effects of the Joint Communique. Democracy Wall movement officially shut down. One Child policy instituted, leading directly to widespread forced abortion and infanticide of girls. Wei Jingsheng arrested.

1980: Sino-US military relations established. First Special Economic Zones set up in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen .

1981: "Gang of Four" convicted in show trial for previous regime's atrocities. Remnants of Democracy Wall movement suppressed in crackdown.

1984: Wei Jingsheng sent to forced labor camp. "Provisional regulation on the use of executed prisoners' corpses and organs" passed, beginning the practise of harvesting organs from political prisoners. China joins International Atomic Energy Agency.

1986: Wave of student protests.

1987: Police fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in Lhasa, Tibet. Reform-minded Hu Yaobang forced out.

1988: Coastal zones opened to foreign investment.

1989: Martial law imposed on Tibet. Hu Yaobang dies. Protesters in Tienanmen Square massacred by government. George Bush imposes sanctions on Communist China for the massacre. European Union imposes arms embargo.

References:

Here's Communist China's chronology of US relations

North Park Universiry has a chronology

freetibet.org

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Spanish Muslim clerics issue fatwa against bin Laden

2005-03-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

So why didn't they do this earlier?

Excerpt:

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader.

The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain.

I say:

A nice way to commemorate the anniversary. But that's not enough reason to wait so long. And was he any less of an a-hole *before* the Madrid bombings?

Let me tell you what I think is going on here (and you can't stop me.) This is the fruits of victory. Dubya's victory. He won simply by fighting. Sometimes that's all it takes. And now the enemy is caving. A slow, majestic, magnificent collapse of the edifice of terror. Bin Laden was "in" with certain circles when he was perceived as a winner. But he's not perceived as a winner anymore. Everyone who embraced him is itching to get loose. But they need to figure a way to back away from him without losing too much face. Hence this anniversary fatwa. If they'd done this November 3rd or January 31st, it would have been too blatant.

I was a bit surprised to learn he had survived Tora Bora. But in a way, he didn't survive. Politically, he's dead as disco. And his movement's dying, too. Nothing fails like failure.

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... zIWETHEY

Giuliana Sgrena and the limits of alliances of convenience

2005-03-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

Jack Kelly provides the background

Excerpt:

Giuliana Sgrena does not lack a sense of self-importance. The 56-year-old journalist for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto thinks she knows so many deep dark secrets the U.S. military tried to shut her up permanently.

Sgrena went to Iraq to report on the heroic resistance to the American imperialists. Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos rode in the airplane to Baghdad with her.

"Be careful not to get kidnapped," Doornbos warned Sgrena.

"You don't understand the situation," she responded, according to Doornbos' account last week in Nederlands Dagblad. (Excerpts were translated into English and posted on a Dutch writer's Web blog.) "The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers. The enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear."

Sgrena left her hotel the morning of Feb. 4 to interview refugees from Fallujah, the resistance stronghold captured by U.S. Marines in November. The interviews didn't go well.

"The refugees ... would not listen to me," she said. "I had in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth in my face."

Sgrena's feelings were hurt that the refugees could be so curt to her: "I who had risked everything, challenging the Italian government who didn't want journalists to reach Iraq and the Americans who don't want our work to be witnessed of what really became of that country with the war and notwithstanding that which they call elections." (Maybe it reads better in Italian, or maybe she just can't write worth a damn.)

She got nabbed on her way back to her hotel. Sgrena told her captors she was on their side, and suggested they kidnap an American soldier instead. But the U.S. government doesn't pay ransoms.

I say:

This excerpt should speak for itself, but since people are often deliberately obtuse, I'd best spell out the implications:

1. The enemy of your enemy is *not* your friend. Leftists such as Sgrena are deluded on many levels, not just the political. They misapprehend basic human nature, if they think the Islamofascists have any regard for them.

2. The sheer arrogance Sgrena exhibits is *not* a personal quirk. All Leftists I have ever encountered are this way.

3. Even in Fallujah, a former stronghold of the regime that once oppressed and terrorized at least 80 percent of Iraq, they will "throw their truth" in a Communist bitch's face.

4. The Left is on the way out. Worldwide.

5. The Left is badly out of touch with reality.

6. Never pay ransom to kidnappers. Especially if the kidnappee is someone you can easily do without.

7. Never negotiate with terrorists. This is a corollary to the principle: never negotiate with those who have no honor.

Oh, and in case anyone is coming late to the party, Sgrena's account of the incident has been falling apart for quite some time now. Leftists are liars, as a matter of principle. The trouble is, as in Sgrena's case, they lie so often and so hard they start to believe their own lies.

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The popular uprising in Lebanon, and what it means

2005-03-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

It seems like democracy is busting out all over the Middle East these days. Since that Inaugural speech Bush gave, the Egyptian government has promised election reform, the Lebanese government has resigned per the demand of massive popular protest, and the Baathist regime of Syria is talking of a pullout from Lebanon.

Of course this has nothing at all to do with Bush's preceeding tough talk on precisely these subjects, or his election victory that puts him in a position to talk tough, or the successful elections in Iraq that vindicate his pro-democratic policy. Nothing at all. Pure coincidence. Just dumb luck. Right? Well, not so fast.

Defeated Leftists and Democrat partisans, in a spirit of sour grapes, have insisted there is no connection. Some have even been so clever as to say that to assert a connection is to commit a post hoc fallacy. Well, it isn't and here's the difference: in this case there is abundant evidence of a connection.

First off, let's talk about correlation. Correlation is when there is a pattern of two things happening at the same time, and one *not* happening without the other. Correlation is not causation, but it *does* indicate the presence of a causal relationship. You can argue about the exact nature of the causation (see below,) but you can't say there isn't any, unless you're in denial. And if you're in denial, no intelligent person will waste time arguing with you. Certainly I won't.

First, some historical facts. There have been three epochs in the past hundred years in which democracy has expanded significantly in various parts of the world. They were: the final period of World War II, the 1989 to 1992 period, and our current post-9/11 era. In that same hundred years, there have been three eopchs in which the united States forcibly advanced the cause of freedom. These three epochs all began just slightly before those other three epochs.

And the first two epochs of expanding freedom came to an end at preciely the same moment that the United States, for whatever reason, started to back down and compromise. Once the United States, against Churchill's objections, decided to let the Soviet Union have Eastern Europe, freedom and democray ceased to spread, not only in Europe, but throughout the globe. Once Bush decided not to follow through against Saddam's regime in the first Gulf War, but stuck to the limits of his United Nations mandate, the Shia rebellion met with disastrous defeat. This current epoch, happily, has not yet ended. John Kerry would gleefully have brought it to and end, but he didn't get the chance.

In 1968, the people of Czechosolvakia rose up and demanded freedom. The Soviet Union did not see fit to grant it, and moved in with tanks. The United States did nothing. This was the Cold War era, when no one believed the Soviet Union could be defeated, and all statesmen hoped for was containment. So much for the theory that street protests by themselves can bring about freedom. It doesn't work that way.

And what of the Korean War? Vietnam? Bloody conflicts, and long ones, precisely because they were undertaken in a way that compromised victory. In World War II, we were willing to do what it took to win. But in these Cold War conflicts, we were willing neither to win nor to quit.

This was the longest and worst phase of the Cold War - the phase when we were unwilling to do what it took to beat back Marxist-Leninist tyranny. And this was precisly the era when democracy did *not* advance, and tyranny did. Ronald Reagan brought an end to this lamentable age. The small-minded jeered when he demanded Gorbachev "tear down this wall." Even today they insist the disintegration of Sovoet Communism was a coinciddence, that Reagan's tough policies and tough talk had nothing to do with. But remember this: no one but Reagan saw it coming. For some people, not even hindsight is 20/20.

And so the Soviet Union vanished like a bad dream, and western Europe was belatedly freed, and then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In a brief flowering of unity of purpose, the United Nations went along with the idea of not letting Saddam take over the entire Middle East piecemeal. But then Papa Bush wimped out. He was succeeded by Bill Clinton, who had no interest in doing anything about anything that didn't directly concern his carnal appetites or his popularity. Under Clinton, there was NATO's move into the Balkans. A good thing, if a bit late. If it hadn't been for Monicagate, Clinton may never even have bothered. Once it was all over, he handed it over to the united Nations, under whose oversight most of the gains have since come undone.

The pattern of correlation here is this: when the United States backs up the human desire for liberty with force or a credible threat of force, this liberty tends to be achieved. Not always, but much more often than not. At the same time, when liberty movements are snuffed out by the force of repression and tyranny, we find that the United States did *not* back up the human desire for liberty with force or a credible threat of same. This pretty much always happens. (Giving Bush credit for the success of the Orange revolution in Ukrainia is a reach, but only a very slight one.) So there you have the two sides of a correlation. And any statistician will tell you that you ignore a strong correlation at your own peril.

When you see a correlation, there are three possible causal relations behind them. First, A causes B. Second, B causes A. Third, both A and B are caused by some unindentified C. Well, since the epochs of American toughness begin just a few years *before* the epochs of spreading democracy, I don't think we have to wonder which of these is the case here. A tough US foreign policy results in the spread of freedom - unless someone has a more plausible explanation to offer. And remember: coincidence is not an explanation. You have to do better than that.

Now, I don't mean to belittle those good people in Lebanon who massed in the streets calling for an end to Syria's puppet government. Demonstrations such as this, as well as the anti-terror protests in the Iraq, help dispel the vicious lie that the Middle East isn't ready for democracy. These people say they're ready, and who are we to second guess them? But just demanding something doesn't magically make it happen. You need force to back it up. They provided the desire. We're providing the force.

(Meanwhile, Bush is *not* forcibly pushing democracy in the Far East, at least not yet. He's refusing to give Eraserhead Kim Jong-Il the bilateral talks he demands, but that's as far as the pressure goes. Not coincidentally, we see no march of freedom in that region. Certainly not in Communist China. Part of the problem here is nukes. It's Cold War II, and again the fear of nuclear holocaust restrains us from putting the despots there in their place. A missile defense would help a lot. The other part of the problem is we need to stop shoveling money into Red China. Our aid money propped up the Soviet Union, and now our investment money is empowering up these thugs. Corporate greed is driving that, and no good has ever come from greed. The lie that this will somehow bring about democracy is wearing thin now, so many years after Tienanmen Square. But that doesn't bother the purveyors of this lie.)

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Times: Kim dynasty going to pieces in North Korea

2005-01-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

Would be nice if it turns out to be true

Excerpts:

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

Some of those interviewed believe the Dear Leader', Kim Jong-il, has already lost his personal authority to a clique of generals and party cadres. Without any public announcement, governments from Tokyo to Washington are preparing for a change of regime.

The death of Kim's favourite mistress last summer, a security clampdown on foreign aid workers and a reported assassination attempt in Austria last November against the leader's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, have all heightened the sense of disintegration...

According to exiles, North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash - an important sign, says one activist, because 'the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else'.

And then there's this

Excerpt:

A 35-minute video clip shows a portrait of Mr Kim taken inside a factory building and defaced with writing demanding democracy.

Do Hee-youn, who heads the South Korean group that made the clip available, said such an act would be considered a grave crime in the North and would bring capital punishment without trial.

I say:

It's like the fall of the Soviet Union all over again. This is what happens when you get tough with these bastards. They can't survive without our help.

One danger here is that North Korea probably has nuclear weapons, and is known to have the missiles to deliver them. Will Kim decide to launch them on the theory he has nothing to lose? All indications are he's not insane, just utterly without moral sense.

When Kim falls, there will likely be a democratic revolution. But if history is any guide, its success is not guaranteed. Recall the French Revolution. Recall Russia's revolutions in 1917. The Left has a habit of killing democracies in the nest and taking their place. Unless we step in to help, it'll just be a new Communist dynasty.

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BBC apologizes for anti-American misrepresentation of deaths in Iraq

2005-01-31T15:06:00.000-08:00

Well, that's good of them

Excerpt:

The figures said that 3,274 civilians had died in that period, 2,041 of them as the result of "military operations".

The rest were attributed to "terrorist operations".

The BBC reported the figures as suggesting that coalition and Iraqi forces could be responsible for up to 60% of conflict-related civilian deaths in Iraq.

However, the Iraqi Ministry of Health then clarified that the figures included not just civilians, but also insurgents and Iraqi security forces. And it said that the phrase "military operations" referred to Iraqis killed by insurgents as well as coalition or Iraqi forces.

I say:

Isn't it awful how the nasty American soldiers are killing all those nice Iraqi insurgents who are just trying to protect their country... oh, wait a minute. Those insurgents are *killing* Iraqis, for the crime of wanting to run the country themselves.

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Iraqis vote for democracy

2005-01-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

Estimated 72 percent turnout

Excerpt:

Speaking at a televised news conference in Baghdad, the official said 72 percent of 13 million registered voters had cast ballots, with polls not expected to close until 5 p.m. (1400 GMT).

The official's statement could not be independently corroborated. Available accounts from polling centres indicated robust turnout in some Shia and Kurdish areas, but low turnout in many Sunni areas.

In neighbouring Jordan, the organization responsible for conducting the absentee ballot said nearly 66 per cent of 280,000 voters registered with the organization had cast their ballots on Friday and Saturday. The voters were spread across 14 countries.

I say:

The high turnout in most of the country proves that the Kurds and the Shia Arabs are ready and eager for democracy. In the case of the Kurds, we already knew that. In the case of the Shia, we presumed it, but now we know for sure.

The only low turnouts to be found are in the Sunni Triangle, where the former oppressors of the country live, and where the remnants of Saddam's regime have openly declared war on democracy as such. Kerry is whining that this makes the elections not legitimate. I say let those mass murdering turds disenfranchise themselves. These are the ones we liberated Iraq *from*.

I still think it would be better to split Iraq up along ethnic divides. But the Kurds have some independence in this scheme, and that's something. This looks like it just might work. Not for the Sunni Arabs, perhaps, but for the other 80 percent of the country.

Chalk up another victory for the forces of freedom, and another - and particularly humiliating - defeat for the haters of democracy, the haters of the West, the haters of the United States, and the haters of Bush. Big losers all.

By the way, a number of Big Lies have recently taken fatal blows. First, the idea that these terrorists were some sort of freedom fighters. Both bin Laden and al Zarqawi have openly admitted that it's democracy they oppose. I remember when Tom Tomorrow mocked the idea that they simply hated freedom. He couldn't refute it, because it was true, so he took recourse to dismissal by ridicule. Why Do They Hate America So Much? Because they're a**holes, that's why. Sometimes things really are that simple.

Second, the idea that the terrorists in Iraq somehow represent the Iraqi People, whatever that is. 72 percent say otherwise. No wonder they hate democracy. Democracy hates them.

Finally, the notion that Iraq was a mistake is looking mighty iffy at the moment.

One thing's for sure: Iraq *is* a quagmire. Just not for us.

Here's Chris Muir's take.

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Palestinian elections: Abbas legitimized?

2005-01-16T13:45:00.004-08:00

Pardon my skepticism, but I'm not sure we chalk this one up as a victory
for democracy. That's okay, the forces of freedom have had plenty of
victories lately. But this doesn't look like one of them.

First off, there's the low turnout.

Excerpt:

Palestinians initially said polls were being kept open another
two hours because of heavy turnout. Subsequently, however, officials
said the polls were being kept open to encourage turnout, which was
only about 30 percent of 1.8 million eligible voters by noon local
time (5 a.m. EST).

And then there's this

Excerpt:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Forty-six members of the Palestinian
election commission, including top managers, resigned Saturday, saying
they were pressured by Mahmoud Abbas' campaign and intelligence officials
to abruptly change voting procedures during the Jan. 9 presidential poll.

Two senior members of the commission, Ammar Dwaik and Baha al-Bakri,
resigned early Saturday, and officials later said 44 more members
resigned. Six top election officials were among those who resigned.

The resignations raised questions about Sunday's vote giving Abbas an
overwhelming victory with 62.3 percent, though the officials who quit
said the alleged irregularities did not fundamentally affect the final
vote tally.

"This proves that what happened is very serious and it must not happen
again," said Dwaik, the commission's deputy chairman. "These pressures
and threats lessened the degree of the integrity of the election, even
though overall it was free and fair."

I say:

Maybe the election's legit, and maybe it isn't. They had elections
before, in 1996. Arafat won.
Now either the elections are bogus, or the leadership in Palestine
reflects the will of the people. Either alternative reflects badly on
Palestinians as a whole.

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) looks like a bad character. He says to the West
what the West wants to hear, but he delivers a completely different message to his constituency.

Excerpt:

Abbas earned his Ph.D. in history from Moscow's Oriental College. His
doctoral thesis denies that six million Jews died in World War II. In his
Arabic-language book "The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism"
Abbas rejects "the Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that six million
Jews were killed. The limited number that did succumb were victims of a
joint [Nazi-Zionist] plot".

Mahmoud Abbas was a founding member of the Palestinian National
Liberation Movement (Fatah) present, along with Yasser Arafat, in the
1964 beginnings of the terrorist organization dedicated to the
destruction of Israel. Since 1968 he has been a member of the Palestinian
National Council (PNC) and rose to Secretary General of the PLO Executive
Committee. The Executive Committee and the PNC are the top two
decision-making bodies of the PLO.

I say:

A Holocaust denier and co-founder of a terrorist organization. This
is what passes for a moderate with these people. Good thing we have that
security fence.

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Bush undermines UN by trying to get its job done

2004-12-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

It's all about the UN

Excerpt:

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to
undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to
coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.

The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia
would coordinate the world's response.

But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that
role should be left to the UN.

'I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming
to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when
it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,'
she said.

'Only really the UN can do that job,' she told BBC Radio Four's PM
programme.

'It is the only body that has the moral authority. But it can only do it
well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.'

I say:

This should go without saying by now, but it doesn't, so I'll say it
yet again: the United Nations hasn't got any moral authority. There is
no moral authority without moral credibility, and the UN has no moral
credibility. Rwanda, Darfur, Kosovo, the Ivory Coast, the Iraq
oil-for-food scandal - all informed persons know the litany.

Also, the United Nations is *not* the best system we've got for any good
work. Not even close. Private charities in the United States are
putting the lie to Short's claims in that regard. They're responding to
this tsunmai fallout in a way that would put UN bureaucrats to shame -
if they were capable of shame.

The only way United Nations can justify their jobs is by denying all
this, and by repeating the Big Lie that they are the arbiters of moral
authority. They aren't.

So the inevitable - and rhetorical - question will be: is Bush trying to
undermine the UN, or is he trying to help people in an unfortunate part
of the world? I say that's a false dichotomy if there ever was one.
The only way to get any real good done in this world is to do it over
the objections of the United Nations.

THe UN is a purely political and bureaucratic organization, dominated by
non-democratic states. They don't care about getting things done. They
care only about protecting their own turf. Maybe Dubya's rogue
coalition will light a fire under them for a while, and they'll acutally
do something themselves, if only to save their own jobs. But only for a
while.

Oh, and here's Chris Muir's take on it.

Kofi Annan is fabulously unsuited to do any good, but so was his
predecessor, and it's a sure bet his successor will be as well. Annan
is not the root problem here. The United Nations is the root problem.

The UN needs to be backed up by the authority of the great powers, as Ms.
Short admits. But do the great powers need the UN? Who *does* need the
UN?

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Ukrania: what serious election interference looks like

2004-11-28T10:25:00.001-08:00

Beyond even what ACORN would dare

Excerpt:

It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks
arrived armed with rubber truncheons.

Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine's Sumy
region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the
village polling station.

"They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push
through towards the ballot boxes," he told The Telegraph.

"People's faces were cut from blows to the head. There was blood all
over."

The thugs - believed to be loyal to the pro-Russian presidential
candidate Viktor Yanukovich from his stronghold, Donetsk - were repulsed
only when locals pushed them back and a policeman fired warning shots.

I say:

Now *that's* tampering. But just to show they're thorough, there's
plenty of milder, more western-style shenanigans as well. Excerpts:

The most common trick was "carousel" voting, in which busloads of
Yanukovich supporters simply drove from one polling station to another
casting multiple false absentee ballots.

In another brazen fraud recorded by observers from the Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe, voters were given pens filled with
ink that disappeared, leaving ballots unmarked and invalid.

The Ukranian version of red state/blue state

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Ukrania: what serious election interference looks like

2004-11-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

Beyond even what ACORN would dare

Excerpt:

It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks
arrived armed with rubber truncheons.

Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine's Sumy
region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the
village polling station.

"They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push
through towards the ballot boxes," he told The Telegraph.

"People's faces were cut from blows to the head. There was blood all
over."

I say:

Now *that's* tampering. But just to show they're thorough, there's
plenty of milder, more western-style shenanigans as well. Excerpts:

The most common trick was "carousel" voting, in which busloads of
Yanukovich supporters simply drove from one polling station to another
casting multiple false absentee ballots.

The Ukranian version of red state/blue state

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The all too justified US aggression in Fallujah

2004-11-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

Intel to help wipe out the terrorists, and a weapons cache they won't be dipping into anymore

Excerpts:

Found along with a laptop computer, stacks of CD-ROMs, and a number
of telephones in an insurgent safe house Thursday, the trove is just one
of many intelligence finds in Fallujah that are shedding light on the
insurgency.

Those finds - along with that of a vast weapons cache and safe house
operating under the cover of an Islamic medical charity, which contained
flags of Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - are one reason US
marine commanders want to keep pushing the offensive...

The scale of the weapons cache discovered Wednesday by Bravo Company at
the suspected Zarqawi charity was the largest found in the city so far
- and stashed in such a nondescript collection of buildings that US
troops passed by several times without taking a closer look.

With an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives, it could have caused
damage up to six city blocks away, if detonated all at once. "Not all
this stuff was being used for Fallujah - a lot was being exported out,
and used as IEDs and car bombs in Ramadi and elsewhere," says Colonel
Tucker at the downtown site, just 200 yards from the central Hadra
Mohamadiya mosque. "This was the central location for planning."

..."On the surface, it looks real, with the Red Cross," says an Arabic
speaker who went through the documentation. "But their real job is
something different.... It's like a front company. This is a medical
facility to help insurgents."

Ledgers listed big ticket, Iraqi donors. More ledgers were for those
receiving cash or food. Outside, garbage sacks were full of car alarms
- a favorite for rigging command-detonated car bombs and explosives.
Homemade RPGs lay in the dirt, not far from scores of Iraqi-made RPGs,
oiled and stacked like cordwood.

Antitank mines and mountains of rockets and mortars of every size and
description choked the buildings. An initial explosion of larger
ordnance - including 14 SA-7 surface-to-air missiles- - sent a cement
mixer flying 120 yards through the air.

Torture rooms discovered and put out of business. And a Syrian connection unearthed

Excerpts:

Fallujah, Iraq - Hostages have cried out and prayed their precious
final moments away in an underworld of secret prisons discovered by
United States (US) marines as they swept through the former rebel
enclave of Fallujah the past week.

A major US-Iraqi assault on the city uncovered at least two prisons and
multiple execution rooms, where people had rotted or had their heads
chopped off.

Fallujah's death row was not a sprawling penitentiary but the living
rooms and bedrooms of its middle-class homes, where religious extremists
set up shop, installed iron-bar jail cells and unloaded bullets into the
back of prisoners' heads, if not worse.

Islamic insurgents have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in Iraq since
April, when a US Marine assault on Fallujah was aborted after a shaky
ceasefire was reached.

At least 30 hostages have been executed in that time, including most
recently the British-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, according to a
video...

Just before the marines left the building, they found a man in a
bathroom. He was from a wealthy Baghdad family and had a $250 000
(R1,5-million) ransom on his head.

"He told us 'I want to go back to Iraq', and we told him that he is in
Iraq. He was really surprised because his kidnappers were Syrian," said
a staff sergeant with Bitanga.

At least 10 bomb-making factories and another 10 operation hubs had been
found in the north-western section of Fallujah, US officers said.

Bitanga also said his troops recovered the Syrian driver of kidnapped
French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, who had been
running around Fallujah after being set free by his captors.

I say:

This is a disaster for Islamist terrorism, and also for their fellow
travellers, the Left. Once again we go in against all insincere
objections, discover the truth, and put the lie to the Left's rhetoric.
How can they cope? By resorting their old tried and true weapon:
propaganda. That's why you're hearing so much hysteria about security rounds.
But it won't help. They can't win this war in the court of public
opinion. We're wise to that trick. They did their worst in the last US
election, and it just wasn't enough.

There's an election coming up in Iraq, scheduled for late January. The
terrorists are trying to prevent this. The Left are cheering them on
(Minutemen, Michael Moore calls them) and giving what aid they can with
their propaganda and lies. They may manage to delay the election, but
it's unlikely they can stop it. We won't let that happen. And that will
make four elections in a row that have not gone their way. In Australia
and in America, voters chose to stay the course. In Afghanistan, and
coming up in Iraq, the elections defeat the enemy's goals sinmply by
taking place at all.

Democracy marches on, and there's nothing they can do about it. They've
already tried everything. Slander, misdirection, hysteria, and even
voter registration fraud. What have they got left?

Europe is a worry, though. The Spanish voters have shown fatal
weakness, and the French are simply too French to resist effectively.
Sweden is also likely to succumb to Islamism. But the Dutch reaction to
van Gogh's murder gives us reason to hope that western Europe isn't
utterly beyond redemption.

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Holland discovers the limits of tolerance

2004-11-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

Too late for van Gogh

Excerpt:

Now, with the manifestation of a violent form of intolerance in
their midst, the iron has entered their souls. After decades of
welcoming immigration and preaching multiculturalism, they now propose
to expel failed asylum-seekers and to assimilate those who settle,
rather than permit de facto religious segregation. If neo-conservatives
are liberals who have been mugged by reality, the Dutch are fast
becoming a nation of neo-conservatives.

I say:

Something like this was bound to happen eventually. But have the
Dutch the mental equipment to respond effectively?

Here's more

Excerpt:

The immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, unveiled plans for a law
allowing the deportation of Islamic radicals even if they are Dutch
citizens.

She said the intention was "to take away their Dutch passports if a
person is suspected of planning or being involved in extremism or
serious crimes", adding that Holland would no longer be so "naive" in
dealing with its enemies.

I say:

I guess citizenship isn't what it used to be. Then again, in
Holland, maybe it never really was. Certainly tolerance isn't what it
used to be, and that's probably for the good. Just so long as they
channel the anger into productive action. No flying off the handle,
no pogroms against all Muslims. The enemy is a culture, and a
collection of despotic regimes in sinister symbiosis with that culture.
Destroy the regimes, destroy the culure, and thus destroy Islamist
terror. In other words, this is *not* a local crime. This is part of
a global war. Fight it globally.

And no more of these mosque bombings.
That's unworthy of civilized people. That's just reverse terrorism.
Terrorists strike soft targets. Sensible people strike targets that
matter, whether they're soft or not. The targets that matter are
overseas. Afghanistan's down, Iraq's down but twitching, Libya's
cringing. But there's still Syria, Sudan, Iran, parts of Pakistan,
Somalia. And it's likely that Spain and France will fall to the enemy
before this is over.

By the way, here's the movie he got assassinated for.

And here's my thoughts on tolerance.

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Osama's back and stumping for Kerry

2004-10-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

Vote for Kerry or die. Or something

Excerpt:

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech.
He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate.
There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more
anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting
that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly
than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe
the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying
if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in
his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

The American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day.
One response is to agree that the United States of America will
henceforth act like Sweden, which is on track to become majority Islamic
sometime after the middle of this century. The electorate best knows
which candidate will serve this end; which candidate most promises to be
European-like in attitude and they can choose that path with both eyes
open. The electorate can strike that bargain and Osama may keep his
word. The other course is to reject Osama's terms utterly; to recognize
the pleading in his outwardly belligerent manner and reply that his
fugitive existence; the loss of his sanctuaries; the annihilation of his
men are but the merest foretaste of what is yet to come: to say that to
enemies such as he, the initials 'US' will always mean Unconditional
Surrender.

Osama has stated his terms. He awaits America's answer.

I say:

Osama's been out of action for a few years, probably recuperating
from injuries in the more lawless parts of Pakistan. But he's back, and
he's telling us how to vote. Maybe he thinks we're Spaniards or something.

Wretchard has him pegged. He's evil but not stupid. If he thought he
were winning, he wouldn't bother trying to influence the election. He'd
just attack us. In fact. he'd have attacked us several times by now.
He knows our weakness, and that weakness is John F. Kerry, Lickspittle
of Massachusetts. The only question is will a majority of voters be
dumb enough to fall for such a clumsy attempt at arm twisting?

(Walter Cronkite thinks this latest Osama video is a Karl Rove scam.
Well, maybe he was kidding.)

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100,000 Iraqis dead!

2004-10-31T05:00:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not

Excerpt:

The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many
Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting
surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began
(more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That
difference - the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period -
signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage
that cites the calculation more fully:

We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during
the post-war period.

Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what
the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent
of you, I'll spell it out in plain English - which, disturbingly, the
study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident
that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and
194,000. (The number cited in plain language - 98,000 - is roughly at
the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

I say:

The Lancet admits the article was rushed to print. Why?

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The incredible shrinking explosives looting scandal

2004-10-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

More and more like the museum looting

Excerpt:

Iraqi officials may be overstating the amount of explosives reported
to have disappeared from a weapons depot, documents obtained by ABC News
show.

The Iraqi interim government has told the United States and international
weapons inspectors that 377 tons of conventional explosives are missing
from the Al-Qaqaa installation, which was supposed to be under U.S
military control.

But International Atomic Energy Agency documents obtained by ABC News and
first reported on "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" indicate the
amount of missing explosives may be substantially less than the Iraqis
reported.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10
memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing -
presumably stolen due to a lack of security - was based on "declaration"
from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of
RDX explosives at the facility.

But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on
Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three
tons of RDX were stored at the facility - a considerable discrepancy
from what the Iraqis reported.

The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed
from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation
Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003.

I say:

It's looking more and more like whatever went missing did so while
we were wasting precious time with the UN Security Council. And rumor
is it all went to Syria, with help from Russian Special Forces.

Also, it's said that CBS planned to come out with this just before the
election for maximum impact, leaving no time to debunk, but the New York
Times jumped the gun.

One thing we know for sure: this scandal is trumped up, just like most
of the others.

Oh, and speaking of weapons caches:

Excerpt:

Littered with burned out Soviet military vehicles, the whole area is
a junk pile strewn with every sort of live ammunition, fuses, unexploded
shells, rockets, etc., all supposedly under the authority of Belgian
troops (at the moment), who ignored it.

In the midst of examining the bunkers and taking photos, a Swedish UN
guy, a French major and a German colonel arrived to make a fuss and
order the Canadians to leave. The French major insisted his government
had a deal with the Afghan government for the area, and ISAF had no
business being there.

This cut little ice with Maj. Hynes, who is responsible -- not to the
commander of Camp Julien, Col. Jim Ellis -- but to the ANA, which has
now moved in to secure the site.

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About those missing explosives at al Qaqqaa

2004-10-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Seems they were missing to begin with

Excerpts:

Now, the story fails to answer one core question: when did these
explosives go missing? It is simply never mentioned anywhere in the body
of the story. American forces, one official is quoted as saying, went
through the facility sometime towards the beginning of the war, saw no
materials carrying the IAEA seal, and moved on. Buried deep within the
story is the most likely explanation for what happened to the stockpile:
it was standard Iraqi practice to, prior to bombing, move explosives out
into the open and camouflage it. In all probability, it was long gone
before any American soldiers ever got near the place...

First: in all probability most of what was at Al Qaqaa and these other
places was looted before the arrival of US troops. Post-war intelligence
confirms what many of us have long believed: that Saddam had, by March
of 2003, abandoned all hope of defeating the United States in a
conventional war and, therefore, had staked his hopes on the victory of
a guerrilla force which, in collaboration with seditionists in America,
would undermine the morale of the American people and force a US
withdrawal.

I say:

This is another overhyped story, very similar to the trumped up
museum looting scandal. The only thing making it different is it comes
very close to the election, leaving very little time to get the
debunking out there.

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Saddam-terror links, with documents and photos

2004-10-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

They exist whether you say they do or not

Excerpts:

Let's start with money. At a minimum, we know that Saddam Hussein's
government supported terrorism by paying "bonuses" of up to $25,000 to
the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. How do we know this?
Tariq Aziz, Hussein's own deputy prime minister, was stunningly candid
about the Baathist government's underwriting of terrorist killings in
Israel...

Between the time Saddam Hussein boosted his bonus payments to the
families of Palestinian terrorists and the March 20, 2003 launch of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and
killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans. These bonus checks
were handed out at ceremonies where banners proclaimed the friendship of
the PLO's Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein...

The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities in exchange for safe
passage to Tunisia. Abu Abbas then joined them on a flight to freedom
aboard an Egypt Air jet. However, four U.S. fighter planes forced the
airliner to land at a NATO base in Sicily. Italian officials took the
hijackers into custody. But Abbas possessed the ultimate get-out-of-jail
card: An Iraqi diplomatic passport...

After escaping Italian police in October 1985 following the Achille
Lauro hijacking (thanks to his Iraqi diplomatic passport), Abu Abbas
finally ended up in Baghdad in 1994, where he lived comfortably as one
of Saddam Hussein's guests. U.S. soldiers caught Abbas in Iraq in April
2003. This time, he did not get away. He died last March 9, in American
custody, reportedly of natural causes.

Abbas' Baghdad sojourn was not an isolated incident. Saddam Hussein
granted avowed international terrorists refuge in Baathist Iraq. Terror
mastermind Abu Nidal also enjoyed his hospitality.

So far, we have documented that Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists
(many with al-Qaeda links) responsible for international mayhem and even
the incidental deaths of Americans. But is there any evidence that Iraq
sheltered those responsible for attacks on America?

Enter Abdul Rahman Yasin...

Former ABC News correspondent Sheila MacVicar looked for Yasin, and here
is what she reported on July 27, 1994: 'Last week, [television program]
Day One confirmed [Yasin] is in Baghdad... Just a few days ago, he was
seen at [his father's] house by ABC News. Neighbors told us Yasin comes
and goes freely.'

...This is Abu Musab al Zarqawi. After running an al-Qaeda training
camp in Afghanistan, he found his way to Baathist Baghdad, where he
reportedly checked into Olympic Hospital, an elite facility run by the
late Uday Hussein, son of the captured tyrant. Zarqawi is believed to
have received medical treatment for a leg injury sustained while dodging
American GIs who toppled the Taliban. He convalesced in Baghdad for
some two months. Once he was back on his foot, Zarqawi then opened an
Ansar al-Islam terrorist training camp in northern Iraq...

The Associated Press reports that Coalition forces shut down at least
three terrorist training camps in Iraq. The most notorious of these was
the base at Salman Pak, about 15 miles southeast of Baghdad. Before the
war, numerous Iraqi defectors said the camp featured a passenger jet on
which terrorists sharpened their air piracy skills. This satellite photo
shows an urban assault training site, a three-car train for
railway-attack instruction, and a commercial airliner sitting all by
itself in the middle of the desert...

Then there is the interesting case of Ahmad Hikmat Shakir - an Iraqi VIP
facilitator who worked at the international airport in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. Citing "a foreign government service," page 340 of the Senate
Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq-War intelligence indicates
that, "Shakir claimed he got this job through Ra'ad al-Mudaris, an Iraqi
Embassy employee" in Malaysia. On January 5, 2000, Shakir greeted Khalid
al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi at Kuala Lampur?s airport. He then escorted
them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11
conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later,
according to The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared...

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CNS: Saddam had absoulutley no WMD program

2004-10-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe a tiny little WMD program

Excerpts:

A senior government official who is not a political appointee
provided CNSNews.com with copies of the 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence
Service documents. The originals, some of which were hand-written and
others typed, are in Arabic. CNSNews.com had the papers translated into
English by two individuals separately and independent of each other.

There are no hand-writing samples to which the documents can be
compared for forensic analysis and authentication. However, three other
experts - a former weapons inspector with the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counter-terrorism official with vast
experience dealing with Iraq, and a former advisor to then-presidential
candidate Bill Clinton on Iraq - were asked to analyze the documents.
All said they comport with the format, style and content of other Iraqi
documents from that era known to be genuine...

They detail the Iraqi regime's purchase of five kilograms of mustard
gas on Aug. 21, 2000 and three vials of malignant pustule, another term
for anthrax, on Sept. 6, 2000. The purchase order for the mustard gas
includes gas masks, filters and rubber gloves. The order for the anthrax
includes sterilization and decontamination equipment.

The documents show that Iraqi intelligence received the mustard gas and
anthrax from "Saddam's company," which Tefft said was probably a
reference to Saddam General Establishment, "a complex of factories
involved with, amongst other things, precision optics, missile, and
artillery fabrication."

"Sa'ad's general company" is listed on the Iraqi documents as the
supplier of the sterilization and decontamination equipment that
accompanied the anthrax vials. Tefft believes this is a reference to the
Salah Al-Din State Establishment, also involved in missile construction.

The Jaber Ibn Hayan General Company is listed as the supplier of the
safety equipment that accompanied the mustard gas order. Tefft described
the company as "a 'turn-key' project built by Romania, designed to
produce protective CW (conventional warfare) and BW (biological warfare)
equipment (gas masks and protective clothing)."

"Iraq had an ongoing biological warfare project continuing through the
period when the UNSCOM inspections ended," the senior government
official and source of the documents said. "This should cause us to
redouble our efforts to find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
programs."

I say:

First the Duelfer report, now this. Real? Time will tell.

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First ever democratic elections in Afghanistan

2004-10-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

Remnants of Taliban sucking it up

Excerpts:

The Taliban vowed to turn the Afghan election into a day of
bloodshed, but the rebels mounted only a smattering of small-scale
attacks on police and civilians and a larger clash that left many of
their own dead.

After months of what proved to be empty threats, military commanders
and ordinary Afghans said Sunday the vote was a serious setback for the
holdouts of the hard-line Islamic regime that was driven from power by
U.S. bombs almost three years ago for harboring Osama bin Laden...

At least a dozen election workers and dozens of Afghan security officers
were killed in the run-up to the election, which Taliban militants had
threatened to disrupt as part of their campaign to drive out foreign
troops and topple U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai.

The violence curtailed voter registration in the south and east of the
country, a conservative land where the Taliban continues to derive
support. But officials said voting had to be abandoned in only one
southern district because of violence the notorious Daychopan area of
Zabul province where militants clashed with Afghan troops.

Afghan officials said 100,000 police and troops including about 27,000
foreign soldiers, most of them Americans were involved in the operation
to secure the election. Some fought with militants in Uruzgan province,
prompting U.S. airstrikes that Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said killed 25
militants and one civilian.

I say:

Between this and some controversy over ink, it was hardly a picture
perfect election. But it wasn't half bad for a first time ever.
Practise makes perfect. Anyway, the monitors are happy. And even
the United Nations monitors aren't showing much sympathy to the
candidates calling the elections unfair.

Even the BBC says it was good.

Excerpt:

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said
demands by 15 of the 18 presidential candidates to annul the poll were
"unjustified".

The local Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said
the poll was "fairly democratic".

We have to wait until the ballots are counted to know who won. But
we already know who lost - the Taliban and other haters of democracy.
They did their worst, and the election happened regardless. I dare say
they've shot their wad.

Next up, Iraq in January.

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Meanwhile in Australia

2004-10-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

John Howard wins re-election

Excerpt:

Prime Minister John Howard won an historic fourth term tonight after
Labor's vote collapsed in Tasmania and the ALP failed to make ground in
key marginal seats.

The result could leave the ALP in a worse position than after the 2001
election, with predictions Mr Howard could increase his majority.

I say:

Howard is the first leader to face a vote of those who intervened
against Saddam. His opponent was for bringing the troops home.

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Coalition of the billing

2004-10-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Confirmed: Saddam 'bought UN allies' with oil

Excerpt:

The UN oil-for-food scheme was set up in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell
controlled amounts of oil to raise money for humanitarian supplies.
However, the leaked report reveals Saddam systematically abused the
scheme, using it to buy 'political influence' throughout the world.

The former Iraqi regime was in effect free to 'allocate' oil to whom it
wished. Dozens of private individuals were given oil at knockdown
prices. They were able to nominate recognised traders to buy the cheap
oil from the Iraqi state oil firm and sell it for a personal profit.

The report says oil was given to key countries: 'The regime gave
priority to Russia, China and France. This was because they were
permanent members of, and hence had the ability to influence decisions
made by, the UN Security Council. The regime . . . allocated 'private
oil' to individuals or political parties that sympathised in some way
with the regime.

The report also details how the regime benefited by arranging illegal
'kickbacks' from oil sales.

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Meanwhile in Iran

2004-10-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Jonah Goldberg directs our attention

Excerpt:

Tehran, the nation's capital, as well as several other cities have
been wracked in recent days with widespread anti-government protests
and violent crackdowns by government forces. Buildings have been set
ablaze, and exiles are calling for revolution. According to reports on
Activistchat.com, a Web site dedicated to freeing Iran from the
oppressive rule of the mullahs, numerous protestors have been killed.
Ledeen - who has many sources inside Iran and out - reports that the
roundups and executions of young men have picked up at a terrific pace.
Iran has staged 120 public hangings since March alone, according to the
government's own news agency.

The unpopularity of the mullahs, primarily with the younger,
Western-oriented generation, is causing panic inside the regime. The
appeal of revolutionary theocracy has been bled dry. The Christian
Science Monitor reported - some would say "reluctantly reported" - that
discontent with the regime and a desire for "change" according to
various "polls" equals 90 percent. And we all remember those famous
soccer games where Iranian fans chanted "USA! USA!"

I say:

A democratic revolution in Iran would make our concerns about Iran
getting nukes irrelevant. Unless you're one of the moral equivalence
crowd who think democracies can no more be trusted with nuclear weapons
that can insane dictators.

Oh, and democracy is a good thing in and of itself. At least *I* think
so. Don't you agree?

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The global test!

2004-10-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

How to get permission to defend democracy

Excerpt:
First of all, what is the objective of your desired act of imperialist aggression?
Unlawfully seize oil fields (0 points)

Install US puppet government (0 points)

Disarm megalomaniacal dictator with WMD (will need to submit
authenticated proof--CIA or MI6 documents will not be acceptable) (100
points)

Encourage spread of democracy in region (-200 points)

Put down violent rebellion in former colony (10000 points)

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Berlusconi caves to terror

2004-09-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

Always the wrong move

Excerpt:

Newspapers in Kuwait, where negotiators were based, reported that
the kidnappers had demanded, and received, $1 million for the release of
the two Simonas, volunteers who worked for the charity A Bridge to
Baghdad on school and water projects.

Asked if a ransom had been paid, a member of Mr Berlusconi's office
skirted the issue but said: "When you're talking about hostages, there
are no two cases alike.

"You can't compare how the Italian government reacts to how the British
Government does."

Mr Berlusconi told parliament that the secret services had located their
whereabouts earlier this week, but rather than risk violence, the
Italian government had preferred to negotiate.

I say:

It doesn't work that way.

Berlusconi has rewarded hostage taking, and thus encouraged it. Now
there will be more of it. Plus, he's funded future terrorist activities.
Inexcusable.

The memory of Fabrizio Quattrocchi has been betrayed.

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UPDATE: Berlusconi denies he paid a ransom. But what was there to negotiate, then?

Marlowe: world politics and the war on terror

Anbar tribes turn against al Qaeda

Iraq on verge of civil war?

Science says colonialism benefits the colonized

The truth about the Tet offensive

North Korea: how it came to this

The squandered goodwill myth

No Saddam al-Qeada link?

Washing their hands of the Plame affair

Things are going just awful in Iraq!

I admit it. Iraq's a quagmire.

"The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig...

"Bush Lied! (TM)" is in trouble.

Iraq quagmire - the real score thus far

Civil war in Iraq?

"No Saddam teror link" update

Video from site of recent massacre in Communist China

Joe Lieberman reports from Iraq

White Phosphorus, hype vs reality

Losing hearts and minds in the Middle East

Iraq quagmire update

Free Iraq is a nation now

Al Qaeda looks for soft spots in LA and Melbourne

Keeping the United Nations out of the picture

Spoiled rich suicide bombers

London: The Pakistani (and Saudi) Connection

Rule Brittania

North Korea nuke timeline: the Clinton years

Making the right enemies

Rubbing it in - a Kurdish president of Iraq

Communist China since Tienanmen Square

Kyrgyzstan!

Communist China after Mao - up through Tienanmen Square

Spanish Muslim clerics issue fatwa against bin Laden

Giuliana Sgrena and the limits of alliances of convenience

The popular uprising in Lebanon, and what it means

Times: Kim dynasty going to pieces in North Korea

BBC apologizes for anti-American misrepresentation of deaths in Iraq

Iraqis vote for democracy

Palestinian elections: Abbas legitimized?

Bush undermines UN by trying to get its job done

Ukrania: what serious election interference looks like

Ukrania: what serious election interference looks like

The all too justified US aggression in Fallujah

Holland discovers the limits of tolerance

Osama's back and stumping for Kerry

100,000 Iraqis dead!

The incredible shrinking explosives looting scandal

About those missing explosives at al Qaqqaa

Saddam-terror links, with documents and photos

CNS: Saddam had absoulutley *no* WMD program

First ever democratic elections in Afghanistan

Meanwhile in Australia

Coalition of the billing

Meanwhile in Iran

The global test!

Berlusconi caves to terror

CNS: Saddam had absoulutley no WMD program