Anbar tribes turn against al Qaeda

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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!

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.

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...

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.

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

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

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Civil war in Iraq?

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.


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"No Saddam teror link" update

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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Video from site of recent massacre in Communist China

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

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

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.


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Losing hearts and minds in the Middle East

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.



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Iraq quagmire update

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."




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... P&CA

Free Iraq is a nation now

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.


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Al Qaeda looks for soft spots in LA and Melbourne

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

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

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

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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