Judicious Asininity

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Sat May 29, 2004

Al Qaeda's strategy in Saudi Arabia

Attack the oil industry by driving out foreigners

Robert Spencer's site, Jihad Watch reports on the latest of a string of attacks by terrorists in Saudi Arabia. He links to a list of eleven terrorist attacks at myway news. Besides clashes with Saudi Security forces, many of the attacks targeted foreigners.

May 12, 2003 - Car bomb attacks on three Riyadh compounds housing foreigners kill 35 people, including nine suicide bombers.

Nov. 8, 2003 - A suicide bombing at a Riyadh housing compound kills 17, most of them Muslims working in Saudi Arabia. U.S. and Saudi officials believe the mastermind is Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, suspected of being al-Qaida's top figure in Saudi Arabia.

May 1 - Shooters storm the offices of Houston-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in Yanbu, 220 miles north of the Red Sea port of Jiddah, killing six Westerners and a Saudi. All four attackers are killed in a subsequent shootout. Saudi officials say the attack may be linked to al-Qaida, but blame a wanted man with links to a London-based Saudi opposition group.

May 29 - Gunmen open fire on oil company compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of Riyadh. At least six people, four of them foreigners including a 10-year-old Egyptian child, are believed killed.

Al Qaeda's strategy can be determined from theses nuggets contained in the Fox News report of the attack:

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on 6 million expatriate workers, including about 30,000 Americans, to run its oil industry and other sectors. The kingdom produces about 8 million barrels of oil a day.

Many expatriates decided to leave, at least temporarily, after the Yanbu attack. Then, U.S. Ambassador James C. Oberwetter advised Americans to leave the country — a move criticized by Saudi officials.

If Al Qaeda can scare off enough expatriates then oil production would be disrupted, since the Saudis currently don't have the expertise to fill the gaps (if they did a bit less Koran thumping and a lot more technical education in their school system, they might eventually acquire the expertise). Decreased oil production translates into higher energy prices world-wide and economic disruption.

Fri May 28, 2004

Bookworm's delight

A reading list for the holiday weekend

Two-Four gives us a reading list for blogdom. Fun just to read. Here are a couple of his entries that appealed to me:

The Rage And The Pride, 2002, Oriana Fallaci -- Hell holds no fury like that of an Italian firebrand shaking the dust of the World Trade Center out of her hair. Look out.

I haven't gotten further than Robert Spencer's "Islam Unveiled", but I gather Oriana sure unloads on the enemy.

The Vampire Economy -- Doing Business Under Fascism, 1939, Guenter Reiman -- Your average American these days is very likely to agree with the proposition that Nazi Germany represented some sort of "capitalism". That's because your average American these days is a walking, talking rutabaga, with no remotely discernable grasp of the simplest facts more than about thirty days aft of his own ass. Here is a book -- researched on the scene, at the moment -- which could probably not shake loose the ethical deformities taken root in a rutabaga's so-called "mind", but, at least, it would bore them to pieces with the actual data.

The Left always tries to equate capitalism with Nazism, conveniently forgetting the "Socialist" part of the Nazi party's full name. This is the antidote.

IRAQ has a Prime Minister

The good news is the announcement took the UN by surprise

Fox News reports on the selection of a new PM for Iraq:

The Iraqi Governing Council (search) on Friday nominated one of its own members, Iyad Allawi (search), a Shiite Muslim physician who spent years in exile, to become prime minister of the new government to take power June 30, members said.

The chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, was at Friday's council session and congratulated Allawi on his nomination, said Mustafa al-Marayati, an aide to council member Raja Habib al-Khuzaai.

Here's the best part of the news:

The announcement came as a surprise to the United Nations, which has been leading the process of choosing the government — hopefully by the end of the month. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been in Baghdad for weeks consulting with Iraqis about the makeup of the government.

Brahimi "respects" the decision and is willing to work with Allawi to pick the rest of the government, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

It doesn't look like the powers that be in Iraq are going to take much notice of the UN. Given its abysmal record in Iraq and everywhere else, that isn't a surprise. Saddam's enemies, the new power in Iraq, simply preempted the UN. That's a good sign for the future.

Eco Hypocrites

Baa Baa To Pay Photographer

Having mentioned the 'ecology for thee, but not for me' syndrome so common among certain high profile Americans in a previous post about Hollywood's latest contribution to science, here's an update to an old post about one of those hypocrites who seem to have a double standard when it comes to conservation:

Barbra Streisand must pay $177,000 in legal fees incurred by an amateur photographer who fended off a $10 million lawsuit over aerial photographs he took showing her Malibu estate.

Streisand, who must pay by Friday, filed the suit in May against retired software entrepreneur Kenneth Adelman, claiming the photos showed details of her estate that can't be seen from the street.

She alleged they could increase a problem she already has with stalkers.

Superior Court Judge Allan J. Goodman initially ordered Streisand to pay Adelman's attorney fees last December when the judge dismissed the lawsuit. The two sides couldn't agree on the amount, so the judge ordered her to pay an additional $15,000 to cover the costs Adelman incurred by returning to court during the negotiations.

Adelman said Thursday that the Web site "is not about Streisand. It's about the California coast, and she happens to have a very, very small part about it."

Well, your Honor, if Baa Baa and her cronies get their way they will indeed own the entire coast as well as every other 'wilderness area' in the land one day. Then, they will truly be able to keep the rabble away from their eco-friendly and humble homes.

Thu May 27, 2004

Kerry's big speech on National Security

I tried to listen, and my wife lasted a little bit longer, but it was hard

Here's a taste of Kerry's wisdom:

And that is precisely what this administration has ignored. They've looked to force before exhausting diplomacy; they bullied when they should have persuaded. They've gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team. They have hoped for the best when they should have prepared for the worst. They've made America less safe than we should be in a dangerous world.

Anyone who followed the lead-up to resolution 1441 knows that the Bush administration got everyone on board. They got a unanimous UNSC resolution threatening Saddam with serious consequences if he did not comply with 1441 and all previous UNSC resolutions. Then the French reneged and threatened to veto Turkey's application for EU membership. Turkey blocked a US attack from the north of Iraq, and left the Sunni triangle without a decent taste of US miltary might. No amount of diplomacy could have gotten the French to countenance military action to back up UNSC resolution 1441. If Bush had taken Kerry's advice, offered in hindsight, they'd still be trying to "assemble the whole team".

Since 9/11 Al Qaeda has not attacked the U.S.. It has lost its base in Afghanistan and a likely ally in Saddam. Pakistan has been forced to choose sides, as has Saudi Arabia. The secret nuclear trade that was supplying nuclear weapons technology to terrorist regimes has been exposed and stopped. Libya has switched sides, apparently because its leader did not fancy being caught like Saddam. Thousands of Jihadists have been captured, killed or scared out of the business. The world is still a dangerous place, but it is lot less dangerous than it was on 9/10/2001. The only thing that could undo the work that the Bush administration has accomplished is to hand Iraq off to the U.N. and our European allies before the Iraqi people have control over their own fate. Then we'd have a failed state with oil wealth (courtesy of France and Russia) hosting Jihad International.

The transcript can be found here:NYT.

Wed May 26, 2004

Media bias shows in what isn't covered

The New York Times has yet to cover the story of the seven Iraqis given prosthetic hands

It was big news in Houston where the Iraqi men were given replacement prosthetic hands to replace hands cut off by Saddam for the crime of trading in US dollars. But this story reminds people of the horrors of the Saddam regime and the good in the hearts of so many Americans. So far as I can tell, the New York Times has ignored this story, or buried it so deep its own search engine couldn't find it.

The Times is still trying to stretch the prisoner abuse story hard with reports like this:Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey. If you read the piece, about the only fact that justifies the use of the word "widespread" is that the few incidents noted are geographically widespread. It reports that

According to Army officials and documents, at least 12 prisoners have died of natural or undetermined causes, including nine in Abu Ghraib. In six of those cases, the military conducted no autopsy to confirm the presumed cause of death. As a result, the investigations into their deaths were closed by Army investigators.

Big deal. A fair number of Americans serving in Afghanistan and Iraq have also died of natural causes. War is stressful and being imprisoned is stressful, especially if your captors believe your day job is planting IEDs or sniping at US forces from behind women and children.

An Iraqi General died

after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. That finding was first reported in The Denver Post.

A charming picture of the General and his grandson accompanies the Times' online version of the article. Mowhoush, a major general in the Republican Guard, was captured in a raid in Qaim. A U.S. military spokeswoman said at the time that Mowhoush was believed to have been financing attacks on U.S. forces and had close ties to Saddam. This information is not included in the Times report. It might suggest that the good General was withholding information that could have been used to save American lives, had he divulged it willingly.

But bad news filler like this article will always take precedence over any good news coming out of Iraq, at least in the NYT editorial offices.

The Day After Tomorrow Part 2

A Cast of All Stars

Just in case there is any doubt as to just exactly what the movie is all about, here's an update:

But "The Day After Tomorrow" is already the likely favorite of enviro-activists everywhere. Look for them by the thousands at theaters this weekend spreading their propaganda.

MoveOn.org, for instance, has plans to pass out leaflets that say: "Global Warming Isn't Just a Movie. It's Your Future." Variety reports that Global Exchange and the Rainforest Action Network will distribute postcards. U.S. PIRG representatives will also be at theaters pestering moviegoers.

If that were not enough, MoveOn.org hosted a town hall meeting Saturday night in New York near the movie's premiere. The rally was thick with self-appointed protectors of the environment, various busybodies and assorted hysterics: Al Gore, Al Franken, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Arianna Huffington, to name a few.

Well, yeah, that cast surely raises some questions. Then there is the matter of exactly what those intrepid protectors of the environment really want. That's an easy one:

But what they want far more is to force change on Western lifestyles. They want average people out of SUVs (indeed, out of automobiles altogether), out of big homes, out of wilderness areas, out of technology, and, ultimately, out of money.

That way, like privileged Soviet apparatchiks, they can have those things to themselves.

And that, I fear, is a fact. For more on this lovely bit of propaganda and the big todo in NYC take a look at this. In the meantime, if you simply must go see this Hollywood extravaganza, be absolutely, positively sure not to drive your SUV, wear any animal skins, carry any Bush memorabilia, or mention that you are an avid hunter or fisherman. Then again, that might be more fun than the movie.

Tue May 25, 2004

The new liberal lie

Terrorists and irregular combatants are covered by the Geneva conventions, just like regular soldiers

You can see this lie being taken for granted in this Washington Post editorial. I found it by following a link from this Democrat's blog which was linked by this Democrat's blog.. The WPO opines:

Until the Bush administration took office, the U.S. Army operated according to the Geneva Conventions as spelled out in its manuals. But in the chaos of Iraq, there was no firm policy; for U.S. soldiers on the ground, there was "an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," as Mr. Gonzales foresaw. And so interrogation methods that the administration had approved for the Taliban and al Qaeda filtered into the theater, in part through intelligence units and interrogators, some of them CIA personnel and civilians who had worked elsewhere. Soldiers and interrogators took those methods to a criminal extreme. That they were able to do so shows that the harm Mr. Gonzales warned of but ultimately dismissed -- the undermining of U.S. military culture -- came to pass. Repairing it will require Mr. Bush -- or Congress -- to reverse his harmful decision to distort the rule of law.

The first issue is the WPO is conflating the prisoner abuses with the harsh interrogation techniques used to deal with Al Qaeda and Terrorist captives. The abuses are quite separate from official interrogations. The military was already investigating the abuses long before the the pictures were leaked to the media.

The second issue is that the Geneva conventions that protect lawful combatants do not apply to terrorists captured in Iraq. They are not fighting for the state of Iraq. They are not uniformed. They do not answer to a properly constituted chain of command. They do not follow the rules of war.

None of our enemies in the last 60 years haven given a tinkers damn about the Geneva Conventions. The Germans massacred American POWs. The Japanese enslaved them. The North Koreans and North Vietnamese treated American POWs abominably. Islamic terrorists fight according to their interpretation of the Koran - all Infidels are targets and prisoners can be beheaded. It is a measure of America's humanity that our present enemies are largely treated as lawful combatants when they clearly aren't.

Here's how the Geneva Conventions distinguish particpants in a conflict:

Combatants

The Geneva Conventions distinguish between lawful combatants, noncombatants, and unlawful combatants.

Lawful Combatants. A lawful combatant is an individual authorized by governmental authority or the LOAC [Laws of armed conflict] to engage in hostilities. A lawful combatant may be a member of a regular armed force or an irregular force. In either case, the lawful combatant must be commanded by a person responsible for subordinates; have fixed distinctive emblems recognizable at a distance, such as uniforms; carry arms openly; and conduct his or her combat operations according to the LOAC. The LOAC applies to lawful combatants who engage in the hostilities of armed conflict and provides combatant immunity for their lawful warlike acts during conflict, except for LOAC violations.

Noncombatants. These individuals are not authorized by overnmental authority or the LOAC to engage in hostilities. In fact, they do not engage in hostilities. This category includes civilians accompanying the Armed Forces; combatants who are out of combat, such as POWs and the wounded, and certain military personnel who are members of the Armed Forces not authorized to engage in combatant activities, such as medical personnel and chaplains. Noncombatants may not be made the object of direct attack. They may, however, suffer injury or death incident to a direct attack on a military objective without such an attack violating the LOAC, if such attack is on a lawful target by lawful means.

Unlawful Combatants. Unlawful combatants are individuals who directly participate in hostilities without being authorized by governmental authority or under international law to do so. For example, bandits who rob and plunder and civilians who attack a downed airman are unlawful combatants. Unlawful combatants who engage in hostilities violate LOAC and become lawful targets. They may be killed or wounded and, if captured, may be tried as war criminals for their LOAC violations.

Is the WPO suggesting that the killers of Nick Berg, the car bombers, the snipers hiding in mosques, and the rest of the terrorists are lawful combatants? Apparently so. The truth of the matter is that they are War Criminals under the Geneva Conventions. Hanging is too good for them.

And, memo to the WPO, this is a war being waged by Unlawful Combatants. That's a first for a modern president.

When Bush haters collide

A Michael Moore lie is exposed by Richard Clarke

First, the lie. Kay S. Hymowitz, in City Journal notes that:

In an appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show in March 2002, Moore announced that during the period that planes were grounded for two days after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration allowed a Saudi jet to whisk away bin Ladin family members over FBI objections. As Snopes.com, an Internet site devoted to tracking down urban legends, points out, the planes did pick up bin Ladin family members—on September 18 and 19, days after commercial flights had already begun flying again, and they did so only after the FBI had questioned the departing Saudis

Yep, sure sounds like Bush is covering for his Saudi friends.

Second, the final rebuttal. According to a report in The Hill

Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush’s chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Why would the dubious Richard Clarke let Bush off the hook? Probably because he was on it.

The Day After Tomorrow

Entertainment with a Purpose

Hollywood's latest propaganda, disguised as a movie, receives a harsh debunking by Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute:

Start with the Gulf Stream. Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knows more about ocean currents than most anyone. He thinks the nonsense in The Day After Tomorrow detracts from the seriousness of the global-warming issue. So he recently wrote in the prestigious science journal Nature that the scenario depicted in the movie requires one to "turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth's rotation, or both."

The stratosphere will become the troposphere when all three laws of thermodynamics are repealed. Hailstones can't reach bowling-ball size because their growth is limited by gravity. Hurricanes can't hit Belfast because the intervening island of Ireland would destroy them.

But hey, it's just a movie. Right?

Mon May 24, 2004

High Gas Prices

Just a Reminder, There is a Reason

Thomas Bray has some info that many people seem to forget these days when gasoline prices are above $2.00/gallon:

As you contemplate those numbers spinning by on the gas pump, here is another number to remember: 1976.

That’s the last time an oil refinery was built in these United States, thanks in large part to the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome cultivated by an environmental movement that has successfully anathematized all things chemical and carbon.

In 1981, according to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, 321 refineries pumped out 18.6 million barrels a day of gasoline. Today only 149 refineries, run by 60 companies in 33 different states, pump out 16.8 million barrels of gasoline a day — almost two million barrels a day less. They are operating at 93 percent of capacity, well above the industrial average, with little time left for maintenance and upgrades.

In a few years vast new reserves of oil will come on stream in Central Asia. But if the United States continues to make it so difficult to develop new sources of energy, or to refine it into usable products, then we will get pretty much what we deserve. So when you think of $3 a gallon, you should also be thinking: 1976.

In the meantime, we allow our energy policy to be dictated by people who want to tax gasoline into conservation but whine like a banshee when prices get to 2 bucks a gallon, which by the way, considering inflation and all that, is not an historic high. To put things into a little perspective take a look at the price of a barrel of oil. With 42 gallons/barrel and a barrel costing $40, we see that about a dollar of the price at the pump goes to buy the crude. Throw in transportation and refining costs, various taxes, and environmental costs and the profit margin for refiners takes a serious dip to about 6 percent which is "less than half the industrial average" according to Mr. Bray. So how about we set some things straight with the pols who twist the facts into lies in an attempt to inflame the unthinking passions of American drivers. The next time someone suggests releasing the strategic reserves give them another option. You know, like 'How about we do some drilling?' Or 'How about we build some refineries'?
Or how about we get our head out of the sand and admit that we are stuck with petroleum products for quite some time to come. Once that is taken care of perhaps some common sense will return and we can maybe, just maybe, take steps to ensure that we actually try to reduce our own dependence on foreign oil by finding some of our own.

Michael Williamsoffers his view and points to some other interesting and little admitted facts:

Read more »

The Arab side needs nukes

So says one French Deputy to the EU parliament

Paul-Marie Coûteaux is a French Deputy to the EU parliament. The Dissident Frogman notes what Coûteaux said in a debate about the Middle East on 6 May 2001:

There is, however, another serious imbalance for which we are in part responsible, namely the imbalance of forces. I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants. That is the policy my country (DF: i.e. France) pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force. We have now destroyed it. So we will carry on with our policy of imbalance and what is happening today is merely the annoying but inevitable result of our collective blindness and cowardice.

It goes almost without saying that Coûteaux opposed the war on Iraq. I wonder if Kerry would count him and his ilk among the allies we need to get on side.

Sun May 23, 2004

The Media Shows its anti-War Bias

Valor under Fire or Prisoner Abuse

Which would the media highlight? We already know the answer. Those naked Iraqis have been on the news for weeks. Meanwhile British and American servicemen are showing the courage of their forebears. Here are two examples that should have made front page news if our media was on actually on our side. First up, Marine Captain Brian R. Chontosh. Here's some of what he did:

And Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack. He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the .50 cal unload on them.

Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines. Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride.

And he ran down the trench.

With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers.

And he killed them all.

He fought with the M16 until it was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.

At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion.

When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon's flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more.

The quote comes from Snopes.Com, a site dedicated to verifying and debunking urban legends. And there we have the problem. His valor is so underreported by the media, that it was actually suspected of being an urban legend.

Next up, a bayonet charge. Type "Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Bayonet Charge Iraq" into Google. What do you get? Minor news outlets and lots of blogs. No sign of the New York Times or Washington Post or Time Magazine or Newsweek or CNN or ABC or CBS or NBC or even Fox News. Here are the highlights of the story:

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.

Charge ... tactics from drills

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway — and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

Quote from The Sun. The Sun is a British sensationalist tabloid, about as low as you can go on the media totem pole (but ahead of the Boston Post and Daily Mirror). But The Sun was one of the few mainstream media outlets to give this story decent coverage. It is nice to know that Rupert Murdoch's Sun knows which side it's on. The rest are shills for the enemy. Shame on them. Read more »

Sat May 22, 2004

Is the tide of bad news out of Iraq turning?

The signs are looking better

The biggest enemy faced by the US is the mainstream media in the US, just as it was in the Vietnam War. The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal is slowly moving off the front pages as it has become increasingly apparent that:

It was the work of a small group of prison guards acting without authority
The military took action as soon as the abuse was reported
Those involved are being tried and punished
The media was using it to attack Bush and this motive was exposed when the grisly murder of Nick Berg received far less coverage

The stand-off with Al Sadr is coming under control. The US inflicted heavy casualties on his militia in Kerbala without damaging the Shiite shrines and it now appears that his forces have withdrawn from the city. The US is now attacking his forces in Kufa. CNN reports:

Preceded by a heavy artillery barrage, more than 20 tanks, armored personnel carriers and hundreds of troops entered the darkened city after leaving their base in nearby Najaf late Saturday.

Fallujah is quiet, although this blogger will be a lot happier when the dismemberers and terrorists holed up there meet justice.

The wedding party story that the mainstream media was buying is falling apart. CNN again:

Kimmitt said that video showing dead children killed was actually recorded in Ramadi, far from the attack scene. "There may have been some kind of celebration," Kimmitt said. "Bad people have celebrations too. Bad people have parties too." Kimmitt said troops did not find anything -- such as a wedding tent, gifts, musical instruments, decorations or leftover food -- that would indicate a wedding had been held. Most of the men there were of military age, and there were no elders present to indicate a family event, he said. What was found, he said, indicated the building was used as a way station for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria to battle the coalition.

The discovery of a 155mm artillery shell that contained nearly a gallon of Sarin precursors put the no-WMD stockpiles crowd on the defensive. Despite Scott Ritter's claim that it was a dud, rational people are asking for explanations as to why such a weapon turned up in a road-side IED. Command Post's Alan Brain gives a good technical backgrounder on Sarin. Especially interesting is the comment:

In fact, Sarin was first developed as a pesticide, and any factory capable of making commonly used Organophosphate pesticides (such as Malathion and Parathion) is also easily convertible to one making Sarin, often no conversion as such is necessary, just change the initial ingredients and the settings. What makes a perfectly legitimate pesticide factory into a WMD factory are facilities for filling shells, bombs and rockets, or storing weapons-grade chemical munitions.

Put that together with this information from Timmerman's report in Insight on the News:

At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

(Hat tip: Daily Pundit) The concrete evidence i.e. stockpiles of actual WMD may yet turn up before the election. Actually, it seems to be there but the administration has so far proven inept in making it's case; that's what happens when you let the enemy (in the case, the media) frame the question.

A little bit of good news escaped the mainstream media's blackout on good news from Iraq; Fox News reports that some of Saddam's victims received prosthetic hands to replace hands lopped off by Saddam's regime. The mainstream media has so far declined to show real prisoner abuse tapes from Saddam's prisons.

US casualties are declining after peaking in April. That may be a sign that the last-gasp terrorist insurgency, intended to derail the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, has run its course. Al Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's problems may just be beginning. From his letter reprinted in NRO:

As we see we are racing time, and if we succeed, which we are hoping, we will turn the tables on them and thwart their plan. If, god forbid, the government is successful and takes control of the country, we just have to pack up and go somewhere else again, where we can raise the flag again or die, if god chooses us.

Personally, I'm hoping for the second option, minus any heavenly virgins.

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Fri May 21, 2004

The FBI goofed on Mayfield

But that is no reason to reduce surveillance of terrorist sympathizers

Fox News reports that Brandon Mayfield has been released now that the fingerprint that placed him under suspicion has been linked to an Algerian. While it was difficult to see how Mayfield's prints could have turned up in Spain, the FBI was right to check him out thoroughly. I noted in an earlier post that Mayfield did have some disturbing connections and history that would arouse suspicion.

Better the FBI err on the side of caution given the threat to national security posed by radical Islam.

Thu May 20, 2004

The consequences of failure in Iraq

Not good - think 9/11 with nukes

In the 1980s the Jihadists defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Ladin played a role in that victory. He used the propaganda value of defeating a super-power to good effect. His al Qaeda organization became the leading terrorist organization of the 1990s. Saudi money and Arab recruits poured into his organization. Victory followed victory and it was usually the Great Satan that lost. In direct confrontations, such as Mogadishu, the soft Americans withdrew. In others, such as the Embassy and Cole attacks, the Great Satan proved unable to defend its interests against simple bombings. Osama planned a final attack on 9/11 that would send America reeling and force it out of Muslim lands. In the short-term, it didn't quite work out the way Osama expected.

The US fought back and quickly defeated Al Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan. President Bush also expanded the war to encompass all terrorist organizations and the states that sponsored them. The Bush team realized that this was not going to be a short war. Afghanistan was merely a battle and longer-term strategies would be required to ensure victory. The quick and dirty strategy would have been to issue ultimatums to every Muslim state in the Middle East and destroy those that didn't comply. It may yet come to that. The chosen strategy was to bring freedom to the Middle East and Iraq provided the most fertile ground, at least on paper.

Read more »

Under UNSC resolution 1441, Saddam's regime was taken down in a few short weeks. But the Saddam loyalists and the terrorists hosted in Iraq and neighboring countries expected that. Their strategy was to bog down the US occupation, impose unacceptable losses on the US forces and demoralize the US public. The strategy depended on the same allies that the North Vietnamese communists exploited; the American left and its media allies. Since these forces had virtually taken over the Democrat party, and that party had won a plurality in the last Presidential election, the odds looked good that the US could win the war but lose the peace in Iraq.

So far, the Jihadists must be rubbing their hands with glee. The mighty US military swats around and then backs down as domestic and international opposition to tough tactics floods the airwaves. At every turn, the prospect of inflicting civilian casualties stays the military's fist. Occasionally, the terrorists overplay their hands, as in Fallujah, and there is a tough US response, but that soon peters out. Better yet, the US media got hold of some images showing US prison guards sexually abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners. Not even the brutal murder of Nick Berg could get those images off the headlines. It didn't help the US cause when the lead reporter on the case, the ever unreliable Seymour Hersh, spread the lie that upwards of 60% of the Iraqi prisoners were virtually innocent. Any good that has happened in Iraq since Saddam was deposed is overshadowed by bombings, US casualties, civilian casualties and damage to Muslim Holy places. The Arab networks, ably assisted by the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and the rest, feed on the bad news like vultures scrapping over a carcass.

Bush's resolution has faltered. The US military stopped their offensive in Fallujah before bringing the murderous dismemberers to justice. Power over the transitional arrangements has been handed over to a sleazy Sunni U.N. diplomat. The prison abuse scandal, the unauthorized work of a handful of sicko guards, has taken attention away from far more important issues. Worse, the abuses have been conflated with proven methods of interrogating hardcore terrorists, and the US is surrendering another valuable weapon in the war by agreeing to abandon those methods. How many US lives will be lost as a consequence is hard to contemplate; imagine what would have been learned if Zacarias Moussaoui had gotten the full treatment in the weeks leading up to 9/11.

The stage is set for the US to prematurely withdraw from Iraq. A few more scandals and disasters, and John Kerry, the man most noted for helping the North Vietnamese secure victory on the domestic front, will become President. Within a few short months, Kerry will cut a deal with the allies that Bush cast aside - France, Germany and Russia - and hand Iraq over to U.N. control. US forces will come home, sullen and defeated.

Iraq will fracture into three zones. The Kurds will establish autonomy in the North, possibly looking to Israel for protection. The Baath hold-outs and their terrorist allies will take over the Sunni triangle, and hard line Shiite elements loyal to Iran will control the South. Saddam's hidden WMD will reappear and get shipped out to Al Qaeda cells and affiliates across the globe. The Iranians will ramp up their nuclear program confident that the US will back down under U.N. cover.

Worse, the Jihadists will be able to claim victory over the Great Satan. The Muslim world will see which was the stronger horse after all, and rally to the Jihadist's cause. The dreams of moderate Muslims yearning for the peace and prosperity of the West will be lost in the call to world-wide Jihad. The nuclear trade that was stopped by Libya's capitulation will resume, and the bad guys, somewhere, sometime, will gain access to nuclear weapons. They will be delivered to their targets in shipping containers, in trucks and in components smuggled by individuals. The West's key cities will be mined with these weapons and a series of impossible demands will be issued by Osama's heir and future Caliph. One bomb will go off as a warning, and a US or European city will be vaporized. Welcome to a Kerry future.

Steven Den Beste sums up the issues in few sharp sentences:

For domestic anti-war protesters who hate Bush more than they hate bin Laden, and foreign "allies" who fear and resent America more than they fear Islamic extremism, the result of an American defeat in this war will be death, destruction, poverty, misery, and tyranny for them. Their own best interests require an American victory.

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Bill Cosby Speaks

Comic vents, NAACP gasps

QandO has an interesting link about a speech where Bill Cosby laid out some facts:

In the presence of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and other African-American leaders, comedian Bill Cosby took aim at blacks who don't take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'

He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"

The Post said Cosby also targeted imprisoned blacks.

"These are not political criminals," he said. "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

uh huh.

Time to knock off the hypocrisy on Israel

Looking in the mirror might help

According to this Fox News report, Colin Powell and the White House have been critical of Israel's latest anti-terrorist operations in Gaza.

President Bush's unflagging support for Israel is in a sudden downward spiral after the White House sharply criticized Israel's military operations in Gaza and the United States allowed the U.N. Security Council to condemn the Jewish state.

It was an unusual double setback, prompted by Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes and an attack on Palestinian demonstrators Wednesday in which at least eight people, mostly children and teenagers, were killed.

...

But in a sudden turnabout, Secretary of State Colin Powell (search) lashed out at Israel, the White House issued a statement criticizing Israel on humanitarian grounds and the United States dropped plans to veto — or at least weaken — an Arab resolution at the U.N. condemning Israel for the housing demolitions and the attack on Palestinian demonstrators.

Israel's operations in Gaza have been aimed at stopping the flow of weapons from Egypt to Syria.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, in an operation designed to stop the flow of weapons and terrorists from Syria to Iraq, US forces killed 40 people, including women and children. Isn't that worthy of a U.N. resolution condemning the U.S.?

Looks like Bush is playing Texas snap again. One day, he's rallying the Jewish vote; the next he's going along with the most corrupt institution on earth, the U.N.

Read more »

SwiftVets Irked by Kerry

Political Ambitions Once Again Supercede Honesty

Some veterans do not appreciate John Kerry using them as a campaign tool, especially since it appears somewhat, shall we say, disingenuous:

Today, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of more than 220 Swift Boat veterans from the unit in which John Kerry served, call on Kerry to stop the unauthorized use of their images in national campaign advertising.

For example, the photo in Kerry’s national campaign ads contains 20 officers, including Kerry, 11 of whom signed a letter condemning Kerry yet their image is being widely used in his own campaign. It was taken on the island of An Thoi on January 22, 1969. These officers together with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth call upon him to cease the unauthorized use of their photo by his campaign. They are jointly submitting the attached letter to John Kerry. (Photo, letter to Kerry, link to authorized use of the photo and earlier letter to Kerry below.)

Of the remaining eight officers in the photo: two are deceased and four do not wish to be involved in any manner; only two of the 20 are believed to support Kerry.

William Shumadine, shown in the photo and a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, stated, “His use of a photograph with his 19 comrades with knowledge that 11 of them condemn him and six who cannot or do not want to be involved is a complete misrepresentation to the public and a total fraud.”

Total Fraud? Imagine that.
Oh yeah, then there is the letter. Here ya go:
Read more »

We write from our common heritage as veterans of duty aboard Swift Boats in the Vietnam War. Indeed, you should note that a substantial number of those men who served directly with you during your four month tour in Vietnam have signed this letter.

It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.

We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a "war hero" status. You now seek to clad yourself in the very medals that you disdainfully threw away in the early years of your political career. In the process, we believe you continue a deception as to your own conduct through such tactics as the disclosure of only carefully screened portions of your military records. Both then and now, we have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political goals.

Your conduct is such as to raise substantive concerns as to your honesty and your ability to serve, as you currently seek, as Commander-in-Chief of the military services.

It is vital that the American public have as much information as possible about candidates for President of the United States. In various ways, you have rightly called upon President Bush to be fully accountable and to provide full disclosure. In the same spirit, now that you are the presumptive nominee of your Party, we believe it is incumbent upon you to make your total military record open to the American people.

Specifically, we the undersigned formally request that you authorize the Department of the Navy to independently release your military records (through your execution of Standard Form 180), complete and unaltered, including your military medical records. Further, we call upon you to correct the misconceptions your campaign seeks to create as to your conduct while in Vietnam. Permit the American public the opportunity to assess your military performance upon the record, and not upon campaign rhetoric.

Senator Kerry, we were there. We know the truth. We have been silent long enough. The stakes are too great, not only for America in general but, most importantly, for those who have followed us into service in Iraq and Afghanistan. We call upon you to provide a full, accurate accounting of your conduct in Vietnam.

Respectfully

Ah, yes, the truth. Here's another pic to add to Kerry's resume:

You decide.

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Wed May 19, 2004

Civilian casualties happen when terrorists use them as shelter

The civilians in Iraq and Gaza have a choice - shelter terrorists or risk their fate

Andrew Sullivan is all upset about attacks that killed civilians in Iraq and Gaza. The US Military claims it attacked a safe house at 3:00 am near the Syrian border. The Iraqis claim it was a wedding party and they were just firing shots in the air. The IDF denies firing at civilians. It was trying to disperse a march that included armed gunmen. The Palestinians claim an unprovoked attack on a peaceful demonstration. The link that Andrew Sullivan provides gives the IDF side of the story. We will likely get a full accounting from the U.S. Military. According to the Fox News report:

Coalition forces came under hostile fire and called for support from the air. After the strike, coalition forces recovered numerous weapons, foreign passports, a SATCOM radio and two million Iraqi and Syrian dinars, military officials said.

The attack killed about 40 people, officials said.

In these matters, I will trust the word of an official infidel agency accountable to its elected representatives against that of a Muslim, instructed by his faith to lie to infidels.

As to civilian casualties: tough. This is a war as nasty and dangerous as the last World War. The enemy uses Western liberality, Western Media, Western communications, demographic time bombs, terrorism and the nastiest weapons it can lay its hands upon to kill infidels. Their civilians should remember that the last time the West fought a World War it ended up incinerating Tokyo and Dresden and nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that was after it was obvious victory was at hand. Our soldiers or your civilians; the choice will come down to that.

Defending the Patriot Act

Heather Mac Donald does it with style

Heather Mac Donald defends the Patriot Act and demolishes Joe Williams, the left-winger trying to destroy it. Go read the whole debate at FrontPageMag.Com:

Why doesn’t Mr. Williams just come right out and say it: he doesn’t think counterterrorism investigations should be conducted in secret. In his world, if the FBI has received a tip about an Al Qaeda cell in Phoenix that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in Las Vegas, the Bureau should seek a wiretap warrant in open court, with notification to the cell members. If intelligence agents want to search the group’s hard drives, they should inform the cell in advance to give them an opportunity to challenge the search. Court TV could broadcast the legal wrangling between the cell’s attorneys and intelligence agents; legal experts could provide running commentary about the likely scope of the FBI’s investigations.

Mac Donald was also one of the first to explain how Gorelick's Wall prevented the FBI from stopping 9/11.

Tue May 18, 2004

Things to be thankful for

Flash cameras in front of Ms. Kerry and behind Mr. Moore at Cannes

Otherwise, this might have appeared on the Drudge Report and equally salubrious websites.

Mon May 17, 2004

How quickly do lies become "facts"?

The Hersh 60% figure is becoming "fact"

A little googling shows many sites repeating Hersh's claim. With this search request:

Abu Ghraib +"60" Hersh -"60 Minutes"

I got about 2600 English pages. About a third of them were hits; i.e. restated, repeated or quoted Hersh (or Taguba) making the claim that 60% of the detainees were basically innocent. Here's the first few I found before I realized how many I would have to look at.

1. Live Journal
2. World Revolution (copy of the Hersh article)
3. A Fly on the Wall
4. Joe's Eclectic Thoughts
5. Hong Pong
6. Soup
7. IPS News
8. Smithers MINNEAPOLIS
9. Darn Tootin
10. Why War?
11. 16Beaver
12. Alan Ramsay in the Sydney Morning Herald
13. Ted Rall on RussNDee.Net
14. Univision
15. Ishbadiddle
16. Gordon Coale

On the plus side, Orwellian Times points out Hersh's error.

Hersh repeats a blatant error on the O'Reilly Factor

The claim that 60% of Abu Ghraib prisoners posed no threat is wrong

Power Line caught Seymour Hersh misreporting the contents on the Taguba report on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. In his New Yorker article Hersh wrote:

The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released.

Karpinski's defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers "routinely" rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners.

The implication of this is that a lot of the abused prisoners were innocent. But Power Line points to the source of the 60% figure, the Executive Summary of the Taguba report, which says:

According to BG Karpinski, this category of detainee [detainees accused of committing "Crimes Against the Coalition"] makes up more than 60% of the total detainee population, and is the fastest growing category. However, MG Fast, according to BG Karpinski, routinely denied the board's recommendations to release detainees in this category who were no longer deemed a threat and clearly met the requirements for release.

On the O'Reilly Factor (5/17/04), Hersh repeated the 60% claim. If one was being charitable, one could see how Hersh might have misread the report and conflated the 60% with the unspecified number that may have met the requirements for release. But how can anyone trust a reporter who is so sloppy? Read more »

Sun May 16, 2004

Lieberman and McCain speak up for victory in Iraq

The administration should now get on with the job and leave Abu Ghraib in the hands of military justice

The Washington Post has an op-ed by Lieberman and McCain that pushes a more aggressive line in Iraq.

We will also continue to see instability increase as long as we make security pledges that are left unfilled. Our retreat from Fallujah has emboldened the insurgents and convinced some Iraqis that America lacks the will or the means to enforce its demands. While it is difficult to criticize tactical decisions from Washington, our personnel in Iraq must show the determination to keep their promises. Our troops can display full resolve only by exercising the military action necessary to back up the words of political authorities. Part of this determination must mean a quick end to all independent militias in Iraq.

This is welcome news; two senators showing more spine than the administration. We were getting sick of the sanctimonious faux outrage of Kerry, the treacherous tripe of Kennedy and the media feeding frenzy over the prison abuse case. Mark Steyn understands the media agenda:

Yet they [The Daily Mirror and Boston Globe] published them. Because they wanted them to be true. Because it would bring them a little closer to the head they really want to roll -- George W. Bush's. If you want to see what the Islamists did to Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl or to those guys in Fallujah or even to the victims of Sept. 11, you'll have to ferret it out on the Internet. The media aren't interested in showing you images that might rouse the American people to righteous anger, only images that will shame and demoralize them.

If more proof were needed that the Abu Ghraib abuse was the work of a sick group of soldiers, rather than a systemic problem with the U.S. military, then it is the news that Ms. England willingly starred in gang bang shows for the prisoners. That undercuts the efforts of the media and the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh to pin the blame on Rumsfeld. Joe Public can understand Rumsfeld supporting tough interrogation methods to get to the ring-leaders of the insurgency, but they can't imagine him ordering his troops to soften up the inmates with live porn shows. The media has over-played its hand and the public now knows it.

One hopes that Rumsfeld's trip to Iraq put the military back in control of military operations against the terrorists and their Baathist allies. Wretchard at Belmont Club thinks that might be the case:

The most striking thing about this new command arrangement is that appears to be an end run around the Coalition Provisional Authority, a shifting of at least some political functions away from a State Department structure directly into one directly under the DOD. For those who saw the events in April as a defeat for Rummy and a discredit to the DOD policy, this evidence suggests that the President may see things the other way. At first glance it is a high level endorsement of the kinds of negotiations which have transpired at Fallujah at [and] Najaf rather than their condemnation. This reading may not be borne out by subsequent clarifications. But it certainly looks that way.

Certainly, the military seems to have decided to deal with Sadr once and for all. Let us hope that signals a move by the administration to regain the initiative against the killers of Berg and the rest of the terrorists.

Fri May 14, 2004

Science and the Quran

A conflict that can't easily be resolved

The Seventh International Conference on Scientific Signs in Quran & Sunna was held in Dubai during March 2004. An invited Western participant we met with recently came away shaking his head. There was very little common ground. The conference agenda is based on finding ways in which the Quran informs science. Under the Medical Sciences:Applied Researches stream we see the following agenda items:

Treatment of Dropsy (Edema) by Camel Urine by Dr. Mohamed Ohaj

The Miracles and Secrets of Treatment with Camel Urine by Dr. Ahalm Al Awadi

Effectiveness of Camel Urine on small rabbits’ kidneys infected with colon bacteria shows the Scientific Miraculous nature in the Sunna by Dr Rahmah Al Alyani

Effect of Camel Urine on small rabbits’ kidneys infected with colon bacteria show the Scientific Miraculous nature of the Sunna Dr. Sana Khalifa

Why this strange fixation on the beneficial medical effects of camel urine? According to bismikaallahuma.org, an Islamic web-site that "facilitate[s] Muslim responses to the various mendacious polemics and distortions of Islam by the Christian missionaries and their anti-Islamic allies on the Internet" :

Thus, Arabian camel urine was a standard prescription in Arabic medicine and remains a staple of Bedouin natural remedies to this day both as diuretic, snuff and delousing hair wash.

The same source lists the various sources for the Hadith that has Mohammed prescribing camel milk and urine:

"Bedouin Arabs from `Urayna came to the Prophet (upon him peace) and accepted Islâm then found Madîna noxious to the point they became jaundiced and their bellies became swollen. The Messenger of Allâh (upon him peace) sent them out to some of his milch-camels that had just given birth (liqâh)[18] and ordered them to drink of their milk and urine until they got better." N 304 and 3967 Talha ibn Musarrif from Yahyâ ibn Sa`îd from Anas.

Googling "Camel Urine Hadith" turns up a lot of non-Muslim sites ridiculing Islam for this Hadith.

One can see that in a historical context, and by the standards of the time, Mohammed's prescription was reasonable. Unfortunately, the Quran and the Hadiths are taken to be the literal word of Allah. Whatever Allah says must, by definition be true, and trumps whatever Western science has to say on the subject. It would be better if the Quran informed modern science, and that is what the Conference on Scientific Signs in Quran & Sunna tries to do. So, if the Mohammed said camel urine was good for you, then that must be true, and the good doctors presenting at the conference provide vindication. Whether their findings would survive the peer review process that guides western science has yet to be seen.

The bigger point is that the Muslim world has a problem that it can't solve. From its humble beginnings in the Arabian peninsula Islam spread across the Middle East reaching into Africa, India, China and Europe. But after the defeat of its forces at Vienna, and its retreat from Spain, the Muslim world stagnated. The infidels in Europe, America, and later Asia have prospered and left the Muslim world centuries behind. But emulating the infidels means adopting their un-Islamic practices. That would put Muslims in direct conflict with what they believe is the literal word of Allah. Allah has given the world the perfect faith in Islam but it isn't working out that way. Most of the Muslim world is a stagnant backwater contributing nothing to the world but oil and bloodshed.

Something has to give. Radical Islam seeks a more perfect Islam; the loss of power and prestige since the glory days must be because Muslims have not been sufficiently faithful to Allah. Moderate Islam is at a loss because modernity contradicts the literal truth of Islam. But peace depends on the moderates finding a road to modernity before the radicals bring far more death and destruction upon them. The Dubai conference was not an auspicious start.

Should Rumsfeld resign? Daniel Drezner still thinks so

But he is blaming Rumsfeld when Powell/Bremer/Tenet share at least some of the blame

Daniel W. Drezner still thinks Rumsfeld should resign. He writes:

The above list indicates that the situation in Iraq is not hopeless, which is an unambiguously good thing. What the list doesn't indicate is what Rumsfeld's doctrines and decisions have done to improve the situation in Iraq. After a year of Rumsfeld overseeing the handling of Iraq, opinion polls show that a majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to conduct an immediate withdrawal, and 80% of Iraqis don't have much confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority (both links via Mark Kleiman)

But the problem with this line of argument is that Coalition Provisional Authority is headed by Paul Bremer from the State Department. If things are going badly in Iraq then he should be sharing the blame.

Read more »

Barbara Lerner's article Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation in NRO points out the things that would have been done differently, had Rumsfeld reigned:

A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset — not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.

Rumsfeld's plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.

Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq's new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks — not months or years — and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority — and they remember. The hero's welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border — a losing game, given the length of those borders — but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.

None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld's plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied.

General Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a State Department man who kept most of the power in his own hands and diluted what little power Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani had by appointing not six but 22 other Iraqis to share power with them. This resulted in a rapidly rotating 25-man queen-for-a-day-type leadership that turned the Iraqi Governing Council into a faceless mass, leaving Bremer's face as the only one most Iraqis saw.

It's a bit tough to blame Rumsfeld for things that were not in his control. You can bet your bottom dollar that it was not Rumsfeld's decision to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at Fallujah, for example.

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The Daily Mirror Editor resigns over fake Iraqi abuse pictures

The Boston Globe Editor stays on despite dirty fake Iraqi abuse pictures

Fox News reports that the editor of the UK newspaper, The Daily Mirror, resigned over the fake photos that were supposed to show British troops beating Iraqi prisoners.

It doesn't look like anyone at the Boston Globe is going to resign after they published pornographic images that allegedly showed US soldiers raping Iraqi women. Their Ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, tries to explain away the errors that led to the pictures appearing in the paper. But nobody is going to get fired:

Some readers called for the firing of various Globe editors. "We are not firing anybody," responds Baron. What will happen, he says, is conversations with staffers about following proper procedure.

Still, she seems more worried about the fact that the picture was indecent rather than what the publication signified.

Publication of the photo in the Globe did not reflect the paper's editorial intent. But it did reflect the failure of its system to keep inappropriate material out of the paper. Baron was right to apologize.

The bigger question was why they gave any credence to an obvious anti-war zealot, Boston City Councilor

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