Judicious Asininity

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Tue Nov 30, 2004

Honor Killings

Alive and well in "Westernized" upper class Jordan

Athena of Terrorism Unveiled is studying in Jordan. She gives us personal insight into the Arab mentality and the issue of honor killings. The young men can wear fancy suits, study in Europe, drive BMWs, and kill their sisters without blinking for having sex outside of an arranged marriage:

Today I was visiting the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and my roommate, we’ll call here Sally, went with me because she had to meet with the same professor as I.

She started crying in the taxi on the way back home telling me about her experience the other night with her Jordanian boyfriend, we’ll call him Malik.

Sally and Malik haven’t been dating for very long and I won’t go into the details of their relationship, but she really did like this guy, and I liked him as well. He seemed very Western, spoke English well, acted respectably, dressed nice, came from an affluent and well-off family. He even lived in Europe for two years and had relationships with girls there.

They went out to eat last night and she brought up the subject of honor killings. Malik nonchalantly said that he would be willing to kill his sister or support his uncle or dad if they killed her if she had sex.

Nice guy; sick culture.

Rather Blather

Praise from the MSM but the Rathergate report has yet to come

MSM admirers admit Rather goofed up on the memos but still heap praise on the man. This report from The Hollywood Reporter is typical:

We forget that long before he became a right-wing punching bag, he was a true pioneer as an anchor who insisted on continuing to go out, get his hands dirty and report. There have been no ivory towers for Rather, who famously placed himself in harm's way in war zones and the path of hurricanes. And it wasn't just for the photo op.

It seemed to a lot of observers that Rather and 60 Minutes were out to get Bush no matter what. Tigerhawk passes on a rumor that suggests that was exactly what Rather and company planned to do:

This afternoon, a college classmate of mine who is also a producer of a news division show on a major non-CBS network and who once in his or her past worked for CBS News (such person, the "TigerHawk Source"), reported that he or she had heard that the evidence contained in the aforementioned preliminary report included emails from Dan and others on the show that revealed, shall we say, malice aforethought. Basically, the TigerHawk Source -- who characterizes his or her information as "rumor" -- says that these emails reveal a clear intention to nail the President.

The Rathergate report will make very interesting reading. The bigger question is whether or not the MSM will take heed and stop being the propaganda arm of the left wing of the Democratic party following such exposure.

Coach Butch Davis resigns from Cleveland Browns

A good move all around

Back Country Conservative links to good coverage. I share season tickets to the Browns and it's been hard to get up any enthusiasm for the team lately. They're boring to watch and get beaten all the time.

Now, if they could entice Bill Belichick back...

Mon Nov 29, 2004

Who to replace William Safire?

How about Maureen Dowd's brother Kevin?

It's a rare thing to read a Dowd column in its entirety but this one made it. That's because she was quoting a letter written by her brother Kevin:

Now, just as four years ago, I breathe a huge sigh of relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked deck. No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in their attempt to influence the outcome of an election. ... He never complained, just systematically set about delivering the same consistent message. You may remember that four years ago, I felt physically ill watching the Democrats try to legislate their way to the presidency. ...

A very big thank you to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Al Franken and Jon Stewart for your involvement. You certainly energized the base. Now, please have the courage of your convictions and leave the country.

Read the whole thing and then try to figure out how Dowd became the blue sheep of her family. (Link via Rantingprofs)

Fri Nov 26, 2004

The Final Connection

After Van Gogh's murder, Europe notices the threat of Radical Islam

Tony Blankley begins his opinion piece with this paragraph:

This Christmastime could be the moment when Western Europe finally joins our war on terrorism. Anti-Islamist fear and anger from the mouths of the European volk are breaking through the surface calm perpetuated by the elite European appeasers. The assassination and mutilation of Dutch filmmaker van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic -- and the retaliatory fire-bombings of mosques by ethnic Dutchmen -- has forced high European leaders and news outlets to begin to publicly face up to the implications of Sept. 11, 2001 and the migration of Muslims in large and hostile numbers into the heart of Europe.

Radical Islam wants to conquer Europe as surely as it wants to conquer Israel. Its primary weapon is the demographic time-bomb. The fuse was lit when Europeans allowed huge numbers of Muslims into Europe without requiring them to assimilate.

What Islam wants for Israel (via LGF), it wants for Europe. We'll know that Western Europe finally understands the threat of Radical Islam when it makes common cause with Israel.

Thu Nov 25, 2004

Historic Kennedy Astronaut Picture

Jack and Jackie meeting Virgil Grissom

My father-in-law just reprinted an old black and white film that he had lying around. It is a series of snaps of a meeting between JFK and some of the first astronauts. I don't know the context yet, but the pictures are fascinating. I scaled one of them them way down for posting on this blog. It shows the President and Jackie with Virgil Grissom.

Tue Nov 23, 2004

Trial lawyers looking to bankrupt the pharmaceutical industry

VIOXX is just the start

Chuck Muth has posted an essay by Michael Clifford, MD on the Vioxx controversy. He explains how Vioxx and similar drugs, like Celebrex works, and gives some information on the studies that led Merck to withdraw Vioxx. Clifford notes that:

I can only speculate but I believe it went something like this: If our drug saves 100 lives per million prescriptions by reducing gi [stomach] bleeding but causes 25 heart attacks we will only be criticized for the heart attacks. No one will recognize the saved lives. Furthermore ... we will be held responsible for ALL the heart attacks in patients who took Vioxx and not just the increase in heart attacks.

That is precisely what we are seeing now. The lawyers are desperate to locate every heart attack, stroke and blood clot that occurred while a patient was on Vioxx because they know they won’t have to prove causality. They know this from the breast implant fiasco. When the dust settled on that one, billions were paid, billions were made and in the end silicone was never proven to cause problems.

Unless there are changes in the way the legal system works, trial lawyers will use the legal system to "prove" that Vioxx caused any heart attack suffered by someone who had also taken Vioxx. The reality is that a small percentage of those heart attacks will have been caused by an adverse reaction to Vioxx but it will be next to impossible to identify the individuals on a case by case basis. That won't stop the trial lawyers.

The problem society faces is that every innovation carries risks and benefits. Vaccination saves millions of lives but kills a few individuals. Cars provide enormous convenience but thousands die in car accidents. Electricity powers our way of life but people get electrocuted. Drugs save millions of lives but hundreds die from adverse reactions.

Trial lawyers prey on the risks. Innovators profit from the benefits. Society as a whole benefits from the innovations. But if the legal system places too high a price on the risks, then the innovators will have no incentive to innovate.

We are already seeing, or rather, not seeing, the impact. Very few American companies are left in the vaccine industry. Single engine aircraft manufacturers were killed off decades ago. Medical device manufacturers stopped using silicone after the silicone breast implant hoax reaped billions for the trial lawyers.

Part of the problem is the conflict between science and the law. Science has very high statistical standards for proving causality. The legal system has very low standards and barely recognizes probability. When Mr. Smarmy Lawyer "proves" to the jury that Mr. Fat Freak, an overweight, nicotine addicted, under-exercised lump of lard, was taking Vioxx before he died of a "sudden" heart attack, they will be all too willing to award millions of dollars to Mrs. Fat Freak in compensation for the evil wrought upon their blissful existence by the evil drug company. Multiply that scenario a thousand-fold through the magic of class action lawsuits and venue shopping and Merck will soon be broke.

The only quick solution is a law that would forbid lawsuits involving FDA approved products. Can a Republican congress get that done? A second solution would involve imposing the highest scientific standards of proof in product liability cases. That would likely involve independent scientific panels instead of the bought expert witness system that is currently used.

Mon Nov 22, 2004

Code of honor

Warriors understand it

My father fought with British 8th Army against Rommel in North Africa. The official history of his battalion includes some war stories that are relevant today. Some men in his battalion captured Major-General von Ravenstein, second-in-command to Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. The account suggests respect between the two sides.

‘We had made a mess of the general's Benz. A front and back tyre, and the spare, which was strapped to the side, were all flat. One round had pierced the upholstery between the general and his driver after ricochetting from the dashboard. Unbeknown to us another had punctured the radiator. No wonder the general, who, by this time, was rapidly regaining his Teutonic composure, paid us the compliment of admitting in broken English: “British! Noo Zeeland? Ja! Ja! Good soldiers, British!”

The captured and capturers shared some of the supplies in the General's car and he was soon handed over to higher authority. Ironically, the capturers were taken prisoner by the Germans a few hours later.

But, when the rules of war were broken, woe betide the enemy. One of the New Zealand battalions fighting in North Africa was the Maori Battalion. The Maoris were the orginal inhabitants of New Zealand before the arrival of Europeans and they were fearsome warriors. The Maori Battalion and my father's battalion were involved in a fierce battle for Takrouna, a strategic high point in the Tunisian battlefield. You can read about the battle here, but what stuck in my mind was the reaction when the enemy committed a war-crime, perhaps inadvertently.

The whole area was covered with stone huts, and there was some bitter fighting until one of the Italians threw a grenade into a hut sheltering Maori wounded. He may not have known that it held wounded men, but on this apparently callous action the Maoris went back a few generations and fought as their forefathers had done. No prisoners were taken, and the enemy were shot, bayoneted or pushed over the cliff; some jumped over of their own accord.

In Fallujah the Marines face an enemy with no code of honor. They ignore the Geneva conventions. They torture and behead civilian hostages. They booby-trap bodies. They pretend to surrender and then open fire. They use mosques to store weapons and use their minarets as sniping positions. An enemy with no honor deserves no respect. The Marine who shot a wounded terrorist in a mosque knew a wounded enemy would blow himself up if he had the chance. Our Marine deprived the terrorist of that chance.

Victory in Fallujah has destroyed a Muslim myth

Infidel forces cannot win in an urban environment

Osama bin Ladin saw America's 1993 defeat in Mogadishu and subsequent withdrawal from Somalia as a sign of weakness. Osama was right but drew the wrong conclusion. It was not the US military man that was weak but his political leadership. While 18 US soldiers had died, hundreds of Somalis paid with their lives.

Belmont Club describes the 1994/1995 battle between Chechen rebels and Russian forces for the city of Gozny, the capital of Chechnya. In an earlier post he quotes Parameters :

The first unit to penetrate to the city center was the 1st battalion of the 131st "Maikop" Brigade, the latter composed of some 1,000 soldiers (120 armored vehicles and 26 tanks) ... Russian forces initially met no resistance when they entered the city at noon on 31 December. They drove their vehicles straight to the city center, dismounted, and took up positions inside the train station. Other elements remained parked along a side street as a reserve force.

The fate of this one unit shows how successful the Chechens were in the urban environment against a superior force:

Sixty hours later, the unit had been wiped out. "By 3 January 1995, the brigade had lost nearly 800 men, 20 of 26 tanks, and 102 of 120 armored vehicles." It had been surrounded and despite urgent pleas for relief, been utterly destroyed. "Its commander, Colonel Ivan Savin and almost 1000 officers and men died and 74 were taken prisoners.

Roll forward to Fallujah in March, 2004. Terrorists had killed four American contractors and mutilated their bodies. The US pledged vengeance and the Marines began to exact it. But the assault was called off under political pressure. The terrorists regarded the face-saving deal that handed "control" of Falluja over to an Iraqi force as a victory. They certainly treated it that way and took control of Fallajuh. It became the base for their operations and a festering sore on the Iraq landscape.

The terrorists knew that the outcome of the US elections and the impending Iraq elections would dictate what happened in Fallujah. In their worst case analysis, a Bush victory would mean a new assault on Fallujah. They had ample supplies of weaponary and six months to prepare. They also had the examples of Mogadishu and Grozny that showed Western military forces, despite armor and aircraft, could be defeated in an urban environment. In the event, the result was a debacle. Within a week the marines took control of the city with the loss of around 50 men. Some died, not in the heat of battle, but from such ruses as booby-trapped bodies. The terrorists suffered far geater losses. Columnist Jack Kelly understands what the Marines achieved in Fallujah:

The rule of thumb for the last century or so has been that for a guerrilla force to remain viable, it must inflict seven casualties on the forces of the government it is fighting for each casualty it sustains, says former Canadian army officer John Thompson, managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a think tank that studies global conflicts.

By that measure, the resistance in Iraq has had a bad week. American and Iraqi government troops have killed at least 1,200 fighters in Fallujah, and captured 1,100 more. Those numbers will grow as mop-up operations continue.

These casualties were inflicted at a cost (so far) of 56 Coalition dead (51 Americans), and just over 300 wounded, of whom about a quarter have returned to duty.

"That kill ratio would be phenomenal in any [kind of] battle, but in an urban environment, it's revolutionary," said retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, perhaps America's most respected writer on military strategy. "The rule has been that [in urban combat] the attacking force would suffer between a quarter and a third of its strength in casualties."

The victory in Fallujah was also remarkable for its speed, Peters said. Speed was necessary, he said, "because you are fighting not just the terrorists, but a hostile global media."

Fallujah ranks up there with Iwo Jima, Inchon and Hue as one of the greatest triumphs of American arms, though you'd have a hard time discerning that from what you read in the newspapers.

The MSM won't tell you how well the Marines fought or what a great victory they achieved. But some analysts and reporters will report the truth and we small bloggers will add our voices. But for sure, the enemy, the few who survived, now know there is no safe haven left for them.

Our duty is to salute the victory and those brave men who achieved it.

Good news from Afghanistan

A people with such traditions deserves our support

James S. Robbins has an inspiring story in NRO describing the preservation of Afghanistan's national treasures. Just go read.

Remember, too, that Iraq's treasures were largely preserved by respectful staff rather than looted, as the MSM triumphantly reported.

Sun Nov 21, 2004

Cerebral Palsy madness continues

A lucky lawyer can now score more in one case than John Edwards scored in forty

The weight of scientific evidence suggests that difficulties during birth do not cause cerebral palsy, as this recent NYT article (now archived) showed:

A new study undermines the long-held belief among obstetricians that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, is the main cause of cerebral palsy in premature ... The study, published in the October issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics Gynecology, found that the brain injury that leads to cerebral palsy was...

The cause remains unknown although there is some evidence that fetal infections early in pregnancy significantly increase the risk that a baby will be born with cerebral palsy.

Trial lawyers were particularly interested in the oxygen deprivation theory. If a child developed cerebral palsy and there was any evidence of difficulty during birth they would claim cause and effect and sue. Unsuccessful Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards made his fortune out of suing obstetricians and hospitals in such cases. This NYT piece pulls no punches.

In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: "She said at 3, `I'm fine.' She said at 4, `I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, `I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, `I need out.' "

But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.

"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument. "And I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

The jury came back with a $6.5 million verdict in the cerebral palsy case, and Mr. Edwards established his reputation as the state's most feared plaintiff's lawyer.

In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards filed at least 20 similar lawsuits against doctors and hospitals in deliveries gone wrong, winning verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million, typically keeping about a third. As a politician he has spoken of these lawsuits with pride.

Over the last thirty years Obstetricians have used fetal heart rate monitors to check the condition of babies during birth. At the first sign of trouble, however that is measured, they perform a Caesarian section. The percentage of Caesarian births has increased five-fold from 5% of births to 25%. This abstract from the The American Journal of Obstetrics Gynecology(2003 Mar) explains the problem:

The rate of cerebral palsy has not decreased in developed countries over the past 30 years, despite the widespread use of electronic fetal heart rate monitoring and a 5-fold increase in the cesarean delivery rate over the same period of time. However, neonatal survival has improved during these decades. These observations have lead to the hypothesis that increased survival of premature, neurologically impaired infants may have masked an actual reduction in cerebral palsy among term infants as a result of the use of electronic monitoring and the avoidance of intrapartum asphyxia. A review of the medical literature, as well as a demographic analysis of term and preterm birth rates in the United States, refutes this hypothesis on four grounds. First, cerebral palsy prevalence has been separately analyzed in term infants and shows no change over 30 years. Second, the prevalence of cerebral palsy is the same or lower in underdeveloped countries than in developed nations; in the former, the availability of emergency cesarean delivery based on electronic monitor data is limited or absent. Third, the increase in prevalence of cerebral palsy among low-birth-weight infants and the increase in cesarean sections based on presumed fetal distress were not simultaneous events-the former preceded the latter by a decade. Improved neonatal survival since the 1980s has been associated with a stable or decreasing rate of neurologic impairment and thus could not have obscured improvement from reduced term asphyxia. Finally, compared with the number of infants born by cesarean section for fetal distress, there are simply not enough infants born in the most vulnerable weight groups to make any impact on even a minimal improvement of outcome in the group delivered by cesarean section for presumed fetal distress. Except in rare instances, cerebral palsy is a developmental event that is unpreventable given our current state of technology.

The rate hasn't changed. Even though obstetricians are doing exactly what the trial lawyers say they should be doing -- "immediately performing a Caesarean section" -- the rate hasn't changed.

I've previously blogged on a Cleveland case where the jury awarded $30 million in such a case. The judge overturned the ruling because the lawyer was following the John Edwards channeling script. Now his ruling has been overturned:

The mother of a brain-damaged 17-year-old Cleveland boy could become $80 million richer after a judge reinstated the largest medical-malpractice verdict ever returned in Ohio.

The bountiful award of $30 million - plus the potential of as much as $50 million in interest - had been in doubt since August. That's when a retired judge decided to throw out the original verdict, which was returned in May. Judge Robert Lawther said he considered the verdict excessive and wrongly based on passion and prejudice. But in a stunning rebuke, Judge Lillian Greene of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court rescued the record verdict, which until Friday had looked lifeless.

"Judge Greene hit it right on the nose," said Geoffrey Fieger, the flamboyant plaintiff's lawyer from Southfield, Mich., speaking by phone from his vacation home in Anguilla, in the Caribbean Sea.

Junk science in bought courtrooms is exacting a terrible price on the medical profession and the community it serves. Is it any surprise that Judge Greene was endorsed by the Democratic party? Or that the trial lawyer has a vacation home in Anguilla?

Thu Nov 18, 2004

Time to respect the Geneva Conventions

Especially the enemy war criminals

Don't wear a uniform? That make's you an unlawful combatant.
Target innocent civilians? That make's you a war criminal.
Booby trap bodies? That make's you a war criminal.
Fake surrenders? That make's you a war criminal.
Executing civilians on video? That make's you a war criminal.
Disembowling female civilians? That make's you a war criminal.
Killing kids with car bombs? That make's you a war criminal.
Asking for medics and self-detonating? That make's you a war criminal.
Using places of worship for military puposes That make's you a war criminal.

Islamic terrorists do not respect the Geneva conventions. Therefore, they do not have the protections afforded by those conventions. They should be treated accordingly. Safety rounds? Every time.

I guess W is an A

Because A's hire A's but B's hire C's

I was looking at Diplomad's post on advice to Condi on how to run Foggy Bottom and browsing the comments and found this:

I myself work for the government (DoD) and I find that the old addage that A's hire A's but B's hire C's is sad but true.

I look at Bush's foreign affairs cabinet and I see class, skill, and vigorous competition. A's all the way. His domestic choices were more obviously driven by politics and included a few turkeys, who, in honor of thanksgiving, won't be named.

But, where it counted, W had good people. Did Powell and Rumsfeld disagree? Sure. What 'A' leader wants a bunch of toadies around them? Did Powell and Rumsfeld do their job well? Compared to Warren Christopher, Madelaine Albright, Les Aspin, William J. Perry, and William S. Cohen, the answer has to be yes, especially since their task turned out to be dealing with the mess left by their predecessors. That's what you get when a foreign policy B hires a bunch of C's.

Clinton could have tried to hire Powell, or Rumsfeld, or Rice, or Cheney or their equivalents. But he kept hiring C's. Look at the list. Reno, Shalala, Brown, Albright, Christopher, Aspin, Perry, Cohen, etc. etc. Kerry's choices advanced during the campaign inspired little confidence.

Wed Nov 17, 2004

NYT Columnists pour cold water on the Iraq campaign

But they choose poor historical analogies

Daryl G. Press and Benjamin Valentino are professors of government at Dartmouth. Their opinion piece in the NYT suggests that the US needs to lower its expectations in Iraq because of the ongoing insurgency. They argue from historical precedents, but they chose poor analogies.

This is why the history of counterinsurgency warfare is a tale of failure. Since World War II, powerful armies have fought seven major counterinsurgency wars: France in Indochina from 1945 to 1954, the British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria in the 1950's, the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Israel in the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya. Of these seven, four were outright failures, two grind on with little hope of success, and only one - the British effort in Malaya - was a clear success.

Many counterinsurgency theorists have tried to model operations on the British effort in Malaya, particularly the emphasis on winning hearts and minds of the local population through public improvements. They have not succeeded. Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, had less to do with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ethnic Malays; they were recruited almost exclusively from an isolated group of Chinese refugees. The guerrillas never gained the support of a sizable share of the Malaysians. Nevertheless, it took the British 12 years to defeat them, and London ended up granting independence to the colony in the midst of the rebellion.

Take Afghanistan, for example. The insurgents were fighting against a Soviet puppet regime and they had broad popular support. They also had a ready supply of Stinger missiles that neutralized the Soviet's technical superiority. After the insurgents won, the country descended into civil war with the Taliban emerging as the eventual rulers. They proved little better than the Soviet puppets and were removed with the application of minimal American military power. The better analogy is the war against the Taliban. The US bribed and bombed its way to victory. It helped that the Taliban were widely unpopular because they had imposed a radical version of Islam on a traditional population. Three years after the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, Afghanistan is a vastly different country. It just held popular elections and the Taliban remnants could not stop that. Voter participation, as a percentage of eligible voters, far exceeded that in the US this year.
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The French analogies don't work. The French were trying to reimpose colonial rule. That is not what is happening in Iraq. The US is trying to give control of Iraq to the Iraqi people. About all the French examples prove is that they always leave a mess behind and trying to clean up after them is a recipe for disaster.

The US did succeed in Vietnam but lost the war on the home front due to the likes of John Kerry and the MSM. The final blow was the refusal of the Democrat's to provide aid to the South Vietnamese to defend against an invasion from the North. The Viet Cong had been virtually destroyed.

The example of Malaya is pertinent because the British won when they handed control of the country to the people of Malaya. While there was no civil war, Singapore split off to become an independent country.

Russia is fighting a war on the bloody borders of Islam. They are doing it in their usual brutal fashion and will likely win that way. Chechen/al Qaeda attacks on targets inside Russia will hasten their loss.

The best analogy, and one that Press and Valentino failed to mention, is post-World War 2 Germany. The Allies destroyed a brutal fascist dictator who had led his country into a disastrous war. Yet, after liberating Germany and starting the process of creating a Democracy the US took heavy casualties from "insurgents". Eventually, the US prevailed and created a prosperous, peaceful democracy.

It took time, it took leadership, and it required handing over control to Germans. John Hawkins at Right Wing News has a post that covers aspects of the post-war situation in Germany. His source is Oliver North who claims:

"From May 8, 1945 until June 1946, over a thousand Americans and their dependents were killed by German terrorists,"

In Iraq, the US is facing Baathists who want to claw their way back to power, al Qaeda afiliates who want to turn Iraq into an Islamic state, and fundamentalist Shiite forces under the influence of Iran. The Shiites have been suppressed by the judicious application of American military power. The people of Najaf were more than pleased to see the back of Al Sadr's thugs. The rest of the terrorists are now being destroyed city by city. It took a week to clean out Fallujah where they the insurgents had had months to prepare their defenses. The other cities in the Sunni triangle and the terrorists' supply routes are under sustained US attack. Iraqi forces are starting to play an important role in the fighting. As the balance shifts, the Iraqi people will turn on and turn in the bad guys.

Bush has won the war on the home front and he will use his political capital to finish the war in iraq. The clearest sign of that is the way Fallujah was won.

Press and Valentino conclude:

Given these horrific possibilities, perhaps we should set our goals more realistically, and focus on the achievable. Some have suggested that we let Iraq divide itself into independent Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish countries. This might avert a prolonged, violent struggle for control of the central government after the United States withdraws. Still, history - most recently that of Yugoslavia - suggests that partition is a risky, bloody business. Millions of people would be forced from their homes, and many would not leave without a fight. Furthermore, the mini-countries carved out of Iraq may be swallowed by their larger neighbors; the Shiite area would be very attractive to Iran.

A second distasteful alternative is to support the consolidation of power in the hands of a new secular strongman. This may bring peace of a sort, but it would be a bitter result for the Iraqi people after their brief taste of freedom. Saddam Hussein was able to keep his politically, ethnically and religiously divided state together only through nearly constant repression; it seems unlikely that any successor could rule with a velvet glove.

These are depressing prospects. The fact that we must consider them underscores the caution that should be employed before deciding to go to war. Still, given where we stand today, if the United States can find a way to withdraw most of its troops over the next several years and leave behind an Iraq that is not in a civil war, that is not a haven for Al Qaeda and is not an immediate threat to its neighbors, history may well record it as an odds-defying success.

One of John Hawkin's commentators quoted "The Saturday Evening Post" and "Life" from the post-WW2 period. I'll give you a sample, here:

Saturday Evening Post, 26 Jan 1946: How We Botched the German Occupation:

Everywhere I’ve traveled recently in Germany I’ve run into Americans, ranging from generals down to privates, who ask perplexedly, "What are we Americans supposed to be doing here? Are we going to take over this place and stay here forever?"

Judging by reports received here from the United States, this perplexity of Americans in Germany is matching by the perplexity of Americans at home. We have got into this German job without understanding what we were tackling or why. Imagine how incredulous we would have been if anybody had told us---even so recently as five years ago---that hundreds of thousands of Americans would be camped in the middle of Europe in 1946, completely responsible for the conduct and welfare of approximately 20,000,000 Germans?

How does it happened that even some of our topmost officials in Germany admit that they don’t know what they are doing here? The answer can be expressed, I believe, in one word---secrecy. . . .

We'll read Press and Valentino and the rest of the quagmirites with the same sardonic smile in a few years when Iraq is a success story for the rest of the Arab world.

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Tue Nov 16, 2004

Airline Security is still a mess

Annie Jacobsen is on the case

Annie Jacobsen, of Syrian musician fame, has continued tracking suspicious activity on commercial aircraft. She received reports of very odd behavior by a group of Middle Eastern men on a recent United flight from London:

The crew took turns walking the aisles and monitoring the suspicious activity. "Every time one of the flight attendants walked by, they [the Middle Eastern men] watched us. We were watching what they did and they watched everything we did. I noticed they constantly had their eyes on a crewmember," one of the flight attendants noted.

Meanwhile, the Captain radioed in to Heathrow airport, asking that the men's names be re-checked against the terrorist "no-fly" list. Word came back from the Captain to the crew that two of the nine men were on the "no-fly" list.

"We were horrified," one flight attendant told me. "I heard the Captain wanted to divert -- I don't know why we didn't. We made sure the passengers didn't notice but we were all horrified."

According to members of the crew, the Air Marshals were keenly aware of the situation. "The Air Marshals were ready and prepared," said one flight attendant. "Apparently, they had their guns out under their blankets."

The Captain requested that FBI meet the plane in Washington. But when the plane landed at the nation's capital, not a single law enforcement officer met the aircraft. No FBI, no Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), no airport police. Instead, there was one United Airlines supervisor with a clipboard. (my bold)

So two of the suspicious guys were on a "no-fly" list and they still go on board. It turns out the "no-fly" list is a mess and nobody owns the problem. Jacobsen has researched the issue and her report is scary.

In 2002, The Homeland Security Act established the DHS. Among other things, it required DHS to take a leading role in coordinating and sharing Terrorist Watch List Information. The government had mandated that a single Terrorist Watch List (consolidated from the multiple existing sources) was paramount to national security. And yet a year later, in April of 2003, the government's main watchdog agency, the GAO (Government Accounting Office) found many of the pre-9/11 problems still existed. There were still nine different government agencies working from more than a dozen different lists. Any given federal agency still didn't have a clue what other federal agencies were doing. The GAO put the need "to consolidate and share Terrorist Watch List Information" as a top priority for DHS -- which is what the Homeland Security Act had originally mandated. (her bold)

Read the complete article.

Mon Nov 15, 2004

Condi for Secretary of State

Good move, W

I've always admired Condoleezza Rice. She is super-smart, eloquent and tough. You've got to like a woman whose dream job is to run the NFL. She's a Browns fan, which is great. Given the way the Browns are playing right now, I'd rather she'd taken the soon-to-be-vacant coaching job at the Browns, but you can't have everything. Winning at football is nothing compared to victory over Radical Islam.

How tough can she be? I spotted this comment over at Daniel Drezner's blog:

People don't have the popular impression that Condi is, well, a hard ass. Instead, she radiates sparkle and affability --or isn't that her main charm?

The only rare time I saw her lose it was a dandy: a virtual Krakatoa with lava spewing over, when a wise guy student handed out a fake final exam to her "Military in Politics" undergrad course at Stanford and students were beginning to take it! She actually hurled the student --with the student inside his desk/chair--out of the room with superhuman strength, seething as she was doing.

It's no secret that Islamists view Blacks as inferior and women as inferior. Their world view is going to take a big hit when Condi gets going. Mess with her? No way. That'd be messing with W's America and they are learning that is not wise.

Sun Nov 14, 2004

Will the Washington Post become the paper of record?

The Times is almost always anti-American. The Post is getting better.

Here are typical quotes from articles by both papers on the recent battle in Fallujah.

1.

For Mustafa, one of 2,000 Iraqi soldiers fighting alongside U.S. troops for control of this insurgent-occupied city, the battle for Fallujah was personal. If the fighters continue to control Iraqi cities, there will be no future for him, his children or his wife of 10 weeks
...
Although they were technically in the rear of the advancing troops, Iraqi soldiers who were interviewed Sunday said that in some respects, they had the tougher job of confronting the insurgents on foot without the benefit of the large tanks and other mechanized infantry that the American forces used to move quickly through the center. The Iraqi soldiers came behind more slowly, their job was to meticulously clear the areas where the U.S. Marine and Army units went.

They said they discovered an equally meticulous insurgent force.

The insurgents were positioned on the tops of houses and buildings, from which they threw hand grenades and fired AK-47s. "The U.S. artillery shaved them all," said an Iraqi sergeant, whose last name was Adnan. "We took care of the insurgents hiding inside the houses."

Many of the insurgents had long beards and wore turbans, the Iraqi soldiers said. They swarmed the small alleys looking for Iraqi soldiers to kill.

"You can tell that the quality of the fighters has improved as we've moved south through the city," said Lt. Steven Berch. "They shoot better, they move better, they cover themselves better."

That progression, too, seems to have been part of a plan by the rebels. How well it has worked is open to debate, but the 50-man platoon that lost the marine on Thursday had nine other casualties as well - a stunning rate of 20 percent in a single day - all a result of the rebels' skill.
...
There were no obvious signs of an ambush, but two of the Iraqi soldiers said, "Just shoot him." But for whatever reason, the Americans held off, and the man produced his wife, mother and two children, all struck by gunfire. His daughter had been shot in the back and his mother in the head. Trying their best to avoid stepping on another set of Muslim taboos, Marines attempted to remove the bullet from the man's daughter while she was standing up, with her clothes on. Her fate is unknown, but the man's mother died later.

These seemingly loyal Iraqi soldiers had no direct involvement in the Thursday incident first classified as an ambush. But visual memory being what it is, when members of the First Platoon, B Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, turned onto a street on Thursday, they saw the chocolate-chip camouflage pattern and hesitated.

Click "Read more" , as if you really need to, to see which paper printed which report. Read more »

Illegal Immigration

Another policy arena the Democrats could win

President Bush has gone far to the left of the Republican party on this issue. That leaves an opening for the Democrats..

The Democrats have been relatively strong in claiming that out-sourcing destroys American jobs. I don't happen to agree with that position; I say out-source low-paying jobs, in-source high payng jobs. Let Nike make shoes in Indonesia; we'll build Honda cars in America. But the Democrats could claim, with consistency, that illegal immigrants are breaking the law and stealing American jobs. It might offend some of their organized constituents -- the various lobbies that prevent effective action against illegals -- but it would play well in blue-collar America. My simple ideas on this issue were posted some time ago.

The Democrat's Achille's heel

National Security

Michael Totten's post on why the Democrats are weak on national security is a must read. He quotes extensively from a two year old article by Heather Hurlburt that is more relevant then ever. Totten notes that:

This is exactly right. It is possible to be some kind of anti-Bush lefty and write thoughtful books and articles about national security without being a backseat heckler who opposes but offers no alternate vision. Paul Berman has managed to do it. But he labors away in an inhospitable left-wing environment that hardly has any room for him. For someone like me who doesn’t have a lifetime’s worth of street cred in the lefty press, I’m all but forced to play in the right’s sandbox whether I like it or not. (But I don’t dislike it as much as I did, and that’s bad news for the Democrats. An entire genre of intellectuals like me exists and has a name – neoconservatives - because mine is all-too common a storyline.)

It is in America's best interests for the mainstream Democrats to address their weakness on defense and the military and develop policies that put America's interests first. If John Forbes Kerry had really been JFK reincarnate, the Democrats would have won in 2004. But they have to go back to their pre-Vietnam past, where the people trusted Democrats to defend America and spread freedom, if they want to recapture the future. John Kerry proved that faking it doesn't work post 9/11.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair is proving that a left-wing leader can take an aggressive stance in the war on radical Islam and win. His right-wing opponents have made the same mistake as the Democrats and attacked Blair on Iraq. Besides earning the disgust of the White House, they have probably lost any chance to beat Blair when he next calls an election.

Here's a word we need to read more often

V I C T O R Y

How else to describe the battle for Fallujah, the destruction of Saddam's regime, the exposure of Libya's WMD program, the virtual collapse of the Palestinian intifada, and the election in Afghanistan?

Will we read that word in the MSM today? No, but the people understand the word and voted for more of the same.

Curious omissions in the 9/11 Commission Report

They seem to involve Iraq

There is a somewhat murky line that can be drawn from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center to 9/11. Abdul Rahman Yasin was one of the ring leaders of the 1993 attack. He fled to Iraq after giving the FBI the small fish involved in the plot. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary. There is a $5 million reward on Yasin's head.

The 9/11 Commission report does not mention Yasin.

We know that Saddam had three terrorist training camps, including Salman Pak. On October 14, 2001, Iraqi defector Sabah Khodada, a former Iraqi army captain who once worked at Salman Pak, granted an interview to PBS television program Frontline, stating, "This camp is specialized in exporting terrorism to the whole world." He added: "Training includes hijacking and kidnapping of airplanes, trains, public buses, and planting explosives in cities ... how to prepare for suicidal operations." He continued: "We saw people getting trained to hijack airplanes...They are even trained how to use utensils for food, like forks and knives provided in the plane." Salman Pak's training facilities included the fuselage of a passenger jet.

The 9/11 Commission Report does not mention Sabah Khodada or Salman Pak.

The Commission attempts to debunk the report that Mohammed Atta met with Al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat, in Prague on April 9, 2001. Edward Jay Epstein lists the evidence supporting the evidence that such a meeting took place. Epstein reports:

Al-Ani scheduled a meeting in April with a "Hamburg student" according to an appointment calendar subsequently turned up by Czech intelligence in a surreptitious search of the Iraq Embassy

The 9/11 Commission Report does not mention that appointment.

Epstein reports:

Subsequently, Spanish intelligence found evidence that Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar provided false passports to Mohamed Atta and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

In "debunking" the Prague trip, the 9/11 Commission claimed that "the FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports." The 9/11 Commission relies on cell phone records rather than sightings to "prove" Atta did not travel to Prague. The report says:

The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta’s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging stablishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida.

The report also tells us that Shehhi:

found the group [hijackers Hamza al Ghamdi, Mohand al Shehri, and Ahmed al Nami] an apartment in Delray Beach, Florida.

So, it is reasonable to suppose Shehhi was organizing accommodations while Atta was away and using Atta's cell phone to do it. It would be interesting to know if Shehhi was seen in Florida in that time period and whether he had his own cell phone (although he could have used Atta's to establish an alibi for him). Al Ani has been captured and continues to deny meeting Atta and the 9/11 Commission report takes him at his word. To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, "He would say that, wouldn't he".

The 9/11 Commission Report does not mention Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar.

The 9/11 Commission seems to be over eager to downplay any possible links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Fri Nov 12, 2004

If you want to understand what's going on in Fallujah

Skip the MSM and read Belmont Club

If any single site distinguishes blogs from the MSM, it is Belmont Club. The author is from the Phillipines and lives in Australia. He has the same resources as anyone else, including all those MSM pundits, yet he provides a depth of analysis and overview of strategies that far surpasses anything you'll read on the MSM or see on TV. Take this analysis gleaned from a press statement (via Command Post) by a former Republican Guard general:

There are two factual nuggets in this screed. First, it gives us a map of the the towns which the enemy considers its bastions. Second, it hints of a fallback plan conceived before the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a subject earlier discussed in War Plan Orange. By plotting the enemy strongholds on the map it is at once evident that they are coextensive with two pathways. The first goes northward along the Euphrates from western Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, Hadithah, Anah and Qusabayah -- along the river and road from Baghdad to the Syrian border. The omission of Qusabayah from mention is very peculiar, since it has been the scene of battalion sized battles between infiltrators and Marines guarding the Syrian frontier since the earliest post-OIF days, but I include it here on that account. The second set of towns goes northeast along the Tigris towards Tikrit and parts of Kurdistan: Hawijah, Balad and Samarra. A spur runs off toward the Iranian border: Baqubah and Baladruz, on the road to the Iran. It is hard not to think that we are looking at their lines of communication.

The towns along these pathways are probably waystations where men and weapons can be smuggled by stages, a kind of Sunni Ho Chi Minh Trail. My own guess is they are probably superimposed on traditional smuggling routes from Syria and Iran which have now been converted to serve the enemy cause. I caution the reader that this is guesswork, but I think it is correct. The discovery of carbomb factories in Fallujah suggests that town was the easternmost terminus of a finger that extended straight from the Syrian border, a final launching pad where enemy delivery systems were "bombed up" for their sorties at US targets in the city or as convoys made their way along the highways west of Baghdad.

Of course, if the insurgency was planned before the war, and the US had no intelligence on that planning, then we are looking at yet another major intelligence failure. That's a topic for another day.

No need to worry about those polar bears

Global warming junk science scare tactics debunked again

Recent reports about the impact of "Global Warming" on arctic animals made it seem like they were under threat of extinction. Check out this Opinion piece by Steven Milloy on Fox News website.

A Canadian Press Newswire story earlier this year reported that, in three Arctic villages, polar bears “are so abundant there’s a public safety issue.” The local polar bear population reportedly increased from about 2,100 in 1997 to as many as 2,600 in 2004. Inuit hunters (search) wanted to be able to kill more bears because they are “fearsome predators.”

An aerial survey of Alaskan polar bears published in "Arctic" (December 2003) reported a greater polar bear density than previous survey estimates dating back to 1987.

If polar bears really are getting skinnier as the 1999 study suggested, it may actually be due to an increased population subsisting on the same level of available food. After all, the harvesting of Alaskan polar bears has been limited by the Marine Mammal Protection Act (search) and international agreements since 1972.

Yep, it sure seems like the poor old polar bears are going to be wiped out by those SUV drivers. (For the record, I drive a stick shift, 4-cylinder Honda, but the Dodge Magnum Hemi sure looks tempting).

Check my earlier post here for other reasons to be skeptical.

Thu Nov 11, 2004

Yasser Arafat

May be R.I.H.^*

Hindrocket at Powerline Blog has a fitting addendum to the pablum obituaries appearing in the MSM.

Yasser Arafat, however, is the true father of this war. First Arafat created Black September as an offshoot of his Fatah organization. He presided over the operation resulting in the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich by Black September in 1972. The following year Arafat became the first Arab terrorist to target Americans.

The connection between the Soviet KGB and the PLO is often overlooked. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of Romanian Intelligence, writing in the WSJ back in 2002 fills that gap:

Just six months earlier Arafat's liaison officer for Romania, Ali Hassan Salameh, had led the PLO commando team that took the Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Games, and Ceausescu had become deathly afraid that his name might be implicated in that awful crime.

It was already too late to stop the Abu Jihad commandos. After a couple of hours we learned they had seized the participants at a diplomatic reception organized by the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum and were asking for Sirhan's release. On March 2, 1973, after President Nixon refused the terrorists' demand, the PLO commandos executed three of their hostages: American Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr., his deputy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian charge d'affaires Guy Eid. In May 1973, during a private dinner with Ceausescu, Arafat excitedly bragged about his Khartoum operation. "Be careful," Ion Gheorghe Maurer, a Western-educated lawyer who had just retired as Romanian prime minister, told him. "No matter how high up you are, you can still be convicted for killing and stealing."

"Who, me? I never had anything to do with that operation," Arafat said, winking mischievously.

Nice guy, huh?

^*Rot In Hell

Wed Nov 10, 2004

When Greenland really was green

And what it means to walruses and polar bears

USA today provides a good report on the North Greenland Ice core Project. Since 1996, researchers have been drilling out an ice core from the ice sheet covering most of Greenland. They recently hit bottom at 10,121 feet and that represents a 120,000 year record of the Earth's climate. The very bottom included fragments of plant material of (as yet) unknown vintage. The researchers had to contend with altitude sickness because their base was 9,000 feet above sea level. The weight of a two mile thick sheet of ice has pushed the underlying surface at least 1,000 feet into the Earth's crust.

At one time all that ice wasn't there. We're not talking about geological time scales where continental drift would be a factor. If the ice wasn't there, then that would be because the Earth was warmer than today. We can't blame fat Americans cruising around in SUVs for that global warming. Could it be that the Earth's temperature has swung wildly in the past, melting and reforming continental ice sheets? That's what the record in the ice core tells us.

More recently, we've had a spate of stories about how warming in the arctic is accelerating and impacting the animals that live there. This recent PBS report is typical. Yet we know the animals that evolved to survive in the Arctic Circle have been through dramatic temperature changes over the last few hundred thousand years and many species have survived. Signing Kyoto won't make a discernible difference to them or to what is going to happen to the climate. Until scientists can fully explain what happened over the last few million years, future climate change is unknowable and unpredictable. The current warming trend could reverse at any time, as it has in the past. Blindly extrapolating a warming trend, that started before SUVs were invented ignores all but the last couple of centuries of the Earth's climate history.

It's bad science and poor public policy.

Update (via Instapundit):

The Speculist notes that Mars is getting warmer, too. I don't think this counts as an SUV.

Tue Nov 09, 2004

That sense of relief is growing stronger

The news keeps getting better

In the week or so leading up to the election my wife and I were becoming concerned that Bush might lose or that the election would be a repeat of 2000. Those bogus exit poll numbers did not help our mood on election day. Bush's reelection provided a profound sense of relief and hope.

Bush won the election. The Republicans won in the House and Senate. Obviously, this will force the Democratic Party to rethink its strategy and platform. It can move further left, following EMK and the JFK wannabe, and lose more, or it can return to 1960 and look at the policies that got JFK elected - strong on defense and America. If that happens it would be good news for democracy in America.

Now the battle for Fallujah has started. The good guys will win and a few brave men will die. But the bad guys will lose and hundreds of evil men will be killed. The decision to take Fallujah had been on hold until the US election was over. Now that's over, and Bush has a renewed mandate to finish the job. That's good news.

Arafat is brain-dead, at a minimum. His political philosophy -- kill all Jews and suck up to the Europeans -- will not survive him. The Palestinian factions will tear themselves apart in trying to take over. Eventually some moderates will emerge who will look to the US for guidance. They will see that Allawi is a winner and Saddam, their old patron, was a loser. The immediate good news about Arafat's imminent demise will be followed by good news in the medium term.

The Incredibles is doing great business. Here's a very good family movie that attacks the philosophy underlying Political Correctness -- universal mediocrity is good. It takes a strong stand on family values and gets in some good digs at the impact of trial lawyers on society. Insurance companies get slapped around a bit, too, but I suppose that was inevitable given that the movie came from the heartland of Blue state culture. But it's a Red state movie and that's good news. Take the whole family and go have some old fashioned fun at the movies.

Should Specter be allowed to take over as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee?

Much as I don't like his positions, I think the answer is yes

Conservatives are outraged at his reported threat to apply a litmus test to judicial appointments. He's back-pedaling now, having realized that he misspoke. But he owes the GOP for his reelection and he owes the President big-time. He has also supported all of Bush's nominations to date. So, there is no reason to expect him to defy the President on major judicial appointments.

At the same time, letting him take the chairmanship sends out an important message to the electorate. The GOP is now the inclusive party. It can accommodate pro-choice and anti-choice leaders in positions of real power within the party. The Democrats can't and haven't been able to do so since 1992. As Nat Henthoff explained:

It was at the 1992 Democratic Convention that then-Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, whom I had the privilege of knowing, was prevented from speaking. This, even though, of all of the governors in the nation, he had done more than any other for the poor (including providing health insurance for children whose families couldn't afford it, but were not eligible for public assistance).

One other point is worth making: the Democrats are going to have an even harder time filibustering appointments sent to the Senate floor by a Judicial Committee led by a pro-choice liberal Republican.

So, maybe Bush will nominate some judges who would be mildly pro-choice. That would reflect the position of a significant fraction of the electorate. The important thing is that such judges would also have to be strict constructionists. That is the real battle; to restore the balance of power between the three branches of government so that we don't have the judiciary legislating from the bench.

Deacon and Hindrocket at Power Line come to the same answer.

The Flypaper Theory

Fallujah is the test

Daniel Drezner posted a discussion of the subject in August 2003. Fifteen months later, the theory is being tested in the real world of Fallujah.

When the fighting is over and the bodies are accounted for, it will be important to know just who the terrorists are. If the estimates of a 2000-3000 fighters are accurate, and a high percentage are foreign Jihadists, then we'll know that Bush was right when he said "bring them on".

But we should not be surprised that a lot of foreign fighters are in Iraq. The Jihadists are attracted to hot spots on the bloody borders of Islam like flies to carrion. Iraq is now the bloodiest border of Islam, and the one where Radical Islam can be dealt a great defeat, on the battlefield, and in the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims.

Sat Nov 06, 2004

Citizenship Trading

So, a lot of U.S. lefties want to move to Canada or New Zealand

But it's a hassle. Both junior members of the Anglosphere are fussy about who can emigrate to their fair shores. You have to wait in line behind everyone else.

What is needed is citizenship trading. I'm quite sure there would be plenty of takers if an American citizen wanted to trade their citizenship with a New Zealander trying to escape Kiwi anti-semitism or a Canadian wanting decent health care. If such a trading system could be implemented it would ensure that the dominant parties in each country would increase their majorities.

Can Jeb Bush run in 2008?

There is one match-up that let's Jeb Bush run without attracting the dynasty/nepotism smear

Fairly easy to figure out. If Hillary (named after the NZ apiarist who climbed Mt. Everest some years after she was born) is the Democrat candidate, then Jeb has a shot. It would be the brother of a 2-term President v. the wife.of a 2-term President.

Just for added spice, add in Condi Rice and Barack Obama as VP candidates.

Fri Nov 05, 2004

Making the case for a Bush vote

Even better to read in retrospect

The Weekly Standard has an article from the October 28, 2004 London Times entitled They are the reason he deserves reelection by Gerard Baker (not a huge Bush fan):

But above all, in this oppositional sort of age, when it is often easier to be defined by what one is against rather than what one is for, I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Bush's reelection.

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them.

Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics.

Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe.

Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else's fight.

Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation's morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace.

French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression.

Most of Belgium.

Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.

This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.

And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected.

Go on America. Make Their Day.

(my bolds) This helped make my day.

How leftist lies become factified

Did you know 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq?

We were just watching Fox News and we heard Geraldine Ferraro claim that 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since the US invasion. On that basis, she is saying that Iraqis were better off under Saddam. In my usual delicate style, I suggested that figure of 100,000 was inaccurate. Had I had a weapon at my disposal, we would no longer have a functional television.

My dear wife, somehow sensing that I was not impressed with Ms. Ferraro's claim, asked why I was a tad annoyed. I was somewhat surprised because my wife is very well informed. She visits all the news sites, the leading blogs and this lowly blog, but she did not know the source of the 100,000 casualties claim.

She had missed the totally bogus Lancet study that came out just before the election (surprise, surprise) claiming that 100,000 Iraqi have died from violence, most of it caused by Coalition air strikes. Chicago Boyz, amongst others, destroyed the methodology:

Needless to say, this study will become an article of faith in certain circles but the study is obviously bogus on its face.

First, even without reading the study, alarm bells should go off. The study purports to show civilian casualties 5 to 6 times higher than any other reputable source. Most other sources put total combined civilian and military deaths from all causes at between 15,000 to 20,000. The Lancet study is a degree of magnitude higher. Why the difference?

Moreover, just rough calculations should call the figure into doubt. 100,000 deaths over roughly a year and a half equates to 183 deaths per day. Seen anything like that on the news? With that many people dying from air strikes every day we would expect to have at least one or two incidents where several hundred or even thousands of people died. Heard of anything like that? In fact, heard of any air strikes at all where more than a couple of dozen people died total?

Where did this suspicious number come from? Bad methodology.

From the summary:

Mistake One:

"A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004"

It is bad practice to use a cluster sample for a distribution known to be highly asymmetrical. Since all sources agree that violence in Iraq is highly geographically concentrated, this means a cluster sample has a very high chance of exaggerating the number of deaths. If one or two of your clusters just happen to fall in a contended area it will skew everything. In fact, the study inadvertently suggests that this happened when it points out later that:

"Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters..."

In fact, this suggest that violent deaths were not "widespread" as 18 of the 33 clusters reported zero deaths. if 54% of the clusters had no deaths then all the other deaths occurred in 46% of the clusters. If the deaths in those clusters followed a standard distribution most of the deaths would have occurred in less than 15% of the total clusters.

And bingo we see that:

"Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja"

(They also used a secondary grouping system (page 2, paragraph 3) that would cause further skewing.)

Mistake Two:

"33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002."

Self-reporting in third-world countries is notoriously unreliable. In the guts of the paper (page 3, paragraph 2) they say they tried to get death certificates for at least two deaths for each cluster but they never say how many of the deaths, if any, they actually verified. It is probable that many of the deaths, especially the oddly high number of deaths of children by violence, never actually occurred.

So we have a sampling method that fails for diverse distributi

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