Judicious Asininity

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Wed May 31, 2006

A must-read post on the Battle of Midway

Wars are won or lost on intelligence

Scylla & Charybdis has a fantastic post on the Battle of Midway. He emphasizes the pivotal nature of the engagement:

Had the Japanese achieved their objective of a quick knock-out of the US Pacific Fleet at Midway (following the devastation at Pearl Harbor), the US West Coast would have been substantially defenseless against the Japanese Navy just 6 months into the war. Although the US had authorized a naval shipbuilding program the prior year, the launch of those boats was months away. It is entirely possible – and the subject of much Monday morning quarterbacking by military thinkers – that threatened or actual Japanese naval attacks on the US West Coast would have caused the US to agree to a ceasefire with Japan. It could have also forced the U.S. to divert scarce naval assets away from Europe, thereby allowing Germany to prevail over England and thus win the war.

Why did the US win against overwhelming odds? Intelligence:

But unknown to the Japanese, their military codes had been broken by the US codebreakers just weeks before the Midway attack. With solid warning that the Japanese were amassing their forces for a surprise assault on Midway and any US Naval ships that came to Midway’s defense, the US did not split its fleet, nor hold any ships in reserve. Rather, the U.S. gambled and sent all three American carriers - the entire US carrier fleet in the Pacific - to lay in wait for the Japanese flotilla at Midway. In short, it was a surprise counterattack on a surprise attack.

The lesson for our present war against an implacable foe? Intelligence can win or lose a war. Those who reveal our intelligence secrets should be hung, drawn and quartered. I'd be OK with a firing squad.

Tue May 30, 2006

Nobody has suggested this yet but I think it will solve the border problem

Of course, these people will be upset with my idea

Forget the wall. People can climb over them, burrow under them or just drive right through them. What we need is a minefield, a mile-wide minefield. It sounds dreadful. The mind immediately visualizes a poor Mexican peasant desperate to get a landscaping job in Phoenix blown to bloody bits by an exploding mine. One hopes the poor Mexican peasant will visualize the same thing. Then he/she might have second thoughts about trying to enter the US illegally. Heck, he/she might even apply for a permit to work in the US. It would sure beat being blown to bloody bits.

Update: My co-blogger had a better idea, including a minefield, if required.

BBC Blinkers

Civilian casualties are bad only if they are inflicted by the US

I caught BBC World News as I headed out for my Tuesday night run. Item one was a report on the Haditha incident. The BBC website says:

The Haditha incident - where US marines are alleged to have killed Iraqi civilians last year - is the subject of growing concern in the United States.
Enough material has now been leaked to the media here to suggest to many Americans that the allegations are very serious and may well be true.

John Murtha, a former marine and Vietnam veteran who is now an anti-war Democratic congressman, said he believed civilians had been murdered in Haditha and senior officers had made an attempt to hide it.

If US forces kill civilians it is a serious matter. If it happened, and that is still an "if" until the investigations are complete, then heads should roll. But it will still be an isolated incident. US forces do not routinely kill innocent civilians.

Item two covered the Memorial Day violence in Iraq. Back to the BBC website again:

At least 46 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in three separate bomb attacks in Iraq.

In the deadliest blast, 25 people were killed and 65 wounded when a car bomb ripped through a busy marketplace north-east of the capital Baghdad.

The enemy in Iraq routinely slaughters innocent civilians. Yet, the BBC doesn't bother to editorialize on that. The BBC doesn't mention that the Al Qaeda high command has failed to launch an investigation into the massacre of innocents. The BBC ignores the lack of protests in the Muslim world at the wanton slaughter of Muslim civilians by Muslim terrorists.

The BBC holds the US to a different standard than the Islamic terrorists who declared war on us, just as it holds Israel to a different standard than it does the terrorist organizations trying to complete Hitler's work.

Of course, the BBC is not alone in its double standard. The NYT must be salivating at the chance to put the the Haditha incident on its front page from now through the 2008 election.

Mon May 29, 2006

Memorial Day

Honoring the sacrifice of our parents

We spent the day celebrating my father-in-law's 86th birthday. But it was more than that. Because he was the commander of an LCT that went in on D-Day. He risked his life for our freedom.

My late father spent the war fighting alongside the British 8th Army against the Axis in North Africa and Italy. He risked his life for our freedom. His battalion suffered casualities an order of magnitude higher than any American forces have suffered in the present war in Iraq.

Our parents' generation rightly despises the defeatists, the likes of Murtha, Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, and the rest of the treacherous scum that has taken over the party of Roosevelt, Truman and JFK. They know neither honor nor sacrifice.

Sat May 27, 2006

Is the Gonzales Justice Department getting tough?

Watch out, Congress

According the NYT:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Why would congress, Republicans and Democrats, be so upset about the FBI searching the office of a congressman caught taking cash bribes? Perhaps because of the precedent it sets. Some of our esteemed law-makers may have more to hide. MacRanger at MacsMind has long been on Senator Rockefeller's case as a big-time leaker. MacRanger links to Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics, who notes:

Investigations into the NSA and "secret prisons" leaks are nearing completion. A senior CIA official has been fired for leaking, and, reportedly, is singing like a canary to avoid prosecution. The FBI knows who's been talking to journalists, ABC's Brian Ross said a source told him.

Journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said on ABC's "This Week" program Sunday.

If members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have been leaking to the press they sure wouldn't want the FBI going through their offices and interrogating their staff. And it looks like Gonzales has been showing some spine, a rare thing these days.

Thu May 25, 2006

Immigration has to be good for America

Legalizing 12 million manual laborers is not good for America

There is a good post at The Skeptical Optimist that addresses a major problem with immigration policy; not enough quality immigrants:

Today, too many would-be immigrants are kept out by an inept, incompetent process for “legal” immigration. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, doctors, inventors, artists, and productive would-be contributors to our economy and society are loath to break our laws, and loath to put up with our incompetent immigration process. So they stay away voluntarily. If we’d fix the ineptness of the current “legal” immigration process, we’d unbottleneck the system. Added bonus: we’d know who they all are, because they’d all have come through legally.

The poor Mexicans who flock here are not equipped to develop new businesses, create software products, cure cancer, design fighter jets or whatever. They can do little more than what they did in Mexico; that is, manual labor. If legalized, they would draw upon government services more than the average tax-payer yet contribute far less in taxes. Worse, they'd still be eligible for social security. That is of no use to America.

Better to plug the gap on the Southern border, encourage the illegals to go home and demand social justice, and start encouraging qualified immigrants from around the world. America should once again position itself as the refuge for Europeans driven out by tyranny and genocide. Now that Islam has planted its demographic timebombs across Europe, that is the fate that awaits Europe.

Wed May 24, 2006

What slaughtered the Aztecs?

Another PC myth debunked

It's long been taken for granted that the Spaniards killed millions of Aztecs by introducing Old world diseases to the New World. Mexican epidemiologist Rodolfo Acuña-Soto, a dogged Mexican epidemiologist has found evidence that a native disease was the culprit. Discover.Com has publshed a fascinating article about Acuña-Soto's research. It begins with a precis of the received wisdom:

When Hernando Cortés and his Spanish army of fewer than a thousand men stormed into Mexico in 1519, the native population numbered about 22 million. By the end of the century, following a series of devastating epidemics, only 2 million people remained. Even compared with the casualties of the Black Death, the mortality rate was extraordinarily high. Mexican epidemiologist Rodolfo Acuña-Soto refers to it as the time of "megadeath." The toll forever altered the culture of Mesoamerica and branded the Spanish as the worst kind of conquerors, those from foreign lands who kill with their microbes as well as their swords.

But there were wholes in the story. For starters, the Aztecs had a word for Smallpox that pre-dated the Spanish invasion and a different word for the plagues that wiped out so many millions. By researching Axtec records, Spanish archives and climate data preserved in tree rings, Acuña-Soto found the culprit:

Hemorrhagic viruses affect human populations that are already stressed, Acuña-Soto says. "The natives were poor and probably near starvation and living in unsanitary conditions where the rats would congregate. They also worked in the fields, where they'd be exposed to the rat droppings. The Spanish made up the upper classes."

Cortés and his soldiers defeated, enslaved, and murdered the Aztecs, but now it seems that cocolitzli, a disease brought about by a native virus, is what really finished them off. Today the Aztec kingdom exists only in museums and ruins, but the virus could still be out there. As Mexico enters into yet another period of severe drought, could the killer reemerge?

This is not to excuse the Spanish for what they did, but genocide by disease should be dropped from the rap sheet.

HT Marginal revolution.

Tue May 23, 2006

Technology meets guts

And a world record is set

I was watching the Cleveland Marathon at the half-way mark and I saw a bunch of fast peope. I knew some of the people in the group and took a picture. Then I noticed that one of the women in the group was running with a prosthesis. Wow!

Afterwards I read this report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Without question, one of the most enthusiastic marathon runners Sunday at the 29th Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon & 10K was 33-year-old Amy Winters of Meadville, Pa.

Why? Because she set a world record for a female amputee runner by completing the 26.2-mile run in three hours, 26 minutes and 16 seconds. She was badly injured in a 1994 motorcycle accident. Following 25 surgeries over three years, her left leg was amputated below the knee. Winters, who ran track at Youngstown State and also ran 3:16:00 in the Boston Marathon in 1993, was fitted in February with a customized running prosthesis designed by A Step Ahead in Hicksville, N.Y.

"I was told in 1994 I wouldn't run again," Winters said. "That lit a spark in me. I got a second chance in life with this special prosthesis. I eventually plan to also do the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii."

Winters set a world record despite falling at the 19-mile mark. "I wasn't paying attention to a bump in the road and I fell forward," she said. "Other than that, I feel great. I wasn't at all winded."

I ran the second half of that marathon. The last six miles were into a 30 mph headwind and it was really tough. The wind was laden with curses and obscenities as the runners saw their dreams blown away. Amy was running with the 3:30 pace group when I saw her at 13 miles. She finished in 3:26. That means she ran the second half of the marathon faster than the first. That's difficult under ideal conditions. Falling, running into a gale during the toughest part of a marathon, and picking up time. Truly amazing.

Mon May 22, 2006

Why is it so hard for illegals to be returned to Mexico?

This seems to be one of the underlying assumptions in the immigration debate

They got here, one-by-one, two-by-two by walking across the border. They can go back, exactly the same way. They had an incentive to break the law to get here so they came. All they need is an incentive to return. Start with biometric identification cards. Add verification of same as a condition of employment and for receiving medical care or welfare. Make failure to verify an expensive crime for employers and public servants. Put a tax on remittances to Mexico sent by unverified persons sufficient to pay for the services that illegals have consumed for the past 20 years. Revoke citzenship rights for all children born to illegals. If a guest worker scheme is implemented, then make it a condition that applicants apply in their country of citizenship. Do all that and the illegals will have no incentive to stay in America. They'll just take a bus back to the border and walk home, one-by-one, two-by-two.

Fri May 19, 2006

Conservatives who embrace creationism can't expect to be taken seriously

Ann Coulter is a prime example

According to this blurb for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism:

Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science.

Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called "gaps" in the theory of evolution are all there is -- Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?

Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.

I thought I had reasonable handle on evolutionary science and then I came across this fascinating account by Carl Zimmer explaining how viruses have been incorporated into our DNA and what it tells us about our evolutionary history:

Now, if you really don't enjoy reading about evidence that you are related to a chimpanzee, now's the time to close your browser window. Because now I must write about the endogenous retroviruses in chimpanzees, macaques, and other primates. It turns out that most of the viruses we carry can also be found in these other species. Our retroviruses can be grouped into families. They carry the same families. Our retroviruses usually appear in the same position in the genome, no matter whose genome you look at. Many of theirs are in the same place. These are all the sorts of evidence you'd expect if retroviruses had been carried down from distant primate ancestors. A particular retrovirus is not identical from one host primate to the next, but you wouldn't expect that. Once each host lineage branched off, the viruses could acquire mutations. But the different versions of these retroviruses are still similar enough that scientists can reconstruct the DNA of original virus that infected some long-gone primate.
...
There's one more use these viruses have to offer: they have preserved a precious record of our evolutionary history.

No matter how you look at the evidence -- the fossil record, taxonomy, DNA studies, field observations -- it all points in one direction - the theory of evolution is fact. Conservatives who try to deny evolution end up damaging their credibility with scientifically literate people. They may as well be members of the Flat Earth Society.

Wed May 17, 2006

Cavs win again

How to create fans

I've never been a basketball fall. Then the home town team drafted a local high school kid who skipped college and went straight to the NBA. He has exceeded the sport's expectations. He's done it while displaying a maturity far beyond his years. When the Cavs made the play-offs I started watching basketball. It's suddenly become a much more interesting game. And our local hero truly looks like the next Michael Jordan. So, I'll be paying more attention to the Cavs and less to the Browns and Indians.

Le Bron James gets in front of a TV camera after dominating a game and praises his team mates. That's refreshing.

Maybe it won't last. Maybe he'll leave to a bigger money market. Maybe he'll get caught like Kobe Bryant. Somehow, I doubt that. James seems to have character. His dedication to the game, his brilliance, his modesty, and his sportsmanship creates fans.

We're looking at immigration from the wrong end

It's not so much an American problem as a Mexican problem

In effect, Mexico is exporting its poverty to the United States. It gets lower unemployment, reduced welfare costs and a huge cash-flow benefit from exporting its poor people to America. The exports get much more dough than they'd get in Mexico, so their incentive is obvious. Rewarding them with citizenship, whatever the route, is a very bad idea.

The solution is to make Mexico more prosperous. The US has already out-sourced tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico under NAFTA. Mexico has huge oil and natural gas reserves. It is a tourist mecca (oops, that'll annoy the muslim hordes). So, what keeps Mexico from prosperity?

I'd say corruption, socialism, and elitism. The US is a classless society. You can move from the bottom to the top and vice versa. Mexico is medieval by comparison. The Mexican elite wants to stay elite no matter what the cost.

It's time to put some pressure on Mexico to reform itself. It should be an easier nut to crack than Iraq, but not by much. Hint to Mexico - look at Chile.

Sun May 14, 2006

Where is the best place to set up a terrorist cell?

Where you can plan your attacks without fear of surveillance

And where might that be? The good old US of A. Once the 9/11 hijackers got inside the US it is as if they had entered a cone of silence. If they called their contacts in the Muslim world or vice versa, the NSA could monitor it but couldn't do anything with the information they gained, as AJ Strata notes. This blindness came about from the layers of checks and balances added since the Vietnam era. It was the Carter administration that created FISA, the Reagan administration that left it in place, and the Clinton administration that strengthened the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations. They created the conditions that cloaked Al Qaeda's plotting in the US.

As is now becoming apparent, the Bush Administration moved quickly to remove the blinkers. But the traitors in the CIA and other branches of government are doing all they can to convince Americans that the Bush administration is invading their privacy. If they succeed in their campaign, the blinkers will go back on, and Al Qaeda operatives and Iranian agents and Latin American Marxists and all the scum that hate America will be free to do what Bush has been trying desperately to stop: launch another devastating attack on America.

Sat May 13, 2006

Why the Press is so worried about NSA analysing calling patterns

They might not like what can be discovered

It turns out that telephone billing records are virtually public information, according to Powerline:

UPDATE: Maybe I'm the only one who didn't already know this, but I was astonished to learn that there is no expectation of privacy in telephone records at all. Section 2702(c) sets out the circumstances in which a telecom provider can disclose phone records, not including the contents of communications. So this would cover the call information at issue in this program. 2702(c)(6) says that such phone records may be freely disclosed, at the company's discretion:

(6) to any person other than a governmental entity.

That's right. These supposedly top-secret telephone records can be given or, more likely, sold to any company or private citizen. So if I had enough money, I could buy the phone records of every person in the U.S., and donate them to the NSA.

Suppose the NSA was asked to analyze calling patterns from the CIA to the New York Times and Washington Post. That might point to potential leakers. Take it a step futher and see which private numbers are calling both the CIA and one or other of the papers. The final step is to see which of those private numbers are calling each other.

Suppose Ms. Lucy Leaker at the CIA wants to tell Mr. Ace Reporter about a new Bush plot to enslave Americans. She might call Ace from her CIA office at his NYT office and say she's got something to tell him, and to call her privately. Ace goes home and calls Lucy on her cell phone. So far, you'd have two unconnected phone calls. But Ace calls into his office on the same phone, and Lucy does likewise. A few database queries later you'd know that Lucy and Ace are talking way too much, which might explain why Ace's scoops are based on highly classified programs that Lucy knows about. At that point it may be possible to get warrants to tap their phones and otherwise monitor their communications.

Scary thought? Not to me, because I believe the current crop of leakers are traitors and should be treated accordingly. But it sure must be a worry to leakers and the reporters they talk to.

Thu May 11, 2006

Ahmadinejad is crazier than Osama

And Ahmadinejad is a head of a state developing nukes

Osama declared war on us in his 1996 fatwa. He had a bunch of demands and grievances that made some sort of sense. Here's a sample:

5-Destruction of the oil industries. The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings and prides and push them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land; therefore spread of the fighting in the region will expose the oil wealth to the danger of being burned up. The economic interests of the States of the Gulf and the land of the two Holy Places will be damaged and even a greater damage will be caused to the economy of the world. I would like here to alert my brothers, the Mujahideen, the sons of the nation, to protect this (oil) wealth and not to include it in the battle as it is a great Islamic wealth and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state, by Allah's Permission and Grace. We also warn the aggressors, the USA, against burning this Islamic wealth (a crime which they may commit in order to prevent it, at the end of the war, from falling in the hands of its legitimate owners and to cause economic damages to the competitors of the USA in Europe or the Far East, particularly Japan which is the major consumer of the oil of the region).

Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush is in a different category. It asks the President of the United States to submt to Allah. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch notes that:

...the letter was indeed the call to Islam that must precede any attack, in accord with Muhammad's words (in Sahih Muslim 4294) about inviting the unbelievers to accept Islam or dhimmitude and fighting him only if he refuses both.

It gets worse. The New York Sun (not to be confused with the New York Times) editorializes that:

President Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush, widely interpreted as a peaceful overture, is in fact a declaration of war. The key sentence in the letter is the closing salutation. In an eight-page text of the letter being circulated by the Council on Foreign Relations, it is left untranslated and rendered as "Vasalam Ala Man Ataba'al hoda." What this means is "Peace only unto those who follow the true path."

It is a phrase with historical significance in Islam, for, according to Islamic tradition, in year six of the Hejira - the late 620s - the prophet Mohammad sent letters to the Byzantine emperor and the Sassanid emperor telling them to convert to the true faith of Islam or be conquered. The letters included the same phrase that President Ahmadinejad used to conclude his letter to Mr. Bush. For Mohammad, the letters were a prelude to a Muslim offensive, a war launched for the purpose of imposing Islamic rule over infidels.

Let me get this straight. The leader of Iran has issued a call to George Bush to accept Islam or be conquered. All bin Ladin wanted was for the US to exit the Middle East and leave Israel to the wolves. He had no expectation of converting us, at least in the short-term.

Ahmadinejad (or those who pull his strings) believe their religion too much; it leads not to rational decisions. By contrast, George Bush is promoting secular values in the Islamic world: democracy, human rights, women's rights and freedom of religion. These are the rational values of civilization.

Tue May 09, 2006

We need a new approach to solving the immigration problem

History shows the way

Mexico had claims on Texas and California in the early history of this country. Luckily, Mexico did not prevail. Texas and California have done rather well since joining the Union. The adjoining states of Mexico have done rather less well. Pretty obviously, starting from the same base, becoming a US state is much better than being a Mexican state.

So, what the US should do is offer the Mexican border states the opportunity to become US states. A democratic referendum would seem to be the appropriate vehicle. If that doesn't work then a brief war would serve the same purpose.

Once the former Mexican states became US states, the residents would have no reason to flee north. US businesses would invest in those states, taking advantage of cheaper labor costs and the protection afforded by US statehood. The people in those states would get real jobs instead of the humble jobs on offer to illegals in the US.

Of course, one might argue that all this would achieve is to move the problem further south. Mexicans would still be crossing the new border in droves. But there would be fewer of them because we reduced the size of the problem, i.e. Mexico. If the immigration problems continue all that is required is to repeat the process. Eventually the problem will disappear.

Senators versus Judicial Nominees

Who are serving and who are being served?

We've seen the confirmation hearings for John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Most of the Senators, but especially the Democrats, made idiots of themselves. Now we have the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Orrin Hatch asked Kavanaugh why he would devote himself to public service when, with his talent and credentials, he could make far more money in the private sector. Kavanaugh responded appropriately.

But, think about the Senators. How many of them could make it in the private sector? I can see Senator Chuck Schumer as a sleazy divorce lawyer, Senator Joe Biden as an ambulance chaser, Senator Arlen Specter as a funeral director, Senator Teddy Kennedy as a life guard (joke), and Senator Dianne Feinstein as a politically corrrect and utterly incompetent Public School principal. None of them could achieve the income, perks and status they have as Senators if they had to make it in the private sector.

Mon May 08, 2006

Iran may have gone too far

Supplying SAMs to al-Sadr's wackos was not a good idea

The Daily Telegraph reports that:

The Army now believes that the Lynx helicopter shot down over central Basra at the weekend was most probably hit by a surface-to-air missile, obtained possibly from neighbouring Iran, after missile casings were discovered on the third floor of a nearby building, security sources in the city said yesterday.
The discovery, if confirmed, will be a worrying development for British operations in Iraq, which are increasingly reliant on helicopter "air bridges" to move men and equipment to reduce the risk of convoys being ambushed by roadside bombs.

If that missile can be traced back to Iran then it can be regarded as an act of war by Iran against the coalition. Rather than fretting about it, the coalition should launch a few missiles of it's own against Iranian military facilities.

The biggest mistake that the US made in Iraq

Failing to kill al-Sadr when we had the chance

Cox and Forkum write:

In the original post we lamented the fact that al-Sadr, already wanted on murder charges, had not been captured or killed during the battle of Najaf, a battle in which America soldiers lost their lives. Instead al-Sadr was being invited to become a politician in the newly forming Iraqi government. Today we are seeing the ugly consequences of letting this theocratic thug evade justice.

We also see the consequences in Basra, which is under the control of al-Sadr loyalists. From Yahoo News:

Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter went down in a vacant lot between two houses after it was struck by a shoulder-fired missile — a weapon widely available among insurgent groups and armed militias in Iraq. He said the four crew members were killed.

British soldiers with armored vehicles rushed to the site and were met by a hail of stones from a crowd of at least 250 people, many of them teenagers, who jumped for joy and raised their fists as thick smoke rose from the wreckage.

As many as three armored vehicles were set on fire, apparently with gasoline bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade, but the troops inside escaped unhurt, witnesses said.

The crowd chanted "we are all soldiers of al-Sayed," a reference to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of foreign troops being in Iraq.

Me, I'd drop the biggest bomb available on any crowd that cheers the death of our people.

Sun May 07, 2006

Always read the comments on the leading blogs

Great insight on WMD and other subjects will follow

Wretchard responds to his commenters, leaving jewels to be discovered. In this thread discussing the WMD issue, yet again, he writes:

It may simply be an outsider's impression, but it feels like the intel apparatus is incredibly ponderous. If I were to guess, the CIA was outsped by an incredibly nimble Russian intelligence operation, which moved most of the stuff out of Iraq and had a jump on US intel in knowing how the Turkey decision vis the 4ID would work out. They may have turned a military defeat into a postwar political victory. May.

Will we ever know? McCaffrey's report asserts that State can't even deploy to Iraq. Can't even deploy. So while I don't doubt that the DOD has its share of problems, whatever their defects the Armed Forces performance has made the intel and state guys look like clowns. At least they took what they had to take and beat who they had to beat. Even insurgents. At least they could deploy to Iraq and appear to be able to keep operational secrets. Again, it's an outsider's impression and there is much I don't know.

All this discussion about lying really assumes the intel organization is actually working but is just being misused. I almost hope that's the case.

Is it any coincidence that Foggy Bottom (love that name) and the CIA have working the hardest to undermine Bush?

Why Goss got the chop

The CIA's turf was being diminished

Via Belmont Club, I read this Time piece:

The President and Goss tried to put the best light on things when they jointly announced the resignation in the Oval Office. "I would like to report to you that the agency is back on a very even keel and sailing well," Goss said after Bush said that he had accepted Goss's resignation.But to use the nautical metaphor, the seas are more turbulent than Goss allowed.

In a speech in San Antonio last week, Negroponte's top deputy, Michael Hayden, declared that an office largely under Negroponte's control — the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC — was now in charge of dictating the role other agencies will play in terror analysis. Hayden said too many agencies were in the analysis business and that the NCTC, like a team captain, " will make these calls for the entire IC [intelligence community]." This may seem like bureaucratic minutiae, but it reflects an important struggle over a key aspect of American intelligence. Even though some diminishment of the CIA was all but guaranteed by the passage of the DNI law 18 months ago, each new detail of the Negroponte's implementation has been watched for how much it may curtail the power of the once-supreme CIA.

My bold. Who's taking over from Goss? Michael Hayden!

How do you get rid of an incompetent, treacherous, leaky organisation? You get your political opponents -- the 9/11 Commission, by and large -- to propose a new intelligence organization, the DNI, staff it with your people, and then move responsibility from the one to the other.

Sat May 06, 2006

Why did Jack Straw get the chop?

Was he going wobbly on Iran?

I hope so. A bit of googling turned up some straws in the wind. George Conger, writing in the Jerusalem Post:

The demotion of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and appointment of Blair loyalist Margaret Beckett to his post are likely to result in a more unified Anglo-American approach to Iran, Hamas and the Middle East.

With no experience in Middle East affairs and a reputation as a capable manager and Blair loyalist, Beckett is expected to back her political master and to favor the American approach to conflict resolution in the Middle East over the initiatives favored by the EU, with a tougher stance towards Hamas and terrorism.
...
On April 24, Blair responded to a question about the apparent divide in British policy, stating that while "nobody is talking about military invasion, people do, however, want to send a very strong signal to Iran. It is not very sensible at this moment in time to send a signal of weakness," refusing to rule out the military option, saying Britain should instead "send a signal of strength."

On April 20, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Straw called for normalization of relations with Hamas, saying recognition of Israel by Hamas would not necessarily require a formal declaration by the new Palestinian government. Straw's remarks were quickly downplayed by the British government stating that there had been no change in policy implied by his statements.

That's good. Straw was sounding very squishy in dealing with the Mad Mullahs. As I write this, I have C-SPAN on in the background, and it's question time in the British House of Commons. Sitting beside Blair on the Front Bench is Straw. Huh? But, it's a rather delayed telecast, and Jack Straw still has his position.

What is rather strange is to see the right-wing Conservatives using the rhetoric and methods of the US Democratic party to undermine a war-time Prime Minister.

Howard Dean goes for the Jewish vote

But maybe his message is a bit confused

DANEgerous has the quote and the picture. Heres what Dean said:

I was recently asked about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. When it comes right down to it, the essential difference is that the Democrats fundamentally believe it is important to make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews.

And, just to make the Jews really comfortable he goes dancing with a Kaffiyeh draped around his shoulders. Yep, Jews really dig guys wearing Yassir Arafat's head gear. Makes them really comfortable with American Democratic politicians.

Tue May 02, 2006

Gas price madness

US prices are comparatively low by Western standards

This chart shows prices in other countries. It's a bit out of date but the relativities would still be valid. Northern Europeans pay around three times what the poor old US consumer pays. Even in wide-open Australia, gas prices are about 75% higher than they are in the US. When gas hits $3 a gallon here, it's going to be close to $10 over in Europe. Little wonder they drive so many tiny diesel powered cars in the old country. Funny how the market reacts to price signals.

US gas prices are still a relative bargain. They could be lower if our elected morons actually addressed some of the constraints on gasoline supply, such as lack of refining capacity, environmental restrictions on exploration and drilling, EPA blending regulations and so on. We will know that gas prices are starting to hurt when people change their buying habits; when SUV sales tank; when people start driving Honda Fits instead of Jeep Cherokees; when commuters actually start car-pooling. None of that has happened yet. It probably won't until gas prices start to hit European levels.

In the meantime Congress critters should just shut-the-heck up on gas prices. They have done nothing useful to help reduce US dependence on foreign oil so they have no moral authority to lecture oil companies on issues they can't control.

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