Saddam's Chemical Supplier Gets 15 Years For WMD

For those who keep insisting that Saddam had no WMD and no way of producing them, The Hague has some embarrassing news. It convicted Saddam's supplier, Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, to 15 years for selling Saddam the chemicals used to kill at least 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, among others:

A DUTCH businessman was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday for helping Saddam Hussein to acquire the chemical weapons that he used to kill thousands of Kurdish civilians in the Iran-Iraq war.

The ruling by a court in The Hague — which could have an impact on the trial of the former Iraqi dictator in Baghdad — also said that genocide had been perpetrated against Kurds in Iraq after Saddam accused them of collaborating with Iran. ...

Prosecutors accused Van Anraat of delivering more than 1,000 tonnes of thiodiglycol. It can be used to make mustard gas, which causes horrific burns to the lungs and eyes and is often fatal.

He was also accused of importing chemicals to make nerve agents. The prosecution said that the lethal cargo was shipped from America via Belgium and Jordan to Iraq. He also imported other shipments from Japan via Italy.

Over a thousand tons of thiodiglycol, nerve agent precursors -- sounds like the kind of stuff that the US and the UN demanded that Saddam produce or prove to have been destroyed. After all, we would have wanted to know that these stocks -- and these from just this one source, among many others -- had been rendered harmless in some fashion, either by destruction or dissipation (or as in Halabja, by attack). Saddam's refusal to account for these very real stocks eventually forced the US and UK into taking action against Saddam.

And if he was bluffing, he did a masterful job of it. After all, no one could ask Frans van Ansaart about what else he might have sold Saddam during the so-called "containment" period. Why not? Because as it turns out, van Ansaart lived in Baghdad since 1989 under an assumed name, after escaping detention in Italy and fleeing an American warrant for his arrest. Saddam kept him safe -- and accessible -- until the fall of Baghdad in 2003, when he fled to the Netherlands and got arrested there.

Oddly, van Ansaart and his trial have received little attention from the American media. Perhaps that is because, once again, the Exempt Media here do not wish to report on developments that contradict their official Bush Lied!^TM narrative. Saddam's partnership with van Ansaart, especially his continued protection of him after 1989, shows that Saddam wanted to ensure that he could get his hands on weapons and chemicals supposedly denied to him by the UN. At the very least, it demonstrates that Saddam had every intention on restocking his WMD at the earliest possible moment.

Alito Opponents Believe In Recycling

Earlier this week, I noticed but did not bother to blog on a news story that Samuel Alito had suggested using a particular case to gain a limitation of scope for Roe v Wade. Although the news media had presented this memo as somewhat of a blockbuster, it appeared more to me that it seemed a lot like an earlier memo uncovered by Alito's opposition; it recommended a certain course of action for the Reagan administration to take if the administration wanted to gradually reverse the ban on abortion but cautioned against an all-out war on Roe. It was yet another example of basic attorney-client advice that should be irrelevant for a committee considering a candidate with over a decade of experience as an appellate court jurist -- which is what the Judiciary Committee should consider when determining whether Alito is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

What I didn't realize is that the memo wasn't a lot like an earlier memo, but the same exact memo as had been reported earlier, to great fanfare on its first release as a "smoking gun" document that fizzled out. Howard Kurtz gives a great blow-by-blow to the idiocy of the Exempt Media on this embarrassment:

Shortly after 9:30 a.m., a story by AP reporter Donna Cassata said, "Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned" and noted that the document was "one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday."

At 9:35, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien reported the AP dispatch with a "Just In" banner on the screen, saying: "Obviously, this will put a little fuel in the fire for people who are very contentiously debating Samuel Alito as a nominee." She then asked White House reporter Elaine Quijano for reaction.

At 9:36, Fox anchor Jon Scott reported the AP story in a "Fox News Alert," saying, "We don't know a great deal more about it" and promising updated information as it became available. But Fox did not return to the story.

At 9:57, CNN's O'Brien asked former prosecutor Kendall Coffey about the memo's potential impact. He said it could be described as a "smoking-gun document."

At 10 a.m., MSNBC anchor Amy Robach reported the story, saying "it is adding more fuel now to the abortion debate." Fifteen minutes later, she asked Washington Post editor Fred Barbash, a former Supreme Court reporter, for his reaction.

"This has no significance as far as I can tell," Barbash said, because the same document had been released several weeks earlier. "I think this is a bit of a false alarm. I could be wrong," Barbash said.

Robach didn't miss a beat. "Even though it may be an old document, it's still a document," she said, asking Wall Street Journal editor John Harwood for his reaction.

The most egregious action of the news organizations on this story belongs to the AP, which never acknowledged the fact that the memo had already been released and widely dissected. Instead, it quietly changed the story on subsequent releases without admitting its earlier error or issuing a retraction. Even then, its changes turned out also to have been old news, as it re-covered yet another memo that had also already been reported by AP and other media outlets.

Kurtz does a good job holding everyone's feet to the fire on this, and in doing so demonstrates the aggressiveness of the broadcast wing of the Exempt Media in hyping anything anti-Alito it can find. Obviously, the vaunted "levels of editors" at virtually every news organization completely failed to identify this, probably because it looked so helpful to their cause of painting Alito in as poor a light as possible. In fact, it took a Post pundit (and editor) to point out that the document had no significance at all. Having this many outlets make the same mistake all at the same time seems very suspicious to me. Kudos to Kurtz for not letting this one slip away unnoticed.

Was 'Pull My Finger' One Of The Reindeer Games?

The problems with fanatics for any cause is that they make the reasonable proponents look like idiots by association. Today in Britain, I suspect that many otherwise reasonable environmentalists are reading about Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Tom Brake and spitting their rainforest-supporting java all over the pages of The Scotsman. Brake apparently decided to celebrate this Christmas season by informing the world that Santa Claus is a major polluter, as his reindeer would emit almost the equivalent amount of greenhouses gases as a jet airplane from ... methane emissions:

REINDEER-drawn sleds have been slammed as environmentally unfriendly, because the carrot-munching animals produce the greenhouse gas methane in their wind. Now Santa has been urged to ditch his sleigh team and start travelling on public transport to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

It has been calculated that Santa's team of nine reindeer would emit methane with a global warming impact equivalent to more than 40,600 tonnes of greenhouse gases on the 122 million mile Christmas Eve dash to deliver presents around the world. ...

The methane calculations were made by Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Tom Brake.

He said the best Christmas present for the environment would be if Santa took the bus, which would keep his total emissions output down to just 10,980 tonnes of - although he admitted the annual trip might take a bit longer than usual.

Mr Brake said: "Boys and girls up and down the country will be eagerly waiting for Father Christmas to arrive with their presents on Christmas morning. What they may not realise however is that Santa would be better off taking public transport."

What the Liberal Democrats might not realize is that the world takes them as a joke, right along with the Greens in the USA, mainly because of stupid stunts like this (and running Ralph Nader for President here, twice). I may not agree with many of the positions that environmentalists take, but I do consider most of them at least somewhat tied to reality and recognize that we need advocates for conservancy in order to maintain a balance between growth and devastation. It's people like Brake who make it easy for his opponents to paint the entire environmental movement as Birkenstock-wearing, patchouli-smelling, hemp-worshipping nutcases that require medical rather than media attention.

When officials of a political party decide to hold public scoldings of Santa Claus based on measures of reindeer farts, they've officially jumped the shark. I'd recommend a lump of coal for Brake this Christmas, but he'd probably wind up suing Santa Claus on behalf of non-union elf miners.

BREATHLESS MEDIA UPDATE: ASH just announced that Santa has also quit smoking. Not a moment too soon, either, considering all that methane in the air around the sleigh. Next up, Fergie will get Santa on Weight Watchers, and we can all toss our Christmas cookies ... if we haven't already.

Movie Review: Munich

After giving the matter quite a bit of thought, I finally decided to see Munich at the theaters in order to make up my own mind about the film and the controversy that surrounds it. The film, which informs the audience that it was "Inspired By True Events", takes the bare bones of the Munich massacre and the Israeli intelligence operation which followed against the Black September organization which plotted it and turns it into ... well, an interesting if ultimately bankrupt morality play.

** Some Spoilers! **

On its most facile level, Munich is a gripping film. Had it been based on complete fiction -- if Spielberg had had the sense to manufacture a hypothetical instead of hijacking history and twisting it -- then it might have even had a valid point to make. Spielberg has lost nothing as a film director in a technical sense, and apart from Schindler's List, this is his grittiest film ever. Eric Bana gives a wonderful performance as Avner, the leader of the team tasked with taking the battle against Black September to the streets. Ciaran Hinds and Geoffrey Rush are just as good -- Hinds just finished getting significant American exposure as Julius Caesar in the wonderful HBO series Rome, and he will whet appetites here for more. The cinematography, music, mood, and all of the technical efforts put into the film are first rate, without a doubt.

And every last bit of it gets wasted by a silly sense of moral equivalency that comes from a fundamental misrepresentation of the threat Israel faces, and in the strongly suggested allegorical sense, the threat that faces the US and the West now.

A number of pundits have already linked to the reports of historical and factual errors in the Spielberg/Kushner script, but I'm less interested in the details of these deviations than the reason Spielberg employs them. He has the assassination squad argue incessantly about the morality of their actions, the futility of violence, and so on, even while killing off the Black September terrorists one by one. Most allegorically, they all wonder why they should bother when the PLO replaces the targets they kill with worse people than before. And while the movie gives a couple of references to the scores of terrorist attacks the PLO conducted through the 1970s, they never show any of them outside of the Munich massacre, and only then at the end of the movie after beating us over the head with the faux internalized guilt that springs entirely out of Spielberg's imagination.

The difference that Spielberg glosses over is that these agents targeted specific members of the PLO and Black September organizations, and in response to an atrocity that not only took place in front of the world, but for which the world refused to hold the Palestinians responsible. In the beginning, we find out that the BS perps live quite openly in Europe, but Spielberg never asks why -- not even once. Why did Europe and the West not arrest these terrorists and bring them to justice? Because the West made the same mistake then that Spielberg makes now: they felt that the Israelis and the Palestinians were equally guilty of the same terrorism. Never mind that the Israelis didn't hijack airplanes, didn't deliberately target and kill unarmed civilians, and didn't kill American diplomats (another Black September operation that Spielberg neglects to mention in Munich).

By equating the two sides, Spielberg and the world gave the perpetrators of terrorism the same moral standing as its victims, especially when the victims sought to ensure that their enemies could not live long enough to plan more such attacks. It's like saying that the perpetrators of Lidice were certainly naughty, but the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich was just as bad. It's absurd, and the absence of any mention of this fundamental, yawning chasm between the Israelis and the PLO/Black September terrorists provide the only true allegory in Munich -- the defeatism in which Avner and his compatriots indulge (in the film) matches perfectly with the Left's moral equivalency of Islamist terrorists and the supposed atrocities of the West, and their unwillingness to fight against Islamist aggression.

In fact, the problem with Munich isn't that it is a terrible film; the problem with it is that is so well-made. Without the context of the nature of the two combatants, viewers will buy into the defeatism and futility that Spielberg and Kushner want to sell so badly. That's why that context gets deliberately elided and shaded, especially when at the end Avner hangs up his spurs and retreats to Brooklyn with his family. He starts seeing cars following him and immediately jumps to the conclusion that the Israelis have targeted them, and winds up breaking into the Israeli embassy to make wild threats about going to the media to tell his story. Why in the world Avner would think the Israelis would want him dead never gets explained -- and if I were Avner, I'd be much more worried that the PLO had discovered his identity and his whereabouts.

Spielberg also has a scene that I found terribly objectionable. When Avner comes back to Israel at the end for a debriefing, he stays with his mother. She tells him how proud she is of him, and how he has helped make a home for the Jews on Earth. But when he asks her whether she wants to know what he had to do, she demurs, not wanting to hear. It comes as a strong indictment on the Israelis, and allegorically for the Americans, by implying that the war(s) are like sausage -- we like to eat it but refuse to watch it being made. It assumes that the Israelis have a cowardice about their efforts to defend themselves that didn't exist then and doesn't exist now, and in the US today gets expressed by the Left as "chickenhawk" slurs hurled against those who refuse to surrender to defeatism and the supposed inevitability of Islamist terror.

One other scene almost made me laugh out loud. In a paean to The Godfather trilogy, Avner's wife initiates lovemaking to take his mind off of his guilt. Spielberg then plays out the Munich massacre between thrusts, with Avner's orgasm coinciding with the gunning down of the Olympic athletes. Debbie Schluessel found this terribly offensive, but I just think it's the one truly sophomoric and self-consciously artistic moment of the entire film.

At some point in time, one hopes that Hollywood will grow up and realize that nihilism doesn't have a moral equivalency with Western values that celebrate life and civilization. Terrorism that deliberately targets women and children and non-combatants and celebrates their deaths do not and should not have the same moral standing as free nations defending those women, children, and noncombatants by killing the terrorists that prey upon them. It's this twisted moral viewpoint that destroys Munich and continues the reputation of the name as a symbol of foolish and benighted appeasement.

Rumsfeld: Starting The Stand-Down

Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Fallujah to address the American troops now holding the once-notorious insurgent stromghold, proclaiming enough progress had been made that the baseline American deployment to Iraq would decrease to 15 brigades, rather than the 17 brigades delpoyed prior to the increased election security details:

Just days after Iraq's elections, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday announced the first of what is likely to be a series of U.S. combat troop drawdowns in Iraq in 2006.

Rumsfeld, addressing U.S. troops at this former insurgent stronghold, said President Bush has authorized new cuts below the 138,000 level that has prevailed for most of this year.

Rumsfeld did not reveal the exact size of the troop cut, but Pentagon officials have said it could be as much as 7,000 combat troops. The Pentagon has not announced a timetable for troop reductions, but indications are that the force could be cut significantly by the end of 2006.

As the Iraqis stand up, we have always maintained we would stand down. The performance of the Iraqi troops during the election and its run-up have given the Pentagon a new sense of confidence in the training of its most experienced troops, confidence shown in the dozen or more transfers of military bases in Iraq to Iraqi control. That process began this summer, but likely will speed up this spring and summer as more trained security and Army troops come on line. Rather than withdraw, the US will likely keep regular Army units in bases farther out from the urban areas and allow National Guard units to either come home or not deploy at all to Iraq.

By this time next year, even with some sporadic violence, we can expect to see around 80,000 American troops providing mostly training and logistical support to an active force of about 250,000 Level 1 and Level 2 Iraqi troops. We will want to maintain some military presence there as a tripwire for the Iranians and the Syrians to consider in their designs on Iraqi sovereignty, and the new Iraqi government will want us close at hand to ensure their continued survival. What we will no longer provide is police action in cities such as Fallujah or Ramadi.

This allows us to ensure the survival of the Iraqi democracy and access to the entire Southeast Asian area, giving us the flexibility to pursue terrorists throughout the region. It resembles the same effort we made in stationing our troops in Europe and Japan to make our stand against the Communists, and it's just as important.

Profiles In Democratic Courage

The New York Sun reports that Democrats blocked the adoption of a resolution denouncing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his anti-Semitic remaeks and Holocaust denial until a demand for an Iranian plebescite and self-determination free of the Guardian Council had been removed. The objection officially came from Senator Wyden (D-OR), who then told the Senate that, uh, he didn't have a problem with the resolutuion, but that his colleagues did -- who displayed their intestinal fortitude by hiding behind Wyden's skirts:

When Mr. Santorum moved to introduce the resolution last Friday, Senator Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, registered an unusual objection. According to the Congressional Record, Mr. Wyden told Mr. Santorum on the Senate floor that he was objecting to the resolution because his Democratic colleagues in the Senate had asked him too. Mr. Wyden did not say who asked him to issue the objection.

"While I personally am vehemently opposed to the statements that have been made by the president of Iran," Mr. Wyden said, "I have been asked by the members on this side of the aisle to object, and I do so object."

Mr. Wyden's office did not return repeated calls yesterday to explain who suggested that he object to the Iran resolution or why he was chosen to register the complaint. And a spokesman for Mr. Santorum, Robert Traynham, said he did not know who raised the objection either.

D. Zin of Regime Change Iran has detailed this more closely -- his latest post is here, and he got a mention in the Sun but not a hyperlink -- but no one has discovered who passed a note to Wyden asking him to object to the original resolution. However, another odd event occurred. After Rick Santorum removed the two sentences that called for Iranian freedom, the Democrats (in name only, apparently) removed their objection to the resolution and it passed on acclamation.

Perhaps Harry Reid or Howard Dean can explain this. Who wanted the resolution blocked? Why didn't they come forward on their own, rather than playing middle-school games with Wyden over it? More to the point, what about freedom and democracy frightens and/or repels the ironically-named Democrats? The fact that our own Congress cannot endorse those two concepts as the ideal for government should worry Americans, and the manner in which the two sentences got removed from the resolution should evoke contempt for the party whose name supposedly celebrates the concepts. Shame on the Democratic caucus in our Senate.

Daschle: Democrats Clueless On 9/12, Too

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle writes an op-ed in today's Washington Post (which the Post covers as a news item on page A04, just in case its readers miss it) claiming that the declaration of war granted to Bush after 9/11 specifically limited his war powers. It's a must-read, if only to demonstrate that either the Democrats have to be the worst historical revisionists still received by polite society or have been truly clueless about the nature of the war on Islamofascist terror since its start.

Daschle actually makes a case for both in his essay:

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

Perhaps Daschle didn't notice, but the entire reason that Congress passed the war resolution was that the United States got attacked -- inside the United States. It's as if that context never occurs to Daschle. We had taken attacks from al-Qaeda on a number of occasions, including on two of our embassies and one of our warships -- both clear cases of casus belli under any terms of war -- and Congress never bothered to act on any of the previous attacks. The Clinton administration never bothered to ask for a declaration of war or its cousin, an authorization to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaeda or anyone else, and Congress never bothered to propose one.

That changed because our homeland suffered an attack for the second time -- the first being the World Trade Center in 1993, which also didn't provoke a Congressional act -- and we discovered that the rats that perpetrated the terrorist act had lived among us for months, if not years, before attacking. America found out that we had not taken terrorists seriously enough to re-cast our defense posture to make a serious effort to find and destroy terrorists among us as well as those outside the US prior to 9/11. That was the context of the Congressional resolution and the admnistration's request for it. Nowhere in that resolution does it restrict the Bush administration from conducting its war operations within the US, and contrary to what Russ Feingold and Tom Daschle would have Americans think, laws do not enable government power but restrict them. That which is not explicitly forbidden is therefore assumed to be legal, and not the other way around, as a moment's thought will clearly show.

Can you imagine that, in the days when the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center still dominated the nightly news, Congress would have passed a resolution barring the US from pursuing terrorists within the United States, implicitly or explicitly? The American people would have held 535 recall elections by October 20th and tossed every last Representative and Senator out on their ear -- and Tom Daschle damned well knows it.

Daschle also includes another bit of sleight-of-hand:

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

Cute, but entirely off-topic. That isn't what the NY Times alleged in its supposed scoop. In fact, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote explicitly that the NSA always waited for warrants when their investigation involved domestic wiretaps. The only warrantless wiretaps came on international communications where "US persons" -- a specific legal status -- were not involved, a legal practice both under FISA and the Constitution.

Daschle demonstrates that he has no grasp of what the issues are in this debate -- and if he's being honest about his intent in the days after 9/11, it shows that he and his party remained absolutely clueless about the nature of the threat from terrorism. He's made the pages of the Post a grand endorsement for the wisdom of the people of South Dakota, whom the entire nation should thank for their vote in 2004.

UPDATE: For the legality of the NSA operation, please see Power Line's extraordinary work, as well as the Hugh Hewitt interview of Cass Sunstein (not exactly a conservative legal mind).

British Tories Unveil The New Conservatism -- Socialism

It appears that British Tories need a strong dose of Margaret Thatcher more than ever. Their new policy chief, Oliver Letwin, wants the Tories to support redistribution of wealth as a central operating principle of the British Conservatism:

The Tories should support the redistribution of wealth and try to narrow the gap between rich and poor, Oliver Letwin, the party's new policy chief, says today.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he says: "Of course, inequality matters. Of course, it should be an aim to narrow the gap between rich and poor. It is more than a matter of safety nets."

Although he refuses to be drawn on specific proposals, he signals a dramatic break with the past by saying that his party should support the redistribution principle.

"We do redistribute money and we should redistribute money," he says. "But we have to find ways that empower people rather than reducing them to dependency."

One of the chief tenets of Conservatism has always been a respect for private property and a belief in market forces to enable wealth creation for all participants in it. Having the government redistribute capital interferes with the application of that capital in genuinely wealth-building activities that naturally spread that wealth according to the trade of cash for goods and services. When government overly taxes the markets, it most often creates imbalances that depress the mechanisms that create jobs. Those jobs would create a natural transfer of wealth in exchange for the labor and the expertise.

The Brits have decided that surrender works in politics. Let's just hope the Conservatives don't embrace that for for warmaking aganst al-Qaeda.

Saddam Judges Reject Beating Claims

The judges in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein denied today that his American guards had ever beaten their most notorious prisoner, despite Saddam's numerous protestations. In what has to be a crushing blow to the New York Times, the Scotsman reports that the judge remarked that American security professionals provide the former Iraqi dictator with a standard of care far better than any ordinary Iraqi:

AN INVESTIGATIVE judge said yesterday that officials never saw evidence that Saddam Hussein was beaten in US custody, contradicting claims by the former Iraqi dictator that he was abused and "the marks are still there". ...

When the court gave the former Iraqi leader an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, Saddam instead used the time to expand on earlier assertions he had been abused in custody. He claimed that the wounds he suffered from the alleged beatings had been documented by at least two American teams.

Saddam claimed that American denials that he was beaten could not be believed, noting that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq despite Mr Bush's pre-war claims that Saddam was harbouring such weapons. ...

But Raid al-Juhi, the investigative judge who prepared the case against Saddam and forwarded it to the trial court in July, said that neither the defendants nor their lawyers had ever complained about beatings. Officials also did not see any signs of beatings, Mr Juhi said. "The defendants receive complete and very good health care by the authorities in charge of the detention. No ordinary Iraqi receives this kind of care," he added.

I know that the NYT wanted to make Saddam's beating yet another "scoop" with which to paint the entire American war effort as one atrocity after another, but I think even Bill Keller knows that beating Saddam wouldn't exactly rate high on the American outrage meter. However, the effort of the Iraqi judges to answer Saddam's false allegations about the professionalism of our troops does help in countering the negativism and defeatism coming from the American media these days.

I'm being a bit sarcastic about the NYT, but in general, Saddam is making a mistake about antagonizing his guards. The troops selected for this duty will undoubtedly have been chosen for their professionalism and their ability to keep their heads despite any antagonism from their captives. However, if Saddam gets desperate enough to want to make an exit like Hermann Goering instead of Joachim von Ribbentrop, he might do better to emulate Goering's greasy seduction of his guard detail. All his accusations do is ensure that the Americans remain motivated to keep him nice and healthy in order to face whatever fate the Iraqis have in mind, and self-termination by cyanide capsule likely won't be the sentence.

How Do We Solve Pork For Good?

The failure of the ANWR strategy of amending arctic drilling to the defense budget, even as other spending amendments remain attached to the Pentagon funding, has Jon Henke at QandO thinking about how best to fight pork and get more honest votes on all federal funding. Jon, who runs one of the best neoliberatarian sites along with co-bloggers Dale Franks and McQ, wants to return to line-item budgeting:

The Parties have each failed to coordinate their principles on legislating-via-budget because they don't actually have any principles on legislating-via-budget. Their position on the process is entirely dependent upon the outcome. They have no Original Position.

While calculations of power and interest might lead one to conclude that this process-pervesion will ultimately be productive, this is not a promising way to organize government. The tables will turn, the majority will be the minority and the precedent will have been set. Republicans often complain that the judicial branch has become "activist", but the budget can just as easily become an instrument of new policy creation rather than extant policy implementation.

In politics, precedent is prophecy.

In other words, Congressmen who learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The problem is that they learn too well from it, and each succeeding generation gets better at sticking as much pork as possible onto unrelated legslation. During the Clinton administration, the Republican-controlled Congress gave the President the ability to veto separate line items -- a power that soon disappeared, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling the law unconstitutional. Clinton only had a chance to red-line a few projects.

Jon argues that Congress should reorganize its rules to require line-item budgeting -- a floor vote on each line item in every bill. It seems to me that the work on that would be lengthy, perhaps too much so for a year just on budgeting alone. On the other hand, the sheer volume alone might work as a limiting factor on federal spending. If the President couldn't veto on a line-item basis, at least Congress would have to pass each item on its own merits, and as an added bonus, we would know that the Congressmen and Congresswomen actually read the bills on which they vote.

AP Caught In More Bias

Michelle Malkin proves that she can do addition -- and reporting -- better than the AP, even with the latter's multiple layers of editorial control. I guess no one ever bought these guys a calculator.

Corruption -- even in the Abramoff case -- extends to both parties, and both parties need to come up with a solution. Reporting like this just gets in the way.

UPDATE: Patterico wrote to point out the correct URL for Michelle's post, along with several other CQ readers. Sorry for the confusion!

Spielberg's Munich Another Appeasement?

FrontPage Magazine reviews the new Spielberg film Munich, which Steven Spielberg based on the discredited book Vengeance, and finds it offensively appeasing towards the terrorists who murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games. FPM reports that the movie appears to want to create an allegory between the Israeli effort at eradicating terrorism back then and our efforts today in Iraq and elsewhere:

Like the book on which it’s based, Munich is long, boring, and filled with fakery. ...

Spielberg’s Mossad agents cry and brood a lot, unsure of themselves and why they are pursuing terrorists. Been there, seen that before – in the left-wing Israeli film Walk on Water. But it bears little resemblance to the real Mossad agents who hunted the terrorists. They were not metrosexual, sensitive guys – as badly as Spielberg and Kushner would like them to be. Like Golda Meir, they could not have been more certain of the just purpose of their mission.

Spielberg’s Mossad agents question why they should kill terrorists who murdered innocent people, when they will be replaced by other terrorists. Using that fallacious logic, why have a justice system at all? Bank robbers who go to jail will be replaced by more bank robbers. Ditto for child molesters, rapists, al-Qaeda terrorists, etc.

Then, there is something I haven’t read in other critics’ accounts of Munich – something that made me sick to my stomach. Are the lives of the innocent Israeli athletes so worthless that the scenes in which they are murdered by Palestinian terrorists are interspersed with the self-doubting Mossad agent having sex? How would Steven Spielberg like it if a loved one was shown being bludgeoned in between scenes of a law enforcement official bouncing up and down on top of the agent’s naked wife?

Debbie Schleussel obviously doesn't care much for Spielberg's vision of moral relativity. I wonder why he didn't have Oskar Schindler fretting over whether to save the Jewish men and women under his protection in his remarkable film Schindler's List, since genocidal regimes would come and go as they had all throughout history. Oh, that's because he saw Schindler as a hero for standing up to genocidal nutcases. Fascists in uniforms are bad; fascists in hoods and headdresses are people just like you and I. Huh?

CQ readers can't say they weren't warned. I wrote about this last July, when word leaked from the production about the direction Spielberg took with Munich, made rather obvious by the hiring of leftist Tony Kurshner as the screenwriter. I may still try to catch this in the theaters if I can to write my own review of the material, but the limited film budget may just stop at Narnia for the next couple of weeks.

Frist Grip Slips

The debacle that occurred yesterday in the Senate for the GOP despite a ten-seat advantage demonstrates a continuing and apparently worsening leadership vacuum for the Republican caucus. Majority Leader Bill Frist once again failed to deliver on two key legislative issues for the White House -- ANWR drilling and the permanent extension of the PATRIOT Act -- and required the Vice President to cut off a diplomatic trip overseas to rescue a third objective of budget cuts for at least a show of some fiscal sanity. As the Boston Globe notes today, either Frist cannot whip the fractious caucus into line or has poor vote-counting skills, but either way he has performed poorly in his role as shepherd to the legislative agenda of the GOP:

Senate majority leader Bill Frist, heading a 55-to-45 Republican majority, might have expected to deliver a pile of legislative gifts this month to the White House, which had hoped to end the year with $40 billion in budget cuts, approval to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, and the full extension of the Patriot Act giving expanded powers to law enforcement.

But Frist, a Tennessee Republican with his eye on the White House, found his party in a pre-Christmas dogfight yesterday, with GOP lawmakers joining united Democrats in a series of embarrassing setbacks for President Bush and the Republican agenda. ...

Republicans attributed some of their party's defections to the politics of a looming election year and the willingness of moderate Republican senators from New England to defy the president.

But others say that Frist, balancing his presidential ambitions with the task of running the Senate, is not doing what's needed to keep his caucus together.

Trent Lott, definitely not an uninterested party in discussions about leadership, notes that Frist doesn't crack heads like this particular caucus appears to require. Frist himself confirms that fact with a quote picked up by the Globe's Susan Milligan:

Frist and his supporters attributed the legislative losses and delays to ''obstructionist" Democrats and a few unruly Republicans. "I think it's childish," Frist said of the efforts to stop the budget cuts. ''You'll have to ask individuals who voted against that, both on the Republican and the Democrat side," why they tried to thwart the president's priorities, he said.

No, Senator, you need to ask the Republicans why they voted against it -- that's your job. A real caucus leader would already have known how and why their members would vote and would have held back on calling the question until everyone had gotten back in line. Harry Reid doesn't have too many problems with bloc unity, and he can't offer committee chairmanships and votes on pet causes like Frist can. Lawyers tell you that they shouldn't ask questions during testimony for which they don't already know the answer; doctors shouldn't start surgery unless they know where the abnormality is located. It's called preparation, and we're not seeing a lot of it from the Republican leadership in the Senate.

It's apparent that Frist wants to run for president in 2008, and he wants to run on the Nice Guy Platform. That might work well in peacetime, but not when the nation is at war and issues like PATRIOT and ANWR hold so much strategic significance. The disarray that has come from Frist's leadership of the largest Republican majority in the Senate for at least two generations demonstrates his lack of credentials for both his current job and the one he wants next. The White House had better start pushing for a change if it wants to see its legislative agenda have a chance in 2006, because Frist's willpower will hardly improve under the pressure of midterm elections.

The Gray Lady -- Captain Obvious

First the New York Times "discovers" that the NSA intercepts communications as a key part of its national charter, stirring up a hornet's nest only to find out that intercepting international communications is legal. Next, the editors "discover" that the FBI conducts counterterrorism investigations to combat domestic ecoterrorism involving political-action groups that might channel funds to the lunatics that commit bombings and arsons around the nation. Again, the Times doesn't find any illegal activity, but just breathlessly reports that the government conducts surveillance on people to find the criminals.

Now the Gray Lady keeps drilling down into the epidemic of law-enforcement competency by discovering that New York's finest goes undercover at protests to ensure that the demonstrations remain peaceful and do not front for domestic or foreign terrorist groups:

Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

The latter incident involved a sham arrest and a bruising confrontation, but what the article describes later doesn't give any indication that one naturally followed from the other. The police apparently arrested their agent in order to get him out of the protest without blowing his cover, and the people protesting with him took it upon themselves to prevent the arrest -- a rather stupid thing to do.

This series of articles show just how much that leftists want to return to a 9/10 world, where the evils of society comprise the government agents that want to protect the US from terrorists instead of the terrorists themselves. New Yorkers, at least those at the Times, appear to have forgotten why a huge gaping hole exists in Lower Manhattan. They either forgot or stopped caring about "connecting the dots", a phrase that they used to castigate these same security forces for not divining the intent of Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 -- but now resolutely oppose and expose the very methodology which would allow them to see the 'dots' in the first place.

The Times and its readers have not seen such a fatuous and self-defeating crusade by the Paper of Record since its obsession with Augusta's Masters Tournament. What will come next -- an exposé on garbage collectors that come onto your property to steal your waste? Metal detectors on public property conducting warrantless searches for handguns and other weapons? The possibilities on this series by Bill Keller's crew have no limits but the overactive imagination.

Hamadi Bails Out Of Beirut Custody

The long wait for American justice for the murder of Robert Stethem will have to go longer, it seems. Lebanese officials released Stethem's torturer and murderer from their custody yesterday, noting the lack of extradition between Lebanon and the US:

U.S. officials yesterday said the killer of a U.S. Navy diver had been released from "temporary custody" in Lebanon but refused to rule out bringing him to the United States by force. ...

Hamadi, a member of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, was taken into custody upon returning to Lebanon after his release from a German prison Thursday. He had served 18 years for hijacking a TWA plane to Beirut and fatally shooting Petty Officer 2nd Class Stethem, who was 23 when he was killed.

"What I can assure anybody who's listening, including Mr. Hamadi, is that we will track him down, we will find him, and we will bring him to justice in the United States for what he's done," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We will make every effort, working with the Lebanese authorities or whomever else, to see that he faces trial for the murder of Mr. Stethem," he said.

We made "every effort" with Mahmoud Abbas, the terrorist who pulled the trigger and killed Leon Klinghoffer during the Achile Lauro terrorist hijacking. He died in US custody from natural causes, but Aimal Khan Kasi, who shot five CIA employees in the Langley office parking lot died by an American execution order. He got captured when the FBI raided his Pakistan camp in 1997 and dragged him back to the US for trial.

Hamadi may believe that his Hizbollah contacts can hide him from the US, and he may be right in the short run. But this is a different America than the one Hamadi attacked in 1985 through his hijacking and murder. We have much longer memories now, and a much stronger will to ensure that our enemies taste defeat as an end result of their terrorist actions. This may not be lost on Hizbollah, which may not overflow with enthusiasm when it comes to sheltering Hamadi. After all, they also have targets on their backs, and extra heat from the US doesn't exactly help them out too much. The US would love to have a casus belli against the Iranian-backed terrorist group in order to pressure both Syria and Iran to reform or risk being the next target of the war on Islamofascist terror. If Hamadi can provide that, so much the better.

Zarqawi Starts Arranging Next Front For Al-Qaeda

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have seen the writing on the wall in Iraq and started looking for greener pastures -- or perhaps more yellow. As the Iraqis increasingly take the terrorists on themselves, Zarqawi has decided to open a more promising front:

A wave of arrests across Europe has thrown new light on a European terrorist network being developed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most prominent insurgent in Iraq.

A growing number of terrorism investigations in Britain, Germany, Bosnia, Denmark and most recently Spain and France are linked to the man who has masterminded countless suicide bombings in Iraq, personally beheaded hostages and bombed three hotels in his native Jordan.

Some of the suspected networks appear to be involved only in supporting his operations in Iraq. But counter-terrorism officials are worried that Zarqawi could be planning to use his base in Iraq to start attacking Europe. Security officials are particularly worried by indications that he wants to recruit white extremists who will be more difficult to detect than Arabs or Asians.

For those who want to claim that the invasion of Iraq allowed Zarqawi to create a network that reached into Europe, the Telegraph's source stresses that it actually went the other direction:

"Zarqawi thinks he is bigger than Iraq," a British source said. "He is spreading his tentacles in Europe. There is a sense that attacks are inevitable. Even before the invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi had a network in Europe that provided funds and recruits. The same pipeline will sooner or later pump the other way, from Iraq to Europe."

As Zarqawi gets more and more marginalized in Iraq, he will need to go elsewhere to fight his jihad. He has already learned that the Americans have not lost their nerve. Now that the Iraqis have thrown in with democracy, including his one-time supporters among the Sunnis, he and his network will need to go elsewhere to fight the West.

Interestingly, according to this report, most of the countries in which Zarqawi seems most interested were the least interested in fighting him. Take a look at the list of nations that have ongoing investigations into Zarqawi's incursions: Germany, Spain, and France all opposed the Iraq war and vigorously challenged the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorism. Yet, instead of focusing his efforts against those nations that have assisted Bush, Zarqawi has selected the nations that shied from the fight (except for Britain and Denmark, exceptions probably due to large Muslim populations). Not only has Zarqawi selected targets among those nations, he also has recruited from them.

The AQ effort in these nations show that Islamists have more attraction towards those who surrender to their efforts than those who fight them whenever and wherever they appear. No doubt that Zarqawi would also like to infiltrate America and stage attacks here. However, the efforts of France, Spain, Germany and others to draw distinctions between themselves and America as somehow more friendly to Islamists because of their retreat in the face of their terror. They have gained nothing in the end except a front of their own in the war.

UPDATE: CQ reader Edwin K corrects me about Denmark being part of the Coalition, which I've corrected.

The Procrastinator's Ball

Late word out of Washington has the Senate ready to pass a six-month extension to Patriot Act that puts off a fight over the more controversial sections of the law. With time running out on the sunset provisions of Patriot, the Democrats wanted a three-month window and the Republicans wanted a full year -- which would have pushed the expiration past the next election. Instead, the Senate split the difference:

The Senate neared passage of a six-month extension of the USA Patriot Act Wednesday night, hoping to avoid the expiration of law enforcement powers deemed vital to the war on terror. ...

The extension gives critics — who successfully filibustered a House-Senate compromise that would have made most of the law permanent — more time to seek civil liberty safeguards in the law. Democrats and their allies had originally asked for a three-month extension, and the Senate's Republican majority had offered a one-year extension. The final deal split the difference.

"For a lot of reasons, it made the most sense, given that there are significant differences that remain," said GOP Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, one of a small group of Republicans who joined with Senate Democrats to filibuster a House-Senate compromise.

"I think this is a reasonable conclusion," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Let's review the many levels of stupidity on display in this action.

1) The joint committee had already worked out a compromise, one that the House had already approved with a healthy bipartisan vote before it left for its recess. With the House gone until January, the Act will expire anyway, unless the Speaker can recall the members in large enough numbers to review the new legislation from the Senate in time to pass it. Do we think that the Act's opponents in Congress might act to prevent a quorum? You bet they will if they think they can get away with it.

2) Instead of working out their problems with the Act in 2005 outside of the pressures of electioneering, now we will get even more grandstanding on both sides about the Patriot Act during the primary season in 2006. How does that help get us the proper legislation we need for the defense of America without unnecessary infringement of civil liberties? In fact, we will probably wind up fighting to a draw yet again, postponing the inevitable for another six months when the geniuses in the Senate finally realize the political significance of a June 30, 2006 expiration.

3) Speaking of putting things off, why did the Senate and the House wait until the very last minute to get this done? The GOP has talked about Patriot Act renewal since last year -- but no Democrat wanted to do it during an election year. (Not then, anyway.) The topic has come up at various times all year, but no one did any heavy lifting on the effort until the Act had almost expired. All of a sudden, the House and Senate discovered the Patriot Act, and the Democrats suddenly discovered that it had turned America into a police state. Does that make any sense? Of course it doesn't. If it's as bad as they say it is, why allow it to continue even another six months? More importantly, why didn't the Democrats push for it to come to the floor earlier for debate?

Now we have a compromise among the members of the Upper Chamber that forces the Lower Chamber to come back into session -- and the Senate will bug out well before the Representatives can form their quorum to take up the new compromise, giving the House a take-it-or-leave-it option. And in six months, we get to watch them do this all over again. Some compromise. Some Senate.

A True Case Of Discrimination

LaShawn Barber got an interview request from the Baltimore Sun to discuss Morgan Freeman's recent comments about the silliness of Black History Month, remarks which I didn't interpret as especially conservative more than just common sense. I doubt that Freeman meant the remarks as an endorsement of the conservative viewpoint, for that matter. Freeman just pointed out the dismissiveness and compartmentalization that occurs when everyone gets their little time slice; it's about the most condescending approach that one can take towards a group.

Read LaShawn's post to find out what happened when the Sun's reporter couldn't get her to criticize Freeman ... but I bet you can already guess what happened, can't you?

Undermining The War Effort

My new Daily Standard column, "Fit to Print?", focuses on the New York Times' supposed scoop that the NSA intercepts foreign communications, blowing a top-secret program that formed a vital part of American defense against terrorist attacks. They followed it up with yet another "scoop" that the FBI investigates domestic terrorism. Unless the Gray Lady plans another "scoop" about how the Highway Patrol conducts warrantless searches when it conducts field-sobriety checkpoints, I'd say it has run out of material for its anti-Bush smears at the moment.

Why did the Times decide to run with this story, after sitting on it for a year? The Times editors must be asking themselves that question after seeing legal experts shred their arguments about domestic spying, but also by the reaction from the President himself:

... With the Patriot Act up for renewal, the current headlines finally provided a political context that would make the story a blockbuster--not because it describes illegal activity, but because it plays into fears about the rise of Orwellian Big Brother government from the Bush administration. The second impetus to publish came from the upcoming release of James Risen's book, State of War, due to be released in less than a month.

It had to dismay the editors at the Times, then, when an angry President Bush came out the next day, the day after that, and the day after that to take personal responsibility for the NSA effort. Bush called the Risen/Lichtblau bluff. Had there been any scandal, the president would hardly have run in front of a camera to admit to ordering the program. He changed the course of the debate and now has the Times and his other critics backpedaling.

The Times wants to engage in a media coup of the twice-elected administration, especially galled by the fact that all of these same tired arguments came up during the election but failed to give Kerry the win. They're trying their best to undo the election using the same tactics that lost it, a futile and embarrassing effort that makes the manufactured outrage over Augusta a Pulitzer moment in comparison.

Subdued Saddam Returns To Trial

Saddam Hussein returned to his trial, showing a more subdued and respectful tone since getting banished for his disruptive behavior two weeks ago. A bit more nattily attired, the former dictator only interrupted to make one request to pray:

A noticeably calmer Saddam Hussein sat quietly in his defendant's chair at the resumption of his trial Wednesday, two weeks after he called the court "unjust" and boycotted a session. When the judge refused to let him take a break to pray, the former leader closed his eyes and appeared to pray from his seat. ...

The deposed president had refused to attend the previous session on Dec. 7. "I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!" he said in an outburst in court the day before.

But on Wednesday, his behavior was calmer, and he appeared clean-shaven and in fresh clothes, wearing a dark suit but no tie. Previously during the trial, Saddam has appeared disheveled and has complained about being held in unsanitary conditions.

After greeting the court with a traditional "Peace be upon you," he sat quietly in the defendants' area and appeared to pay close attention to the proceedings, at times taking notes.

The Iraqi court has been criticized for showing Saddam too much deference and allowing him to control the pace of the testimony, which had ground to a crawl before the last session. It looks like the judges have heard the criticism and have responded accordingly, and today's session had several witnesses testify to missing relatives and the actions of the Saddam government in detaining and torturing Dujail residents after the assassination attempt on Saddam failed.

I wonder, though, whether the court had any affect on Saddam. I suspect that the enthusiastic participation by the Sunni in last week's election sobered Saddam deeply. He had told himself, I think, that the Iraqi people would rise up and bring him back to power -- and then to see his own, favored Sunni minority embrace democracy must have been a cold dash of reality. He now understands that no one will rescue him from the end all dictators eventually face -- and that his input will mean little or nothing towards avoiding that end.

Hamadi Held In Beirut

In a move proving that the new government of Lebanon has more sense and more courage than Berlin, the terrorist that tortured and killed an American Navy diver in 1985 got arrested almost immediately on his arrival. Acting in concert with US intelligence, Lebanese officials detained Mohammed Ali Hamadi and will hold him while they consider a request for his extradition to the US:

The Lebanese killer of a U.S. Navy diver was in custody in Beirut yesterday, according to U.S. officials who decried his release from a German prison last week and pledged to bring him to the United States for trial. ...

Kenneth Stethem, the petty officer's older brother, called the release "absolute injustice," and called on the Bush administration to "bring to bear all of its resources to demand an explanation from the German government as to why he was released."

U.S. and German officials said Berlin notified Washington a couple of days before Hamadi was released. The United States, whose extradition request was turned down in 1987, did not ask that he be held longer because it saw no chance that Germany would turn him over now.

Instead, Washington approached the authorities in Beirut, where Petty Officer Stethem's murder occurred and where Hamadi arrived on Friday.

I recall now when Hamadi got tried in Germany in the late 1980s why it was so controversial; the crime hadn't taken place in Germany. Hamadi got captured by the Germans and instead of turning him over to the Americans -- who claimed jurisdiction for the hijacking of the American plane and the murder of Stethem -- the Germans insisted on trying Hamadi themselves. After Hamadi's sentencing, the US insisted that Hamadi get extradited to the US upon his release, and the Germans told us at that time it would constitute "double jeopardy". We still insisted on extradition, but as this further reporting shows, we knew we wouldn't get it.

And Lebanon doesn't have any illusions about double jeopardy or rehabbing Hizbollah torture-murderers. They may not extradite Hamadi, as we do not have an extradition treaty with the new government, but they're brave enough to detain him despite the pressure that will undoubtedly come from Hizbollah to release Hamadi. That's a damn sight better than the gutless wonders in Berlin that would rather let Hamadi go than to expose the poor dear to the death penalty in the United States, after trying him for a crime in which Germany had no jurisdiction in the first place.

Let's hope we can bring Hamadi to the US to give him the proper reception he deserves for torturing and killing an American, and send a message to the Islamist lunatics around the world: We don't forget. We will eventually find you, and when we do, we will show you we mean business.

Have Islamists Begun Using Chemical Weapons?

The Scotsman reports tonight that dozens of Chechnyans have been hospitalized in what looks like a nerve-gas attack in the region where Islamists have surpassed nationalists in a terror war against the ruling Russians. As in nearby Beslan, the attack took place at a school and children comprised the bulk of the victims:

AT LEAST 45 people, most of them children, have been hospitalised in the Russian region of Chechnya with an illness that doctors say might be nerve-gas poisoning.

Pupils, teachers and workers began reporting breathing trouble and headaches on Friday at a school in the town of Starogladovskaya, emergency workers said.

As of yesterday, 38 children and seven teachers had been hospitalised, said Oleg Ugnivenko, a spokesman for emergency situations ministry. Preliminary investigation points to an unspecified kind of nerve gas, said emergency workers and Chechen government officials.

This preliminary report, if confirmed, will certainly cause many people to wonder where the rebels/Islamists got their WMD. One likely source, of course, would be from the Russians themselves, or at least from stocks left over from Cold War production. Another possibility could be Syria or Iran, but that also leaves open the possibility that the weapons themselves originated in Iraq first.

If true -- a big if -- it demonstrates that the fears of WMD falling into terrorist hands were completely justified. The Islamists have no moral compunction about using such weapons, and after the terror and slaughter in Beslan, no one can doubt that they have no second thoughts about selecting children intentionally for their victims. The only consolation from this story is the fact that no one died from the exposure -- meaning that the attackers (if any) didn't have the expertise to use the chemicals properly to achieve a killing effect.

That last part should comfort no one. The Islamists could well be using the children of Starogladovskaya as their lab rats, determining the proper procedures and field-testing their weaponry for a larger attack. That could come in either Chechnya or in Iraq, depending on which target will generate the most headlines. If this has truly been a WMD attack, expect to see more in quick succession, with escalating numbers of dead.

Vikings Coach Blames Fans For Loss

You think I'm kidding? Think again. After seeing their winning streak halted at six games by the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers, head coach and chief boob Mike Tice found yet another way to shed all class -- a tricky proposition, given that his players already faced charges for flying prostitutes in for an orgy on Lake Minnetonka. Now Tice has decided that the real culprit in the Viking's lackluster effort against the Steelers wasn't the fault of his offense or defense, or even special teams, at least not entirely. Oh, no -- it was the fans who didn't cheer the Vikings to Tice's satisfaction:

Vikings coach Mike Tice blamed his team's 18-3 loss to Pittsburgh on its sputtering offense and frazzled special teams. But make no mistake: Tice wasn't happy with video workers at the Metrodome, nor the fans that filled it Sunday.

Tice said Monday he was really bothered by the number of Steelers fans that procured tickets and attended the game. He also suggested the Dome's JumboTron operators could do a better job favoring the home team.

First things first: Tice estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Steelers fans were at the game, curtailing the Metrodome's home-field advantage. If Tice's figures are accurate, that means at least 10,000 of the Vikings' season-ticket base sold their tickets.

"It confuses me, I guess," Tice said. "Maybe they're not really diehard season-ticket holders or maybe they needed the money for Christmas presents. I don't know. One of the two."

Maybe some of the people in the Twin Cities would rather support a classy organization like the one in Pittsburgh, Mike. Besides, Tice has no room to complain about selling tickets to the game. Just last March, the NFL discovered that Tice ran a ticket-scalping conspiracy out of his locker room for years, exploiting his players to stick money in his own pocket by scalping his and their allotment of Super Bowl tickets. Tice didn't even have the guts to take the blame when the NFL's investigators first uncovered the scalping ring and attempted to put the blame on a former player instead before cracking:

Two investigators from the league's security staff were in the Twin Cities on Tuesday to question Tice and Vikings running backs coach Dean Dalton about the alleged ticket scalping. In a reported five-hour meeting with the investigators in Tice's office, the head coach admitted he scalped some of the Super Bowl tickets he obtained this year, but denied approaching any Vikings players about scalping their tickets. A Vikings source said Tice maintains that Dalton was the intermediary who dealt directly with the players and the person who purchased their tickets for a California ticket agency. ...

"I sold some of my tickets this year,'' Tice said. "I did. I told the league that and I told [team owner] Red McCombs that. I'm not going to lie. But if I'm going to be thrown out this year for selling tickets, then I'm a scapegoat. If I'm guilty of anything, I'm guilty of selling some of my tickets. I am not guilty of buying any player tickets since I've been made the head coach [in January 2002].''

Tice has also acknowledged that he scalped Super Bowl tickets as a Vikings assistant coach from 1996-2001, and that he told his assistants this year it was all right for them to sell their Super Bowl tickets to a California ticket agency that he has long dealt with. ...

"Dean is going to be the one taking the fall,'' said a former Vikings player from the 2003 team. "Tice was running it all, but he worked it through Dean so it didn't get traced directly to him.''

Maybe Tice should have used a couple of those tickets for himself instead. It would be the only way he'll ever get to a Super Bowl.

The fans didn't blow a chance to get on top of the playoff-bound Steelers when Antwaan Randle El fumbled a punt on his own 3-yard line, and the Vikings offense couldn't score a touchdown. Fifty thousand die-hard Vikes fans turned out to watch their favorite team put up a lousy, sleepwalking effort made even more frustrating by the fact that the Steelers didn't need to play much better to beat them. The Steelers played only their third dome game in the past two seasons and managed to overcome their own mistakes and get whatever motivation that 20,000 fans (Tice's estimate) gave them to persevere through an off game to win it.

Mike Tice can't go through one season without demonstrating that he's an idiot. Will new owner Zygi Wilf join Tice in blaming the fans for the team's crappy effort, or will Wilf decide that perhaps the problem has been Mike Tice all along?

What A Shock! The FBI Investigates Domestic Terrorism!

The New York Times has yet Another Major Scoop for the completely clueless. After informing the nation that the NSA intercepts international communications last Friday, the Gray Lady now spills the beans that the FBI investigates domestic terrorism and has jurisdiction to conduct intelligence operations to prevent it:

Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

The best part of this story is the anguished cries of PETA and Greenpeace, who have served as the American Sinn Fein to the terrorists of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front for years. One quoted source said that the FBI had "punished" PETA for its social activism. Another spokesman claims that Greenpeace causes no property damage or physical injury, a claim that the loss of their ship and the destruction of a coral bed they wanted to save might negate somewhat.

No one got punished for anything, and this handwringing is getting absolutely silly. Domestic terrorists, especially ecoterrorists, caused $100 million in damage over the past decade. With that kind of track record, the FBI will certainly be looking at the economic structure that allows them to continue their operations. As long as they do so in a legal manner -- a point which Eric "The Sky Is Falling" Lichtblau never gets around to making in his screed -- then what's the problem?

When will the New York Times grow up?

Stevens: I'm Here All Month, And Don't Forget To Tip The Waitresses

Senator Ted Stevens has raised the temperature in the Senate by attaching ANWR drilling to the defense appropriations bill that needed to get signed to keep the troops funded in the field. Senate Democrats howled at the supposed breach of rules, and Harry Reid has promised to block all sorts of Senate business as a result. Now Stevens has raised the ante on Reid, threatening to Grinch the Senate into working right through the holiday season and forcing them to give up their Christmas:

It's an audacious power play, even for Sen. Ted Stevens.

The wily and cantankerous Alaska Republican is trying to secure the mother of all pet projects for his state: oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Stevens has attached the provision to a popular defense spending bill and has put holiday plans of his Senate colleagues on hold as he dares Democratic and moderate Republican opponents to vote against it. ...

Even more ominous for impatient senators, he appeared to be in no rush. "I could go all month," Stevens said on the Senate floor Monday. "I've been with it for 25 years."

Stevens is not usually one of my favorite Senators, especially given his love affair with the pork barrel at taxpayer's expense. However, this cause raises my estimation of the Alaskan at least a notch or two. We finally have a GOP Senator who hasn't put "comity" as the overriding concern of their service in Congress, but in actually getting things done. ANWR drilling makes sense and has the support of a clear majority in both houses of Congress. The only hurdle has been Democratic obstructionism by filibustering the legislation every time it comes up, an undemocratic but legal maneuver for that chamber.

Now, however, the GOP has played hardball by attaching ANWR to an unfilibusterable bill, one that if rejected would defund the DoD while we're at war and American troops fight in the field. This bill also got endorsed by a joint conference committee and passed overwhelmingly in the House, putting even more pressure on Democrats to pass it. Reid's threats have caused Bill Frist to back down in the past to maintain the old-boy nature of debate in the Senate, but Stevens has had enough of delaying tactics over 25 years on ANWR. He makes it clear that Christmas in DC sounds just fine to him, and he'd like nothing better than to celebrate the holiday with 99 of his closest co-workers ... and not just the Senators, of course, but their staffers and volunteers, and so on.

Stevens is putting on a school for hardball for his Republican colleagues, who in several conflicts with Reid and the Democrats have shown a burning need for such an education. Stevens may have his flaws, but in this case, he's absolutely right.

Liberal Foot-In-Mouth Disease Continues

The Liberal propensity to shoot off the mouth continued on the campaign trail with a testy e-mail exchange between now-former Liberal riding president Elie Betito (Oakville, ONT) and now-former Liberal voter Stacy Cherwonak. Cherwonak wrote the opening salvo in protest of Martin's pledge to ban all handguns, sparing none of her ire as a sport shooter who thought the Liberals would protect her right to engage in her sport:

At issue was an e-mail exchange initiated by Stacey Cherwonak, who identified herself as a sport shooter and wrote to Brown's campaign to take issue with Prime Minister Paul Martin's proposal to ban handgun ownership as a crime-fighting measure.

"In addition to the millions (if not billions) of dollars that your party has stolen from Canadians since 1993, Paul Martin's speech today makes it clear that your party's word isn't worth the breath it's spoken with," wrote Cherwonak.

"After work today, I signed up as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, along with a $100 donation."

She concluded with an observation that she was "sick to death of you lying bastards."

In his response on Dec. 9, Betito told Cherwonak to "take your NRA gun loving ass back to the U.S. where you belong."

First, let me extend that welcome to Chernwonak. I'm not a member of the NRA, but I support responsible gun ownership and self-protection. We would love to have Cherwonak join us, but she's made it clear that she wants to remain a Canadian citizen. Liberals apparently want to eliminate all dissent by chasing the politically incorrect across the 49th Parallel. Canadians will have an opportunity to determine whether democratic inclusiveness or dogmatic exclusiveness will prevail in Canada on January 23rd.

Besides, Canadians should be wary of starting something that could quickly get out of hand. Send us your Stacy Cherwonaks, and we're likely to send you our Alec Baldwins and Sean Penns. Not only will you miss the patriotic spirit of Stacy and those like her, you will find the ignorant condescension of the Penns, Baldwins, Streisands, et al most annoying and distracting. And for those Liberals who think that such a trade might sound pretty good, I'd warn you -- Hollywood would go NDP in a heartbeat.

UPDATE: Fixed a few tag problems in the post. Also, a clarification for Dave Rywall -- the patriotism reference was to Cherwonak's loyalty to Canada (ie, not moving here to continue practicing her hobby) and not to gun ownership itself. Your take, given the nature of the topic, was reasonable and I should have been a bit more specific.

Dislikes It, He Hates It, He Wants No More Of It

Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has issued a presidential order demanding that bans on Western music, even classical music, get full enforcement in Iran. The hard-liner has decided to follow Ayatollah Khomeini's example and castigate Western music as "intoxicating" and un-Islamic:

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned all Western music from Iran's state radio and TV stations — an eerie reminder of the 1979 Islamic revolution when popular music was outlawed as "un-Islamic" under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. ...

[T]he official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban all Western music, including classical music, on state broadcast outlets.

"Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site.

Ahmadinejad will have his hands full trying to enforce this ban. The sales of Western music have long been tolerated, if not made explicitly legal, during the relatively moderate Khatami administration. Unlike in 1979, when Iranians were seized with religious and revolutionary fervor, they're unlikely to buy into the new prohibition. Many Iranians have access to Western entertainment through their satellite dishes. How many will simply eschew the entertainment delivered by their content provider? Not many anymore, and the sheer silliness of the order to do so will further undermine the authority of both Ahmadinejad and the Governing Council which plays marionette for him.

With all of the unrest occurring in Iran at the moment, this could provide a push for students to demand real change in Iran -- regime change, hopefully, or at least real reform and an elimination of the Governing Council. That band of unaccountable clerics has done all the damage it can do short of nuclear annihilation, and it looks more and more certain that a nuckear exchange with either the US or Israel or both is its endgame. When it comes down to that, Iranians had better decide whether they want to perish in a flash of light for a madman and his co-conspirators, or whether they want to take their country back before the button can get pushed.

In this case, it is a race against time, and Michael Ledeen's exhortation rings more and more true: Faster, please!

Germany Frees Terrorist Wanted By US

The Germans continue their cluelessness in the war on terror by releasing not just any known terrorist serving out a life sentence, but one wanted by the US for the murder of a Navy diver in 1985. The AP reports that German diplomatic sources confirm the release of Mohammed Ali Hammadi back to Beirut and his Hizbollah cohorts despite an outstanding extradition request from the United States:

Germany has secretly released a Hizbollah member jailed for life for killing a U.S. Navy diver and returned him to Lebanon despite an extradition request from the United States, Lebanese political sources said on Tuesday.

They said Mohammad Ali Hammadi, convicted of killing Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem during the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight to Beirut and sentenced to life without parole, was flown back to Beirut last week Diplomatic sources in Germany confirmed Hammadi's release.

In case anyone wonders how that could have happened, the AP also notes that Hammadi's release came just a few days before Islamists in Iraq released the German hostage they had held since November 25th. Coincidence? Hardly likely, and if not it demonstrates that the Syrian-backed Hizbollah has operational connections to at least some of the terrorist groups working in Iraq.

Like the Italians, the Germans have decided that the best way to fight terrorism is to surrender to it and negotiate with the lunatics who want to destroy the West. They have run up the white flag and in this case, coughed up a prisoner who by rights should have been extradited to the United States decades ago to face murder charges. The reason Germany never gave us that opportunity was their moral preening over their anti-execution stance. That moral standing has certainly dissipated now, given their craven negotiations with hostagers and terrorists.

It's time to leave Germany behind. It has become a nest of cowards and skulks, and this episode proves it. If this is how Germany treats people who murder our servicemen, then let us not have one more troop stationed there one more day to provide them security while the Germans spend the money they should be spending on their defense on the dole instead. We have much better friends in more strategic locations east of Germany, people who know what terrorism and tyranny means and who have much more enthusiasm for freedom and liberty than the past and present German governments. We should pull out at least one of our consulates as well, just to make sure the point does not get lost.

It's time to say Auf wiedersehn to the poseurs of the Rhine.

UPDATE: Want more of an example of German cluelessness? Reuters reports on the German reason for letting Hammadi go:

"He served his term," a spokeswoman for Germany's Justice Ministry told a news conference.

Uh, his term was life without parole. Did Germany send a corpse to Beirut? Or did Hammadi claim to be born again in order to get out?

For those who debated me last week on the death penalty, this episode certainly makes me think twice about applying it to terrorists, at least.

Copperheadism Still A Tough Sell: AP-Ipsos

When Jack Murtha started talking about "immediate redeployment" and had it taken up by a chorus of Democratic Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry, one had to wonder whether they had discovered some undercurrent of American defeatism in secret polling. After all, they had long searched for a resonant message on Iraq; their lack of coherence on the issue likely cost them the 2004 presidential election. Even up to the eve of the historic elections last week, the Democrats still insisted that we couldn't hope to beat the insurgency and the only realistic tactic left was retreat.

If the Democrats hope to find resonance with the American public on that message, they will find themselves very much disappointed in 2006. In a poll taken before the Iraqi election and the strong speeches of George Bush shortly afterwards, Ipsos-AP discovered that the percentage of Americans believing in defeatism has remained steady at 36%. That number has remained solid since last June, meaning that the addition of Murtha as a supposedly credible voice on the war has had no impact with the public, which supports remaining in Iraq until victory at 57%. For the first time in over a year, less than half said that going to war in Iraq was a mistake, although that position polled seven points higher than those who thought it was the right thing to do.

The poll asked 1006 adults, 813 of which were registered voters (Democrat/Republican ratio 46%-40%), about their position on Iraq. Of those who answered that the US should keep troops in Iraq, the reasons were as follows:

To stabilize the country................................................. 32
To finish the job that was started ................................ 26
To fight terrorism........................................................... 10
To make/ keep peace ..................................................... 9
To create a democracy .................................................. 5
To ensure the sacrifices were not in vain ..................... 5
People need freedom ..................................................... 3
To ensure the U.S. does not appear weak .................... 3
To protect our country/ national security ....................... 3
To help them.................................................................... 2
To win the war ............................................................... 1
Other.............................................................................. 17
No reason ....................................................................... 1
(DK/NS) ........................................................................... 3

The Democrats have made a bad decision in taking up the white flag as a political banner, not just due to being on the wrong side of history, but also on the wrong side of the electorate. And that was before the Iraqi election.

Saving The Lives Of Our Enemy

With all of the cheap talk floating around the media about how the US supposedly tortures its prisoners -- all based on the common-sense refusal of the US to tell the world what specific limits we place on interrogation -- local columnist Katherine Kersten provides us with a reminder of what it really means to be an American soldier. In her Star-Tribune article, Kersten highlights local Army medic Sgt. Joe Buhain of Rochester and his dedication to saving lives on the battlefield, regardless of which side his patients fought:

What do you do if you are an Army medic and you are asked to provide medical care to an Iraqi terrorist who has just killed or maimed some of your buddies? Staff Sgt. Joe Buhain of Rochester knows the answer. ...

Buhain, 35, found it emotionally taxing to treat terrorists who had detonated explosives under coalition Humvees or killed innocent children.

"It broke my heart when I saw an American soldier come in badly wounded," he says. "At first, I asked, 'Why do we have to do this, treat people who try to kill us this way?' But the chaplain and the combat stress team helped. I came to see that, at a certain level, the insurgents were like us. They are human beings. We medical personnel had to learn to control our emotions, in order to give them the best care we could."

U.S. soldiers took a similar attitude, Buhain adds. "The call would go out to give blood, and our guys would line up without knowing whether one of our soldiers or a terrorist would get it," he says.

To illustrate his co-workers' dedication, Buhain tells of one badly wounded terrorist who had received a tracheotomy, or breathing tube. "Every day for months, the nurses and respiratory therapists would patiently suction him to make sure he didn't choke," he says. "We tried everything to help him get better: coming up with novel breathing techniques, walking around with him."

Most of us won't be surprised by the humanity and the honorable way in which these young men conduct themselves in war. People like Jane Fonda might enjoy telling people that America trains its soldiers to commit atrocities, but men like Joe Buhain show the opposite: our men and women do whatever they can to recall a sense of humanity in a war against one of the most inhumane enemies our country has ever faced, an enemy that deliberately kills civilians to keep from facing military units that kill them in overwhelming ratios whenever they meet.

Be sure to read all about Sgt Buhain and his fellow soldiers -- and three cheers to the Star Tribune for allowing Kersten to tell this story from their pages.

FM Update: Good Day

I just wanted to let everyone know that the First Mate has returned home after her four-day stint at the hospital. She's tired but happy to be back in her own bed, where she's currently resting. She thanks everyone for their kind thoughts and prayers; they helped her tremendously. Whenever I mentioned all the e-mail and comments I got from the posts, it never failed to pick her spirits up. For that, I also thank you. CQ has the best community in the blogosphere, bar none.

Back to blogging ...

Gray Lady Loses Respect For Security Council

I seem to recall a time when the New York Times editorial board considered the UN Security Council the final word on international affairs, not to be contravened once it had rendered a decision -- or a non-decision. Even after a dozen years and sixteen resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein comply with terms of his cease-fire and the disarmament demands went by without any answer from the Iraqi dictator, the New York Times insisted that the UNSC still held the only legitimacy for international action to remove a madman from power. Now it discovers that the UNSC has feet of clay -- but only because it won't hold Syria responsible for the assassination of a newspaper columnist:

Syria is getting away with murder in Lebanon, and the United Nations Security Council is letting it happen. The resolution the Council passed last Thursday might have been minimally adequate if something less were at stake than the sovereignty of a United Nations member country and the lives of some of its best and most courageous people.

Here's the laughable closer:

In October, an initial report by U.N. investigators confirmed that important elements of the Syrian government appeared to be deeply involved in planning and organizing the Hariri murder. The Security Council then warned Damascus of further action to follow unless it started providing full cooperation to international investigators.

Yet in the intervening two months, the will to impose consequences on Syria seems to have all but evaporated. Despite a follow-up report last week noting several important areas where Syria has withheld its cooperation, no serious consequences will result any time soon. That failure to follow through comes despite further political murders, including last Monday's car bomb assassination of a publisher known for his criticism of Syria, that have fed suspicions that Syria is continuing to employ terrorism to try and impose its will on Lebanon. As if that weren't disheartening enough, the tough-minded German prosecutor who led the U.N.'s investigation is going home with no successor yet named.

Syria's deadly meddling in Lebanon presented an ideal opportunity for the Security Council to show it was capable of taking effective diplomatic steps to defend vulnerable member states and punish brazen international terrorism. It is too bad that Russia, China and Algeria failed to recognize the fundamental issues at stake.

Excuse me, but the UNSC had twelve years to demonstrate its capability for taking effective steps against "brazen international terrorism" in dealing with Iraq. All the UNSC would do was to pass meaningless resolutions it never intended to enforce. Why? Because Iraq was a client to Russia, China, and France, and they wanted their oil concessions -- the ones promised by Saddam Hussein in exchange for their interference on the UNSC. It's the Times that fails to recognize the fundamental issue: the UN has become hopelessly corrupt and probably should be shut down.

At least the Washington Post had the intellectual honesty to point out the similarities to Iraq while editorializing against Syria and the UNSC. It starts from the beginning of the editorial:

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S challenge to international security was exceptional in part because of his flagrant defiance of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and his equally crude actions to obstruct the work of U.N. inspectors. Now another Arab Baathist dictator, Bashar Assad, has adopted the same tactics. Not only has Mr. Assad sought to obstruct a U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, but his agents in Lebanon are continuing to murder Syria's Lebanese critics.

Both editorals demand, in their own ways, some kind of payback for Syrian intransigence. Neither will find it through the UN, however, a fact which both editorials conveniently ignore. If the UNSC could not find the courage to act on its own resolutions with a nutcase like Saddam, they certainly won't do anything with Bashar Assad over two or thee murders of politicians, even if one of them wrote newspaper columns for a living.

The lessons of Iraq? Don't leave global security and freedom in the hands and vetoes of the Russians, Chinese, and French. Don't give the UNSC more than one opportunity to take action in defense of its own credibility. And if a dangerous dictator needs to get removed, don't even bother to call the UNSC, but start talking to people who commit to following their own best interests in spreading freedom and democracy, like the US and the UK.

Who Let These Dogs Out?

Someone in the Iraqi Interior Ministry has some explaining to do, according to the AP. An Iraqi lawyer says that two dozen of Saddam's henchmen have been let out of prison and have fled the country, including two notorious leaders of Saddam's biological-weapons programs:

An Iraqi lawyer said Monday that about 24 former top officials in Saddam Hussein's government have been released from jail in Iraq, and some have left the country.

A legal official in Baghdad said Rihab Taha, known as "Dr. Germ," and Huda Salih Ammash, known as as "Mrs. Anthrax," were among those released. Iraqi officials did not immediately confirm the information.

No other details have come out as yet. If true, it could either mean a jailbreak with help from Ba'athist sympathizers within the outgoing Iraqi government, or it could also indicate some kind of plea deal. The latter seems rather unlikely, especially since the top officials in the Hussein government had many of their own crimes for which to answer, as well as complicity in Saddam's crimes. It sounds more like a foul-up of the worst order.

Reid Discovers Democracy, Leaves Bad Taste In His Mouth

We've become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn't worked that way in 216 years. -- Harry Reid, on the likelihood of losing a vote on budget cuts and defense spending, including ANWR

The Senate Minority leader shut down the Senate yesterday in yet another fit of pique brought on by reality. He discovered that a conference committee would shortly present a defense bill -- agreed upon by members of both houses -- that contained a provision allowing drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The thought of having a majority-rule vote on ANWR has driven Reid to threaten a complete shutdown of the Senate every time a presidential nomination comes to the floor, raising obstructionism to ever-new heights just in time for the next election cycle:

House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached year-end deals on a $42 billion budget-cuts package and a $453 billion defense-spending bill that includes a provision allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now Republican leaders just have to find the votes to pass the bills.

Senate Democrats will try to filibuster the spending bill, arguing that adding the drilling provision at the last minute was a perversion of Senate rules.

"These rules mean nothing. It's like a game of monopoly with grade-school kids. But this is the United States Senate," said Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, before using a parliamentary technique to shut down floor action all night.

He also said he would not consent to passing any of President Bush's pending nominations this year, which in effect blocks seven district court judges and the president's picks to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

He can certainly try to do just that, but the Republicans have had enough of Reid's intransigence and parliamentary games. Bill Frist assured the media that he knows how to count, and that he has the votes to overcome Reid's petulance. Reid's frustration comes from the attachment of ANWR drilling to a budget bill, which by Senate rules cannot be filibustered. That removes the one tactic that has kept ANWR drilling from getting through the upper chamber even though it has had majority support for years.

If Reid thinks he can win long-term gains by shutting down the Senate and blocking a bunch of executive nominations, he should remember Newt Gingrich and think again. He will have to convince his cohorts to return to filibustering and obstructionism just in time to have that highlighted during the mid-term elections, when past elections have shown that to be kryptonite to Democrats. Five of his own caucus have to face re-election in states George Bush carried handily in 2004, and they won't be keen to be part of Reid's Traveling Extremism Show, where one has to explain why a majority doesn't rule in a democracy. He can also kiss the Gang of 14 agreement goodbye and watch as his filibuster leverage gets whittled down, Robert Byrd-style, each time he pulls that tactic from its sheath.

Reid still hasn't figured out that elections matter, and that losing four seats in the last election meant that Americans didn't want more of the same, tired obstructionism that Democrats offer. He's likely to get sent back for the same curriculum in 2006 if he presses his luck.

Standing Tall In Tal Afar

The London Telegraph highlights the American success in at least one previous terrorist stronghold in Iraq -- the city of Tal Afar. Americans wouldn't know this from their own media, but the Telegraph reports that Tal Afar has been transformed by the American destruction of the Zarqawi-led terrorists there, through rebuilding and cultural sensitivity that has made the Americans more popular than ever:

In the low-slung concrete buildings of Tal Afar, a city built on dirty sand and mud, George W Bush sees the potential for military success in Iraq. ...

In Tal Afar, according to the president, military success had been followed by the restoration of law and order and the implementation of reconstruction projects to give "hope" to its citizens. Visiting the city, nestled near the Syrian border in the north-west of the country, there is no doubt that something has been achieved.

Unlike in Fallujah, another Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, the storming of which by US marines was the defining campaign of 2004, there is actually large-scale rebuilding in progress. While many of the citizens of Fallujah still eke out their existence in the ruins of their former homes, in Tal Afar the streets are full of building sites. New sewers have been dug and the fronts of shops, destroyed in the US assault, were replaced within weeks. Sunni police have been hired and 2,000 goats were even distributed to farmers.

More remarkably, the approach of an American military convoy brings people out to wave and even clap, something not seen since the invasion of spring 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In order to replicate that success across the country, we will need to invest a lot of money and effort into rebuilding the cities and farms that got damaged. The money, so far, has been allocated by Congress, but what has been lacking is security for the rebuilding work. That has slowly changed as well, as the new Iraqi security forces get strong enough to hold territory and keep the peace well enough for construction to start on these projects. Not only will the rebuilding give a sense of optimism to Iraqi residents, but it will also provide jobs and stability during both the construction phase and afterwards when the shops re-open.

Tal Afar shows what can be done when we have all the elements in place. It will serve as an example for American defeatists to learn that Iraqis have hope and confidence in Americans to do the right thing and help get them back on their feet -- and that we have already started to win that war as well.

Presidential Address Live Blog

I'll be live-blogging the Oval Office speech by George Bush in this post when it starts in 30 minutes. Keep checking back for updates ...

8:00 -- I wonder what color tie he'll be wearing? I'll be watching this on Fox ...

8:02 - Stressing the launch of a constitutional democracy and an ally in the heart of the Middle East; good point.

8:03 - Found "some capacity" to restart WMD programs but not the weapons themselves. He again took responsibility for the war, but reminds us that we rid the world of a "murderous dictator". "The world is better for it" -- yes, it is.

8:06 - He talks about the nature of the terrorists in plain language. He reminded us that on 9/11, we weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan and the terrorists attacked us anyway.

8:08 - Bush strikes the right notes in acknowledging the criticism of the war and the difficulty in fighting the war, but says that no one in Iraq thinks we're losing, including the terrorists. He's not engaging in triumphalism, although perhaps a bit more about how we're winning might help here.

8:10 - More than 125 Iraqi combat battalions fighting terrorists -- information like that helps.

8:11 - A difference between honest critics and defeatism. Absolutely. But part of fighting defeatism means making more speeches directly to the American people like this.

8:13 - To retreat before victory would be dishonorable. When did that start having to be said aloud?

8:14 - Rejects artificial timelines one more time.

8:15 - Bush asks for patience in pursuing the war. For those who opposed the Iraq War, Bush acknowledged their deeply-felt convictions, but told them that we need to choose between defeat and victory now that we have engaged the enemy. I wonder if they will acknowledge that choice.

8:18 - He finished with a Christmas carol, saying "God is not dead," a religious reference that will not and should not go unnoticed.

All in all, a respectful, smart, and Presidential speech. It's the kind of address we should have heard on a quarterly basis all along -- and then perhaps we would not have had the difficulties we have today. Part humble, part visionary, the obvious message here was that we are winning the war and defeatism makes no sense at this point at all.

8:26 - Watching the Fox coverage, I hear the protestors across from the White House. I recall visiting that spot when I was in DC, and I was struck by the unidirectional nature of the demonstrations (which at the time consisted of just two pretty quiet signwavers). Tonight, the President finally answered back, giving a sophisticated look at the current status of our efforts. He also kept the stakes of defeat front and center: a loss of prestige in world affairs that has proven deadly over the past two decades, and a return to the defensive on terrorism -- meaning we just wait around to get hit again. That shouldn't be acceptable to anyone. While we're engaged with AQ in Iraq -- an undeniable fact -- we should continue to engage them there and destroy them. His calm presentation gives a stark contrast to the sloganeering of the protestors and some opponents in Congress.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin also live-blogged this, with some great commentary. I'm going back to watching the Falcons-Bears game while I check the RSS feeds for tomorrow.

Boring Day: FM Update

Not too much to report on the FM. She's still resting comfortably, and the blood has almost completely cleared up. This being Sunday, though, the necessary doctors had the day off, so they will complete the work on Monday. That means she gets one more night in the hospital for observation.

She and I watched the Steelers beat the Vikes at the Metrodome, which is less than two miles away from the hospital. I actually ran into another Steelers fan at the hospital after the game -- she wore a Jerome Bettis jersey, always high on my Santa list -- and she reports that a lot of Steeler fans made it to the Metrodome for the game. Maybe next time they're in town, I'll join the rest of the Steeler Nation.

In fact, the FM called while I was posting this, and she says to tell you all thanks again for the prayers. If you're not prayed out, pray that they can finish the job tomorrow ...

Time Jumps The Shark

We had a great post up here at CQ nominating people for Time's Person Of The Year, which Monkei and I wanted to turn into a poll for the finalists. Real-life events got in the way of the second step, but I'm reasonably sure that whatever CQ voters would have decided would have made a lot more sense than Time's selections for Persons Of The Year -- Bono, and Bill and Melinda Gates.

Bono? Bill Gates? Mrs Bill Gates? Whatever for?

For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year. ...

The Constant Charmer The inside story of how the world's biggest rock star mastered the political game and persuaded the world's leaders to take on global poverty. And he's not done yet.

From Riches to Rags Imagine a kinder, humbler Microsoft—one designed to spend money, not make it. That's the kind of philanthropy Bill and Melinda Gates have invented. The story of a very risky venture.

If TIme wanted to salute Good Samaritans, the real newsmakers in that field would have been the millions of people who opened up their pocketbooks and gave directly to the charities doing the most good after a series of natural disasters this year. Honoring Bono for Live Aid first off undercredits the work of Sir Bob Geldof, who worked just as hard and had more influence on the effort to push the G-8 into taking Africa seriously. As part of the blogger effort to publicize it, I still can't see Bono or Geldof as particularly effective in this regard, although certainly sincere and committed to the cause. They hardly made a particular impact in 2005; their Live Aid project fizzled unspectacularly in the time it took the last notes of the last concert to waft off into the night air.

And the Gateses? Bill builds a multinational, multibillion-dollar mammoth corporation from a series of improvements on ideas largely pioneered by Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, beats Xerox and IBM on their home turf, and revolutionizes communications -- but Time has no interest in that while it happens. Bill opens the largest philanthropic organization in the world several years ago, and Time decides to play it like some half-assed recent promise to go broke giving his money away, and all of a sudden he's Person of the Year. And Melinda gets mentioned because ... well, apparently because she's not divorcing him and making that pledge twice as easy to accomplish. Seriously, she's involved in running the foundation, but even the Time article makes it clear who's running the show, and it's not Melinda:

But despite what anyone says, it's clear that the big decisions still get made by Bill Gates. At a quarterly review of grants at the offices in Seattle, he sits at the head of the table, with Melinda on his left and his father on his right. Nervous staff members direct their presentations to him, not Melinda—who drinks a Snapple and seems like the most relaxed person in the room. Bill flings out questions in his trademark squeaky voice, with an expression on his face that suggests more curiosity than concern. "How are they going to prioritize?" he asks about a potential grantee. "Are they going to have a theme? Are they heart, lung, cancer, infections—what are they?" he asks, his voice arcing higher with each question.

Can we ask ourselves the question as Time supposedly wanted it posed -- what people made the most impact on the news in 2005? Bono and the Gateses are fine people doing good work, except when Bill monopolizes the computer marke (note that he didn't come up with a new operating system this year to tick anyone off). Have the Gateses made news this year that they haven't in years past? Has Bono had any real, lasting effect on coverage of African debt relief and the G-8? Not at all.

The true newsmakers this year, as Michelle Malkin notes in photos, were the people who went into the streets and overthrew dictators and autocracies in order to gain freedom for their nations -- in most cases, through non-violence. Ukrainians had their Orange Revolution; the Lebanese forced the Syrians to beat a hasty retreat across the Bekaa Valley after 29 years of military occupation following the murder of a pro-freedom statesman; and Iraqis faces bombs and death threats three times to in voting for a democracy and a new constitution to replace a genocidal tyrant in the heart of the Middle East, the first time that has ever occurred in an Arab nation.

Pick any of those examples, or roll them up into one pro-democracy movement that has tyranny on its heels throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa. Those were the real newsmakers this year. Instead, Time decided to go as obscure as it possibly could and picked three fine people whose impact on 2005 will have us all wondering what the hell they did to deserve the cover of Time by 2007.

The Santa Crime Family

Did you know that a Santa Claus conspiracy to protest global commercialization of Christmas existed? It apparently consists of men in red suits and white beards who get drunk off of stolen liquor and urinate on cars from overpasses, according to sources in New Zealand:

A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy" by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty. She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings. ...

One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff, Hegarty said. The remaining Santas entered a downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks. "They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," store owner Changa Manakynda said.

"Santarchy" even has a spokesman, who revealed that the series of arch-crimes intended on demonstrating the evil of commercializing the celebration of Christmas. Alex Dyer claims this as a world-wide movement, but so far the other chapters must have adopted a severe form of omerta. The only other naughty Santa we've seen, was the one of which Londoners saw too much . Rather than being a world-wide movement, it sounds more like a convenient excuse for bad behavior from Aucklanders.

Good thing, too. Police could never break such a crime family using traditional methods for the Mafia. These guys would immediately know who'd been squealing by checking their list twice, finding out who'd been naughty or nice ....

Powell: CIA Never Told Administration Of WMD Doubts

Colin Powell has dropped a water balloon on his friends of the Left and their "Bush Lied, People Died!" cri du coeur during a BBC interview due to be aired within hours. Mark in Mexico caught this early report of Powell's revelation that the American intelligence agencies never gave the White House any contradictory intelligence to the prevailing wisdom that Saddam Hussein had retained and hidden his WMD stocks and capability throughout the twelve-year quagmire of UN impotence, corruption, and failing containment:

THE US administration was never told of doubts about the secret intelligence used to justify war with Iraq, former secretary of state Colin Powell told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday night.

Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us."

"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us," he said.

This, of course, brings up the question as to whether those doubts actually existed at the time -- or more accurately, whether any evidence had developed counter to the existing intelligence before the invasion at all. Later, of course, the CIA came up with information that cast doubt on the Bush administration's interpretation of the intelligence both he and Congress reviewed -- the same intelligence Powell saw in both administrations and the same conclusions reached by all Western nations before Bush took office in 2001.

It sounds like the notion that the CIA has decided to conduct its own war against Bush and the elected government isn't quite as far-fetched as one might imagine. Powell's accusation will put quite a different take on the presumed narrative and start people wondering what the hell Langley has been doing since 9/11. It's starting to look like they have hung the CYA sign in front of the facility to replace their old logo.

Sunnis Want Cooperation With US

Events in Iraq this year have convinced the Sunnis that cooperation with the United States gives them the best option for political strength in the new democracy and now want to build on the temporary truces that led to an almost violence free election this week, the Washington Times reports today. Sunni leaders understand now that they will need to participate fully in the new political structure if they hope to see the central region of Iraq freed of American soldiers, but want to negotiate their cooperation with explicit actions from American forces as well:

Key Sunni Muslim leaders in Iraq's violent Anbar province have concluded that their interests lie in cooperating with the United States, and they are seeking to extend a temporary truce honored by most insurgent groups for last week's elections.

But at the same time, they are demanding specific steps by the U.S. military, including a reduction in military raids and an increase in development projects for their vast desert province that stretches from the edge of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. ...

A prominent Sunni religious leader in Anbar province, Sheik Abed al-Latif Hemaiym, told The Times in an interview in Amman that Sunnis were prepared to work with the Americans.

"We now believe we must get on good terms with the Americans," Sheik Hemaiym said. "As Arab Sunnis, we believe that within this hot area of Iraq, facing challenges from neighboring nations who want to swallow us, especially the Iranians, we feel we have no alternative."

I wrote after the first round of elections, which the Sunnis boycotted, that they would one day wake up to find themselves isolated between the other two major ethnic groups in Iraq and suddenly discover a need for effective protection of their rights -- and without working with the Americans, they would not find it. The Sunnis seem to have come to that conclusion this week, but it took a bit more than self-realization. General Casey's courageous decision to engage the less-bloody elements of the Sunni "insurgency" in truce talks for the election had more than a little to do with the attitude change. Those talks gave the Sunnis some basis for trust, which will allow for further negotiation.

What do they want? They want a series of trades -- withdrawal for peace, and peace for withdrawal. They want a shrinking footprint of American power in the Sunni Triangle; so do we. They want peace, so do we. What they want is a formula that gets us out quickly, while we want their cooperation in order to replace us with the new Iraqi Army and native security forces to replace US personnel. In truth, our positions are almost identical, but the process needs definition. The only sticking point will be the disarming of the Sunni insurgents, but with their leadership now committed to the political process, those men can return home and start rebuilding their lives -- and perhaps even join the Army to ensure the security of the country. If the Kurds and the Shi'a can co-exist in the Iraqi Army, then the Sunni can as well.

It's more than the end of the beginning in Iraq now. It's looking like victory with each passing day.