Don't Worry About That Amnesty Offer

After a day of debate over the idea of granting amnesty to native insurgents that have killed American troops, the insurgents themselves rendered the point moot. According to the Times of London, which broke the story on the Iraqi peace offer, key insurgent groups have already stated their opposition to the plan (via Newsbeat1):

IRAQ’S main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence.

Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died. ...

Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government.

A senior commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups warned that they would continue to fight. “As long as there is an occupation and an illegitimate government, the resistance and insurgency will continue,” he said.

That puts an end to the entire notion of negotiated peace with the insurgents. If they will not recognize the elected government as legitimate, then they will recognize no arbiter for a truce. The position leaves the insurgents outside the political process and in the sights of both American and Iraqi security forces. At the rate that their intel has improved, these groups may soon regret their stance.

This will come as a victory for Talabani, Maliki, and the new Iraqi government. Fourteen million people voted to put this government in power, which gives it a legitimacy that the sorry band of Iraqi deadenders will never win by blowing up security forces and civilians. The government has faced pressure to offer some sort of national reconciliation to the native insurgents, especially from the Sunnis in the center of the country. When Maliki makes this plan public, he will have given the best offer possible while maintaining self-determination for the Iraqi people. Their rejection takes the pressure off of the national government to be the prime mover for that reconciliation, and it will undermine what sympathy still remains for the insurgents.

What next? Expect a renewed security effort by the Iraqi government and a lot less pressure for an American wihdrawal in the near term. Maliki and Talabani have given themselves an open window for conducting further degradation of the insurgent networks. And now, the Iraqi people will know who to blame for the continuing violence -- and the intel will improve that much more.

NYT Reveals Secret Briefing On The Painfully Obvious

The New York Times has revealed yet another war secret, this time publishing details of negotiations between CENTCOM and the Iraqi government on troop reductions in Iraq. Michael Gordon reveals that General George Casey has briefed the Pentagon on specific troop reductions that will cumulatively reduce troop strength in Iraq by 60% at the end of 2007:

The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.

Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced. Military officials do not typically characterize reductions by total troop numbers, but rather by brigades. Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq, and other kinds of units would not be pulled out as quickly.

American officials emphasized that any withdrawals would depend on continued progress, including the development of competent Iraqi security forces, a reduction in Sunni Arab hostility toward the new Iraqi government and the assumption that the insurgency will not expand beyond Iraq's six central provinces. Even so, the projected troop withdrawals in 2007 are more significant than many experts had expected.

This leak appears to come from a high-placed military source, as this kind of briefing would have a small number of attendees. That tends to make a mole hunt rather quick to conduct, and the Pentagon will undoubtedly start looking very quickly for the leaker -- unless they staged it themselves. The White House has faced a lot of pressure to show results in Iraq, and while it has come in a rush recently, the training of the Iraqi troops has mostly passed under the media radar. If we already have the reductions in process, the pressure from Congress to set deadlines will likely fade.

Otherwise, the news that Casey has planned for troop reductions should not surprise anyone. We knew from the Washington Post article by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national-security advisor, that these transitions had already started and would accelerate soon. Rubaie explained this on June 20th:

Iraq has a total of 18 governorates, which are at differing stages in terms of security. Each will eventually take control of its own security situation, barring a major crisis. But before this happens, each governorate will have to meet stringent minimum requirements as a condition of being granted control. For example, the threat assessment of terrorist activities must be low or on a downward trend. Local police and the Iraqi army must be deemed capable of dealing with criminal gangs, armed groups and militias, and border control. There must be a clear and functioning command-and-control center overseen by the governor, with direct communication to the prime minister's situation room.

Despite the seemingly endless spiral of violence in Iraq today, such a plan is already in place. All the governors have been notified and briefed on the end objective. The current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has approved the plan, as have the coalition forces, and assessments of each province have already been done. Nobody believes this is going to be an easy task, but there is Iraqi and coalition resolve to start taking the final steps to have a fully responsible Iraqi government accountable to its people for their governance and security. Thus far four of the 18 provinces are ready for the transfer of power -- two in the north (Irbil and Sulaymaniyah) and two in the south (Maysan and Muthanna). Nine more provinces are nearly ready.

George Bush has made it clear that the troops required now to secure these provinces would return home when the Iraqis took command of security from us. Gordon's report just confirms what Rubaie has already told us: the Iraqis have made themselves ready to take charge. Casey's briefing on proposed troop reductions reflect the reality on the ground in these provinces. Even Gordon notes that the reductions come at the pace dictated by the situation on the ground and not to an artificial timetable.

The Times, then, has told us that General Casey has held a briefing detailing the numbers and rotation strategy of a process long expected and described on numerous occasions. The fact that the Pentagon held this briefing recently shows that Rubaie had his facts straight, and that the Pentagon considers the progress substantial enough to proceed with planning the reductions. Otherwise, this is nothing new nor surprising.

If the Pentagon felt that they needed to leak this information for political purposes, it just shows how corrosive the debate on the deployment in Iraq has become to the war effort. If not, then expect the DoD to get very serious about tracking down the leaker. In either case, the New York Times has once again specialized in publishing classified material on a story with only marginal news value.

ADDENDUM: I would caution my friends on the Right from getting too far ahead on comparisons between this story and the Lichtblau/Rosen series. No intel methods got blown in this story, and apart from the fect of the briefing itself, Michael Gordon's reporting does little but confirm the strategy that the White House and DoD have stated from the time Saddam Hussein got chased out of Baghdad. It doesn't even note specific dates or deadlines, apart from an educated guess that the provinces will turn over in time for the four-brigade drop by the end of this year, and the halving of the force by the end of next year. It looks like the kind of leak that serves to build confidence in the effort rather than undermine it.

UPDATE: Michelle was nice enough to link to me, and reminds us that the law regarding classified information does not distinguish between "controlled" and "uncontrolled" links. Make sure you check out her excellent collection of adapted WWII posters exhorting Americans to keep quiet about confidential information. These, unfortunately, are different times.

UPDATE II: Josh Marshall misses a couple of points in his analysis (via TMV):

No leaving Iraq until 2009, the president says. But then the administration leaks word that the pull-out is in 2007. No plan -- just whatever sounds best at the moment.

Against a phased withdrawal before they were for it.

First, the plan all along has been for a phased withdrawal; the difference is that the Democrats have insisted on tying that withdrawal to calendar dates, while the Bush administration has insisted on tying it to progress on the ground. Second, the plan as reported by the Times does not end the Iraq deployment in 2007. If Josh had read this more carefully, Casey proposed that only four or five brigades (out of 14 currently) would remain at the end of 2007. That's not a pull-out by anyone's definition. The final withdrawal would probably come from Anbar and Baghdad, and that could take another two years of close logistical support past the rest of the drawdown to achieve.

As I said, this article reports nothing new to those who have paid attention.

The Washington Post Doesn't See The Problem, Either

The New York Times has come under fire from a wide spectrum of observers for their hysterical and tabloidesque revelation of a national-security program that turns out to break no laws and endanger no one's civil liberties. Today, the Washington Post joins the chorus of criticism, albeit sotto voce, in their lead editorial today:

THE TREASURY Department's just-disclosed program of searching records of overseas bank transfers may provoke outraged comparisons to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance and data-mining of telephone call records. At least if news reports and government statements concerning the revelations are correct, however, this program is far less troubling. As with all revelations concerning the secretive Bush administration, you have to worry about what you don't know. So far, however, it seems like exactly the sort of aggressive tactic the government should be taking in the war on terrorism.

For one thing, it appears to be legal. The government is receiving large volumes of data detailing financial transfers from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based consortium that acts as a kind of messenger service for banks around the world, electronically notifying banks of transactions other banks are attempting to complete. The government, if it develops suspicions about a person, can search the system for any transactions that person may have engaged in. While customer banking data are generally private under federal law, the statute does not appear to cover the society, which isn't a bank and doesn't have individual customers. What's more, a different law gives the president broad powers in a national emergency situation to investigate, or even prohibit, certain financial transactions.

It is also the sort of information the government should be examining in any effort to frustrate terrorist financing and develop leads about who is funding whom.

The Post doesn't come out and explicitly call the NY Times out for hyping a non-story nor say anything at all about the damage done to national security; that may be because their own news editors saw fit to run their own take on the NYT's story yesterday as well. However, it goes a long way to pointing out how little news Lichtblau and Risen reported, and how much hyperbole and bias it comprised instead.

Make no mistake: if this program doesn't violate the law or threaten civil liberties, both of which this editorial stipulates, then it serves no public purpose to report the clandestine efforts involved in pursuing terrorist financing. This editorial rebukes the argument offered by Bill Keller, before he disappeared to a "vacation", that the public interest outweighed national-security concerns.

No one elected Bill Keller to make those kind of decisions for our national security. The White House asked him to spike this story and explained to him why, and he chose to put us all at risk anyway, and as the Post notes, for no purpose other than to sell a few more papers. The Department of Justice needs to find out who leaked this information to Lichtblau and Risen, and at the same time hold Keller and the Times responsible for revealing classified information illegally. Until the Attorney General starts making Keller and his ilk responsible for their attacks on national security, no classified material will remain safe from exposure.

Ledeen And McCarthy: The Media's War On War

Michael Ledeen had an excellent post at The Corner last night, reminding the media that Islamofascists don't distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in their war against the West. With Bill Keller leading the war against national security here in the United States, perhaps Ledeen's reminder should get put to the top of Keller's reading list when he returns from his "vacation":

Keller et al have confirmed yet again that they don’t care about national security, at least in this war (sorry, the current circumstances; they don’t think we’re at war). What they really want is the defeat of George W Bush, and the devil take the consequences.

They have forgotten that the terrorists love to behead journalists. But Daniel Pearl, well, it’s such a long time ago, you know...

The next point is: Who leaks? The answer is, enemies of the president’s policies leak. His supporters don’t. That basic rule helps understand both the background and the current state of play regarding the classified document that Hoekstra and Santorum are trying to get declassified. The media reaction is twofold: First, to pooh-pooh its significance (the kind of stuff I might find under my sink, the drooling Jane Harman says). Second, to ig nore it, to bury it in distant pages of the paper, to touch on it lightly in the evening news.

The NYT and its ilk pound their chests about the revelations of the successful search of financial data to catch terrorists. They declare they are acting because of the public’s right to know. But in the matter of WMDs found in Iraq, the public’s right to know is totally dissed. There is NO call for the declassification of that document, NO righteous indignation at Negroponte, Cambone and the others who quite improperly failed to inform Congressional oversight committees of the existence of this document, and are fighting its declassification and release, NO investigative action to discover why this information was suppressed, NO curiosity about how Hoekstra and Santorum found out it existed.

It isn't that the Times relegated the information about the WMD finds to its back pages or to the small links on its website; the Times never bothered to report it at all. While Keller finds a public need to know in the classified details of counterterrorism efforts, whose publication renders them ineffective afterwards, he doesn't bother to report on declassified findings that tend to support pre-war arguments about the nature of the regime we deposed in the invasion. And while Keller and his rabid band of partisan reporters demand to get details of secret programs that have kept this country safe for almost five years, he cannot be bothered to request the declassification of a known report on WMD that may show much more extensive stocks still in Iraq than previously revealed.

That certainly seems relevant -- and yet the Times could not care less. It doesn't support their war against the war, after all, and so therefore the public has no interest in it, as decided by Bill Keller. Andy McCarthy wrote about this effort yesterday at NRO, and his essay calls Keller and his ilk out in an articulate indictment that only this former prosecutor could create:

Appealing to the patriotism of these newspapers proved about as promising as appealing to the humanity of the terrorists they so insouciantly edify — the same monsters who, as we saw again only a few days ago with the torture murder of two American soldiers, continue to define depravity down.

The newspapers, of course, said no. Why? What could outweigh the need to protect a valid effort to shield Americans from additional, barbarous attacks? Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, smugly decreed that the Bush administration’s “access to this vast repository of international financial data” was, in his singularly impeccable judgment, “a matter of public interest.”

And you probably thought George Bush was the imperious one. And that the public’s principal interest was in remaining alive. Wrong again.

The blunt reality here is that there is a war against the war. It is the jihad of privacy fetishists whose self-absorption knows no bounds. Pleas rooted in the well-being of our community hold no sway.

The anti-warriors know only the language of self-interest. It is the language that tells them the revelation of the nation’s secrets will result, forthwith, in the demand for the revelation of their secrets — which is to say, their sources in the intelligence community — with incarceration the price of resistance. It is the language admonishing that even journalists themselves may be prosecuted when their publication of national secrets violates the law.

NRO remains a vital part of the resistance to this effort. Be sure to read both essays in their entirety to remain in contact with the front lines.

Talking About The Gray Lady On Hugh Hewitt

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend some time on Hugh's show, discussing the NY Times article disclosing more classified methods of tracking terrorists, this time through the global financial system. I had the distinct pleasure to join Glenn Reynolds and Rep. John Campbell in a ten-minute segment, which Hugh's top-notch producer, Generalissimo Duane Patterson at Radioblogger, transcribed late last night. Here's a taste of the debate:

HH: Now earlier in the program, Senator Jon Kyl, and last segment, Congressman Campbell agreed that the New York Times' and Los Angeles Times' story today assisted the terrorists. The Vice President made the same argument. Glenn Reynolds, do you believe that to be the case.

GR: Yes, and I want to make another very important point that I think a lot of the coverage has missed. This was done through SWIFT, the Society for Worlwide Interbank Financial Transfers. That's actually something I know about. These are organizational and institutional money transfers. These are not individuals. These are companies, these are governments, these are NGO's. There is no individual privacy angle to this at all.

HH: But you do believe the story did assist the terrorists?

GR: I suspect it tipped them off to something, and yeah, I imagine so.

HH: Ed Morrissey, do you believe it assisted the terrorists?

EM: I believe it assisted the terrorists in two ways. First off, it discussed the specific ways in which we are tracking financial transactions. And now they can try to develop strategies to get around that. But the second reason I think it assisted the terrorists is because it demonstrates that a segment of America still is not serious about fighting the War On Terror, and understanding it as a War On Terror, and not just some law enforcement effort on steroids. This is a tremendously bad public relations blow for the United States, I think, internationally.

Don't just stop with my segment, though; Hugh also talked to Power Line's John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson (two great guys as well as keen legal intellects), and one of my favorite pundits, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. Be sure to check out all of the discussion on the continuing fire sale on our national security at the Paper of Record, and how Bill Keller courageously decided to duck all of the demand for an accounting of his decision to blow yet another part of our offensive against the terrorists by going on vacation the day the story broke.

Update From CQ's Sick Bay

I've received a few requests to update readers on the status here at the infirmary, and Saturday seems like a good day to post it. The First Mate has been home now for almost two weeks and is doing a little better than before. We found out that she had pneumonia earlier, which is what caused her low oxygenation and poor energy. She still has some of the infection in her lungs, so she has to have oxygen at all times now. We have a pretty nifty oxygen generator here at the house, and it has a long lead on it, so she doesn't need to use a tank unless she leaves the house. I understand that portable oxygen generators exist, and we may look into that as an alternative to the tanks.

Her CMV infection slowly has improved, but she's still seriously ill on that front. I have a better understanding of the scope of that infection, and found out that it really is life-threatening if it gets out of control. All other considerations have been put on hold until she recovers from the CMV, including immune suppression for her pancreas transplant. That will not risk a rejection for probably several months as her immune system has been so badly suppressed up to now (which is why she has the CMV infection in the first place), but we will keep an eye on it. On the plus side, however, her anemia finally seems to be under control and her bone marrow appears responsive.

As for me, I'm still on the mend. Last night, I spent the first night in bed rather than in a recliner. The doctors recommend staying in the recliner so that the mechanical process can assist patients in getting up. I handled it fine this morning, so I can get back to normal sleep. The pain is mostly gone except for bruising around the surgical site, but I'm still weak, especially in my right leg. Today I got a haircut and ran a couple of errands, with the Admiral Emeritus chaufferring, but I overdid it and now I'm exhausted. (The last errand was to have T-Mobile replace my cell phone, which has trouble pulling in a signal; they took excellent care of me and will have a warranty replacement sent in the next few days.)

I will be unable to do the Northern Alliance Radio Network show today, because I still cannot sit for more than a few minutes in a straight-bck chair. I'll be listening, however, and maybe call in for a segment if Mitch and King can squeeze me into what should be a packed schedule today. Be sure to listen at AM 1280 The Patriot, starting now and continuing until 3 pm CT.

Addendum: Thank you for all your prayers and kind thoughts. I would like to offer my own for Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake, who lost her mother rather unexpectedly two days ago.

UPDATE: I'll be on the show at 1 pm CT for at least a segment, via the telephone. If you want to call in and join the conversation, dial 651-289-4488. The Patriot has a great webstream, so be sure to listen there if you're not in the Twin Cities area.

ACLU, Right On Schedule

The ACLU has jumped into the fray over the publication of national-security efforts to trace financial transactions of suspected terrorists and their organizations in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal this morning. To no one's great shock, the ACLU has leveled more accusations of malfeasance against the Bush administration:

"The revelation of the CIA's financial spying program is another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power. The invasion of our personal financial information, without notification or judicial review, is contrary to the fundamental American value of privacy and must be stopped now. It seems the administration feels entitled to flip through all of our checkbooks. How many other secret spying programs has the Bush administration enacted without Congress, the courts or the public knowing? We need a full accounting of what information has been demanded by the U.S. government, how they have used it, with whom it was shared, and how they intend to repair this grave breech of trust. This program is a glaring example of how this government thinks nothing of widespread abuse of power.

"The government contends that the program is legal since Swift is ultimately a messaging service and not a bank, exempting it from U.S. banking laws. However, Swift is established and owned by banks to assist directly in banking activities. Swift is subject to both U.S. and European law, and it is wrong for the U.S. to demand information without following the established channels.

"Once again, this administration has performed an end-run around the legislature, allowing for no Congressional approval or oversight, and violating the freedoms Americans falsely believed they could take for granted. Congress should call them to account."

John at Stop The ACLU has this to say in response:

There is probably no other time that a proper balance between civil liberties and national security becomes more important than in wartime. During times of war, sometimes unusual responses are implemented, often requiring suspension of certain liberties. Of course war opens the opportunity for abuse by governments, and the ACLU are right to watch for them. However, the ACLU in its absolutist perception of freedom, only worries about one side of the equation, civil liberties. It pays no attention to the national security side of things, not only ignoring it, but working against it.

One of the most revealing occurances towards the ACLU’s absolutist position on national security and its recent evolution can be seen in the action the board of directors took at its Oct 1989 meeting: It dropped section (a) from its policy, “Wartime Sedition Act.” Before, the ACLU held that it “would not participate (save for fundamental due process violations) in defense of any person believed to be “cooperating” with or acting on behalf of the enemy.” This policy was based on the recognition that “our own military enemies are now using techniques of propaganda which may involve an attempt to prevent the Bill of Rights to serve the enemy rather than the people of the United States.” In making its determination as to whether someone were cooperating with the enemy, “the Union will consider such matters as past activities and associations, sources of financial support, relations with enemy agents, the particular words and conduct involved, and all other relevant factors for informed judgement.” Source

All of this is now omitted from the Official ACLU policy!

Actually, it gets worse than that. The ACLU enjoys a large membership of attorneys, many of whom work in specific Constitutional law regarding civil liberties. They have a vast wealth of talent from which to call for in-depth analyses. And yet, in reviewing their statement alleging criminality and abuse of power against the government, the ACLU cannot cite any statute or regulation violated by the Swift project. Not one. Why? Because, as the New York Times report explicitly states, it doesn't violate any laws at all.

Not only that, but anyone operating within the US banking system -- at least at those facilities insured by the FDIC and FSLIC -- the government has access to data on individual banking customers whenever it wants to access it. Any institution insured by the federal government has to give federal regulators access to their records during any extensive examination. Not only that, but since most accounts pay interest, the IRS also gets all of the information on these accounts, including taxpayer numbers and other private information.

However, in this case, the Swift project targeted only those people already indentified as terrorists or terrorist financiers, and the focus was on international transactions. The government brought in outside auditors to ensure that the information requested remained within the boundaries of their power. Most of all, George Bush told us on a number of occasions that the United States would track these transactions around the world to find terrorists and their enablers. The project itself has never been a secret; only the methods used remained clandestine.

At least they remained clandestine until now. The New York Times and its two reporters have sold out our national security to sell a few papers, and in this case told us absolutely nothing we haven't known for five years except the specific methods used. That information only helps one set of people: the terrorists we want to catch and stop before they can kill more people, Americans or otherwise. And the ACLU, instead of actually reading the article and determining that the Times had its head up Bill Keller's backside, sends out its typical knee-jerk jeremiad accusing Washington of stomping its jackbooted feet on our civil liberties but somehow cannot be bothered to explain what laws they claim have been broken.

I wonder how the ACLU's board will deal with this criticism. Of course, we won't know, because the ACLU is about to impose a ban on public criticism of the organization by its board members. Some civil liberties are more precious than others at the ACLU, after all.

UPDATE: An e-mailer sent this to Instapundit, one who worked for Swift:

What has not been stressed is that SWIFT is not used for individuals. It is used for processing money transfers, stock transfers and bond transfers from companies, governments, banks, insurance companies and NGO's. What we essentially had on file was the holdings for almost all our clients and the clearance data for these transactions dating back for years. We had to keep all this on file to satisfy all the governmental regulations on taxations, etc.

What the NY Times has essentially done is open up to the terrorists the trails of all their transactions and how the banking procedures of money laundering was done for them by the system. They have essentially stopped dead the ability to track this money and keep it from being put in the hands of our worst enemies. Whether the terrorists might have guessed that their money was being transferred is a moot point. The NY Times had told them that their worst fears have been realized and that they need to find another way to move money around the world. They know it for sure now. Thank you, Bill Keller, and when the nice young man or woman from down the street is killed by one of these terrorists I can thank you for that as well.

Glenn made a great analogy posing the NYT as the media equivalent of toxic-waste dumpers. It looks like the ACLU might qualify as the lobbyist for the toxic waste dumper.

UPDATE II: King Banaian explains what SWIFT does for international banking. Its cost means the transactions reviewed will hardly be your average checkbook transaction:

SWIFT transactions are typically large size because the cost of using the system is substantial. When I lived in Ukraine I only used SWIFT for receiving sums of about $10000, typically quarterly, for payment of expenses. The information on the slip that I would receive had codes for the banks, the accounts being transferred from and to (in both those cases, mine -- I could not get dollars without a Ukrainian bank account) and the amount to be transferred.

About 90% of the messages between banks are sent via SWIFT. If al Qaeda wanted to be sure to keep its activity private, it would want to use telex or phone messages -- older technologies pre-dating SWIFT. It can use a mail payment from bank to bank. Those are still possible and some banks use them, many in the developing world. But it slows down the transfer process; for example, the mail transfer gets caught up in two countries' postal systems.

Perhaps the ACLU can explain their hysterical shrieking about the government peeking into everyone's savings accounts with this as the context.

CQ On The Air Tonight

I'll be joining Hugh Hewitt tonight. He wants to talk about the New York Times and Bill Keller -- and since Bill Keller won't return his phone calls, he'll talk with a number of bloggers today instead. I'll be on at 6:40 CT this evening.

Apparently, Keller went on vacation. On the day that his newspaper blew another national-security program. The day that he knew he would have faced calls for some sort of accounting.

Well, that's courage in journalism for you ...

UPDATE: I had the opportunity to get in on the same segment as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit -- always a great honor -- and Rep. John Campbell. We had a spirited and delightful time skewering Bill Keller and the Times for their insistence on divulging national security secrets during wartime. Radioblogger will have the transcript up shortly, and my pals from Power Line will be up next hour. Stay tuned!

When Lucifer Gets Into Oppo Research, Call us

Every once in a while, events remind us that politics can be very entertaining. Today's case in point: John Jacobs, a Utah politician running for Congress, who believes that Satan has made his life difficult ever since announcing his candidacy against Chris Cannon in the Republican primary. Jacobs has had business deals delayed, preventing him from putting as much cash as he would have liked into the campaign:

"You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there's some other, something else that is happening," Jacob said.

Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people."

Jacob initially said the devil was working against him during a Wednesday immigration event, then reiterated his belief Thursday in a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

"There's a lot of adversity. There's no question I've had experiences that I think there's an outside force," he said.

As a Catholic, I believe that Satan does exist, and that he continually tempts us to separate from God in order to keep us from our eventual salvation. Generally speaking, I don't believe that Satan causes delays in business deals that might impact a primary race for the US Congress. If Satan wanted to have an effect on the race, I suspect that he would work his wiles on Jacobs in a completely different manner. Maybe Satan would have Jacobs blame all his problems on him while talking to the media -- now, that would be more Satan's style.

I think Jacobs sounds like the kind of politician who doesn't want to take responsibility for his own missteps -- and we have enough of that species of politicians in office already. Rep. Cannon should have no problem getting to the general election this year.

Sarcasm And Satire Causes Cynicism? No!

Richard Morin breaks the news today that sarcasm and satire produces cynicism in those who get continually exposed to it, and the effect causes them to lose interest in political participation, especially voting. Since the essence of satire is ridicule and devaluation, this should be almost akin to the correlation between the sunlight and warmth, but apparently it comes as a shock to some people.

Morin reveals this dynamic in the demographics of Jon Stewart fans, whose show discourages its fans from voting, according to a new study:

This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.

Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.

That's particularly dismaying news because the show is hugely popular among college students, many of whom already don't bother to cast ballots.

Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris of East Carolina University said previous research found that nearly half -- 48 percent -- of this age group watched "The Daily Show" and only 23 percent of show viewers followed "hard news" programs closely.

I have always assumed that people who found Jon Stewart hilarious suffered from a form of superficiality, and this tends to prove it. Not that the phenomenon necessarily limits itself to Stewart, who has managed to successfully turn SNL's "Weekend Update" into a daily routine; satire and sarcasm's corrosive effects generate cynicism regarding any topic, given enough time. Jerry Seinfeld made a mint satirizing self-infatuation, and most of his fans failed to get the joke when the final episode made the point about how obnoxious his main characters had become.

The study tested responses of viewers to political speeches from Democrats and Republicans before and after watching "The Daily Show". Instead of biasing viewers towards one side or another, the researchers found that support for both parties dropped with repeated viewings of Jon Stewart. They also expressed more negative feelings about the political system in general -- and also of the media.

This should surprise no one. I love good satire, and sarcasm can hit at hypocrisy to an effect that perhaps no other approach can match. However, both satire and sarcasm take inherently negative attitudes towards their subjects, and relentlessly negative approaches result in increased negativity. These results simply confirm what common sense should tell us.

In the end, a reliance on satire and sarcasm alone requires little real courage, especially in a free society. It takes some courage to offer positive solutions and make arguments for their adoption, or even to offer rational arguments in opposition to them. Poking fun continuously without ever taking responsibility to advance some rational agenda as an alternative amounts to a form of political cowardice. One cannot hide behind the excuse of "I'm just a comedian" forever without taking responsibility for one's effect on the process. If we continue to denigrate our political environment in this manner, we will eventually wind up having only a few with any interest in public policy, with the rest of us wallowing in apathy.

That may look like a democracy when it arrives, but functionally we will have surrendered liberty to the next strongman to come along.

Barone: Bush Gets Stronger

Has George Bush gained strength through the debate over the war policy in Iraq? Michael Barone writes that the Democrats have profited from bad news in Iraq over the past few months, but now that the war effort has seen a string of victories, Bush can play Republican unity into recovering his political strength. However, Barone rightly surmises that Bush's bad fortunes may have been overplayed from the start:

Things are looking up for George W. Bush and maybe for his party. The Democrats failed to win the special election in the 50th Congressional District of California June 6. Abu Musab Zarqawi was killed on June 7. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he would not seek an indictment of chief Bush adviser Karl Rove on June 12. Bush made a dazzling surprise trip to Baghdad on June 13 and followed up with a confident press conference the next day. The Senate voted 93 to 6 on June 15 and the House 256 to 153 on June 16 against U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

A turning point in the president's political fortunes? Maybe. But I'm inclined to think that Bush and the Republicans were not in quite as much trouble as most in the press thought, and I'm not sure these developments will produce an immediate surge in Bush's poll ratings. Why? ...

Senate and House Republicans last week staged debates over whether to pull out of Iraq now or stay on. Democrats complained that these were meaningless debates aimed (as they said the debates on the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages were) at dividing voters. But on these issues it is the Democrats--their officeholders and their voters--who are divided, while the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are all on one side. The Democrats have profited politically from bad news from Iraq. Good news puts things in a different light and raises the question of just what Democrats would do if in power. For the moment they are, as ranking House Armed Services Democrat Ike Skelton said, "absolutely" divided. That's not a good posture from which to face the voters.

Barone touches on something that has crossed my mind over the last few months. Bush won his elections by solidifying his base and pointing out the increasingly extreme views of his opponents. The center often leaned towards Bush, but his strategy has been to turn out the base in large numbers. The reason why Bush has lost ground comes from the disaffection of his base over issues like immigration and the Dubai ports deal, not Iraq, and he knows it. The conservative base has had reason to question his political competence over the past year, something that Bush didn't give them in the first term.

Support from his base on Iraq remains solid, and that's what may push his numbers back up after the past two weeks of debate on his policy. Conservatives openly talked about protest boycotts in November and possible schism for a third-party effort. One will note the relative lack of such discussion since the Democrats pushed for two different cut-and-run options in Congress. Not only did the Democrats demonstrate Barone's contention that they remain divided and incoherent on national security, but it showed conservative critics of George Bush what could happen to the war effort if the Democrats take the House and/or the Senate in the fall.

The Democrats damaged themselves significantly with their insistence on a withdrawal from Iraq in the same month that we have rolled up large swaths of the foreign insurgency there. In fact, the amendments offered epitomized snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq and figuratively did the same thing to their electoral standing with the public. Even before this, their polling numbers had begun to drop in Congressional calculations, and now we should see a precipitous drop that calls into question whether they can gain anything at all in November, let alone take over the majority.

Will that translate to bigger approval numbers for Bush? Probably not more than 45% in Rasmussen calculations, but he's not running for re-election. Bush can afford to act on principle rather than electoral calculations -- in fact, it's supposedly one of the benefits of the term limits on the Presidency. As long as his base continues to see him acting on principle and as long as the Democrats continue to offer nothing but retreat and extremism, the Republicans and the President will do fine in November.

Navy Missile Intercept Test A Success

The Navy conducted a successful missile test yesterday that has implications for the current standoff with North Korea. The defense system intercepted a medium-range test missile near its apogee after booster separation:

A Navy ship intercepted a medium-range missile warhead above the earth's atmosphere off Hawaii in the latest test of the U.S. missile defense program, the military said Thursday.

The military had initially scheduled the test for Wednesday but postponed the drill after a small craft ventured into a zone that had been blocked off for the event.

The USS Shiloh detected a medium-range target after it was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, then fired a Standard Missile-3 interceptor.

The interceptor shot down the target warhead after it separated from its rocket booster, more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and 250 miles northwest of Kauai, the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement.

This is the second successful test of the system against multi-stage rockets, and it couldn't have come at a better time. North Korea wants to engage in some high-stakes extortion games with its Taepodong-2 missile, assuming that the US has no ready response. The missile defense system may or may not be ready for a live-fire response, but if it comes to it, we can at least make a credible attempt to shoot it down -- and that would sink Kim Jong-Il's threat level from acute to irritant, and he knows it.

Miami Terror Press Conference Live Blog

9:36 CT - Starts with Alberto Gonzalez statement regarding homegrown terrorists. Toronto, Madrid, and London bombings were not sleeper cells, but turned on their own country ...

9:39 - The Haitian immigrant was in the US illegally. Hmmm ... wonder if Congress will do anything about that?

9:42 - John Pistole, Deputy Director of the FBI, joins Gonzalez. I wonder why Mueller didn't attend the press conference?

9:44 - Gonzalez won't answer whether all known cell members have been arrested; he won't comment, says investigation is ongoing.

9:45 - Asked whether the group had explosives and weapons stockpiled, Gonzalez stated that sufficient actions had occurred to press the case now rather than wait for them to arm themselves.

9:47 - Asked if they really thought these people could have pulled off a terror attack. Gonzalez replied they didn't get the materials and the weapons they wanted, but that we can't assume people plotting attacks are incapable of staging them successfully.

9:48 - The entrapment question came up, and parried by Pistole. He also states that there was no mention of ammonium nitrate during their interaction with the group. One of the individuals in the inidctment had worked at the Sears Tower.

9:50 - "Why would a group of men with different ethnic backgrounds ... get together? What do they have against the United States?" Aha! The "broad strata" meme appears ready to pop its head above water! Pistole replies that they had a "common ideology".

9:52 - Some of the indicted have criminal records. Big surprise.

9:54 - "These guys couldn't buy boots on their own? They don't sound like very sophisticated actors." Well, no kidding. Read the indictment.

9:56 - "Was the video camera supplied by the informant?" Didn't anyone there read the indictment? And these are the people that Bill Keller feels should control information about our national security.

9:57 - The last overt act in the indictment came in April; why wait? Pistole gave a vague answer regarding the timing. That question at least was interesting.

9:57 - "Providing material support" -- the reporters seem confused by the issue of material support. Their volunteering for al-Qaeda explicitly provides material support, namely themselves, to AQ. That, also, is explained in the indictment.

10:00 - Batiste initiated the contact between the agent and the group.

That ended the DC press conference. The Miami presser should start soon, and I'll pick it back up here. A couple of thoughts, though: the indictment really spells out in detail the issues and evidence involved. If reporters wanted to advance the story, they should have familiarized themselves with that document first. I had read all of the indictment and even reported on it before the press conference. Their lack of preparation should embarrass the press, but it won't.

10:12 - White House press conference beginning. The Fox News anchor wouldn't shut up, so I switched to C-SPAN. Right now, Tony Snow is briefing the correspondents on scheduling; the line-item veto will be the subject of tomorrow's radio address.

10:15 - Snow gets into some good-natured hot water by implying that a reporter might be a little old.

10:18 - Norm Mineta has announced his retirement. That sounds like good news.

10:19 - Going to questions: the first is on the NYT story. "'The program was a significant departure from typical practice.' So was 9/11." Snow notes that the story reports no violation of any law, using vague and meaningless language about "concerns".

10:23 - Stupid question of the morning: "This was a temporary program based on 9/11. Why is it still in operation five years later?"

10:36 - Snow is taking to the press corps this morning. He has been scolding them on misreading the article, not understanding the legal issues, and in general acting cluelessly. This is a public spanking. These people show up unprepared; it was obvious that none of them really read the stories on the issue.

10:40 - Miami press conference begins ...

10:43 - So far, just a rehash of the DC presser.

10:48: - Reporters keep asking whether these men constituted a real threat against the US. The point of the operation was to ensure that the threat got neutralized before it could coalesce. Whether or not they could tie their own shoelaces has no bearing on the criminality of their acts. Ineptitude is not a defense.

10:50 - The infiltrator was apparently not a law-enforcement agent, although it's difficult to say whether Acosta meant that specifically.

These press conferences didn't expand our knowledge to any great extent; the big news today is the indictment itself.

Saddam Notes Value Of His Defense Team

After proclaiming a hunger strike in honor of his slain defense attorney and in protest of a lack of sufficient security for the defense team, Saddam Hussein ended his fast -- fast:

Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday.

The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch on Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal.

Former Saddam aides being held in the same prison had refused to eat three meals since Wednesday evening but ended their fast with the ex-president.

Saddam honored Khamis al-Obeidi by skipping lunch. The international news media breathlessly reported this hunger strike in the wake of Obeidi's assassination, but one suspects that this will drop to the bottom page of their next editions. Even Saddam's co-defendants gave a better effort, missing three meals before digging into dinner with hungry-man stomachs.

When we pulled the dictator out of spider hole pleading for his life, we knew that like most dictators, he had no honor or courage. Now we know he has no stomach, either. Saddam has repeatedly shown himself to be nothing more than a crawling worm, a man full of bluster but utterly unconcerned about anything outside of his own comfort. He fooled everyone into thinking of him as the next Salah al-Din and following him to their destruction, and in the end he deceived even his own two monsters of sons, who died for that fantasy. Perhaps that amounts to a small bit of poetic justice. (via It Shines For All)

Miami Indictment Released

The government has released the indictment for the seven men arrested in Miami last night, and the charges levied do not mince words. The government will charge the men with "levying war against the government of the United States":

A federal indictment against seven men revealed Friday details of what the government said was a plan intended to "kill all the devils we can."

The mission was intended to be "as good or greater than 9/11," beginning with the destruction of Chicago's Sears Tower, according to court documents obtained Friday by CNN.

Named in the grand jury indictment is Narseal Batiste, who allegedly told a federal undercover agent, who he thought was a member of al Qaeda, that he was organizing a mission to build an Islamic army to wage a jihad in the United States.

The document says that Batiste "recruited and supervised individuals in order to organize and train for a mission to wage war against the United States government, which included a plot to destroy by explosives the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois," the nation's tallest building.

The indictment itself contains enough allegations to prove that these terrorist wannabes have some serious cognitive difficulties. For instance, the first count of the indictment charges the defendants with attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda, and it outlines the actions of the conspirators showing their explicit intent. Some of these would make a great comedy routine but for the fact that these idiots took it seriously. Those actions include providing a list of shoe sizes to an undercover agent posing as an AQ representative, supposedly to get the "soldiers" combat boots. One wonders why they just didn't buy their own shoes. A week later, the leader, Narseal Baptiste, accepted the boots from the agent.

They certainly acted the part, however. One of the overt acts mentioned in the indictment were statements by Batiste that the group intended to "kill all the devils they can," a bit of warmed-over Nation of Islam rhetoric that goes at least as far back as Malcom X. They all took the AQ pledge at different times as well, a smart bit of theatrics staged by the FBI that will carry a lot of weight with a jury. Batiste insisted on performing video surveillance on his potential targets, arranging for the camcorder with the agent, who helpfully outfitted Batiste with both a camcorder and a digital camera. The only targets named in the indictment were the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago, but other reports show that other targets were on a broader list of potential goals.

These charges could not get more serious. The fourth count of attempting to levy war against the US amounts to treason, and qualifies the defendants for the death penalty. This case may attract high-profile attorneys for publicity's sake, but they will want to have an existing predilection for lost causes. Their clients appear too stupid to breathe without written instructions, let alone assist in their own defense. The alter egos of the defendants show their comic-book mentality:

Narseal Batiste, aka Brother Naz or Prince Manna
Patrick Abraham, aka Brother Pat
Stanley Grant Phanor, aka Brother Sunni
Naudimar Herrera, aka Brother Naudy
Burson Augustin, aka Brother B
Lyglenson Lemorin, aka Brother Levi or Brother Levi-El
Rotschild Augustine, aka Brother Rot

The trial should provide plenty of drama, and at least a small dose of comedy.

NYT Reveals Secret Banking Anti-Terrorist Program

The New York Times Eric Lichtblau and James Risen have exposed yet another clandestine method used by American intelligence to track terrorists at home and abroad. This time, the pair has revealed a complex surveillance system in the international banking system that traced financial transactions of people suspected of terrorist ties. The system, called Swift, has resulted in at least one capture of a high-value target, al-Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. ...

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

The White House sent a bipartisan team of officials to ask the Times not to print the story:

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Excuse me, but no one voted to put Bill Keller in charge of our national security, and the laws covering classification of materials does not have an option for journalists to invalidate their clearance level. The continuing arrogance of Keller and his two reporters has damaged our national security, and in this case on a ridiculously laughable story that tells us absolutely nothing we didn't already know in concept. They keep pretending to offer news to their readers, but instead all they do is blow our national-security programs for profit.

The administration has told us on many occasions that one of the main fronts in the war on terror would be the financial systems. We have seen plenty of coverage on how the US has pressured various banking systems into revealing their records in order for us to freeze terrorist assets. If anyone wondered whether our efforts had any effect, all they needed to read was the stories of Hamas officials having to smuggle cash in valises in order to get spot funding for the Palestinian Authority. Their neighboring Arab nations pledged upwards of $150 million in direct aid, which banks would not transfer lest the US discover the transactions and lock them out of the global banking system.

Did no one read that and understand that the US has an extensive surveillance system on financial transactions around the world? Perhaps Keller, Lichtblau, and Risen need facts spelled out for them using crayon and words of two syllables and less, but the thinking world already understood that American intelligence had thoroughly penetrated global finance -- exactly like we said we would do in the wake of 9/11.

This story is only good for one thing, and that is an attempt to blow the program and stop our ability to follow the money. The New York Times apparently wants to stage itself as a publication written by traitors for an audience of idiots.

Iraq To Offer Amnesty And American Withdrawal To Insurgents

In a development that underscores the cluelessness of the Senate debate the past two days, the Iraqi government has built an ultimatum and offer to native insurgents in Iraq that will offer amnesty for most of their actions and an American withdrawal if all insurgencies surrender themselves. The US government has helped craft the offer, which both Iraq and the US hopes will allow Iraq to reach stability quickly:

THE Iraqi Government will announce a sweeping peace plan as early as Sunday in a last-ditch effort to end the Sunni insurgency that has taken the country to the brink of civil war.

The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal.

The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; a halt to US operations against insurgent strongholds; an end to human rights violations, including those by coalition troops; and compensation for victims of attacks by terrorists or Iraqi and coalition forces.

It will pledge to take action against Shia militias and death squads. It will also offer to review the process of “de-Baathification” and financial compensation for the thousands of Sunnis who were purged from senior jobs in the Armed Forces and Civil Service after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The deal, which has been seen by The Times, aims to divide Iraqi insurgents from foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda. It builds on months of secret talks involving Jalal al-Talabani, the Iraqi President, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, and seven Sunni insurgent groups.

The Iraqi government held a summit with representatives of the native insurgencies, including the dead-ender Ba'athist elements of Saddam's regime, last month while Nouri al-Maliki built his Cabinet. The meeting gave strong indications that the insurgents would be willing to cut a deal, if foreign troops left Iraq as a consequence. They did not give a formal response and have continued their operations since, but Maliki wants to hit a home run in his first at bat. They did indicate a willingness to open formal discussions with both Iraq and the US along the lines of this offer.

One complication was that the Democrats almost gave the game away before the offer could be made. While Talabani, Maliki, and Khalilzad carefully crafted this one-time offer, Democrats almost gave away the main carrot that would have induced the insurgents to lay down their weapons. Had they controlled the government, our troops would have marched out of Iraq and taken the best chance for a negotiated end to the Iraq insurgencies with them.

As it is, Talabani's offer seems a bit naive, especially regarding the Ba'athists. Never known for their love of democracy, they have always wanted nothing more than a Stalinist regime to run Iraq, just as it did under Saddam and as their cousins still do in Syria with the Assad regime. The best-funded and best-resourced of the insurgencies would not surrender lightly just to join a multiparty representative government. One has to think that the Ba'athists just want to play for time so that they can wait for another chance to take power through assassination rather than an insurgency that obviously has little chance of progress.

The Times of London notes the touchy issue of amnesty for attacks on American soldiers. The brutal deaths of two American soldiers this week has complicated that issue, although that came at the hands of the foreign terrorists. Americans will find the notion of allowing Iraq to waive prosecution for attacks on our soldiers repulsive, as I wrote a week ago. However, we have to calculate whether the amnesty will help us speed our mission of creating a democratic and stable Iraq; in that context, amnesty may well be a bitter but necessary step. In a real sense, it isn't our decision to make, as any prosecution for crimes in Iraq will have to come from the Iraqis anyway.

Will such an offer be accepted, and if so, would it have the desired effect? The Iraqis have to see the strides made by the Kurds in the north and the relative peace in the Shi'ite areas to the south. In fact, as the Times also notes, the increasing influence of Iran on the Shi'ites will have a powerful impact for the Sunnis engaged in the insurgencies. Their efforts make the Shi'a more receptive to Iranian interference, a threat that will engulf the Sunni minority if allowed to continue and grow. The native insurgents have to have wearied of fighting their losing cause, and of watching as foreigners adopt their battle as an excuse to deliver brutal attacks on their own people.

This holds some promise for success. If it works as the Iraqi government hopes, we could bring stability to Iraq and isolate the foreign terrorists in one fell swoop.

Domestic Terrorism Raids In Miami

CNN has breaking news on a series of FBI raids in Miami that involve domestic terrorism. Not too many details have come out yet, but several arrests have been made:

FBI agents were raiding sites in Miami, Florida, on Thursday in connection with a domestic terrorism investigation, law enforcement sources said.

The FBI said one search warrant was being executed in the Liberty City area of Miami. Officials said no weapons or bomb-making materials had been found in the searches so far.

"We are conducting a number of arrests and searches, and we'll have more about that when the operation is completed, probably tomorrow morning," FBI Director Robert Mueller told CNN's Larry King in an interview to be broadcast Thursday.

Domestic terrorism means that the threat involves American citizens. This could be militias, or perhaps enviromental or animal-rights nutcases. It could also have something to do with the Cuban community, but that sounds a bit far-fetched. However, one possibility is the Puerto Rican separatists. (please see my last update)

More as it develops ...

UPDATE: Via Hot Air, the "domestic" tag looks more like the so-called second wave of homegrown Islamists. ABC News reports that the targets involved -- the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago. The suspects are not all Americans, either:

According to sources familiar with the investigation, the group allegedly planned to bomb the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

The group has been under surveillance for some time and was infilitrated by a government informant who allegedly led them to believe he was an Islamic radical. The suspects are described as African Americans and at least one man of Caribbean descent.

Sources say the arrests reflect the government's concern about so-called "homegrown terrorists." It's a threat FBI Director Robert Mueller discussed during a recent speech in New York.

It's not domestic terrorism in the prior sense of the term, and it's remarkably similar to the Toronto operation that the Canadians busted a couple of weeks ago.

UPDATE II 8:03: Larry King has Robert Mueller on his show now. He addressed the Suskind revelation about the subway plot by saying it was "no longer a threat". Mueller now is talking about homegrown terrorists, but not specifically about this story yet.

UPDATE III: King played Hillary Clinton whining about the cuts to New York City in the grant money from the DHS and demanding that King ask Mueller about them. Laughable. First, Congress controls the money for the program, and they cut it overall. Second, now that we see that Miami and Chicago got targeted by this cell, we can see why the DHS wants to start spreading that money around to other large cities in the United States. Talk about events catching up with you ...

UPDATE IV: King finally got around to asking Mueller about the story -- it apparently got handed to King during a commercial break, which says something about his show preparation -- and Mueller would only confirm that an operation had commenced in Miami.

UPDATE V: The AP has updated its initial report, and the sense of homegrown Islamists has further confirmation:

Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Mulims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic.

The residents said FBI agents spent several hours in the neighborhood showing photos of the suspects and seeking information. They said the men had lived in the area about a year.

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

Rose said the men tried to recruit her younger brother and nephew for a karate class.

"It was weird," she said.

Weird indeed. If they were out recruiting in this manner, it probably launched a few dozen tips from their neighbors. If this turns out to be the case, the FBI may have saved the prototerrorists' lives; they would be too inept to build a bomb without detonating it themselves.

UPDATE VII: The Hot Air link above now has a video from Fox noting the jihadist planning of the terrorists. Plus, Rick in the comments wonders just how long it will be before the New York Times notes the "broad strata" origins of the suspects. CNN now also reports that one suspect had taken an "oath to al-Qaeda".

UPDATE VIII: Via the Commissar and Hot Air, NBC News says the group identified themselves as Black Muslims:

The men — part of a radical Black Muslim group — were planning terror acts in Miami and Chicago, officials say…

Benjamin Williams, 17, said the group had young children with them sometimes.

“We were under the assumption that they were opening up a garage business,” he said, adding that they wore normal clothes “but sometimes they would cover their faces. Sometimes they would wear things on their heads, like turbins."

UPDATE IX: The Miami Herald says 12 to 15 men were involved, not just seven (thanks to Allahpundit once again):

A man who lives across the street from the warehouse where the search warrant was served described the suspects as an unusual group of men, almost cultist, who wore military-style clothes and kept to themselves.

''They reminded me a lot of the followers of Yahweh Ben Yahweh,'' he said, referring to a cult that flourished in Miami's Liberty City in the 1980s and spawned a reign of terror in the neighborhood.

''They have like a purpose or something,'' said the man, who would not give his name for fear of retribution.

The 12 to 15 men in their 20's and 30s appeared to be from Haiti and from the Bahamas.

''I bet they've gone across the water'' he said, believing some had escaped the federal agents.

Somehow, I suspect that anyone who tried to leave the country never made it to their destination.

UPDATE X: Val at Babalu Blog rightly calls me out for suggesting that the Cuban-American community may have been involved as nothing more than sheer speculation, via e-mail. I apologize for that; it's what happens when calculating all of the potential vectors of "domestic terrorism" without thinking things all the way through. Blogs have the important quality of immediacy, but some immediacy shouldn't get committed to pixels, as it were. I have tremendous admiration for the Cuban-American community and their struggle against the fascist dictatorship of Fidel Castro, and I blew it by my insinuation that they present a potential danger to our country on the basis of no information at all. Please accept my apologies. It won't happen again ... but if it does, Val's going to call me on the carpet, and I'm grateful for that. Also noting this was Liberal Catnip and The Florida Masochist, the latter also by e-mail. They're all correct.

Then What?

Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry offered an interesting option for the North Korea missile standoff -- commit an act of war:

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy.

Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

I've mused on this all day, as this advice from Perry and Ashton Carter has received much debate throughout the media and blogosphere. Talk radio and television panel shows have argued the merits. However, after listening to all of the arguments, I have to say that Perry leaves me unconvinced.

First of all, he misunderstands the nature of pre-emption. When Bush talked of pre-emption, he meant pre-emptive war. Perry's essay seems to assume that pre-emption stops at an attack, but that's a very unrealistic view of warfare and diplomacy. The difference can be shown between the strategies used by the Clinton and Bush administrations in Iraq: Clinton tossed a few missiles and did not solve the problem, where Bush invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein.

When one tosses a cruise missile at another sovereign nation, one had better be prepared for war. Iraq at the time did not react as such because Saddam did not want to lose, and lose badly, as he did in 2003. However, Kim Jong-Il would likely react to a cruise missile by launching an attack on South Korea and perhaps firing a few more missiles at Japan. Are we prepared to deal with that consequence? Do we want to fight a pre-emptive war on the Korean Peninsula? That is the probable consequence of Perry's advice.

Unfortunately, we don't have many good options to get the missile off the pad, other than diplomacy and brinksmanship. We do, however, still hold an ace card: China. While China has no real interest in reining in the North Korean "menace" as long as it ties up the US military in the Pacific Rim, they have a high interest in keeping Japan from going nuclear in its national defense. We need to make clear to Hu Jintao that any missile launch by Kim will result in Japan's immediate production of nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles for their own protection against the North Korean nutcase they continue to sponsor.

Escalation is an ugly option, but the North Koreans will have forced our hand. The Chinese will get the message and that Taepodong-2 missile will get disassembled in record time, if Beijing wants to avoid a nuclear-armed Tokyo. That at least can be done before we start a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula and a real exchange of nuclear weapons with a madman.

Line-Item Veto Passes House

The House just passed the new limited line-item veto moments ago, 247-172, with 35 Democrats voting to support the Republican initiative on reform. Andrew Taylor at the AP notes the irony in this vote:

Lawmakers voted to give Bush and his successor a new, weaker version of the line-item veto law struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998, despite a recent series of lopsided votes in which they've rallied to preserve each other's back-home projects. It would expire after six years.

The idea advances amid increasing public concern about lawmakers' penchant for stuffing parochial projects into spending bills that the president must accept or reject in their entirety. ...

The bill would allow the president to single out items contained in appropriations bills he signs into law, and it would require Congress to vote on those items again. It also could be used against increases in benefit programs and tax breaks aimed at a single beneficiary.

Under the proposal, it would take a simple majority in both the House and the Senate to approve the items over the president's objections.

The hope is that wasteful spending or special interest tax breaks would be vulnerable since Congress might vote to reject such items once they are no longer protected by their inclusion in bigger bills that the president has little choice but to sign.

The roll call vote can be found here. Voters concerned about earmarks and corruption should note those who opposed this measure. The following Republicans decided to back away from the line-item veto:

Aderholt
Buyer (there's a name for you!)
Emerson
Hobson
Jones (NC)
Lewis (CA)
Northrup
Otter
Paul
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Simmons
Simpson
Sweeney
Walsh

The inclusion of Jerry Lewis, the head of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, comes as no surprise. After all, Lewis sent $11 million in earmarks to Trident Systems, whose president paid Lewis' stepdaughter almost a third of all the money raised by his PAC, for which she was employed. Lewis doesn't want to lose his political heft and ability to direct federal funds to the beneficiaries of his family -- which gives us more reason to cheer this vote.

It goes next to the Senate, where significant opposition exists. The idea of giving the executive branch the power to deny specific funding rankles those who already view this administration as a problem in terms of power-sharing. However, the Senate itself has shown almost no discipline in reforming its own appropriations processes, porking up one bill after another shamelessly. It took a conference committee to strip out $15.5 billion of pork added to an emergency spending measure intended to fund our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as provide more assistance to Hurricane Katrina victims.

Supporters need to keep the pressure on their Senators to vote for the new line-item veto. We need to make clear that those who hold out for a broken and corrupt system of appropriations will not long be trusted to handle the taxpayers' money.

CQ On The Air Tonight

I will be on radio twice tonight. At 5 pm CT, I will appear on the Lars Larson show, discussing the WMD find and possibly the SCOTUS decision. Then at 9 pm CT, I'll be back on CHQR's The World Tonight with Rob Breckinridge, also talking about WMD, Iraq, the Senate votes today, and possibly Bush's visit to the EU.

Be sure to tune in!

UPDATE: Had a great time with Lars; I hope you all had a chance to listen in! We spent the entire time on WMD, but the topic could easily have taken us through an hour or more. Lars will stay on top of it, so stay tuned.

The Post Picks Up Hastert's Real-Estate Deal

The Washington Post picks up on the profit taken by Dennis Hastert and his partners in the Little Rock Trust that came from $207 million in federal highway funding, a traffic corridor championed by Hastert himself and funded through pork-barrel earmarks. Now it turns out that federal highway earmarks may have enriched two more Congressmen in a similar manner:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds.

A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year's highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that he co-owns.

In all three cases, Hastert and Reps. Ken Calvert and Gary Miller say that they were securing funds their home districts wanted badly, and that in no way did the earmarks have any impact on the land values of their investments. But for watchdog groups, the cases have opened a fresh avenue for investigation and a new wrinkle in the ongoing controversy over earmarks -- home-district projects funded through narrowly written legislative language.

I covered this eight days ago as part of an ongoing effort to highlight the corrosive effects that earmarks have on both our political system and the appropriations process. Several commenters scolded me for attacking Hastert, but this new development shows why we need to address earmarks and put aside the party considerations for the time being.

Elected officials enter into a de facto agency agreement with their constituents. That means we expect them to represent our interests above their own personal considerations when conducting their business on Capitol Hill, especially when it comes to spending our money. If you had a business agent, you would scream bloody murder if he diverted your funds as collateral on loans for his investments without your knowledge and permission, even if you never lost a dime in the transaction. His access to your money stems from the agency relationship that should create a barrier between his personal business interests and yours.

What Haster did was to direct our money, which the federal government takes by threat of force, into specific projects that apparently enhanced his own net worth substantially. Regardless of whether those projects had merit or not, his real-estate ventures in that same district should have prompted Hastert to recuse himself from the federal corridor project. He shouldn't have even cast a vote on the line item. Instead, he went out of his way to push this project and earmarked federal funds for it so that the Department of Transportation could not put the funds to better use. And it looks like Calvert and Miller did much the same thing.

Some commenters dispute whether the corridor really enhances the land value in Little Rock. Before the sale of the land to developers, Little Rock had 2,683 housing units for a population of 7,700. The developer who bought the land plans on creating 1600 more housing units and a retail and commercial center. Does anyone really believe that the developer would have spent the money necessary to buy this property if the nearest major highway to Little Rock remained over 25 miles away?

If we want to get serious about reforming government, we had better start holding our political leadership to task for their performance with our money. Regardless of the scale of profit, Hastert had no business earmarking federal funds for a project that had this much potential impact on his own business interests. At the minimum, it shows a remarkable level of disregard for the role of Representative.

UPDATE: NZ Bear tipped me off to this story, and it's the topic of at least one post at Porkbusters. Scroll around; it looks like Joshua Micah Marshall may have posted a couple of times on the same topic. Thanks to Instapundit for the link!

Guest Post: Senator John Sununu On Net Neutrality

CQ welcomes Senator John Sununu, a member of both the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation as well as the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force. Senator Sununu posts the following statement on the issue of "net neutrality", a topic that has not received coverage at CQ.

Government’s role in supporting the development of emerging technologies is to get out of the way. Imposing unnecessary regulations on the Internet is a sure way to discourage investment, limiting the deployment of new products. The marketplace has powerful incentives for private industry to continue the development of existing technologies, while at the same time providing safeguards to protect consumers. Furthermore, the most recent version of the Commerce Committee’s legislation includes an ‘Internet Consumer Bill of Rights,’ along with authority for the FCC to adjudicate complaints against providers. These provisions will help ensure that Internet users have unfettered access without stifling technological innovations that benefit consumers.

How do CQ readers feel about the net neutrality issue? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: Thanks to Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll for his link. Danny keeps a close eye on all things DC, and Beltway Blogroll is an important source for any political blogger.

Hamas: Islam, Islam Uber Alles

Palestinian Media Watch notes a new video Hamas has posted to their web site, one that calls for the overthrow of the United States by Islamists. The governing political party of the Palestinian Authority predicts that Israel, Britain, and Europe will also fall before the onslaught of Islam and exhorts their followers to maintain their defiance against international pressures (via Michael van der Galien at TMV):

A Hamas video just released on their web site focuses on the broader Palestinian Islamic ideology, promising the eventual conquering and subjugation of Christian countries under Islam. The way Israel "ran" from Gaza after terror is presented as the prototype for future Israeli and Western behavior in the face of Islamic force. ...

The following is the transcript of selections from the Hamas video:

"We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered … The Jihad for Allah... is the way of Truth and the way for Salvation and the way which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah's will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun".

The video shows a rather strange exhortation by the former head of Hamas' terrorist wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. Ghalban got killed in the internecine fighting in the Palestinian territories, one particular event he did not predict. However, this new statement by Hamas shows that they have no intention of transforming themselves into a peaceful political force. Indeed, the video explicitly states that the fall of the West will not come through agreements but by force of arms. They link themselves very clearly to the fighting in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, and the standoff with Iran.

The US and our European partners should abandon hope for the so-called prisoner's declaration, the NCD, as a vehicle for moderation of Hamas. For one thing, as I wrote at the above link, nothing in the NCD even hints at an acceptance of Israel. Instead, it proposes a union of Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad -- presumably to pursue the long-term goals stated in their latest video release. The call for Islamist attacks on the US, Europe, and India clearly show that Hamas has aligned itself with the Islamofascist terrorists, and a refusal to acknowledge that will be interpreted as a cowardly retreat -- as the video itself makes clear.

We need to start laying down ultimatums to the Palestinians in the territories. If they continue to support terrorists, then we will abandon them completely and cut off all funding and outside assistance. They elected these terrorists to power, and the Palestinians have to assume responsibilty for their actions. If we seriously intend to wage a war on terrorism, we cannot feed the people who support it.

Kurds Show Why Saddam Had To Go

While the rest of Iraq continues to show marked progress towards self-reliance and security, even in the Sunni Triangle, one portion of Iraq has already transformed itself into a remarkable area of freedom and stability. The Kurdish areas of the north have blossomed since the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, expanding their cities and rapidly modernizing through significant capital investment and reliable security. The left-wing British newspaper The Independent reports on how the Kurds have delivered on the promise of liberation:

The struggle of the Iraqi Kurds for self-determination has been longer and bloodier than that of any nationalist movement outside Vietnam. It began under the British in the 1920s when "Bomber" Harris, later the commander of the air offensive against Germany, practised his art against Kurdish villages. Setting the tone for Baghdad's treatment of the Kurds over the rest of the century, he wrote with approval in 1924: "They now know that within 45 minutes, a full-size village can be practically wiped and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured."

Saddam Hussein proved an apt pupil. He imprisoned or forced hundreds of thousands of Kurds to flee when their independence movement collapsed in 1975 after being treacherously abandoned by the Shah of Iran and the US. Repression of the four or five million Iraqi Kurds reached a peak of cruelty and violence in the late 1980s: Saddam Hussein's forces slaughtered 182,000 of them and destroyed 3,800 of their villages as he crushed another uprising during the Iran-Iraq war. ...

Three years later it is far less nerve-racking to travel to Arbil, the Kurdish capital, than Baghdad. Its newly built airport is already overstretched, with 60 to 70 flights a week to and from Europe and the rest of the Middle East. When I flew there from Amsterdam last month my main anxiety was loss of my luggage as the small airport tried to cope with the influx of passengers. It was all very different from Baghdad, where the burnt-out cars used by suicide bombers lie beside the airport road.

At first, Arbil, the world's oldest inhabited city with a population of about a million, appears normal compared with the rest of Iraq. New houses and apartment blocks are being built across the city. People drive late at night without worrying about curfews. The lawn of the main International Hotel, invariably called the Sheraton, is covered with tables crowded with diners listening to live music.

It takes a little time to realise that not everything is quite as seems. My hotel, for instance, had more than a dozen flags, including those of Brazil and Morocco, fluttering from poles outside its main door. Few visitors noticed that the only flag missing was that of Iraq, the country in which the hotel is standing.

For those who scoff at the claims of Saddam's genocide, this should provide food for thought. Patrick Cockburn knows firsthand the depravities of Saddam's decades-long war of attrition against the Kurds. The one attack most referenced is the gas attack against the civilians of Halabja that left 5,000 men, women, and children dead and many more maimed and ill. That amounts to 3% of all the deaths attributed to Saddam's attacks on the Kurds, just in the 1980s. Halabja still stands, but Saddam leveled an amazing three thousand, eight hundred villages and towns during the same time, when the Kurds attempted to repel Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

When Slobodan Milosevic attempted the same ethnic cleansing on a similar scale, Europe demanded a military solution to stop it.

The Kurds had survived the era of the No-Fly Zone in better shape than some might have thought. They have their own divisions, yet united to set themselves apart as much as possible from the Saddam regime for the last twelve years that the UN dithered on his status. Since 2003, however, they have positively flourished. While Cockburn overestimates their power in the new Iraqi government -- which was crafted as a unity government, after all -- the fact that they have any political power at all comes as a historical singularity for the Kurdish people. Economically, they have made their area of Iraq into a model for the rest of the nation, attracting all sorts of capital investment and even starting a burgeoning tourist trade.

The Kurds stuck with the West, trusting in our eventual realization that Saddam wanted to do nothing more than retrun to slaughtering the ethnic minority in Northern Iraq that had opposed him for so long. Their survival and their revival comes from the liberation from one of the most genocidal dictators of the latter 20th century, a man who modeled himself after Stalin and would have continued his legacy had we not acted to remove him.

Kerry Doubles His Support!

John Kerry has managed to double his support for the cut-and-run amendment he offered to the defense authorization bill. He got 13 votes instead of six by extending the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq to July 2007 rather than the end of the year. Roll call to follow shortly ...

UPDATE 10:53 CT: Bill Nelson of Florida voted against the Levin resolution, crossing party lines. The so-called "cut and jog" appears headed to defeat as well. Ben Nelson of Nebraska also voted against it -- but of course, Linc Chafee (R-RI) voted to support it. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) also voted against it. So far all of the red-state Democrats appear to be coming out against it.

10:59 - Joe Lieberman voted against the Levin resolution. While that remains consistent with Lieberman's previous support for the war and the long-term strategy -- recall that he alone among his caucus acknowledged the progress made in Iraq, even before Zarqawi was killed -- it impresses me that he did not bend to help his primary challenge from the Left.

Levin's resolution failed 60-39. This should conclude the debate over the long-term strategy in Congress. Both houses have now spoken, and both houses have supported the White House strategy in Iraq.

11:09 - Ben Nelson of Nebraska, not Bob (fixed it above). Thanks to The Influence Peddler for the quick catch! The Defense Authorization Bill now faces a cloture vote. If debate ends on this bill, it should put an end to any further exploration of panicked retreat for the foreseeable future. Cloture appears to have a wide margin of support and should pass on a wide bipartisan basis.

11:17 - I missed this, but Michelle Malkin reference to Sideshow Bob Democrats seems most appropriate today. In a fortnight where we have disposed of the main terrorist in Iraq and rolled up a huge section of the networks that he led, this nervous effort to demand an end to our efforts in beating the terrorists in Southwest Asia rather than fighting them here seems almost comical.

I'm waiting for the roll calls to be posted at the Senate web site ...

11:22 - Cloture passes, 98-1. Want to guess who cast the only vote to continue debate? Russ Feingold.

12:07 - Roll calls are up for both votes now. On the Kerry amendment, the yeas were:

Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Wyden (D-OR)

No real surprises there. Perhaps Leahy might come closest to an eyebrow raise, but this pretty much sums up the clueless caucus in the Senate.

The yeas are more extensive on Levin's non-binding resolution. Notable for their party switches are Linc Chafee in support, as I noted above. Hot Air has the list of Dems who switched:

Dayton (D-MN)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)

Dayton's vote surprises me. Of all those who I thought would support a cut-and-run, his vote would have been near the top of my list. The rest, except Lieberman, all come from solid red states.

SCOTUS Limits Illegal Immigrant Access To Courts

The Supreme Court denied the appeal of an illegal immigrant who wanted to appeal a deportation ruling on the basis of an ex post facto argument. By a vote of 8-1, the justices ruled that illegal immigrants have no basis to appeal their status based on changing immigration law:

The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a blow to longtime illegal residents, ruling that a deported Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years is barred from seeking legal residency or other relief in the courts.

By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before and returned.

Vargas applied for resident alien status after getting married in 2001 to an American citizen after a longterm relationship, including the birth of a child. However, having already been deported several times and re-entering the US illegally again, the INS deported him again in 2004 on the basis of the 1996 law. Vargas argued that since he had re-entered the US prior to the 1996 law upon which his first appeal was denied, the Constitutional prohibition on ex post facto application of laws made the deportation illegal.

SCOTUS should be congratulated for its clear-headed ruling. Had the justices ruled in the opposite, it could have created a situation where illegal immigrants receive de facto amnesty with every revision of the immigration statutes. The change in the law did not change the fact that Vargas entered the US illegally, and that his presence remained illegal. The government needs to have the power to deport illegal entrants, especially those who repeatedly break our immigration laws.

More On The WMD

But not much more, as most media outlets chose to ignore the Santorum/Hoekstra press conference on WMD discovered in Iraq since 2003. The Washington Post put the story on page A10:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Santorum said. ...

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction soughtin Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Of course, what the Post and Dafna Linzer missed from this analysis is that the pre-1991 WMD was the subject of the cease-fire agreement and the UN sanctions that Saddam defied. Two or three buried shells do not constitute much of a threat, at least militarily, although terrorists could use them on civilian populations to much greater effect. Five hundred shells, however, show that Saddam continued to stock and conceal the very munitions that UNSCOM and its inspections were designed to discover and destroy. Militarily, the five hundred alone would have presented a real threat in the hands of an artillery battery, something that the yawners have yet to address.

It also indicates that more probably exists. After all, if Saddam hid five hundred mustard gas and sarin shells, why wouldn't he have attempted to hide all of his chemical WMD? Rep. Pete Hoekstra referenced an unhappiness with the limited disclosure from John Negroponte and hinted at a much larger context in his statement to the press yesterday:

The Iraqi Survey Group, or the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn't find anything.

The report that Rick and I reference -- and I'll have to tell you that I'm disappointed in the summary that was provided for us in an unclassified version from the intelligence community because I think you lose some of the context of exactly what Rick and I and others on the committee have seen from that report.

But this says: Weapons have been discovered; more weapons exist. And they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq. ...

Number one, I think Rick and I are in agreement: More of the classified report has to be released to the American public. They need to get this in a more complete context. ...

So we are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war.

Because this now is not only an issue of what exists; this also gets to be an issue of force protection. Finding these quantities of weapons indicates that they're out there. The terrorists have indicated in press reports that they desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

Critics of the war may find themselves undercut by their continuing insistence that the WMD finds are insubstantial, either in quantity or threat. First, we know undoubtedly that they existed, and the unclassified amount, in the wrong hands, could have killed thousands. Second and more importantly, the classified portion of the intel report speaks to a larger context -- and the only reason to keep that quiet would be to either avoid a threat or to avoid some diplomatic embarrassment.

Despite the lack of interest at most of the major media centers, this story is not over. We know more than we have already stated, and when the entire story comes out, those who built their war policy on the sands of "no-WMD, Bush-lied" may find themselves sinking quickly.

A Nation Of Laws?

La Shawn Barber takes her bow as a member of the Examiner Blog Board of Contributors with an opinion piece on immigration, and she holds nothing back in her scorn for the rhetoric of George Bush on this issue. Commending his speechwriter for creating "the most exquisite piece of empty doublespeak", La Shawn reminds Bush about the laws this nation does not see fit to enforce:

The issue is not whether the United States should seal the borders and stop all immigration, as the president very well knows. It is whether illegal aliens should be given amnesty for their crimes and allowed to benefit from their fraud. That is the crux of the controversy.

Last month, the Senate passed a “comprehensive” immigration reform bill that would permit illegal aliens in the country for at least five years to remain, continue working, pay fines and back taxes, and learn English. Instead of enforcing current immigration laws and strengthening the border, the federal government would busy itself implementing a guest worker program and granting amnesty to illegal aliens and their employers. Those who obtained fake documents, cheated on taxes and committed Social Security fraud will get to remain in the U.S. and also claim Social Security benefits based on their illegal employment.

A nation of laws, President Bush? The “comprehensive” immigration plan is too obscene for words.

The very existence of a law implies the existence of consequences for disobeying the law. A country that allows millions of criminals to go unpunished and to profit from their unlawful acts ceases to be a nation of laws.

La Shawn touches on one of the reasons why Americans get so polarized about this issue, and why compromise will be so difficult to reach on the terms of the White House. Most countries have ethnic ties as a common culture to bind their nation as an entity. The Germans are German, and non-Germans do not assimilate well; just ask the Turkish and other Muslims they have imported as "guest workers" over the past few decades. The Russians are Russian, and where they are not -- in the Caucasus, especially -- integration has created flashpoints for violence and separatists. The French are French, and when they are not, they wind up in ghettoes and marginalized with no hope for assimilation.

Americans have no real ethnic ties to bind them as a nation. This nation bound itself from the beginning on an ideal, one that we have frequently failed but always aspired to achieve: equal treatment under the law. At the time, the notion that a functioning state could survive without a monarch as at least a symbol of national unity seemed ludicrous, but the real challenge as we grew was the notion that disparate cultures could come together, cast off their allegiances to ethnicity and religion to be Americans first and foremost. The one binding cultural touchstone was the ideal of equal treatment under the law, and the laws that implemented it.

It therefore rankles and enrages when we have new immigrants come to this country, and in their very first steps on American soil disdain the laws that bind us as a culture. We look at that and wonder how these people could possibly respect the American experience and support the American culture of laws when they violate at least the immigration laws to arrive here, and usually break several others in regards to employment and identification. If we have to accept that lawbreaking as acceptable, it eats at the very heart of what it means to be American.

For that reason, most people demand some sort of accountability for the lawbreaking before anyone gets offered US citizenship. It isn't that we don't want people to assimilate; it's that we want assimilation on the terms of America and not on the terms of the lawbreakers. Reasonable people can reach a compromise on the status of 12 million illegal immigrants, but the message of 2006 seems pretty clear: the compromise cannot include a forgiveness of lawbreaking as a means to citizenship. Those who want to become Americans have to show that they understand and support the most basic element of the American ideal: equal treatment under the law.

Iraqi Police Rescue 17 Hostages

The Iraqi police, who have come under criticism from some American politicians as ineffective, today staged a successful raid that freed 17 hostages. Insurgents had kidnapped them a day earlier, part of 85 hostages taken at an Iraqi factory:

Iraqi police stormed a farm north of Baghdad early Thursday and freed at least 17 people who were snatched a day earlier in a mass kidnapping of about 85 workers and family members at the end of a factory shift. ...

A National Security Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, told The Associated Press that several insurgents holding the kidnap victims were captured during the Thursday morning raid on the farm in the Mishada area, about 20 miles north of the capital.

Police operations were continuing in the area, the official said, in a bid to locate the rest of the victims who were taken at the end of the day shift at al-Nasr General Complex, a former military plant that now makes metal doors, windows and pipes.

The raid brings the number of hostages liberated to over 50, with some negotiating their own release, sometimes through subterfuge. One hostage showed the Sunni kidnapper a forged ID that listed him as a fellow Sunni, rather than the Shi'ite he is.

The raid helps the Iraqi police gain more credibility with the Iraqi people, even if some Americans still consider them ineffective. Another development noted by the AP may also impact another misconception. According to the same article, the media has misreported the assassination that killed Saddam Hussein's attorney. They have repeated the defense team's claim that the assassins wore the uniforms of Iraqi police when they abducted Obeidi. However, the New York Times quoted Obeidi's widow to state that the assassins wore civilian clothes, not police uniforms.

If it seems that the police can't catch a break, it may be that people want to underestimate them to keep the notion alive that the Iraqi people are incapable of progress -- and that our mission there is hopeless. The performance of both the Iraqi police and army continue to improve, and we can expect to see more instances like this where the Iraqis take care of the insurgents and criminals themselves.

Zawahiri Speaks, Again

Al-Qaeda's second in command, Egyptian terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri, released another videotape today. Unlike his past missives, this release appears aimed at Afghanis rather than Westerners, with Zawahiri speaking in Pashtun and Farsi and skipping the English subtitles:

In the video, al-Zawahiri, speaking in Arabic, addresses his message to the people in Afghanistan and talks about what he terms "crimes against the Afghan people by the Americans."

He claims to have recorded the message, which lasts 3 minutes and 44 seconds, the day after deadly riots in Kabul on May 29.

He calls on young men in Kabul's universities to defend their homeland against what he called invaders.

Zawahiri missed the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the collapse of the AQ network in Iraq. He also recorded it prior to the completion of the Iraqi government, an event that even apart from Zarqawi's death would have ruined Zawahiri's month. As it is, the message to the Afghans about supposed war crimes of the Americans will fail to resonate while Zawahiri's allies keep using their women and children as human shields.

In fact, the focus on the Afghans seems more than a little strange. Not many of them have televisions, and when Zawahiri's goons ran the country few were allowed that luxury. Now Zawahiri wants them to support the Taliban by using a technology that they all but banned while in charge. Can Zawahiri explain that hypocrisy?

Santorum: 500 Chemical-Weapons Shells Found In Iraq (Updated And Bumped)

Negroponte letter can be viewed in PDF format here.

According to numerous sources but not yet on the wires, Senator Rick Santorum announced a few minutes ago that the US has found 500 chemical-weapons shells in Iraq. Hot Air has the hot link for what little data exists thus far. Apparently, some of the shells contained sarin and others mustard gas. No word has come yet on when and where the US found these munitions.

I will update this as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Nothing on the wires yet at 5:10 pm CT, but let's think through what this discovery -- if it is new -- means. We have found a handful of such shells already in Iraq; I reported such a find here in November 2004. The shells had come from around the time of the first Gulf War and the contents had likely been rendered inert by the passage of time and exposure to air. That has a lot less significance than a find of 500 shells; that kind of stockpile could have done real damage to our troops during the invasion, and of course could also have caused a lot more trouble with civilians in the hands of terrorists, if properly deployed.

The political significance will be difficult to calculate without more information on when and where the shells were found, in what condition, and so on. However, their existence in those numbers will at least eliminate the argument that Saddam's WMD existed only in his head, a position that former Saddam henchmen have taken ever since they fell into Coalition hands.

UPDATE II: Here's a post that noted confirmation of one shell with sarin gas found in May 2004.

UPDATE III: The Corner has the bullet points from the declassification:

* Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

* Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.

* Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.

* The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.

* The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.

* It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

I think that we have known of a handful of recovered chemical-weapons shells, but not 500. That number has more significance. An artillery company could have laid down a very effective attack on an enemy position, quickly killing or disabling them in a manner outlawed for decades. Of course, that had been the entire point of the UN Security Council resolutions -- to strip Saddam of that capability -- and he obviously retained it, and lied about it.

The next question will be why the White House did not release this information at the time of their discovery. Santorum's statement says, “The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq[.] It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.” That implies that a broader analysis of WMD in Iraq exists -- and that it differs significantly from the common understanding shown thus far.

Some will claim that the release is strictly for political purposes. They may have a point, but I doubt it will have anything to do with domestic politics. If Bush wanted to use it for that, he would have done so in October 2004 and not in June 2006. This information changes the picture about our pre-war intelligence in time for the Iranian confrontation -- and I suspect that the White House wants to declassify it in order to convince European leaders that our intel actually paid off.

This will be an interesting story, and I will keep on top of any new revelations.

UPDATE IV: I have the PDF file of the letter from John Negroponte. Also, here is the transcript of the press conference with Santorum and Hoekstra.

UPDATE V: None of the wire services have seen fit to report on this development, but CNS has a report here. One argument that may come up is that these munitions predated the first Gulf War. Well, that's exactly what the sanctions regime, UNSCOM, and the majority of the 16 UN Security Council resolutions addressed -- and what Saddam defied. He was supposed to account for and destroy all of his existing WMD stock. Obviously he did not do that, and in reading the Negroponte letter and the transcript of the Santorum/Hoekstra presser, the Pentagon feels that more of it still exists in Iraq -- perhaps a lot more.

So why keep this quiet? Perhaps CENTCOM did not want to tip the AQ-I forces to their continued existence. Another explanation may have been that some of this got captured through active intel sources that would have blown continuing operations. Obviously the Intelligence Committee felt that the need for secrecy had passed.

UPDATE VI: Rick at The Real Ugly American has an update with an explanation of the reason the Bush administration kept this quiet:

General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war.

We wanted to keep France, Russia, and China from embarrassment? Well, maybe. And if that is true, then maybe the White House has decided that the silence has hampered its attempts to get tough on Iran, and thus the declassification now.

UPDATE VII: At 8:46 PM, the first wire report from the mainstream media comes from Fox four hours later:

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

The DoD reminds people that these munitions likely would not have worked if deployed and were not necessarily the WMD that intel agencies reported. However, they also acknowledged that Saddam's retention of his Gulf War munitions shows his deception to the UN and the cease-fire powers.

Walking In Lockstep

The conservative blogosphere gets accused often of working off of "talking points" and coordinating our efforts. That's a fairly ludicrous charge, as anyone who really reads the starboard side of the 'sphere understands. Most of us support the Bush administration, but certainly do not offer carte blanche on all policies and efforts from either the White House or Congress. We also sometimes snipe at each other, usually politely but not always, and the latest such point came with the latest Ann Coulter brouhaha.

I can state pretty clearly that, as far as my involvement with conservative bloggers go, we have never sent around e-mails telling each other to not blog about an issue. According to The New Republic's Jason Zengerle, however, that's exactly what Markos Moulitsas did with several of the more prominent liberal bloggers, and apparently they obeyed:

TNR obtained a missive Kos sent earlier this week to "Townhouse," a private email list comprising elite liberal bloggers, including Jane Hamsher, Matt Stoller, and Christy Hardin Smith. And what was Kos's message to this group that secretly plots strategy in the digital equivalent of a smoke-filled backroom? Stay mum! He wrote (emphasis added below):

The YearlyKos media people have already forced corrections at Slate and NY Times (Suellentrop's blog). There has been some serious overreach by the few outlets that picked up this story (which as I mentioned before has been shopped around). It was interesting how this one piddly-ass story was used to try and smear Jerome, me, AND YearlyKos.

So the only paper to run this as a news story is the disgraceful NY Post. Others who picked up on it have had to backtrack from their original sensationalistic claims.

I am exploring legal options against some of the wingnut bloggers who are claiming I'm syphoning netroots money into consultants and my own pockets. Note how Glenn Reynolds is fueling it with his typical passive aggressive, "I don't think it's a big deal, but let me provide links to everyone who thinks this is THE BIGGEST STORY EVER!"

And Jerome's case, if it could be aired out, is a non-story (he was a poor grad student at the time so he settled because he had no money). Jerome can't talk about it now since the case is not fully closed. But once it is, he'll go on the offensive. That should be a couple of months off.

This story will percolate in wingnut circles until then, but I haven't gotten a single serious media call about it yet. Not one. So far, this story isn't making the jump to the traditional media, and we shouldn't do anything to help make that happen.

My request to you guys is that you ignore this for now. It would make my life easier if we can confine the story. Then, once Jerome can speak and defend himself, then I'll go on the offensive (which is when I would file any lawsuits) and anyone can pile on. If any of us blog on this right now, we fuel the story. Let's starve it of oxygen. And without the "he said, she said" element to the story, you know political journalists are paralyzed into inaction.

Thanks, markos

So far, Kos's friends in the fiercely independent liberal blogosphere seem to have displayed a sheep-like obedience to his dictat. And while it's true that Kos himself hinted at the controversy in this blog post yesterday, he didn't come anywhere close to addressing the questions that really matter. You might even call Kos and company's behavior in this whole affair just another case of politics as usual. So much for crashing the gates.

Quite frankly, the whole trope about stock touting has been a crashing bore, and I've avoided commenting about it -- because as far as I can see, Jerome handled the issue and it's over. I'm not sure why anyone else finds it fascinating other than as a potential issue about credibility, but Jerome posts opinions at MyDD. Almost all of us have day jobs doing something very different. And tying this back to the Dean campaign is very old news.

However, this revelation goes directly to credibility as bloggers. I can understand why Markos would make that request of close friends, but this seems to imply that Markos controls the content of several bloggers thought to have been independent voices. Most importantly, it's exactly the kind of coordination that the Left often tosses out as accusations against their political opponents -- and this shows a significant level of hypocrisy in those accusations.

It's not going to shut anyone down, nor should it. However, it should embarrass those involved, and readers should now consider themselves warned about the independence of their favorite bloggers.

UPDATE: Stirling Newberry calls this TNR accusation "libel", but all he offers in response is that some people commented on the issue. He doesn't provide any links, nor does he explain the central thrust of the TNR post -- which is that Markos apparently feels comfortable asking bloggers to stay silent about a story, and none of the bloggers who received Markos' request thought it strange enough to object on their blogs.

CENTCOM Confirms Second AQ Leader Captured

A new release from CENTCOM confirms that the US military captured a second high-value target three days after killing "Sheikh Mansour". Two days after the death of Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani and the capture of two American servicemen later brutally butchered, American forces captured an as-yet unidentified AQI leader and three of his lieutenants:

In another operation June 19 southwest of Baqouba, Coalition forces detained a senior al-Qaida in Iraq network member and three suspected terrorists during coordinated raids.

The terrorist is reportedly a senior al-Qaida cell leader throughout central Iraq, north of Baghdad. He’s known to be involved in facilitating foreign terrorists throughout central Iraq, and is suspected of having ties to previous attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces.

Coalition forces secured multiple buildings and detained the known terrorist plus three suspected terrorists without incident. Troops found an AK-47 with several magazines of ammunition and destroyed them all on site.

This confirms the report yesterday that came through at the same time as the story about Sheikh Mansour. CENTCOM's press release has information on several missions conducted against AQI and other insurgents.

More On Sheikh Mansur

Yesterday I reported a breaking news item that the US had killed a Top 5 leadership figure from al-Qaeda in Iraq based on a televised briefing. Today the AP gives more background on Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani:

A key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader described as the group's "religious emir" was killed in a U.S. airstrike hours before two American soldiers went missing and in the same area, the military said Tuesday.

Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, and two foreign fighters were killed as they tried to flee in a vehicle near the town of Youssifiyah, in the so-called Sunni "Triangle of Death."

U.S. coalition forces had been tracking al-Mashhadani for some time, American military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said in announcing his death. He said al-Mashhadani was an Iraqi, 35 to 37 years old, and that one of the men killed with him was an Al Qaeda cell leader identified as Abu Tariq. ...

Caldwell said the Iraqi militant played a key religious and recruiting role in the group. The spokesman said Mansour was linked to the senior leadership, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a June 7 U.S. airstrike, and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the man the U.S. military has identified as Zarqawi's replacement.

Mansour "reportedly served as a right-hand man of Zarqawi's, and also served as a liaison between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the various tribes in the Youssifiyah area, as well as playing a key role in their media operations," Caldwell said.

American forces had Mansour in 2004 but released him due to a lack of knowledge about his status in AQI. That decision cost the US; Mansour shot down at least one Coalition aircraft this spring and undoubtedly helped arrange other attacks. The pressure to release detainees whose provenance cannot be proven has allowed more than one terrorist to return to kill again, and Mansour turned quite deadly indeed. He also helped the various terrorist groups coordinate their operations, making himself a bit of a force multiplier for AQI.

In other words, our troops are much better off with him dead. Had we realized that in 2004, we could have saved ourselves two years of his efforts against US and a free Iraq.

DHS: AQ Planned More Aviation Attacks

ABC News reports this morning on a Homeland Security document that describes at least three plans to attack America and its allies via commercial aviation. The DHS analysis notes the "ingenuity" of al-Qaeda planners even though US security efforts stopped all of the plots:

Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to use cameras to disguise bombs and flash attachments as stun guns in a disrupted hijack plot that targeted the U.S. east coast, Britain, Italy and Australia, U.S. officials say.

The plot was one of three previously unknown al Qaeda hijack plots disrupted before they could be carried out, according to a Department of Homeland Security report obtained by ABC News.

The report, a strategic assessment on U.S. aviation, says despite security improvements, "DHS continues to receive information on terrorist threats to the U.S. aviation industry and to the Western aviation industry worldwide."

The previously secret plots include one in which "Al-Qa'ida planned to hijack flights departing London's Heathrow Airport and crash them into the airport and a skyscraper in the Canary Wharf financial district of London."

The third plot involved taking over a plane of unknown origin, filling it with explosives, and crashing it into the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. This plan would certainly have killed a number of Americans had it succeeded, but it also would have killed many more Muslims in Pakistan. The same dynamic occurred in the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, and it appears that al-Qaeda really doesn't care. One of the criticisms that Ayman al-Zawahiri had for Zarqawi before Americans rendered thermal equilibrium unto the leader of AQ-Iraq was that he indiscriminately killed Muslim citizens, especially his slaughter of Jordanians attending a wedding. This appears to either have been overblown or an example of AQ hypocrisy.

The document comes along at the same time as Ron Suskind's One Percent Solution, which detailed other AQ plots against the United States. It seems as though the government wants to remind us how dangerous Islamofascits terrorism still remains to America after almost five years without a terrorist attack. Some had theorized that AQ wanted to narrow its focus on Saudi Arabia, including Suskind himself. That may well be the case now, although it hardly seems probable that Osama bin Laden or Zawahiri would pass up a chance to hit the US if they could. We see now that the run of safety has not resulted from the mercy of terrorists or through blind luck, but instead through improving operational intelligence.

The war is far from over, and we fight it on many fronts. This may remind some that one of those fronts is here in the US, and our tenacity on any front (or lack thereof) carries consequences for the others.

Liberating Trackbacks

In all of the posting I did the last couple of days, I neglected to check my junk-trackback filter. This morning, I found around three dozen valid trackbacks that had not appeared on my posts. The posts are in the process of being rebuilt now, and the trackbacks will appear shortly.

August 22nd?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has replied to the joint EU-US demand for a response to their package of incentives and sanctions regarding the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Iranian president informed the West that he would need until August 22nd to review the proposal and to prepare an answer (via It Shines For All):

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran will respond in mid-August to the package of incentives on its nuclear program offered by the West, but President Bush accused Tehran of dragging its feet.

"We are studying the proposals. Hopefully, we will present our views about the package by mid-August," Ahmadinejad told a crowd in western Iran in a speech broadcast live on state television.

Speaking at an annual U.S.-European Union summit in Vienna, Austria, Bush said that the mid-August timetable "seems like an awfully long time" to wait for an answer.

The long review time request did not come with an explanation of its need. The EU and the US appear to see this as a fairly straightforward package that only requires the Iranians give up uranium enrichment, at least during the negotiating period -- a prerequisite that has a basis in the NPT as well as in previous Iranian deception about their technology. Considering all of the resources that both sides have used to get to this stage, one would expect that all of the technical issues would be well understood.

Ahmadinejad's request has nothing to do with analyzing the package; he simply wants to stall as long as possible. August 22nd comes exactly two months from tomorrow, contradicting Bush's insistence on "weeks, not months" for a substantive response. It's so silly and childish that one wonders what else of significance might happen in the nine weeks between now and his proposed deadline. Could the Iranians be that close to starting a massive cascade of centrifuges that could produce weapons-grade uranium by that date?

August 22nd is just an opening gambit. The EU should take the lead in insisting on a shorter response cycle, and start at mid-July. The haggling will allow both sides to seem tough to their domestic audiences, and the response from Iran will be instructive about their insistence on the late date.

Saddam Lawyer Murdered

Iraqi authorities found one of the lawyers representing Saddam Hussein and his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti murdered earlier today. Gunmen dressed in police uniforms abducted Khamis al-Obeidi from his home and shot him to death just prior to the launch of the defense's final arguments in Saddam's trial:

One of Saddam Hussein's main lawyers was shot to death Wednesday after he was abducted from his Baghdad home by men wearing police uniforms, the third killing of a member of the former leader's defense team since the trial started some eight months ago.

Khamis al-Obeidi, an Iraqi who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim in their trial, was abducted from his house Wednesday morning, said Saddam's top lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi. His body was found on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi confirmed that al-Obeidi had been killed, although he did not provide any details. A photo of al-Obeidi provided by police showed his face, head and shoulders drenched in his own blood.

Lawyers who flocked from Western nations to join Saddam's legal team have received plenty of justified criticism, especially Ramsey Clarke, as genocidal ambulance chasers. However, Obeidi as an Iraqi upheld one of the fundamental tenets of fair justice: independent legal representation for all defendants to ensure an acceptable result. Obeidi took the job with some expectation of fame and fortune as well as an understanding that it would make him a target. He may or may not have been a dedicated Ba'athist -- I truly do not know -- but in the end he opted to participate in the nascent Iraqi justice system that wants to serve the people and not a dictator, and he paid for that choice with his life.

What a shame. Obeidi had an opportunity in the days ahead to offer some kind of argument for his client that would have at least been memorable, and probably historic. After having served the trial for as long as he had, he deserved at least that much for his efforts. As it is now, we will almost certainly see a suspension in the trial while the remaining defense team regroups and while the Iraqi interior ministry changes the security arrangements.

The people who assassinated Obeidi -- there is no better word -- are not acting for a better Iraq. One of the toughest disciplines to acquire in the collapse of a tyranny is patience for justice. For those victimized by Saddam's genocidal actions over four decades of rule, the temptation to take vengeance on Saddam and anyone associated with him must be almost irresistable. Having seen the Iraqi justice system used as a tool for oppression for so long -- after all, that's the entire point of the Dujail indictments -- they do not trust it to deliver justice to them now.

The Iraqis will need time to accept that the new representative government will deliver the justice they need and desire. That will take patience, not just for the Iraqis but also for the West as well. We must not wash our hands of the Iraqis but redouble our efforts to ensure that this promise gets delivered.

Now Kerry Irritates Democrats, Too

For a man who wants to capture his party's nomination for President in less than two years, John Kerry has spent more than his fair share of time putting his putative allies on the spot over the Iraq War. After a number of Democrats tried fashioning a non-binding Senate resolution that would eliminate a specific timetable to avoid the charge of a cut-and-run strategy, Kerry undercut them by simply resubmitting his original proposal with a deadline only six months further out than the last:

When Senator John Kerry was their presidential nominee in 2004, Democrats fervently wished he would express himself firmly about the Iraq war.

Mr. Kerry has found his resolve. But it has not made his fellow Democrats any happier. They fear the latest evolution of Mr. Kerry's views on Iraq may now complicate their hopes of taking back a majority in Congress in 2006.

As the Senate prepared for what promises to be a sharp debate starting on Wednesday about whether to begin pulling troops from Iraq, the Democratic leadership wants its members to rally behind a proposal that calls for some troops to move out by the end of this year but does not set a fixed date for complete withdrawal. Mr. Kerry has insisted on setting a date, for American combat troops to pull out in 12 months, saying anything less is too cautious.

In drawing up a schedule for the Wednesday session, the Democratic leadership has arranged for its plan to be debated first, pushing Mr. Kerry and his proposal into the evening, too late for the nightly television news, to starve it of some attention.

The Democrats have never embraced John Kerry, even when he ran for president, and especially afterwards. Kerry has done little legislative work over his extensive tenure in the Senate; when he ran in 2004, he had only authored six bills in almost 20 years. Kerry has long preferred to operate investigations, where he can grandstand and get his picture in the papers without the tough political negotiating that takes more effort and more compromise with other members. He may be the closest Senator to a dilettante over his career, at least up to 2004.

Now that he blew an eminently winnable election against George Bush, Kerry has made himself more active in Senate politics, but the Democrats have not grown more fond of the junior Senator from Massachussetts. In fact, he seems to relish operating outside the strategems of his own caucus, ironically in pursuing yet another major flip-flop. He wants to underscore his belief that the Iraq War was a mistake by setting a firm date for withdrawal, a position he wouldn't take in the rough months in 2004 while the US built the political structures that has now led to tremendous progress in 2006. Just when the US has started to roll up the insurgent networks, now Kerry wants to hit the panic button.

All of this makes the Democrats unhappy -- but not because they support the progress being made, but because Kerry makes the rest of them look bad. Christopher Dodd is one example:

In an interview, Mr. Dodd, who is also considering a presidential run, said one danger in the November election was in making Democrats look indecisive. "If the argument comes down to, Is it one year or 18 months, I think we're going to confuse people," he said. "I'm not sure what the value is; I think it hurts us rather than helps."

The problem does not occur with one particular date, but with date-setting at all. This shows that Kerry may still have the most honest approach among the Democrats, an assertion that doesn't cover any of them with glory. The Democrats still want to leave the impression with their antiwar base that they will pull the troops out of Iraq once in power, but they also want to keep the moderates in place by watering down the "cut-and-run" strategy their rhetoric has demanded.

Perhaps that reason has the Democrats angriest with Kerry. His insistence on pursuing his own amendment highlights their hypocrisy and the sham that their latest proposal is.

Post Takes The Law-Enforcement Approach

The Washington Post editorial board, which has demonstrated an above-average comprehension of the dynamics of a war on terror, gets it wrong in their lead editorial today. The Post scores the Bush administration for failing to provide trials for master terrorists it captures, calling the lack of such a "shambles":

SEPT. 11 MASTERMINDS Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, along with numerous other infamous al-Qaeda figures, have been in American custody for years. So has Mohamed Qatani, who was allegedly to be the 20th hijacker. None has faced trial for his crimes. Nor have any of the hundreds of lesser foreign detainees captured in the war on terrorism. Nearly five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration's plans for bringing the enemy to justice are a shambles. This failure has been one of the most easily avoidable blunders in the war on terrorism. ...

The administration is correct that U.S. federal courts often will not be the right venue for such trials. Evidence collected in the rough and tumble of a shooting war doesn't always meet the rigorous standards that courts here rightly demand. The government may have good reason to withhold witnesses or classified information. Given that foreigners abroad do not have full constitutional rights, the administration's impulse to create an alternative trial mechanism with some flexibility was reasonable. Had it gone to Congress and sought authorization to use a variation of military courts-martial, with clear rules and a codification of the offenses such tribunals were to judge, it might today have a vibrant system of justice at Guantanamo Bay.

Instead, the administration sought to rewrite the rules from scratch and revive a system of trial not seen since the World War II era. The reason for this fateful error was largely ideological: The White House wished not merely to conduct trials but also to emphasize the president's power to do it on his own.

The reason for doing so had nothing to do with ideology, but with a decision that the United States had war declared on us and that the proper response was to treat it as a war and not an organized-crime ring. The Post wants to have it both ways, and the suggestion makes no sense at all.

When nations capture enemy combatants during wartime, they either get classified as POWs or as illegal combatants, usually by some sort of short tribunal. By all accounts, those have already taken place for all of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. When well-known leaders get captured, the need for such tribunals disappears; no one needs to determine the status of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, since he has repeatedly self-identified as a member of the terrorist ring that declared war on and repeatedly attacked the United States. The detaining country has no obligation to provide trials for war crimes at that point; in fact, for POWs, the Geneva Convention forbids them. Only after the war has concluded does the capturing nation have an obligation to either charge their detainees with specific crimes or to release them.

The Bush admnistration had to reach back to World War II in order to develop their policy because the US has tried to pretend that its military actions in other venues did not amount to wars but instead were "police actions". No one refers to the Korean Police Action or the Viet Nam Police Action, of course -- because the rhetorical dodge fooled no one. However, it does indicate that the American ruling class has avoided the entire notion that we have warred with anyone since 1945. One of the more ridiculous effects of this self-deception of late has been an insistence on applying a civil criminal justice system to issues arising from war, an application for which our justice system and its precedents is almost completely unsuitable. Can you imagine a defense attorney not insisting on Miranda rights for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the identification of the interrogators who got incriminating information from him?

In wartime, no enemy has any right to a trial until the war has finished. For instance, the British did not try Rudolf Hess in 1941 despite his one-man invasion of Britain. The Brits simply kept him imprisoned in the Tower until the Nuremberg trials sentenced him to life imprisonment. Hess, as Deputy Fuhrer, had no need of tribunal for that imprisonment, and the British had no need to try him until after victory had been secured.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has no right to trial or even to an administrative hearing during wartime. The Bush administration has correctly determined that al-Qaeda (and its affiliated terrorist groups) is an enemy at war, and that those who have identified themselves as leaders have given the US all it needs to hold them indefinitely. Trying to give them a right to a trial in the middle of a war does not serve victory or even legitimacy, but instead undermines the truth. In order to provide a legitimate trial, the defendant has to have a chance of being released if no conviction can be obtained. Does the Post truly think that the US and the war effort will be served by Mohammed's release if a court cannot make a specific trial determination of his connection to an act of war (9/11)? If the Post doesn't agree to his release under that circumstance, then isn't insisting on a trial a highly cycnical and hypocritical act?

We need to remember that Islamist terrorists declared war on the US almost a decade ago and initiated a series of escalating attacks on us to prosecute it. That effort culminated in 9/11, which the Bush administration correctly determined as an act of war. We need to continue fighting it as a war. We do not need to make ourselves feel good by pretending that our enemy has the same legal standing as urban gangs.

French Imperialism

A Paris Criminal Tribunal ruling has pinned the government of Jacques Chirac with responsibility for a 1995 coup in Comoros, giving suspended sentences to over two dozen French mercenaries who seized power on Chirac's secret orders. The judge refused to sentence the defendants to jail time, saying that the French government had obviously allowed the men to act as their agents in their attempt at an overthrow:

COVERT attempts by President Chirac to exert influence over Africa were exposed by a French court yesterday, when it denounced his secret services for conniving with a band of mercenaries in a coup in the tiny Comoros Islands.

In a damning ruling, the Paris Criminal Tribunal said that the French authorities had given at least tacit approval to the 1995 coup led by Bob Denard, the best-known French soldier of fortune. ...

The court refused a prosecution demand to jail the plotters and instead handed out suspended sentences after hearing them claim that they were acting with the backing of M Chirac’s Government.

Although France has long been accused of secret operations to maintain its influence in Africa, the ruling constituted an unprecedented, public condemnation of these practices. It was particularly embarrassing for M Chirac, who has sought to portray himself as one of the Third World’s greatest advocates in the West.

Chirac used just that pose to protect Saddam Hussein from an American invasion in the early months of 2003, attempting to shield France from the revelations of the Oil-For-Food scam as well as protect its corporate interests in Iraq. The French made quite a show about their disavowal of violence in the service of regime change, skipping over the sixteen unenforced UN Security Council resolutions that Saddam defiantly ignored. Now we find out that the French have no problems with military intervention for regime change, and only differ in the level of honesty involved.

France and Chirac owe an explanation of this episode. They won't give one, but they owe it nonetheless.

No Amnesty, No Normalization, No Border Security

Republican Congressional leaders have told the White House that they will not bend on any normalization scheme that allows those who entered the US illegally to have a path to citizenship without leaving the country -- and so no immigration reform will happen in 2006. They will not proclaim the effort dead out of respect to George Bush, but they will not consider the broader reforms that the Senate wants, and the Senate will not act on border security alone:

In a defeat for President Bush, Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday that broad immigration legislation is all but doomed for the year, a victim of election-year concerns in the House and conservatives' implacable opposition to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

"Our number one priority is to secure the border, and right now I haven't heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship," said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., announcing plans for an unusual series of hearings to begin in August on Senate-passed immigration legislation. ...

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after Hastert's announcement of hearings, "The president is undeterred. We are committed and we have been working very hard with members (of Congress) to see if we can reach consensus on an issue the American people have said they want action on."

In the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters he welcomed hearings. "As much examination of the House bill and Senate bill as possible is good," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a principal author of the Senate-passed measure, offered to testify at House hearings. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, "I'm hopeful" of a compromise before the elections.

Two thoughts come to mind on this announcement. First, I find it interesting and a little appalling that the GOP leadership in Congress waited for George Bush to leave the country before making this announcement. They have had plenty of opportunity to make this announcement before he took off for his EU conferences; this kind of tactic looks like a stab in the back, even if it isn't intended that way.

Second, it looks like the GOP wants to win its base back rather than attempt broad-based legislation. In this case, that may well prove successful. The midterms have more risk for the House than anywhere else, and the Democrats have aimed their main efforts at capturing the lower chamber. This may be an acknowledgement of too much risk in November and offering a tough stance on immigration in order to drive conservatives back to the polls.

That strategy carries some risks, but mostly for the Senate, and that mostly for the moderates. The issue of border security has received high-profile attention, and if this session of Congress still produces nothing significant, the blame will fall on the upper chamber, especially the moderate and liberal Senators that insisted on linking border security to the larger issue of immigration. The House may well force the Senate to de-link the issues and come together on a straight border-security bill before the elections.

One fact is certain: this issue isn't dead, even if immigration reform is on life support.

Readily-Prepared Storylines, Example 06-137

ABC News reports at 3:03 pm CT:

Bush Arrives In Austria

BBC reports at 2:37 pm CT:

Guantanamo clouds EU-US talks

Well, those talks went downhill quickly, huh? Why did he bother landing at all?

They Can't Silence Us! (Well, Not For Long, Anyway)

Apparently we are having a problem with the comments script at CQ, so our readers have not been able to post their thoughts. I have asked Hosting Matters to look into the matter. Hopefully we will have the comments section open for business soon.

In the meantime, please check out these links:

Bruce Kesler is callng for Human Rights Watch to fire Mark Garlasco. Given his and HRW's track record on Israel, he's probably right but shouldn't hold his breath...

The Anchoress notes a very strange coffee commercial ...

If you haven't read Michelle Malkin's post about the 9/11 Scholarship Program, make sure you do so soon. See Deb Schlussel as well ...

Learned Foot's substituting for Mitch at Shot In The Dark, and he has a scoop on Pink Floyd lead singer Roger Waters and his protest against the Israeli security barrier. Gee, guess which song lyrics he changes to make his point? Connie Chung sounds better and better all the time ....

Tom Maguire dissects the latest in conspiracy theories coming from TruthOut and has trouble typing while laughing ...

ShrinkWrapped (not Michae van der Galien, as I wrote earlier) finishes his Standing With Israel series ...

And The Commissar takes a look at the relative sexuality of various sports, flirting with political incorrectness the entire way -- not that there's anything wrong with that!

Did Suskind Confuse His Terrorists?

Ron Suskind, whose new book The One Percent Solution revealed spectacular allegations of pending terrorist attacks in the US, may have confused two different terrorists in his research. The error could have led to erroneous conclusions in Suskind's book, ABC News reports, but Suskind stands by his work:

Counter-terrorism officials in the United States and Great Britain say an allegation of a "catastrophic breakdown in communications," reported in a new book on terror, is based on the author's own breakdown in communication.

Officials say author Ron Suskind, in "The One Percent Doctrine," got names confused when he reported that the mastermind of last year's London bombings, Mohammad Siddique Khan, had contacts in the United States, had been placed on a no-fly list and was prevented from boarding a plane to the United States in 2003.

Terror experts say that no evidence shows that M S Khan ever entered the United States. However, Mohammed Amjad Khan fits the description much more closely. M A Khan did have contacts in the US prior to his conviction in the UK on terror-related activities. American and British officials say that Suskind simply got his terrorists confused.

Why is this important? M S Khan masterminded the July 7 London bombings, and Suskind has charged that British intelligence received warnings from American intel services about the danger he represented. If Suskind is correct, his book contradicts official British explanations that the attack from M S Khan could not have been specifically anticipated. However, if Suskind turns out to have confused the two terrorists, then his entire argument regarding a "catastrophic breakdown in communications" will completely fail.

So far, Suskind stands by his reporting. However, it does look like an awfully large coincidence between the two names, and if it turns out to be more than that, then his credibility will take a big hit in the days to come.

Missile Defense: Shall We Play A Game?

Earlier today, North Korea stepped up the rhetoric surrounding their impending missile launch by declaring themselves free of the moratorium on missile launches it established with Japan four years ago. In response, the US has activated its missile defense systems while trying to keep our moves from being unnecessarily provocative:

The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the
Pentagon has activated the system, which has been in the developmental stage for years.

"It's good to be ready," the official said.

U.S. officials say evidence such as satellite pictures suggests Pyongyang may have finished fueling a Taepodong-2 missile, which some experts said could reach as far as Alaska.

The Taepodong-2 missile has Alaska in easy reach for a direct targeting profile. Depending on the configuration used, however, the Taepodong-2 can hit targets in the continental US using a ballistic polar route for its flight. The pending launch has the US and Japan on high alert. Without a doubt, if the rocket fires, the US will have no choice but to respond in some forceful manner -- and if we're lucky, it will only be a successful demonstration of the missile defense system.

Pyongyang asserted its right to launch ballistic missiles earlier:

North Korea asserted it has full autonomy to conduct missile tests, and outsiders do not have the right to criticize its plans, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported Tuesday.

Before the latest statement, North Korea's apparent moves toward test launching a long-range ballistic missile already spiked tensions in the region and drew warnings of serious repercussions from the United States and others.

Australia on Tuesday strengthened its warning to North Korea, saying Canberra could downgrade diplomatic ties with Pyongyang if the launch goes ahead.

Kim wants immunity from ... criticism? Well, he can wish all he wants. We've seen Kim's brinksmanship in the past, and we're still probably looking at more of the same. However, no one wants to shrug off his actions, and the increasing criticism coming from abroad will help convince Kim that provocative stunts like this may do a lot more damage than good.

In any event, we should know shortly whether Kim is bluffing or not. It may get to the point where further diplomacy simply cannot continue without some degree of rational thinking from the North Koreans.

UPDATE: Here's some timely information on our missile defense from TCS:

Missile defense remains a work in progress. For example, a highly sophisticated X-band radar is being towed by sea from Hawaii to Adak, Alaska, which sits some 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Once activated, it will discern between decoys and warheads as small as a baseball, and keep a watchful eye on inbound traffic from Beijing and Pyongyang.

Elsewhere on the high seas, May saw the Navy fire an SM-2 anti-missile missile from the deck of an Aegis cruiser and kill an inbound threat in its terminal phase (the final few seconds of flight). "It was the first sea-based intercept of a ballistic missile in its terminal phase," according to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Likewise, the MDA scored a land-based success in May, when rocketeers at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico test-fired a high-altitude interceptor missile designed to seek out and destroy inbound threats in their final minute of flight.

In the skies, the Airborne Laser -- a missile-killing laser mounted on a 747 that can loiter outside enemy territory and destroy a missile long before it threatens American soil -- continues to hit its marks. Ground-based testing of the laser was completed in December, with a new round of flight-tests scheduled for this coming fall, all building toward a full-blown missile-intercept above Edwards AFB sometime in 2008.

It looks like the array may arrive just in time.

UPDATE II: Dan at the BY Sun blog It Shines For All reminds readers that the Sun editorialized on the need to prepare for war in regards to North Korea:

But most of all a priority should be placed on preparing a military response to North Korea's nuclear program so that the moment intelligence discovers that the communists who run the North Korean state have been cheating, its atomic weapons program can be dealt with directly, before things reach the point that more countries than South Korea and possibly Japan are within range of North Korean guns.

The pacifist argument that has been circulating since President Clinton first started appeasing Kim Jong Il and set North Korea down the nuclear road is that any action against the communist state would endanger nearby countries. But the flipside is that inaction just lets North Korea build up its strength and have more countries in its sight. And now America is threatened. Now will America prepare for war?

We'd like to think so.

AQI Top 5 Terrorist Killed (Update: Confirmed, Perhaps Plus Another AQI Leader Captured)

CENTCOM announced minutes ago that one of the men expected to take the place of the now-room temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also reached thermal equilibrium near Baghdad. The spokesman for the military briefed reporters on the death of Sheikh Mansur, displaying before and after mug shots of the dead terrorist and explained his significance to the insurgent network in Iraq. So far, none of the wire services have picked up the story; I will fill in the details as they become available.

UPDATE: The BBC has an addendum to the story on the discovery of the two bodies that reports up to 15 insurgents killed while hunting a "senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq," but does not identify Sheikh Mansur despite the specifics in the briefing.

UPDATE II: The Commissar asks if I may have mistranscribed the name from al-Masri or al-Mohajer. I took the name from the placard at the briefing, but it still might be the same person, as terrorists have been known to adopt multiple identities. I'm waiting for better reporting to come from the morning briefing, and find it disappointing that the story has not made its own way onto the wires thus far. Still scanning ...

UPDATE III: CENTCOM now has a release stating that they have detained a senior AQI leader and three of his lieutenants near Baghdad. CENTCOM has not named the terrorists detained as yet.

UPDATE IV: Thanks to CQ reader Brendan F, we see that the BBC has updated their report:

Gen Caldwell said on Tuesday US forces had killed Zarqawi's "right-hand man" in a raid in Yusifiya on Friday, near where the US troops were abducted.

The general said Iraqi Mansur Suleiman al-Mashhadani was "a key leader in al-Qaeda" and could have succeeded Zarqawi.

So now we have mainstream media confirmation on the kill -- and it appears we also have another senior AQI leader detained. It may take some time to get the information clear about the later CENTCOM release.

Oh, Those Brave And Honorable Jihadis!

The Times of London reports on the latest defensive tactic by the brave and honorably Islamists in Afghanistan when facing Western forces. Instead of just hiding among and targeting civilian populations in their terrorism, now they have started seizing women and children to use as human shields when running away from NATO/Coalition forces under fire:

TALEBAN fighters used women and children as human shields as they tried to escape into the mountains of Afghanistan, British troops claimed yesterday. The tactics were revealed in the first account by those who fought in one of the main battles faced by the men of 3 Para and the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Helmand province, where 3,300 British troops are stationed.

The Taleban’s use of human shields happened during a six-hour battle that began when British troops arrived in a remote area to flush out a suspected Taleban hideout.

They came under attack seven times and fired 2,000 rounds as the rebels set ambushes and opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades. About 21 Taleban were killed.

“It happened twice where they pushed women and children in front of them. The first time they ran into a compound and pushed them out the front to stop the assault,” said Corporal Quintin Poll, 29, from Norfolk [UK]. “The second time they were firing through a building with women and children inside. My guys had to go around the left and right to get them.”

The Western media should keep this story in mind when reporting on civilian casualties in areas where terrorists fight against Western forces. On two occasions during the rout that killed almost two dozen of the Islamists -- supposedly brave Muslim fighters -- they deliberately pushed women and children into the line of fire.

This has two purposes for the Taliban. First, it keeps Western forces from firing on them, as they know that Coalition troops will try to protect civilians where possible. Secondly as just as importantly from a strategic point of view, any women and children killed in the battle will almost certainly be blamed on the Western forces by the Western media. It allows the Taliban to continue their propaganda blitz against the West, one in which the media has unwittingly (in most cases) found themselves a pawn to the Islamists.

Men who throw women and children in the line of fire to protect themselves have no honor, no courage, and no claim to religious righteousness under any circumstances. It's high time that the West grows up and understands the cowardly nature of tyrannies and the people who impose them. It will give us much more clarity in the effort that needs to be made to rid ourselves of the craven ghouls who prey on civilian populations for their own delusions of grandeur.

Bodies Of Two Missing Soldiers Found In Iraq

The Iraqi government has found the bodies of two American soldiers reportedly captured by terrorists in Iraq last week, and the bodies show signs of torture according to the preliminary reports:

The bodies of two U.S. soldiers who had been reported kidnapped have been found near the checkpoint where the men disappeared after an attack, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday. The U.S. military said two bodies had been found but had not yet been identified.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., went missing Friday near the town of Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad. Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack. ...

Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer who said he witnessed the attack Friday, said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two Humvees went after the assailants, but the third was ambushed before it could move, he told The Associated Press.

Seven masked gunmen, including one carrying what Falah described as a heavy machine gun, killed the driver of the third vehicle, then took the two other U.S. soldiers captive, the witness said. His account could not be verified independently.

McQ at QandO has written about this tactical shift in the terrorist game plan over the past few days, and how that tactics often shift on both sides in response to successes and failures in the field. The terrorists apparently detected a tactical pattern and came up with a strategy to exploit it, and CENTCOM will undoubtedly have already been working on a counter-tactic for patrols in the future. This happens in every war, but it doesn't make the loss any more palatable.

One of the families of the two men stated that the US should have paid the ransom from money captured from Saddam Hussein's riches. I can understand why they feel that way, and I don't blame them a bit (please see my update on this, too). However, I doubt that the soldiers even survived long enough for any negotiations to take place; they have been missing only a little under four days. In that time, the military received 66 intel tips, 18 of which were actionable, and they didn't have time to exploit them before the bodies were found. In any case, paying ransom for kidnappings only subsidizes more kidnappings, more Danegeld in proverbial terms, and it is a bad policy overall.

We'll keep the families in our prayers, as we do every day for all our young men and women in harm's way.

UPDATE: In case people find this post from the Blogometer, let me emphasize what I wrote above about understanding why the families of these men would be upset at the US policy of not paying ransom for hostages. After all, they are the ones most directly affected by that policy -- and they are entitled to their grief. People who take them to task for an eminently understanable emotional reaction really need to rethink their argument and cut these people a whole lot more slack.

The Blogometer, by the way, is an excellent daily roundup of the blogosphere, and I read it every day, and recommend it to you as well.

Iraq Already Has A Plan For Coalition Withdrawal

Today the Senate will start debate on a non-binding resolution that will demand an end to the American presence in Iraq except for those troops engaged in training Iraqi security forces. This new proposal contains much of the same language as the amendment offered by John Kerry to the defense authorization bill that got soundly thumped last week 93-6 when offered by the GOP separately for debate, but as the newly appointed Iraqi National Security Advisor writes today in the Washington Post, the effort is completely unnecessary.

First, let's take a look at the latest Democratic effort to shut down the American effort in Iraq, a silly and nonspecific proposal that inspired Senator Mitch McConnell to call it a "cut and jog":

Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They avoided setting a firm timetable for withdrawal but argued that the Bush administration's open-ended commitment to the war would only prevent Iraqis from moving forward on their own.

Coming the week after partisan and often angry House debate over the war, the Senate proposal, a nonbinding resolution, was carefully worded to deflect any accusations that the Democrats were "cutting and running," as their position has been depicted by Republicans. The Democrats behind the measure did not even use the term "withdrawal," and talked about how to guarantee "success" for Iraq, not about any failures of the war.

"The administration's policy to date — that we'll be there for as long as Iraq needs us — will result in Iraq's depending upon us longer," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who has been designated by the Democratic leadership to present the party's strategy on Iraq. "Three and a half years into the conflict, we should tell the Iraqis that the American security blanket is not permanent."

The resolution was cobbled together by moderate Democrats trying to smooth over differences within the party. The minority leadership has tried to distance itself from a proposal by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts setting a mandatory deadline for American combat troops to be out of Iraq by the end of this year, a limit that Mr. Kerry modified only marginally on Monday. Some Republican lawmakers and the White House pointed to that proposal last week in attacking Democrats as inconsistent and weak on national security.

The Times gets its analysis completely incorrect in the lead paragraph. This amendment has no intention of bridging differences between the parties, but to bridge a huge difference within the Democratic Party. Kerry's amendment exposed the lack of enthusiasm on the part of many Democrats to call the effort in Iraq a complete defeat, especially in an election year.

With the successful roll-up of the Zarqawi network last week demonstrating how long-range intel and boots on the ground work together for progress, the talking point that our military could not take on terrorists -- a defeatist attitude in any case, but especially after last week -- no longer holds water. The establishment of the elected government after five months of frustrating negotiations has also shown that the Iraqis have made real progress in learning to be democrats, a skill that did not get any development during the decades of Saddam's dictatorship.

We can expect the Democrats to complain bitterly during the debate about the lack of a plan for returning American troops home. That argument has already been undermined by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi National Security Advisor, who makes the plan very clear in today's Washington Post. Not surprisingly, his explanation of the security plan sounds identical to what the Bush administration has said all along:

There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq, but no defined timeline has yet been set. There is, however, an unofficial "road map" to foreign troop reductions that will eventually lead to total withdrawal of U.S. troops. This road map is based not just on a series of dates but, more important, on the achievement of set objectives for restoring security in Iraq.

Iraq has a total of 18 governorates, which are at differing stages in terms of security. Each will eventually take control of its own security situation, barring a major crisis. But before this happens, each governorate will have to meet stringent minimum requirements as a condition of being granted control. For example, the threat assessment of terrorist activities must be low or on a downward trend. Local police and the Iraqi army must be deemed capable of dealing with criminal gangs, armed groups and militias, and border control. There must be a clear and functioning command-and-control center overseen by the governor, with direct communication to the prime minister's situation room.

Despite the seemingly endless spiral of violence in Iraq today, such a plan is already in place. All the governors have been notified and briefed on the end objective. The current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has approved the plan, as have the coalition forces, and assessments of each province have already been done. Nobody believes this is going to be an easy task, but there is Iraqi and coalition resolve to start taking the final steps to have a fully responsible Iraqi government accountable to its people for their governance and security. Thus far four of the 18 provinces are ready for the transfer of power -- two in the north (Irbil and Sulaymaniyah) and two in the south (Maysan and Muthanna). Nine more provinces are nearly ready.

So not only do we have a plan in place, the Iraqis have already agreed to the plan, all of the provincial governments know it, and all of them have plans to implement it. The plan does not rely on timetables but on specific markers that show competency on the part of the new Iraqi security forces to deal with gangs, militias, and terrorists on their own. Four of the provinces have already met the standards and await the transfer, and nine more have almost met the criteria at this point, leaving five that need significant progress.

When would that place America in a position to drop troop levels significantly? Rubaie foresees significant declines in 2007 to a level below 100,000, and all but gone by the end of 2008. He wants the US to leave Iraq for the same reasons that some politicians have noted: Iraqis want to rule themselves, of course, and see the American troops as interlopers. Nevertheless, he understands that his government needs the US military to keep order for a while longer, and that drawing up deadlines instead of progress criteria only encourages more violence -- and he's correct.

The Democrats have demagogued this debate for years, and they keep trying to extend their foolishness despite the damage it does to the nation and their own party. They have once again been exposed as either negligently uninformed, deliberately obtuse, or just flat-out dishonest about the plan for Iraqi security and the progress being made towards it. Watered-down resolutions calling for retreat and defeat only continue a political lemming march, whether it comes at a run or a jog, and expect the American people to continue their disappointment in the Democratic lack of spine in fighting terrorists and spreading freedom as a forward strategy against Islamofascism.

ADDENDUM: This also shows that the Iraqis, despite the rather bigoted and contradictory language coming from the Senate on both sides of the aisle, are not lazy and simply allowing the US to do all the heavy lifting:

"As long as we're there to do this heavy lifting," [Senator Jack] Reed said, "even though they want to do it themselves, they won't do it."

This argument never made much sense. The same people who tell us this are telling us simultaneously that the Iraqis resent us and want us to leave. Rubaie confirms that the Iraqis not only want to provide their own security, they have increasingly done so, and have not transformed into layabouts.

Hillary, Kerry, Gore Face Near-Majority No Votes

In an early poll determining the strengths and weaknesses of the various potential candidates for the 2008 presidential race, both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry face a skeptical electorate. Both candidates have at least 47% of the voters opposing them already, the second-highest of any would-be Democratic contenders. Another previous nominee takes first prize, while a presidential brother takes the top spot for the GOP:

With the presidential election more than two years away, a CNN poll released Monday suggests that nearly half of Americans would "definitely vote against" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Respondents were asked whether they would "definitely vote for," "consider voting for," or "definitely vote against" three Democrats and three Republicans who might run for president in 2008.

Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would "definitely vote against" both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's candidate in 2004.

Forty-eight percent said the same of former Vice President Al Gore, who has repeatedly denied he intends to run again for president. ... As for Bush, brother of the current president, 63 percent said there was no way he would get their vote. The younger Bush has denied interest in running for president in 2008.

Hillary also had the highest positive result from the poll, with 22% ready to cast votes in support of putting a Clinton back in the White House. That comes to a negative 25% rating, which cannot bode well for anyone wanting to win a primary nomination. Kerry fared far worse, with a negative 33%. Rudy Giuliani comes up with a -11%, while McCain surprisingly scored a -20%, almost the same as Hillary.

It certainly has some interest, but at this stage of the process this poll is hardly determinative. The race will not begin even preliminarily until next summer, and the upcoming midterms may have a tremendous impact on these numbers, especially for Hillary. I would be interested to see the same poll twelve months from now. In the meantime, the poll is notable for who has apparently been left out: Mark Warner and Barack Obama for the Democrats (as well as John Edwards, who has slipped through all the cracks), and Mitt Romney, George Allen, and Condi Rice for the GOP, the latter just for the fun of seeing how those numbers would look.

America's First Jihadi War

The Jerusalem Post reviews a book by Joshua E. London on the first war that pitted Americans against jihadist Muslims titled Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation. The history of that conflict, and how America prevailed over an enemy comprised of suicidal zealots, would appear informative in today's conflict:

A fledgling republic without a navy, the United States seemed ripe for the picking. In 1783, Muslim pirates - the sea-faring terrorists of their day - began attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, and the following year, the Moroccans captured a brig called Betsey and enslaved its crew. Soon afterwards, the ruler of Algiers declared war on the US, a declaration backed up by marauding corsairs.

The situation worsened with each coming year, but for the life of them, the Americans could not figure out what they did to make themselves so hated. In May 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then both diplomats in Europe, met with Tripoli's ambassador to London. Why did the North Africans attack ships of a country that had done nothing to provoke such hostility, the two asked him.

The response was unnerving. As Adams and Jefferson later reported to the Continental Congress, the ambassador said the raids were a jihad against infidels. Muslim privateers felt "it was their duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could as Prisoners, and that every Mussleman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

The Americans now had two choices: pay tribute or fight the pirates.

Eventually, we stopped paying the Danegeld and took North African politics into our own hands. The Marine Corps hymn does not include "the shores of Tripoli" because it makes for a nice rhyme with "on the land and on the sea". The resolution of the war with the Barbary Pirates came because we decided to institite a policy of regime change on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. It didn't take long before the Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast got the message and left American shipping alone, both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean.

The Post does not give a complete endorsement of the book. Erik Schechter scores London for not being more condemning of the racist statements from American figures of those times, and also complains about sketchy details in London's work. However, Schechter remains positive about the book overall and remarks on London's abilities to make the colorful personalities "come alive". And Schechter notes that London's work reminds us that America's troubles with Islamists did not start in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel.

Haditha: No Cover-Up, But No Determination On Central Allegations

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier that the DoD investigation into the circumstances of the civilian deaths in Haditha show no attempt at a cover-up. Instead, the report appears to point towards poor investigative technique on the part of Marine officers allowed faulty information to flow back to CENTCOM:

The general charged with investigating whether Marines tried to cover up the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has completed his report, finding that Marine officers failed to ask the right questions, an official close to the investigation said Friday.

Nothing in the report points to a "knowing cover-up" of the facts by the officers supervising the Marines involved in the November incident, the official said. Rather, he said, officers from the company level through the staff of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force in Baghdad failed to demand "a thorough explanation" of what happened in Haditha.

In an official announcement about the report by Army Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell, a military spokeswoman said that Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli would "thoroughly review the voluminous report as quickly as possible," but had no timetable. ...

In the Haditha case, military officials have said that photographs of the scene contradicted the initial reports of Marines that the civilians were killed in the crossfire of a battle that erupted after a roadside bomb went off.

Bargewell's inquiry was believed to have looked into who knew about the photos, and why those military men did not question the initial report.

This means that allegations from John Murtha that a massive conspiracy to falsify the evidence from Haditha have turned out to be false, but it does not clear the Marines involved in the original event itself. The circumstances of the deaths continue to be part of an ongoing Navy CIS investigation, whose report is due later this month.

The review of preocedures following the incident and the lack of proper communication of the evidence shows a lack of focus on documentation, a situation that requires immediate remediation, according to the USMC. They intend on impressing on their active units in the field the importance of noting all relevant information in situations where their actions could be called into question. The Corps commandant, General Michael Hagee, warned Marines in Iraq about becoming indifferent to civilian deaths, reminding them of the warrior code of the Corps. Hagee told the troops that a lack of sharpness and focus on their code will present the real danger, not brutality.

In other news, the ACLU released an edited report that concluded that charges of detainee abuses could not be substantiated. Some minor accusations, such as only providing bread and water to certain detainees, had evidence supporting those making the allegations, but the more "spectacular" charges had no evidence in support.

We need to still keep our powder dry on Haditha. While we knew that the Corps could not have possibly conspired to keep evidence of an atrocity like that quiet -- the Corps has too much honor in too many levels for that -- we now have a solid confirmation of that fact, and it takes a bite out of the credibility of those who threw around some pretty wild accusations early on. However, the event itself still remains under investigation. We hope that those allegations will not be substantiated, but we should wait for the final report to celebrate.

UPDATE: Just to clarify Murtha's remarks from three weeks ago, here's the Washington Post from May 29:

"There has to have been a coverup of this thing," Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, charged in an interview on ABC's "This Week." "No question about it."

How many times will Murtha jump the shark, and why is he so insistent on throwing the Marine Corps under the bus in order to win that House Majority Leader position? I don't know, but Hot Air has some funny photoshops featuring Mayday Murtha that will entertain us while we await the answers.

Forty-Two Months For Adscam Figure

In a departure from the lenient sentencing originally given to Paul Coffin for his crimes in the Sponsorship Programme corruption ring, Chuck Guité received significant jail time for his five convictions. The Montreal court has given the former Liberal bureaucrat forty-two months in prison, the harshest sentence thus far:

Former bureaucrat Chuck Guité was sentenced Monday to 42 months in prison after being found guilty of all counts of fraud in the wake of the federal sponsorship scandal.

The Crown had sought a sentence of between three to four years. Prosecutor Jacques Dagenais told a Montreal court that Mr. Guité's power and position of trust meant he deserved the harshest sentence to date of the three players convicted in the federal scandal. Mr. Guité was found guilty earlier this month of five counts of fraud.

Mr. Guité oversaw the program set up by then prime minister Jean Chrétien after the separatist forces' near-win in the 1995 referendum. The others convicted in the scheme are Liberal-friendly admen Paul Coffin, sentenced to 18 months, and Jean Brault, sentenced to 30 months. Mr. Dagenais said that Mr. Brault, head of Groupaction Marketing, showed genuine remorse. ...

The verdict signalled that the jury wasn't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he said that any irregularities in the sponsorship program stemmed not from criminal intent but from the panic that seized Ottawa in the wake of the 1995 referendum.

Mr. Guité was charged with five counts of fraud for awarding five contracts worth about $2-million to Groupaction Marketing Inc., the firm of Montreal ad executive Jean Brault. The Crown said little or no work was done.

This brings an end to all of the criminal cases under consideration, at least thus far. No move to indict any other player in the Adscam scandal has been made, and the Gomery report did not give any clear path for future prosecutions. However, it will likely not be the end of Adscam for Canadian taxpayers. No one really knows how much the Liberal Party functionaries took out of the Sponsorship Programme for work never done or even contemplated and rechanneled back into the hands of the party and its benefactors, but some estimates run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Canadians may ask themselves where all that money went, especially since the three men convicted only accounted for about $2 million of the funds. It is a question that may never find an answer.

Disabiliblogging Round-Up, Day 1: Six Degrees Of Connie Chung

In honor (or denial) of my temporarily disabled state, I offer the following roundup of political and cultural liabilities around the blogosphere. I don't think this will exactly be a trend, but it's good for a laugh for now:

In an apparent attempt to wrest the title of World's Worst Television Variety Presentation from Lifetime Achievement Award winner Chevy Chase, Connie Chung sings goodbye to her MS-NBC audience, her credibility, and any respect she still might have in broadcasting. The Moderate Voice has the YouTube video and the sound. Trust me, the latter is worse than the former, but that ain't saying much ...

Ankle-Biting Pundits picks up on the Democrats' plan to combat the "culture of corruption" in Congress by making impeached former judge Alcee Hastings their chair of the House Intelligence Committee. That's somewhat akin to improving Connie Chung's singing by having her accompanied by PDQ Bach. I covered it here two weeks ago ...

Speaking of Congress, the Influence Peddler notes that a judge has strongly indicated that our elected representatives do not belong to a sanctuary movement, and that the FBI can indeed enforce a search warrant on Congressional offices ...

In a case of handicapping one's opponents, Betsy Newmark's academic team won the National Scholastic Championship Quiz Bowl -- and beat the national champions to do it. Congratulations, Betsy -- but please do not let your team watch the Connie Chung video, or they may lose twenty IQ points ....

Academia proves that no conspiracy theory or moonbat explanation is too ridiculous not to have at least a couple of dozen professors willing to support it -- and Michelle Malkin's got the goods. I think they may have watched Connie Chung in real time, myself ....

Sachi at Big Lizards has been all over the Dixie Chicks, who sing better than Connie Chung if anyone wanted to listen to them. On the other hand, that is damning with faint praise, isn't it? ....

The Anchoress has a book list from her readers. I would prefer something lighter, like Connie Chung's Musical Method To Greatness ...

We kid, Connie. We kid because we love you. Now please promise never to do that again, and we will recall that CBS could have had you doing the Evening News instead of Dan Rather. We prefer his swan song to yours anytime!

HFM Making Excuses

I admit that I have not kept up with this story well enough, but the conflict between independent journalist and photographer Michael Yon and Hachette Filipacchi Media over their use of his poignant photograph without permission prior to publication has escalated. HFM CEO Jack Kliger has sent a letter to retailers that have come under pressure to pull all HFM publications from their shelves, especially Shock, where HFM used Yon's photograph without permission, according to Yon. Kliger essentially has told retailers to stand fast, as the entire controversy is a tempest in a blogpot:

Even though we had purchased the rights to use the photograph through a reputable photo agency, we recognize that misunderstandings do occur. We acted quickly to address Mr. Yon's concerns, attempted to settle the matter, and when he agreed to a settlement, Mr. Yon himself stated on June 5th via his on-line magazine that he was "satisfied" that we were "acting in good faith." A few days later, Mr. Yon reversed his position and walked away from our talks. We were disappointed, but not surprised. ...

Mr. Yon appears to have taken on the role of self-appointed censor and makes the assumption that if a media outlet depicts the current war in Iraq in a way he considers to be unacceptable, they are anti-military and thus anti-American. To be clear, there is nothing in our story on Iraq that dishonors our troops, quite the contrary. That said, Mr. Yon sees it fit to use intimidation tactics – such as email campaigns to people like you -- to paralyze us, the "offender."

(For more background on Mr. Yon and his controversial past and relationship to the U.S. Army etc. please read this story published recently by The Los Angeles Times. )

While mainstream press has mostly ignored this story, like-minded bloggers have taken it up with a vengeance and
Mr. Yon's website enables anyone to simply press a button and send prepared statements and complaint letters to retailers, to Hachette executives, and to other bloggers en masse. He has a highly-organized campaign and, while we do not take issue with Michael Yon's right to voice his opinion, it seems clear that those participating in this effort are not Shock readers, but rather Mr. Yon's followers.

Because of Shock's outstanding success in Europe, our research in the U.S. which clearly shows a market for this product here, and our plans to aggressively promote this new title to its intended demographic (18-34), we are confident that this magazine will strike a chord with the younger generation.

Kliger assures retailers that the standoff has been perpetuated by Yon, and does not address at all their alleged failure to secure the rights to the image other than saying that they paid some agency for its rights. Kliger doesn't explain which agency and why he thinks it represented Yon when Yon claims it does not. In any case, Kliger dismisses blog readers rather casually, even though the demographics of blog readers appear to mirror that of the intended demographic of his magazine.

Yon has responded with a statement addressing Kliger's remarks:

Michael Yon is turning up the heat on Hachette Filipacchi Media, as almost 7,000 retailers join a burgeoning list of stores refusing to stock or sell Shock magazine. The French publishing conglomerate is behind the launch of the gross-out tabloid that used a well known Yon photo of an American soldier cradling a dying Iraq child on its cover. The photo was used without Yon’s knowledge or consent. The former Green Beret turned writer and photographer spent almost a year embedded with the US military in Iraq gaining notoriety and acclaim for his dispatches detailing the efforts of soldiers in places like Mosul. Yon chronicled the successful struggle there to quell the insurgency and restore order in a city once better known as headquarters for kidnapping and beheading terror squads. His iconic photograph, which he calls “the true portrait of our combat soldier in Iraq,” was taken in May 2005after a terrorist drove a car bomb through a crowd of children who’d gathered around U.S. soldiers.

On Friday, Yon responded to an accusation of “censorship” leveled against him by Hachette Filapacchi executives who were starting to feel the pinch of diminishing shelf space. “This campaign is NOT censorship. It’s the muscular articulation of principle,” he says. “It’s how honorable people align their actions with their words. Not buying Shock, or any HFM magazine, cancelling subscriptions they may already have, and shopping in stores that are with us in this battle, are all ways Americans are sending a clear message to this company, its distributors and advertisers.”

This seems rather straightforward. If Yon owns the rights to that photograph, then HFM has infringed on his intellectual property rights by publishing it without compensating him. In this case, they have two choices: meet his price or pull the magazines off of the stands. They have no right to declare that Yon wants too much for the use of the photograph; they've already bought it at his price by publishing it without his permission. HFM appears to want a third option, which is that they set the price for Yon's property.

I suggest that HFM should honor that philosophy bidirectionally. I now declare that I own a controlling interest in HFM and will immediately replace Jack Kliger with Mark Tapscott (who needs another part-time job to go with his new assignment at the Washington Examiner). My offer will be $1,000 for that controlling interest, plus the spare parts from my back surgery for another Shock exclusive. I will also throw in another $500 to purchase Jack Kliger's house. After Mark takes over at HFM and I complete my move to wherever it is Kliger lives, we can haggle about the price -- or I can simply pay them nothing and declare them unreasonable and only interested in pursuing their own political vendettas.

If that works for Kliger as a response to Yon, I'm sure he will assent to those conditions for control of HFM. I'll get the PayPal check ready.

More Sanctions Threatened For NoKo Missile Launch

North Korea's impending missile test has captured the attention of the United States and Japan, with both countries threatening new sanctions in response to any missile launch:

North Korea has finished loading fuel into a long-range ballistic missile, a Bush administration official said Monday as signs continued that the reclusive communist state will soon test a weapon that could reach the United States.

U.S. intelligence indicates that the long-range missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, is assembled and fully fueled, said the official, who requested anonymity because the information comes from sensitive intelligence methods.

That reportedly gives the North a launch window of about a month. ...

The United States, Japan, Australia and News Zealand all cautioned the impoverished country that a test would bring serious consequences and further isolate the regime. The White House has warned of an appropriate response and Japan has threatened a "fierce" protest to the United Nations.

"Japan has been urging North Korea to stop the attempt to launch a missile," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. "We are making efforts to urge North Korea to act rationally and with self-restraint."

"If it does not listen to us and fires a missile, we have to consult with the United States and take stern measures," he added.

Different analyses of the fuel status of the missile say that the North Koreans would have to launch the missile in a window that may be as short as 48 hours or, as the AP states above, within a month. Leaving a missile fully fueled will eventually damage the missile, so either Pyongyang would have to launch or go through the dangerous step of defueling the rocket.

Of course, this could be another bluff by Kim Jong-Il in order to wrest more concessions from the six-party talks on their nuclear program. They used a rather flimsy diplomatic excuse by saying a Russian editorial supported their right to defend against overflights of North Korea by American espionage aircraft and presumably satellites as well. The rocket itself has a predicted range of 9,000 miles -- which could reach Chicago in a ballistic flight.

The responses so far do not hold too much worry for North Korea. Japan wants to engage the UN by lodging a "fierce protest", but that has all the strength of the proverbial strongly-worded memo. One would hope that the US and Japan might have some anti-missile systems in the area that we could test against their launch, voiding their data and making a completely different impression than the one Pyongyang intends. The short window means we will likely see a quick resolution -- and probably a de-escalation by Kim, who seems to pull these stunts whenever he feels that the media has ignored him too long.

Freedom Of Speech RIP?

Today's Washington Examiner editorial decries the pressures of political correctness and underscores how it undermines the very concept of free speech as well as freedom of religion. It takes a debate in DC over how homosexuality is perceived through secular and religious viewpoints and notes that the consequences of speech seem a bit one-sided:

Robert Smith, Roman Catholic and now-former Metro board member, believes homosexuality is a form of “deviancy.” Jim Graham, District of Columbia Council member, believes Smith’s beliefs are “ancient and archaic.” Graham’s views cost him nothing. Smith’s cost him his job.

Graham and Smith’s now-former boss, Maryland Gov. Bob Erhlich, should have said something like this: “I repudiate Smith’s views and find them disgusting, but it’s a free country and he can say whatever he thinks about any issue.” In a culture increasingly dominated by political correctness, however, such remarks would be derided.

So we have a fundamental issue: freedom of speech for Jim, but not for Bob. Thus the state of health of the First Amendment: You can say anything you want so long as it is politically correct. That’s the definition of “tolerance” practiced by officials like Graham, Erhlich and by many among America’s official and elite opinion-makers.

Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich fired Smith for airing his views on homosexuality, a rather extreme sanction for speaking out on a topic in a public debate. However, one has to remember that Smith was in fact a political appointee of Ehrlich's and served at his pleasure. That means that Smith had to understand that his comments would reflect back on Ehrlich and, depending on Ehrlich's position, would generate some sort of strong response.

I don't see that as a particularly compelling example of the PC urge stamping out free speech, but that dynamic has undeniably been in play for at least the last two decades. Campus speech codes are by far the best example of state- and privately-run institutions showing little tolerance for diversity in opinions and political stances, but it also goes throughout the entire culture of America. This may have reached its pinnacle in the convoluted and destructive regulations of the BCRA (McCain-Feingold), where political speech itself is not only not tolerated for its position but also for its timing and sourcing.

Somewhere along the line, people assumed a right to be free from being offended, a "right" that is diametrically opposed to free speech. A free political discourse will always offend someone, and sometimes it will offend a vast number of people. The solution for that is more free speech, not prior restraint or cultural pressures to shut up. Smith had to know that his appointment held him accountable for his representation of his political patron, but the rest of us are only responsible to ourselves. We need to assert the right of free speech in order to avoid the bonds that one political class would place on the rest of us -- regardless of the political orientation of that class.

UPDATE: CQ reader JD thinks that the global warming debate is a better example, and I'm inclined to agree.

Nifong Now Faces Republican Challenger

Mike Nifong's pursuit of the Duke rape charges regardless of the evident collapse of the case has generated at least one reaction -- he now will face a Republican challenger in the general election. La Shawn Barber has followed the case closely and has more on this development. Jeralynn at TalkLeft has also covered this story with precision and excellence. Be sure to visit both sites to catch up on the story.

UPDATE: I had Nifong's first name incorrectly as Matt instead of Mike. Thanks to CQ reader and Duke student Mike J for the correction.

Owning Both Ends Of An Economic Cycle

This seems almost unfair:

In a twist in corporate synergy, chocolate-maker Nestle AG said Monday it will fatten up its weight-loss business by buying Jenny Craig Inc. for $600 million.

The acquisition follows Nestle's purchase for around $670 million last month of Uncle Tobys, an Australian maker of nutritional cereals and snacks, and is part of the company's "continuing commitment to nutrition, health and wellness," the Swiss company said in a statement.

While best known for its namesake chocolates, Nestle is the world's largest food and drinks company, making baby formulas, nutrition foods such as PowerBar, drinks to aid weight loss and the Lean Cuisine line. The company's purchase of Jenny Craig follows the lead of consumer products company Unilever, which bought both Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Slim Fast in 2000.

So Nestle will sell you enough of their original product line until you need Jenny Craig -- and then sell you Lean Cuisine for maintenance. That sounds like a clever and rather cynical marketing strategy, doesn't it?

However, there may be more to this than just cynicism. With class-action activists targeting the food industry for making consumers fat, these companies are smart to diversify. The trend for food has gone towards healthier options, and high-sugar/high-fat products will continue to slow. Nestle made the right choice in an overall strategic sense, although the individual performance of Jenny Craig may or may not pan out for the Swiss chocolatier.

Still, that cycle looks pretty strange in a corporate portfolio ....

The New French Right?

Sabine Herold, acclaimed by French libertarians as a harbinger of the policies that would rescue France from itself, has announced her intent to run for the National Assembly. Herold will run for office in an upscale Paris district where a center-Right member of Jacques Chirac's coalition currently serves -- a message that Herold might eye a higher office soon:

Sabine Hérold, who sprang to fame when she led a protest movement against French workers' readiness to go on strike, now hopes to exploit growing disillusionment with her country's political elite by winning a seat in parliament.

Miss Hérold, 25, who regards her French media nickname - Mlle Thatcher - as a compliment, also refuses to rule out standing as a candidate to replace Jacques Chirac as president next year.

Miss Hérold, a prominent figure in the new Liberal Alternative Party, told The Daily Telegraph last night that her aim was to restore French people's confidence in their country and society.

"I don't see myself as being of the Right," she insisted from Turkey, where she is on holiday. "Our concept of liberalism doesn't translate easily into English, but essentially means giving individuals the freedom and responsibility to make their own decisions in all areas of life." Miss Hérold found herself addressing crowds of up to 80,000 three years ago when she became the spearhead of a campaign against crippling anti-government strikes by public sector workers.

Herold had operated more quietly since the heady days of 2003, when her star rose on the backlash of those strikes. Her candidacy for office had been the subject of much anticipation, and her decision to run will certainly gain enough publicity to put her opponents at some disadvantage. Young, attractive, intelligent, Herold also has a unique political point of view that may well resonate with disenchanted Parisians who have watched their country fail economically and politically over the past several decades.

Her nickname appears well-earned. Like Margaret Thatcher, she has diagnosed her nation's domestic ills to overzealous state control of the economy and paralysis through trade-union control of the government. Even three years ago, Herold transfixed political observers. After the riots this year in France, more voters may well be inclined to agree that the hidebound controls over French economics must be broken before France can fix itself. Thatcher's experience might be the best analogy to the current French situation, and her solution would appear to apply even more now than it did then, when Britain faced a milder economic problem in comparison.

Will the French change overnight? Of course not. However, if Herold can find her way into the National Assembly, she can serve as a beacon for the sanity of open markets and laissez-faire regulation as the only means to generate the new investment needed to rescue the French economy. At the least, Herold will provide some political fireworks in a nation that sorely needs a positive debate instead of riots and walkouts to set their policies.

UPDATE: Occidentality is not as sanguine about Sabine as I am, and Joel Shepherd interviewed Herold for an article last year. Be sure to read both posts.

Saddam Trial Heading Into Final Arguments

The trial of Saddam Hussein has concluded its evidentiary phase and now has proceeded to final arguments. To no one's great surprise, the prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Saddam and his co-defendants, while the defendants tried to disrupt the proceedings yet again:

The prosecutor asked for the death penalty for Saddam Hussein and two of his co-defendants, saying in closing arguments Monday that the former Iraqi leader and his regime committed crimes against humanity in a "revenge" attack on Shiite civilians in the 1980s.

The arguments brought the eight-month-old trial into its final phase. After Monday's session, the court adjourned until July 10, when the defense will begin making its final summation.

Saddam, dressed in a black suit, sat silently, sometimes taking notes, as chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi delivered his arguments, listing the evidence against each of the eight defendants.

Concluding his remarks, al-Moussawi asked for the death penalty against Saddam, his half brother Barzan Ibrahim — the head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time — and Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former senior regime member. The method of execution is hanging.

The defense complained that the judges forced them to close their case prematurely, but the court had had enough of witnesses who failed to appear and those who did offering irrelevancies. Four witnesses found themselves under arrest for perjury, showing that the court had abandoned it earlier mollification of the dictatorship's key figures and instead opted for judicial sanity.

Not all defendants got the call for hanging. The prosecutor recommended lighter sentences for a few of the defendants and called for the outright release of one, Mohammed Azawi Ali, due to a lack of evidence specific to the Dujail crimes. One defendant did not get a recommendation of sentencing: Awad al-Bandar, the man who ironically had no problem sentencing 148 Dujail men, women, and children to death. The prosecution called for his conviction but left out any recommendation for punishment.

The defense will take to the lectern later this week. Expect to hear plenty of political diatribes and calls for Iraqi uprisings against the newly elected government in their summation -- and expect the tough judges to shut it down shortly afterwards.

Are We Winning The Viet Nam War?

The New York Times reports that Viet Nam has received plenty of attention lately, and not just as an analogy to our current war in Iraq. American investors, prompted by the US government, have renewed interest in an increasingly capitalistic Viet Nam. In fact, DC wants to use its economic leverage to beat the Chinese in Viet Nam's market, a strange but interesting twist by the players of a much different conflict four decades ago:

With the fastest growth in East Asia after China and a capitalist game plan that is attracting global investment, Communist Vietnam is emerging as a regional economic power as it moves steadily from rice fields to factories.

And with the wounds of war all but healed, Washington is paying attention.

Trade talks between House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, and his Vietnamese counterpart turned into a lovefest here recently, choreographed by the hosts to show their affection for America.

"At last we're having dinner together," said Nguyen Van An, the leader of the Vietnamese National Assembly, as he hugged the speaker and presented a copy of a letter from Ho Chi Minh to President Harry S. Truman appealing for American help against the French. "We should have met 60 years ago."

Mr. Hastert's presence in April was part of a larger dance that has since starred Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as visitors, and will feature President Bush when he attends the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting here this fall. Vietnam's leaders have made plain they want the United States on their side for equilibrium against China, a longtime occupier. Vietnam, though an ideological ally of Beijing, fears an expanding Chinese sphere of influence and being reduced to an economic appendage by China, its northern neighbor.

It has fought wars against China, most recently in 1979. But now, relations have "never been so good," said Ton Nu Thi Ninh, the vice chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly.

The US has put aside historical animosities to open another economic front in the battle against Chinese expansion in the Far East. The remarkable part of this story is that Viet Nam has actually moved this far into market-based economics after the tragic consequences of Hanoi's rule in the 1970s. This has mostly happened in the past six years, as the Politburo did not allow for private enterprise until a momentous decision in 2000. Mired in an economic disaster -- per capita income remained below $200 per year -- the regime had watched as the Asian Tiger roared all around it, including in China, while Viet Nam remained mired in the past.

Small- and medium-business owners abound in Viet Nam now, and per capita income has increased 400% in the period since. The government continues to operate monopolies for now in large industries, but the regime has given some indications of flexibility. Most interestingly for a former hardline Communist regime, people now proudly proclaim their incomes from the ownership of their own businesses. One entrepeneur has created a string of fast-food restaurants that he modeled on McDonalds, and each of the franchises can earn their owners $40,000 a year -- a fortune that represents almost 70 years' average income for the Vietnamese.

Even more interestingly, the Chinese have as much of an interest in moving manufacturing jobs to Viet Nam as do American investors. The labor rate for Viet Nam comes in significantly below that in China, making one of the more notorious of the labor exploiters (including illegal prison labor) fight to keep labor costs even lower. With 1.4 billion people requiring employment, the Chinese probably can't afford to export too many of their jobs, and that gives the US an advantage in taking up a share of that market. We can also afford to use that labor force even when it exceeds the Chinese labor rate, further squeezing China in Viet Nam for economics and influence.

It may turn out that we will win the Viet Nam War outright through the engagement of market economics and friendship and put an end to communism in Southeast Asia. This time, it may be the Chinese who have to worry about domino principles.

The Left Can't Tell Between Victory And Defeat

The problem in the debate over the war in Iraq has suddenly clarified itself thanks to two people on the Left who demonstrate that their side has no idea what a successful military decision looks like. Between John Murtha and Frank Rich, both of whom argue that Iraq is a disaster, Somalia is either a brilliant tactical decision or a stunning loss for America -- and this within hours of each other.

On yesterday's Meet The Press, where Murtha followed the John Kerry strategy of criticizing Karl Rove's weight rather than his positions (I guess this kind of ad hominem insult attracts voters on the Left), Murtha has this to say about Somalia:

REP. MURTHA: He’s, he’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, “Stay the course.” That’s not a plan. I mean, this guy—I don’t know what his military experience is, but that’s a political statement. This is a policy difference between me and the White House. I disagree completely with what he’s saying.

Now, let’s, let’s—give me, give you an example. When we went to Beirut, I, I said to President Reagan, “Get out.” Now, the other day we were doing a debate, and they said, “Well, Beirut was a different situation. We cut and run.” We didn’t cut and run. President Reagan made the decision to change direction because he knew he couldn’t win it. Even in Somalia, President Clinton made the decision, “We have to, we have to change direction.

That's funny, because yesterday Frank Rich spent his column assuring us that Somalia's fall to Islamists was a failure that can be blamed on the United States (via Just One Minute, emphasis mine):

Those who are most enraged about the administration's reckless misadventures are incredulous that it repeatedly gets away with the same stunts. Last week the president was still invoking 9/11 to justify the war in Iraq, which he again conflated with the war on Islamic jihadism — the war we are now losing, by the way, in Afghanistan and Somalia. But as long as the Democrats keep repeating their own mistakes, they will lose to the party whose mistakes are, if nothing else, packaged as one heckuva show. It's better to have the courage of bad convictions than no courage or convictions at all.

So while John Murtha thinks that Bill Clinton did the right thing by abandoning Somalia to its warlords and Islamist rebels, including al-Qaeda, now Rich wants to blame Bush for its fall -- and for what? Not invading Somalia? Has Frank Rich stood on his soapbox and ever demanded a return in force for the US military in Mogadishu? Of course not, because Rich sees all military deployments overseas as another example of American imperialism at work. He calls Somalia an American defeat at the same time that Murtha praises our abandonment of the Somalians. That demonstrates why the Left cannot be trusted on national security and defense -- they have no concept of success or failure in military matters, and believe a defeat can somehow be a strategem that should be repeated.

Let's return to Murtha, however, because the Congressman kept getting more and more incoherent as the interview went on. Tim Russert even showed where Murtha had advised against just the scenario he now advocates two years ago:

MR. RUSSERT: But in 2004, you had a view that was much different than you had now, and this is what you wrote in your book: “A war initiated on faulty intelligence must not be followed by a premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable. An untimely exit could rapidly devolve into a civil war, which would leave America’s foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America’s judgment but also its perseverance.” Aren’t you now advocating that?

REP. MURTHA: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That’s what I said then. And I think in the early stages, you have to judge that. But there comes a time when you got to change direction. There comes a time when you have to say to yourself, “OK, we’ve done everything we could do, we can’t win this militarily.”

Uh, OK. So in 2004 it was wrong to make that kind of calculation, but in 1993 and in 2006, it's fine. Russert then asked where 135,000 American troops could deploy and still remain in a position where they could respond quickly enough to make a difference for the fledgling Iraqi Army and security forces if they needed our assistance. This has to be read to be believed:

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

MR. RUSSERT: But it’d be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa.

REP. MURTHA: Well, it—you know, they—when I say Okinawa, I, I’m saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly. And—and—when they don’t know we’re coming. There’s no question about it. And, and where those airplanes won’t—came from I can’t tell you, but, but I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take very long for them to get in with cruise missiles or with, with fighter aircraft or, or attack aircraft, it doesn’t take any time at all. So we, we have done—this one particular operation, to say that that couldn’t have done, done—it was done from the outside, for heaven’s sakes.

Okinawa? Okinawa is five time zones away -- over 5,000 miles from Baghdad. And that's considering a straight flight, which unfortunately means we would have to violate Chinese airspace for about half of the trip. Do you suppose the Chinese would give us access to their airspace if we explained that this huge mission of military bombers and fighters would pass through quickly on their way to Iraq?

Is John Murtha really that dumb?

Anyone lacking even the geographical notions of strategic deployment, anyone who cannot read a map and see a very large hostile nation between a staging area and a target and not discern a problem, is someone who has absolutely disqualified himself as any sort of military expert. The question for Democrats is why they keep putting Murtha out as their defense expert when he can make statements like this with a straight face. It reveals the utter lack of military scholarship on their part when their two most hailed experts on military affairs are a man who cannot see why Okinawa might be a bad place for a staging ground for Southwest Asia, and a man who wants to turn over Iraqi sovereignty to Iran and Syria.

And Democrats wonder why they cannot gain traction against the Republicans in the age of Islamist terror!

UPDATE: Froggy at Blackfive has the same take on the Okinawa Option, along with a pretty cool graphic showing exactly how the shortest flight line would take our planes over China but also Iran, and the range of the planes necessary for that kind of mission. It is, one realizes, the kind of information a real military expert would have consulted before showing up on Meet The Press and winging it.

UPDATE II: It turns out that Murtha wasn't winging it at all with his Okinawa Option -- he proposed it last December:

They keep saying the terrorists are going to control Iraq -- no way. Al Qaida's only 7 percent of the people in Iraq and doing this fighting. The terrorists -- there's several factions, but let's say Al Qaida is 7 percent at the very most.

Iraq will get rid of them because they'll tell the Iraqis where they are and it will be the end of the terrorist activity.

Now, my plan says redeploy to the periphery, to Kuwait, to Okinawa, and if there's a terrorist activity that affects our allies or affects the United States' national security, we can then go back in.

Rather than just a misstatement on national TV, this shows that Murtha has no clue at all about deployments or strategic geography. As the Admiral Emeritus (who served in Korea) put it, deploying men takes a hell of a lot of preparation. Each man needs one gallon of water per day, especially in that area of the world. If you have to deploy 300 men for ten days, transporting 3,000 gallons of water is not a big problem. If, however, the US needs to send 30,000 men for just ten days, it needs to transport 300,000 gallons of water for them to survive their deployment -- and water is just one of the many critical needs that Logistics has to resolve in any deployment. Other nagging items include material such as ammunition, weapons, artillery, armored personnel carriers, tanks ...

This is why "over the horizon" usually means a tactical position just out of sight, not hundreds or thousands of miles away. This also demonstrates the severe cluelessness of the representative from Pennsylvania.

Are We Talking About A Two-State Solution?

Earlier this evening I posted an update on the tensions between Fatah and Hamas regarding the efforts by Mahmoud Abbas to use a plebescite to bypass Hamas and work towards a two-state solution. At least, that has been the reporting from the mainstream media. However, CQ reader Dan and Charles at LGF point towards the actual document -- and we find no evidence that the so-called National Conciliation Document envisages any such solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The proposal has some problems in its presentation at the Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre. Either the translation is sketchy or the original language has a number of grammatical errors. The writing uses long run-on sentences that seem to double back on themselves. However, it clearly never states any intention of recognizing Israel, nor of accepting 1967 borders for a Palestinian state. Let's take a look at the key paragraphs of the proposal:

1- the Palestinian people in the homeland and in the Diaspora seek to liberate their land and to achieve their right in freedom, return and independence and to exercise their right in self determination, including the right to establish their independent state with al-Quds al-Shareef as its capital on all territories occupied in 1967 and to secure the right of return for the refugees and to liberate all prisoners and detainees based on the historical right of our people on the land of the fathers and grandfathers and based on the UN Charter and the international law and international legitimacy.

The "right of return", of course, is mentioned separately from the "territories occupied in 1967", the first clear indication that the NCD has no intention of recognizing Israeli sovereignty in any area.

2- to work quickly on achieving what has been agreed upon in Cairo in March 2005 pertaining to the development and activation of the PLO and the joining of Hamas and Islamic Jihad Movements to the PLO which is the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people wherever they are located and in a manner that meets with changes on the Palestinian arena according to democratic principles and to consolidate the fact that the PLO is the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people in a manner that reinforces the capacity of the PLO to assume its responsibilities in leading our people in the homeland and in the Diaspora and in mobilizing the people and in defending their national, political and humanitarian rights in the various fora and circles and in the international and regional arenas and based on the fact that the national interest stipulates the formation of a new Palestinian National Council before the end of 2006 in a manner that secures the representation of all Palestinian national and Islamic forces, factions and parties and all concentrations of our people everywhere and the various sectors and the figures on proportional basis in representation and presence and struggle and political, social and popular effectiveness and to maintain the PLO as a broad front and framework and a comprehensive national coalition and a gathering framework for all the Palestinians in the homeland and in the Diaspora and to be the higher political reference.

All this does is demand that Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad finally unite in a single organization to speak for the Palestinians. Apparently, the Triangle Strategy has run its course. The multiple militias now on the brink of civil war worry the prisoners who promulgated this document, and they know a civil war will completely undermine any sense of legitimacy for existing organizations.

3- the right of the Palestinian people in resistance and clinging to the option of resistance with the various means and focusing the resistance in the occupied territories of 1967 alongside with the political action and negotiations and diplomatic action and continuation of popular and mass resistance against the occupation in its various forms and policies and making sure there is broad participation by all sectors and masses in the popular resistance.

This equates resistance in the occupied territories with "the continuation of popular and mass resistance" elsewhere in the region; the document makes a distinction between the two, and endorses resistance in both.

7- Administration of the negotiations is the jurisdiction of the PLO and the President of the PNA on the basis of clinging to the Palestinian national goals and to achieve these goals on condition that any final agreement must be presented to the new PNC for ratification or to hold a general referendum wherever it is possible.

8- To liberate the prisoners and detainees is a sacred national duty that must be assumed by all Palestinian national and Islamic forces and factions and the PLO and the PNA as President and government and the PLC and all resistance forces.

9- The need to double efforts to support and care for the refugees and defend their rights and work on holding a popular conference representing the refugees which should come up with commissions to follow up its duties and to stress on the right of return and to cling to this right and to call on the international community to implement Resolution 194 which stipulates the right of the refugees to return and to be compensated.

Resolution 194 of the UN Security Council dealt with Cyprus. UN General Assembly resolutions have a prefix for the session of the UN in which they were promulgated, and 1967 was the 22nd session. Resolution 194 in fact comes from 1948, and it has no binding effect. Interestingly enough, it recognizes Israeli sovereignty, at least implicitly. However, it predates the 1967 war in which Israel occupied the territories in question in reaction to another invasion from the West Bank by its Arab neighbors, a war that the Arabs lost in spectacular fashion. It shows that the NCD has no intent on stopping at the 1967 borders and instead insists on the destruction of Israel.

Quite frankly, nothing in this document speaks to any solution other than the annihilation of Israel. Perhaps another translation has a better grip on why anyone considers this a breakthrough, but in reality all this proposes is a union of all the enemies of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to stop the impending civil war. A plebescite on this document effectively puts all power back in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas, but does nothing for a peaceful, two-state solution. In fact, this looks a lot like the kind of dodge that Mussolini attempted at Munich, a dodge that succeeded all too well.

Will Hamas Bend?

Reports from the West Bank have Hamas considering a compromise with Fatah on the proposed plebscite on their plan to recognize Israel and work towards the two-state solution. Hamas may agree to an implicit recognition in order to rescue themselves from a back-breaking sanctions regime forced on the Palestinians due to their defiance, but it may not be enough:

The ruling Hamas and rival Fatah factions were moving closer to an agreement on implicitly recognizing Israel, negotiators said Sunday in a sign that international pressure on the new Palestinian government could be yielding results. ...

One official, who was serving as a mediator, said Hamas is desperate to reach an agreement with Fatah as a way of lifting the international aid boycott that has bankrupted the Hamas-led government and left public workers unpaid since March. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were still in progress.

A Hamas leader in an Israeli prison said agreement could be reached in the coming days.

A possible face-saving formula could be a vague reference to "just Arab solutions," which could be interpreted as a nod toward an Arab League plan that offered Israel peace in exchange for a full withdrawal from the
West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, and resolution of the issue of Palestinian refugees.

It was unclear whether such a formula would satisfy the U.S. and Europe, which demand a clear commitment from the Hamas-led government to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept peace accords signed by Palestinians before Hamas took over the government.

The last point is the most critical. We cannot expect Israel to have to renegotiate every agreement whenever the Palestinians elect a new government. If the Palestinians want statehood, then they need to establish a reliance on their agreements. Unfortunately, the world has too often excused Palestinian backtracking, which led them to believe that the new Hamas government could expect the money to flow even when they negated all the work the West had done to get the conflict to this stage of resolution.

The lesson that the Palestinians are learning now is long overdue and absolutely necessary. Until they understand that breaching agreements will result in significant sanctions, we will never have peace of a lasting nature. Perhaps Hamas has finally begun to understand that they jave to bend -- but so far, they still don't understand just how far they will have to bend to rescue themselves from political and economic disaster.

Hamas wants to somehow elide over a recognition of Israel and still hold onto the notion of a "right of return" to territory within Israel. That will never happen, and the sooner the West makes that clear the better off everyone will be. If Hamas balks at that basic issue, then flexibility on all other points will not make much difference anyway. I doubt that Hamas will ever give on that point -- even if Fatah might -- and the result may well be civil war.

UPDATE: Power Line has an interesting report on an apparent collapse of the Israel-divestment movement in the Presbyterian Church. Joel Mowbray sends an exclusive to the Power Line trio:

Initially, divestment efforts seemed to be gaining a head of steam. But no university thus far has taken the bait, and almost all other churches persuaded to sign on have resisted. At several regional religious conferences over the past year, in fact, votes on divestment have turning more and more against embracing the policy, resulting in a string of defeats for pro-Palestinian forces.

Just over an hour ago, the 62-member Peacemaking and International Issues Committee voted overwhelmingly to apologize for its action of two years ago and no longer officially endorse divestment. Much like the procedures of Congress, this "recommendation" must now be taken up by the 534 voting members of the full assembly, who can amend it, ratify it as is, or defeat it.

The idea that one could equate Israel with the apartheid regime previously in charge of South Africa is ludicrous on its face. The Israeli Arabs have the right to vote in Israel and hold seats in the Knesset, and face no restrictions on their rights within Israel. The intellectual dishonesty of the movement will likely be its chief cause of collapse.

A Correspondent To Thank

I have received many e-mails and comments on my back injury and recuperation from CQ readers, giving me their personal stories and advice based on their own experiences, and I have found all of it tremendously helpful. I have been grateful for all of the correspondence, but I would like to acknowledge one correspondent whose personal story and outreach to me touched me very deeply, especially considering his experiences with his own difficulties.

I wrote last week about the excruciating pain that the disc rupture caused and the painkillers that doctors prescribed to ease the situation. Some of you wrote to caution me about Vicodin and Percocet and their addictive qualities. One person in particular wrote to me about his own addiction, and in particular gave me solid advice on physiological conditions that would indicate an addictive response from my body. Given the very public nature of his addiction, his note had one hell of a lot of impact on the decisions I have made this week.

That man is Rush Limbaugh.

I know that some people think that conservatives all take orders from Rush, but we're really not that lucky. I have corresponded with Rush' staff on a couple of occasions where they wanted to quote my blog -- they are extremely scrupulous about asking permission -- but other than that, I have never written directly to Rush nor him to me. He read my post and wanted to make sure that I took precautions with pain medication in order to avoid the problems that he faced in very public (and very overblown) fashion.

It takes a special kind of person to reach out in those circumstances to a man unknown to him just to help protect that man from a danger he might not see. That correspondence informed my decisions in the hospital to hold down my pain medication and to transfer to Ibuprofen as soon as possible. I've been fortunate; my pain since the surgery has allowed me to rely on the over-the-counter analgesic instead of the Vicodin and Percocet. Had I never heard from Rush, I might not have had the discipline to make that decision.

All conservative writers and radio hosts, even those who do radio as a hobby and political writing as an avocation, owe a professional debt to Rush for his pioneering efforts in creating and expanding the market for conservative communications. I owe a very personal debt to Rush -- and I thank him for his thoughtful and timely personal advice.

Ayatollah's Grandson Wants US To Invade Iran

This apple apparently fell far from the tree. Hossein Khomeini, the grandson of the Ayatollah Khomeini that overthrew the Shah and established the first Islamic Republic in Southwest Asia, wants the US to invade Iran in order to establish a representative democracy to replace the mullahcracy his grandfather established:

The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime.

Hossein Khomeini's call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran's Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah's death.

"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted its leaders."

He also made clear his opposition to Teheran's alleged development of a secret nuclear weapons programme. "Iran will gain real power if freedom and democracy develop there," he said. "Strength will not be obtained through weapons and the bomb." ...

"As for his call to President Bush to come and occupy Iran, Hossein Khomeini explained that 'freedom must come to Iran in any possible way, whether through internal or external developments.

If you were a prisoner, what would you do? I want someone to break the prison [doors open]'."

Khomeini's statement has to serve as an embarrassment for the mullahs in Teheran, especially coming from the heart of the Islamist revolution, Qom. Shi'a scholarship has two schools, one in Qom and the other in Najaf, and they give two very different versions of Shi'ite thought. Najaf, where Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani presides, teaches a 'quiet' and more spiritual version of Shi'a, one in which theology and temporal issues are kept more separate. This has helped the Coalition establish the representative democracy in Iraq, as Sistani has consistently endorsed that approach as most beneficial to the Shi'ite majority while allowing the Sunni an outlet for their own political issues.

In Qom, however, the Shi'a philosophy ties spiritual and temporal issues tightly together and produces the Islamist response that created the Taliban and other totalitarian impulses in Islam. Ruhollah Khomeini crafted the Islamic revolution using Qomian philosophy and put it into practice after the Shah's fall. Qom usually recognizes Islam as the only basis for temporal government.

That makes the younger Khomeini's statement even more surprising. It also seems rather surprising that the ruling Guardian Council would have allowed Al-Arabiya to interview him from Qom, and that they have not locked him up after making his bold pronouncement. No one really knows how much influence Khomeini has with the Iranians, but his lineage certainly attracts interest in his opinions.

In any event, the US will not invade Iran, not now and certainly not at the invitation of Khomeini. The US would much prefer that the Iranians rise up on their own to overthrow the mullahcracy, and more signs appear to point to that end with news of domestic unrest increasing in recent months. The populace has not taken well to the strict imposition of Islamist practice; the Iranians had been among the more cosmopolitan of Muslim nations before 1979 and that tradition has not dissipated in a burst of religious fervor. The younger generation has especially chafed at the restrictive climate inside Iran, and as the students once followed the Ayatollah into the streets of Teheran, this generation of students may well end up liberating Teheran once again. An American military invasion would only serve to discredit such activists as Western pawns, and the US knows that could set back an Iranian correction for another generation.

The grandson of the Ayatollah will have to focus his energies on his own people. Perhaps if that message started coming consistently out of Qom, the Iranians might finally push themselves into tossing out the autocratic government that has threatened a nuclear disaster with the West.

CNN: Democrats Congressional Support Eroding

The efforts of Democratic caucuses in both houses of Congress to set a mid-term election agenda have had a definite effect on their standings with the electorate -- they've eroded them significantly. According to CNN, Democrats have lost seven points and the majority in support for a generic party preference, while Republicans have remained steady:

When registered voters polled were asked if they were more or less likely to vote for a candidate Bush supported, 47 percent said they were less likely, while only 27 percent said they were more likely. Twenty percent said it made no difference. The sampling error for the question was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

However, the poll showed that Democrats have so far not been able to capitalize on Bush's political difficulties.

When voters were asked which party would be their choice for Congress in November, 45 percent said Democrat and 38 percent Republican. Twelve percent were unsure. However, in May, Democrats captured 52 percent in the same generic ballot question, showing their support had dropped 7 points in a month.

It's been over this past month that the Democrats have tried twice to outline its agenda in the midterms, and this result shows that they may have been better off saying nothing at all. Considering that the agendas they announced rely on traditional big-government solutions and hardly address national security at all, in effect they gave voters nothing to attract their support. They may have earlier overplayed their zeal to start all sorts of investigations of the Bush administration rather than focus on legislative efforts, and their later demurrals have fooled no one.

The Republicans have not made much headway in attracting those that the Democrats have repelled, however. The seven points moved into the unsure column, which doesn't exactly bode for a banner election for the GOP, at least not yet. However, it does show that a significant part of the disaffection from the GOP comes from its own performance as the party in charge, and that they still have a chance to convince voters to stick with the Republican candidates in the fall. It also means that the Republicans have an opening to run against the agendas that the Democrats keep retooling. They will probably be helped by the efforts of the far Left towards abandoning Iraq to the terrorists, a move that got so little support in the US Senate that it exposed and widened a split in the Democratic Party in a time when unity is a necessity.

These results appear to benefit incumbents more than anyone else. The voters in individual districts may well stick with what they have rather than change horses if the trends remain. Democratic hopes for recapturing either house of Congress may have to wait for the presidential election, as long as they can field a ticket with enough strength to pull down-ticket votes their way. (via The Moderate Voice, which has a number of excellent posts this weekend.)

Annan: Don't Pull Our Plug

Kofi Annan warned the United States yesterday not to pull the plug on the United Nations by defunding Turtle Bay. Annan assured the US that the world body would reform itself despite the slow progress thus far:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan predicted on Thursday the United Nations would avert a budget crisis threatened at the end of the month over the slow pace of U.N. reforms and implicitly warned the United States against trying to "pull the plug" on the world body.

"The reform will proceed, and the cap on the budget will be lifted. There will be no crisis as far as I can see this month," Annan told a news conference.

Rich nations, pushed by the United States, imposed a cap on the U.N. budget in December in hopes of increasing pressure on developing nations to approve long-delayed management reforms by June 30. ...

Annan told reporters he saw no signs Washington was backing away from reforms or that Malloch Brown's remarks had left them "much more difficult" to negotiate.

"For someone to say that 'because you have not reformed to my satisfaction I am going to pull the plug and stop all the activities,' it is going to be a very hard sell for all the member states to swallow and rightly so." Annan added.

Annan says that the General Assembly will never stand for a permanent imposition of a budget cap, but it isn't up to the General Assembly. The nations paying the bill for the UN do so voluntarily, and we do not see the UN as a positive force in the world. In fact, what we see is a world body that too often allows its leadership to reflect that of most of the member nations: autocratic, unaccountable, and almost absolutely corrupt. The lack of mechanisms to hold management responsible for its actions spring from the undemocratic nature of the organization as well as its members, and the ongoing corruption and atrocities involved in its operations embarrass and anger those of us footing the bill for them.

As a matter of principle, we do not intend to keep funding any international organization that refuses to reform itself and continues to allow its agencies to prostitute refugees for food and water. After the billions of dollars lost in the Oil-For-Food scandal that went directly into the pockets of a dictator that the UN assured us could be contained. While it's difficult to believe that this organization serves any purpose for anyone with the kind of rank corruption it practices, it certainly dosn't serve the purposes of democracy or advancement. With its structure and its general membership, it serves only to keep a status quo and to tie the hands of those nations willing to take action to rectify wrongs and spread democracy and freedom.

If the UN can reform itself into an agency that serves those ideals instead of self-perpetuation and the venal needs of its management, then perhaps we can see our way to funding it fully. Otherwise, we can and should simply walk away from the UN and encourage the democracies of the world to form a separate multilateral organization that actually works for the advancement of the only values that have proven themselves beneficial to humanity and a deterrent to war: self-determination through representative democracy. When the nations of the world all have that freedom, that organization will fulfill the promise that the UN has so tragically failed.

Time: AQ Called Off NY Gas Attack

Time Magazine reported yesterday that an inside mid-level source in al-Qaeda informed the US that the terrorist network built a device that would have turned New York's subway tunnels into a gas chamber that could have killed hundreds in an attack. Inexplicably, AQ's #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri called off the attack in 2003, but American analysts proved the design of the weapon could easily have worked:

It was time to call on Ali.

His handler contacted him through an elaborate set of signals, and a meeting was set up. cia operatives mentioned to him the names of the captives in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the existence of the mubtakkar designs.

Ali said he might be able to help. He told his cia handlers that a Saudi radical had visited bin Laden's partner al-Zawahiri, in January 2003. The man ran the Arabian Peninsula for al-Qaeda, and one of his aliases was Swift Sword. Ali said the man's name was Yusef al-Ayeri. Finally, the United States had a name for Swift Sword.

This brought elation—a mystery solved, a case cracked—and then screams of pain. Al-Ayeri was in the Saudi group that had been released. They had had him. The Saudis let him go. But what Ali would next tell his American handlers would shape American policy and launch years of debate inside the White House. He said that al-Ayeri had come to tell al-Zawahiri of a plot that was well under way in the United States. It was a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. The cell members had traveled to New York City through North Africa in the fall of 2002 and had thoroughly cased the locations for the attacks. The device would be the mubtakkar. There would be several placed in subway cars and other strategic locations and activated remotely. This was well past conception and early planning. The group was operational. They were 45 days from zero hour.

Then Ali told his handlers something that left intelligence officials speechless and vexed. Al-Zawahiri had called off the attacks. Ali did not know the precise explanation why. He just knew al-Zawahiri had called them off.

Ali then offered insights into the emerging structure of Islamic terrorist networks. The Saudi group in the United States was only loosely managed by al-Ayeri or al-Qaeda. They were part of a wider array of self-activated cells across Europe and the gulf, linked by an ideology of radicalism and violence, and by affection for bin Laden. They were affiliates, not tightly tied to a broader al-Qaeda structure, but still attentive to the wishes of bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. Al-Ayeri passed al-Zawahiri's message to the terror cell in the U.S. They backed off.

That was three years ago. When Bush demanded answers about the reasons why Zawahiri would have personally called off an attack of this magnitude on the subway system -- and why cells only loosely affiliated with AQ would have obeyed -- intel analysts could not come up with a single clear answer. The one option that made the most sense was that AQ had a much bigger attack in mind and did not want the subway attack to disrupt it with even tighter security response as AQ saw after 9/11. Bush asked them, "What could the bigger operation that Zawahiri didn't want to mess up?"

What, indeed? After three years, one has to assume that the larger operation either failed to coalesce or that AQ lost interest in staging it. Given the continual pressure the US has placed on al-Qaeda, the latter sounds rather silly, and even if true, the cells would have simply carried out the gas attack later. In 2005, New York announced greater security for the subway system in a move widely derided as a false alarm. Now, with this information, it looks like the intelligence community may have gotten information that the internal cell had reactivated the attack. It also would explain the terror alert just before the Republican National Convention in 2004, one that received some derision as an election-year ploy by the Bush administration.

I think we can now understand why the intel agencies felt so touchy during this period. Not only were they expecting a poison-gas attack, but they obviously worried about a much-larger attack of unknown character.

While the publication of this material may make us feel better about past terror alerts, one has to wonder about the release of the information about our humint within AQ. AJ Strata wonders if this has blown a valuable asset in the war on terror, a good question that will probably never get answered due to the nature of this conflict. I would think that the release of this information would indicate that this source has already gone cold, either killed or extracted by now. After all, three years in the organization as a double agent would be an intriguingly long run, and probably not realistic. The secondary effect of this release also might be beneficial; we may now have more humint sources within AQ, and now that AQ knows we penetrated their management once, they will likely have to start mole hunts to purge themselves of traitors -- a process that always leaves an organization damaged and less able to function, in the short run at a minimum. It could also be that 'Ali' was a composite of a number of sources.

AQ will have to guess at the truth, as we will -- and the results could devastate what's left of their structure.

Be sure to read the entire excerpt, published today. It will leave readers with a definite impression that our long run without an attack has been no accident, that our forces have done a good job (and been a little lucky) in their efforts to keep us safe. It also explains more why the NSA programs we use to discover these cells are highly valuable in giving us some means of discovering patterns of communications for the decentralized threats we face. With these enemies, we need to use all of the weapons we can muster to beat them before they can wrak their devastation on our homeland.

Happy Father's Day!

I want to wish all of my readers a happy Father's Day and hope that you have a chance to spend some time with your fathers or close family today. In a way, I'm fortunate to have had my surgery this week, as the Admiral Emeritus had just been out a week before my injury and hadn't planned on coming back out this way this soon. Now we'll be able to put four generations of Morrisseys under one roof on Father's Day for the first time ever -- even with the second generation firmly planted in a recliner, it will still be a special day. Even hard times have their blessings, and this is certainly one of them.

I'm very grateful that I still can celebrate the day with my father -- I know that plenty of people don't have that luxury, especially those whose fathers have given their lives for our nation or who are serving today overseas to secure freedom for ourselves and others. I'll be saying a prayer for all of them while enjoying my good fortune, and I hope everyone will do so as well.

Blog notes: I'm changing the trackback script again, as the spammers seem to have discovered the script again. Thanks to Hyscience's Tim R for teaching me how to accomplish this. I have rebuilt the last twenty entries prior to this in order to allow the trackbacks under the new script, but older posts will probably not allow trackbacks to work.

Also, thanks to Michelle Malkin and her readers for wishing me well on my return from the hospital! Be sure to click through on all of her links today...