Market-Based Profiling

The Daily Mail reports on a flight in Britain that remained on the ground due to the demands of its passengers that two Arabic passengers get ejected. The incident shows that citizens will start imposing their own solutions to flight safety in the absence of demonstrably intelligent security while attempts at attacks continue:

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.

The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.

It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'.

These incidents have started to spike in the wake of the successful exposure of a massive plot in the UK against the airlines. British travelers have decided, ironically, that the government has not done enough to screen for terrorists and have lost confidence in air service as a result. This will lead to dramatic market reactions; either people will stop flying, or they will take security into their own hands. The perceived lack of security will make it harder for Muslims to travel (the British reference to "Asians" usually means Pakistanis or Arabs).

After 9/11, every flyer understands that they are targeted by terrorists and have to remain vigilant. This message has been reinforced over and over again by the governments themselves. Common sense dictates that people will act in their perceived self-interest in any case, and that means people will remain highly suspicious of Arabic men traveling together -- and more so when they act strangely. In Malanga, the two wore heavy clothing despite the heat and kept checking their watches. That was enough to make them unwilling to risk a flight with the two men, and they applied the pressure necessary for the airline to eject the two.

Is that fair? Hardly. However, the unwillingness of the governments in both the UK and the US to provide systems of screening that instill confidence in the flying public has led to these incidents. They will continue and increase while screening systems insist on playing political correctness games instead of focusing on real threats as the Israelis have done for decades. As I wrote earlier this week, the US has an experimental program attempting to create a similar system; it should get expedited and expanded as soon as possible.

Our Sympathy Is Limited

Ismail Haniyeh wants the world to come to his assistance. The Hamas leader demands that the international community demand the release of his deputy prime minister, captured by the Israelis a day earlier:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya has appealed to the international community for help to secure the release of his deputy.

Nasser al-Shaer was detained by the Israeli army early on Saturday.

Mr Haniya, from the Islamic militant movement Hamas, said the arrest was part of an Israeli attempt to undermine the Palestinian political system .

The Israeli army said it had detained Mr Shaer because he was a member of a "terrorist organisation".

Lest anyone forget, Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, more than two months ago in order to extort the release of terrorists from Israeli prisons. Now Haniyeh runs crying to the world because the Israelis have begun to arrest Hamas' leadership for its part in this provocation and other terrorist actions. When did terrorists become such whiny sob sisters, anyway?

If Haniyeh wants to get his ministers out of Israeli detention, he can start by coughing up Shalit and stopping the rocket attacks and suicide bombings aimed at Israeli citizens. Until then, he can just suck it up all by himself.

Data Restored

I got a call from Best Buy's Geek Squad earlier this evening, after the NARN show was over. I had asked them to retrieve the data from my dead laptop's hard drive, a service they provide for a fairly reasonable fee regardless of the condition of the drive. They have two tiers for the service: $99 for up to 9 GB of disk space, and $159 for unlimited retrieval. I chose the second, and it turned out to be the right call. The Geek Squad got 43 GB of data off my hard drive, everything I had before the crash. They had asked me to bring my new laptop into the store to transfer the data rather than burn a bunch of DVDs, and the data is now safely on my new system. I'm very pleased with their responsiveness and the fact that all of my data came through cleanly.

Once we determined that the hard drive was undamaged, I bought an enclosure for it, an Adaptec device that allows me to use it as a USB external hard drive. It only costs $26 and is simple to assemble. It even comes with its own handy carrying case and a Y-cable that allows me to attach it without losing a USB port.

I'm in the process of restoring my old e-mail in a separate profile setting. That will take a little work, even in Thunderbird, but the files still exist and I expect to retrieve everything by the end of the weekend. If you've sent a request for the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, that is part of the data I'm trying to restore. Feel free to resend your requests, but please use "101st Fighting Keyboarders" as the subject line. I'm going to try to get them all anyway.

Now to reload all of the programs ...

Arab Media Take Aim At Assad

After Bashar Assad called Arab leaders "half men" for failing to rally to Hezbollah's support, state-sponsored media in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have castigated Assad in terms usually reserved for infidels. His critics have called him a coward and a dead rosebud, among other epithets:

Syria's president sparked a wave of anger after he knocked Mideast leaders as "half men" in a televised speech, underlining the divisions as Arab nations try to form a unified front in the wake of the Lebanon crisis.

The bitterness over Bashar Assad's speech last week will likely stir up a gathering of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Sunday. The meeting is supposed to pave the way for a summit of heads of state later in the month that will draw up plans to help rebuild Lebanon - and try to launch a new Arab peace initiative with Israel.

So far governments have not commented on Assad's jibes - instead, the task has been left to newspapers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - some of which are state-guided - which have been sizzling with personal and direct attacks on Assad the like of which the region has not seen directed against an Arab leader in years.

One paper described the Syrian president as a rose that has failed to bloom. Another berated him for remaining silent throughout Israel's offensive on Lebanon. And a third mocked all his talk about resistance when not a single bullet has been fired from Syria toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Assad had been silent throughout the 34 days of fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hizbullah, a Syrian ally. But the day after a cease-fire set in, he gave his speech.

One might expect the man who went into hiding after the Israeli Air Force buzzed his house after the Gilad Shalit kidnapping -- and didn't emerge for over a month -- would take care in tossing out accusations of insufficient masculinity. The accidental dictator apparently didn't think before berating other Arabs for a lack of testicular fortitude.

He's making a big mistake. As the Jerusalem Post notes, Assad has made his alignment with Teheran even more explicit with this speech, which will cut him off from the mainly Sunni Arab governments in the region. Even apart from the sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites (Assad himself is a Shi'ite), the Arabs do not want Persian rule. They have a deeper mistrust of Teheran than they do of the Israelis and the Americans, whom they know to act rationally. None of them want to take their cues from a panel of mullahs from Qom, nor from their latest nutcase mouthpiece.

It's not the first mistake that the myopic opthalmologist has made, even this month. Earlier, Assad stated that he will apparently mothball the Syrian armed forces in exchange for setting up Hezbollah-like guerilla groups in an attempt to wrest the Golan Heights from Israel. What Assad apparently doesn't understand is that Hezbollah enjoyed an advantage in Lebanon only because the world considered the terror group separate from the nation itself. Any guerilla warfare in the Golan region will result in the destruction of the Syrian air force, their armored units, and most of their infrastructure within the first few hours of the engagement -- because Syria will have responsibility for this militia just the same as it does for the actions of its traditional armed forces.

Assad does not appear very stable. One has to wonder whether the pressures of the job has affected his mind. Other Arab leaders must be asking themselves the same questions.

Northern Alliance Radio Expands To Six Hours!

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will expand its live programming today to six hours. King Banaian and Michael Broadkorb will begin NARN 3 today, airing from 3-5 PM on Saturdays from now on. That follows Mitch Berg and me in NARN 2 at 1-3pm CT, and the trio of NARN 1 (Brian Ward, Chad The Elder, and John Hinderaker) from 11-1 CT.

Our broadcasts can be heard as always on AM 1280 The Patriot, which has an Internet stream for those outside the Twin Cities. Listeners can join the conversation at 651-289-4488, and we love telephone calls. Be sure to join the original blogger radio show every Saturday!

Maybe It's A Protest Against Halal?

The descent of modern art continues in Cornwall, where a dead pig and a naked woman received government funding for an exhibition in Newlyn. Kira O'Reilly dances with an actual dead pig on stage, and British taxpayers get to foot the bill (caution: link not work safe):

After pickled sheep, unmade beds and painting with elephant dung, some questioned where modern art could go next.

Kira O'Reilly will provide her own answer today by spending four hours naked, hugging a dead pig - at the taxpayer's expense.

The controversial Irish performance artist will invite one person at a time to watch her sit in a specially-constructed set and perform a 'crushing slow dance' with the carcass in her arms.

She claims the bizarre exhibition is an attempt to 'identify' with the pig, which she cuts with a knife during the show.

She feels the need to "meld into [the pig's] warm flesh, my blood and her blood," which is why she cuts the pig during the performance. I think it's safe to say that Kira O'Reilly desperately needs a date, but potential suitors may want to ask her to shower first -- and to keep the knives locked up.

PETA is organizing protests against the show, but it will only be performed once in any case. The pig has a prior engagement at a luau.

Does anyone wonder why conservatives see government funding of the arts as a joke? The decision makers have no sense of judgement or artistic vision, but instead have become the carnival barkers of their age. They care nothing for art but instead fund exhibits strictly for their shock value. Why should governments fund geek shows? Artists should have their freedom, but they should get their patronage from their own work and not from government handouts.

The Taylor Embarrassment

The more people read of the opinion by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruling against the government in the NSA's terrorist surveillance program, the less impressed even the program's opponents become. Adam Liptak reports in the New York Times -- whose editorial board hailed Taylor's jurisprudence -- that legal analysts have little support for Taylor's reasoning:

Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday.

They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions.

Discomfort with the quality of the decision is almost universal, said Howard J. Bashman, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose Web log provides comprehensive and nonpartisan reports on legal developments.

“It does appear,” Mr. Bashman said, “that folks on all sides of the spectrum, both those who support it and those who oppose it, say the decision is not strongly grounded in legal authority.”

One of the first arguments that legal analysts attacked, according to this report, was the novel notion that the NSA program violated the First Amendment as well as the Fourth. No one that Liptak contacted would support that assertion. Another issue with Taylor's analysis is her refusal to engage the government arguments in a substantive way, dismissing them in a hail of "obviouslys". She also failed to review the pertinent precedents, even those supporting her overall decision. Most felt that Taylor rushed the decision in order to garner headlines.

It brings up an interesting question, one raised by Patterico yesterday. Judicial diktats like this one have the same effect as any unconstitutional efforts by the executive or by Congress, and all that is left is partisan bickering over whether the ends justified the means. Taylor's weightless opinion reduces itself to a basic because I said so, which is exactly the same impulse for which she excoriates the Bush administration in her decision. The only saving grace is that Taylor doesn't get the last word, and in this case one can hardly say that she had the first word, either.

Taylor's lack of rigor in examining the legal arguments presented in this case will force the appellate court into a position it usually avoids -- being the finder of fact. It now must review the evidence and listen to all the legal arguments, which must be made a second time, in order to straighten out the mess that Taylor made of her responsibility to give all sides a fair hearing. Liptak's sources believe that the appeals will uphold the decision while completely rejecting the opinion Taylor issued in delivering it. I predict that the appellate court will throw the entire case out for lack of standing. We will all know soon enough, but in the meantime, the NSA continues to operate its program under a stay issued by the Sixth Circuit appellate court.

UPDATE: I wrote Sixth District when I meant Sixth Circuit; thanks to Barnestormer in the comments. He also raises another important point. The strange argumentation that led Taylor to conclude that the NSA program violated the First Amendment is the only manner in which these plaintiffs had standing to bring the suit. If the appellate court rejects that portion of her ruling, the entire lawsuit goes out the window.

Israel Attacks Resupply Convoy

Israel has made it clear that they will abide by the cease-fire only to the extent that their partners do the same. In a raid this morning, Israel killed three militants while stopping an arms transfer to Hezbollah:

Israel carried out an overnight raid inside Lebanon aimed at disrupting an arms transfer, the Israeli army says.

One soldier died and two were injured in the Bekaa Valley operation, it said. Lebanese sources earlier told Reuters agency that three militants also died.

The incident came hours after UN chief Kofi Annan warned of a "fragile" situation on the ground.

The Israeli commando raid took place near Baalbek, far to the north of Lebanon along the border with Syria. The IDF attacked the convoy and claimed that its mission objectives "were achieved".

Fuad Siniora, meanwhile, complained that Israel had committed a "naked violation" of the cease-fire agreement. Siniora may want to take care with that accusation. After all, it's his government that refuses to implement the key portion of the agreement: the disarming of Hezbollah. Israel has no real reason to abide by the cease-fire while Siniora hasn't the testicular fortitude to adhere to its provisions. This raid shows that Israel will not stand by while Siniora allows Hezbollah to garner even more arms.

If the Lebanese want to restart the war, they will find the Israelis more than willing to do so. Israel may count on precisely that reaction, as well as the inability of Siniora to enforce his end of the cease-fire agreement. If this cease-fire fails, the Israelis will have no further constraints by the UN and can take all the time necessary to complete their overall mission, and Siniora will have no way to stop it. All the crying in the world will not cover the fact that he had an opportunity to rid himself of Hezbollah and chose to endorse it instead.

Canada: Iran Responsible For War In Lebanon

In a surprisingly straightforward declaration, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister has publicly declared Teheran responsible for Hezbollah's actions in Lebanon this summer, and described Syria as a "conduit" for Iranian misconduct. Peter Mackay's statements aligns Canada more closely to their southern neighbor than to their traditional alliances in Europe, where governments have been reluctant to lay blame for Hezbollah on their obvious sponsors:

With a potential international showdown looming next week in Iran's nuclear standoff with the West, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says Tehran has "blood on its hands" for backing Hezbollah in its recent war against Israel.

In an interview with CanWest News Service, Mr. MacKay highlighted Iran's support of Hezbollah and its nuclear ambitions, which will be back in the international spotlight on Tuesday -- the symbolic date in the Muslim calendar chosen by the Islamic regime to reply to UN demands to end its suspected nuclear weapons program.

"They [Iran] are certainly behind much of the difficulty that's going on in the region by funding Hezbollah, by supporting them in terms of their activities against Israel. They have a great deal of responsibility and blood on their hands from their activities," he said. ...

"Of course, we've been very much caught up with what's been happening in the Middle East, but Iran, it's fair to say, has been described an agent provocateur."

Mr. MacKay also pointed to Syria as "a conduit for Iran to perpetrate much of this mischief."

Of course, Mackay gets points just for his willingness to state the obvious, a willingness that seems to escape many in the West these days. It reflects the reality of Iran as perhaps the most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism and Islamic fascism, and it comes at a moment when the world holds its breath over the potential for millenial mischief on August 22nd.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad picked that date for the Iranian response to the incentive package offered by the West for Iran to end its uranium-enrichment program. That date holds special significance in Muslim belief, as most know now; it's the date that Mohammed rode a winged horse to heaven, after making stops in Jerusalem and Mecca. Some people believe that millenial thinkers such as Ahmadinejad will want to use that date to advance some strategy to create the chaos necessary for the return of the 12th Imam -- which would either point to an attack on Israel or some act of defiance so provocative that it will start a devastating war.

So far, that remains an interesting and entertaining hypothesis and not much more. What has remained fact is the overweening deference paid to Ahmadinejad and the mullahcracy by European diplomats. Perhaps they fear that the truth will cause Iran to reject their incentive package out of petulance, a laughable notion considering the calculating nature of the Iranian ruling class. They have eschewed the firmness and resolve needed to face down the Iranians and offered sweet words and ever-increasing incentives: the basic appeasement package.

It's good to see that Canada no longer holds any illusions about Iran and its intent in the Middle East. We only wish that more Western nations would wake up to the threat that faces us. (via Newsbeat1)

UPDATE: It's not just the diplomats in Europe who have their lips firmly affixed to Ahmadinejad's nethers. Try reading this Simon Tisdall piece in The Guardian (UK) without laughing at the lack of objectivity:

As the rotors of the venerable American-made Huey 214 chopper spin slowly to a halt, and the murk clears, a great, human noise replaces the sound of engines. It is not cheering; more like a giant, murmuring sigh, punctuated by shouts of joy and the screams of women.

For Meshkinshahr, a city perched on the desiccated Caspian steppes and mountains west of Ardabil, this dramatic descent to earth has the momentous significance of a prophetic visitation. Local elders say there has been nothing like it in years. Children are out of their heads with excitement.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clambering out of the helicopter cabin with a big smile on his face, is getting used to it. His visit, part of a magisterial three-day, nine-city procession through Ardabil province in north-west Iran, is the 18th such meet-the-people expedition since he took office one year ago this month.

Mr Ahmadinejad's extraordinary comings and goings are a cross between American-style town meetings, itinerant Islamic evangelism, and pure political theatre. Think Bill and Al's "excellent adventure" during the 1992 US presidential campaign; think Saladin on a soap box; then add a straggly beard, wrinkly, unexpectedly twinkly eyes, a gentle, open-handed style, and a genuine ability to connect - and you have Mr Ahmadinejad, a local hero (he was formerly governor of Ardabil), a would-be champion of Muslims everywhere, and an unlikely grassroots superstar.

Tisdall later says that Ahmadinejad "may not know much about the Holocaust", about as close to criticism as this piece gets, but he's quite obviously wrong. Ahmadinejad has learned how to become an adored Fuehrer, or at least pose as one for Western journalists. It worked seventy years ago, too, and it portended much the same kind of conflict in the end.

Israel Arrests Palestinian Deputy PM In Ramallah

The Israelis sent a message this morning that they have not forgotten the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit by Hamas. The IDF captured the Hamas Deputy Prime Minister, Nasser Shaer, at his home this morning:

Israeli soldiers arrested the Palestinian deputy prime minister Saturday, the highest-ranking Hamas official rounded up in a seven-week-old crackdown against the ruling party.

Troops burst into the home of Nasser Shaer around 4:30 a.m. and took him away, said the deputy prime minister's wife, Huda. ...

The army said Shaer was arrested in Ramallah overnight for his involvement and activity in the Islamic militant Hamas.

With Shaer, Israel has now arrested four members of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Cabinet and 28 Hamas lawmakers. Four other ministers have been detained and released.

As Shaer's wife explained, this comes as no surprise to the deputy PM. He had avoided his home ever since the Shalit kidnapping, which preceded the similar Hezbollah operation that touched off the war in Lebanon. The Israelis have taken the Hamas claim of responsibility seriously, and acknowledged it by holding its senior leadership responsible. The Israelis show no sign of relaxing their campaign, and Ismail Haniyeh may well be next if Hamas does not return Shalit.

Of course, the Palestinians howl with outrage at the Israelis. Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad claims that Israel "won't be satisfied with any government headed by Hamas or headed by Fatah," which amounts to a PR non-sequitur. Hamad wants people to believe that the Israelis have reacted badly to normal political activity. Apparently, Hamas considers kidnappings (and worse) as a banal part of government, not an act of war. If Fatah believes that as well -- and its Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade certainly suggests it -- then no sovereign government should be satisfied with that kind of government. And in any case, if Hamad wants to argue for kidnappings as political maneuvers, then his petulant whining must spring from the fact that Israel can capture people better than Hamas can.

When the Palestinians decide that they want responsible, rational government, the world will rush to give them their own state in which to live, and Israel will be at the head of the line. Until then, the Palestinians would do well to remember the proverbs about reaping what one sows, and to quit crying like babies when their own tactics get turned onto themselves. If they want Israel to stop capturing its leaders, then return Gilad Shalit and renounce terrorism. It's really that simple.

UPDATE: I forgot to credit CQ reader Stackja1945 for the hat-tip.

Mel Had The Good Grace To Get Drunk First

At least Carter-era UN Ambassador and former Mayor Andrew Young didn't call a police officer "sugar tits" when unleashing his bigoted tirade:

The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”

In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.

“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”

Mr. Young, 74, a former mayor of Atlanta and a former United States representative to the United Nations, apologized for the comments and retracted them in an interview last night. Less than an hour later, he resigned as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group created and financed by the company to trumpet its accomplishments.

“It’s against everything I ever thought in my life,” Mr. Young said. “It never should have been said. I was speaking in the context of Atlanta, and that does not work in New York or Los Angeles.”

It's unfortunate that Mayor Young decided to perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes in his evaluation of urban economics, because he actually has a point. Store owners in blighted neighborhoods -- no matter who owns them -- do charge much higher prices for lower-quality goods. That comes from the high risk associated with business ventures in the neighborhoods, and that requires the owners to either pay high insurance rates or do without. Either choice requires the owners to get as much margin as possible in a short period of time. Also, most family-owned businesses don't create jobs in these areas, because the families usually run the businesses themselves to save even more overhead.

In that respect, Young told the truth. The romantic view of mom-and-pop small-business retail might apply in places like Solvang and Belmont Shore, but in the inner city it represents a critical loss of buying power and employment. Their displacement by a retailer like Wal-Mart, a provider of low prices and much-needed employment, hardly seems like a disaster for communities in these economic straits.

However, rather than explain it in economic terms, Young gave vent to his inner bigot and trotted out a veritable cornucopia of paranoia. Unlike Mel Gibson, whose drunken state could arguably have created an irrational mental state (or he could just be an anti-Semite), Young has no such excuse. Not only was Young sober, but the statements came in a newspaper interview, when Young knew his statements would go on record. Nor does his apology quite wash; he implies that anti-Semitism and anti-Asian bigotry is rational and understandable in Atlanta, if not in Los Angeles or New York. Atlantans might take offense at that suggestion -- well, perhaps most Atlantans, excepting the McKinney family.

The world issued condemnations for days after Mel Gibson's drunken outburst. It will be interesting to see whether the same people rush to condemn Andrew Young's measured and deliberate bigotry. (via TMV)

Addendum: Of course, Young's economic argument for the benefits Wal-Mart brings to blighted neighborhoods clashes strongly with the new war that Democrats have declared on the retailer. Perhaps the Democrats may want to re-think their effort to demonize the organization that allows the poor to extend their buying power.

Martyrdom Videos Found In Suspects' Computers

The latest meme to emerge is that of skepticism of the British sky terror plot on the part of some bloggers. Arguments heard when the feds busted the amateurish Miami conspiracy earlier this summer have arisen -- that the supposed conspirators had no capability to carry out such a wide-ranging plot, or more often that the plot came from Pakistani torture and the desire of George Bush and Tony Blair to change the subject. The discovery of martyrdom videos on the laptop computers of some suspects appears to throw cold water on the conspiracy theories:

Police investigating an alleged plot to bring down airliners have found several martyrdom videos in the course of their searches, the BBC has learned.

Unofficial police sources said the recordings - discovered on laptop computers - appear to have been made by some of the suspects being questioned.

Scotland Yard has refused to comment on what officers are finding.

Police are continuing to search woodland at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire and 14 addresses.

The Metropolitan Police, which is leading the inquiry, has said it has already completed searches of 36 business and residential sites.

If this proves true, then apparently the conspirators took this plot very seriously indeed. Martyrdom videos don't usually get made far in advance of the plot, either. If the police found several on laptops, it would strongly indicate that the plot not only was deadly serious, but about to launch.

British courts have extended the interrogation times for all 23 suspects, two of them for five more days and the rest for seven. This also seems to indicate that the judges have found some reasonable grounds for invoking the anti-terrorism laws regulating detention of suspects. The videos may form part of that basis, but the police have hardly focused solely on interrogation. According to the BBC, every single police force in the UK is taking part in the investigation -- an astounding level of mobilization.

All indications, then, show this plot to be as serious as advertised, perhaps even more so. Why do people exhibit such skepticism? One fair explanation is that we have had some false alarms before, but by this time in each of those the lack of a true threat had been determined. It seems as though some people want to believe that either the governments of Britain and the US make up these stories to scare people, or they haven't the capability to acknowledge the real and existential danger that terrorism presents.

Skepticism can be healthy. Foolish denial can cost lives.

Earmarks, Inc.

(Note: This was the post I was writing when the laptop died. Thanks to good friends who had an advance look at the effort, I can post it now.)

Earlier, the Heritage Foundation profiled legislation that provided over $1.5 billion dollars to the Washington DC Metro System, which Dr. Ron Utt called the biggest pork-barrel project in American history. Representative Tom Davis offered HR 3496 as an amendment to the Deep Water Resources Act, even though his boondoggle for the transit system had little to do with deep water or any other kind of resources. At the time, Dr. Utt questioned Rep. Davis’ motives in providing such a thick slice of federal revenue to Maryland and Virginia:

Beyond such posturing lies a legislative effort whose origins sprang from an act of constituent service, and chief among the constituents served is the Congressman himself. As originally introduced in July 2005, H.R. 3496 was written to force a resolution of a dispute between Mr. Davis and Metro over its plan to sell 3.75 acres of land it owns beside a rail station to a developer who wanted to incorporate the land into a large, mixed-use development near Mr. Davis’s home. Concerned about traffic congestion and the displacement of suburban charm by urban density, Mr. Davis threatened to do something about it. While most Americans can only complain about encroaching development, Mr. Davis can use his congressional powers to prohibit it, and H.R. 3496 was written to do exactly that. Specifically, Section 4(a) of the bill prohibits Metro from selling the 3.75 acres in question until it has submitted a detailed study of the proposed land sale and planned development to Congress. But as Metro has since sold the land to the developer, this legislative prohibition is pointless, and all that remains of the bill is a massive federal and local bailout of the faltering system.

Rep. Davis took umbrage at this description of his project, and of his motivations in championing it. After Dr. Utt arguments against the bill appeared in the Washington Examiner, Rep. Davis fired off a letter to the Examiner:

It is a journalistic travesty that the Examiner has decided to re-write poorly reasoned press releases and masquerade them as editorials ("Don't give Metro the 'largest earmark in history,'" July 19). Your editorial is based entirely - and indeed quotes at length - from a piece that originated with the Heritage Foundation, written by an author who never met a transit system he didn't want to kill. The end result was an editorial that betrayed a stunning ignorance of my Metro legislation, the legislative process, and the importance of Metro to the federal government and to the region as a whole. …

Calling my legislation an "earmark" and a "federal bailout" for Metro is both incorrect and inflammatory. The legislation approved by the House on Monday does not authorize one nickel of federal money. The money for Metro was approved on June 29, when the House agreed to take a small portion of offshore drilling royalties and dedicate them to Metro for the next 10 years. That was possible because of the work my Government Reform Committee has done in recovering additional royalty payments the Clinton Administration failed to identify or collect. Nothing was "earmarked" - instead, a fiscally responsible source of the funding was identified.

Since 1965, Congress has on four previous occasions infused the Metro system with federal funding, recognizing the unique relationship between the federal government and the transit agency responsible for the daily commute of so many federal employees. With each vote, the Congressional Record illustrates the Congress' belief that the Nation's Capital requires mass transit for the day-to-day operation of the federal government.

Davis tried mightily to convince people that when Congress spends $1.5 billion, it somehow fails to qualify as “federal funding”. His argument that the money comes from revenue the government received through an overdue debt collection doesn’t make it any less the property of the taxpayers; it could easily have been applied to the federal deficit rather than put into the pockets of Maryland and Virginia. He contradicts himself in almost the next breath anyway, explaining how federal funding for the Metro has plenty of precedent.

All of this hides the fact that Davis has some interests beyond good government. The Washington Post, whose editorial board supported the Metro funding, reported shortly afterward that Rep. Davis has often pressed for legislation that allow for easier passage of pork and looser controls and oversight on spending:

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and his staff have worked closely with corporations and their lobbyists to help write federal procurement legislation.

Davis said the effort is intended to streamline contracting and make it more efficient. But some procurement experts and federal investigators said the legislation, called the Services Acquisition Reform Act, contains provisions that would loosen federal oversight on contracts and allow practices that are susceptible to abuse and fraud. …

[Angela B. Styles, the former chief of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget] described 13 of the legislation's 29 provisions as "problematic" and said they would result in "policy changes that the administration cannot support." Among them: a plan to allow more contractors to bill the government for their "time and materials" with no fixed cap on the total amount.

While some of the provisions have been adopted, Davis continues to work on winning approval for the others.

Why would Rep. Davis continue to pursue pork-friendly policy with such tenacity? Apparently, it pays to do so. Looking at the campaign-finance disclosure site Open Secrets, it becomes apparent who supports the Virginia Congressman:

• Rep. Davis gets the second-highest amount of contributions from public-sector unions – and he is the only Republican in the Top 20.
• Contractors and real-estate companies donate a lot of money to Rep. Davis. They total over $130,000 in campaign contributions.
• Metro contractors like Rep. Davis, too. Bechtel gave $5,000 in this election cycle, for example.
• The House Subcommittee on Standards of Official Conduct warned Davis about the appearance of impropriety when his wife’s employment with a government contractor came to light. Davis later claimed that the Ethics Committee had “thoroughly vetted” his wife’s relationship with ICG Government.

The Metro bailout offered by Rep. Davis involved real estate deals, and public-sector unions service the Metro employees. Any expansion and improvements would create opportunities for contractors to get federal contracts.

Rep. Davis may well support this measure out of pure conviction, but the evidence shows that he hasn’t too much incentive to side on fiscal responsibility and limited government. At the very least, this shows why the principle of federalism and the efforts to reduce the amount of money given to politicians are so important in reducing the temptations to enrich one’s friends and supporters.

Does The Press Owe Us An Apology For Jon Benet?

Jack Shafer argues that the press has no need to apologize for the sensational coverage of the Jon Benet Ramsey murder, which appears closer to resolution after ten years. Shafer, one of the best media critics in the business, says that the scrutiny the media gave the case was warranted by the circumstances:

If you're down on your knees for me, gentlemen, please stand up. We have nothing to apologize for. The riotous coverage of the endless murder investigation won't be recorded as journalism's finest hour, but the story deserved the punishing scrutiny the press gave it.

In the case of the JonBenet murder, Boulder, Colo., police and prosecutors botched the investigation from the get-go. Their incompetence gave the story additional legs.

And as the obituary page proves each morning, the murders of the wealthy and privileged—and their offspring—automatically receive more play than the tragic deaths of the poor and working class. Newspapers everywhere lavish attention on the murders of young innocents, no matter what demographic or racial persuasion they hail from.

Did the press treat the Ramsey family unfairly by airing official suspicions, which is at the heart of the apologies cited above? According to the JonBenet case timeline in the Denver Post, the Ramseys gave that suspicion greater play by announcing through a spokesman, two months after the murder, that they knew they were "at the top of the list of possible suspects." Were journalists supposed to ignore this news? Likewise, when the district attorney said the Ramseys were under an "umbrella of suspicion" three-plus months after the murder, were reporters supposed to suppress his statement? The "umbrella of suspicion" was still wide open as recently as May 2000, according to CNN.

Well, maybe. Shafer correctly says that the leaks and public statements implying or outright stating that the Ramseys themselves were the prime suspects did not originate with the media. From that poisoned fruit came the entire poisoned coverage, Shafer says, as law-enforcement amateurism begat journalistic amateurism.

That might make for a compelling rhetorical argument, but most parents recognize the he made me do it! defense, and usually reject it out of hand. I don't blame the media for reporting on the tips from inside sources and the statements of the authorities. I blame them for not exercising some restraint and skepticism in doing so, a situation that allowed the media to get exploited as a tool of intimidation by these authorities against a family that had realized the hostile stance they had taken towards Jon Benet's survivors.

News agencies used to exercise judgment and restraint, and they used to focus on facts. The competitive pressures of the 24-hour cycle and the need to fill all of that time with compelling entertainment has demeaned journalism and promoted the tabloid mentality. Cable news shows gave us endless (and mostly baseless) speculation about this case, all of which cemented the image of the Ramsey family as sick, twisted murderers without a shred of supporting evidence. Shafer wants to distinguish between the Geraldo-Greta type of shows and straightforward paper and television reporting, but in this case it was indistinguishable, and that was a deliberate decision on the part of media outlets.

One would expect that the revelation that the Ramseys were blameless in the murder of their daughter would inspire some apologies, and not just to the Ramseys but also to the public. They exploited a little girl's murder for years, and allowed themselves to be manipulated in the effort of Colorado authorities to intimidate the Ramseys into submission. That seems worthy of an expression of regret.

The French Surrender ... Again

After insisting on a cease-fire in Lebanon and demanding international action to separate the combatants, the French have performed one of their traditional about-faces and refused to substantially contribute to the effort. Efforts to create a strong international force to support the Lebanese Army centered on commitments by the French of up to 5,000 troops. Now the Chirac government says they could scrape up maybe 200, if they're not too busy on their August vacations:

France on Thursday rebuffed pleas by U.N. officials to make a major contribution to a peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, setting back efforts to deploy an international military force to help police a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, according to U.N. and French officials.

French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France would contribute only 200 additional troops to the U.N. operation in southern Lebanon, which the Security Council wants to expand from 2,000 troops to 15,000. Chirac said that a force of about 1,700 French troops and crew members on warships off the coast would provide logistical support. ...

[T]here were no firm commitments to contribute personnel for a crucial, well-equipped spearhead force of 3,500 troops that the United Nations is trying to get into southern Lebanon within the next 10 days, according to India's U.N. ambassador, Nirupam Sen. The United Nations had hoped that the mission would be made up largely of forces from advanced military powers, including France, Italy, Spain and Turkey, whose troops and firepower could deter challenges.

It's difficult to blame the French for this. Since World War I, the French have shown a great capacity to demand action and little stomach for providing it. In this manner, they mirror almost perfectly the UN itself. After imposing a cease-fire in Lebanon -- mostly on Israel, the only sovereign nation fighting the war -- the UN casually mentioned that its commitment to provide troops would get fulfilled in a few months, and perhaps a year. When Israel and the US objected strenuously, Annan finally decided to start asking nations for immediate commitments. So far, Annan has come up empty.

If nothing else showed the uselessness of the United Nations, this latest folly should convince everyone of it. The UN fancies itself as the modern mechanism of peace. However, in its sixty years of being, the only accomplishment it has achieved has been the prolongation of every conflict it enters. The UN provides no solutions; they fix all disputes in amber and hope that the boredom kills them. That strategy has proven singularly unsuccessful, and nothing demonstrates that better than the UNIFIL force that the UN wants to bolster. Most people did not know that the UN had a peacekeeping force on the Israel-Lebanon border for almost thirty years -- and the reason why is because they have proven themselves nonentities in the effort to stop war.

At some point, the combatants in the region will have to have the war they so obviously desire, and all the UN resolutions in the world will not stop it. Until governments stop using terrorists as proxies to conduct their wars, conflict will continue, and the UN has done nothing to solve that underlying cause of the troubles in the region. The French just provide the latest and the crassest example of the joke at Turtle Bay. (via The Moderate Voice, which notes that the French have now doubled their commitment to a whopping 400 troops.)

NSA Decision: Lots Of Emotion, Little Reasoning

The ruling yesterday to forbid the President to continue his warrantless surveillance of international communications involving one party within the US seems likely to find resistance in the appellate court, not so much for its conclusion but for its emotional and mostly weightless reasoning. The Washington Post notes that legal scholars found themselves underwhelmed by the legal justifications of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, and after reading the decision myself a couple of times, I'm glad to see that my reaction matched theirs:

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action until a Sept. 7 hearing. Legal scholars said Taylor's decision is likely to receive heavy scrutiny from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit when the Justice Department appeals, and some criticized her ruling as poorly reasoned. ...

Several dozen lawsuits have been filed around the country challenging the program's legality, but yesterday's ruling marked the first time that a judge had ruled it unconstitutional. Experts in national security law argued, however, that Taylor offered meager support for her findings on separation of powers and other key issues.

"Regardless of what your position is on the merits of the issue, there's no question that it's a poorly reasoned decision," said Bobby Chesney, a national security law specialist at Wake Forest University who takes a moderate stance on the legal debate over the NSA program. "The opinion kind of reads like an outline of possible grounds to strike down the program, without analysis to fill it in."

Judicial opinions usually state the competing arguments in a lawsuit, which read like press releases combined with legal references, and then provide a solid line of reasoning towards the eventual decision. Taylor's opinion seems to just continue the assertions into the analysis, which is filled with scolding rhetoric but not much else. She comes across as so anxious to be the first to strike down the program that she marches right past the standing of the plaintiffs, which seems questionable, to agreement with every point raised by their attorneys.

Taylor not only declares that the President has violated the Fourth Amendment but also the First Amendment by not allowing people the right to unfettered international communications. In this, she accepted the fact that the plaintiffs suffered real damage because they are journalists who have to make overseas phone calls for their job. However, the program in question only applied to telephone numbers and/or persons identified by intelligence agents as potential terrorists. Unless Taylor heard evidence that these men knowingly communicated with terrorists, it seems a stretch to accept their standing to sue over the program. (Congress would have had standing in any case, but Congress did not sue after polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly supported the program.)

No one doubts that the legal question would center on the Fourth Amendment, as well as Article II and the AUMF from September 2001. However, the inclusion of the First Amendment, as well as the condescending tone Taylor takes while invoking it, can't be supported in the context of the program as presented to the court. No one has the right to unfettered communications with suspected terrorists; otherwise, terrorists could never be surveilled. Journalists do not have the right to unfettered conversations with mafia bosses, either. A warrantless surveillance in these situations may run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, but the First Amendment doesn't come into play.

The Sixth District Appellate Court slapped a stay on this decision almost immediately, and one suspects that the justices will take a long and skeptical look at Taylor's scattershot opinion. Whether or not one agrees with the end result, the decision itself is insupportable because Taylor never bothered to provide the support necessary.

How does this play out politically? Had it happened before the plot uncovered by the British last week, I would think it would have damaged the Bush administration. It still might, in the short term. It's likely to sway moderates to the thought that the program did violate the law, while it's unlikely to convince die-hards of anything but what they already believed. The exposure of another international and complex plot against airlines might mitigate that and remind moderates and undecideds that we still face an enemy determined to kill as many of us as possible. And if Taylor gets overturned by the 6th, that will only underscore the validity of the program.

I think one can make compelling arguments against the NSA warrantless surveillance program. However, I believe that surveilling enemy communications falls within the executive powers during wartime and does not require FISA approval, a construct that (I believe) violated Article II from its inception. Taylor's opinion is only the first round anyway; this will go to the Supreme Court before it gets settled for good, and that will likely take place after the present administration leaves office.

For other views, see Power Line, Volokh Conspiracy, Patterico, and Glenn Greenwald for dissent.

UPDATE: The Washington Post editorial board takes its turn scolding Taylor for her weightless screed:

Judge Taylor's opinion is certainly long on throat-clearing sound bites. "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," she thunders. She declares that "the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." And she insists that Mr. Bush has "undisputedly" violated the First and Fourth Amendments, the constitutional separation of powers, and federal surveillance law.

But the administration does, in fact, vigorously dispute these conclusions. Nor is its dispute frivolous. The NSA's program, about which many facts are still undisclosed, exists at the nexus of inherent presidential powers, laws purporting to constrict those powers, the constitutional right of the people to be free from unreasonable surveillance, and a broad congressional authorization to use force against al-Qaeda. That authorization, the administration argues, permits the wiretapping notwithstanding existing federal surveillance law; inherent presidential powers, it suggests, allow it to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance on its own authority. You don't have to accept either contention to acknowledge that these are complicated, difficult issues. Judge Taylor devotes a scant few pages to dismissing them, without even discussing key precedents.

In the end, this poorly-reasoned decision may wind up damaging both Taylor's reputation and the effort to stop the warrantless surveillance performed by the NSA. Jurists will not easily lend their names in upholding such mediocre work.

Palestinians Declare Unilateral Cease-Fire

Apparently concerned that the Israelis might adopt the tougher tactics that their citizens wanted used against Hezbollah, Mahmoud Abbas has declared a unilateral cease-fire in the West Bank and Gaza. He claims to have the support of all armed groups in this stand-down agreement, and hopes to end the Israeli offensive in Gaza:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that Palestinian armed groups promised him they would suspend their attacks on Israel in hopes of ending a nearly 2-month-long Israeli crackdown in the Gaza Strip.

The groups hedged their bets, denying there was a formal agreement with Abbas, while leaving the door open to a possible halt in attacks. There was only minor violence reported Thursday, and there appears to have been a drop in rocket attacks against Israel in recent days.

Abbas said the groups reached their agreement late Wednesday during renewed talks on forming a national unity government between his Fatah Party and the rival Hamas group, which controls the Cabinet. The talks broke down after Israel launched a widescale offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 after Hamas-linked operatives attacked an Israeli army post and captured IDF Cpl. Gilat Shalit.

This demonstrates that the Israelis gained something from their actions in Lebanon, and earlier in Gaza. The Olmert government may have mishandled the military strategy in their Lebanon incursion -- almost certainly they did -- but their ferocious response to what had been routine provocations made an impression on both Hezbollah and the Palestinian fighters. The latter want to bring an end to the fighting before the Israelis redeploy their retreating troops into the two Palestinian areas.

Hamas refused to confirm that they had participated in any deal. Indeed, the terrorist group launched a rocket into Israel from northern Gaza, but it hit nothing. They claimed that Israel needed to "calm down" before Hamas would agree to negotiations, although they claimed that they had decided to halt rocket attacks last week but want an Israeli gesture in return. One has to wonder what kind of gesture the Israelis were supposed to provide, or how they were supposed to learn about that decision while rockets still fall into southern Israel from Gaza.

This looks suspiciously like another round of the triangle offense, a time-tested tactic of the Palestinians. Abbas will declare this cease-fire and put pressure on Israel to withdraw from Gaza, while Hamas and/or Islamic Jihad continue to shoot rockets into Israel. If the Palestinians truly lay down their weapons, they will find a ready partner in Israel. However, they would also have to return Gilad Shalit and recognize Israel's right to exist, two steps I notice that Abbas still hasn't taken. Color me skeptical until then.

UPDATE: Maybe things have changed with the Palestinians. Now they can't even agree to run the triangle offense:

Talks between Hamas and Fatah on forming a Palestinian unity government have failed, Fatah officials reported Friday.

Among the terms of the proposal was that Hamas would keep most ministerial posts according to its parliamentary majority. Fatah would retain the post of prime minister. ...

Abbas and Haniyeh have invited Islamic Jihad to join the prospective government - an invitation that has been turned down by leaders of the organization in the Gaza Strip and Syria.

Abbas said on Friday that the Islamic Jihad refused to sign on officially, but agreed to refrain from attacks as long as the other terrorist groups did so.

The last seems rather interesting. Islamic Jihad got vetoed by Syria, an unusual and subtle smack at Iran, IJ's sponsor. Apparently content to let Teheran call the shots in Lebanon, Damascus seems to want the West Bank and Gaza all to its own. Besides, the IJ pledge is laughable. They will only agree to a cease-fire if no one else attacks Israel -- which means Israel has no effect on IJ's decision. That should make plain the nihilistic intent of Islamic Jihad: they will only refrain from killing Israeli citizens as long as none of their brothers are having that sort of fun, either.

CQ Under Construction, Open Thread On NSA Ruling

We've got the construction hats on tonight, although all of it behind the scenes. I'll be rebuilding the vast machinery that supports the CQ empire .... which means I've replaced the laptop. This time, I bought my new computer at Best Buy and got the three-year all-inclusive warranty. I decided on another Sony Vaio, because I've had excellent luck with Sony in the past and the price was too good on this machine to pass up. The Geek Squad guys are going to retrieve the data from the old Sony's hard drive, and I'll start restoring previous e-mails this weekend.

In the meantime, how about an open thread on the federal court ruling on the NSA warrantless surveillance program? I'll have more to say about it tomorrow.

The Post Highlights Pork Database

The new effort by a coalition of bloggers and non-profits to identify pork-barrel projects gets noticed in today's Washington Post. Judy Sarasohn reports on the new Exposing Earmarks website at the Sunlight Foundation:

One legislator's "pork," of course, is another's vital public works project. But all are earmarks, those tax and spending directions added to money bills at the behest of anonymous lawmakers -- anonymous, that is, until the legislation is passed and they can boast of it to constituents.

A coalition of odd bedfellows is trying to bring more transparency to earmarking by encouraging citizens to get involved in tracking who is trying to get what money for which special interest. And all of this will be online and available to the public.

The coalition includes the Sunlight Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, Porkbusters.org, Human Events Online and the Washington Examiner newspaper. They created a single database of earmarks, but each organization is presenting the database on its own Web site and asking the public to participate in different ways. Generally, however, they are asking citizens to investigate the earmarks that grab their attention, then report back. They plan to share their information with each other.

Sarasohn even included the URL in her report, and the Pos t created it as a hotlink. A number of us in the blogosphere have supported it from its launch earlier this week, and the Examiner even has a challenge to its readers to call their Congressmen for an explanation of the earmarks for unnecessary local politics. It's this last effort that will help to change the culture of pork in the halls of Congress.

Of course, this database only covers the proposed appropriations for Health & Human Services. In order to really blow the lid off of pork, we need to have an interactive database like this that covers the entire federal budget. Senators Tom Coburn and Barack Obama have proposed just that solution in S 2590, which came out of committee last month. However, we have discovered that at least one Senator has placed an anonymous hold on 2590, attempting to spike the bill before it comes up for a vote. We need to get every Senator on the record as to whether they placed the hold on the legislation. Call your Senator and get an answer, then leave your notes in the comments section here. Let them know that we're watching.

Profiling Profiles

Taking a page from Israeli security forces, the US has started using a technique for screening at airports that focuses on the people rather than the methodology to stop terrorism. Although currently only an experimental program, the technological escalation of the British sky plot will pressure the Transportation Security Administration into deploying this across all airports:

As the man approached the airport security checkpoint here on Wednesday, he kept picking up and putting down his backpack, touching his fingers to his chin, rubbing some object in his hands and finally reaching for his pack of cigarettes, even though smoking was not allowed.

Two Transportation Security Administration officers stood nearby, nearly motionless and silent, gazing straight at him. Then, with a nod, they moved in, chatting briefly with the man, and then swiftly pulled him aside for an intense search.

Another airline passenger had just made the acquaintance of the transportation agency’s “behavior detection officers.”

Taking a page from Israeli airport security, the transportation agency has been experimenting with this new squad, whose members do not look for bombs, guns or knives. Instead, the assignment is to find anyone with evil intent.

So far, these specially trained officers are working in only about a dozen airports nationwide, including Dulles International Airport here outside Washington, and they represent just a tiny percentage of the transportation agency’s 43,000 screeners.

But after the reported liquid bomb plot in Britain, agency officials say they want to have hundreds of behavior detection officers trained by the end of next year and deployed at most of the nation’s biggest airports.

Israel, which has had to contend with terrorism on airplanes for much longer than anyone else, has maintained a high record of success with this approach. Israel doesn't worry about what a passenger might carry onto a flight as much as they focus on the traveler himself. John Hinderaker at Power Line described his experiences flying El Al several years ago, while traveling with his family to Israel. After only asking a couple of questions, the screener wished him a happy vacation, assured that John meant no harm. (Apparently, the Israeli screener has never seen John in court.)

This approach allows people who present no danger to travel without being treated like a criminal from the moment they step into the airport to the time the plane lands at their destination. Israel understands that restricting items from carry-on luggage, or eliminating carry-on luggage entirely, will not stop a determined effort by terrorists to seize flights or destroy them. Therefore, the screeners focus on the passengers themselves. If they find one that makes them nervous, they start doing a more in-depth interrogation and a thorough search of the passenger and his luggage, carry-on or not.

It's this subjective analysis that has civil libertarians opposed to such procedures in the US. The Times notes that some complain that such a program could turn into racial profiling without any objective safeguards. Some passengers who refused to cooperate in interviews got threatened with arrest, prompting lawsuits. The program in Dulles has uncovered over fifty people whose reactions revealed ill intent, although none of them terror-related.

These criticisms should have died on 9/11. The important point about airport security is to secure the airport and the airplanes, not worry that social attitudes may get bruised. If done properly -- and the Israeli consultants say we have more work to get to that stage -- then this program can catch the actual terrorists and leave the rest of us to travel in peace. Selection comes from a wide net of casual interactions, from which screeners narrow down the potential problems. That seems like a reasonable program, and its success would allow travelers to carry their Juicy Juice and Gatorade on board without getting tackled on the ramp.

One would think that after the latest terrorist plot got revealed, people would understand the need for better screening techniques and the desire to replicate the success of the Israelis. Some people will only be satisfied if passengers travel equally naked and equally shackled to their seats, rather than just find the few people who actually mean us harm.

Democrats Declare War On Wal-Mart

The Democrats have finally found a unifying theme for the mid-term elections, one that appears to unite all ends of the political spectrum in their party. Instead of fighting a war on terrorism, though, they have decided to fight a war against Wal-Mart. Claiming that attacking a retailer with the lowest prices somehow champions the poor, Democrats of all strips have enlisted in the latest cause:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, delivered a 15-minute, blistering attack to warm applause from Democrats and union organizers here on Wednesday. But Mr. Biden’s main target was not Republicans in Washington, or even his prospective presidential rivals.

It was Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer.

Yes, not Islamofascist terrorists, not oppressive dictatorships, not drug cartels nor organized crime -- Wal-Mart.

Among Democrats, Mr. Biden is not alone. Across Iowa this week and across much of the country this month, Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits.

Six Democratic presidential contenders have appeared at rallies like the one Mr. Biden headlined, along with some Democratic candidates for Congress in some of the toughest-fought races in the country.

“My problem with Wal-Mart is that I don’t see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people,” Mr. Biden said, standing on the sweltering rooftop of the State Historical Society building here. “They talk about paying them $10 an hour. That’s true. How can you live a middle-class life on that?”

This is Democratic economics at its most state-controlled, and its politics at the apex of class warfare. Biden and the rest of the Democrats volunteering for this war want Republicans to defend a $10 per hour wage, instead of talking sense about market wages and the effect on prices that interference will bring.

Let's address the wages first. In any area of the country, that wage is a large improvement over minimum wage, even over the minimum wage the Democrats proposed this year. That wage applies to the entry-level positions at Wal-Mart and seems about right for the skill sets and the experience needed for a new-hire in retail. In fact, I suspect that most other retailers do not offer a starting wage that high. And remember that this is a starting wage, not a cap on wages. Employees who work hard and gain experience get promotions into better-paying jobs. It's the same fallacy that Democrats trot out about minimum-wage workers not having a raise in seven years. If they haven't earned a raise in that amount of time, then that's hardly the government's fault.

Another argument the Democrats trot out attacks Wal-Mart for not offering a better benefits package. That again is a market decision. Some retailers offer better packages at lower wages, some do not, but Democrats for some reason have not marked them as an enemy of the state. The main thrust of this is that Wal-Mart displaces other retailers who paid better wages and benefits, but that's not the case. In most communities, Wal-Mart displaces locally-owned specialty retail stores, which traditionally pay lower compensation to employees.

Besides, the effect of the reforms that Democrats want to force on Wal-Mart would require the company to raise prices. The money for all of these higher wages and benefits have to come from somewhere, and just as with any other retail business, it will come from the customers. In Wal-Mart's case, the low prices allow working-class families to have access to goods that would otherwise take a bigger bite out of their income. The working poor that the Democrats want to protect will find that their income has less buying power, and as Wal-Mart becomes less competitive, their numbers will increase as Wal-Mart starts laying off workers and closing stores in less-profitable areas.

None of this is a secret; it's basic economics. The Democrats want to fool people into thinking that government edicts can somehow override market forces of supply and demand. They would do better by ending the public-school monopoly that delivers so many graduates with minimal job skills, forcing them into choices that limit themselves to Wal-Mart's entry-level positions. The truth is that the job market values skills such as literacy, competence, and education, and rewards hard work and experience, and that is what allows people to live middle-class lives. Joe Biden's outrage does nothing to solve the underlying problems for lower-wage workers, and the Democratic Party's war on Wal-Mart will make their lives worse, not better.

Palestinians Try Forming Unity Government

Fatah and Hamas have opened talks on forming a unity government in the West Bank and Gaza. This follows an abortive attempt at the same goal earlier this year, when Hamas got desperate to end the global embargo on aid once they assumed power:

MAHMOUD ABBAS, the Palestinian President, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Prime Minister of the Hamas-led administration, agreed yesterday to discuss forming a government of national unity after meeting in Gaza.

Similar negotiations last February with the President’s Fatah faction foundered when Hamas refused to accept earlier peace deals with Israel which would have implied recognition of the state. Hamas went on to form its own Government, which sparked an economic embargo by the international community.

This follows the demands made by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that the various groups unite in one government, which could then work towards the end of occupation -- as defined by the Palestinians. The National Conciliation Document received a lot of approbation when it first appeared, as people believed that it proposed recognition of Israel at the 1967 borders. Of course, it did no such thing, instead demanding a united front for the purpose of pushing Israel into the Mediterranean.

The formation of a unity government will probably get the same silly kind of attention that the NCD inspired, but it will mean little except for efforts to give the Palestinians more money. It legitimizes Hamas, which wants to control the executive in this new political structure. Fatah and Abbas lend them their limited prestige, but in the end it still remains a terrorist enterprise. Hamas' control guarantees that Damascus will use them just as they do Hezbollah in Lebanon -- as a proxy for attacks on Israel

Hamas and Fatah have never worried much about improving the lives of their constituencies, preferring to extend their misery as a motivating force for jihads both religious and secular, respectively. Combining their efforts promises to deliver more misery and therefore more radicalism. The Palestinians at some point have to push responsible leadership to the fore if they ever expect to live normal lives; this union only makes that a more difficult task.

Pakistan: British Sky Terror Plot Started With AQ #3

Pakistani sources indentify al-Qaeda's #3 man as the originator of the plot to attack airliners in Britain in perhaps the largest-scale plot since 9/11. Abu Faraj al-Libbi personally directed the terror conspiracy and used Rashid Rauf as the main liaison between AQ leadership and the British cell:

Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who after Osama bin Laden and the Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, is suspected of being al-Qaida's third in command, has been named by Pakistani security sources as the main planner of the alleged plot, according to Dawn, a daily newspaper. He has also been accused of being in a plot to assassinate Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and was arrested last year and turned over to the US.

A security official said: "There was a mastermind, there was a planner, and there were the executioners." He claimed the al-Qaida link to the alleged plot in Britain had been established and that it had been at the planning stage when it was interrupted in London last week.

Mr Rauf, who has dual nationality, is being held for interrogation after his arrest in Bahawalpur last week. He has appeared once in court and can be held initially for 28 days, a process that can be repeated for up to a year. Further details of his movements emerged last night as the father of Masood Azhar, head of the banned militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, told Reuters that he had left the movement to join rivals more interested in al-Qaida's anti-western message. "He was a member of our group but later deserted and joined our rivals," Hafiz Allah Bukhsh said at Jaish's HQ in Bahawalpur. "Our cause is Kashmir, their cause is Afghanistan. They are anti-American, we're not."

Pakistani authorities arrested al-Libbi in the spring of 2005, which I noted at the time. Al-Libbi was determined to have taken the place of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after the capture of the author of 9/11. After Pervez Musharraf and George Bush hailed the capture as a blow against AQ, some argued that al-Libbi was nothing more than a mid-level manager. A French intelligence expert on terrorist finance said at the time that al-Libbi never did anything more ambitious than facilitate connections between AQ and local Pakistani Islamists.

If the sources prove correct, this appears to prove otherwise. It also shows how long this plot has taken to reach fruition, since its main cheerleader has remained in custody for the last fifteen months. The 9/11 plot took two years or more to plan and execute, and it took less technical expertise than this plot.

Some have wondered whether Rashid Rauf had intended on becoming a terrorist mastermind. The Guardian makes his Islamist impulses plain. Rauf only came to al-Qaeda after spending time with Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militia in the disputed Kashmir region. A JeM leader, Hafiz Allah Bukhsh, told reporters that Rauf left his group due to the organization's limited scope. JeM only concerns itself with Kashmir and holds no particular portfolio for attacks on the US or UK. Rauf wanted to take his jihad global, and deserted JeM for their "rivals", as Bukhsh considers AQ.

Details uncovered by this investigation show that terrorists still plan for big attacks against the West. We stopped them from doing so successfully in this case and exposed more of their network. If we are to remain successful, we have to continue using all the tools available to us. The terrorists continue to adapt to our defenses, and we need to ensure that we can adapt to theirs as well.

A Spot Of Tea Lands Lebanese General In Tight Spot

A Lebanese general sits in jail today after committing a terrible crime -- having tea with an Israeli. During the military operation, the IDF captured his barracks and held Adnan Daoud and 350 of his men prisoner, but apparently did so rather informally. A videotape taken during the event shows Daoud drinking tea with the soldiers as both sides acted cordially:

A Lebanese general was ordered arrested Wednesday for appearing in a videotape drinking tea with IDF soldiers who had occupied his south Lebanon barracks during their incursion of the country.

Adnan Daoud was summoned and ordered held for questioning, Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said in a statement. Daoud is commanding officer of the 1,000-strong joint police-army force that had positions in southern Lebanon and was based in Marjayoun.

IDF troops seized the barracks there last week and held him and 350 soldiers for a day before allowing them to leave the occupied zone. The Lebanese garrison, which is lightly armed, did not resist the Israeli force which moved in armor into the base.

In the videotape, aired on Israeli television and carried by a Lebanese TV station Wednesday, Daoud was shown having tea with smiling Israeli soldiers and walking with them in the base courtyard.

"He was very polite with me," Daoud said of his first encounter with an Israeli colonel in this conflict or any other. It most likely will be the last.

Daoud finds himself in jail not for fraternization, but for exposing the real nature of the war. Israel had no beef with the kind of military police force Daoud commanded. In fact, Israel wants to have precisely these kinds of forces across their northern border, rather than the Hezbollah terrorists that have held the territory for years. That is why Israeli soldiers treated Daoud so chivalrously.

The Siniora government cannot afford to have the Lebanese see the Israelis treating the LA well, however, at least not while Hassan Nasrallah is still in charge. It interferes with the preferred terrorist narrative that the Israelis committed a war of aggression on Lebanon instead of a war against the terrorists that committed a casus belli in the first place. If Israel treats Lebanese people in a friendly manner, then the Lebanese people will wonder why they need Hezbollah protecting them from the IDF.

It shows that the Siniora government still finds itself hostage to the terrorists and their propaganda. Unfortunately, Daoud is the type of officer who could help establish peace and work with the Israelis to make further wars unnecessary. That also conflicts with the aims of Hezbollah and their masters in Damascus and Teheran. Daoud's tea tour will likely make him into a martyr for radicalism.

Hollywood Hates Terrorism?

At least a few celebrities in Hollywood have decided to support the war on terror and call terrorists what they are, according to an advertisement a number of them took out in the Los Angeles Times. Tomorrow's edition will carry a full-page ad denouncing terrorism and supporting democracy, carrying some notable signatures:

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.

"If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.

"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs." ...

The actors listed included: Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.

Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names.

Other Hollywood powerplayers supporting the ad included Sumner Redstone, the chairman and majority owner of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul, Haim Saban.

Of course, this sounds like a tacit endorsement of Israel, which it obviously intends to be. The recognition of terrorism and the denunciation of the groups involved comes as a bit of a surprise. Too many in Tinseltown remain infatuated with revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and see Hezbollah and Hamas in the same light ... which is actually accurate, but not for the reasons they assume. (hat tip: CQ reader J. C.)

UPDATE: Bruce Kesler wonders why we have to go haflfway around the world to find out about this.

Flight Drama Somewhat Overblown

When I returned home after my minor surgery today, the story of the transatlantic flight dominated the news. I could not blog on it at the time due to the condition of my hand, and I recalled thinking that might not be a bad thing. I suspected that the news reports would turn out to be overblown, and I was right:

Two fighter jets were scrambled Wednesday to escort a London-to-Washington flight to an emergency landing in Boston after a disturbance in which passengers said a woman in a jogging suit paced up and down the aisle, peppering her incoherent mutterings with the word "Pakistan."

The federal official for Boston's Logan International Airport said there was no indication of terrorism, but passengers said they were unnerved by the woman and by the military response, just a week after authorities in London said they foiled a terror plot to blow up flights to the U.S. ...

Nash said he noticed the woman's oversized handbag appeared to contain items such as lotion that he believed should not have been allowed on the plane since the new safety regulations were put in place after last week's terror plot revelations.

Romney said a search of the woman's bag turned up matches and a gelatin-like substance, which he did not define, but there was no indication the items were related to terrorism. Naccara said he did not believe any items she was carrying were the cause of the emergency.

An airport spokesman, Phil Orlandella, previously confirmed broadcast reports that the woman was carrying Vaseline, a screw driver and a note referring to al-Qaeda, but later backed off the statement. Naccara said it was not true.

It's difficult to blame the news media for its reporting. Orlandella may have received bad information from someone else, but ultimately he has responsibility for ensuring that he keeps the public properly informed. The al-Qaeda note story, following the events of last week in Britain where this flight originated, introduced an unnecessary sensational aspect to the event and probably set off scores of conspiracy theories to boot.

The flight crew performed magnificently, however. They took all the right steps to ensure the safety of the passengers as well as those on the ground. Fortunately, it all sprang from the actions of a panicky passenger and not something more ominous.

We need to see more care taken by authorities in releasing information early in an incident. Enough rumors fly on their own without those in charge adding to the problem.

More Computer Fun At CQ

The CQ laptop has once again gone overboard. The Sony Vaio I bought over a year ago suddenly died this evening -- just as I was about to put up a killer post, too. It looks like the power supply burnt out; the computer suddenly lost power, and it will not power up at all, either with our without the battery.

What's more frustrating is that I had to stay home from work today, thanks to a minor surgical procedure on my finger, and I took most of the time napping and recuperating. I wish I'd spent the time keeping up with my e-mail and news.

Unfortunately, that puts a bit of a crimp in my style. I can get e-mail on my backup machine, but all the e-mail I received from around 5 pm and earlier is now unaccessible to me. I can still surf and post, but my preferred tools are on my Vaio, so it will be slow going.

I'll take my Vaio to the shop tomorrow and see if I can get it fixed. Otherwise, it may be a while before I can replace it -- this summer has been rather taxing. It's a great machine and I hope it can be salvaged .... we'll see.

Iran Agrees To Discuss Nuclear Halt

If Hezbollah supposed victory served to embolden its sponsors, then perhaps Iran has not received the memo. Reversing its public stance this summer, Iran has agreed to discuss ending its uranium enrichment as the deadline on the West's offer approaches:

Iran is ready to discuss the suspension of its uranium enrichment programme as demanded by Western powers, the country's foreign minister has said.

Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference that Iran was ready to talk but still regarded any suspension of its programme as "illogical".

A package of incentives has been offered to Iran by six world powers in return for a halt to its programme.

Tehran has said it will respond to the offer by 22 August.

"We are ready to discuss all the issues, including the suspension. There is no logic behind the suspension of Iran's activities. We are ready to explain this to them," Mr Mottaki said.

This isn't an agreement to stop enrichment, not even temporarily, as the UN demanded in its UN Security Council resolution. However, it does represent a shift from Iran's earlier reaction from both its president and its supreme leader. Both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khameini had insisted that Iran would never debate its sovereign right to the nuclear cycle, and that negotiations had to start on that basis. This represents a retreat from that position less than a week before Iran's self-assigned deadline for a formal response.

Much has been made of the August 22 date for the deadline. Many expect Iran to do something irrational as part of its millenial ambitions to bring back the 12th Imam, which certainly remains possible. However, it appears that the mullahcracy may not be as sanguine about the response to Hezbollah's provocations in Lebanon as their public pronouncements of victory would indicate. This retreat seems incongruous with the triumphalism exhibited in Teheran and Damascus, and may be an indication that rational thought still prevails in Iran -- for the moment.

Rice Protests Too Much?

Condoleezza Rice takes to the pages of the Washington Post in an effort to explain to Americans why the US pressed for the cease-fire agreement adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council. Rice insists that UNSCR 1701 delivers the construct for a lasting peace, if fully implemented. That, however, is the problem, which even Rice acknowledges:

The agreement we reached last week is a good first step, but it is only a first step. Though we hope that it will lead to a permanent cease-fire, no one should expect an immediate stop to all acts of violence. This is a fragile cease-fire, and all parties must work to strengthen it. Our diplomacy has helped end a war. Now comes the long, hard work to secure the peace.

Looking ahead, our most pressing challenge is to help the hundreds of thousands of displaced people within Lebanon to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. This reconstruction effort will be led by the government of Lebanon, but it will demand the generosity of the entire world. ...

Already, we hear Hezbollah trying to claim victory. But others, in Lebanon and across the region, are asking themselves what Hezbollah's extremism has really achieved: hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. Houses and infrastructure destroyed. Hundreds of innocent lives lost. The blame of the world for causing this war.

While I normally have tremendous respect for Secretary Rice and I'm one of the few who actually think that 1701 represents a limited gain for Israel, the arguments Rice offers here are eye-rollers. Of course the problem is implementation -- that's been the problem all along. The UN has demanded the disarming of Hezbollah before, but no one bothered to do it. Israel finally decided to take the task on itself after tiring of the empty rhetoric coming from Turtle Bay. The most pressing issue is this implementation, not the hand-wringing over civilian displacement, a concern that Rice does not extend to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Israelis.

This doesn't represent much of an improvement. UNSCR 1701 does promise a better world, but it unfortunately leaves it to the UN to deliver. Predictably, it has failed to demonstrate much enthusiasm for the task. Its leader, Kofi Annan, told Israelis that the primary basis for its agreement to 1701 -- the disarming of Hezbollah -- doesn't really concern the UN, despite two demands for the action from its own Security Council. Annan also told Israelis that the UN would get around to sending troops to support the Lebanese Army ... in a year. Maybe.

My optimism over 1701 relies on the fecklessness of the UN, not on its supposed usefulness. The UN has proven that it understands the problem in Lebanon, and that it has little interest in solving it. It completes the descent to League of Nations status and further undermines its credibility. Had the UN actually implemented 1701, it would have struck a blow against terrorism and non-state actors, and would have strengthened sovereignty and the stability of national borders.

The UN and Annan cannot feign ignorance after the passage of 1701. If they want peace, then they have to act to establish it by disarming Hezbollah and thwarting its proxy use by Iran and Syria. If they fail to do so, then Israel has both their recognition of the problem and their failure to act in defense of their own mandates as a tacit endorsement for action themselves. It's similar to what happened with Iraq in 2003, only this time the UNSC hasn't the UNSCOM/UNMOVIC dodge to offer as an obstruction on behalf of dictators and terrorists. Annan can't even gin up the UNIFIL force that the UNSC required.

Perhaps Rice felt it improper to take such a cynical public stance. If so, she would have been better off keeping her pen in the holder than publishing this particular justification.

Needed: A Commitment To Win

The death toll in Iraq continues to rise, as civilian deaths hit a new high in July, mostly in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. By any measure, the war in Iraq has shifted dangerously, and the strategies employed to this point have failed to bring security to Iraq's capital:

July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new government has failed.

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3,438, is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January.

The rising numbers suggested that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control, and seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have made in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one, and that the American-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias.

The numbers also provide the most definitive evidence yet that the Baghdad security plan started by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on June 14 has not quelled the violence. The plan, promoted by top Iraqi and American officials at the time, relied on setting up more Iraqi-run checkpoints to stymie insurgents.

The officials have since acknowledged that the plan has fallen far short of its aims, forcing the American military to add thousands of soldiers to the capital this month and to back away from proposals for a withdrawal of some troops by year’s end.

At the same time, the Iraqi government has continued to press for transfers of security in other provinces to their control. While they cannot keep the violence down in the capital, the Interior Ministry and the Army has peformed well enough to replace American forces in outlying areas. The Kurdish provinces have done exceptionally well, but those have less sectarian diversity than Baghdad.

Unfortunately, the response from the US has been slow and reluctant, mostly for domestic political reasons. The Bush administration finally decided last month to increase troop strength in the capital, a move that probably should have taken place months ago when the level of violence was more manageable. The Army will find the necessary troops by delaying rotations out of the theater and putting off drawdowns that the administration hoped to deliver by the end of this year. Those expectations came from the month-long debate over the cut-and-run demands of Democrats, who demanded retreat from Iraq in a time frame that ranged from immediate to July 2007.

The political pressure created an environment where the one option that would address the Baghdad situation could not get public mention, which is to commit more troops to fight the war rather than keep the peace. Part of this stems also from the administration's insistence in casting the situation in the best possible light. That strategy ended when CENTCOM commanders told Congress that the situation had a good chance of descending into civil war.

Now that we have that on the table, the US has a choice to make in Baghdad. Either we fight to win or we get out, but the continuance of the strategies employed in the first half of the year and prior obviously will not work and will get more people killed. Early in the war, we took on the sectarian militias, especially Moqtada al-Sadr's, and we subdued them. Somewhere we lost the initiative against armed militias in Baghdad, and we need to get it back. That will require more troops and an honest acknowledgement of the mission, not just pretty words and shrugging shoulders.

In my opinion, we cannot afford to lose Iraq. In strategic terms, we cannot allow the terrorists to take over Baghdad and push us out. That means that we have to start fighting this war to win it and not simply to avoid losing it, and the new deployments are a step in the right direction. The White House needs to commit overwhelming force against the militias and insurgents that have tried to touch off a civil war in Iraq's capital and clearly have had some success in their efforts. The people of Iraq elected their representative government and rejected government by the gun, and we need to ensure that their trust in the electoral process has not been misplaced.

UPDATE: Here are the quotes from Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and CENTCOM's Gen. John Abizaid:

"The sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it," Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war." ...

"We do have the possibility of that devolving to a civil war, but that does not have to be a fact," said Pace. ". . . We need the Iraqi people to seize this moment."

To me, that sounds like more than just a remote possibility, but perhaps "good chance" might overstate the significance the two generals assigned it. YMMV.

Throwing Her Weight Around For The Last Time

New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber resigned last night after a state ethics panel harshly criticized her for interfering with the citation of a friend at a traffic stop. Farber had a state trooper drive her to where officers had stopped her friend because of a seat-belt infraction and subsequently found him to have a suspended driver's license, putting undue pressure on the officers:

On May 26, Ms. Farber received a call from her companion, Hamlet E. Goore, saying that he had been stopped at a seat-belt enforcement checkpoint in Fairview, in Bergen County, and the police determined that he had a suspended license and an expired registration.

Ms. Farber was taken to Fairview in her state car, driven by a trooper. But she has said she did not intercede in any way and did not speak to any police officers. She did acknowledge, however, that Mr. Goore had told the police that his companion was coming to help remove some items from his van — and that his companion was the attorney general.

The investigation, led by a former state appeals court judge from Atlantic County, Richard J. Williams, found that although Ms. Farber broke no laws at the scene, her appearance there raised “serious ethical questions.” Judge Williams’s report cited three specific violations of the Department of Law and Public Safety’s code of ethics that prohibit officers and employees from accepting favors because of their position or appearing to influence others.

The report made no recommendations as to whether Ms. Farber should remain in office, but the language that was used was stern. As attorney general, Judge Williams wrote, “coming to the scene of a traffic stop where you have a personal interest in the outcome of police decisions made at the scene creates a serious risk of raising public suspicion about the legitimacy of those decisions.”

The report continued: “It also creates a risk of inhibiting the local police officers at the scene. It does not appear that the attorney general ever considered those risks.”

Farber didn't break any laws, but she certainly exercised extremely poor judgment. As the ethics panel noted, having the state attorney general travel all the way to the scene of a friend's arrest delivers a message to the officers involved, and that message is not Have A Nice Day. The manner of her arrival compounded that impression; she had her official car driven by her official driver. That certainly implies that the AG was conducting official business -- which calls into question her demurral that she simply wanted to get personal effects from Goore's van. If that was the case, she could have driven herself.

Of course, that brings up another controversy over Farber. When nominated by Corzine in January, her driving record came to light. It included twelve speeding tickets, three license suspension, and four bench warrants for her arrest. Corzine still managed to get her the top law enforcement gig in New Jersey with that record, but the state legislature grumbled about it. Now Corzine has to explain his decision all over again, and it won't be just Farber's judgment that Garden State residents will question.

Farber tried hard to keep her job, but even fellow Democrats appeared unmoved by her protestations. Some openly called for her resignation, even after she started meeting with key NJ politicians. Of course, the manner in which she did so may have contributed to the hostility she faced. When she went to meet the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat John Adler, she arrived at his house ... in her state car and with her driver. Adler brushed her off, and last night sounded hostile still: "I’m glad that we can put this sad chapter behind us and look for an attorney general of the highest intelligence, competence and integrity to restore a department that’s once again been disappointed by failed leadership.”

Jon Corzine rolled into office on his reputation of exceptional competence in private industry. One has to wonder if he paid more competent people to make his hiring decisions during his career.

Did Torture Break The British Sky Plot?

According to the Guardian, Pakistani intelligence agents used torture to break Rashid Rauf, one of the plotters involved in the plot to attack transatlantic flights and kill thousands of travelers. Not surprisingly, the newspaper decries the use of this intelligence by Western forces and accuses the British and Americans of outsourcing torture in order to keep our hands clean:

Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." ...

But none of this stops governments acquiescing in torture to acquire information, rather than secure convictions, as British as well as American practice has shown. It has been outsourced to less squeamish countries and denied through redefinition: but it is still torture and still illegal. The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan has provided disturbing evidence of the uneasy boundary between benefiting from torture and encouraging it; so did the Council of Europe's report on rendition in June. The defence, to the extent that anything other than evasion has been offered, is no better than the one provided by Colonel Mathieu in Algiers: it works. But does it? Torture and other illegality can offer authorities a short-term seduction, perhaps even temporary successes. Information provided by torture may have helped foil the alleged airliners plot. But evidence provided uder torture is often unreliable, sometimes disastrously so - and its use always pollutes the broader credentials of torturers and their allies. This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome.

The Guardian gets it wrong here in the specifics, but perhaps not philosophically. Rashid Rauf did not get sent to Pakistan by the British or the Americans; he went there on his own, and the Pakistani authorities arrested him as part of the investigation. The Guardian attempts to turn this into a case of "extraordinary rendition", for which it doesn't qualify. One wonders what the Guardian would have security officials do with the information about the terror plot -- ignore it? Allow thousands of travelers to die as the uncaptured and unmolested terrorists already in place simply passed off the project to others?

This falls between the law-enforcement model and the war model, and it shows why using the former leaves the West vulnerable to attack. In some cases, we may not care about gaining convictions as much as identifying and detaining the terrorists and stopping their attacks. We aren't choosing the battlefield, a fact that the Guardian and many others seem to forget. Our enemies select the battlefields, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should allow them the advantage they seek by allowing them access to our civil justice systems. This is war, not crime, and it needs to be handled in the proper fashion.

The larger point, though, still holds. Strategically, supporting regimes that torture their captives makes little sense if we want to transform the region. Part of the reason we needed to eject Saddam from power was to allow democracy and respect for human rights change the Middle East from a powderkeg of suppressed and radicalized rage to a region of responsible self-government. Our alliance with Pervez Musharraf paid off in the protection of perhaps three thousand lives now -- but how long will we tolerate his form of oppression, and the radicalized anger it produces?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. However, ignoring intelligence on acute and critical threats hardly seems to be the correct decision under any circumstances. The Guardian uses the wrong example for a good point and winds up burying it under incoherence.

Maybe He Can Invent Cold Fusion, Too

Americans have earned their skepticism about the promises of politicians during campaigns, usually treating them with several grains of salt when made. That reflects not only the disinclination of politicians to fulfill them, but also the grandiose nature of the promises they make. Campaign promises have to make headlines and tend towards the fantastic.

However, Benjamin Cardin has offered a promise that makes others look positively banal:

With a month to go before primary voters head to the polls to choose Senate nominees, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin kicked off yesterday a weeklong effort to highlight his congressional record and vision on health care by making the mother of all campaign promises - to cure cancer.

Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease.

"We are going to lick cancer by 2015," Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road.

Perhaps Cardin will walk on water sometime before the primary in an effort to prove his credentials.

The promise highlights an issue the Democrats expect to exploit in the general election, regardless of whether Cardin or Kweisi Mfume faces off against Republican Michael Steele. The Lieutenant Governor opposes federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, preferring that the government focus on adult and umbilical stem-cell research. His position matches closely with the Bush administration, and Bush's veto of the embryonic stem-cell research bill will give the Democrats a rhetorical stick with which to beat Steele, or so they hope.

For that purpose, Cardin staged the event with the cancer survivors, hoping to leverage them into an image of a life saver. It makes a powerful image, without a doubt, but it also represents a contradiction. Obviously, we can already cure cancer, and we have been able to do so for years. Most forms of cancer have a better than 50% survival rate, although survival rates among African-Americans lag somewhat. In 2004, the National Institute of Health reported that survival rates improved 1.1% in each year between 1993 to 2001, almost a 10% improvement in survival. The NIH also reported that incidences of cancer dropped as well in most categories.

Cardin wants to throw more federal funding at cancer research, but chasing embryonic stem-cell research hardly sounds like a wise investment. Private-sector research has mostly avoided it because of the difficulties in turning it into real therapies. Far more progress has been made on adult and umbilical varieties, which actually resulted in successful therapies. In the meantime, private sector research can still continue on embryonic stem cells -- California has committed six billion dollars to it as part of the public sector push -- but the lack of interest should be instructive.

That gives Cardin too much credit. He wants to buy votes out of fear by throwing federal funds at unproven techniques rather than focus support on successful strategies. The promises of politicians have rarely been so cynical.

Israel: Game On If Hezbollah Keeps Weapons

Israel has warned the UN and Lebanon that any solution that allows Hezbollah to retain any weapons will result in a resumption of hostilities. Kofi Annan's earlier reaction to the reported deal between Fuad Siniora and Hassan Nasrallah that amounted to a "don't show, don't tell" policy angered Israelis and probably scotched the notion of a cease-fire in the short term:

The IDF will have to resume operations in Lebanon if the expanded United Nations force being assembled does not fulfill its obligation to dismantle Hizbullah, an official in the Prime Minister's Office warned on Tuesday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly reached a deal allowing Hizbullah to keep its weapons but refrain from exhibiting them in public. Israeli officials called the arrangement a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which passed over the weekend and was approved on Sunday by the cabinet.

"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round." ...

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected.

None of us who follow the UN and Kofi Annan experienced any sort of surprise when he demurred from actually enforcing a Security Council resolution. His insistence that the UN has no real interest in the question of Hezbollah disarmament may seem shocking, since the Security Council has now twice demanded it, but it comes as a piece to the record of UN peacekeeping under his regime, first as the head of peacekeeping and now as Secretary-General. UN forces sent to keep "peace" have almost without exception fled from terrorists and genocidists, only standing firm when under NATO or US/UK command.

Many saw UNSCR 1701 as a defeat for Israel, because of this obvious deficiency and the use of the discredited UNIFIL force for the mission. However, Israel would not quietly allow Annan and Siniora to defeat them where Hezbollah failed. Politically, the Olmert government cannot accept the return of an armed Hezbollah organization to the sub-Litani, a fact that even the terminally dense Annan should have recognized.

Annan also miscalculated the Israeli impulse for a cessation of hostilities. He was under the impression that Israel had tired of the military option, but in reality Israel won everything it wanted in the action, especially under the terms of 1701. The Israelis still had plenty of will left to fight, but with the exception of pushing into the Bekaa, a further incursion past the Litani would have produced rapidly diminishing results. The Israelis want a sovereign Lebanese government to take responsibility for its own territory, and do not want to conduct another long occupation based on the lack of a partner in Beirut.

Don't expect this cease-fire to last more than the next 24-48 hours. Annan himself managed to destroy it, and the UN Security Council will be hard pressed to make any more demands on the Israelis -- which leaves them open to do whatever they think best without further interference.

Killing Me Softly With Macaca

I've been a fan of Senator George Allen for the past couple of years, and I have repeatedly referred to him as someone who could put a good face on conservatism in the upcoming melee for the presidential nomination. Having served one term each as governor and in the US Senate, his long experience on the national stage and as an executive gives him a leg up on most of his competition.

Unfortunately, his mouth has pretty much wiped it all out, and I think Senator Allen can probably stick a fork in his hopes for the time being:

At a campaign rally in southwest Virginia on Friday, Allen repeatedly called a volunteer for Democrat James Webb "macaca." During the speech in Breaks, near the Kentucky border, Allen began by saying that he was "going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas" and then pointed at S.R. Sidarth in the crowd.

"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great," Allen said, as his supporters began to laugh. After saying that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen said, "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Allen then began talking about the "war on terror."

What the hell is a macaca? Apparently not even Allen knows. In his apology -- which he made quickly thereafter, to his credit -- he told reporters that he had no idea what it meant. He came up with some lame explanation about how it sounded like "mohawk", which it doesn't, and said Sidarth's hairstyle reminded him of one. Sidarth has a mullet, which is bad enough, but a mullet looks nothing like a mohawk.

It doesn't appear to be a racial epithet, either. Jon Henke provides a pretty good review of why that possibility looks remote. Allen's sarcastic welcoming of Sidarth to America does make it sound somewhat xenophobic, especially when one considers that Sidarth is a native Virginian.

Regardless of the motivation, one has to ask a couple of embarrassing questions about Allen and his fitness for higher office. First, anyone who uses a demeaning nickname to an attendee during a stump appearance probably has some judgement issues. It doesn't exactly give one warm fuzzies about the candidate's ability to think on his feet. The same can be said about using words one doesn't understand, doing so in very public settings, and then doing it repeatedly. That's the mark of an intellectual lightweight.

And speaking of intellectual gravitas, Allen should have just apologized and then shut up. That explanation only makes him look worse. Mullets, mohawks, and macacas, oh my!

I'm terribly disappointed in Allen. I don't think it's enough to kill his political career, and it's no reason to stop supporting him for the Senate. However, I do think that we need someone with a little more on the ball for the GOP ticket in 2008, and unless the macaca really hits the fan, Allen should focus on keeping his Senate seat.

UPDATE: One term in each office, according to CQ commenter Lewis. I've made the correction above.

Saddam Documents: Fences Make Good Neighbors Edition

A newly-translated document from the archives of Saddam Hussein’s ISI indicates that the regime kept some kind of weapons in Baghdad that made Saddam's elite Special Republican Guards nervous enough to keep hidden -- in a residential area. Document CMPC-2003-000788 contains a memo from Major Sa’ad Ahmed Taha al-Wis, an intelligence officer in the Special Republican Guard to the Special Security Organization dated May 14, 2001, regarding the proximity of weapons caches to residential units at the SRG base. These facilities became the point of contention between UNSCOM and the Saddam regime in 1997 and precipitated the collapse of the weapons inspections, as the UN suspected that Saddam hid his WMD with the SRG. The SRG and SSO existed to handle the most sensitive programs in Iraq, including the protection of Saddam Hussein but also the protection of the regime’s secret programs.

Taha’s memo complains that the fence surrounding the facility is too low and allows local residents to view their weapons storage. Note that his complaint remains even though Taha discovered that the residents all work for the ISI:

Date: May 14, 2001

Dear General Director of the Unit
Greetings and regards
Subject: Adjacent Houses

I would like to inform you that there is an open area from the back and the side of the unit. It starts at the back fence of the compound and goes up to the houses at the Al-'Amil Block road bordering the north side of the Special Security Institute. This area expands toward the weapons cache belonging to the supply and transportation companies of the Special Republican Guard and to the Artillery Battalion of the Special Republican Guard which is neighboring the compound from the south side up to Al-'Amiriyah street –Al-Jihad Al-'Am Neighborhood. This matter previously submitted to you, but now it appears this area is already allocated as a public housing area and the public started building their houses on it. Some of these houses are less than 15 meters from the back compound fence. Some of the houses surrounding the compound are so close to the weapons storage belonging to the supply and the transportation company of the Special Republican Guard, and if they build the buildings higher, they can see whatever is inside the compound from the back side. After further investigations, we found out that most of the residents are employees of the Intelligence Service.

I suggest the following: inform the comptroller to improve the compound and to raise the height of the fence to 4 meters instead of the 2 meter existing height. The total length of the fence is approximately 500 – 600 meters.

The memo included a block drawing by Taha showing the problem.

Click here for a larger view of the drawing. The center shows four cache facilities where the Special Republican Guard kept its ammunition -- including the SRG Artillery Battalion.

It looks like the UNSCOM inspectors had the right idea. Saddam would hardly need to stage a conventional artillery battalion within his elite corps, whose mission had less to do with defending Baghdad than it did in protecting Saddam and his favorite toys. The regular Republican Guard had artillery battalions for conventional combat, as did the Army. Taha would hardly be concerned with the ability of civilians to view normal artillery shells, especially since military reviews regularly put such weapons on display in the streets of Baghdad as a morale booster.

So what was Taha afraid the neighbors would see in May 2001, prompting him to request a 12-foot-high fence around the facility?

Exposing Earmarks

The Sunlight Foundation unveils its new Exposing Earmarks website today, in conjunction with the Club for Growth, Citizens Against Government Waste, The Heritage Foundation, and many in the blogosphere, including Instapundit, Porkbusters and Human Events Online. The Examiner announces the launch in today's edition:

Congress is considering a bill — the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations measure — that presently contains 1,867 earmarks worth more than a half-billion tax dollars and averaging nearly $268,000 each. Many are for things that sound like worthy causes such as "hospital facilities and equipment," yet none of the sponsoring congressmen put their names on their earmarks.

That's why The Examiner newspapers have joined with the Sunlight Foundation, Porkbusters.org, and Citizens Against Government Waste in posting the database of earmarks in the Labor-HHS appropriations and inviting readers to help identify the congressmen behind each earmark. Organizations like The Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union and Club for Growth blog are linking to the database. The database was obtained from a congressional source and has been checked and double-checked. Congress may still modify the bill, approve it as is or reject it.

I'll be posting more at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog, so keep an eye out there. Let's see how the viral network of the blogosphere can work. Find the most outrageous pork-barrel items in the HHS budget and post them in comments here. I'll put some together and post about them here and at Heritage to keep everyone informed about the ridiculous manner in which Congress spends our money.

One caveat: I already found the three million dollars that went to the Charles B Rangel Center for Public Service. That one's mine. Go find yours now!

The Problem Is Leadership

E.J. Dionne presents an intriguing look into Democratic Party politics at the mid-terms, and relates a story of disunity and disarray. Unfortunately, though, Dionne misses the bigger problem with the Democrats, focusing on self-image rather than the real issue:

The Democratic Party has a self-image problem.

Talk to Democrats at every level about the strong position the party is in for this fall's elections and the conversation inevitably ends with a variation of: "Yeah, if we don't blow it." Karl Rove's greatest victory is how much he has spooked Democrats about themselves.

This, in turn, leads to a problem among political elites and, especially, fundraisers: While Republicans believe in their party and in the cause of building its organization from bottom to top, Democratic sympathizers tend to focus on favorite causes and favorite candidates, notably in presidential years.

The reference to Karl Rove reveals much about the root problem with the Democrats. Dionne's column gives readers a revealing look inside party politics at the moment, but it doesn't get to the real heart of the illness. What plagues this party more than anything else isn't Karl Rove or a lack of big-ticket donors, or even disagreements over strategic planning for short- and long-term growth. It's a complete lack of leadership and innovative thinking.

Karl Rove is not their problem. Their problem is the lack of a Karl Rove.

The Democrats have an image problem, as Dionne writes, but the image problem springs from divisiveness and the lack of any coherent ideological message or policy platform. That divisiveness springs from one main source: Howard Dean. He has spent far too much time railing on about his hatred of "Republicans, and everything they stand for" and not enough time building the kind of relationships with elected party leaders and donors to create a consensus direction for the Democrats. People pointed out this probable result at the time of Dean's appointment as chairman of the DNC, and apparently no one but the DNC is surprised by the result.

Dean offers voters the same, tired Bush hatred that lost the Democrats three successive national elections, elections they arguably could have won. The DNC hired him to harness the energy of the radical Left that swooned over Dean early in the 2004 electoral cycle and produced $40 million in small-ticket donations. Unfortunately, that segment of the party is the only one that responds to Dean's hate-ins, and the larger donors have started to turn their backs on the party. Nor has Dean played well in the Democratic sandbox, alienating key elected officials such as Rahm Emanuel, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This leadership has resulted in contradictory electoral strategies, with the DNC working at cross purposes to the DCCC and the DSCC in a midterm election that the Democrats have a chance to win. It also has resulted in the lackluster thinking and promotion behind their policy statements. The Democrats have given no one any reason to think that they will deliver better government over the Republicans, other than wallowing in GOP hatred. Even their one unifying theme, the "culture of corruption", has collapsed as it swallowed up Democrats and Republicans alike -- showing the folly of relying on that theme in the first place.

And with leadership that can't even work with itself, the American public has no confidence that Democrats can produce leaders that will work within government.

Dionne gives an excellent catalogue of symptoms; all he misses is the chief diagnosis.

British Sky Plot May Have 9/11 Connection

German authorities are investigating a possible link between the captured terrorists of the recent airliner plot and a key figure in the Hamburg cell who worked with Mohammed Atta on the 9/11 attacks. Said Bahaji, a computer expert who helped plan 9/11, may have provided the same assistance to these suspected al-Qaeda terrorists:

German authorities are investigating contacts between a Briton being questioned over the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airlines and a key figure in the September 11, 2001, terrorist cell.

Intelligence sources said that, at Britain’s request, they were examining possible links between the suspect and Said Bahaji, the computer expert in the Hamburg cell that planned the suicide hijackings in 2001.

Bahaji shared an apartment in Hamburg with Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker, and Ramzi Binalshibh, the planner of 9/11. He fled Germany for Pakistan a week before the attacks in New York and Washington and has never been caught.

Bahaji's name came up in the 9/11 Commission report, at least briefly. Bahaji was an odd duck in the Hamburg cell. For one, he was the only German citizen in the group. Bahaji spent five months in the German Army before getting a medical discharge. He had only limited knowledge of Islam despite his Moroccan heritage, but eagerly volunteered for violence.

His assistance to Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh went beyond enthusiasm, however. He gave them access to the Internet for their research, and investigators later found disks and documents showing the Internet surfing done by the terror leaders. While Atta traveled to Afghanistan for training, Bahaji maintained a false front in Germany, covering their absence in order to throw off suspicion.

He has long since fled Germany. Bahaji flew to Pakistan days ahead of the 9/11 attacks, thanks to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's warning to the Hamburg cell that the date of the attack was quickly approaching. He bought his tickets to Karachi and left on September 3rd. American authorities would love to get their hands on Bahaji, and now it looks like the British would also want a crack at him.

The financing of the scheme has also been coming under more scrutiny. According to the Times of London, the Crescent Relief charity may have laundered some of the money that fueled this terror cell. The charity's founding trustee, Abdul Rauf, is the father of Rashid Rauf, whom the Pakistanis now hold in connection to the plot. Another of Rauf's sons, Tayib, was among those arrested last week in Britain. Crescent Relief and Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa raised large amounts of money, much of it in cash, following the earthquake in Kashmir. Now the British would like to know where it went.

This plot looked like an al-Qaeda production from the beginning. If Said Bahaji can be tied to it, that diagnosis looks pretty accurate.

Lebanon Balking At The Terms

Rick Moran tipped me to this story from the Jerusalem Post which indicates that Lebanon may blow the cease fire within hours of its implementation. Despite the clear language in the agreement that not only calls for the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1559 to disarm Hezbollah but also to ensure that the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL have the only arms in the sub-Litani region, Beirut now says that Hezbollah can keep their weapons -- as long as the weapons stay concealed:

Hizbullah will not hand over its weapons to the Lebanese government but rather refrain from exhibiting them publicly, according to a new compromise that is reportedly brewing between Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The UN cease-fire resolution specifically demands the demilitarization of the area south of the Litani river. The resolution was approved by the Lebanese cabinet.

In a televised address on Monday night, Nasrallah declared that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of his guerrilla fighters, saying the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests.

"This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the cease-fire," he said in reference to calls from critics for the guerrillas to disarm.

According to Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, "There will be no other weapons or military presence other than the army" after Lebanese troops move south of the Litani. However, he then contradicted himslef by saying the army would not ask Hizbullah to hand over its weapons.

Unless Lebanon strips Hezbollah of their weapons, the Israelis do not have to move an inch from the Litani. The UN wants to have a series of meetings with Lebanese and Israeli military commanders to strategize on the handover from the Israelis, and I suspect that the IDF will tell both that nothing moves until Lebanon agrees to implement all points of the resolution. If 1701 becomes a smorgasbord rather than a series of requirements, then neither Lebanon nor the UN will like Israel's selections from Column A or Column B.

This follows reports last night that Hezbollah had launched missiles from their positions north of the Litani, but that they had fallen in Lebanon, not Israel. It demonstrated the need to keep Nasrallah north of the river, where the vast majority of their weapons are out of range of Israeli cities. Israel chose not to respond to the ten missiles, noting their lack of damage to Israel or the IDF.

Small arms in the sub-Litani are probably not much of an issue for Israel, but they will be for the Lebanese Army. Israel needs to be sure that Beirut can take control of their own territory before they withdraw back across the Blue Line. That's the goal for which they fought, and they will not withdraw without having achieved it. Expect the Israelis to make this an issue today.

Lastly, let's get a little perspective on the supposed Hezbollah victory. Many yesterday continued to bemoan the cease fire, arguing that it gave Hezbollah enhanced prestige in the Arab community. Unfortunately, any war that didn't involve Syria would have delivered that result, because Hezbollah would survive any kind of frontal attack, no matter how prolonged, as long as the Assad regime survives in Damascus. Wars are not won or lost on prestige, or the Arab street, or the creation of martyrs and heroes. Wars are won when one side either captures territory or changes the threat level in a significant manner.

The critucs operate from a narrow context, believing that Israel has made itself vulnerable because it did not crush its enemies beneath its tank treads. However, that has rarely been the case in Israel's wars, as evidenced by the fact that the Assad regime remains in Damascus, the Hashemites still rule Jordan, Sadat remained in power in Egypt after all the wars -- until he actually made peace with Israel, when he was assassinated by his own people. Israel is still surrounded by its enemies, and they remain armed. No one would make the case that Israel therefore has lost every war it fought.

In this war, they pushed Hezbollah out of the sub-Litani, forced them to fire off a third of their missile and rocket inventory, and destroyed a number of their launchers. This all took place over two kidnapped soldiers, and Hezbollah didn't even get the prisoner swap they wanted. After six years of relative non-action to Hezbollah provocations, Olmert changed the dynamic by launching a massive war after a relatively routine terrorist action by Hezbollah. Israel also forced Lebanon to finally address the conundrum of sovereignty and drove a wedge between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon's institutions. Does anyone think that Fuad Siniora would even have discussed disarming Hezbollah before this war? They had a year after UNSCR 1559 and completely shrugged it off.

The goals for Israel have always been a Hezbollah-free sub-Litani without having to conduct another generational occupation. They got the agreement they wanted that delivers on these goals, and at the same time served notice that the era of non-response to provocations had passed. The key for Israel is to insist on full implementation of 1701 and 1559. They cannot budge on these points. If Lebanon reneges, Israel can go back to their military options until the Lebanese get the message for good.

That Old Rugged -- And Now Federal -- Cross

The struggle to keep a landmark San Diego cross on public land took a new turn on Monday, as George Bush signed a bill making the land under the monument federal territory. That removes one particular legal threat to the 29-foot-tall cross, long visible for miles to Southern Californians, but brings up new challenges on the federal level:

President Bush on Monday signed a law transferring a 29-foot-tall Latin cross high on a hill in San Diego to the federal government, stepping into a long-running dispute over the separation of church and state.

Mr. Bush, in the latest unusual action designed to save the Mount Soledad cross, in the La Jolla district, sided firmly with cross supporters who acknowledge that it is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity but contend that it forms part of a secular war memorial.

An atheist, Philip K. Paulson, has fought the cross, built in 1954, for 17 years in federal and state courts. Mr. Paulson says the memorial was built only after he protested the cross and filed suit, and is a ruse to cover its intent to promote Christianity.

The legislation that Mr. Bush signed uses eminent domain to transfer the memorial land, which includes the cross and six concentric walls holding nearly 2,000 plaques honoring war veterans, from city ownership to the federal government. The private group that built the cross, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, will continue to maintain it.

The order brings an end to the pursuit of Paulson's efforts in California courts. State jurists no longer have jurisdiction on the property, and with Congress making its intent known in the legislation, portends a difficult path for opponents of the landmark. It might make the case come to a conclusion more quickly, however, as federal issues have always been in play in this controversy. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy issued a stay against the destruction of the cross recently, and the court will likely have its say soon.

Efforts by Congress and the White House to save the monument may raise some eyebrows as well. Conservatives supporting the existence of the cross have little use for exercises in eminent domain, especially since Kelo. This particular transfer seems ready-made for controversy anyway, given that it obviously intended to wrest control of a state issue away from California, which hardly fits within the federalist viewpoint.

Now the government owns a cross, and one can expect the usual suspects to come out of the woodwork to protest this "endorsement" of religion. Once again, people mistake freedom of religion for freedom from religion, the latter of which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. That people get so offended by a religious symbol in the public square testifies to the power of symbology less than it does to the spoiled brattiness of American politics. This cross does no one any harm, and has sat on the mountaintop for over five decades without giving any distress to anyone except those who go out of their way to be offended.

This problem will choke American cultural intercourse. We cannot possibly live in a world where people are guaranteed free speech while at the same time guaranteed a lack of offense in public. Carving out rules of political correctness in order to make sure no one has their feelings hurt provides the start of those good intentions that wind up paving a road to ... well, someone might be reading this in a state or federal office, so I'm probably not allowed to say where. Just think of the cross on the mountaintop and consider the other possibilities.

There May Be Crossover Between The Two

Zogby International has published another poll in which Americans prove they watch way too much television. The worst example comes on the difference between knowing the members of the Supreme Court and knowing the members of Snow White's diminutive court:

Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new online game on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair. ...

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.

Well, okay, but these are trick questions. After all, we're pretty sure that Grumpy (David Souter) and Sleepy (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) sit on the Supreme Court. The American government can certainly be described as stooges, too, but even we admit that three is just too few. We think that federal bureaucrats and politicians might number more like 15 million, and all of them unfortunately are Larry.

A Glimmer Of Political Courage?

Over at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog, I posted about a quiet effort by the White House to find some bipartisan ground for entitlement reform. This seems remarkable, considering the timing of the feelers. During August, most members of Congress have returned home to tend to their re-election efforts. That hardly seems the most propitious time for those facing election battles to do some long-term thinking, but the Bush administration apparently wants to prepare for a big effort after the midterms have concluded.

Read the whole post, and keep an eye out for any other signs of random fiscal responsibility. I'd love to think that we would bring that species back from near-extinction, but color me skeptical, at least until November. Unfortunately, and this reflects on us more than the politicians, very few have ever been elected on the promise to cut off entitlements.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, A Saint For Our Times

Today is the feast day of my favorite saint (yes, I know, Catholic alert!), Father Maximilian Kolbe. The patron saint of journalists, families, and prisoners died in Auschwitz in 1941, taking the place of another selected for death. His amazing story is told at the Auschwitz web site:

In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.

'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'

Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'

Father kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'

Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.

Gajowniczek later recalled:

'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?

I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.

For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘

Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over.

Gajowniczek survived Auschwitz, which was a miracle in itself. He eventually attended the ceremony that canonized Father Kolbe as a saint in 1981. He returned to Auschwitz every year on August 14th, the date that the Nazis finally had to kill Kolbe with an injection, to offer prayers on his behalf. Gajowniczek died in 1995, fifty-four years after Kolbe's sacrifice.

I think of Father Kolbe when we see the heroics of everyday people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. World Trade Center, which I reviewed yesterday, provided a number of examples of people who risked their lives to save others. United 93 showed people who almost certainly knew that they had forfeited their lives to save others. Few get the opportunity to personally put themselves in another's place for certain execution without any guarantee of saving the other life, with only trust in the Lord. The Nazi commandant could easily have added Kolbe to the other ten, after all, or could have killed Gajowniczek separately later.

Why didn't he do that? Why did the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz -- someone we can certainly assume to be as evil as any who goose-stepped the Earth in that period -- allow Kolbe to sacrifice himself for another? It makes no worldly sense, but it happened. It's where reason ends and faith begins, and why Father Kolbe makes such a compelling figure of faith for so many.

Mackinac Bridge A Terror Target?

Michigan authorities have detained three Texans of Arabic ancestry while they investigate their unusual interest in the Mackinac Bridge and disposable cell phones. A Wal-Mart employee tipped police when the three bought 80 of the phones, and when police caught up to them, they had over a thousand of the untraceable phones in their possession:

If the hundreds of prepaid cellular telephones found in the minivan seemed odd, the pictures of the Mackinac Bridge were downright troubling to Tuscola County law enforcement officials who have charged three Texas men with terrorism-related crimes.

The phones plus photographs and videos of the 5-mile-long bridge led authorities to believe that the men -- two brothers and a cousin, all of Middle Eastern heritage -- were targeting the iconic structure linking the Upper and Lower peninsulas, according to a law enforcement official familiar with details of the case.

While the bridge pictures might have been vacation images taken by any tourists, they took on potentially sinister significance because of the men's bulk purchase at a Caro Wal-Mart of 80 talk-and-toss cell phones that have been used by terrorists to detonate bombs, the official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

But relatives of the Texas men said they're innocent entrepreneurs buying phones cheaply at discount stores, then selling them at a profit.

The men -- brothers Adham Othman, 21, and Louai Othman, 23, and their cousin Maruan Muhareb, 18 -- were charged by Tuscola County prosecutors over the weekend with providing material support for terrorist acts and terrorism surveillance of a vulnerable target, said Sgt. Curtis Chambers of the Tuscola County Sheriff's Department. They were each being held on $750,000 bond.

The phones can be used for two different purposes in the hands of terrorists. They can detonate explosives, a remote control for terrorists who do not wish to commit suicide as part of their jihad. Disposable cell phones also help evade wiretaps and data-mining efforts to detect terrorist communications. The bulk purchases of so many of the phones would indicate the necessity for a long series of communications and a fairly extensive plot.

The Mackinac Bridge, sometimes called the Mighty Mac, connects the Upper Peninsula with the Michigan mainland. It will celebrate its 50th birthday next year, an event that will almost certainly attract at least regional attention. The Mackinac is the world's third-largest suspension bridge and a bona-fide landmark -- and it also allows 10,000 cars per day to transit to and from the UP, making it attractive for those who want to attract a different kind of attention.

The excuse given by the suspects' families sounds pretty thin. If the three had a business that flipped cell phones, why buy them from a retailer? Wholesalers would have some interest in sales in the hundreds, even to smaller operators. Paying retail for these phones makes little sense, especially traveling from Texas to Michigan to do so. Paying retail, however, does give terrorists an advantage: cash transactions cannot be traced. Wholesalers keep too many records of their business to avoid leaving a trail if one uses the phones for nefarious purposes.

Combine that with the pictures of Mighty Mac, and it looks like an attempt to commit a terrorist act on a second-tier target, where security would be more loose than in New York City or Washington, DC. Ironically, Michigan has one of the largest Arab-American communities and would have been under immediate pressure if a plot like this executed successfully. Perhaps the plotters thought they could disappear into the community after the explosions took place.

If this turns out to be a terrorist plot, then we can thank the Wal-Mart employee who acted on his instincts. We need to keep our eyes and ears open. Complacency is our greatest enemy in this war.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Penn State University has an excellent academic reputation, but it may need to teach a course on common sense in this age of terrorism. A woman transferring from PSU to a Chicago college attempted to save money on her move by mailing her leftover sugar and flour to her new address. Unfortunately, she didn't package the foodstuffs very well, and the leaking white powder set off hazmat alerts:

A woman who sent flour and sugar through the mail set off a major hazardous materials response in Pennsylvania when one of her packages leaked, police said. About 80 police officers and firefighters were sent to the State College post office because of what appeared to be a menacing powder.

The woman, whose name was not released, told police she was transferring from Penn State to a school in Chicago and was trying to save money by not replacing her flour and sugar.

The foolishness staggers belief. How much would it have taken for her to simply buy five pounds of sugar and flour in Chicago? Ten bucks? She had to have spent half of that trying to mail it to herself. One would expect undergraduates to understand basic economic principles, especially the law of diminishing returns and risk/reward strategies.

I suspect that the first responders of Nittany will not miss her when she's gone.

Chavez Rival Escapes From Prison

Hugo Chavez may want to take his mind off of the US and his lips off of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's posterior. His chief rival has just escaped from a military prison, and it looks like he had some help:

A senior Venezuelan opposition leader has escaped from a military prison, the country's attorney general has said.

Carlos Ortega was sentenced to almost 16 years in jail last year after being convicted of inciting unrest during a strike that began in late 2002.

He escaped along with three military officers and may have been aided by some authorities, Venezuela's attorney general said.

Ortega failed to get asylum from Costa Rica last year and got arrested for his role in a union action that threatened Chavez' rule. Chavez had Ortega jailed, ostensibly for his own safety, although Ortega obviously disagreed with that assessment.

And he wasn't the only one, either. An escape from military custody takes some doing, and certainly some cooperation from people on the inside. This seems rather omninous for Chavez; if the military has decided to take an active role against Chavez' wildly aggressive rule, then a coup may not be far behind. If senior officers are involved, they may have sprung Ortega in order to hold a sense of civil legitimacy in their efforts.

On the other hand, it may just be a cover for the Chavez regime to get rid of Ortega once and for all. A jailed Ortega could serve as a rallying point for anti-Chavez activists. A dead Ortega, especially one who died in an escape attempt, might become a martyr but most likely would get forgotten quickly enough. If that's the strategy, Ortega's body will turn up sooner than Raul Castro did during his Cuban rule.

The Youngest Suicide Bomber

British officials have begun questioning a Muslim couple arrested in the terror-plot roundup this week about their plans to exploit their six-month-old baby in order to sneak explosives on board an international flight. Abdula Ahmed Ali and his wife Cossor intended on using baby bottles to sneak liquid components of a bomb onto an airplane, allowing their infant to become the world's youngest suicide bomber:

Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb.

The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies' milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights. ...

Police in England have reportedly recovered bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling centre close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects.

It has emerged MI5 agents launched covert intrusions on the homes of some suspects several weeks ago in "sneak and peek" operations to plant listening devices and gather evidence ahead of the arrests last week.

Links between suspects in the jet bomb plot and those behind the London 7/7 attacks have also come to light.

This will shock many, but it hardly seems very far removed from jihadists that use children for suicide missions. In the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas rallies regularly feature children barely old enough to walk laden with mack suicide-bomb belts. Parents seem pleased to offer their offspring as cannon fodder in efforts to kill the children of others. With a mindset like this, why would it surprise anyone that a jihadist would exploit his newborn as a murder weapon?

It seems shocking only to those who have not paid attention to the rise of Islamofascism. The article provides examples of this from the Ali's neighborhood. One neigbor expressed his disbelief because "He is religious and seemed to love his family." Yes, apparently he is quite religious -- and that radical faith is exactly why he saw no problem in turning his child into an improvised explosive device. Even the family seems to have trouble putting the signs together. The child now is in the custody of its maternal grandparents, who expressed surprise about the urgency of Ali's recent trip to Pakistan.

The depravity of the enemies of reason and freedom have never been more apparent. We knew they had no problem killing women and children, and we knew they had no compunction about committing suicide to accomplish this. The coldly calculated sacrifice of their own children for tactical advantage in a suicide mission shows just how animalistic these people can get, and why we need to be ruthless in our war against them.

The Humiliation Of Lebanon

Fuad Siniora's collapse yesterday humiliated his armed forces, the Times of London reports, and demonstrated the illusive grasp of power that the official government holds in Lebanon. The consensus in his Cabinet to accept the cease-fire collapsed when it came time to deploy the army into southern Lebanon:

TODAY was supposed to be the day when the muchmaligned army of Lebanon took control of its borders and policed the UN ceasefire.

Instead, its military commanders were left humiliated and its troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to try to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south yesterday when Hezbollah demonstrated who exercised the real control by announcing that it had no intention of surrendering a single weapon. General Michel Sleiman, the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Army, and his lieutenants had been invited to join in Cabinet meetings to finalise plans to deploy their 15,000-strong force in a buffer zone south of the Litani river. However, they ended up being lectured by Hezbollah’s two Cabinet ministers in the coalition Government on what the army could and could not do.

The humiliation traveled from the generals to the troops, as everyone understood exactly why their orders to move out got countermanded. Government officials finally gave voice to the conundrum that all of us knew existed during this entire conflict, complaining that the Hezbollah "political party" would not abide by government decisions. Soldiers who have seen 20 of their comrades killed in a war they have neither waged nor wanted had to go back to their barracks after initially receiving the orders that would have given their country back to them.

This national humiliation will not soon be forgotten by the Lebanese. If Hezbollah gained some sympathy and support during the Israeli invasion that they themselves provoked, it has dissipated in this mutinous reaction. The scales have fallen from the eyes of the political class in Beirut, and they see the danger to their existence standing baldly in front of them. Hezbollah has stripped them of their legitimacy, and now their theft of southern Lebanon has become crystal clear.

Will this move the Siniora government to quit blamimg everyone but the terrorists that started the war? As late as Saturday, the PM still talked about the brave "national resistance", but those moments appear to have ended. If Fuad Siniora expects to lead his nation, he now has to acknowledge that Hezbollah cannot exist as a state within a state.

The civil war is coming very soon now.

UPDATE: The army will deploy in 72 hours, one source says, but will not disarm Hezbollah:

Lebanon's communications minister told French radio Monday that the Lebanese army was preparing to cross the Litani River into the troubled south within two or three days, despite uncertainty about a future UN force for the region.

"The Lebanese army is readying itself along the Litani to cross the river in 48 or 72 hours," Marwan Hamade said on Europe-1 radio.

It will then be flanked by "the first contingents of an international force," he added, likely from France, Turkey, Spain and Italy. He did not give a timeframe. ...

Lebanon's ambassador to the UN said that his government would not use force to ensure the dismantling of Hizbullah, sources said early Monday morning. He claimed that Hizbullah would independently be responsible for leaving south Lebanon. ...

Earlier, another Lebanese cabinet minister said that the Lebanese army would not deploy in southen Lebanon if Hizbullah retains its weapons.

The confusion in Beirut continues, but Israel will not leave the area without Hezbollah disarming and the Lebanese/UNIFIL forces assuming control. This cease fire (or cessation) will be short-lived.

Chertoff: No Connection And No Distraction

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told news interviewers yesterday that the terror plot uncovered in Britain this week had no American connections, but that the investigation would still continue to pursue leads if they led in our direction. He also cautioned against complacency and assured Americans that the plot's exposure had not provided a distraction for his department:

There is no evidence that terrorists were working within the United States as part of a plot to detonate explosives on airliners, but U.S. officials remain vigilant after last week's arrests in Britain and Pakistan, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday.

Appearing on several Sunday-morning television talk shows, Chertoff warned that it is clear in the wake of the foiled terrorism operation that enemies of the United States "still want to carry out spectacular plots" and have been developing innovative ways to skirt security.

"As we speak right now, we have not found any indication of active planning in the U.S. or plans to conduct operations within the U.S.," Chertoff said on CBS's "Face the Nation," discussing the plot to use liquid explosives on airplanes headed to U.S. cities.

He also said there is a concern about copycats. "I think we have to be concerned about other groups that may seek to exploit the opportunities to do their own activities or their own operations because they believe we are distracted," Chertoff said. "And the message here is we are not distracted."

Much of the conversation on yesterday's interview shows centered on the tools needed to provide the necessary security for the US. Chertoff noted that the British have more flexibility for counterterrorist efforts within their country, and those additional powers played a significant role in discovering the extent of the conspiracy. Chertoff declined to explicitly endorse the no-warrant NSA surveillance on international communications, but he told two news shows that we should not leave "tools on the table" in our fight against terrorists.

That assertion came under some fire from other talk-show guests. Senator Russ Feingold, widely rumored to be staging a presidential run, says that he thinks NSA surveillance of terrorists is fine, but he wants the NSA to get the warrants first when part of the communication comes from within the US. Ned Lamont struggled to answer Chris Wallace's questions on Fox News Sunday in an appearance that lent little luster to his flagging campaign. He insisted that the US is distracted by the war in Iraq despite the discovery and halt to this massive terrorist plot and the lack of successful attacks on the US since 9/11. He told Wallace that it was "time to focus", but then opposed the Patriot Act and the surveillance programs that Chertoff mentioned.

The distraction argument sounds great as a political sound bite, but the evidence seems very thin. It assumes that the government can only perform one task at a time. Congress created the DHS in order to allow for homeland defense while the Pentagon focused on a forward strategy against the terrorists. DHS has nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, and no one has yet to explain why those wars distract DHS from its primary mission. If anything, Katrina showed that homeland security had distracted Chertoff and his team from emergency response, a secondary task that Congress grafted onto the department in what has now widely been acknowledged as a mistake.

Chertoff emphatically discarded the notion that Iraq or the successful end to the terrorist plot against British and American airliners had provided a distraction. Their track record speaks to their success, and the collapse of this grand al-Qaeda plan seems to demonstrate even better competence and cooperation than we had hoped.

Movie Review: World Trade Center

When I first heard that Oliver Stone planned on making a film about 9/11, I admit that I had misgivings -- big misgivings. Not only did I worry about his predilection for conspiracy theories and bad history, but also about his style of filmmaking -- showy, pretentious, egotistical, and distracting. His previous full-length cinematic efforts, Alexander and Any Given Sunday, provided excellent examples of Stone at or near his worst, and the subject of 9/11 had plenty of potential for further mischief.

Fortunately, Stone put all of the nonsense away for World Trade Center. He allows to the story of John McGloughlin and Will Jimeno, two Port Authority police officers, tell itself. Stone gives his best directorial effort since Wall Street, keeping the trick photography and weird editing on the workbence and instead gives us a taut, touching, and strangely spiritual film.

McGloughlin and Jimeno go into the towers in order to perform evacuation and rescue, but the buildings come down around them while they are still staging their efforts in the concourse between the two buildings. Due to McGloughlin's knowledge and instincts, most of his six-man team make it into the elevator shaft area. Three of them survive the collapse, and one other dies shortly thereafter. For hours, McGloughlin and Jimeno had only themselves and the rubble for company, and neither could see the other. Badly injured and cut off from their command, they spent hours trying to keep each other alive.

Stone expertly intercuts their story with that of their families, as well as the rest of America in the aftermath of the attack. In a simple and matter-of-fact way, Stone shows the terrible resolve that formed throughout the day, as ordinary Americans asked themselves what this event called for them to do. One such man, David Karnes, put on his Marine fatigues despite having been discharged from the service and made his way to Manhattan, believing that God called him to duty at the WTC -- and he plays a crucial role in the rescue. Karnes re-enlisted after his efforts in Manhattan and served two tours of duty in Iraq.

I don't want to give too much away. That the two men survive should be obvious; they were two of only 20 to be rescued from the towers after the collapse. Stone paints everyone in very human terms, and even allows some moments of grim levity to enter into the film, a much needed palliative at times. He treats the men and women of thsi story with great humanity, honors their spirituality (especially Karnes', which was a pleasant surprise), and in the end shows how heroic all of these men and women turned out to be.

Stone's film can sit proudly with United 93 as honest and straightforward retellings of the important stories from 9/11. The story of the rescue of two PAPD officers may not have had the same historical impact as that of the heroes on Flight 93, but it shows that heroics came in many forms on that horrible day. I highly recommend this film to everyone.

UPDATE: United 93 gets released on DVD on September 5th, and is available for pre-order from Amazon at the link.

UPDATE II: The story of Staff Sergeant Karnes has been told by Slate, among others. As Power Line notes, don't read this if you want to see the movie, because the movie tells the entire story in almost complete accuracy.

BBC: Lebanon Refuses To Disarm Hezbollah

I guess that crying on television and writing op-eds about the desperate hope for peace cannot motivate Fuad Siniora and his Cabinet to take the concrete action that would deliver it. The BBC reports that the Siniora government has rejected the UN demand to disarm Hezbollah, and the terrorist group has blocked the deployment of the Lebanese Army to the south:

Crucial Lebanese cabinet talks on disarming Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon under a UN-brokered ceasefire have been put off.

A truce between Israel and Hezbollah is due to come into force at 0500 GMT.

The postponement, amid reported divisions, seriously complicates the establishment of a stable ceasefire, the BBC's Nick Childs in Beirut says. ...

[T]he issue of Hezbollah's disarmament and its military presence in southern Lebanon continues to cause major tensions within the fragile government, our correspondent reports.

He says that without a meeting and an agreed plan, it seems that the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese army troops to the south is unlikely to go ahead.

As expected, Nasrallah and Siniora have let Israel off the hook -- and provided the political cover for further military action against both. If Lebanon refuses to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, expect the UN Security Council to wash its hands of the issue.

It'll Have The Most Interesting Blogroll ...

First, the good news: The blogosphere now has a bona-fide head of state as one of its members.

The bad news: it's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I'm serious. He even has RSS feeds, although you'd have to read Farsi to take advantage of them. He even has this soulful picture on the website, appearing to be in deep consideration of ... what? Eradicating Jews? Nuking New York? The taste of pork chops? Hard to say. Readers who click on the small American flag icon get treated to this personal entry:

In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Oh Almighty God, please, we beg you to send us our Guardian- who You have promised us- soon and appoint us as His close companions.

During the era that nobility was a prestige and living in a city was perfection, I was born in a poor family in a remote village of Garmsar-approximately 90 kilometer east of Tehran. I was born fifteen years after Iran was invaded by foreign forces- in August of 1940- and the time that another puppet, named mohammad Reza – the son of Reza Mirpange- was set as a monarch in Iran. Since the extinct shah -Mohammad Reza- was supposed to take and enter Iran into western civilization slavishly, so many schemes were implemented that Iran becomes another market for the western ceremonial goods without any progress in the scientific field. Our Islamic culture would not allow such an infestation, and this was an impediment in front of shah and his foreign masters’ way. Thus, they decided to make this noble and tenacious culture weak gradually that Iran be attached strongly to the west as far as its economy, politics, and culture was concern. After the implementation of this policy and the unreal and outward of upswing, the villagers began to rush to the cities. Upon the enforcement of the land reform, the status of the villages became worst than the past and villagers for earning some breadcrumbs, they were deceived by the dazzling look and the misleading features of the cities and became suburban and lived in ghettos.

My family was also suffered in the village as others. After my birth -the fourth one in the family- my family was under more pressures ...

Oh, come on. Can't he do better than this? CQ readers -- you know the challenge. Fill in the thought bubble that should appear above the Mad Iranian's head in this photograph. It's not a contest, but just a bit of Sunday fun. Besides, Mahmoud himself says that all deadlines end on August 22nd, so you have at least that long. (via Hot Air, who notes that comments have been enabled at The Mad Iranian!)

Lebanon About To Fall

The cease-fire agreement appears to have created a crisis in Lebanon's government, as a Cabinet meeting of Siniora's government has been abruptly cancelled. The Cabinet was supposed to vote on a plan to deploy their army into southern Lebanon and to displace Hezbollah. That has now been indefinitely delayed -- which means that Israel is not bound by the agreement to stop fighting:

A critical Lebanese Cabinet meeting set for Sunday to discuss implementation of the cease-fire between Israel and Hizbullah was postponed, a move that was likely to delay the dispatch of the Lebanese army to the south and an end of the fighting.

A top aide to Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said the meeting had been indefinitely postponed but would give no reason. Published reports said the Cabinet, which approved the cease-fire unanimously Saturday night, had been sharply divided over demands in the cease-fire agreement that Hizbullah surrender its weapons in south Lebanon.

That disagreement was believed to have caused the postponement of the Sunday meeting that was to have taken up the dispatch of some 15,000 troops to the south.

Does anyone not believe that this crisis has been precipitated by Hezbollah's refusal to leave southern Lebanon and disarm? The cease-fire proposal put the onus on them to cease their attacks on Israel and to dismantle their military wing. I warned earlier that such a requirement would eliminate the need for Hezbollah at all; their entire raison d'etre for the Lebanese people has been as a shield against the Israelis. If the Lebanese Army took that function away from them, they just become another terrorist militia, a construct of which the Lebanese have rightly tired.

Nasrallah knew this. He signaled his approval yesterday of the cease-fire but objected to the arms embargo and the disarming of his organization. Perhaps he thought the Israelis would reject it, but when the Israeli Cabinet adopted it unanimously, it looks like Nasrallah had his bluff called.

Unless Siniora gets this resolution adopted in the next couple of hours, Israel will push past the Litani into Bekaa -- and this time they will have the tacit endorsement of the UN Security Council.

UPDATE: I think we have Nasrallah's answer:

Hezbollah fired more than 230 rockets, Israel reported, and several hit the northern port city of Haifa, where at least two people were seriously injured.

The IDF said it carried out more than 100 aerial attacks targeting Hezbollah militants. ...

But the Lebanese Cabinet postponed its meeting Sunday to discuss implementing the resolution, a Lebanese government minister said.

The meeting was postponed one to two days, the minister said, at the request of parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, a key negotiator with Hezbollah.

The postponement will give government officials more time to meet with Hezbollah leadership to discuss details of implementing the U.N. resolution, the Lebanese minister said.

That's a different time frame from earlier, when it was postponed indefinitely, but it speaks to the same problem. Berri represents Hezbollah interests, and Hezbollah isn't interested in making themselves obsolete. Instead, they have taken the opportunity to provide the Israelis with an additional 230 reasons to continue operations in Lebanon, although it does follow Israel's successful deployments yesterday to secure points of egress over the Litani for retreating Hezbollah terrorists -- a move Israel should have made weeks ago.

Either Lebanon enforces the UN resolution, or it reveals itself as a puppet of Hezbollah. Either way, the Israelis win, and Nasrallah knows it.

UPDATE: Pajamas Media reports that the Lebanese Cabinet got flummoxed by Israel's agreement to UNSCR 1701:

The cabinet then gave themselves 24 hours. They were hoping that the Israeli Cabinet would oppose UN Resolution 1701. Then they would blame it on the Israelis. But when the Israeli Cabinet agreed they decided to postpone today’s emergency cabinet meeting to avoid further internal clashes.

In sum, as Lebanese we are looking and and suffering under a disgusting match of empty rhetoric bathed in lies and hypocrisies. God Help us for these leaders and politicians.

British AQ Leader Seized?

The Times of London reports that one of the men rounded up in the collapse of the airliner plot this week is the head of al-Qaeda in the UK. The Times does not identify him by name, but apparently MI-5 knows him well:

SECURITY sources believe that a man arrested in last week’s anti- terror raids in Britain is Al-Qaeda’s leader in this country.

Home Office officials say that one of those arrested is suspected not only of masterminding the foiled plot to bring down up to nine transatlantic airliners, but also of involvement in other planned atrocities over the past few years.

They believe that he was instrumental in sending the ringleader of at least one previous British terror plot for training at a camp in Pakistan last year. He is described by counter-terrorist officials at MI5 as the senior figure in a British terror network involving Kashmiri, north African and Iraqi cells.

The capture does more than throw a wrench into this plot, which has obvious AQ fingerprints -- multiple attacks, coordination, timing for maximun effect, and the targeting of crucial transportation among them. The AQ chief also ran multiple lines of communication to jihadist locations in Southwest Asia, especially Pakistan. His capture would cripple, at least temporarily, AQ's efforts to recruit and direct terrorists in Britain. MI-5 also suspects that he has played a serious supporting role in the Iraqi jihadi movement.

More details have come forth in the days following the arrests. Contrary to initial reports, the arrest in Pakistan that preciptated the counterintelligence captures in Britain was not coordinated with the British at all, but took them by surprise. The subsequent arrests had to be hurried in order to keep their suspects from fleeing, and that may have allowed a few to slip from their grasp.

However, that arrest sheds some more light on the 7/7 bombng plot that British authorities chalked up to home-grown amateurs last year. According to the Pakistani official, the arrest came after the suspect visited the same radical imams and mosques as Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, the 7/7 bombers. That could just be coincidence -- or it could indicate that Khan and Tanweer had direction and support from AQ for their attacks as well.

That brings us to the concern of a "second wave". The 7/7 plot was followed closely by an abortive attempt for a repeat two weeks later. AQ also plotted a second wave of attacks in the US after 9/11 but got surprised by the quick grounding of the airliners and tight security restrictions afterward Security officials in Britain worry that the plotters who escaped may yet try a second wave even though the first failed. The capture of the terrorist leader will damage AQ's ability to carry an attack out, but they will be back.

UPDATE: Michael at TMV notes that British security levels remain at "critical" -- which means they still believe an attack to be imminent.

Israel Cabinet Unanimously Adopts Cease-Fire

It does not appear that the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution created much controversy in Israeli politics. Ehud Olmert's Cabinet unanimously agreed to adopt it, with only one abstention:

The cabinet approved the UN cease-fire deal after a stormy debate Sunday, clearing a key hurdle to ending the monthlong Mideast war, the government said.

The 24-0 vote, with one abstention, came a day after the Lebanese government approved the agreement, and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave his grudging consent. The truce was to take effect on Monday morning, but the potential for new flareups remained high. ...

Addressing reporters after the vote, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the cease-fire deal approved would bring about a "change in the rules of the game" between Israel and Lebanon.

"The decision is good for Israel. I am not naive. I live in the Middle East and I know that not every decision in the Middle East is implemented and yet I still say it's good for Israel. It can lead to the real change in the Middle East that we have all been waiting for."

She noted that "The world now understands that Israel will not accept a terrorist organization on our border firing upon our citizens. We achieved most of our goals. If it's implemented, the change has been dramatic."

Under Israel's parliamentary government, the Israeli Cabinet comprises several political groups, who get ministries in order to form ruling coalitions. A unanimous decision at this level shows strong political support for the decision, which somewhat undermines the notion that Olmert acted outside the political mainstream in this effort.

Livni, whose relationship with Olmert has apparently been less than cordial of late, assured Israelis that this agreement delivers the goals for which Israel fought the monthlong war. Lebanon will take control of the south and will have responsibility for security on the Blue Line. Hezbollah will cease being a state within a state, which happens as soon as the Lebanese Army take up their positions in southern Lebanon, a no-go area for the Beirut government for years. They also have the responsibility for enforcing an arms embargo, explicitly a condition of the cease-fire, and the failure of which allows Israel to reject the cease-fire and begin offensive operations again.

It's obviously not the perfect solution, nor even a very good one. It's not the disaster that some would paint it, either, and if implemented properly would allow Israel to keep its northern territory safe from terrorist attack. Israel still retains the war option if it doesn't work. The Israelis appear to agree with that assessment.

Captive Test Subjects?

The New York Times reports on a disturbing suggestion from the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine that urges the government to allow testing of pharmaceuticals on prisoners. The idea is hardly new, but that is part of the problem. The practice came to a screeching halt in the mid-70s as abuses came to light:

Until the early 1970’s, about 90 percent of all pharmaceutical products were tested on prison inmates, federal officials say. But such research diminished sharply in 1974 after revelations of abuse at prisons like Holmesburg here, where inmates were paid hundreds of dollars a month to test items as varied as dandruff treatments and dioxin, and where they were exposed to radioactive, hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.

In addition to addressing the abuses at Holmesburg, the regulations were a reaction to revelations in 1972 surrounding what the government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, which was begun in the 1930’s and lasted 40 years. In it, several hundred mostly illiterate men with syphilis in rural Alabama were left untreated, even after a cure was discovered, so that researchers could study the disease.

“What happened at Holmesburg was just as gruesome as Tuskegee, but at Holmesburg it happened smack dab in the middle of a major city, not in some backwoods in Alabama,” said Allen M. Hornblum, an urban studies professor at Temple University and the author of “Acres of Skin,” a 1998 book about the Holmesburg research. “It just goes to show how prisons are truly distinct institutions where the walls don’t just serve to keep inmates in, they also serve to keep public eyes out.”

Critics also doubt the merits of pharmaceutical testing on prisoners who often lack basic health care.

The Tuskegee experiment, which was the subject of an excellent HBO movie, actually was the opposite problem: they withheld medicine for people who needed it. It shows how the medical establishment put the value of their experiments over the value of the humans involved. And unlike this proposal, it did not involve prisoners, but rather poor and mostly illiterate sharecroppers in Alabama. The doctors never even told the subjects about their disease, but instead told them they had "bad blood" and disguised their experiments as free medical treatment, while watching them go through the horrific final stages of syphilis without ever trying to save them. In fact, they acted on several occasions to keep them from getting proper medical treatment elsewhere.

Human trials for experimental treatments need to meet the highest ethical standards. Using prisoners for this purpose puts too much power into the hands of the researchers and the prison authorities. No one will be able to say that the convicts had an opportunity to make an informed decision, or to have the opportunity to simply withdraw, without facing pressure from wardens and guards to continue. At least one has to recognize the potential for those dynamics to leave prisoners vulnerable to that kind of abuse.

That's why it is so surprising to read that an ACLU-affiliated attorney endorsing the proposal. Alvin Bronstein founded the National Prison Project, supported by the ACLU, and he doesn't see anything wrong with the proposal. Putting enough safeguards in place would prevent abuse, Bronstein claims, and the interests of medical research outweighs the concerns. That's a new way to look at prison reform, hardly one endorsed by the NPP. As I recall, they were pretty skeptical about the idea that societal needs outweighed prisoner rights.

When free people volunteer for these experiments, they have the ability to gather their own information, unfettered by the government and the researchers. They can make informed decisions about their participation and treatment, and can opt out at any time. Prisoners cannot just stroll down to the local library or surf the Internet to gain the knowledge necessary for truly independent decisions, nor do they have the freedom of their persons to simply walk away from the researchers. This is a bad idea, and I'm shocked that the medical community would propose it.

UPDATE: The HBO movie was Miss Evers' Boys, starring Alfre Woodard and Laurence Fishburne.

Where's Raul-do, Day 13: The Natives Are Restless (Updated!)

The Scotsman reports on the continuing absence of the Castro brothers in Cuba, noting the increasing unease felt by the island's residents at the lack of clear leadership for the first time in the lives of most Cubans. They'e not talking too openly about the situation yet, thanks to efforts by the secret police to spot anyone who may view this as a moment of opportunity:

Some Cubans, fed up with the hardships endured under Castro, and particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, have found timid grounds for optimism in the handover, hoping for economic if not political change. ...

Officials have said Castro is recovering and would be back running the country within weeks or months. Reports last night said he was "walking, talking and receiving briefings." But there is anxiety about the fact that neither Fidel Castro, who turns 80 today, nor Raul Castro, 75, has appeared in public since July 31.

Dissidents, who accuse Castro of subjecting Cuba's 11 million people to collectivised poverty in a police state, said the state had activated its network of informants to detect any hint of protest and deter people from talking openly about the political situation.

This again begs the question: why hasn't Raul just simply made a public appearance and put an end to the speculation? The Cuban government appears to be going to a lot of trouble to keep people from discussing the apparent leadership vacuum, an effort that a Raul spotting would make superfluous.

Today is Fidel's birthday, usually a cause for national celebration. It would be inconceivable that Raul would not publicly celebrate his brother's birthday if Raul was capable of doing so. If he does not show up with a birthday cake somewhere in Havana and give a public show of support for his brother, Cubans will know that the jig is up.

And all of the secret police officers on the island will not keep them quiet after that -- which is exactly what the Cuban government fears.

UPDATE: Uh-oh -- it looks like the boss is back! bRight & Early spots a photo of Fidel in an AP release:

On his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro cautioned Cubans on Sunday that he faced a long recovery from surgery and advised them to prepare for "adverse news," but he urged them to stay optimistic. As the Communist Youth newspaper published the first photographs of the Cuban leader since illness forced him to step aside as president two weeks ago, Castro said his health had improved, but warned that risks remain.

"I feel very happy," said a statement attributed to Castro in the Juventud Rebelde newspaper. "For all those who care about my health, I promise to fight for it."

In the photos appearing in the online edition of Juventud Rebelde, Castro wears a red and white Adidas warm-up suit, looks a bit tired but is sitting up straight, his eyes alert.

One picture is a close shot of the leader posing with his fist under his chin and in two he is talking on the telephone.

The fourth photograph shows Castro sitting in a chair in front of a bed with a white spread in what appears to be a home, holding up a special supplement published as an homage to him on his 80th birthday in the Saturday edition of Granma, the Communist Party newspaper.

The adverse news may be that he is coming back. However, since I'm sure that Cubans will be happy to see him return -- in the same sort of way that Saddam Hussein got 100% of Iraqis to vote for him in 2002 -- I'm thinking that he's either preparing them for some dire news about his prognosis, or that something happened to Raul.

Or maybe it's that he's been kidnapped, since this seems to be a classic hostage photo:

Maybe Raul's holding him for ransom!

UPDATE II: The Florida Masochist remains skeptical.