Dughmush Now Dog Mush

I'm not sure exactly what dog mush is, but it's definitely nothing nice, so I couldn't resist the headline.

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Air Force struck terrorist groups in Gaza in three separate attacks Tuesday afternoon, killing at least six operatives, including Army of Islam second-in-command Muataz Dughmush.

The head of the terrorist group, Mumtaz, is Muataz' half-brother.

Two of the strikes were carried out in the central Gaza town of Dir el-Balah, where IAF pilots successfully targeted the gunmen involved in the 2006 kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

One of the missiles struck a vehicle carrying the Army of Islam terrorist cell, which included Muataz Dughmush. Five terrorists were killed, including Dughmush, and three others were wounded, one critically. The vehicle was completely destroyed.

Two other Army of Islam terrorists were wounded in the second strike, which occurred in the same area a short time later.

Of course, the news report I heard said merely that six Palestinians had been killed. Are we to assume that all Palestinians are terrorists? Of course not (at last report, there were 17 who didn't support terrorism). Are we to assume that every Palestinian killed by Israelis is an innocent? Of course not (go ahead and use that 17 number again).

The media could do a better job of reporting Israel/Palestinian issues. That said, please register me in the "Understatement of the Year" contest.

hat-tip: Jim

What Next For Guantanamo's Bad Guys?

The Libs won, finally, after pushing pig-headedly through every logical obstacle placed before them, and got the men of Guantanamo, who never saw a provision of the Geneva Conventions they didn't mind breaking, rights beyond what we've ever offered foreign enemy combatants before.

Now that a few hundred habeas hearings are going to be scheduled before federal judges, what possible hope do we have that the judges will handle the matter well? As Andy McCarthy points out today at The Corner, we don't trust judges enough with criminal cases to let them make habeas decisions without reams of guidance and piles of precedence, there are no such safety brakes in place to guide judges in the proper handling of foreign enemy combatants. McCarthy points out the risks of this situation:

By comparison, (a) alien unlawful enemy combatants are more serious threats to public safety (indeed, to national security) than drug dealers and violent felons; (b) alien unlawful enemy combatants are also not defendants accused of crimes (they're hostile operatives captured in military operations overwhelming authorized by Congress following the mass-killing of nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11) and, therefore, they are not entitled in detention hearings to the constitutional presumption of innocence that applies in civilian prosecutions (by contrast, they do get the presumption of innocence if charged with war crimes); and (c) judges have no institutional competence in determining the status of enemy combatants, a war power the framers committed to the political branches.

McCarthy proposes a narrow detention procedure law for these cases, which could be modeled on the federal pretrial detention statute, followed by a national security court, but sees the problems inherent in the suggestion. The Left has fought tooth and nail to minimize the risk posed by the Guantanamo detainees and to give them undeserved legal rights, and they're not about to settle for a Pyhrric victory this close to the finish line.

Even with all the guidance before them, liberal judges often make horrible habeas decisions, and little itty bitty bad guys catch a break as a result. It would be nice to say "we can't allow such mistakes to happen with the detainees," but that's ridiculous. We are going to allow such mistakes to happen thanks to the SCOTUS ruling, and we are going to deal with the consequences -- in this case, the deaths of our soldiers, our allies, or us.

I share McCarthy's concern that when that happens, Obama and the other politicians who brought us to this point will be shielded by the courts. Let's hope that as that happens, the communicators on our side will be more effective than the Bush communications team, and the American people will be reminded that it was politicians on the left, not the courts, that have the greatest measure of responsibility.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Father's Day Sunday Scan

Role Model Day?

Here's an interesting take on Father's Day from Sweating Through Fog:

I'm getting pretty tired of seeing things that treat being a father as just a "male role model."

A father is not a male role model. A father is an adult male that a child knows:
a) will take a bullet for them.
b) will work hard for many, many years, doing things he may or may not like, in order to provide a loving, secure home for his wife and children.
c) loves the child enough to consider the well-being of that child the foundation of his worth as a person.

You can be a male role model if you teach a kid how to ride a bike, throw a curve ball, learn a trade or act on a date - all good and wonderful things. Fatherhood is an irrevocable, lifetime commitment to sacrifice - with grace and pride - for the benefit of a child. A child derives great benefit knowing that someone made those sacrifices for them.

God bless the Dads who dedicate themselves to doing both, and God bless the kids who have neither. For them, today's not much of a day.

Father's Day Read

David Woo, a photographer with the Dallas Daily News gave a reverse Father's Day present to son Jake that merits an entry in the Chronicles of Fathering -- Woo the elder visited Woo the younger at his post on at Forward Operating Base Iskan, south of Baghdad.

Woo the elder's piece is posted at the Dallas Morning News today; here's a poignant excerpt:

As I walked about 100 yards to my room, the only light was moon glow. As I looked up, I had to stop. Before Jake was deployed to Iraq, I told him that I would go outside every night before I went to sleep, look up in the heavens and say a prayer for his safety. This time, my prayer was a little different:

"God, I'm here with my son now. Keep him and his fellow soldiers safe."

For whatever his reasons, God did not keep several thousand of Woo's fellow soldiers safe in Iraq. What a terrible, terrible day today must be for those families and those fathers. Please keep them in your prayers today ... there are no words sufficient to the loss.

(See Woo the elder's photo gallery from the trip here.)

Predators And Reapers


Two of the coolest named weapons in the US arsenal, the Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft, are flying over the Pakistan/Afghanistan border like never before, in a renewed effort to bring in Osama bin Laden before the end of the Bush presidency. The Times of London reports:

As Mr Bush arrived in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe, defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

I'm not a big supporter of last-minute legacy-building by presidents, so I have to ask why this effort wasn't undertaken sooner? Why the big rush now?

I hope they get him -- today wouldn't be soon enough -- but having big stories in major international newspapers about the hunt isn't going to help the effort any.

Admitting Defeat In The Rhetoric War

Another famous American has followed in the footsteps of the Dixie Chicks, Susan Sarandon and a host of others to choose a foreign venue to bad-mouth Bush.

This time the guilty party was ... George W. Bush.

In an interview with the Times of London, Bush said he regretted the tone of his rhetoric in the early days of the war, believing it has led to a misunderstanding of America and its motives.

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”.

As a communicator, I couldn't agree more. Those phrases felt good at the time. We had just been beaten up by a rancid slug in a turban and we were angry and embarrassed. Bush talked tough and it made us feel better, and we needed to feel better, but it set a tone inappropriate for a real war.

Fifty-four years earlier, America was beaten up, bruised and embarrassed, and the president at the time, FDR, took to the airwaves with his famous "day of infamy" speech. He measured out his rhetoric much more carefully, careful to set a tone appropriate for the horrific task that lay ahead. He knew thousands of our military had already died at the hands of the Japanese, and that tens of thousands more would likely fall in the war to follow, yet these were the most pitched lines of the speech:

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

Granted, "bring 'em on" was the low point in some lofty rhetoric Bush delivered in the days following 9/11, and at the initiation of the wars, but presidents have to be careful in what they say because history selects the words the world will remember. FDR chose words that set the stage for a righteous battle against an infamous foe; Bush sounded like a schoolyard thug.

The communications failures of the Bush administration are legion and will not be fixed in the final six months of his term. He not only framed our effort unfortunately, he allowed far too much illegitimate criticism to go unchallenged -- especially the criticism of the Dem congress and American hardcore left.

By the time Bush became passably adept at framing the consequences of the Dems' approach to the war, his style had already turned too many people off, so his speeches lost much of their power to influence.

Finally, Bush appears to have bought into his "dead or alive," "bring it on" rhetoric, as evidenced by the careful planning and strong execution of the first phases of both wars, and the failure to anticipate the difficulties to follow.

We are in a quandry. The candidate with the rhetorical powers to patch things up has the wrong policy, and the candidate with the right policy is perhaps even worse rhetorically than Bush. McCain might want to make his #1 qualification for running mate "soaring rhetorical power."

Long Awaited

2,459 days after his plan was executed, killing 2,792 innocents,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sits in a courtroom, a major milestone in his descent to Hell.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is facing a military judge in his long-awaited first public appearance before a war-crimes tribunal.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators have taken their seats at defense tables before Judge Ralph Kohlmann, a Marine colonel.

Their arraignment Thursday is the highest-profile test yet of the controversial tribunal system, which is being challenged in court. It comes seven years after the attacks. All five face the death penalty if convicted.

How very odd, and how very American, that Mohammed (familiar name; isn't that some prophet or something?) awaits his fate amidst the dry, orderly environs of a military courtroom.

How very different from those he judged misjudged, who he sentenced to painful, noisy, smelly, terrifying deaths, without ever once looking any one of them in the eye.

And how amazing that there are American lawyers who hate the country that nurtured them and gave them freedom so much that they are standing beside this pillar of Islamism, attacking America to defend him.

Rumsfeld's Pre-War "Strategic Thoughts" Memo to Bush

I'm reading Douglas Feith's War and Decision on my Kindle, and am finding myself periodically "cutting" pages electronically for filing and future reference, and adding notes regularly -- excellent features that make the Kindle a good little reference tool.

This morning, I read Feith's summary of Rumsfeld's "Strategic Thoughts" memo that presented to President Bush the Pentagon's thinking at the conclusion of initial planning for the war in Afghanistan. It's fascinating to read today, so I'll present Feith's narrative and excerpts here. Italicized sections are from the actual memo; non-italicized indented sections are from Feith.

In the "Strategic Thoughts" paper, our main point was that the United States should be focusing on the state actors within the enemy network, which could create a strategic and humanitarian nightmare for us by giving a terrorist group a biological or nuclear weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions.

This purpose, so vivid in the days after 9/11, has faded now for many, but continues to be very real as Iran pursues its bomb, Islamists struggle to take over Pakistan, and intelligence reports of terrorist queries into various WMD components continue to trouble those who think rationally.

One way to disrupt terrorist groups was to compel their state sponsors to change policies on terrorism and on weapons of mass destruction. This could be done, we reasoned, through military action against some of the state sponsors, and pressure-- short of war -- against others. The effectiveness of the diplomatic pressure would hinge to some extent on the success of our military actions.

Contrast that with Obama's no preconditions, no military presence in Iraq approach.

In some cases, we would get leverage by aiding local opposition groups, rather than sending U.S. forces to take the lead in overthrowing foreign regimes. The regimes that supported terrorism tended to be oppressive domestically as well as aggressive internationally, so there were opposition groups in various countries that we could assist as a way of pressuring the leaders there. The U.S. "strategic theme," Rumsfeld advised the president, should be "aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism."

We are seeing this work in Iraq today as local citizens are contributing information that is putting al-Qaeda on the run, but in general, the long war in Iraq is preventing us from implementing enough of this strategic theme elsewhere in Repressistan.

The United States could set up the pattern in Afghanistan by supporting the anti-Taliban and anti-al-Qaeda militias:

Air strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban targets are planned to begin soon. But, especially in the war's initial period, I think US military action should stress:

• indirect (through local, non-US forces) action, in coordination with and in support of opposition groups;
  
  
• direct use of US forces initially primarily to deliver logistics, intelligence and other support to opposition groups and humanitarian supplies to NGOs and refugees, and subsequently
  
  
• on-the-ground action against the terrorists as individuals -- leaders and others ...

This is not at all as the war turned out, although it is pretty much how the war is today.

Rumsfeld cautioned that the United States should be restrained on air strikes until we had sufficient intelligence to mandate "impressive (worthwhile) strikes" against al Qaeda and other targets. In an especially remarkable passage, he also advised the President that victory in in the war on terrorism would require geopolitical changes substantial enough to cause every regime supporting terrorists to worry about its vulnerability:

If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim. There is value in being clear on the order of magnitude of the necessary change. The USG [U.S. government] should envision a goal along these lines:

• New regimes in Afghanistan and [some other states] that support terrorism (to strengthen political and military policies elsewhere.
  
  
• Syria and Lebanon.
  
  
• Dismantlement or destruction of WMD in [key states]
  
  
• End of many other countries' support or tolerance of terrorism.

Feith does not reveal the other states where regime change and destruction of WMD capabilities were envisioned; presumably they are Iraq, Iran and North Korea (and Syria and Cuba to a lesser extent). Two of the three biggies still exist and there is little sign that we have moved them one bit off their positions immediately post 9-11. We have done much, but not enough, to stop other countries' support of or tolerance for terrorism, but these bullets are still largely unrealized.

Rumsfeld again raised the idea of deferring military strikes in Afghanistan:

• It would instead be surprising and impressive if we built our forces up patiently, took some early action outside of Afghanistan, perhaps in multiple locations, and began not exclusively or primarily with military strikes but with train-and-equip activities with local opposition forces and humanitarian aid and intense information operations.
  
  
• We could thereby:

• Garner actionable intelligence on lucrative targets, which we do not now have.
  
  
• Reduce emphasis on images of US killing Moslems from the air.
  
  
• Signal that our goal is not merely to damage terrorist-supporting regimes but to threaten their regimes by becoming partners with their opponents.
  
  
• Capitalize on our strong suit, which is not finding a few hundred terrorists in caves in Afghanistan, but in the vastness of our military and humanitarian resources, which can strengthen the opposition forces in terrorist-supporting states.

I am impressed with the clarity and visionary quality this original strategic framework for the GWOT. It is a decidedly American strategy, predicated on our military capabilities, for sure, but also on the belief that people will strive for freedom. It is also typically American in that it is designed to avoid unnecessary deaths and promote humanitarian responses.

It is not, unfortunately, entirely as the war has worked out. "Misunderestimating" the distrust of America in Muslim lands and the ability of Sunni and Shi'ia terror groups to exploit that misunderstanding in the early years of the war ended up focusing our efforts almost exclusively on only two theaters of war, and on war more than humanitarianism. (Yes, of course the humanitarianism is there, but it is not the world's focus due to the successful efforts of our enemies to refocus attention on violence.) As a result, we are seen too much as occupiers and not enough as liberators; a false perception, but much of the world's perception nonetheless.

Feith's book is showing me that there was much more careful thought going into the GWOT than the left would have us believe. There were no cowboys. But it also shows that war is not as much about well laid plans as it is about what really happens once forces are set into action -- and if we made more of that in our strategic planning, we might not be as likely to get into difficult, almost intractable situations, as we have in Iraq.

Terminally Backwards

Leftyblogger Attaturk at Firedoglake is hot and bothered this morning:

The Chinese are apparently taking a supervisory role in overseeing their investment.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."

Let's forget for the moment that lawyers for Guantanamo detainees are the worst of the hardcore left and are about as believable as Bill confronting a blue dress. And let's forget that the report is reporting on what it knows little about. Did we soften them up (i.e., keep them awake for a bit) or did we let the Chinese do it? Dunno. And let's forget that what these dolts call torture is just routine interrogation. Just watch an episode of Law and Order.

What rankles me about Attaturk and Manning is this: They are abuse biggots and terror deniers. They never wrote, I'm sure, about similar behavior by Chinese in their interrogations of Christians. Didn't matter to them.

And the Uighurs? They're de facto heroes to these folks, no questions asked. I've written human rights pieces on the Uighurs myself, but let's remember, they're an Islamic people from China's Western frontier.

Some of them are simply an abused minority, just wanting to practice their religion in peace, but prevented by the omnipresent Beijing Thumb all China is under. But some of them are Islamist jihadists intent on stoning adulteresses, beheading homosexuals and apostates, replacing China's rule of law (such as it is) with Sharia, and converting all of China by the sword. In other words, they are one and the same with al-Qaeda and those darlings of the Firedoglake set, Hamas and Hezbollah.

This is the global war on terror and I think it's safe to assume that anyone held in Guantanamo is a soldier on the wrong side of that war, not some hapless Muslim who just wants to pray towards Mecca five times a day. And because they are swine of that nature, it's not just fine but smart to have the Chinese drop by and find out what's up with them.

This is a case where the Uighurs should praise Allah because they're in Guantanamo. If they were captured in China, far from the watchful eyes of American military personnel, they no doubt would have suffered a far worse interrogation. This story could have been written from the "lucky detainees" angle except for one little niggle: That would go against all in the Left's warped worldview.

Do you doubt it? Just check out this comment on Attaturk's post:

Things are going well in bushdom. Now they can say that they are not the only ones that torture use enhanced interrogation techniques “see other people do it to so can it be all that bad”.

Will it ever end? No, not without impeachment so maybe we should impeach that f***ing pelosi madwoman as she is the classic enabler.

I swear that clinton2 is only still mucking about as a distraction from all the bull***t coming out of Washington. She is in the pay of the MIC and is doing their dirty work for them. Business as usual. [Profanity edited by C-SM]

Paranoid, hateful, distrusting. Your American Left has reported for duty in fine form today.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Is OC's Most Notorious Terrorist Dead?

Our local boy gone very, very, very bad, Adam Gadahn, aka "Azzam al-Amriki," al-Qaeda's English-language mouthpiece, may be dead, as we speculated earlier.

Here's an update from Counterterrorism Blog:

This afternoon, Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation has released the second audio recording of Usama Bin Laden in the space of only three days--this time, openly addressed "to the Islamic nation." But, perhaps what is most interesting about Bin Laden's latest set of audio recordings is not what they contain--but rather, what they inexplicably lack: the English-language subtitles and matching transcript that have, until recently, been a customary feature of professional-quality As-Sahab videos. An analysis of the history of As-Sahab recordings and their evolution over time would seem to indicate that the responsibility for creating these English-language products fell largely on the shoulders of one man alone: Adam Gadahn (a.k.a. "Azzam al-Amriki"), the California native who was recruited by Al-Qaida computer specialists living in Garden Grove in the late 1990s, and who later traveled on to Pakistan seeking to join his new hero Usama Bin Laden. Gadahn's voice and, more recently, his face have been an integral part of As-Sahab releases since their first video production in 2001, "The Destruction of the U.S.S. Cole" (a.k.a. "State of the Ummah"). He has frequently appeared as a freely identified commentator in As-Sahab videos, with clips of him speaking in English juxtaposed amid footage of Usama Bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In January 2008, the U.S. military used a Predator drone to launch an airstrike on a house in Mir Ali, Pakistan, which was suspected to be hiding several high-ranking Al-Qaida leaders and operatives. Within days, Al-Qaida issued a series of statements and video recordings acknowledging that the airstrike had caused serious casualties, including Abu al-Laith al-Liby--a senior Al-Qaida leader considered to be the "Field Commander" in charge of foreign mujahideen military operations across large swaths of southern Afghanistan. But according to NEFA Foundation sources inside Pakistan, the legendary Abu al-Laith was not the only loss suffered in the strike at Mir Ali. These sources indicated that a host of other less-senior-but-still-significant Al-Qaida members were also inside the house at the time, including Abu al-Laith's deputy, a Somali holding Australian or U.S. nationality, two Kuwaiti jihadis, and--most interesting of all--none other than Adam Gadahn himself. Al-Qaida has never confirmed nor denied reports of Adam Gadahn's death, and that has only added to the growing mystery surrounding his whereabouts. (more here)

Let's hope it's true, and that Gadahn awoke on the other side of this mortal veil only to discover that he should have stuck with his family's Jewish religion and morals. No virgins, no paradise for Azzam al-Amriki. (Yes, I also hope and pray that at the last moment, Gadahn shook off his Islamic chains and accepted Christ -- but what are the chances of that?)

Still, if it is true that he's met his well-deserved fate, there is a family here that mourns him. For their story, read my posts summarizing an OC Register three-parter on the Gadahn family that I've linked to several times before:

From Liberal Jew To Al Qaeda In Two Generations
Flower Child Dad, Al Qaeda Son
"If You're A Good Believer, You'll Kill Your Parents."

hat-tip: LGF

Sunday Scan

Who You Gonna Mourn To?

China, an atheist regime that forces "religion" into a state-run box and prosecutes practitioners of serious religion, has called for three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake.

Who will the country mourn to? A vacuum? The spirit of Mao, who, decomposed as he is, does not offer much eternal hope?

The answer is in the heart of those that suffer, as this AP story reveals:

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?"

Oh God, give them comfort. The state certainly can't.

Moral Relativism Alert!

Before straying too far from AP, let's turn our attention to a story filed by Terence Hunt earlier this morning about Prez Bush's address to assembled Arab leaders in Egypt. Hunt tells us:

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

Gosh. I wonder why the tone would be different.

One of the rules of thumb I teach my employees is that when your opposition is lying, distorting or just being ignorant, use their own words against them. That would apply with Hunt's story. Let's look at Hunt's reporting on what Bush said to the Arab leaders and see if there's a reason for the contrasting tones, shall we?

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said ...

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and are represented in government. On the other side, there's Mubarik, Assad and a host of other power-barons who have jailed or suppressed their opposition, and not one functioning democracy save the nascent one in Iraq and the crumbling one in Lebanon. Point Bush.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled ..."

Israel's' "political prisoners" are people who have carried out or planned violent attacks with real weapons against Israel. In the rest of the region, jails are full of people whose only weapon is the pen or the tongue. Freedom of speech in Israel, repression in all the Arab lands leads to point Bush.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future ..."

Israel has no prisoners of conscience, just prisoners of action. It has an open political debate, and it trusts its future to its people. Anyone want to speak from the Arab side? Anyone? Anyone?

Point, game and match Bush.

On The Wrong Foot

The EU asked Interpol to look into the state of Islamist terror in Europe. Interpol found that it's bad and getting worse ... and it blamed England.

Britain's controversial foreign and military policy has made UK the hub of Islamic terrorism across Europe, and turned the country into a fertile ground for jihadist recruiters, a report by the EU warned.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report revealed that British foreign policy presented critical dangers for all Europe: "The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have a large impact on the security environment of the EU." (Source)

So the problem isn't the EU's policy of appeasing radical Islamists who promote race hatred under the protection of the EU's tolerance laws? And it's not Islam itself and its long history of violent jihad, sharpened in recent years by the phenomena of international migration, the Internet and Saudi-funded radical education?

The EU study may be worlds off in its finger-pointing, but it's probably right about this: It predicts more terror attacks in Europe from a "rejuvenated" al-Qaeda.

Where are we fighting al-Qaeda? Well, we and the Brits are fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where aren't we fighting them? Europe.

Big News From The Nanosphere

Advances in nanotechnology appear poised to dramatically increase the efficiency of thin film solar cells. As in from a theoretical cap of 31% efficiency all the way up to 45% efficiency.

Put on your techie hat and read about it here.

Anthropomorphic Hucksterism

More indications that the global warming debate is anything but over:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce [Monday] that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. (source, via ICECAP)

The OISM list doesn't focus on climatologists, so the Warmies will discount the announcement. But all have university degrees in science and over 9,000 of them have PhD's so we can postulate that they know the difference between good and bad research methods, and the difference between evidence and proof.

Meanwhile, as we look at ten years of global cooling having no effect whatsoever on the prognostications and pontifications of our electeds, Richard Rahn writes in WashTimes that global warming constitutes the greatest intelligence failure of our era, concluding:

You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the "science" is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)

The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the "truth" of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an "intelligence" failure.

Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world's poor who are paying more for food. This is not an "intelligence" but an "integrity" failure.

This One's A Stand-Alone


SF Readies For Big Gay Bucks

While the 60-plus percent of us in CA who voted that marriage in our state is between a man and a woman are unhappy with this week's CA supreme court decision overturning our will, tourism officials in San Francisco are decidedly ... uh, gayer.

San Francisco's tourist industry is betting that gay marriage will lead to a boon in same-sex wedding and honeymoon packages.

Nationally, gay tourism amounts to a $60 billion-a-year industry. Thanks to Thursday's ruling by the state Supreme Court striking down the ban on same-sex marriage, California stands to become a destination spot for gay and lesbian couples from around the world who want to get hitched.

And San Francisco is hoping for the biggest slice of the wedding cake.

No sooner did the court decision come down than the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau fired off a release to the gay press, inviting couples to get married in the city where "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made." (source)

If the ruling stands, gays from any state will be able to wed in California, unlike Massachusetts, which only lets its own gays marry.

Cue up quickly, my friends. A constitutional amendment is likely to cut your fun short soon enough. Had gays gone the legislative route, they very well might have secured the right to marry in California, but as long as they rely on courts stripping the majority of the sanctity of their vote, the majority will stand together against gay marriage -- because they support the sanctity of a democratic, free vote, not necessarily because they support the sanctity of marriage.

Time To Remember The "Global" In The War On Terror

Mark Steyn does it again, summarizing all I've thought about Obama's snitty response to Bush's Knesset (not Parliament) speech, and getting it just right:

Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here] concept is an original idea.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

And those well-crafted words brings me to what I feel, increasingly, is wrong with our position in Iraq.

I read of the Druze "300" valiantly standing between the ambitions of Syria and Iran to overwhelm Lebanon in order to assume a power position over Israel and give Syria a port for transshipment of weapons from Iran and NoKo, and I think, why aren't we fighting alongside the Druze?

Why don't we have an adequate force on the ground with air support, to stop the advance of the Hezbollah - Syria - Iran front? Why aren't we using our military assets to give Lebanon breathing room?

We're not fighting this short war because we are tied up with the long war. There are similar opportunities in Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Gulf -- like precise attacks on Iran Revolutionary Guard facilities near the Iranian border -- but the long war is limiting our options.

I'm reading Doug Fieth's War and Decision, and going back to the first days after 9/11, we see these bursts of short wars to very much be in the initial response planning. Remember, we are supposed to be fighting terror and those who support terror, not just al-Qaeda. The Pentagon planners envisioned military actions in Africa, Asia and even South America to take out terrorists and their support network.

Then Iraq and Afghanistan turned into long wars.

The fact that they did turn into long wars maybe shows that the short war option may not be viable. Can we strike here and there and change things? If we support the Druze, can we save Lebanon, or will saving Lebanon require another long war?

A good question, for sure, but perhaps the best way to answer it is to try the short war option. Seize the ship with the weapons. Knock out the training camp. Close the bank account. Stop the next Janjaweed attack in Darfur. Capture the terror-king and his henchmen and transport them to some unknown prison for a friendly debriefing.

Do. Do. Do. We are doing a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are converting whole societies bit by bit, allowing them to taste freedom from extremism and tyranny. It's time to do more elsewhere. I don't hear any presidential candidates talking about this, but as we draw down our troops in Iraq over the next few years, transferring authority to a more stable Iraqi government and a better trained Iraqi army and police force, we need to consider "where next?" for our hegemonic military.

We can go anywhere and do just about anything, so let's do hurry up with getting a few tens of thousands of troops available to support freedom and trounce terror in theaters around the globe.

This is not going to be the Global War on Terror until we take it to the terrorists globally.

Hitting Softballs

A friend took issue with Prez Bush's words in Jerusalem yesterday, specifically this part where he spoke about democracy spreading throughout the Middle East.

From Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy, tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. And al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause.

He put his concerns into an e-mail last night, and I didn't get a chance to answer him today, so ...

You often tell me, "it isn't so, just because you say it's so..."

This sage advice [Suck up! (I love it.)] can be directly applied to today's comments, and in fact, his entire policy for the region.

"We'll be welcomed as liberators..."

As it happens, we were welcomed as liberators. But that was before Iraq turned John Kerry on us and didn't welcome us as liberators after they welcomed us as liberators. Let me count the countries where people pray that some day they will be welcoming us as liberators ...

"Mission accomplished."

Granted, not a perfect PR moment, but it's been exploited by the Lying Left. They know the mission that was referenced was the toppling of Saddam's brutal, repressive, murdering rein, a mission that had, in fact, had been accomplished.

"Saddam Hussein is proliferating WMDs..."

I'm amazed that as bright my friend is, he still repeats these easily rebuttable lies. He must know that our intelligence matched up against Germany's and England's and Russia's. He must know that his own beloved Bill Clinton thought Saddam had WMDs. He must know that Saddam was squirreling away money he stole from Oil-for-Food, intending to spend it on WMDs the first moment he could. And he must know that Saddam frustrated UN weapons inspectors at every turn, increasing the rationality of the "Saddam has WMDs" position.

And on, and on, and on...

Bottom line, it is not even close to so, yet he continues to say it is
so.

So because democracy hasn't spread throughout the Middle East in five short years, we're supposed to give up on the entire concept and leave that entire huge part of the world continue in its totalitarian, Islamo-theocratic dungeon? And leave the future of the world to the jihadists?

We have two alternatives: Hide behind our borders, something al-Qaeda taught us we cannot do, or continue to try to bring liberation and freedom to the oppressed people on our planet. I'll choose the latter.

The Unspeakable Foe We Face

Words sometimes just cannot express the rank ugliness of Islamic terror. As a communications professional, I've found in cases like this, it's best to let the ugliness speak for itself, so:

A young girl carrying explosives that killed her, an Iraqi captain and injured four soldiers was blown up by remote control, officials said today.

The incident happened as she approached an Iraqi command post in Youssifiyah, south Baghdad, earlier this morning.

Iraqi army Lieutenant Ahmed Ali confirmed that the girl, who had hidden explosives strapped to her, was the cause of the blast. ...

"The bomber was detonated by remote control, killing Captain Wassem al-Maamouri and injuring four soldiers," Ali added. (the Guardian)

Just to clarify for any confused readers out there, here's a photo of how we treat young girls in Iraq.

How old is a "young" girl, anyway? Twelve? Eight? Younger? Whatever her young age, she was obviously too young to be counted on to be a noble martyr Hell-bound hooligan in Islam's war on all that is free and modern, so al-Qaeda in Iraq just murdered her instead.

Obama and the Left will look at this as more chaos, and more reason to leave Iraq. Who strapped the explosives to their intellect and detonated it remotely? Terrorist Islamists are not people who should be given the boost a US defeat in Iraq would give them.

Every day we're there, more of these scum are killed and their infrastructure becomes less effective, as is evidenced by the fact that they must resort to remotely detonating young girls and mentally retarded women -- actions far more pathetic than Japan's use of suicide pilots in their last gasp before defeat in the Pacific.

Department Of Homeland Insanity

Sometimes I wonder how we've made it since 9/11 without a terrorist attack on our shores, given the incredible incompetence of some of those tasked with protecting us. As reported in WashTimes:

Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are allowed to board in the future.

The problem with federal air marshals (FAM) names matching those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list has persisted for years, say air marshals familiar with the situation.

One air marshal said it has been “a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline.”

“In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,” the air marshal said. “I've seen guys actually being denied boarding.”

A second air marshal says one agent “has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.”

Well, gee. They've only had six years to work out this thorny problem so maybe we should cut them some slack ... hey wait! That's longer than it took al-Qaeda to plan and carry out 9/11.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda via Jim

Sunday Scan

Lessons In New Politics From Barack

Barack Obama is leaving the old politics behind, supplanting it with a new, cleaner style that leaves the smarminess behind. Here, courtesy of The LA Times (which provides a darn good compendium of Obama-smashing news, in its usual blatant favoritism for Hillary objective style), is a tutorial in how Obama approaches politics the new, clean way:

1. Need money after your first unsuccessful campaign for Congress? Then get a sweet job from a big campaign supporter to supplement your state senate income. (Obama got a $112,000 job from Robert Blackwell Jr., about double his state senate salary of $58,000.)
   
   
2. In return for the favor, urge the state legislature to grant a Blackwell company, table tennis promoter Killerspin, a $50,000 tourism grant. (Pingpong tourism is such an important tourist market, and so deserving of state subsidies!) ((Shall we make, or avoid, the devilishly clever connection between the name "Killerspin" and the Obama PR machine?))
   
   
3. Then, to show that a cash-stuffed paper bag the system really does work, land $320,000 in state subsidies for Killerspin tournaments.
   
   
4. Finally, get new political contributions from Blackwell as soon as the grants go through.

There are business people who feel it is their responsibility to run a profitable company, and there are business people who feel it is the people's responsibility to make their company profitable. There are politicians who believe in the former, and politicians like Obama who, despite all their fine talk about new ways of doing things, definitely believe in the latter.

Islamist Horror Stories

Bubba, of What Bubba Knows, has put together a list of stories for Sabine, a gal who apparently doesn't get the threat posed by Islamist thought and action. Here's his intro:

For Sabine's education, today's stories of atrocities by Muslims.

May you come to realize who and what is the real threat to peace, may you learn to recognize the face of the real enemies of your peaceful, tranquil world.

And here are the story links:

¤ Please Let Me Marry Her and Then Kill Me
¤ The criminality against children in the koran
¤ German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages
¤ Europe or Eurabia?
¤ Home-grown 'champion of Islam'
¤ Saudi women 'kept in childhood'
¤ Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada

The first link one tells of a particularly heartless murder carried out by an al-Qaeda in Iraq thug, who is now in prison, awaiting his death sentence. Another prisoner wanted to identify the thug's victim:

So, he asked the killer to give him the name of the victim.

The killer replied he didn’t know, he asked from what tribe? The killer didn’t know, he asked from what sect? The killer didn’t know, he asked him from what province? The killer didn’t know.

Then he asked him, then why you killed him? The killer said he cannot remember, whether it was the victim's haircut or the way he was dressed or the music pouring from his car.

This is the enemy we're fighting, and this is why we're fighting this enemy. Islamist terrorists are the vilest villains we have ever fought, a fact the Left is quick to forget, despite unforgettable stories like this one.

Lessons In Environmental Hypocrisy

If you like the splendor and quiet, hot solitude of the desert, Anza Borrego is your state park. It's the state's largest park, stretching across most of eastern San Diego County almost all the way to the Mexican border, with 500 miles of dirt roads, 12 separate wilderness areas and untold miles of hiking trails.

Somewhere in that vastness, a long line of wooden power poles stretches from horizon to horizon, lost in the vastness, hardly noticed by most park visitors. Call the power lines the Maginot Line of the war between the Greenies and the rest of us.

San Diego Gas & Electric, in order to meet a state mandate that 20% of its power come from alternative sources by 2010 (that's less than two years away!), proposes to convert the current power corridor to a new Sunrise Powerlink, which would carry renewable power from the sun, wind and geothermal facilities to be built in the Imperial Valley.

The environmentalists, who demand that we stop using oil and go with renewable resources, are furious, of course. Here's Elizabeth Goldstein, prez of the California Parks Foundation, quoted in the LA Times:

"The idea that we're going to sacrifice critical pieces of our environment to protect other pieces of our environment seems a little ironic. That's an irony I cannot accept. We have to find a way to do both."

I think she means "protect both," not "sacrifice both," but the sentence's structure is a little hazy. The Sierra Club makes it more clear, talking about a "powerline juggernaut:"

Fare thee well, big skies and open vistas. To feed the energy demands of the West's inland megalopolises and crowded coasts, public lands in 11 Western states may soon be crisscrossed by a web of power lines and pipelines. These "energy easements," up to three-quarters of a mile wide, are slated for every sort of public property: national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holdings, state parks, even national parks. Since they'll be "preapproved," the easements will be ready to go at the energy companies' convenience.

Note that they don't say a word about these easements being required to comply with the alternative energy mandates they themselves demanded. So like a Kennedy attacking windmills, they attack the infrastructure required to make their alternative energy dream come true.

But you see, having 20% alternative energy isn't their dream, not if it means conventional power solutions. They wanted growth to stop, grids to be ripped out, and Americans to change the way they live. Nothing less will do.

So they will fight this power line, even though there really isn't a good alternative route. They would rather condemn private land than use public land for a public use. And the public, I hope, will see the Greenies for what they are: Demanding and totally inflexible, demanding the world without giving up a square inch, and self-righteous but thoroughly hypocritical.

On Anniversary Of Beirut Bombing, WaPo Blames Bush

The Washington Post sure has a strange way to honor the dead.

Acknowledging (in the very last line!) that the State Department will hold a ceremony this morning marking the anniversary of Beirut Marine barracks suicide bombing that killed 241, causing the largest loss of American military life in a single incident since the Battle of Iwo Jima, reporter Robin Wright tees off on an America-blaming piece on suicide bombing, not a piece that honors the fallen.

The piece quotes a study by Mohammed Hafez of the Naval Postgraduate School showing a big increase in suicide bombing as a tool in the new warfare.

The unpublished data show that since 1983, bombers in more than 50 groups from Argentina to Algeria, Croatia to China, and India to Indonesia have adapted car bombs to make explosive belts, vests, toys, motorcycles, bikes, boats, backpacks and false-pregnancy stomachs.

Of 1,840 incidents in the past 25 years, more than 86 percent have occurred since 2001, and the highest annual numbers have occurred in the past four years. The sources who provided the data to The Washington Post asked that they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the tallies.

The data show more than 920 suicide bombings in Iraq and more than 260 in Afghanistan, including some that killed scores of U.S. troops. All occurred after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Of course, the Left knows who is to blame for all this. Rising Hegemon sums up their position with a question, "Is there nothing the Bush Administration cannot do?"

Always good for an off-base inanity, Juan Cole goes academic (i.e., too intellectual to be smart) on us:

542 [attacks] out of 658 is about 83% [in Afghanistan and Iraq], lending further testimony to Chicago Political Scientist Robert Pape's theory that suicide bombings tend to occur in countries under foreign military occupation by an otherwise democratic government. (That is, they are staged for the public in the occupying country to some extent; people tend not to bother to blow themselves up when occupied by a dictatorship.)

My gosh. Can't these people see something idiotic for what it is? This is the most a$$-backwards thinking I've seen since ... well, probably since whatever leftist dribble I was reading yesterday.

It's hard to tell by Cole's garbled structure whether Pape is referring to Iraq's democratic government or America's, but the fact is there would be no democratic government in Iraq were it not for us. We are not occupying; we have a fraction of the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan required by an occupation, and we are encouraging the strengthening of the Iraqi government, not controlling it.

And "people tend not to bother to blow themselves up when occupied by a dictatorship?" Did it not occur to these two academic muddle-heads that "occupied by a dictatorship" does not describe pre-war Iraq? "Controlled with an iron fist by a 100% Iraqi dictatorship" does. There's no occupation now, there was no occupation under Saddam. What is this ridiculous fixation with a word they can't even define?

As quoted by WaPo, you would never know that the study deals almost exclusively with Islamist bombing. Nothing is said about the rise of Islamist terror, preceding Iraq and Afghanistan.

No context is given from the Palestinian use of suicide bombs in their war on terror against Israel, even though they and the Tamil Tigers pretty much invented the suicide technology. No effort is made to explain the bombings in Algiers or China within the context of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And worse, there is no mention that there's a war going on. When there's a war, both sides need weapons or one side will summarily win. We have plenty of weapons that are capable of trouncing any conventional weapons the Islamists can raise against us, so they utilize a weapon that we have difficulty deterring: suicide bombs.

If there were weapon parity, suicide bombing would not be used; AK 47s, RPGs and other conventional weapons would be used by both sides.

So here's the story WaPo didn't write:

Islam has been actively at war against democracy since the 1980s and they have found that there most effective tactic is terror and their most effective weapon is the suicide bomber. These bombers -- recruited from the dregs of society and doped up before they're sent off -- are effectively keeping the war going, killing thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of our troops in the process.

Is the enemy, then, George Bush or Islamist warriors? For all but the intellectually befuddled and Bush-deranged, the answer is obvious.

Upload Coordinates!

Here it is, folks, the reason why President Bush is arguing for a missile defense system to protect Europe: Iran's long-range missile complex.

(Funny how there are no massive street demonstrations in Europe this time around, unlike when Reagan proposed missiles in Europe. The Europeans must see Iran as much more a threat than they ever saw the USSR.)

The Times of London ran the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite photo today after it was published by by Jane's Intelligence Review, which ran it after the imagery was analyzed by a former Iraq weapons inspector.

A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.

Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.

Avital Johanan, the editor of Jane's Proliferation, said that the analysis of the Iranian site indicated that Tehran may be about five years away from developing a 6,000km ballistic missile. This would tie in with American intelligence estimates and underlines why President Bush wants the Polish and Czech components of the US missile defence system to be up and running by 2013.

An Iranian space program is as much a laugher as an Iranian nuclear electrification program. I'm certain the Mad Mullahs would rail against spending Allah's hard earned petrodollars on such trivial pursuits as space research when there are perfectly fine jihads to fight right here on terra firma.

And indeed, people more expert then me agree, at least on the technical aspects of the matter:

At a meeting on February 25 between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Iranians, UN inspectors confronted them with evidence of design studies for mounting nuclear warheads on long-range missiles. The Iranians denied any such aspirations.,

A number of years ago on TV, I saw a segment on cops and car theft busts. They had fixed up a car to be easily stolen and left it on a street. Sure enough, a young urban [get the PC reference?] thug approached the car, looked around, got in and drove off.

One block down the street, the pre-wired car shut off, the windows rolled up and the doors locked. The kid tried desperately to get out, but was stuck. When the cops came and unlocked him from his little four-wheeled cell, he had one thing to say:

It ain't me, man!

Ahmadinejad and the Iranians must have seen the same episode.

However, according to Jane's Intelligence Review, the satellite photographs prove that the Kavoshgar 1 rocket was not part of a civilian space centre project but was consistent with Iran's clandestine programme to develop longer-range missiles.

The examination of the launch site revealed that it was part of a large and growing complex “with very high levels of security and recent construction activity”. It was clearly “an important strategic facility”, Dr Forden said.

The former Iraq weapons inspector said that Iran was benefiting from the North Korean missile programme and following its designs. The Taepodong 1 consisted of a liquid-propellant Nodong (like the Shahab 3) first stage, a liquid-propellant Scud second stage and a solid-propellant third stage.

“The production and testing facility next to the Kavoshgar 1 launch site would seem well positioned to contribute to this third stage,” Dr Forden said.

Rather than build a missile defense system and count on it to take out an incoming Kavoshgar, it would make much more sense to dispatch some B1's and B2's and take care of the facility right now.

That President Bush is negotiating the missile deal instead would seem to be strong evidence against the Leftist portrait of the renegade cowboy, just looking for an excuse to start another war.

Here's what I'd like to see instead: Some quick and lethal strikes at training bases and depots used by the Iranians to support their war against us in Iraq, concurrent with some obvious over-flights of their nuclear and missile facilities by our long-range bombers.

Heck, let's even fire a cruise missile, have it pass about 30 feet over the nuke facility, turn and pass back over it again, then head back an ocean landing.

But President Bush should send them all some cowboy boots first.

So they can quake in them.

Sunday Scan

Survival

I didn't know there was a publication called Survival until my friend Jim forward a link to it. No, it's not about eating grubs and avoiding grizzlies -- it's about geopolitical survival, the tectonic plates of foreign policy, and what we must do, as humans, to avoid the alternative to the publication's name.

In the winter 2007–08 issue, which I haven't seen, Philip Gordon, a Clintonista from the Brookings Institution, published an article that argued that America’s strategy against terror is failing ‘because the Bush administration chose to wage the wrong war.'

The current issue gives former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner an opportunity to rebut, and he does it quite well, without the arrogant rhetoric Gordon accuses the Bush administration of suffering from. Gordon presented six reasons why Bush has failed, and Wehner rebuts each quite neatly, while admitting our shortcomings along the way.

Each of the six rebuttals is a gem to file away for safekeeping until the next time you have to debate a rhetoric-spewing anti-Bushite, but I particularly liked this little bit in response to Gordon's claim that Bush has squandered the goodwill of the world:

For Gordon’s thesis to have merit, then, he would have to rewrite most of the history of the past six years. He would have to erase virtually all of the day-to-day activity of the war on terror, which as a practical matter consists of unprecedented levels of cooperation and integrated planning across scores of countries, both long-time allies and new partners.

All of this calls to mind the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which the Judean ‘guerrillas’ debate whether the Roman Empire has brought any good to the Holy Land. John Cleese’s character asks rhetorically what good the Romans have done. After his men point out one benefit after another, the Cleese character is obliged to say: ‘All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?’

Apart from the vast number of multilateral anti-terrorism initiatives from 2001 to the present, when has the Bush administration ever worked in partnership with other countries?

The magazine offers the opportunity for counterpoint to Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, and the tired, recycled rhetoric of his piece underscores the effectiveness of Wehrner's piece. Here's an example, part of his argument that America's support for Israel makes friendship with the Islamic world difficult:

The threat Israel faces was illustrated very well by Deng Xiaoping, who once used a simple comparison to describe the folly of Vietnam taking on China after defeating America in 1975. When he was asked how long China could fight Vietnam, Deng replied that when a large rock and a small stone are continuously rubbed together, over time the small stone disappears. Vietnam soon realised the wisdom of Deng’s comments. Despite the confidence the nation felt after America’s retreat, it sued for peace with China. Vietnam’s population is 84 million, while China’s is 1.3 billion, meaning there are 15 Chinese for every Vietnamese. The ratio of Israel’s population (7m) to that of the Islamic world (1.5bn) is even worse – 1:200. Wisdom dictates that Israel should work for peace.

What a concept! Israel should work for peace! Why hasn't this occurred to us before? Mahbubani, in one paragraph, has succeeded in exquisitely illustrating for us the blind, hate-filled, anti-Semitic mind of Islam -- even the highly educated, moderate Islamic mind he says is different from our perception of Islam.

Unlucky Seven

Lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride, look out. You've got company.

After 1,500 years of committee meetings and prayer, the Catholic church has added to the list of mortal sins for the first time since Pope Gregory. And I have to say, the new Bad Biggies lack the simple message impact of the first Big Seven.

Lust? Got it. Gluttony, yup. Sloth ... I could go on through the seven but I'm sooo tired, and you get the point: They're all one-worders that get their point across well and easily. But some of the new ones? "'Manipulative' genetic scientists?" What does mean? That they play nasty little tricks to get more than their fair share of Petri dishes?

Fortunately, we have Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, to explain it to us. Manipulative genetic scientists are those who "carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos.”

I see. But I bet these scientists are already loaded up with avarice and pride and therefore are in for a Dante-esque afterlife.

Abortion is also new to the list, and let's give it a warm welcome -- as long as we're talking about abortionists, not women who have abortions. It's the abortionists, who live high on the hog by murdering the unborn with full recognition of what they're doing, who deserve to move up to Majors in the Sin League.

Unfortunately, it appears the Catholic Church is including those that have abortions on the list as well, just as it is including those who take drugs with the deserving new mortal sin bunch, drug dealers. People who have abortions and people who do drugs have much wrong with them and are guilty of many sins, but I don't understand how the Vatican can group them with the profiteers who exploit their weakness. Given that the Catholic Church had 1,500 years to make the list, couldn't it have done a better job?

Rounding out the seven are environmental polluters (which includes all of us, of course, so I hope some quantification is provided), pedophiles (including those in priest's robes), the "obscenely wealthy" (how does that differ from gluttony?), and social injustice that causes poverty (which is sometimes the scapegoat for sloth and avarice).

All in all, we've been presented with a complicated and confusing bunch of new sins, lacking the simplicity and clarity of the first seven. Come the year 3,508 -- 1,500 years hence -- the Church may stretch the list to 21. Let's hope they do a better job than they did with this bunch.

Wombs For Rent

Best be careful here ... this seems to be a dangerously narrow loophole between the genetic manipulation and social injustice mortal sins we just talked about. Let's let the NYT (which is surely some sort of mortal sin all by itself) explain:

An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby).

Because few if any well-healed women will offer to be a surrogate womb for a stranger, surrogacy is a business of giving poor women enough money ($7,500, according to the NYT) to make an all-business pregnancy worthwhile, for the benefit of a wealthier couple.

While I like the free trade aspects of it -- that these desperately poor Indian women are quite literally lifted out of grinding poverty for the price of one or two pregnancies -- it's hard not to be struck by this paragraph from the NYT story:

In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.

Is the fact that the surrogate's own children will never have to sign a contract with a thumbprint, thanks to the education they received because their mother rented out her womb, enough to make this entire enterprise cheery and bright? Not quite.

Shocking Headline of the Day

And the winner is ... BBC!

Conservatives win Iran election

Meanwhile ...

Those Iranian conservatives have been busy protecting their slaves citizens from things the poor oppressed masses happy participants in the Islamic Revolution don't know to protect themselves from:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's Culture Ministry on Sunday announced the closure of nine cinema and lifestyle magazines for publishing pictures and stories about the life of "corrupt" foreign film stars and promoting "superstitions."

The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hard-liners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on "observing the provisions of the press law," the ministry said on its website.

It was not clear why the nine magazines were targeted for closure. They do not deal with politics, focusing on light lifestyle features, family advice, and news of celebrities.

They regularly publish photos of Iranian actresses in loose headscarves and stylish clothes, as well as foreign female film stars without head coverings — but nothing more revealing than what is tolerated on some state media.

The ministry said it shut them down for "using photos of artists, especially foreign corrupt film stars, as instruments (to arouse desire), publishing details about their decadent private lives, propagating medicines without authorization, promoting superstitions."

You know, sick as I am of 24/7 Brittany and Paris news, I sometimes wish we could have a little media repression here ... but then the thought passes.

Had the Iranian election been fair (a BIG "had"), chances are the government would have paid the price for this sort of unwelcomed, heavy-handed control over peoples' lives. But it wasn't fair, so the conservatives won big.

The reference to "propagating medications without authorization" is apparently a reference to ads the shuttered publications ran for male enhancement formulas. Apparently the Islamic state has no room for enhanced males.

Going Green, China Style

Perhaps, being better read than I, you've read kudo-laden accounts of an emerging solar panel industry in China, and perhaps you've thought, "Ah, the corner is begining to be turned. China may be changing from its polluted ways."

Well, that just proves that being better-read doesn't mean having better sense. ENN explains why:

As people worldwide increasingly feel the heat of climate change, many are applauding the skyrocketing growth China’s fledging solar-cell industry. ...

A recent Washington Post article, however, has revealed that China’s booming solar industry is not as green as one might expect. [Really?!] Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands.

The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents. Other polysilicon factories in the country have similar problems, either because they have not installed effective pollution control equipment or they are not operating these systems to full capacity. Polysilicon is a key component of the sunlight-capturing wafers used in solar photovoltaic (PV) cells.

Uh-oh. That's a mortal sin, fer sure.

So now when you put those PV units on your rooftop, you can rest easy knowing that not only are you greener than the Jones, you're significantly less poisoned by Chinese industrial pollution than the Pengs, whose picture (above) ran with the WaPo story.

Feeling A Little Cocky

Let's see if the Euros, the ex-Soviets, the Chinese or the Caliphate can do this:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wed., March 12, flying about 15 kilometers per second (32,000 mph) through icy water geyser-like jets. The spacecraft snatched up precious samples that might point to a water ocean or organics inside the little moon.

A Euro-Terrorist

On the heals of a study proving that al-Qaeda cynically recruits social outcasts for suicide bombings, we read this, from Spiegel:

His last mission began at exactly 4.04 p.m. on March 3. The driver pulled up his blue Toyota Dyna truck in front of the Sabari district center in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. The motor was still running when he hit the detonator. The force of the blast shook the earth and caused the guard post to collapse, trapping dozens of US soldiers under the rumble. The explosion was so forceful that eye witnesses assumed there had been a rocket attack on the building that the US army had built just two months previously.

Of course, as a suicide bomber, his "last mission" was also his first mission. This punk who killed two of our men has been identified by the Islamic Jihad Union as 28-year-old "Cüneyt C." from Bavaria, a scrawny, pimply-faced loser of a German-born Turk. Spiegel provides more detail:

Cüneyt C., a 28-year-old German-born Turk, is known to be an Islamist and to have had links with the so-called "Sauerland Cell" led by Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz. He had been regarded as dangerous since their arrest last year on suspicion of planning a terror attack (more...) in Germany. "Ismail from Ansbach," as C. was called by his friends had already left Germany by then. He left Ansbach with his wife and two children on April 2, giving up his apartment, quitting his job and even going to the local registration office to inform them he was leaving the area.

The investigators have since regarded C. as belonging to a group who have traveled from Germany to Pakistan in order to receive training as Jihadists. In the eyes of the German authorities this makes them extremely dangerous.

This is why we can't treat terrorism as a problem to be handled by the legal system, as the Libs and Dems would have it. German intelligence was well aware of the risk posed by C. and his scummy friends, but because no crime had been committed by them, Germany couldn't stop them. By exploiting the system, the Islamic Jihad carried out a successful operation ... leaving behind at least two orphans and sending a sick young man to Hell.