First, the tired (I'd hoped it was re-tired by now) 'chickenhawk' argument:

...the warbloggers, those armchair generals who appear to delight in conflict, war and death -- so long as it all occurs far from wherever they happen to be, while their fingers fly over their laptops, while they sip their evening drinks and watch their widescreen TVs in their oh-so-comfortable homes.

Second, the notion that simplisme is the root of the desire for war, and that one who understands the complex, rich broth of history would take a different position:

According to the brave, fearless, always-typing warbloggers, we had spread before us an old-fashioned morality play: on one side, we had pure, untarnished good -- the noble, honorable, uncompromising United States, which stands only for truth, justice, freedom and liberty for all. And on the other side, we had a monster like Saddam Hussein -- and anyone who expressed a "but" clearly had placed himself on Saddam's side, and on the side of torture, the murder of innocents, the gassing of children, rape rooms, and innumerable other crimes against humanity. There was no middle ground, no complexity, no nuance here -- it was one or the other. You were either on the side of the typing warbloggers and of Pure Good, or allied with the forces of Unadulterated Evil.

Third, the notion that criticism somehow equals censorship:

I also realized something much more important: all those who adopted Coalition of the Pissy as their war whoop of condemnation against anyone declining to join their mindless dance of joy are nothing more than moral bullies and intellectual thugs. They are the enemies of mind, and of thought -- and they are the enemies of truth, justice and freedom in a very deep sense. They are the advance guard of the Truth Police. For them, history does not exist, nor does the past in any meaningful sense at all, nor does the future. These barbarians live only in the moment, only in the now -- disconnected from everything that has become before, and from everything that is likely to flow in the future from our present actions. Thought, principles and ideas are alien to them, in the most profound sense imaginable.

Fourth, the notion that it's really All Our Fault:

And if you want thorough, indeed overwhelming, documentary evidence of the numerous kinds of support provided to Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s by both the United States and Britain, go to this page. Follow the links -- and despair, but wonder no more where Saddam's "power" came from. But our own crimes and betrayals still continued. Not only did we build up a man we knew to be a vicious, brutal dictator when it suited the demands of an utterly pragmatic, unprincipled foreign policy -- a policy which many enthusiastic supporters of our current foreign policy now want to see continued with Taiwan, so that we can sell yet another free country down the river for the benefit of a totalitarian dictatorship -- but we then stood by while innocents were slaughtered by the tens of thousands. The following has to be one of the blackest marks in our recent history -- and one of the most damning indictments of a "pragmatic" foreign policy, a policy which deliberately and intentionally spits in the face of principles, and of the value of human life.

Fifth, the notion that having done something wrong in the past, we can't right it.

...these people who proclaim their own moral superiority at every turn, and condemn those who do not agree with them in every detail as loathsome "Saddam-lovers" who "hate America" -- apparently never learned, or are now determined to forget, that it was the United States, Britain and other Western nations who built up and supported Saddam when it suited our purposes, and that it was the United States that stood by while courageous Iraqis were slaughtered literally under our noses.

Sixth, the overweening moral arrogance that seems to characterize a big part of the antiwar movement.

I want to state one thing very clearly and unmistakably for the benefit of any warbloggers who might read this -- particularly those warbloggers and other hawks who strut their self-announced moral superiority and constantly shove it in the face of everyone else, and who act as if any disagreement with their historically ignorant views of the world constitutes some sort of treason. You are the enemies of America -- just as you are the enemies of thought, of history, of ideas, of any conception of what genuine liberty means, and how it is to be achieved.

Let's go through these in order. First, I've hammered a nail in the chickenhawk argument before; I should try again with a wooden stake. It's a vile debate tactic, aimed as silencing those with whom you disagree, and intellectually senseless, as it would suggest that only the troops ought to vote on issues involving war - something that I hope we're pretty far away from in this country. Second, no, the issue isn't the acceptance of nuance, but the inability to see anything in the other side's facts or argument that can simply be accepted - as it makes sense to accept that Saddam's capture was good - without a left-handed attempt to devalue it.Again, it's about devaluing an opponent's arguments so that no real weighing can take place. I fully accept the idea that war is a bad thing - that innocents (and innocence) die; that events seldom play out according to plan; that plans themselves are incomplete and contingent. I'm just weighing the scales differently, and am willing to accede both the goodwill and intellectual probity of those who disagree with me. Doesn't mean I don't think they aren't wrong; people often are. But I don't need to deny the idea that deaths in combat - of our troops, civilians, or even our enemies - are tragic, or that lives are in fact shattered by loss and injury in wartime. And I can hold that thought without the balancing 'but' and still hold on to my belief that those tragedies and losses are sometimes necessary or unavoidable. In my universe, that's what qualifies a nuance and intellectual sophistication. Third, no, saying that you're wrong - even loudly saying that you're wrong - isn't censorship, it isn't something that makes us 'enemies of truth, justice and freedom' - unless, of course, you are the sole arbiter of truth, justice, and freedom (see arrogance, below). I'm tired of reading in the Los Angeles Times plaints from those who explain that their dissent is being crushed by the totalitarian State. If the State was crushing your dissent, you wouldn't be on page A3 of the Times, you'd be in Pelican Bay. that ought to be a difference we can all understand. Fourth, where does the notion that all of history is driven by the Trilateral Commission (or, more seriously, by the U.S.) come from? Everything isn't our fault, nor is it entirely our responsibility. The West, collectively, has both some responsibility for what happens in the Middle East, and some stake in how it comes out. That stake was raised dramatically on 9/11 - as it would have been had we watched a cloud of debris, dust, and human ash rain down over Paris rather than Manhattan. But to suggest that we - in the U.S., or even in the West in its entirety are the only actors in this drama - is both counterfactual and morally demeaning to the actual people who live in those far away lands. They have the status of actors, of moral agents, not props in some morality play being acted out among the intellectuals here in California. Fifth, our failure to march on Baghdad and to support the Sunni uprising was a stupid and immoral act. But I'll point out that it was many of the same actors in Europe and the UN who counseled that we limit our action to ejecting Saddam from Kuwait. And having failed to do the right thing once precludes us from doing the right thing later - how? Sixth, I certainly reserve the right to enthusiastically argue on behalf of what I believe in. But I make those arguments in the context of my belief that the rest of the universe is full of smart, well-informed people who are worth listening to. And that not only do I hope they I can convince them of things important to me, but that it just may be that I learn something from them. Because if I can't learn from other people - if my only lessons come from self-reflection and dialogs held with my mirror - there wouldn't be any point in public dialog, and I could save myself the effort of typing these words for public consumption. UPDATE: Demosophia comments, and adds some historical echoes from an earlier era.

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Glenn thinks that the Palestinian people are part of a proxy war against Israel and the U.S., and that by attempting to be 'evenhanded,' we're misleading ourselves. His concrete proposals are pretty reasonable:

I don't think this means that the Bush Administration should be taking direction action against them -- closing off their funding via shutting down Saddam is a good start, and a policy of slow strangulation directed at Arafat and his fellow terrorists is probably the most politic at the moment. We need to try to squeeze off the EU funding, too, especially now that it's been admitted to be part of a proxy war by the EU not just against Israel, but America. But let's stop pretending that what's going on between Israel and the Palestinians is some sort of family misunderstanding. It's war, and the Palestinians -- and their EU supporters -- think it's a war not just against Israel, but against us. We should tailor our approach accordingly.

But I still think he's is wrong in this - wrong because I tend to think that while a bloodthirsty cult run by kleptocrats does dominate the Palestinian people today, I continue to believe (based on not much more than optimism and my own view of human nature) that this dominance doesn't have to last. This implies that the issue is the leadership and dominant culture, and that the average Palestinian hasn't completely internalized the values of that homicidal leadership; or rather that it is best to proceed as though that's the case. That's a subtle but crucial distinction. It implies that we can be, in the terms of the Marines, both the "best friend and worst enemy" to the Palestinian people, and it builds a door that reasonable Palestinians can follow should they choose to. Making that choice possible should be the goal of our policies in that area. The paths are twofold; to openly go to war with the Palestinians (and in doing so, ultimately with the Arab world), or break the problem apart by doing several things: dry up the political and financial incentives being offered the Palestinians and terrorists to fight rather than simply live; find and neutralize the committed fighters; and work to empower (initially by keeping them from being killed by the more radical elements) the majority who I have to believe simply want to raise kinds and lead normal lives. Note that none of what I'm proposing is easy. And that elements of it do involve the explicit use of force - against terrorist organizations operating in the Occupied territories and judiciously, against states that harbor or sponsor them. But I think that it's easier to try the complex solution before we simply sweep the table clean with a war. Look, so far the Arab states have made it clear that they will fight the war against Israel to the last Palestinian. They have gotten a free ride in that they can send relatively insignificant amounts of cash and aid and so at a low cost have a lot of impact on Israel. Our goals should be in part to end that free ride, and free the Palestinians from their role - as Glenn describes it - as cannon fodder in order to let them make a conscious choice about whether they want war or peace. I won't foreclose on the latter possibility until it's clear that the Palestinian people have.

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The US Army has caught unholy hell because it shipped interceptor body armor to the Poles ahead of US National Guard formations getting ready for or now in Iraq. It isn't going to do the same with HMMWVs. The type of HMMWV that the Poles want are the M1114 armored variants. The Army is flat out at maximum production capacity with the vehicle, and every truck that it lets the Poles buy is one less for American troops in Iraq. The issue is likely the same for C-130s. The USAF can only fly C-130s and C-17s into Baghdad and Kabul because of the shoulder fired missile threat, and it is flying only the latest and most up to date electronic counter measures equipped planes. The Poles want the same anti-missile equipment that the USAF is using up in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and there is none to spare. This article from the Government Executive about Military Depots -- and the Congressional politics involved -- makes clear the problems of ground forces industrial mobilization. See this passage:

"The length and high tempo of Iraq operations are stressing all the Army's depots. Gary Motsek, deputy commander for support operations at the Army Materiel Command, says all five depots - at Red River; Anniston, Ala.; Corpus Christi, Texas; Letterkenny, Pa.; and Tobyhanna, Pa. - are spending more money and employing more people this year than last year. Spending is expected to double from $2 billion in fiscal 2003 to $4.5 billion in 2004, and overall employment could rise by as much as 15 percent - from about 7,000 to 8,000 or more. "Depots across the board will be executing substantially more work than they have in the past," says Motsek. To handle the rising tide of work, the Army may, for the first time, request a Pentagon waiver of the so- called "50-50" rule, which prevents contractors from performing more than half of all depot work. The Army is running out of people and space to do the work. Currently, the Army contracts out about 48 percent of its depot work to contractors."

...and this passage:

"Lately, workers have had to discard more shoes than usual. Under normal wear, Bradley tracks are changed once a year, after 1,000 miles of wear. Today they are reaching the 1,000-mile mark in two or three months. As a result, the Red River production facility, the Army's only in-house source of Bradley tracks (Goodyear does some limited work), has gone from producing 5,000 to 6,000 shoes a month (enough to outfit about 30 Bradleys) to as many as 18,000 a month (enough for about 107 Bradleys). This year, the facility has ramped up from three shifts, five days a week, to three shifts - including one that's 12 hours long - seven days a week. The number of federal workers at the rubber plant has increased from 78 to 128 and more contractors have been brought on under short-term contracts to help cover the added shifts. Depot employees say they view the extra hours as their contribution to the war. Many wage-grade employees have worked so much overtime that they have stopped getting extra pay. Instead, they trade their overtime for more vacation days because earning more money would push them into higher tax brackets. Russell Vogeltanz, a front-line supervisor in the rubber facility, says he usually has no problem finding workers willing to extend their shift from eight to 12 hours or to work a weekend, though "it's a little hard to make people come out on Sunday, being the Lord's Day," he says. Not only have workers been putting in overtime, but they also have been going places they never expected. Before the Iraq war began, the Army transformed an empty warehouse at the Army's Arifjan Camp in Kuwait into a sixth depot. Nearly 500 civilian workers rotated in and out of the front-line repair center during the past year preparing for combat and then maintaining equipment during the fighting. It is the first depot created in a theater of war. Motsek says that having a depot near the battlefield saves the money and time required to ship equipment stateside. "Instead of just pushing parts and giving advice, these guys are there tearing down engines and making repairs," he says."

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What he says has the ring of truth; it describes an attitude which I believe is consistent with the behavior of the media over the last few years. It's certainly consistent with my direct experience with the Man In The Hat at Brian Linse's, and it's consistent with the kind of institutional arrogance that brought Howell Raines down at the NY Times. I share his belief that it's the 'pragmatic middle' where most things happen in societies; like supertankers, they turn slowly. But - I also am convinced that here is some interesting sociology to do in studying how journalism works in this new century; the web of relationships and obligation and even more important the filters that decide who will and who won't get a job at the NY or LA Times. As I've noted before, I think that one of the most important functions of the blogosphere is to provide some public check on journalism, and to do so not because any one blogger is better-informed or smarter, but the because the dialog among blogs can quickly knock down bad facts or unsupported ideas. Rutten, (and his boss Jon Carroll) in closing journalism off from that kind of dialog, are taking the position of Linda Ham, the shuttle manager for Columbia who cut off discussion of the possible damage from the foam strike. (Ironically, the Times just ran a series on Columbia; note that they appear to have joined ProQuest in making all their archival materials only for-pay) Sadly, more than the lives of seven individuals are at risk because of the arrogance of the media. (Corrected dumb error on Howell Raines' name, thanks to Kaus) (Corrected dumb grammar mistake...my editor must have missed it...)

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Spirit of the Season * UPDATE 4:21pm: Apolgies for the lateness of this - missed one: WeckUpToThees!: I'll be home for Christmas A series on getting home for Christmas in 2001 from Operation Enduring Freedom. A new post will be added each day to update my progress from Central Asia to the arms of my family. * Wordlab: Seasons Greetings from Bucky (As in, Buckminster Fuller) Best Wishes for the year-end Holiday Season, and a happy, prosperous and peaceful New Year for all of us on Spaceship Earth. * Winds of Change.NET: Gratitude from Operation Gratitude The founder of Operation Gratitude thanks us for their inclusion in our comprehensive "Support the Troops" list, and talks about their success in spreading the spirit of giving. * Wäldchen vom Philosophenweg: "A Christmas Stories Review" My favourite Christmas stories, and why. See also "A Christmas Carol Review," discussing Dickens' famous book. * Sneakeasy's Joint: A Newport Harbor Christmas A first hand report from one of the New York Times "Top 10 Holiday Happenings in the nation." * Scrappleface: Yes, Virginia, There is a United States of America Scott Ott gets serious for a change. It's just as good as his funny stuff. * Priorities & Frivolities: A Holiday Card to the World In learning the history of a Filipino holiday custom, I find meaning in my young marriage's new Christmas experiences. * Pragmatic Conservatism: Merry Christmas from Dan K. O'Leary Here are the reasons why we need to appreciate liberals and protestors on Christmas. * Plum Crazy: Oy Chanukah A series of posts about Chanukah featuring clickable menorahs with playlists of (mostly) Jewish folk songs. Well, and one post with a latkes recipe. * Patriot Paradox: The True Meaning of Christmas The true meaning of Christmas, as told by Linus van Pelt, and brought to you by Patriot Paradox. * OxBlog: "Holiday Season Reminders – How You Can Help" A list of good causes helping to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan that people can support. * Mudville Gazette: Ghosts of Christmas Past Greyhawk wasn't always Grey, and in this first of a multi-part entry he reflects on Christmas past. It's playtime in Mudville! * Interested-Participant: The Ghosts of Christmas Past Reflection on the past is fully in the spirit of Christmas. And so we bring you thoughts on Christmas... in 1777. * Ego: X-MA$ Martin Lindeskog writes from Sweden with a historical background of Christmas and reasons for why this holiday should be commercial. * Discriminations: Kwanzaa and the Serial Comma An analysis of a description of the principles of Kwanzaa reveals the need for clear rules, in life and law as well as in grammar. * Blackfive - The Paratrooper of Love: Meet Some American Heroes I have a reader that has sent several Christmas poems to me which I posted. After a few email exchanges with him, I discovered that he had two boys in Iraq, both paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne Division - one wounded. He wished ME a Merry Christmas. Religious * King of Fools: Little Natalie Grace Christmas of 2003 will forever be remembered by a young couple from Houston, TX. * The Flag of the World: Merry Christmas! A musing on why it is that I, as a Christian, prefer Christmas to Easter when, theoretically, Easter is more important. The answer: Christmas is about the intersection of the epic and the common, and few things stir the heart more. * Gleeful Extremist: Family In addition to a little Christmas nostalgia, we look at the religious idea of your wife as your sister. No, this does not involve Arkansas dating. Humour * You Big Mouth, You! Christmas Wishes In the spirit of the season, I wave my magic wand, and give my fellow bloggers their heart's desire. * Wizbang: Times Are Tough All Over Downsizing at Claus Enterprises, Inc. A parody news release. * Wicked Thoughts: Wicked Thoughts Wicked thoughts has a joke about a man names Olafsen in Chinatown * Who Tends the Fires: Rudolph roasting over an open fire... A short tongue in cheek account of why Santa tries very hard to bypass my block on Xmas, to the consternation of my neighbors and my godkids. * Thief's Den: 'Twas Two Weeks Before Christmas "As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly/ When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky/ So down to some farmhouses the 600 men rode/ With a convoy of whup-ass all set to unload..." * The Speculist: Xmas Special Since I didn't have anything planned for the week, instead of my usual previews of things to come, I wrote a bunch alternate-universe revisions of holiday classics and gave some utterly pointless gift-giving and general holiday advice. * The SmarterCop: Santa Claus is Coming to America It's time to kick off the holiday season with a familiar song, with some link-u-endo attached. * Quibbles-n-Bits: My Christmas Contribution... Rewriting an overplayed Holiday classic for Senator Clinton... * Mad Kane's Notables: Holiday Humor Mad Kane takes a break from politics to offer seasonal humor about holiday office parties, gift giving, and other holiday aggravation. * Fringeblog: "Happy Holidays, You Right Wing Religious Zealot, You" What's in a Christmas card? Blessings for good cheer and peace for the season? Or just fundamentalist, right wing spittle lathered up on cheap cardboard? Find out here. * Da Goddess: Not Under My Tree! Da Goddess has been poking at the cat and the BTOTB, and now she's poking at a beloved blogging institution. Then again, it’s Glen’s own fault that he requested a Hummer for Chirtmas. * Amygdala: Your Seasonal Item from the National Security Archive Ho ho ho from the CIA. You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch * A Small Victory: Working retail in december: a horror story Working retail during the Christmas season is bad enough without blue-haired Julio Iglesias fans humming Quiet Riot tunes. * Joe Kelley's The Sake of Argument: Ho Ho NO! A small firehouse in Illinois has had to remove their interior Christmas decorations because passersby could see them from outside. In this post, I compare the living quarters of the firemen to that of our President. Has anyone asked President Bush to take down his Christmas decorations? * BoiFromTroy: Little balls banned in California Lawyer sues manufacturers, distributors and Martha Steward over those little decorative silver jimmies used on holiday cookies... product now unavailable in California. The Human Condition * Taken In Hand: No helpless hysterical heroines here! In this charming article, which may help men understand how many women feel, Amber Jackson of Taken In Hand writes about her childhood irritation with helpless movie heroines, and about her later discovery that being submissive does not have to mean giving up your strong, independent, effective self. * Snooze Button Dreams: Bestofme Symphony, 3rd Performance The Bestofme Symphony is one of the red-headed step-Children of the Carnival. It deals with posts from the archives instead of current content. This was the first week where the Symphony was not aggressively plugged and it still filled out at almost two dozen submissions. * Liquid Courage: Dolled Up and Pissed Off. Builds on an earlier post making fun of "Razanne," Islam's burqa-clad answer to Barbie. From its initial outrage, the post moves on to discuss the position of women in society. * DodgeBlogium: Winter Solstice Thoughts by Andrew Ian Dodge A contemplative piece on the past year in the life of Andrew Ian Dodge. It includes an excerpt from his most recent novel (as yet unpublished) Slither Service. Space: It's Not Just for Santa Any More * Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Rovers That Pay For Themselves Interplanetary rovers could pay for themselves, if only space agencies would properly manage the ends of their life cycles effectively. International Politics * QandO: Agreed Framework: Lessons learned, applied The Agreed Framework was not the success we'd hoped it would be, but the Libya deal proves we've learned from our failures. I discuss the weaknesses of the Agreed Framework and how those are fixed in the Libya deal. * Peaktalk: The Year of Europe We have seen a monumental shift in geopolitical relations this year. The disappearing transatlantic alliance and the internal divisions in Europe will have repercussions for decades to come. * Overtaken by Events: Wrap Your Brain Around This Not exactly festive, but a fisking of a Palestinian columnist writing in the Seattle Times who is very sad that Saddam is no longer in power. On the light side, there is my Saddam/Han Solo moment. * Idler Yet EPITAPH The waning year is sometimes pictured as an old man with a scythe. Here's a poetic verse to see him out. * Dean's World: My Brother Gladimir Dedicated to the memory of our brother. * Curiosity: Sadly the USA isn't Perfect This post analyses BBC bias about Israel and the ambiguity of the U.S. response to Sharon's recent policy speech. * Blogo Slovo: Russia, Russians, & Americans A book review in The Atlantic magazine sparks a discussion of Russia's future, and the similarities and differences between Russians and Americans. * Bad Money: Saddam Captured – The Conversation Description: My completely fabricated notion of the conversation that took place when Saddam was captured. Domestic Politics * Useful Fools: Democratic Candidate Opportunism Threat Level Raised to Orange The threat of Democratic Candidates taking cynical advantage of a terrorist attack is raised to Orange. The DCOTL scale is shown with a description of each level. * Political Correctness Watch: Voodoo Correct Too? Even voodoo seems to have become accepted in U.S. Courtrooms * The People's Republic of Seabrook: "Can we PLEASE get a grip on reality here??" It's no wonder that Conservatives think that Liberals are all wacko nut jobs. Perhaps it's because, in cases like this, that's EXACTLY what we sound like. * Patterico's Pontifications: Repeal Of First Amendment Not So Bad After All The Supreme Court repealed the First Amendment in the campaign finance decision for "practical" reasons. Patterico decides that this was the correct call, and discusses some other pesky constitutional amendments that are also impractical and should be repealed by judicial fiat. * Outside The Beltway: Level Orange James Joyner argues the terrorism alert system has become bureaucratic background noise. * The LongBow Papers: Mississippi Sorrows It is not a Holiday Season post. This is a personal story between myself and Trent Lott; a story about some 40 years of personal conflict. It is unlike any story you have read about Lott and those ugly days in Mississippi. * Feste...a foolsblog: Back Away From the Cliff, Governor To better understand the Dean phenomenon, a little background is in order. * DissectLeft: The Lying Skeptics The "Skeptical Inquirer" is devoted to exposing frauds, quacks and charlatans. John Ray gives evidence to show that they themselves are frauds, quacks and charlatans.

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The American Terror Machine Joe and I disagree somewhat on the nature of al-Qaeda infrastructure inside the US based on his own inferences from the case of Abdullah al-Muhajir case and to be quite frank, I really hope I'm wrong on this one because of the logical implications that follow from such conclusions. In any case, I think that one of the reasons as to why the US has yet to experience a second wave of terrorist attacks since September 11 is due in large part to three unique factors: al-Qaeda's grandiose visions of death and destruction, the arrest and later detention of Ali Saleh al-Marri, and the fact that US law enforcement has finally gotten their act together. Let me go through these one-by-one to show you what I mean. 1. The Downsides of Meglomania ... For better or worse, by carrying out attacks like 9/11, the Bali bombings, the Poshipnikov Zavod Dubrovka theater seige in Moscow, and more recently the Istanbul suicide bombings sets a very high bar for the terrorist network as far as its operational planning goes, which is one of the reasons as to why there is such a lengthy gap between major al-Qaeda attacks. While smaller organizations like Hamas or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are generally content with killing only a handful of civilians in reasonably simple attacks such as suicide bombing a bus, al-Qaeda favors sophisticated simultaneously mass casualty suicide attacks designed to inflict a massive amount of damage as well as to spread a maximum amount of fear to the civilian population. More to the point, al-Qaeda leaders such as Abu Salma al-Hijazi have previously promised the network's supporters that the next major attack on the US will kill as many as 100,000. Chopping that figure down by a factor of ten by filtering out the hyperbole, we arrive at ~10,000 casualties, which would be well within the network's capabilities of achieving - Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing originally hoped to kill over 100,000 in his plan to cause one tower to crash onto the other, creating a kind of giant "domino effect." However, by committing itself to such astronomical figures, the network cannot easily resort to Hamas-style suicide bombings inside the US because to do so would be to grant America a tacit admission that its capabilities have become extremely degraded since 9/11. This train of thought is echoed in this article from USA Today from November 27 which states that al-Qaeda scrapped plans to launch a series of low-level attacks inside the US this year in favor of a "more spectacular" attack on par with 9/11. 2. Ali Saleh al-Marri According to the June 23 issue of Newsweek, al-Marri was identified by none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as al-Qaeda's "point man" in the United States after 9/11 and was charged by the network to organize further attacks against American interests inside the continental US. Unfortunately for al-Qaeda, al-Marri, an alumni of al-Farooq camp was arrested December 2001 and is now listed as an enemy combatant, meaning that he is almost certainly removed from any contacts he had inside the United States, likely severing the main point of contact between US sleeper cells and the central leadership. 3. The FBI Gets A Clue ... Couple this with the arrest and subsequent turning of al-Qaeda sleeper Iyman Faris that we know led to the arrest of at least two additional operatives: Uzair Paracha, who was involved in the NYC shipping industry and Majid Khan, who was planning to blow up the underground storage tanks of several US gas stations, and we can see that a sizeable dent was already made against the US al-Qaeda infrastructure by law enforcement in the spring of last year. And in addition to leading us to Faris, who turned in Paracha and Khan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has reportedly given the FBI the names of 12 US al-Qaeda operatives who were reportedly planning attacks inside the US to be in conjunction with the war in Iraq. According to other reporting that followed the arrest of Faris as well as Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's press conference on Sunday, the combination of turning Faris and cracking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was one of the steps that enabled the US to avert potential al-Qaeda plots during the course of the war with Iraq, the last time the US was placed on "Orange" alert. To date, the FBI has identified 6 al-Qaeda support groups spread out across 40 states inside the continental United States and if I had to venture a guess I would say that they likely include al-Muhajiroun, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and Jamaat ul-Fuqra, three extremist organizations known to act as al-Qaeda front organizations. A parallel might be drawn between these groups and the German-American Bund or the Silver Shirts prior to the US entry into World War 2. Decentralized? Think Again. A number of media reports that I've seen since we entered "Orange" alert seem rather skeptical at the prospect that al-Qaeda could plot an attack on par with 9/11, citing the increasingly decentralized nature of the network since the events of Operation Enduring Freedom. What these reports frequently miss, however, is the fact that within the course of the last year or so al-Qaeda has been successfully relocated itself to a new HQ - the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first whispers of this started on August 28, 2002 when the Washington Post reported that "dozens" of key al-Qaeda figures including military commander Saif al-Adel and top ideologue Mahfouz Ould Walid (variously known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian or Mr. Mauritania) had taken shelter in hotels and guesthouses in the Iranian border cities of Mashhad and Zabol. This seems to have been noted by US intelligence but little was done about it publicly as far as pressuring Iran on the subject until shortly after the first Riyadh bombings when US intelligence identified Saad bin Laden, Saif al-Adel, and Abu Mohammed al-Masri (the latter two being the network's equivalent to ministers of war and finance) as being sheltered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) at one of their military bases somewhere in Kerman province. More tidbits have trickled out over the course of the last several months, including the rationale as to why Iran is carrying out this seemingly suicidal foreign policy. While the general Iranian response to these allegations are that these individuals are "in custody," such a state of implies generally implies that the individuals being held are unable to run a global terrorist network out of the Islamic Republic. Take for example, the case of Suleiman Abu Ghaith, whom Iran has admitted is among the "detainees" yet is still able to make audiotaped threats to Dubai's Panorama FM radio station. Last time I checked, the ayatollahs don't extend these kinds of courtesies to all of the students and pro-democracy activists that are routinely arrested in Iran. At any rate, the latest information is that over two dozen al-Qaeda leaders and roughly 500 operatives are currently based inside of Iran and are being protected by Qods Force formerly run by Ahmed Vahidi, who is now Iran's Deputy Minister of Defense. These developments, among others, led the conservative Weekly Standard to publish an article on November 3, 2003 entitled "Al-Qaeda's New Base" detailing the extent and implications of al-Qaeda having a safe harbor in Iran. If one is to believe Mansoor Ijaz, those al-Qaeda leaders who have been granted safe haven in Iran include both bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Ironically, this squares somewhat with account of Haji Mohammed Akram, a Saudi national who claims to have served as bin Laden's chef in Afghanistan. Whether or not bin Laden is in Iran, the point is that enough of the organization's operational infrastructure is both inside the country and likely has been for over a year - more than enough to time plan a major attack on US soil. On the other hand, any successful mass casualty attack launched by al-Qaeda against the continental United States (and I concur with the Belmont Club that they can probably execute at least one) will have almost-certain suicidal consequences for the current Iranian government, a fact that al-Qaeda's backers inside Iran may well be keenly aware of. Thinking Vigilance Is Good, Too ... Despite all of the warnings of vague caution from elected officials, one of the things that I have found the most deplorable is that a US media that finds it "newsworthy" to show us Jacko's freakish visage 24/7 could at the very least put up the face of the man reputed to be the next Mohammed Atta in addition to being the guy looking for dirty bomb material during the hourly news bulletins - Adnan El Shukrijumah. Even more ominous is who El Shukrijumah was reputed to be traveling with during the last sighting of him on September 14 in Naples, Maine - Abderraouf Jdey, for whom an FBI advisory on August 1, along with his associate Faker Boussora. As the article notes, Jdey first came to US attention after he and Boussora appeared on videotape with three other individuals who were apparently intended to serve as the next generation of al-Qaeda leaders. Of the three others, Binalshibh became a member of the military committee while Khalid Jehani replaced Abd Rahim al-Nashiri upon his capture as the head of al-Qaeda's operations in the Persian Gulf. To be quite frank, if Jdey is here than it means that he's likely got a sizeable number of followers to order around, either in the US or north of the border in Canada. A Saudi Connection? Recently, MEMRI carried excerpts from The Voice of Jihad, which appears to be the main propaganda organ of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In it, we learn that Lewis Atiyyat Allah, a noted al-Qaeda ideologue who has taken over from the late Yousef al-Ayyeri as al-Qaeda's principle ideologue and is a member of the 225 Wahhabi leaders who make up the supreme council of the global jihad led by bin Laden's spiritual advisor Safar Hawali that maintains extensive infrastructure within the United States as a result of the good relationship between the US and the Saudis that could easily be converted by al-Qaeda to serve as a support base for attacks launched from in North America. It is for that reason that Lewis Attiyah's most recent comments in The Voice of Jihad should be remembered:

"Regarding the Al-Muhaya operation [the November 8, 2003 bombing in Riyadh],, it can be claimed that the house of Salul [a derogatory term used by al-Qaeda against the Saudi monarchy] had some media success in portraying the battle as the killing of Muslims, and in inciting some against the Mujahideen. But this effect is temporary and will disappear if, for example, the Mujahideen strike another blow in America. Then sympathy will return to what it was in the past, and may even increase."

In Conclusion ... While attacks may or may not materialize over the course of the holiday season, we should nevertheless keep in mind that as long as men like Lewis Attiyat continue to roam freely and have access to Saudi finances, we may as well get used to this whole system of multi-colored terror alerts and vague warnings from the authorities.

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THE CONTROVERSY As Democrats and some in the Pentagon criticized the company publicly, Halliburton defended its prices, noting that the Army insisted on issuing short-term orders only, which prevented Halliburton's Kellog Brown & Root subsidiary from negotiating more favorable terms. The company also stated that it had saved the government money by proposing that fuel be purchased from Turkey rather than Kuwait for delivery to northern Iraq. The Pentagon's comptroller agreed that it did not appear the company was trying to cheat the US government, noting that an "antiquated" accounting system and the complexity of billing at headquarters for work done in Iraq might also be problems. However, Democratic criticism of Halliburton continued, as presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman announced that an internal Halliburton audit raised questions about the price charged by the Kuwaitis for the fuel they delivered under a subcontract issued by KBR, a claim the company denied. Halliburton went on the offensive Monday, claiming the US pressured it to buy more expensive fuel from Kuwait as a political favor to the Kuwaitis. Defenders of the company also note that Gen. Sanchez originally requested rapid delivery of fuel from Kuwait because of an uprising in Basra due to lack of gas and cooking fuel. As additional fuel was delivered to other cities, the Kuwaiti subcontractor continued to demand surcharges due to the danger of attacks by insurgents. What's going on in all these claims and counterclaims? How did Halliburton get a huge uncompeted contract in Iraq anyway? Isn't this obviously the result of Vice Pres. Cheney steering profits to his cronies at the expense of the US taxpayer? LONG AGO IN AN ADMINISTRATION FAR, FAR AWAY Halliburton is one of the largest engineering and energy services companies in the world. Its Kellog, Brown & Root subsidiary started as the BrownShipbuilding Co. in Houston in 1942 and they continue to be managing owners of the Devonport Royal Dockyards in the UK, where British surface combat ships and nuclear submarines are refueled and refitted. KBR provides a wide range of other naval and air defence services to the UK. In addition to their expertise in oil and gas drilling, mining and power generation, KBR's government operations group provides a broad array of facilities, logistics and emergency response services to federal, state and local governments in the US. KBR is responsible for security upgrades to US embassies, consulates and annexes worldwide. They also have extensive experience in managing disaster response around the world. However, the springboard for their contract in Iraq lies in the Clinton administration's decision to outsource military base logistics services. In 1992 KBR won an open competition to provide the service support for overseas troops. This contract, called the Logcap, is awarded every few years. KBR won the it in 1992, lost in 1997, and won it again in 2001. Under the deal, KBR builds bases, supplies water, operates laundries and performs thousands of other tasks. In an Op Ed in the New York Times (full text here), David Brooks writes that: bq. "Though the G.A.O. has found that KBR sometimes overcharges, in general the company has an outstanding reputation among the panoply of auditing agencies that monitor these contracts." Logcap is an umbrella contract which allows DOD to procure a wide range of services, but when conflicts emerge there are sometimes unforseen but urgent needs. In the Federal Acquisition Regulations Congress specifically establishes circumstances and mechanisms for awarding contracts without competitive bid when a clear case can be made that this is in the best interests of the government. The Clinton Administration issued a temporary non-bid contract to Halliburton during the Balkans conflict under these FAR provisions. The Bush administration did the same thing in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. In particular, the Pentagon was deeply concerned about the likelihood that Iraq's oil wells would be set on fire or otherwise sabotaged, as was done in Kuwait by Iraqi armed forces during Gulf I. That was a major environmental disaster for Kuwait in addition to an economic blow. Pentagon planners were determined to prevent a repeat this time around. Under Logcap, Halliburton was asked to plan a disaster management approach to capping oil well fires and to dealing with other forseeable attacks on the oil infrastructure. KBR was well suited to do this planning - some would say uniquely suited for the task. They are one of only a handful of companies world wide who combine the necessary engineering, oil field, construction, emergency response and project management skills in one organization. As the current Logcap contractor, they were certain to have a presence in Iraq even before major combat operations would die down. Moreover, KBR could potentially mobilize people who not only had the requisite technical and managerial skills but who also held security clearances - among KBR's government clients is the Defense Intelligence Agency as well as the State Dept. Equally important for success, KBR had approved labor and general & administrative rates already audited by DOD. As we saw in Part 2 of this series, establishing and approving these rates is a complex, time-consuming activity. Leveraging existing approved rates made it possible to arrange critical support quickly and ensured that these portions of any service charges would be fair and advantageous to the Government. As with any cost plus contract, direct materials and sub-contractor charges would have to be approved on a task by task basis. Logcap's Statement of Work allowed the government to direct KBR to plan emergency oil field services for Iraq under the existing umbrella contract. Executing that plan, however, was outside of Logcap's terms. It was for this reason that KBR was awarded a short-term non-competitive contract last Spring. The terms of the contract called for KBR's allowable burdened costs (remember those?) to be reimbursed along with a very small profit margin (1% according to a company spokeswoman). However, other advantages might accrue to the company: they will have a presence in Iraq and -- assuming they are seen to do a good job -- would have an advantage in future competitive bids there. The Defense Contract Auditing Agency would, as usual, keep an eye on the one area of costs open to discussion, namely the direct materials costs and any subcontractor costs incurred when KBR undertook tasks as a result of this contract. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Doing business with the United States government is a cumbersome process designed to prevent abuses while still advancing the best interests of the country. To achieve that balance, Congress has written and regularly modifies the FAR and the DFARS in order to provide government contracting officials a variety of mechanisms for for procuring goods and services at a fair cost to the taxpayer. The process includes substantial oversight at all phases, pre- and post-contract award. One such mechanism is the ability to award a broad contract allowing agencies to procure a certain range of services without having to draw up a full acquisition package and run a competition each time. Such an Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity contract establishes the labor and overhead rates a federal agency will pay for approved services. Task or bid orders still must be issued under the auspices of such a contract for actual work to be performed and there is a maxiumum ceiling on the total value of services and goods that can be procured. The announced value of such a contract may be very high, but until actual task orders are issued the contractor is not guaranteed any particular level of work. The mechanisms of defense contracting can be clumsy. They aim at cost-effective compromise rather than the nth degree of bargain-hunting. It is not in the best interests of the US taxpayer, for instance, to spend $5 to avoid being overcharged $1. We want real competition for contracts where that will bring the best value, but it would be foolish to ignore those cases where an incumbent contractor's expertise and resources offer the most likely way to achieve urgent and important results. To quote David Brooks' NYT Op Ed once more: bq. "The fact is that unlike the Congressional pork barrel machine, the federal procurement system is a highly structured process, which is largely insulated from crass political pressures ... The lesson of this Halliburton business is that some parts of our government really do make their decisions on the merits." I haven't the faintest idea whether or not the rates paid for the Army's preferred Kuwaiti fuel subcontractor were appropriate. But I am pretty sure that the DCAA will make a reasonable and honest evaluation of them. If they decide to disallow some portion of those charges, KBR may end up taking a loss on that portion of their work. That will signal other contractors not to overcharge. But abuses can go both ways: if capable companies believe the government is being unfair to KBR, we will all be the worse for it. KBR contractor and sub-contractor personnel have died while supporting the reconstruction of Iraq. That's a fact worth keeping in mind when we read about disputed materials charges on a temporary sole source contract.

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bq. "Even elements of the human rights movement, much of the anti-globalist community, and a large swatch of the philanthropic world -- the so-called NGOs -- still yearn for a government that, through sumptuary laws, high taxation, political correctness, and entitlements, would force to happen what people ought to, but do not make happen of their own free will. Much philanthropy has the stated goal of eliminating itself when through its advocacy and lobbying it has given government the power to compel what was once freely given; at which time the employees of the Foundations would presumably take over the powerful role of government civil servants. If the law of right is to become the only enforceable law of the human race, all these constituencies will have suffered what will feel to them to be a mortal setback, and will have to accept the humble and weaponless position of Judaism and Christendom..." [full article] Thought provoking. If valid, his thesis would certainly tie up a number of loose threads - most prominently, the role and positions of many International NGOs. This is an important issue, so I'll continue to forward interesting posts from all sides that may improve our understanding of the Great Idiotarian Conjunction and the mass hate movements it supports or enables. Don't forget Amy Chua's work about local dynamics, either, as discussed in "Democracy, Liberty, Ethnic Cleansing?!?" Aside from providing an additional angle on the global conjunction, her work offers valuable insights into likely fault lines the GIC will seek to exploit. If we really want to beat these conjoined enemies and win what Armed Liberal has called "The War on Bad Philosophy", we'll need a true understanding of our enemy... and ourselves. By bringing you these perspectives and opening them up for reflection and discussion, we hope to contribute in some small way to that process. If Christmas reminds us of anything, it reminds us that hatred doesn't have to win.

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"Aid groups worry that their attempts to remain independent in the eyes of Afghans, including Taliban sympathizers, has been compromised by U.S. involvement in delivering assistance. But Barno suggested it was time for relief groups to accept that they could not be neutral after a stream of deliberate attacks on de-miners and well-diggers, and said he hoped aid workers would return to Pashtun areas. "They probably have to, and they are, realizing that they are now operating in a different world," he said."

They do, and most have chosen to be hostile. As Exhibit A, please compare and contrast what these international NGOs did in the just as dangerous Somalia after the UN armed aid mission left, and compare it to the bug outs from Iraq and Afghanistan. I have said numerous times over on Winds of Change that international aid NGOs are parasites on international disorder, and that the American military's mission to eliminate that disorder made the American military the NGOs' enemy. For the American military to fulfill its mission means the elimination of the work international NGOs do. Previous articles here on Winds have noted: * Amnesty's Moral Bankruptcy * Silence from Amnesty & Human Rights Watch The U.S. Military has noticed, too, as I mentioned in these 2 articles: * U.S. Military - Back to the Future! * US to International NGOs -- Drop Dead In the face of NGOs who would rather oppose America than do their jobs, the U.S. military is drawing the appropriate lessons as predicted. In short, the American military and government is learning from both defeats and victories and applying those lessons to the current battlefield. The same cannot be said of our enemies � a roster that includes most international NGOs.

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Here's Steven Johnson's definition, in his book 'Emergence':

In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively stupid elements, rather than a single, intelligent "executive branch." They are bottom-up systems, not top-down. They get their smarts from below. In more technical terms, they are complex adaptive systems that display emergent behavior. In these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies one scale above them: ants create colonies; urbanites create neighborhoods; simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recommend new books. The movement from low-level rules to high-level sophistication is what we call emergence.

Security, to me, is an excellent place to start talking about the policy utility of this concept. We're seeing the cost of highly centralized, overly-complex and intrusive security every time we fly. Does it work? Are we safer in the air today than we were on Sept. 10, 2001 because we all have to take our shoes off, or because passengers have changed their response doctrine? I've said it a hundred times; no one not armed with guns is going to hijack an airplane any time soon. The passengers won't allow it. Every time you take your shoes off as you go through security, ask yourself how well Richard Reid did, and how he got stopped. The reality is that no centrally planned security apparatus can adapt fast enough to the variety of challenges that an imaginative opponent can present. And the efforts to do so will require the imposition of an increasingly Stalinist security apparatus. We're seeing this play out the back-and-forth over civil liberties versus security that is taking place in Washington. So what's the response then? Do we abandon security in order to maintain our freedom? Or do we abandon freedom to remain secure? Or do we compromise, as we are, to wind up half-free and half-secure? I think there's another way. Conceptually, it looks like this: Instead of centralizing and bureaucratizing the defensive part of our security apparatus - of 'professionalizing it' - move the responsibility outward, where it really will be anyway. The reactions to 9/11 weren't coordinated in Washington D.C., they were done on the ground in Manhattan and in the air over Pennsylvania. We have a large network of 'first responders.' They are the police, fire, hazmat, EMT and emergency medicine staffs that exist in every city and county of the country. The reality is that any unanticipated terrorist action will first be met by these forces, not some super-special SWAT group coordinated out of the Pentagon. So why not beef these forces up? Rather than creating a national-scale bureaucracy that is guaranteed to get to the scene too late to do anything, why not move the responsibility outward? Concretely, that might mean some policies along these lines: * Improving the training and escalation procedures for front-line responders to enable them to recognize a terrorist act and quickly escalate the response to an appropriate level. Improve the tactical training for police in dealing with terrorist-level threats, and beef up local responses to explosive devices by better training and equipping local bomb squads. * Improve the training of even lower-level responders like private security guards in malls and office buildings to enable them to identify and respond, where appropriate, and to effectively communicate upward to local police and fire services. * Improve the public-health infrastructure (this would be a good thing regardless) to enable it to identify and respond to bioterror more quickly. This involves, unsurprisingly, better training local EMT and emergency room personnel in identifying and communicating potential outbreaks. Notice that each of these points relies to a great extent on two things: # Creating a doctrine in which the lowest level possible reacts to the threat; and # Creating a communications network (which is a combination of communications technology and the human attention and connections necessary to make that technology effective that connects local agencies upward and laterally. Overall, there is a current set of beliefs that each level will wait for the next level up to deal with a terrorist act. A citizen will tell a security guard, who will call the police, who will call SWAT, who will call the FBI, who will call the HRT, who will call the military. By the time we're done playing 'telephone,' it's all going to over except burying the bodies. At Columbine, the police response was right out of the current playbook. Secure a perimeter, evacuate all the civilians you can get out of the way, wait for SWAT and the bomb squad to show up, stage and prepare, and go in and secure the building. That didn't work so well there. But it was the standard doctrine, established because we believed that an unplanned response or a response without the necessary overwhelming force would be an ineffective response. So the police trained to wait for the situation to be right. The passengers on AA Flight 11 similarly followed doctrine; when hijacked sit tight, avoid confrontation, wait until the plane gets on the ground and the grownups either negotiate a settlement or effect a rescue. That didn't work so well either. Similar stories in Thurston High School and on AA Flight 93 ended differently. It wasn't because there were better plans, or necessarily because the specific people were braver or smarter (although on Flight 93 they were obviously better informed). It was because they operated on a different doctrine, which involved immediate action, and not passively waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Now some problems can't easily be solved by a few high school kids or airline passengers, and I don't mean to suggest that they are. But I do mean to suggest that we need to invert our doctrine - actually, to bring our doctrine in conformance with reality. Because we're spending billions building capabilities that aren't. Because the reality is that the only people who will have a chance to avert an unanticipated terrorist attack will be a couple of security guards and local cops. And the first people to react to it will be EMT's firefighters, and the staff of the local ER. So let's design a security system around them. There are some collateral benefits of doing this. First, we spend less time and energy building a giant, centralized domestic security apparatus which will inevitably be abused by those in power. By diffusing the power, we make that inevitable abuse harder to do, easier to detect, and more limited in scope. Second, the additional capability we build into local law enforcement and public health bears immediate fruit in better law enforcement and public health, even absent a terror attack. The communications infrastructure that will help Southern California agencies respond to an attack can also be used in the event of fires or earthquakes. Better public health infrastructure will not only limit the population's exposure to bioterror, but to naturally occurring disease as well. Practically, not every threat can be met at a local level. NEST will never be a county function. And offense will remain the best defense, and will never be a local function. But if we want to build a truly robust security system, we'd do well to heed Bruce Schneier (author of the great book 'Beyond Fear'):

The moral, Schneier came to believe, is that security measures are characterized less by their success than by their manner of failure. All security systems eventually miscarry in one way or another. But when this happens to the good ones, they stretch and sag before breaking, each component failure leaving the whole as unaffected as possible.

and

"The trick to remember is that technology can’t save you,” Schneier says. “we know this in our own lives. We realize there’s no magic anti-burglary dust that we can sprinkle on our cars to prevent them from being stolen. We know that car alarms don’t provide much protection. The Club at best makes burglars steal the car next to you. For real safety we park on nice streets where people notice if somebody smashes the window. Or we park in garages, where somebody watches the car. In both cases people are the essential security element. You always build the system around people.”

The people on the front lines. Angela the baggage clerk. She's not going to violate my civil liberties, and she might actually save me some day, rather than investigating afterwards.

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Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, er, well maybe not * Bush's licking Taiwan on changing the status quo got Tacitus to say it's odd that the administration would disapprove of Taiwan's exercise in democracy, and Calpundit responds it's just another rhetorical speech. Brainysmurf disagrees and says it's at least bad politics and may even mean a change in policy. Meanwhile the Gweilo takes Wen to task for some of his less enlightened comments during the trip. * Native Beijing blogger Hailey Xie provides a rare look into what many Chinese think on the Taiwan/China issue. She has a post written for a foreign audience here, and snippets of an earlier post as well as a discussion on it can be found here. Before choosing to comment though, consider that people such as Hailey are resources that we shouldn't attack with scathing comments. * Flying Yangban devotes not one but two posts to the crisis and his viewpoint on them, noting that war is more likely with every passing year. Den Beste documents why Taiwan will never invade, and Vodkapundit wonders out loud if the PRC won't just launch a bunch of missiles at them. * Prince Roy, writing for Living in China, documents why he thinks China is actually pursuing a policy of peaceful evolution towards Taiwan. This time writing for PRC News, the Prince flexes his knowledge of the legal language surrounding the Taiwan/PRC relationship while opining on Hoagland's latest. * Parapundit provides a link fest on the issue as well as some deep-cutting questions, and points to the growing economic inter-dependence with the PRC and the US as reason to believe the US will have no choice but to choose the PRC over Taiwan. The Information Revolution -- with Chinese characteristics * Sex blogger Mu Zimei received so many visitors to her blog talking about her sexual encounter with a Chinese rock band star that she voluntarily stopped blogging on her own. Background, saucy pics (if you like women with big hair), and even a translation of her most recent blogging, and much much more is available by one of Beijing's newest blogs by a media professional, danwei. Meanwhile there's available some thoughts on what Mu Zimei's done to the blogging community in general, as well as some translations of native Chinese bloggers' reactions. * China Digital News tells us that "Twenty-five percent of Chinese city dwellers (especially small cities) are regular Internet users... Nearly 85% of them were below the age of 35." * So far this year both times Iraq was huge in the news China offered live news coverage of the events. During the Iraq War II it got unprecedented live coverage with no censoring. When Saddam was covered the same happened, as Living in China tells us, although Voluntarily in China says it was rudely interrupted by a talking foreigner figure in the middle of the broadcast. Nonetheless, the news agency is learning the value of live feeds. Economic activity * Robert Frost of Asia Labour News, a new Hong Kong-based blog that digs into economic and labour figures and the like, tells us that China's biggest overseas textile investment is in ... where else? ... Mexico. Frost also documents labour unrest in Liaoyang Province, and reveals that a Christian Science Monitor article on China's economic output contains a ringer of a statistic that rivals even China's own generous estimates. * Currency is gaining on the notion that China is steadily rising as Asia's default power as their economy gains strength. A string of articles discussing China's recent diplomatic moves and their breakout from their Leninist straightjacket provide the argument. * Peking Duck wonders if China hasn't been hit with "Irrational Exuberance". Simonworld points to evidence of a market bubble. China-related discussions * Various posts have led to healthy discussion in the blogosphere lately, including Andres Gentry on the possibility of Chinese democracy and a follow-up post examining some of the comments and criticisms given by readers. * Language Hat hosts an interesting discussion on the categorization of Chinese as a Sino-Tibetan Langauge. * The Duck comments on a spirited intra-blog discussion on how expat bloggers should be interacting with local bloggers that erupted on the local China and Hong Kong blog scene. Etcetera: * Zhuhai (in southern China)'s night life hasn't been the festive party it once was, but that's because of China's biggest sex crime involving three Japanese tourists and their "comfort tour" with reportedly hundreds of prostitutes led to a court case and a crackdown on the partying there. The reported orgy resulted in a repeat of anti-Japanese feelings, and the pimps got life in prison. It also resulted in some great fodder for a bad soap opera. * The founding chairman of Human Rights Watch, Robert L. Bernstein, writes an op-ed in WaPo making the claim that two to three million Chinese live in 800 "virtual 'slave' camps," and accuses western journalists everywhere of ignoring the story. Brainysmurf takes a careful look at the claim and finds it wanting, while the Gweilo thinks its more evidence that the current Chinese leadership is just as bad as previous regimes. * Phil of Flyingchair reports that Hong Kong's cell phone saturation rate is now above 100 percent. Simonworld comments and links to relevant articles on the mobile phone disease. * Hemlock says that claims about Shanghai catching up to Hong Kong is all about impressions. * The Marmot notes the PRC's latest historical revisionism, in particular it's attempt to call two ancient Korean kingdoms its own. The Marmot follows up on the story here, and Oranckay has some comments as well. * Media in China notes that Shanghai is banning bicycles on the streets, a policy that is becoming more and more standard as they interfere with traffic flow and the rising number of automobiles. * Taiwan-based blogger A Better Tomorrow found an online version of the book Formosa Betrayed. Quite possibly your one-stop source for decoding the history of Taiwan. * Vote for your favorite Asia-based blogs, or bookmark ones you've discovered for the first time, over at the first annual Asia Weblog Awards. A lot of work was put by Phil and everyone taking part in it says that the best part about it is the grand blogroll that's been created. Perfect for a lazy holiday afternoon of web surfing. * Finally, most China- and Hong Kong-based bloggers are gathered around a community with the central location of Living in China. It has its own original postings, photos, and most notably a constantly updated aggregator of RSS feeds from participating blogs that lets readers check out the latest in China-based blogs. Thoughts and reflections on the site by participants can be found here and here.

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Now, personally, I don't believe that WMD were the sole justification to invade. There are a host of broader issues (some of which Bush is handling well, some extremely badly). But there's a pretty serious problem with even this narrow argument being made by Calpundit. Let me make a simplified model to make my point, in an area where I have some knowledge and direct experience, and which scales nicely, I believe. The nightmare scenario for a police officer to be confronted by someone with a realistic-seeming toy gun. I have never bought my sons real-looking guns, not even chrome cap guns that look like six-guns. That's for two reasons; first I didn't want them, at a young age when children have an imperfectly-formed sense of the real, to ever possibly confuse a real gun for a toy one. And I didn't want a police offer or armed citizen to ever confuse a child brandishing a toy gun for someone who presented a real threat. We had such a case here in Los Angeles recently. The police were called to a loud party, and one officer, walking alongside the house, suddenly saw someone holding an extremely realistic prop gun - one so realistic that prop houses control access to them. The specific sequence of events is subject to some dispute, but the result wasn't: officer opened fire with his very real gun and killed the innocent (but to my mind, foolish) partygoer. The officer was investigated, and not criminally charged. The family sued, and the city settled for $225,000 - a relatively low amount in use-of-force cases. Why? Because the officer - and more important, any reasonable person in that position - perceived Anthony Dwain Lee as a mortal threat. In the limited time he had to make a decision, he made one - in this case, unequivocally the wrong one. But it was one that most reasonable people in his position, with his training, and with his information would have made. Now personally, I believe that police training places too great an emphasis on 'shoot first'. I've argued passionately with police friends about it, and that's a subject for another post. Was the officer wrong to do what he did? In the light of all the facts that we have on hand now, obviously yes. In the .4 seconds he had to make up his mind and act, however, his superiors and the courts didn't believe that he was. While they might draw lessons learned about it - and I'd argue that they should - the notion that his shooting was somehow malign never arises in most people. They can distinguish between deliberate or careless error, and error that comes from incomplete or inaccurate information. And the standard used is typically "what would a similarly situated, trained, and informed reasonable person have done?" You see where I'm going with this... Similarly, let's go to the record of how both parties felt about Saddam's state of readiness before April 2003. I could dig like mad for quotes from Daschle and other leading Democrats, but let's go with the Big 3: Madeline Albright, in 1999:

"Saddam Hussein had been acquiring weapons of mass destruction. We carried out with the help of an alliance, a war [Desert Storm], in which we put Saddam Hussein back into his box. The United Nations voted on a set of resolutions, which demanded Saddam Hussein live up to his obligations and get rid of weapons of mass destruction. "The United Nations Security Council imposed a set of sanctions on Saddam Hussein until he did that. It also established an organization that is set up to monitor whether Hussein had gotten rid of his weapons of mass destruction. "There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies."

Sandy Berger, in 1998:

Berger sought to frame the dispute in broad, strategic terms. He said the world could not afford to allow Iraq to flout the will of the international community. "The lesson of the 20th century is, and we've learned through harsh experience, the only answer to aggression and outlaw behavior is firmness," Berger said. "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983," Berger said.

President Clinton, in 1998:

"Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons," Clinton said in a December 16 statement from the White House.

These are the ones I could Google. There are a bunch more collected at http://www.nowanow.com/wmds.htm. I list these, not to try and parse the blame for whatever faulty intelligence there may have been between Republicans and Democrats; I say it because reasonable, smart, well-informed people other than those in the Bush Administration believed that Saddam had WMD, and was willing to use them. And so to look at the decision made to invade, we have to look not in the light of the perfect information of hindsight, but in the context of the imperfect information available - to the question of whether it was a toy gun or a real Desert Eagle. There are absolutely legitimate questions to ask about the quality of our intelligence about Iraq - from before the first Gulf War until today. There are absolutely legitimate questions to ask about whether an invasion was the appropriate response to the risk of WMD. But those aren't the questions we're asking. And before we do, let's step further into the reality of the pre-invasion world, and move away from an Anthony Dwain Lee innocently holding a prop, standing at a party, and to Alan Newsome:

Alan Newsome never thought his BB gun would kill anyone. When he brandished it in the hallway of his Harlem apartment building, it was just something to help scare some cash out of a burger joint deliveryman. But the deliveryman turned out to be a cop, and when Newsome pulled the fake gun, the cop's partner shot the 17-year-old three times in the chest, killing him.

The threat posed by Newsome - brandishing a realistic looking pellet gun - was one that any reasonable person would have responded to with deadly force. Saddam may have thought he had WMD because his staff lied to him. He may have thought he could use the empty threat to bluff. But the fact of his behavior moves him from the Lee category to that of Newsome.

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But there were a few choice quotes from Kleiman and Sabl I'll pass along: Sabl:

Clark isn't indifferent or hostile to American power: He wants the U.S. to be the most powerful country in the world in a hundred years, thinks it will be good for the world if that happens, and is here to tell us how to do that. His answer is that of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. The U.S. triumphs when it supports institutions that embody our values -- universally attractive, if pursued seriously and humbly -- and further our interests -- to the extent that they're compatible with those of most of the world's citizens.

Kleiman:

As I would have expected from Andy, the essay has a highly original slant on what this campaign could be about: making the Democratic Party once again a comfortable place for those who are comfortable in their patriotism, and linking a progressive domestic agenda to the requirements of world leadership. You might call Clark's message as interpreted by Sabl -- though Sabl doesn't himself use this label -- the liberalism of national greatness.

I like both of those quotes a lot. I've been put off from Clark by the sad fact that many of my military friends (albeit a self-selected and highly conservative group) actively detest him. I'll go read the book and do some more thinking over the next month or so.

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I have to go to the Bay Area next week to visit another potential client, and then Joe has passed on to me an invitation to meet with the Marines at Camp Pendleton to discuss ways to support programs like Chief Wiggles'; an invitation that - as a liberal hawk - I'm proud to have been offered and I feel an obligation to accept. The uncle who helped raise me has pancreatic cancer, and so I'll be heading East in a few weeks to see him in New York; I may as well swing south and watch Biggest Guy sign his ROTC papers and make it official. Oh - there's one more little thing - TG and I have set a date in Spring, and picked a tentative venue. So I trust that folks will be understanding about my abject inability to blog much this month. Here're some of the topics that I would be blogging, if I had the time. I'm sore the posts you can make up around them will be as good or better than what I have actually written. * "Precision by Division," or how to get blog and journalistic commentary to limit the level of detail that it raises to something approaching the actual amount of knowledge held - and why it is that neither seem very interested in adding to knowledge, as opposed to fitting knowledge into pre-existing opinion. * "Real Quants," about Crooked Timber's post on the appropriate and inappropriate use of mathematical metaphor in politics and economics. * "Emergent Politics," about the impact of emergent analysis on politics and on my conception of liberalism. * Part IV of my discussion with Calpundit - about the need to increase troop levels. * A reprise of my earlier post on job exports, and on the various political and moral issues raised by folks since my first post, with a tie to the overall issue of the future role of unions. ...I'll see what I can get done in the next week or so. ...oh, and pretty damn cool about Saddam, no?

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * It was Saddam Hussein's decision to remain in contact with his second wife, Samira Shahbander, who ultimately betrayed his location to the United States. * US forces were led to Saddam Hussein by the very man who has helped to feed, hide, and protect him over the last several months. I'm not sure whether or not he and this guy are one and the same, but it's certainly a possibility. * Task Force "All American's" 1st Brigade Team has uncovered an arms cache east of Ramadi as well as engaging the enemy near Fallujah and Khalidiyah. * Members of the 101st Airborne Division killed 3 insurgents in an attack near Mosul. * US forces have launched a major raid in Samarra, which as many as 1,500 insurgents may be operating out of. * Chuck over at Rantburg has a guerrilla body count for Tuesday, December 16. * Members of the 4th Infantry Division have arrested an Iraqi insurgent leader and 78 others in a raid north of Baghdad. * Contrary to various media reports, it appears that Saddam Hussein was indeed involved with the Iraqi guerrillas and that his capture has yielded valuable intelligence. * US troops killed 11 insurgentsafter being attacked in Samarra. * A Saddam Fedayeen leader, a financier, and 72 other suspected insurgents have been captured by the 8th Infantry Division west of Balad. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * Saddam Hussein is being shown videotapes of anti-Baathist protests as well as the unearthing of mass graves in an effort to break down his demeanor and get him to cooperate with US interrogators. * The Baathist denizens of the Sunni Triangle are still in denial over the capture of their former Maximum Leader. The webmasters of the Baath Arab Socialist Party website don't appear to be quite as naive. * Former Iraqi leader Tariq Aziz has renamed his son Zuhair, refusing to refer to him by his birthname of Saddam. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * Saddam Hussein's cousin (and former bodyguard) as well as his daughters seem quite angry over the nature of his capture and claim that he cannot receive a fair trial in Iraq. * President Bush supports the application of the death penalty in the case of Saddam Hussein, as does British prime minister Tony Blair (a view that is at odds with official UK policy?). * South Korea has opted to deploy 3,000 troops to Iraq to support coalition efforts in the country. * Iraqi Governing Council member Hoshyar Zebari is blasting the United Nations for failing to act against Saddam Hussein. WMD HUNT * British prime minister Tony Blair is claiming that David Kay's teams have found quite a bit, including a network of clandestine laboratories and plans to develop long-range missile systems. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated April 1, 2003]

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IRAN REPORTS * Iranian officials are planning to upgrade their Shihab-3 missile to achieve a longer range. * Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is pleased with the capture of Saddam Hussein - though he would evidently prefer that Bush and Sharon join him behind bars. * Hasan Rowhani, the powerful head of Iran's National Security Council, is promising that Iran will punish any country that supports the US in bringing the issue of the nation's nuclear program to the UN Security Council. This comes as Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh is telling reporters that Iran will open up its nuclear weapons sites to IAEA inspectors. * Geostrategy Direct is reporting that Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri have entered Iran and are being harbored by members of the IRGC. USA HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * The issue of Grover Norquist's ties to radical Islamists has come up before on Winds of Change, but now it appears that Norquist is only part of a larger puzzle involving the Safa Group that I first noted back in October. THE WIDER WAR * The Pakistani Daily Times is reporting that bin Laden fled to the city of Peshawar following the bombing of Tora Bora. I'm not sure what to make of this, but it does jive with reports at the time that bin Laden fled to home of Jamaat Ulema-e-Islami leader Fazlur Rehman after Tora Bora. * The assassination attempt on the life of General Musharraf used five bombs, though the dictator may have been saved through the use of a radio jamming device. So far, Pakistani authorities have arrested 40 and the main suspects are said to be al-Qaeda or its local flavor, the Harkat ul-Mujahideen al-Aalmi, both of which were involved in the bombing of the US consulate in Karachi a year earlier. * Yet more violence has rocked Kashmir despite the tentative cease-fire between India and Pakistan. * Bangladesh is becoming a weak link in the War on Terror, with the al-Qaeda affiliate Islami Oikya Jote serving as a member of the ruling coalition. * Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj's recent threats against Japan have apparently not gone unnoticed, as two articles from the Japan Times appear to indicate - nor is Japan the only place in East Asia that seems to have caught the terror network's interest. * Chechen terrorists rebels have crossed into Dagestan and attacked the town of Shauri, killing 3 and taking 30-40 hostages. In addition, a number of Chechen and Arab fighters have also attacked Galati, taking 8 additional hostages. * The Taliban have released a propaganda videotape in apparent collusion with unemployed potenate Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. * We try to end on a lighter note if possible. The venerable Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, variously known as Baghdad Bob and Comical Ali, has denied the capture of Saddam Hussein and has no doubt announced that US soldiers are committing suicide on the gates of Los Angeles ...

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The Long-Anticipated Crackdown ... Representatives of Osama bin Laden informed the Taliban in November that al-Qaeda was shifting forces away from Afghanistan to Iraq. As a result, hundreds of European jihadis have been recruited by al-Qaeda and sent to Iraq to fight against coalition forces there. European intelligence and security services have identified the ultimate source of these recruiting efforts as none other than Abu Musab Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda affiliate organization al-Tawhid. According to reports in the Seattle Times, this same network of European extremists headed by Zarqawi was also responsible for the deployment of at least two associates of the 9/11 hijackers. Recently, however, things have been heating up for al-Tawhid and al-Qaeda in general with arrests in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Turkey. These arrests and others like them are likely to severely deplete al-Qaeda's ability to operate in Western Europe for at least several months until the organization can establish new networks on the Continent from which to either recruit or to conduct attacks. Hizb-ut-Tahrir: Al-Qaeda's political wing? Far more ominously, however, are recent revelations that I first learned of from Alphabet City. The transcripts that Robert Stevens links to are of wiretaps conducted by Italian authorities as part of an investigation into members of Ansar al-Islam and if you want to see the ins and out of how al-Qaeda operates inside the West, this is it. During one of the wiretappings, Ansar al-Islam member Nasr Usama Mustafa is told by his German Arab superior the following: "On 16 of last month there was a confidential meeting with the shaykhs in Poland; the final decision was to completely change the Hizb al-Tahrir front and to build a new organization that concerns itself with the national territory and with the international territory but we need highly trained people at every level." Now "shaykhs" here doesn't necessarily mean clerics, since Arab honorific can refer to either a cleric or to an older or esteemed man (for example, al-Qaeda members often refer to bin Laden as "Sheikh Osama" even though he is not an Islamic cleric). However, the organization that the unidentified German Arab is referring to is Hizb-ut-Tahrir. As this profile from the Heritage Foundation via ICT indicates, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (referred hereafter as HuT) has tens of thousands of members worldwide ranging from London to Indonesia. While the organization is widely banned and persecuted throughout much of Central Asia and the Middle East, it still meets openly in Yemen and seeks to implement a worldwide sha'riah. The latter would be more than enough to place them in the kook category for most Westerners, but understand that this organization has a presence on most major European university campuses. The profile also notes that the identity of the organization's current leader and other senior members is unknown, but given the group's wide reach and apparent objectives I don't think that it's too much of a stretch to speculate that the individual in question may be none other than Osama bin Laden and that Hizb-ut-Tahrir may be functioning as the political arm of his organization. The involvement of Hizb-ut-Tahrir members in plotting an attack against US interests in Azerbaijan as well as having ties to Islamic extremists in Chechnya would seem to support this assertion. Plots and Counter-Plots in Sana'a As noted in previous editions of Winds of War, the government of Yemen has been negotiating with al-Qaeda ever since September 2003 to work out some sort of agreement under which the terror network would cease operations inside the country. Al-Qaeda appeared open to such an agreement, with the stipulation that in return the government would be required to start releasing al-Qaeda members from jail. For nearly a month the negotiations seemed to have little effect, with the exception of al-Qaeda regrouping inside the country. Then on November 11, 2003 Yemeni security officials balked at a presidential degree that would have released over 150 "repentent" al-Qaeda in spite of the fact that some al-Qaeda who had previously been released (???) had gone right back to the terrorism business as soon as they were out of jail. It appears that the objections from security officials were enough to convince Yemeni strongman Saleh to only release 92 al-Qaeda, but lest we forget it only took 19 to bring down the World Trade Center. Then on December 13, a statement arrives from al-Qaeda's Yemeni politburo claiming responsibility for the assassination of the intelligence chief of the Ibb governorate and claiming that the government violated its agreement with them. While al-Qaeda is not generally the most credible source, this statement, which was intended for local distribution, has the ring of truth to it, especially given that the communique also promises vengeance for any attempts to harm the family Amal al-Saddah, one of bin Laden's four wives. This isn't the only interesting bit of information coming out of Yemen, however. Recently, Yemeni authorities captured Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, a key al-Qaeda financier and one of the organization's key leaders in the country. Yet mysteriously, they aren't going to let the US talk to him. Why not? Well, among other things, al-Ahdal is reputed to know quite a lot about who funds al-Qaeda, which may explain who Saleh has called in to help them interrogate him ... Cutting the Cash Flow I know you all are no doubt shocked at the notion that the Saudis would ever be involved in anything remotely relating to terrorism, those tricky things called facts keep cropping up to a point where not even a hundred Adel al-Jubeirs can rationalize it away. To begin with, US News and World Report published a lengthy article detailing the Saudi role in financing al-Qaeda and its affiliated networks. Most of what is written in the article has already been known for sometime for those of us who have been following this, but there was one extremely interesting tidbit - numerous members within the royal family are quite aware of where their money is going and actively support the goals of al-Qaeda. This is quite significant because puts to lie the idea that the Saudi royals have been essentially paying protection money to al-Qaeda over the course of the last decade and places at least some of them in active alliance with the organization and its goals. This is going to complicate any actual efforts (as opposed to window-dressing, which is pretty much what we've seen to date) by the Saudi monarchy to crack down on the al-Qaeda primary financiers, most of whom are still very much at large inside the Kingdom. Ever further complicating the situation involves the fact that numerous known al-Qaeda financiers and front companies in Europe, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere are in many cases still operating unhindered more than two years after the events of 9/11, even to point where Wahhabi charities like the al-Haramain Foundation continue to operate despite US and international efforts to stem the flow of terrorist financing. In Conclusion ... Each of these events should serve as things to keep in perspective as events unfold while the Winds of War shuts down for the holiday season. The capture of Saddam Hussein has given us all something of an early Christmas present and with a little bit of luck, the enemy will have nothing to look forward to in the new year.

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Georgia's Rose Revolution * The immediate cause of the protests leading to Shevardnadze's resignation was the disputed results of the November 2nd parliamentary elections. One of the opposition leaders, Mikhail Saakashvili, pledged to overthrow Shevardnadze on November 7th. Members of Georgia's opposition groups surrounded parliament and kept their pledge to stay until Shevardnadze stepped down. * Shevardnadze hinted that he would enforce order with troops. By November 23, St. George's Day in Georgia, Shevardnadze's tune had changed. As soldiers rallied to defend anti-Shevardnadze protesters, the President knew his time was up and agreed to step down. * Living with Caucasians was on scene and has photos of protesters the evening after parliament had been taken. Mary Neal also has television images of Saakashvili and his followers capturing parliament as Shevardnadze was giving a speech. * With presidential elections set for January 4, Saakashvili looks to be a lock as Georgia's new president. Saakashvili is a graduate of Columbia University Law School and worked for a law firm in the United States before returning to Georgia. His strong anti-corruption credentials and commitment to making Georgia part of the West is giving hope to Georgians. * Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, seemingly played a decisive role in convincing Shevardnadze to step down. Seemingly... * Georgia's revolution proves the United States can have its cake and eat it too in dealings with undemocratic states by dealing with leaders and fostering the growth of democratic alternatives. Everything that could be done correctly in Georgia was, and a range of programs supporting democratization laid the groundwork for the Rose Revolution. Saakashvili studied in the US under the Muskie exchange program, and other opposition leaders also benefited from US leadership development initiatives. * Love him or hate him, George Soros' Open Society Institute also nurtured civil society development in Georgia. * South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Ajaria are three Georgian regions that have ambitions that don't include allegiance to Tbilisi. The former two won civil wars against the Tbilisi government and are de facto independent states. Ajaria is autonomous and under the rule of the dictatorial Aslan Abashidze. As of December 11th, Abashidze still refuses to recognize Nino Burjanadze as interim President, and the three regions appear to be trying to coordinate actions to prepare for whatever may be in store for them. Efforts to increase the central government's authority and personal hostility between Saakashvili and Abashidze make Ajaria one of the biggest issues confronting Georgia's new leaders. * Georgia is also facing enormous economic problems, and the new leadership is seeking aid. In his campaign for the presidency, Saakashvili has not announced any new economic plans, but donors feel a page has turned and will likely offer generous aid to the new government. * For regular updates and on the scene reports from Georgia, visit Cinderella Bloggerfeller and Living with Caucasians. The Great Game: Politics & Regional Security * Georgia's revolution is a major setback for Russian ambitions. Georgia's recent drift towards Russia as part of the latter's goal of building a "liberal empire" was a cause for U.S. concern. The fall of Shevardnadze and the likelihood of much closer relations with Europe and the United States drew cool reactions from the Russian Duma. Though a transcript was unavailable, you can listen to (WMA) Zbigniew Brzezinski's analysis of Russian moves in Georgia. * Russia, of course, is not making things easier for Georgia. Russia is wary of what the new Georgia will mean for its interests--oil, energy infrastructure, and Chechnya--in the Caucasus. To intensify pressure on Georgia's leaders, Russia has intensified ties through direct talks and special treatment with Georgia's secessionist leaders. * Already upset over the presence of US troops in neighboring Georgia, Russia has warned Azerbaijan against accepting American troops. Russia's ambassador could barely contain his anger as he said that US troops have "nothing to protect int he Caspian." Forgetting that Russia maintains troops in Georgia and Armenia, he also said that the presence of foreign troops is a "partial seizure" of sovereignty. * A graduation ceremony was held in Republic Square in Tbilisi for the 111th Light Infantry Battalion participating in the USMC's Task Force Georgia Train and Equip Program. President Burjanadze was on hand to congratulate the troops and meet the trainers. The other three battalions that have completed training were present as well. * Affirming its commitment to the United States, Georgia has also announced that it will have 500 troops in Iraq by the summer of 2004. These troops will be added to the 70 already present. * Tajikistan has been reliably pro-Russia over the last decade. That seems to have been changing lately though. The US has made a number of overtures to boost cooperation between the two countries. Recent agreements include immunity from ICC prosecution for US troops in Tajikistan and US support for Tajikistan's entry into the World Trade Organization. * Saying that Uzbekistan needs money, not soldiers, Islam Karimov has said "no" to a permanent US troop presence in Uzbekistan. The funny thing is, the US never asked. It seems that Karimov wants something... * Central Asian leaders use the threat of Islamic extremism to justify large security forces and oppressive policies. Hizb ut-Tahrir's rise in popularity presents unique difficulties. On the one hand, the group is committed to nonviolence, but it is also very anti-American (PDF) and may be a fertile recruiting ground for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and al-Qaeda. * It's fun to have a laugh at the expense of the French every now and then, but the French military is making important contributions in Central Asia. France and Tajikistan will be conducting joint exercises soon. Focus: Afghanistan * Afghanistan's constitutional convention has begun, but there are still many issues to be resolved with the document. * Kabul is under tight security amid fears for the safety of the Loya Jirga in town to debate the country's new constitution. The city provides many opportunities for attackers who wish to harm the 500 delegates. * In one of the first orders of business for the Loya Jirga, an advocate of parliamentary government failed his bid to chair the council. A Karzai ally has won instead, indicating that Karzai will get his wish for a strong presidency. * Pakistani troops, saying they are pursuing Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, have hunkered down in disputed territory along its Afghan border. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of having crossed the Durand Line, the poorly mapped border drawn by the British in 1893. Though there's no way to be certain of who's right, locals have taken up arms against Pakistani troops and are reluctant to accept aid. * In the realm of stunningly positive news, two warlords based near Mazar-i-Sharif, the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum and the Tajik Atta Mohammed, have turned over tanks and other heavy weapons to the Afghan Army despite recent clashes between the two. Donald Rumsfeld was on hand, and urged both warlords to pick up the pace. Human Rights * Uzbek President Islam Karimov rails against human rights groups operating in Uzbekistan after Human Rights Watch criticized Karimov's failure to meet benchmarks set by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and for the blocking of a conference on the death penalty. Asia Times Online says that Uzbekistan ignores quiet diplomacy, but if anything, Karimov's outburst demonstrates that the vocal, critical approach may in fact be counterproductive. * It's almost a given that any country that has a "Ministry of Fairness" (instead of a Justice Ministry) will have serious human rights problems. Therefore, it's no surprise that Turkmenistan has outlawed public associations. If there was anything that could make life even worse in Turkmenistan, this was probably it. * Uzbekistan's tendency to lock people up for being practicing Muslims has inspired protests in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. These protests took place at the same time in a number of cities in each country, indicating both that they were likely planned by an organized group (Hizb ut-Tahrir, maybe?) and that Karimov's policies are radicalizing Muslims. * Why are these protests outside of Uzbekistan though? It's probably cross-border raids by Uzbek police to arrest Islamic activists like the one recently foiled in Kyrgyzstan. In this case, all but one of the Uzbek officers was captured by Kyrgyz citizens and border guards. These raids anger the Kyrgyz government, but it fears how Uzbekistan will react if it gets too upset. This has prompted fears that Kyrgyz police will quietly release their Uzbek counterparts. Economics * Who knew? Kazakhstan's economic growth in the past few years has only been second to Equitoreal Guinea, and, unlike E.G., only 20% of Kazakhstan's GNP comes from oil. The difference, and what sets Kazakhstan apart from much of the rest of the CIS is sound fiscal and monetary policy. * Tajikistan's plans for hydroelectric development are in limbo. Like Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan meets most of its power needs by trading water for energy from Uzbekistan, which is known to be unreliable in its shipments and more than willing to shut off the lights to get its way. A significant chunk of any new US aid for Tajikistan will likely go towards developing energy production capacity. * Kyrgyz businessmen are using family as collateral in China. When plans to turn Chinese goods into profits don't pan out, these family members are stranded in China. Neither government acknowledges the problem. Et Ceterastan * I read Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, set primarily in Tashkent, when I was in Uzbekistan. I sometimes forget that the Soviets dumped much more than political prisoners on the deserts and steppes of Central Asia. The tailings from 20 years of uranium refinery, some from East Germany, poison Mayluu-Suu in Kyrgyzstan and threaten the water supply of the Ferghana Valley. Mayluu-Suu officially did not exist until recently, as it was considered vital to the defense of the Soviet Union. I lived in an Uzbek city, Navoi, that also only just made its first cartographic appearance. Here too, the leftovers of the Cold War poison the Kazak villagers who continue to have little idea why they are so ill. * Heidar Aliyev, the first post-independence president of Azerbaijan, died in Cleveland, where he was undergoing treatment for heart and kidney diseases, on December 12th. He leaves, at best, a mixed legacy. * News from Turkmenistan is extremely rare. Just over one year ago, there may or may not have been an assasination attempt targeting President Niyazov, shattering the image of Turkmenistan as a stable monolith. Niyazov, who calls himself Turmenbashi ("father of all Turkmen"), has squandered his country's enormous oil and gas wealth on statues, mosques, and a sea of black hair dye all dedicated to his cult of personality. Compare photos from Ashgabat with those from Pyongyang. Both are eerily empty of people and creepily full of "dear leader" paintings. * Eurasianet, recognizing the lack of attention paid to Turkmenistan, has a long list of commentaries to mark the anniversary of the last year's attempted coup. * Pepe Escobar of Asia Times Online, continues to prove that he can't write an apolitical travelogue. Nevertheless, Silk Road Roving is interesting to read. I particularly enjoy the entries on noble Bukhara and Samarkand, perhaps the greatest city I've ever visited.

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According to the Department of Defense Audit of DEF, DEF spent half of its grant on itself, which, the auditors note, is 25x the industry average. That included more than $2M of "unallowable" expenses, i.e. outright fraud and overcharging. Here is DEF's conversion "recipe": pay $100,000 per year to play golf in the Moscow Country Club, fly Concorde, and, most of all, take huge kickbacks from "partners" connected to Russian mafia. According to the Department of Defense Audit of DEF dated December 31, 2001, DEF had an investment portfolio of $30M and $20M disappeared from it under very suspicious circumstances. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service has been investigating DEF for the last four years, a pace that seems quite leisurely. Diplomatically, DEF has been a "resounding success" as well. In one instance, DEF paid a $500K bribe to the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, but the project failed anyway. The project created such a scandal that Secretary Albright had to get involved. Defense Threat Reduction Agency ("DTRA") is a DEF's program supervisor and it maintains a DEF-related webpage. This page used to state that the number of former Soviet WMD scientists converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits was 3370. I questioned this figure in my letters to DTRA, and DTRA reduced this figure to 1250, which is a 66% reduction. But the real figure is no more than 200 Russian scientists, an extremely poor result, considering that $67M of US public funds were spent. DTRA knows that it is reporting blatantly false DEF results, but it still would not change its website to reflect DEF's real operational results. DTRA does not dispute that its figures are wrong, that they contradict the Audit that is almost two years ago, and yet, they would not change the site! After I wrote a letter of concern to the US Department of State alleging that $20M of US funds were grossly mismanaged and outright stolen by DEF's top American managers (an allegation since proven by the Department of Defense Audit of DEF), I have been blacklisted for the US assistance positions and had my career and my livelihood destroyed. A more complete description is here: http://nunn-lugar.com/def/articles/1.shtml Respectfully, Matthew Maly US citizen residing in Kiev, Ukraine. ------- Dear Joe, Thanks for your note. My situation was indeed amazing: I was stuck in Kiev, Ukraine with a Ukrainian wife and two very small children, and I did not know there was a "reason" I could not get a US-financed job (I am one hell of a specialist of Russia's transformation to democracy with three published books on the subject). Then the IRS disallowed my Tax Return ("because 68 is greater than 72") and froze all my accounts. PWC that did the return would not defend me because there was "obviously" nothing wrong with the return. So we pawned all my stuff and starved a little. Starving, I hasten to add, does not make your figure look more sporty: you just worry a lot and eat cheap food. The account was restored, after seven months (!) without any explanation, fine, or apology after I got some publicity -- the return was just fine. I am now employed by a British-owned company here, earn a survival wage, saving up money for a ticket to move back to the States. I am fine, I am not the issue. Writing a truthful and confidential letter of concern (my contract said there would be up to five years imprisonment and up to $250,000 in fines for FAILURE to report) should not be a way to commit suicide, professionally, if not physically, and IRS should not be used as an instrument of revenge and pressure, but even that is not the issue. There are two genuine issues here: [1] Defense Enterprise Fund ("DEF") was supposed to peacefully employ former Russian producers of weapons of mass destruction, and the entire $67M grant was wasted and stolen so that DEF will close shop by the end of the year, its important mission accomplished not at all. There are hundreds and hundreds unemployed and disappointed Russian WMD scientists, who can watch their children starve or, perhaps, go try to find Al Queda. Also, it is bad when Americans are seen by the Russians as marauders. [2] When I informed Defense Threat Reduction Agency ("DTRA") that their DEF-related web page contains blatant lies and directly contradicts Department of Defense own Audit of DEF, the response, in effect, was "We lie, so what?". A correspondent from the Nation Magazine called -- they reduced DEF's operational results by 66%, overnight, but the figures are still wildly inflated. What the hell is that? How can we believe DTRA at all? DTRA is supposed to be cutting up Russian nuclear missiles, destroying bacteriological agents, and the like. They report having destroyed 6000 Russian warheads. You call them on the phone: maybe it will be just 2000, overnight? And when you count them up, physically, will you only find 73 or 28? Never mind the billions DTRA is costing us all: where are the reliable operational results having to do with the stuff that can destroy the planet? Or read the letter that DTRA's Deputy Director, General Robert Bonjiovi, attached to DEF's audit: Since the grant does not define what expenses are "unallowable" having "unallowable" expenses (like overcharging the government $150K on housing expenses, $100K golf fees, Concorde flights), does not contradict the terms of the grant! Do you want this amateur moral philosopher at the helm of DTRA? I do not. Thanks, Joe. If you could post my letters and maybe initiate the discussion of these issues, that would be great. I just hope your readers won't start coming up with letters like "Oh, yeah, I heard a similar story" - it is just too scary to contemplate. I am a US citizen and I sort of thought we had a functioning democracy...

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"Vengeful Minorities" is actually derived from her book World on Fire, which I now plan to find and read. Salon.com offers a worthwhile review, and Chua's interview with Booknotes.org is good synopsis that helps to put her work in perspective.

I paid special attention to her description of the links between these dynamics and America's place in a globalizing world. It's one thing to talk about the convergence of antiglobalism with hatred of Jews and of America - quite another to begin to explain how this process works, and what lies underneath. Kudos to Amy Chua for bringing a fresh approach to some important problems.

ChicagoBoyz takes this logic one step further in "Anglosphere Achievement and Global Resentment," a gold mine of links to interesting resources and perspectives. I don't mention Chicagoboyz often enough, especially since Jay Manifold started blogging there.

Still, this is an issue that goes beyond left/right. Responding to the comment that her work has received praise from across the political spectrum, Chua notes:

"I think that -- I think that a lot of people are very bored of the debate about globalization. It's sort of going nowhere, and people are tired of it. And I don`t even think it`s make sense to talk about the right and the left when it comes to globalization. So I think that both globalization's critics and globalization's enthusiasts overlook -- both make mistakes. They both overlook the ethnic dimensions of free market democracy. So I feel that my book is non-partisan, or at least along traditional lines, and you know, neither left nor right, in any meaningful way."

Maybe. There are holes in her arguments and a definite bias in her worldview, as some of the Amazon reviews are quick to note. Even so, her work is a useful and potentially important contribution.

Ideologies, even good ideologies, have limit cases. Good intentions aren't enough - if we really want to help, it's critically important to know where those limits are. Bravo to Amy Chua for beginning a debate that will deepen our understanding at this critical time.

UPDATE: Peaktalk has some insightful thoughts on this matter, also based on his personal experience in Asia.

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A mountainside is split in two, His coward legions fall. His shackled cities fade from view Beneath a smoky pall. Armored treads sound in the street, The tanks are not his own. He has bid many to be slain. He'll face his death alone. Cineas told Pyrrhus that 'Rome has a thousand heads.' And Rome was a republic, strong After that king was dead. The tyrant butchers live in fear And we go on and on. A century shall find us here And every tyrant gone. Our carriers loom off his coast. Our bombers fill his skies. And brave, skilled men with stealthy tread Prepare his grim surprise. Grant, and Sherman, Patton, Greene Have taught us to make war. We now pick up their legacy And free the world once more"

So he wrote. So it was. The tyrant butchers live in fear... and we go on and on.

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* Lessons Learned from a LTC in Tikrit (WoW - Sept. 22, 2003) * Post-war Lessons Learned Report from 3rd ACR, and also one from TM C/3-15 Infantry, Task Force 1-64 Armor "Desert Rogues" during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Sept. 17, 2003) * God is in the Details analyzes the weapons problems of the 507th. See also the comments section (June 24, 2003) * AARs from the Marines on their gear, and another related to small unit engagements in Operation Iraqi Freedom (June 3, 2003) * Real Men Wear Pantyhose! No, this isn't a joke. (June 3, 2003) * V Corps Lessons Learned (April 4, 2003) * Israeli historian and army reservist Yagil Henkin on Israeli urban tactics (WoW - April 3, 2003) * Master Sgt. Rudy Romero's Letter from Afghanistan (Feb. 18, 2003) * 4GW: Small Wars (July 9, 2002) * A very comprehensive account of the battle of Jenin offers some lessons on tactics, as well as some indicators of what to prepare for.

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AFGHAN-PAKISTAN THEATER REPORTS * Anyone wondering why the US chose to hold illegal combatants at Guantanamo might want to read this. A Taliban commander held at Gitmo and released by US authorities in July is now back in Afghanistan in charge of attacks against US forces there, according to a report released Sunday. * Despite reports that the Afghanistan consitutional assembly would be postponed again due to threats from armed Islamacist groups and the polarization between conservatives and reformers, the delegates to the loya jurga opened deliberations on Sunday. US commanders warned that Taliban forces were planning attacks to disrupt and intimidate the proceedings, and US and Afghan forces were heavily deployed around the area. * The Afghani delegates are demonstrating courage and tenacity but, predictably, the UN is getting ready to pull out due to the recent attacks by Talibanis. For an organization that wants to run things, they sure don't have much sticking power. * Calling it as it is: Richard Haass, a former senior official at the State Department and currently head of the American Council on Foreign Policy told Tom Brokaw of NBC that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the region, citing the bomb attempt on President Pervez Musharraf's motorcade close to Islamabad on Sunday. Haass said Pakistan was dangerous because it had nuclear weapons, and a military government which was not entirely in control of the country. IRAN REPORTS * The Iranian Students at Daneshjoo aren't thrilled with Nobel Winner Shirin Ebadi (Hat Tip: M. Simon). * Charles says the IAEA is on Iran's side. Fuirthermorem, "Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has not been able to conclude that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, although he says that if they ever do, the IAEA might be able to detect it. In any case, he's going to need a lot more time to decide whether there's really anything going on in Iran." * On the other hand, ElBaradei has no hesitation at all declaring that Israel has nuclear weapons (even though this has never been admitted by Israel or conclusively proven by anyone else), and demanding that they immediately disarm, for the sake of "Mideast peace": El Baradei: Israel should disarm nuclear weapons. What hypocrisy. U.S.HOMELAND SECURITY * Cleaning up the ant nests of terror cells takes patience and commitment. Many Americans are beginning to doubt that our northern neighbor with that long, undefended border has that commitment. Trent Telenko notes that another Canadian was arrested in the US on charges of associating with al-Qaeda. Mohammed A. Warsame, who was taken into custody on Tuesday on a material witness warrant, has been tied to Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected al-Qaeda member who faces trial in Virginia on conspiracy charges in the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. * On the other hand, the Chaplain James Yee case, noted in this blog, appears to be falling apart. THE WIDER WAR * JK: More on the growing tactical alliance between neo-Marxists, neo-Nazis, and Islamists that's taking shape around the world. The phenomenon is being noticed in Foreign Policy Magazine now. * Momentum in Iraq has major implications for the wider War on Terror. Above all, terrorists seek to destroy the will and resolve of their enemies. What is happening in Iraq, symbolized by our patient, professional pursuit and capture of Saddam Hussein will have ripple effects elsewhere. Austin Bay agrees. * At least one Jemaah Islamiah (JI) manual on terror tactics has been sold off the shelf in Indonesia. The manual shows that the group is well-organized and urges members to attack anyone who subscribes to Western ideology and to engage in guerilla warfare. Among the advice it dishes out: The best position to attack an army truck is usually when it is turning around a corner, and C4 explosives should be used to make bombs deadlier. * Other JI guidebooks exist and some probably still being written. In the months following last year's Bali bombings, Indonesian security officials seized copies of JI's Constitution, known by its acronym Pupji, and a bomb-making manual written by leader Azahari Husin. In July, they also uncovered the 'Semarang documents' - a set of Arabic manuscripts that is a warfare and bomb-making manual - during a raid in Semarang, Central Java * Don't forget major OPEC player and supporter of the FARC narco-terrorists President Hugo Chavez of venezuela. The situation in Venezuela continue to develop. * Meanwhile, 54 of the 61 members of the House Armed Services Committee, joined by the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have sent President Bush a letter urging him to expand the U.S. combat force. The letter also asks Bush to reassess the ratio between active and reserve forces used in long deployments. For that to happen, the deliberate post-Vietnam crippling of our active duty service components, by pushing key functions into the Reserves, has to be undone, however. More troops won't be a quick fix, either: it takes time and money to train them to the level of professionalism we need and right now that would distract us from the operations we're currently pursuing. Bases, weapons and support systems would need to be expanded as well. No magic wands here to undo over a decade of deliberate neglect, guys. (Hat Tip: Team Agonist) * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. Check out Rand Simberg's classic "riches to rags" photo of Saddam for a chuckle. Sic Semper Tyrannis! Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * The US has organized a number of Special Forces groups including Task Force 121, involved in the capture of Saddam. Does their mission include direct assasination of ex-Baathists? * Meanwhile, the Coalition is choking off funds for the insurgents. * Interrogations of captured insurgents led to Saddam's hiding place, but infiltrating networks of terrorists is notably difficult to do. Is the US organizing a new Iraqi intelligence force, with Jordanian help? * There are rumours of Israeli help, too. * The Coalition is considering a pay raise for the New Iraqi Army after over 1/3 of recruits leave the Freedom Battalion shortly before it was due to be deployed, complaining about the level of pay. * Heroism can be found in unexpected places. TIME magazine correspondent Micheal Weisskopf, 57, likely saved the lives of his companions, including two U.S. soldiers, by attempting to toss away a grenade thrown into their vehicle before it exploded. Sadly, he lost his right hand doing so, but he is reported in stable condition. The soldiers and a second TIME correspondent travelling with him in the Humvee had minor shrapnel wounds. * And as the U.S. Marines get ready to head back to the Sunni Triangle, they're planning for a different approach than the one used by the U.S. Army, reports blogger and ex-Army officer Phil Carter. RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY * We need to help Iraqi bloggers like Zeyad, and give Iraqis the communication tools they need. To succeed, we first need a way to send payments to Iraqi bloggers. Can you help? * Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz announced a list of countries whose companies can bid as prime contractors on reconstruction work funded by the US. Those left off the list (and protesting mightily) include China, France, Germany, Russia and Canada. The EU's Chris Patton and Kofi Annan are among the predictable critics pushing for the UN to manage reconstruction. * International trade lawyers (Financial Times, registration required) are also examining the announcement, but the Government Procurement Agreement, to which the US is a signatory, specifically exempts "procurement indispensable for national security or for national defence purposes". Wolfowitz invoked Coalition security in the decision. However, the office of the US trade representative suggested that the US might instead defend this decision, if it is protested to the World Trade Organization, on the grounds that that the Coalition Provisional Authority was not covered by the WTO rules, and therefore the CPA was free to discriminate in contracts as it saw fit. Expect more fuming and actions by the EU - as blogger Bjorn Staerk notes, Europeans are crowing about their "brass balls" in "forcing" Bush to back off of the steel tarrifs. * President Bush has sent former Secretary of State James Baker III to open negotiations on Iraqi debt forgiveness. Baker is a tough, savvy and effective negotiator and this should be seen as a clear signal that the US will not allow reconstruction of Iraq's economy to be held hostage to the inefficiencies of the UN or to political grandstanding aimed at obstructing the US in that country. INTERNATIONAL STAGE * An Iraqi Colonel has provided details of Chinese involvement in Iraqi air defenses in the immediate runup to the war. More information will no doubt emerge in the future over violations of the UN-imposed sanctions. * The repercussions from the capture of Saddam Hussein have yet to be felt in Iraq, but Iraqis are already demanding that they themselves be allowed to try him in their own tribunal, not an international court. * Everyone else wants to get into the act, though. Canada's new PM insists on an international trial in order for the trial to be "just" and "credible". Somehow I doubt the Iraqis will take well to the suggestions that they are not competent to try their own fallen leader, though. * Nor are they likely to heed Amnesty International's concerns that Saddam might face the death penalty. Funny, I just don't remember Amnesty mounting a huge campaign about the abuses of human rights under his regime. * As Instapundit is fond of noting, "they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side." German and Italian "peace activists" collect money to finance Iraqi terrorists, while another prominent activist shows his pro-fascist sympathies by arguing that Saddam's victims deserved it. * JK: Marine Lance Cpl. Guardiano writes about his experiences in Hillah, and believes the capture of Saddam will make it difficult for the media to keep denying the accomplishments in Iraq. No, Lance Cpl., it will not. Those who are hostile (and that is the correct word) will remain so, regardless of any accomplishment or fact you may throw at them. WMD HUNT * Former Lieutenant Colonel Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh told British press that his air defense unit was issued WMD warheads designed to be fired from RPG launchers during Gulf II and that he provided this information to British intelligence in the runup to the war. He may have been the source cited in the infamous British intelligence brief stating Iraq could deply WMD in 45 minutes if it chose. He also believes that some of these warheads may still be in the hands of the Saddam Fedayeen. With luck, the capture of Saddam will lessen the likelihood that they would be used against Coalition forces. In any case, a WMD warhead fired from an RPG launcher seems likely to be a martyrdom action given their short range of fire, but that might not stop some from attempting such an attack. No comments from either the British and US governments or their critics so far on this claim. N.B. Al-Dabbagh had spied for the Iraqi National Accord, a London-based exile group, for several years before the war and is now working as an adviser for the Iraqi Governing Council. Al-Dabbagh is also the source of the story cited above about Chinese involvement in Iraqi air defense planning during the runup to the war. Expect more intelligence sources to go public with their claims, some of which will be solid and some of which might be shaky. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." Love that Ace! * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated Dec. 1, 2003] * Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive! * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. Yesterday brought reports of the first Iraqi baby to be named after Paul Bremer. I'm waiting for a spate of Rummies myself .... Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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Building the Picture Brick by Brick Nearly all federal contract pricing starts with cost accounting. The government isn't particularly interested in the financial profit & loss statements that investors care about. Instead, the price that a contractor can charge is determined from the bottom up. Here's how it works. Suppose you own a small business that builds brick patios for suburban homes. A new home owner asks you how much you would charge to install a 20' x 30' patio for them. We start with direct expenses: * You would begin by estimating how many bricks your crew would need, including a few extras in case of breakage. Multiply that by the cost per brick you pay at the supply yard. Do the same for the cement and sand your crew would use. Those are the costs of your materials. * You're not sure which workers you would send to do the job, but based on prior experience you know a job this size usually takes one senior bricklayer and two junior helpers a total of two days (16 hours) to complete. Senior bricklayers get $25 / hr and helpers get $10, for a total of $720. * However, you have to pay benefits to your workers, which average 33% of their hourly pay, so the total burdened labor costs are $960. * You also provide the fleet of trucks used by your crews; let's just say your crew will need one truck and will drive a total of 100 miles to pick up the materials and go to/from the work site. Your accountant might have calculated the real cost / mile of your trucks based on their purchase price, the cost of gas and oil and regular repairs. Or, you might just use the tax deduction rate of 37 cents / mile. In either case, you add this cost to your running total. * You might also calculate the hourly cost of using any special tools or equipment you provide for your crew by dividing the purchase and maintenance price by the average useful life of the tool. These costs - labor, materials and related expenses - are what the government calls direct expenses, i.e. they are directly incurred as a result of doing the job. But your little company must incur other costs too, in order to make that backyard patio for your prospective client. If your crew chief comes into the office to type up an invoice and make 3 copies of the work plans on the copier, his need to use that office equipment creates indirect expenses associated with doing a specific client's work. Finally, there are general and administrative costs necessary to be in business. For instance, you yourself may need office space, a telephone line, a computer and an office assistant, plus the services of an accountant, in order to run the business. You probably also take a salary from the business to do so. If this job would be 1% of your revenues for the year, then 1% of your total G&A expenses will be considered part of the job's cost.. The federal government, including the Department of Defense, requires companies who bid on a contract to provide a cost justification to back up the financial side of their bid. The bidder must estimate the mix of skills needed to do the job and provide a burdened hourly rate for each labor category. Direct, indirect and G&A expenses are also estimated. For instance, office space costs will be estimated based on the actual location where the job will be performed. The Federal Acquisition Regulations and the Defense FAR Supplement are very detailed and specific about how these costs must be calculated. For instance, marketing and sales costs cannot be included when expenses are calculated. Neither can any proposed profit margin, which is treated separately. What Profiteth a Man (or a Company).... Once the total costs of the job are estimated, we enter the thorny realm of profits. The government has to allow contractors to make some profit, if only to cover marketing and sales costs and to return some dividend to shareholders. Otherwise no competent, solvent company would bother to bid. The allowable profit on a contract can be determined in any of several ways, but the specific way is determined when the contact is awarded. For instance, the Request for Proposal might ask for a firm, fixed price bid. In this case, bidders reply with a total price for doing the work. If they can accomplish it in less than the estimated hours or with fewer expenses, they pocket more profits; if they overrun, they must cover the losses. This type of contract is only used when the nature and extent of the work is very well known. Otherwise it is too risky for the contractors and for the government - the company doesn't want to take a huge risk and the government doesn't want a company to go bankrupt half-way through the job. A more common form of pricing is the time and materials or the cost plus award fee contract. In a T&M contract, the government reimburses the contractor for the hours expended, based on the burdened labor rates the company bid for each labor category, plus materials and the allowable indirect and G&A expenses associated with those labor costs. The contract might specify a fixed profit margin, say 4 % or 5%, or it might specify an award fee, i.e. a maximum profit margin that could be earned. In award fee contracts, the Contracting Officer essentially gives the contractor a report card - if the company earns 95 points out of a possible 100, then it gets 95% of the negotiated award fee as profit. Award fees are written into contracts as a motivation to perform services in a timely and quality way and are appropriate when the contractor can reasonably be expected to determine the quality of work provided, i.e. when there are no outside factors that would have a big impact. Deja Vu All Over Again Estimating costs and the time to perform services is an expensive and time-consuming affair for bidders and for the government auditors who verify the bidder's numbers before the contract is awarded. It would save a lot of hassle if the costs could be established on some periodic basis rather than recomputed every time the government wants to have companies provide services or goods, no? That's what Congress thought, anyway, and so it modified the FAR to allow task order contracts. In this case the government negotiates a contract allowing agencies to task the contractor to do certain kinds of services. Only the specific services listed in the master or 'umbrella' contract may be procured this way and the negotiated labor pricing, G&A rate and profit/award fee apply. A maximum total cost is also specified in the master contract. Agencies who want to use this contractor's services must draft a task order, basically a mini-contract spelling out the tasks to be done, so there is still some overhead required to use a task order contract.  A ceiling is placed on the total amount of work that can be awarded. A modified approach is for a company to negotiate a set of approved labor categories and costs with the General Services Administration. Once a company has an approved GSA Schedule of rates, it also seeks to be awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract. This is very similar to the task order contract, but it streamlines the process for an agency that want some well-defined tasks done which don't warrant the 3-6 months that might be needed to get a task order written and through the legal approval process. We're Getting Closer.... We're beginning to close in on the elusive Halliburton contract in Iraq now. One more step is required, namely to revisit some decisions made during the Clinton administration that resulted in the award of a DoD-wide umbrella contract for logistical and base support services to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. More on that in Part 3 of this special report shortly.

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Mass-hate movements are serious matters, deadly on a massive scale unless somehow controlled, and usually uncontrollable once begun in earnest. A Second Holocaust is not yet begun - but consider:

• The coalescence noted above
• The rising level of attacks against Jews in Europe
• Ritual murders of Jews in France attracting only official cover-ups (Hat Tip: M. Simon)
• The suppression of the recent EU report on anti-Semitism, and
• Columnists like Hillel Halkin and Daniel Pipes openly wondering if Europe's future will be Judenrein just like the Arab countries.

These are not good trends, to say the least. It's one thing when this kind of madness takes root in a backward civilization like Saudi Arabia's, quite another when it crosses like an airborne virus into the heart of a technological civilization like Europe's.

Along the way, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are becoming less and less separable. I'll have more to say about some of the underlying dynamics on Tuesday - and it may make for uncomfortable reading on both sides of the political spectrum.

RELATED READINGS

• The Democratic Party's Fred Siegel has noticed this same trend, and so has Michael Totten as he reads his AdBusters.

• So why is this hate so important? See Islam 2003: "It's the Hate, Stupid!"

• James C. Bennett, UPI (April 12/03) - Anglosphere: why do they hate us? "it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe...." Also discusses the historic role of Jews in continental European culture, their status as a bellweather, and the effects of their current absence.

• Activism's Onanist Fantasy Ideology. Committed leftists critique the current strain of "activism as ritual worship," disengaged from any connection to actual results. It's part of the cocktail, and the contentless ritual worship parallels strengthen both the "why Idiotarianism..." origins thesis and the idea that the Left's current incarnation is laying the ground for a new far-right.

• Speaking of which, we have The Origins and Meaning of "Idiotarian". How did that word get started, anyway - and what does it really mean? Winds has answers.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * The 101st Air Assault Division has been conducting raids just south of Mosul. * Soldiers from the Stryker Brigade have encountered their first roadside bomb just south of Duluiyah on the Tigris River. * US forces are conducting operations along the Syrian border as well as Samarra in an effort to root out the insurgents. * 31 US soldiers were injured in a car bombing at Tal Afar, near Mosul. * US forces have arrested 41 in part of the investigation into the killing of 7 Spanish intelligence officers on November 29. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is getting up and running, with * American Forces Network (AFN) will begin broadcasting live from Baghdad all throughout this week, featuring everything from news to information on Iraqi culture and language. * Omar over at Iraq the Model provides a chilling account of a Baathist massacre at al-Dujaile in 1982. * The Iraqi Governing Council has voted to establish a war crimes tribunal to prosecute former members of the Baathist government. * The Shi'ite population of Basra (which revolted against Saddam Hussein during the war) is engaging in revenge killings against members of the former regime. This jives with Zeyad's remarks on a similar subject aptly entitled "Halhoola lil Baath al-Samid." * JK: Women in Iraq are demanding a greater role. * The Iraqi Air Force, meanwhile, is being scrapped in favor of pots and pans. INTERNATIONAL STAGE * The Iraqi Governing Council has voted to expel the the Iranian communist organization Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which fought for Saddam Hussein both during and prior to the war. This could serve as a possible means for members of the MEK to be turned over to Iran if they take the Jordanian offer on al-Qaeda seriously. WMD HUNT * Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh has been revealed as the source of the controversial 45 minutes claim that made it into British intelligence dossier on Iraq. The UK newspaper Daily Telegraph takes a look at how al-Dabbagh's claim made it all the way to the top of the British intelligence apparatus. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated December 1, 2003] * And don;t forget the "Toys for Iraq" drive.

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Women, Iran & The Mollahs by "Ahmed Hamze" The trend that is mentioned there is very real and in fact a basic one. Unfortunately for the Islamic government of Iran, women according to Islam and traditions, contrary to what many Muslims would say and argue, are treated like second degree citizens (if not less) but there are simply too many of them and nowadays they have obtained too much education. The prospect of seeing more educated women and consequently a more enlightened next generation has already scared the conservative mollahs... This also applies to other oppressed classes but women seem to be the most powerful! However there is one point worth mentioning here: The Iranian government can easily dodge any existential threat based on human rights by allowing for more personal freedom and injecting fresh oil money into a mercantilist economy to project a false image of prosperity, something that they have done before. For this reason, if one is serious about opposing the principles of the theocratic regime of Iran, one should put human rights and political agendas (national and international) on the same table and all the cards have to be dealt simultaneously. Currently in Iran, from what I hear from wise and observant travelers, people, while aggressively demanding their personal freedoms (civic/economic/cultural), have become totally apathetic to politics. This is the kind of apathy that goes deeper than low voter turnout in the elections... The wealth generated by the "tax-free" (literally) economics and the social decadence in the upper class have become the main objective of many Iranians who have become increasingly less political and more relaxed towards the attitudes of their government as long as it does not interfere with their wishes. Ironically, fundamentalist Islam is using these "sinners" to buy itself a few more years of reign. In fact political apathy might have a rebound effect such that after a while we might see an actual increase in the voter turnout in the Iranian elections (the only elements of democracy, a reminiscent of the pre-Pahlavi constitutional revolution) in favour of those hardliner elements in the Iranian regime, in exchange for an illusion of prosperity. If you ask what is wrong with a bunch of Mollah oligarchs running Iran? Since they will satisfy people; they would not be adventurist in their politics; there would be prosperity for people; they might even leave Israel and the US alone for that matter. It turns out that this question is more than a moral dilemma, the problem lies in the sustainability of such a proposed finality.

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IRAN REPORTS * Jordan's King Abdullah is said to be working on a truce between Iran and the US in which the US will hand over members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq in return for Iran handing over al-Qaeda leaders. This comes after US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher is renewing the call for Iran to turn over any al-Qaeda within its borders. * "Ased Hamze" discusses Iran's coming "Girlquake," and the regime's options for dealing with dissent. * 3 German tourists have been abducted in Iranian Baluchistan, near the Pakistani border. USA HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a Saudi graduate student at the University of Idaho, is under investigation for providing material support to al-Qaeda. * US authorities have revoked the visa of Jaafar Idris, a Wahhabi cleric who is a leading figure among Washington-area Wahhabis. * An associate of Zacarias Moussaoui has been arrested in Minneapolis and is apparently quite chatty with the authorities. THE WIDER WAR * JK: Eyes On Korea regional briefing. The best update you'll find, in the blogosphere or beyond it. * Taking advantage of the recent shifting of al-Qaeda personnel, US forces in Afghanistan have launched the largest ground offensive to date against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Operation Avalanche. * Two Taliban commanders were arrested at Spin Boldak, near the Pakistani border. * Renegade Afghan warlord Bacha Khan Zadran may have been arrested in northern Pakistan. * A Chechen suicide bomber has killed 6 in an attack near Red Square, just a few hundred meters away from the Kremlin. Meanwhile, 4 Russian soldiers were killed on Tuesday in ambush as Chechen terrorists rebels killed a member of the republic's election commission. * Yazid Sufaat, who is suspected of being a major figure within al-Qaeda's WMD program, may be eligible for release soon from Malaysia prison. * Meanwhile, Jemaah Islamiyyah appears to be having an internal debate over whether or not it is acceptable to kill fellow Muslims in terrorist attacks - with both sides of the debate seem to agree that it's okay to kill kufr ... * Members of al-Qaeda affiliate MILF and the communist NPA have attacked the Filippino military at Pantukan. One might wonder whether or not both parties have been informed that secular communist revolutionaries cannot work with Islamist extremists due to ideological conflicts ... * Abu Sayyaf leader Galib Andang, otherwise known as Commander Robot, has been captured by the Filippino authorities in southern Jolo. He also claims to have shared the loot from the $21,000,000 ransom payment he received in 2000. * We try to end on a lighter note if possible. Does this strike anyone else as just a tad odd?

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I've enjoyed watching the building come up, and watching the scaffolding and barricades come down has made an interesting building a wonderful one to drive past. And inside, it's even better. We were in the front row center of the Terrace section (one balcony below the top), in the seats given to the artists - not exactly the pricey seats. But the sound was a million times better than in the old Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and better, to my recollection, than any other U.S. concert hall I've been in (most of the ones in California, New York, and Chicago). And it's beautiful! At a quiet point, someone in the orchestra dropped something - possibly a quarter - and the sound resonated through the hall with amazing clarity. Oh, and the program and chorus was really, really, good as well. I hate boondoggle redevelopment. I criticize the Skybox mentality that impoverishes government to ease the lives of the rich. But I've got to say that when it's done this well, my qualms get left at the door. I know what a quarter of a billion dollars - the cost of the hall - could do for people in this state. But somehow, coming home from there tonight, I never doubted the worth of what had been built. I talked about it before, talking about poet Mark Doty:

I had grown sick of human works, which seemed to me a sum and expression of failure: spoilers, brutalizers of animals and one another, self-absorbed until we couldn't see that we ruined, finally, ourselves - what could we make? An epidemic ran unhalted, The ill circumscribed as worthless and unclean; the promises of change seem hollow, the poor and marginal hopelessly marginal, endlessly poor. I saw no progress, and the steeping ink of this perception colored everything, until I felt surrounded by weakness and limit, and my own energies failed, or were failing, though I tried not to think so. I awoke in Manhattan, just after dawn, in the tunnels approaching Grand Central: a few haunted lamps, unreadable signs. And with a thousand others, Each of us fixed on the fixed point of our destination, whatever connection awaited us, I spilled up the ramp and under the vault and lugged my bag out onto 42nd Street, looking for the Carey Bus. The dawn was angling into the city, A smoky, thumb-smudged gold. It struck first a face, not human, terracotta, on an office building's intricate portico, seeming to fire the material from within, so that the skin was kindled, glowing. And then I looked up: the ramparts of Park Avenue were radiant, barbaric; they were continuous with every city's dream of itself, the made world's angled assault on heaven. ...

"...the made world's angled assault on heaven." yessss...

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This is an issue we began covering here at Winds of Change.NET back in March, with links from our March 4th & March 19th Winds of War editions to these articles in National Review and The Seattle Times (restricted access now, try The St. Petersburg Times instead). By far the best article, however, is Franklin Foer's "Fevered Pitch" in The New Republic, back on Nov. 12, 2001. Unfortunately, it's subscribers-only now, but here's a Yahoo Groups message - a bit hard to read, but it contains the content. The Hill was writing about the growing rift between Gaffney and Norquist over this issue back on February 26, 2003, and on March 19, 2003 a number of conservatives sent Norquist a very sharp letter of rebuke for these activities. None of which seems to have given Norquist pause. Or led to any accountability. As Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) said recently of activities by Sen. Rockefeller et. al. on the House Intelligence Committee: bq. "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both - should be dealt with quickly and severely sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused." Amen - and that has to apply on both sides of the aisle. UPDATE: Here's a FreeRepublic link of Foer's "Fevered Pitch" that's easier to read.

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In Appreciation * JK: Robert's Regional Briefings consistently "go to 11," in Spinal Tap parlance, and are a tremendous asset to this blog. He, and other members of our team, are why this blog is receiving accolades and nominations for awards. Thank you for a consistently outstanding job! (UPDATE: Alright, that tears it. Behind MEtafilter, with stuff like this? I hadn't done this before, but... please follow this link and vote!) North Korea

• Kevin at IA links to a couple of recent pieces on the never ending soap opera that is North Korea, including one about an apparently completed nuke proposal thats currently on its way to Pyongyang via China.
• Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo enters the ugly world of Korea punditry. The Marmot, Junkyard Blog, The Gweilo and Brainysmurf respond.
• North Korea's official news agency, KCNA, hands America the bill for "human and material damage caused by the U.S. imperialists to the south Korean people since it occupied south Korea on September 8, 1945," and in so doing does its best impression of the Third Reich.
• Renowned Korea scholar Bruce Cumings ripped the Bush Administration's North Korea policy in this column in the London Review of Books. I have linked to a number of outstanding responses over at the Marmot's Hole. I also posted an extremely brief response here, although the comments are probably more worth reading.
• Curious about the work of NGOs in North Korea? Read Kirk's review of the book Paved with Good Intentions over at "It Makes A Difference to the Sheep." Yes, it does.
• Mike over at Seeing Eye Blog takes time off from posting pics of hot half-Korean babes and discussing Korean political cartoons to rip apart North Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter for this piece in the Asia Times.
• Are North Koreans getting Internet savvy? Check out this piece in Wired as well.
• In case you were thinking of taking a tour of North Korea's scenic Diamond Mountains, you may wish to read this post by the Big Ho first.
• I shouldn't have to mention this still, but Free North Korea! is chock full of information and analysis concerning events north of the DMZ.

The Neighborhood

• Chinese and Korean scholars fight about ancient history, with possible geopolitical implications in the future.
• American forces in South Korea will redeploy to positions south of the Han River, with the huge Yongsan Garrison in downtown Seoul being moved out of the capital to the Osan-P'yongtaek area. The Korean press reports that talks concerning troop reductions have been put off until the end of next year.
• Richard Halloran reported in the Washington Times that troops from Korea may be sent to Iraq and/or Afghanistan, a report vigorously denied by USFK headquarters in Korea, even as reports surface that USFK will become a regional expeditionary force. This is a highly confusing issue, and those who reside in South Korea are forced to endure an endless stream of contradictory reports on USFK redeployments/reductions.
• Japan to Rumsfeld - Don't be a wimp.

South Korea and Iraq/War on Terror

• Two South Korea civilian engineers were killed by gunmen in Tikrit, Iraq. You can read the Korean press and political reactions here. In response to the attack, there is now talk of dispatching ROK special forces units to Iraq - their fearsome reputation is well-deserved.
• A fact-finding team sent by South Korea's National Assembly came back from Iraq and reported that the security situation was better than they thought (this despite residing in the Baghdad hotel targeted by a rocket attack on November 21), and counseled sending a "unified force" composed of combat and non-combat troops.
• Over at the Marmot's Hole, I take guest columnist Jeon Hyeon-jun to task for a column in the left-leaning Hankyoreh Shinmun.
• A bomb threat forces South Korea to evacuate its Kabul, Afghanistan embassy.

South Korea

• David Scofield discusses whether Seoul is an ally or an arbiter in the Asia Times.
• Donny Rumsfeld paid the southern half of the peninsula a visit - check out Oranckay's weblog for some commentary and links (he has a couple of posts on this, and you're best off typing "Rumsfeld" into his search section).
• In case you were wondering what the bar girls of Seoul's Itaewon entertainment district thought of Rummy's visit, check out this column in the Joongang Ilbo on the subject by Seeing Eye Blog's Mike Ferrin.
• Speaking of bar girls, former President Bill Clinton paid South Korea a visit, too. The Oriental Redneck didn't like what he had to say.
• RIOT!!! Group mayhem seems to have become somewhat of a national pastime in South Korea - check out Jeff in Pusan's excellent posts on the fun - with pics! ("South Korean Demonstrations Spiral Further out of Control", "Buan Riots Out Of Control") And while your at it, take a look at Kevin of IA's post on the same topic ("Buan Residents Laugh at Roh's Get-tough Policy").
• Cathy Hong of the Village Voice contributed a piece on anti-Americanism on South Korean university campuses. Personally, I didn't like it too much (Jeff in Pusan thought it full of fluff, too), but the comments are far more interesting.
• Read all about South Korea's credit card crisis over at Goldbrick in Seoul.
• Jeff in Pusan criticizes the lack of understanding in South Korea concerning the benefits of economic liberalization.
• Kevin at IA tries his best to convey just how messed up things in South Korea can appear with this State of the Union post. And yes, that's Choe Byeong-nyeol, head of the conservative Grand National Party, on a hunger strike.
• Brendon Carr, an American attorney in Seoul, gives his readers much food for thought over at his blog Goldbrick in Seoul. This post on the concept (or lack thereof) of "law" in Korean society, is one that should be read by all.
• For a little insight into the way in which Koreans relate to the rest of the world, check out "The Politics of Uri" over at Cathartidae.
• Norman Bates, welcome to South Korea.
• Yes, she was a he...
• The Big Hominid, in his quest to win the title of Asia's best essayist, has kindly linked to a number of essays of which he is rightfully proud. No blogger in Korea covers religious and cultural issues quite like he does.
• Kimchee GI enters the world of blogging - check out Budaechigae for views on events on the Peninsula from the perspective of an "American-Korean exploring the homeland courtesy of the US Army."

Korean baseball off-season news

• Samsung Lions 1st baseman Lee Seung-yeop, who set the Asian single season record for homers last year with 56 dingers, is getting less attention in the States than he would like. Read Kevin's other posts (1, 2) on this, too.

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On August 16, he sped past a startled Monica Collins, ran a stop sign, and was struck by motorcyclist Randy Scott who died at the scene. He was tried for second-degree manslaughter, and today he was convicted. His conviction won't bring Scott back, and his resignation from Congress was just announced, meaning that whatever follows, Janklow's life has also been derailed. And I'm elated. Because in this tragedy, a basic truth shows up; in this nation the law applies to us all. I have a hard time imagining that Janklow would have been convicted in most nations; the levers of power would have ensured that Scott's family was compensated, but Janklow would have walked away. The U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries would have convicted him. France, nope. Germany, maybe. Italy, maybe. Industrialized Asia or the Third World? Nope. Those countries - the ones that would have convicted him - are the ones we need to seek out as out allies in the years ahead.

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IRAQ BRIEFING * How are we doing in Iraq? Take a look at what the U.S. Army division commanders have to say on the subject. * Reader praktike offers this article about the 101st Airborne's reconstruction efforts, under the excellent leadership of General Petraeus. Note the importance of those CERP funds, now gone. More in the Comments section below. * The question of what happened at Samarra remains unclear, but Jim Henley is staying on top of the story. Check out his reports here, here, here, here and here. * JK: Do we need more troops in Iraq? Yes, says Melana Zyla Vickers, drawing on some historical parallels. But maybe not the ones you think. * Bruce Rolston of Flit offers an analysis of the SAM attack on the DHL Airbus prior to Thanksgiving. * So, what's the full story re: the NY Times barring an Iraqi citizen from his own property and threatening him with violence? Fortunately, there was a blogger on the scene.... * The Kurds claim they have no interest in independence, good news if true, as it removes one potential for significant disruption of the budding Iraqi government. * If the United States hopes to get more assistance from NGO(non-government organizations) in rebuilding Iraq, perhaps it would be a good idea to make it a little easier for them to get out of the Green Zone. Hat tip: Amygdala * For most Americans, Saddam Hussein is very much yesterday's news. But Pejman points out that for people who grew up under Hussein's tyranny, he'll never be gone enough. * The Blair government took a lot of heat for its claim that Iraq could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes. Now an Iraqi Lieutenant Colonels says that the claim was accurate after all, though the weapons weren't quite what we might have expected. Jim Henley isn't impressed with the report, however. * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated Nov. 2, 2003] * Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive! IRAN REPORTS * The students in Iran continue to demonstrate for democratic reform, and they may actually have some affect on Iran's politics in short order. Hat tip: Instapundit. U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * It appears federal authorities have thwarted the biggest domestic terror plot since Oklahoma City, seizing a sodium cyanide bomb that could have spewed a cloud of the noxious chemicals over the Dallas area. * The U.S. and Canada share the longest unguarded border in the world, but that posture may not last much longer. Israel is reporting that they arrested a Canadian Palestinian who was recruited by Hamas in Canada. The Canadian response: criticizing the Israeli ambassador. If that's the best Canada can do to root out terrorists in their very midst, the U.S. is going to have to do a much better job of securing the border. * The inability to pull together disparate pieces of intelligence in time to prevent the September 11th attacks was a direct result of U.S. intelligence agencies' inability or refusal to share information. Phil Carter notes that not much has changed since then. * Authorities and the media assured Americans that the Washington snipers were criminals, not terrorists, and that Islam had nothing to do with the attacks. Accused sniper Lee Malvo might disagree. THE WIDER WAR * Al Qaeda may be feeling another pinch, as Yemen arrested their chief of finances two weeks ago. This arrest highlights the value of allies, and suggests that America still has some help in the war on Islamofascism. * Another airstrike may have caused the U.S. more trouble than it's worth. Nine Afghan children were killed when an A-10 engaged a target they believed was Mullah Wazir, who had bragged about his involvement with attacks on Afghan civilians. * The Taliban continues the fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, wounding approximately 20 Afghans in a Kandahar bazaar with a suicide bomber. * Although Afghanistan is nominally a NATO mission now, the U.S. still supplies more than two-thirds of the troops involved at a time when the U.S. needs all the troops it can find for Iraq rotations. ParaPundit recommends the U.S. pull out of the Balkans to raise the necessary troops, while Phil Carter warns NATO refusal to help in Afghanistan could spell the beginning of the end for the alliance. * After several days of talks, the Palestinians have still failed to reach an agreement with Israel for a cease-fire. * The Geneva Accord is being hailed in some areas as the next great solution to the Israeli-Palestinian war, but Donald Sensing's excellent points out it's nothing more than another fantasy. Across the political aisle, Matthew Yglesias agrees. * But there is some good news from Israel, as it appears the fence they're construction to wall off Israel from the West Bank is already paying dividends. Let's hope the Israeli government pays more attention to those results than to the public disapproval they're receiving over the wall. * For centuries Islamic schools known as madrasas have helped teach young Muslims the fundamentals of Islam. But they're also a source of the terrorists who continue to strike the West whenever they get the opportunity, and it appears that threat won't go away soon. ParaPundit offers some good suggestions for countering the threat, however. * Darren Kaplan pointed out that winning the war against Islamofascism will require us to win the war of ideas. Now Josh Chafetz offers an excellent suggestion of how to do just that: getting copies of signficant democratic works translated into Arabic. If only the State Department read Oxblog. * Islamic bombers may have hit Russia again, killing 36 on a train near Chechnya. Look for a Russian counter in Chechnya in short order. * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. Charles Bronson's claim to fame was his portrayal of a normal citizen who fought back against criminals in the Death Wish films. Now Florida citizens can request their own concealed-carry permit from Charlie himself (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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Militarily, the original justification for settlements was they would provide 24/7 sets of Israeli eyes to assure that there would be no pre-invasion buildup. Between satellite imagery and Predators, that justification seems pretty much evaporated at this point. I have to believe that in the face of constant, low-intensity attacks such as we are seeing now, the settlements cost a great deal more in readiness than they provide. Economically, the Haaretz articles seem to speak for themselves. Politically, I used to think that the slowly growing settlements were a ploy to induce the Arab world to hurry up and negotiate - if they waited too long, there wouldn't be any land left over to make into Palestine. It may be that we're hitting that point now (back to 'Ruthless People' again).

Note that this argument (that the occupation is such a ploy) is supported by a post by David Bornstein in Israpundit:

I propose that settlements be EXPANDED, new ones established and progressively more of Eretz Israel taken back and annexed on a sliding scale of time. Terror attacks will accelerate that process, and further, this policy publicly and aggressively announced. In other words, be good and we won't kill you. The same applies to Hizballah.

The problem, of course, is who will pay.

The newspaper said it had given a team of reporters three months to interview officials, pore over ministry budgets and make calculations. The exercise was filled with frustration, but the conclusion drawn is that since 1967, Israel has spent roughly $10 billion on the settlements. Currently, the annual amount spent on settlements' civilian needs is more than $500 million.

And the answer is that, fundamentally, we in the U.S.do.

U.S. assistance to Israel for fiscal year 2001 includes $1.98 billion in military aid (of which over $1.4 billion was earmarked for procurement from the United States) and economic assistance totaling $840 million.

Note that I don't begrudge a dime of what we give Israel. But I'd like what we spend to be in Israel's and then our interest, as opposed to the settlement policy, which I genuinely believe evolved as follows: Once the West Bank, Golan, and Gaza had been conquered (in a war preempting a massive attack by the Arabs, let's remember) certain forces within Israel wanted to keep them, as a kind of Eretz Israel. I tend to believe that the policy was very much a 'Ruthless People' one, in which by gradually building out a network of settlements, they would make it clear to the Palestinian forces that time was not on their side, and that they needed to settle. For a variety of (mostly ignoble) reasons, the Palestinians refused to take the offer. And so Israel is stuck with a hostage it doesn't want and can ill afford. Clearly, this policy of 'civilian occupation' is economically devastating to Israel (which we mask by loaning or granting the necessary funds). I'm hard pressed to believe that it isn't militarily devastating as well, in the context of a terror war (as opposed to a conventional one). The burden of securing this scattering of small towns is immense. From a Haaretz interview with reservists:

Samocha: "The energy that goes into maintaining `normal life' there is inconceivable, not to mention the calculation of the economic cost versus the benefit. I'm not talking about the cost in the narrow sense - Doing a crude calculation, we found that the direct cost of the month that we served in Netzarim is NIS 12 million. Add to that the indirect costs and the sums are tremendous, I'm talking about the total cost of sanctifying the residency of 60 families, whose lives are in danger, and the lives of the soldiers guarding them, while gravely harming the lives of the Palestinians." Becker: "The issue isn't money, but how we Israelis look within a society that allows the illusion of Netzarim to exist."

'The illusion of Netzarim.' I certainly couldn't put it any better. We in the U.S. foot the bill for this. While our support for Israel's right to exist securely cannot be challenged, I do believe that a full and frank discussion with the Israeli government on one simple point - the settlements must not be expanded by one house, and the illegal settlements must be permanently dismantled - until there is a final peace settlement with the Palestinians, or until we give up on peace, and frankly state that Israel has conquered and will keep the West Bank and Gaza.

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The trip was sponsored by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based activist group that opposed the U.S. invasion and is eager to spread its antiwar message. None of the parents had formal military clearance to visit their soldier children.

In the Tennessean, another mother goes to visit:

Many of the soldiers serving in Iraq volunteer to help in hospitals, schools and with athletics and other areas where they feel they can make a difference. Holly's unit has a lot of fun helping at the Baghdad Zoo, where more than half of its 800 animals were stolen, killed or eaten by looters after the invasion. Some of the unit found a camel that had been stolen from the zoo. They put it into the back of the Humvee and hauled it back. The unit works closely with the South African group Thula Thula, which has come to Baghdad to improve conditions at the zoo. Holly and Vanessa took Raoul and me to the zoo, where we saw parents and children strolling the grounds.

and

I was on a 12-day trip to Iraq and Kuwait to visit my daughter, Maj. Holly Meeker, an Army reservist who was deployed in February with the 372 Mobile Public Affairs Detachment based in Nashville. Operation Iraqi Freedom is her second war. And mine.

I'm coming to the conclusion that somehow Iraq has become a sandy mirror where our journalists - the eyes and ears of our polity - see what they set out to find. The activists find unhappy Iraqis; the military moms find peaceful families strolling through the zoo. Somehow, in this era of instant communication, the fog of war is thicker than ever.

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"Israel understands only the language of violence and what we are doing is aimed at liberating the land, ousting the occupation and preserving the holy sites. We can't accept a hudna similar to the one we had in June. The Palestinian people want their freedom and independence and Israel must pay the price for a hudna by halting the construction of the fence and settlements." "Our final response is that we are not ready to declare a new ceasefire,'' said Muhammed Nazzal, a member of the Hamas delegation to the talks. "Hamas rejects the hudna and won't accept it, because our reading of the current political situation shows that the Americans and the Zionists are in deep crisis because of the continuation of the resistance in Iraq and Palestine." He said there was a wide gap between Hamas and Fatah on the shape and content of the proposed truce. "This is a very big issue concerning the future of the Palestinian people," Nazzal said.

So, in case you're wondering when I do my post later on the Israeli settlements, why it is that I don't call for the immediate formation of a Palestinian state. It has nothing to do with this statement from the same interview:

Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin has told a German magazine that a Jewish state could be established in Europe. In interview excerpts slated for publication on Monday in Der Spiegel, Yassin opposed a two-state solution in which a Palestinian state would coexist next to Israel. "That would not work," he said. "The Israelis claim 80 per cent of the territory and will only let us have 20 per cent. It would only be an interim solution." Asked if there was no place at all for a Jewish state, he said, "They could set up a state in Europe." Yassin also rejected the Geneva Accord, which was hammered out between Israeli politicians and Palestinian representatives. "That plan is worse than the Oslo one, because it abandons the right of return for the refugees," he said.

On a more local front, an interesting article in the regional section of today's L.A. Times (intrusive registration, use 'laexaminer'/'laexaminer'):

Taking the Intifada to the Football Field What could be more American? Dozens of young men in Orange County have planned a football tournament for the New Year's weekend in Irvine. But this gathering of Muslim American athletes on the gridiron - they say a first for Southern California - is being flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct by religious leaders dismayed by some of the team's names. Monikers for the flag-football teams include Mujahideen, Intifada and Soldiers of Allah and are accompanied on the league's Web site, http://muslimfootball.com, by logos of masked men, some with daggers or swords.

There's a dialog going on about it within the local Muslim community.

An organizer of the Jan. 4 event, geared for American Muslims in their teens and 20s, said the names are a sign of football bravado and a show of support for Muslims in the Middle East. "A lot of the kids on our team are from Palestinian origin," said Tarek Shawky, Intifada's 29-year-old captain and quarterback. "We are in solidarity with people in the uprising. It's about human rights and basic freedoms." "I think they should be more sensitive and show respect to other people's sensitivities," said Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County and a national Muslim leader. "The words themselves do not have bad meanings, but people associate them with what's going on in the world around them."

Personally, I'm more than a little tired of the culture of sensitivity that we live in. That means that while I'm not happy with the names, and less happy with the political statements being made by the youth who have chosen them, it's not a terribly big deal. I will, however, wait with bated breath for Jackie Goldberg to weigh in on the need for cultural sensitivity. It won't happen. Because offense can only be taken by the powerless, of course.

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But, there is an ad campaign which will hopefully do what the news media won't. You can watch it at this website. Treasurer Angelides is sponsoring it. ... ANGELIDES: Well, here's what I'm saying. What he told the voters is that he was going to balance the budget, protect education, health care for kids, and he was going to balance the budget while doing it. And all I'm saying, Judy, is he ought to try to do that first. And merely borrowing more and more money and putting the state further and further into debt, and sending the bill to our children, is not what he promised and not the right thing to do. So come January 10, he's required to have a balanced budget plan. We ought to see it. Btu he ought not be asking to borrow $15 billion plus without a plan on how to balance the budget. He doesn't have one.

Damn, this pisses me off. Personally, I don't yet know if Ahnold will be a good governor or not; I do continue to think, from my conversations with friends in Sacramento, that the shock of his election was a good thing. But this attack is pure and simple B.S. Let's go through it quickly, from three perspectives. First, I really do wish that someone with business experience would talk about why borrowing by a troubled entity - whether a household, company, or state - can sometimes be necessary. Since that apparently hasn't happened, I'll nominate myself. A big part of my business is dealing with troubled projects; some of them are actual companies, and some are troubled real-estate deals. The first thing you do is to assure sufficient liquidity to see through the time necessary to come up with an orderly plan. A company has bills due, and needs to keep operations going while you figure out how to fix it or close it in an orderly fashion (thereby retaining as much value for the creditors and stakeholders as possible). To do that, one of the first things you do to a cash flow projection, and to sit down with the banks to figure out where the cash will come from. It is often at this point that you wind up filing Chapter 11, because only in a post-11 environment will new loans be forthcoming (they get priority over the old loans). Similarly, California's budget isn't going to be changed in 45 days. And to bust Ahnold for not having a new, balanced, and politically palatable budget in 60 or even 120 days is unrealistic. The test is whether the budget process is moving closer to reality, and we won't know that for at least a year. Meanwhile, we have bills to pay, and the reality is that we're going to have to go to the bank to get the cash to do so. I'm not even sure this is the last bond issue that we'll require for this purpose (note that tax revenues are improving, but it remains touch-and-go). Second, in the specific context of the California budget; Davis and the Legislature sold about $10B in general-revenue bonds as a way of shuffling off the spending crisis. Those bonds are being challenged in court, and it is not unlikely that they will be found to have been illegally issued. This bond issue will cover (I believe) those bonds (retroactively legalizing them by getting authority from the voters) plus the additional car-tax-cut deficit, plus a little something in the kitty as noted above. Finally, Atrios neglects to note (he's not from here, so it may just be lack of knowledge) that Phil Angelides is the leading D candidate for Governor in the next cycle, and that he's overtly begun the campaign with this attack. I thought that he would have been a good candidate to run in Part 2 of the recall (along with Leon Panetta), and probably would have voted for him. A disclaimer - I knew him pretty well when I worked in Sacramento a long time ago, didn't think much of him then, but thought he'd grown substantially in his role as Treasurer. The posturing he's doing now may cause me to rethink my support. He blessed the bond issue Davis & Co. did (although he was critical), and his fiscal solution relies, unsurprisingly, on raising the taxes on well-off Californians. I've discussed earlier why that isn't necessarily a good idea.

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... Our own government made the UK the only country in Europe to derogate from the European convention on human rights in order to rush through the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act. It has used it to imprison 14 foreign nationals for up to two years without charging them or bringing them to trial. They face the prospect of remaining in detention indefinitely on the basis of secret evidence that they have not been allowed to see and therefore cannot challenge. These "security measures" are undermining the credibility and viability of basic legal safeguards. The clampdown on the right to asylum has seen the Australian government's "Pacific solution" set of policies enable it to hold for months scores of people, who have been recognised as refugees, in detention centres - a policy branded by a UN delegation as "offensive to human dignity". Similarly, the new asylum bill in the UK threatens to criminalise those seeking asylum.

See, it appears to be like this. Unless we are perfect, anyone else has every right to do exactly what they will - and we of course can't be critical. This is a consequence of that particular blindness that we seem to have nowadays in which everything bad becomes equivalently bad; it's a kind of binary morality. Sadly, I live in an analog world, as do the rest of the real people I know. Ms. Allen, may I introduce you to your US counterpart, William Schulz?

Certainly I have argued within Amnesty that in the face of genocide, such as in Rwanda, the organization is utterly remiss not to take a position in favor of military intervention.

At some point we can spend our energy worrying about relabelling audio jacks labelled 'master/slave', or about liberals who criticize team names using racial epithets - or we can look at countries that are being looted by kleptocrats, and where the people are starving as a result. It seems like an easy decision to me.

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Bush ought to be losing on domestic issues, much as his father did. From the left, a substantial minority of the electorate are opposed to much of what he's doing on principle. From the right, a growing number are opposed to much of his domestic and fiscal policy in principle. They ought to abandon him, leaving him with the corporate-welfare queens and those National Enquirer-reading voters who base their votes purely on the number of brand impressions that have been bought. But there're two problems with that. One is domestic, and I've pretty much beaten it into the ground. The cosmopolitan left has become the engine of the Democratic Party, and for them, love of country is essentially subsumed to a broader vision of interest-group alliance and worldwide bureaucratic order. The average American, who ought to be for the Democrats if voting a paycheck, can't bridge the social gap, and isn't buying the international vision. The other is foreign, and is simply this: "How do we respond to 9/11, and ensure that there won't be another one?" I hope this doesn't require any explanation. The Democrats are beginning understand that they need to form a coherent vision, but I believe that it gets stuck in two areas - the assumption of easy multilateralism, and overreliance on law-enforcement models. So we wind up with a bunch of potential voters who ought to be in play, but aren't because they have two top-level issues (values and defense) that the Democrats haven't yet been able to neutralize. Will I support Bush? It depends. I don't want to. But I think that the damage he can do in his effed-up domestic policy is less than the damage that can be done by an effed-up foreign policy. I'll take a large national debt and a looming class war over a real nuclear war any day of the week. And while I'm a coastal cosmopolitan, I still cringe when my wealthy fellow Angelinos get together, raise millions, and try and explain how, because they make television shows or manage pension funds, they know so much more about the world than "guys with Confederate flags on their trucks." So I'm waiting and watching, and I doubt that I'm alone. UPDATE: Yglesias responds.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * The 82 Airborne Division has conducted 16 raids and arrested 25 in al-Anbar. * The 101 Airborne Division has captured 3 al-Qaeda operatives, but as Fred Pruitt notes, most al-Qaeda operatives present in Iraq are likely to be middle management variety with the cannon fodder belonging to local affiliate groups like Ansar al-Islam or al-Jamaa al-Salafiyyah. * The Washington Times is reporting that the US military is holding foreign fighters from Syria in a huge complex simply known as "the Cage." The Times also suggests that the cannon fodder among foreign fighters are being replaced by more experienced operatives, likely members of al-Qaeda loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi in my assessment. * Geostrategy Direct (via Rantburg) is reporting that the Saudis have largely refused to police their northern border, leaving it wide open for Saudi jihadis to head north to fight against US forces. * US forces are keeping a tight rein on Saddam Hussein's birthplace of al-Owja and the dictator's hometown of Tikrit. * Saad Mohammed al-Douri, an aide (and relative?) to suspected Baathist insurgency leader Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has been captured in Hawijah along with a former Iraqi general and a Baathist youth leader. * Recent intelligence (from al-Douri's aide?) has enabled the US to determine the structure of the Iraqi insurgents: 8-12 subdivisions, with some subdivisions having as many as 100 fighters. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * The Washington Post looks at the dangers of losing the media war in Iraq, something that Iraqi blogger Alaa noted over at the Messopotamian back on November 9 and had some trenchant suggestions for how to rectify the problem. * Iraqi blogger Ays is thanking Jeff Jarvis for his kind words to the ever-growing family of Iraqi blogs. * Four massive busts of Saddam Hussein are finally coming down from Republican Palace in Baghdad, yet another sign that the former strongman isn't coming back. * The Iraqi Governing Council appears to have sided with a US plan over the objections of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Shawn over at Arx Americana thinks this is a good thing and I have to admit that I think writing off Sistani as some kind of a theocrat is a mistake given both his disengagement with politics and his refusal to allow Muqtada Sadr to hijack Iraqi Shi'ism for his own personal agenda. * Here's yet another example of the reconstruction efforts that are being carried out in Iraq, this time in Baghdad. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * Slain Japanese diplomat Katsuhiko Oku wrote in his diary that his reluctant countrymen should stand firm in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. * Spanish intelligence believes that killing of 7 Spanish agents in Iraq was the work of Iraq traitors and connected the killings to the assassination of Jose Antonio Bernal, who was shot last month in Baghdad. * The Pentagon has decided to start paying soldiers' travel expenses as means of bolstering morale. WMD HUNT * Saddam Hussein planned to set up a full production line for North Korean missiles based in Syria nearly two years prior to the war according to Iraqi files and the testimony of former regime officials, though deal appears to have fizzled. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated April 1, 2003]

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* Papers may be submitted in any of five topic areas: (1) budget and tax policy; (2) water policy; (3) housing and/or transportation policy; (4) energy policy; and (5) education policy. * Papers will be judged primarily on the extent to which they provide concise, well- substantiated, concrete ideas for overcoming political and financial barriers to Opportunity Economics in California. Opportunity Economics refers to the notion that economic growth is a crucial precondition for expanding equal opportunity for all, and also that such expansions of opportunity promote long-term prosperity. For more information, see ?Building the Opportunity Economy,? at http://www.hopestreetgroup.org/publications.htm. * Five winners shall be chosen, one for each of the five topic areas. A grand prize winner shall be selected from among the five winning papers, and will receive a cash award of $2,500. A second prize winner shall also be selected from among the five winning papers, and will receive $1,000. The other three winning authors will each receive $500. * The grand prize winner will have the opportunity to present his or her paper at a seminar sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.

Check it out. I'm continually impressed by the level of dialog in the comments to this blog. If you're a reader here, go write something then submit it. Maybe I'll even get motivated to write something new.

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* Although the war on terrorists in Africa has been largely fought alongside the military and police of allied nations, it's important to remember that terrorists cannot operate effectively without support from states. Caudia Rosett explains why Qaddafi is dangerous (first of all to his own people), and questions the wisdom of softening US policy toward Libya. Zimbabwe * Head Heeb reports that a shadowy rebel group calling itself the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement has vowed to remove Mugabe by force. AfricaBlog weighs the costs and benefits of a hypothetical armed rebellion against the ZANU-PF regime. * Meanwhile, several African heads of state go out of their way to defend Mugabe, make excuses for his thuggish behavior, and otherwise ignore the plight of the Zimbabwean people. In Africa, this sophisticated, nuanced policy is known as "quiet diplomacy." The rest of us call it appeasement. * And in case you've forgotten why Mugabe is worth removing, here are several ideas. Liberia * On the other side of the continent, another tyrant goes unpunished for his crimes, however, the recent War on Terror spending bill may have included $2 million to help bring Charles Taylor to justice. * Typically, this bounty was denounced as a blatant example of "state-sponsored terrorism." In the real world terrorism refers to violence targeted at civilians, not attempts to arrest an indicted war criminal. Uganda * daudi notes that the war against terrorists in northern Uganda shows little progress. AfricaBlog concurs. * Mostly Africa reports that in a new effort to defeat the LRA rebels, the Ugandan government is now employing "community militias." The new initiative has shown some signs of success. Ivory Coast * France's military intervention in the Ivory Coast took another blow this month with the apparent early demise of the once-celebrated Marcoussis Accords. * Believing that they now have the strength to defeat the rebels militarily, pro-government supporters are now telling French soldiers (very rudely) to leave Ivory Coast immediately. Instapundit has the story here and here. * JK: Winds of Change, meanwhile, can teach you how to say "quagmire" in French. Finally * The situation in Congo remains far from stable, but this surprisingly hopeful article from the Washington Post shows that some progress has been made toward forming a new government. * JK: Tacitus has a post on Rwandan Islam, which is growing quickly. When you read it, you'll understand why. * JK: That post builds on his East Africa Report, an early journal entry from his ongoing trip there. * If you feel like you still need more Africa-related blogging, you can check out BlogAfrica for more than sixty blogs (and counting!) about Africa from all over the world.

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There is a veritable jungle of regulations, rules and practices in the government contracting world. Acquisition specialists who work for the federal government undergo extensive training and must traverse that jungle on foot each day. Companies wanting to do business with DOD or other federal agencies must also make their way through the undergrowth. Our tour will be easier - we'll be flying over this terrain, sometimes climbing high to see the lay of the land, sometimes coming in close to look at some particularly important details on the ground. Ready? Okay, let's go. Please ensure your seat belts are buckled and your tray tables are in their upright and locked positions, and give your attention to the flight attendant at the front of the cabin as the pilot prepares the plane for takeoff! Introduction Welcome aboard. We will be making this journey in three stages. In a few minutes we will be climbing up to get a high-altitude look at the people involved in defense contracting, the regulations that govern it and the process that is followed when the federal government buys things or services. Your tour guide will point out the main sights and and the key people involved in defense contracting. Then we'll land, refuel and answer any questions you might have. During stage 2 of our trip we'll drop down to a lower altitude so that you can have a chance to see the various kinds of contracts that can be awarded to companies. It looks as if we'll be having fine weather with good visibility, so you all will be able to get a good glimpse at how prices and profits are decided in defense contracts - and by whom. After that it will be time for another refueling break. On the final leg of our tour, we'll be over Halliburton country. If we're lucky, we'll get a glimpse of that fabled Iraq contract you all have heard about. Sometimes we can see Bechtels and even local subcontractors on that part of the trip, so keep your cameras out and your eyes peeled! Your tour guide has traveled in Defense Contractstan in several roles, mostly as a Bidder / Winner (and occasionally, a non-winner) of contracts but also on several occasions as part of the support team for the Government Side. One caution - the local rules in Contractstan change from time to time. But the main roads and the terrain are pretty well-defined. Relax and enjoy the trip! FAR Out It all starts with the Federal Acquisition Regulations and their offspring, the Defense FAR Supplements. The FAR/DFARS are the federal law that governs Department of Defense contracting. They spell out the process which Defense agencies must use to solicit bids, award contracts and manage the execution of those contracts by awardees. Also crucial to contracting is the defense budget passed by Congress. This starts with creation of the Presidential budget. Each executive branch agency submits detailed requests to the Presidential budget, and these in turn will be modified in dialogue with White House officials until the budget is finalized and sent as a request to the House of Representatives. Congress will then debate the requested budget and pass the spending authorizations which may, or may not, match the President's requests. Once passed, the defense spending authorization bill allows DOD to expend funds for various line items in the authorization. This means, for instance, that DOD cannot move money intended for troop salaries to pay for a weapons program, unless Congress explicitly approves. The Acquisition Process DOD and other federal agencies buy many things and hire companies to perform many services. Some of these, such as toilet paper, pens, and janitorial service, are purchased using a straightforward process. Office space might be rented and items such as toilet paper are purchased through the General Services Administration through a bidding process. The specifications of the required items are stated and generally the contract is awarded on the basis of price, although other considerations such as a willingness to warehouse the items might be important as well. A much more complicated process is necessary for professional services, the development of technologies and weapons systems and similar high-end efforts. These are items and services for which there is no "off the shelf" product or solution to hand. In these cases, the agency begins by developing an acquisition package. The acquisition package, which may grow to be hundreds or even thousands of pages long, documents the government's requirements for a new product or service. An analysis will usually be made of existing solutions and why they do not meet the current need. Detailed specifications will be drawn up, especially for technology solutions such as software programs, new weapons systems, etc. Cost analysts will attempt to estimate the price which the government will probably need to pay to acquire this system or service. One important part of the acquisition package is a list of the criteria (and their relative importance) which will be used to evaluate proposals and select the company who will win the contract to do this work. For instance, in the early stages of a new technology, technical creativity may be a top priority. In the development of a fighter aircraft that is to go into production for active deployment, other factors such as cost, ease of manufacturing and ease of maintenance and the management team's experience in building similar aircraft will be weighted more highly. Once the acquisition package has been completed, and assuming that the agency's line item budget appears to be adequate for the estimated cost, a Request for Proposals will be drawn up and advertised in the Commerce Business Daily. In addition, a Source Selection Authority and a Contracting Officer are named. (More on these below) The RFP states the detailed specifications for the product or service required, along with the information that bidders must provide in order to be considered for a potential contract. Generally, proposals have three main sections: the technical proposal (what the bidder proposes to do), the management proposal (how the bidder will organize and staff the management team that will run the contract if they win it, and why their previous experience makes it credible to think they can do this work successfully) and the cost proposal. We'll look at cost issues in Part 2 of this series. For now, we only need to note that companies or teams of companies spend a great deal of time and money responding to major RFPs, so most will only submit proposals when they think they are competitive. And, of course, the government agency has also spent a good deal of time and energy developing the acquisition package and drafting the RFP. Prior to the release of the RFP, and at every stage thereafter, government lawyers review the process to ensure that the RFP and the agency's actions conform to the DFARS and are being fairly executed. These lawyers report through a different chain of command than the program office that issues the RFP - both in theory and in practice they are independent of the Source Selection Authority and the Contracting Officer involved in this procurement. The Key Players on the Government Side The Source Selection Authority is a senior government executive or military officer who will make the final selection of the winner from among those who submitted proposals. The Contracting Officer is a career civilian who will actually execute the contract between the government and the winning company and will administer the contract while it is in effect. Each of these people are supported by a team of other government officials and often by a Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance contractor as well. For medium and large contracts, the SSA must convene an advisory Source Selection Board whose recommendation the SSA nearly always takes. This board may call on a SETA contractor to provide specialized technical or cost analysis during their deliberations, but the SETA has no decision role and also may not bid on this or similar contracts themselves. High profile companies that play a SETA role include the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) such as MITRE, Rand and Aerospace Corp. Written records are kept of the SSB's meetings and a written justification is filed by the SSA to support the choice of the company to receive the contract award. The Contracting Officer usually does not have direct technical expertise needed to evaluate the technical performance of a contractor him or herself. A Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (usually a military officer) is named to provide this expertise and to advise the CO as to the adequacy of the contractor's efforts once the contract has been awarded. The COTR is one member of the government's Program Office, the team that drew up the acquisition package and which will oversee the contract's execution. The Key Players on the Contractor Side The winning bidder will designate a senior executive as the Program Manager for the contract. The PM has both budget and technical authority over the activities that the company undertakes in performing on the contract. A program management office will be formed to track costs and schedules and submit required reports and invoices to the government. The FAR/DFARS are very detailed and specific regarding how this information must be determined and reported, so great care must be given to this activity. If a team of companies submitted the proposal jointly, one of them will be the prime contractor and will receive the contract from the government. The others will be subcontractors and contract with the prime to do specified portions of the work. The prime's Program Manager is then responsible for the performance of the entire team. For many defense contracts, prime contractors are required to subcontract a given percentage of the work to minority- or woman-owned small businesses. Pit Stop As this brief overview suggests, defense contracting is a complex process. Over the last 10-15 years, DOD has proposed and Congress has approved several mechanisms which allow the government to reduce the overhead of procuring high-end products and services while still ensuring that contracts are awarded fairly and executed properly. We'll take a look at some of these in the second part of this 3 part series. After we refuel and stretch our legs, we'll resume our tour with a more detailed look at the types of contracts that can be awarded. We'll also see just how - and by whom - pricing and profits are established in Defense Contractstan.

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They're united by a desire to shoot the same messenger.

Staring at their shattered idols, they all blame the same set of demons for the destruction of their gods: capitalism, modernity, the bourgeois mentality. And what do you get when you cross all 3? Symbolically, you get Jews... and you get America.

If they could but kill their god's destroyers, perhaps their gods could live again and fulfill the glorious prophecies foretold. The prophecies they were cheated out of. As I said in an April 19, 2002 exchange with MuslimPundit:

"A culture that sees nothing new in the world beyond the idols of its doctrine can only lash out in rage when those idols are cracked. For those idols carry their very identity, and the loss of identity leads inexorably to violence. This characteristic is not unique to Islam, and can just as easily be seen on any "progressive" university campus.

Which brings up an interesting point. Until now, conservatives have seen the (one way) sympathy and winking between the university's radical left and Islamist jihadists as ideological in nature: a pinch of Marxism, 2 tablespoons of reflexive anti-colonialism, a quart of victimization politics as a sop to the failure of their doctrines to create anything but brutal slums and pest-holes.

Maybe we were wrong. Maybe the real bond is not ideological, but cultural in nature. Facing their cracked idols, lashing out at the common messenger of their failure, these two movements agree only to borrow what they can from each other in order to wound the common object of their hate. America is surely the most prominent messenger. Israel, with no oil but a per capita purchasing power twice that of Saudi Arabia, is another."

Instapundit notes that this may not be the wisest choice of enemies. To which I reply: neither wisdom nor rationality are part of this equation.

Trent Telenko notes, correctly, that the most reliable covariant around the world for unreasoning hatred of America is becoming anti-Semitism - and vice versa. And so we watch as fascism, the radical left, and Islamism all meld together in an ooze of apologetics for murder and rabid denunciation of their common enemy.

Hence, "idiotarianism." That its proponents are largely immune or even ideologically hostile to rational thought is demonstrated, clearly, every day.

Are you paying attention? You should be. Know thine enemy, and learn to recognize them. They certainly recognize their enemies, and in case y'all hadn't noticed, we're it. Worse, there's nothing we can do to change that, short of adopting their Marxist or Islamofacist theocracy. Nothing. Which leaves us with just one option: win.

Pointing this out hardly cheapens discourse. Indeed, it's essential to intelligent discussion of what we're seeing.

Besides which, I love the label. It fits. Especially after we've spent the last 70 years demonstrating and documenting the inevitable trail of futility and poverty, and the oceans of blood these ideologies have left are everywhere they've been tried. In the 1930s, one might (barely) have had ignorance as a valid defense. No longer.

As we've been reminded on 9/11 and since, these ideas have real-world consequences.

Defeating and discrediting these ideas and those who promulgate them, and winning what Armed Liberal calls "The War on Bad Philosophy," is as important as any military action in the War on Terror. Maybe more so, if you're thinking on a civilizational scale.

I know which side of that fight I'm on. How about you?

--- UPDATES ---

• Porphyrogenitus writes a similar post that provides additional backup and makes some very cogent points, as he shines a bright light on the pro-Palestinian movement. Since these groups featured so prominently in the neo-nazi spam of "Exxibit #24,349," it's a sort of double synchronicity.

• Inoperable Terran suggests the term "Axis of Dumbass." Objectively true, but insufficiently catchy.

See also...

• The Origins and Meaning of "Idiotarian" How did that word get started, anyway - and what does it really mean? Winds has answers.

• Activism's Onanist Fantasy Ideology. Committed leftists critique the current strain of "activism as ritual worship," disengaged from any connection to actual results. It's part of the cocktail, and the ritual worship parallels strengthen this post's thesis.

• Anti-Globalization, Anti-Semetic, Anti-American. Adds some chilling examples highlighting the reality of the sharing going on between Islamist theocrats, neo-Nazis, and neo-Marxists. The Democratic Party's Fred Siegel has noticed, and so has Michael Totten as he reads his AdBusters. It all builds on the core thesis in "Hating America, Hating Israel" - ever hear the one about the 2 waiters...?

• James C. Bennett, UPI (April 12/03) - Anglosphere: why do they hate us? "it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe...." Also discusses the historic role of Jews in continental European culture, their status as a bellweather, and the effects of their current absence.

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akp.no amnesty.org apk2000.dk boikottisrael.no books.dreambook.com caat.org.uk dkp-ml.dk electronicIntifada.net enar-eu.org euforthepeople.tripod.com f24.parsimony.net f6.parsimony.net framtidenskultur.se friends-partners.org global.indymedia.org.au groups.yahoo.com hebron.com home.bip.net home.online.no home8.inet.tele.dk HumanRights.org icare.to indictsharon.net institutkurde.org IntifadaOnline.com javascript.nu Kurdinfo.com lalabor.org myweb.vector.ch pub.alxnet.com radiorobinhood.fi ukar.org w1.858.telia.com webcom.com wpb.be 216.230.204.167 64.226.129.19 911pi.com aaargh.vho.org abbc.com Abunimah.org ADC.org addameer.org adelaideinstitute.org adsum.it afrikan.i-dentity.com aftonbladet.se againstbombing.com againstbombing.org ageramotkriget.olydiga.net Ahram.org.Eg air-photo.com Al-Awda.org.uk Al-Ayyam.com alaqsaintifada.org AlHaq.org aljazira.it alkhilafah.info allthatremains.com alnakba.org AlQuds.edu altermedia.info alternativenews.org americanfreepress.net americanstateterrorism.com amin.org amnesty.org answerla.org antifakomitee.de antiimperialista.com antikrig.org antipredazione.org antiwar.com antorcha.org apc.org.nz apfn.org Arabhra.org asile.org aztlan.net b2g2.com Badil.org baha-cartoon.net banthebomb.org barnesreview.org bayanorg.pilnet.com belgium.indymedia.org bilderberg.org blaskan.nu boikottisrael.no bollettino.it bolshevik.org bop2004.org boycottbush.net bushspeaks.com bushwatch.net caabu.org caat.org.uk cactus48.com cassiopaea.org ccmep.org che-lives.com che.playagiron.org chicagoantiwar.org christiangallery.com cilicia.com clajadep.hpg.ig.com.br codoh.com compuserb.com connection.se converge.org.nz courttv.com coventrysocialistparty.freeserve.co.uk covertaction.org cpa.org.au cpnpeecp.org csrp.org dailycatholic.org danpal.dk dci-pal.org deiryassin.org democracynow.org den-svenske.com deoxy.org derechos.org dfn.org diaspora-net.org digilander.iol.it dkp-ml.dk domino.un.org e-jihad.net eandgcomputers.com edwardjayepstein.com el-comandante.com electronicintifada.net electroniciraq.net elevermotkrig.nu ender.indymedia.org english.jinbo.net ericblumrich.com ety.com euromedrights.net euskal-herritarrok.org ezln.org fair.org farc-ep.org fateh.net fiiq.qc.ca forisociali.org fpp.co.uk freebarghouti.org freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com freepeltier.org freesaj.org.uk freespeech.org freethefive.org fsrn.org gagarama.de geocities.com globalfire.tv globalresearch.ca greenleft.org.au guardian.co.uk guerilla.hypermart.net guestbookdepot.com hanitzotz.com hem.passagen.se hereinreality.com highspeedart.com hlt-palestine.org hoffman-info.com holywar.org home.earthlink.net home.online.no home.wanadoo.nl hotboards.com htmlgear.lycos.com humanista.hu humboldt1.com hussamkhader.com iacenter.org iap.org icdsm.org images.ucomics.com independent.org ingenkrig.no intellex.com internationalanswer.org IntifadaOnline.com inverta.com.br io.com irishantiwar.org irsm.org israel-state-terrorism.org israelshamir.net it.geocities.com italiapalestina.it jca.apc.org jeninjenin.org jfkmontreal.com johnpilger.com jonathanpollard.org jurist.law.pitt.edu jvpnet.com kcna.co.jp kinderusa.org kommentar.org kommunisten-online.de Kurdinfo.com kurdistan.org labournet.org.uk law.umkc.edu lawsociety.org.uk lcr-rouge.org legitgov.org leninist-current.revolte.net libertad.de lpage.com mailman.t0.or.at marcel-lefebvre-tam.com marxists.org mathaba.net mctv.ne.jp medialies.com members.cox.net members.freespeech.org members.spree.com members.surfeu.fi members.terra.net.lb members.tripod.com mercury.guestworld.tripod.lycos.com MERIP..org mideastchamber.com mideastfacts.com miftah.org millions4mumia.org motherearth.org movimentgraffitti.org mugu.com mujweb.cz mumia.org nadir.org najdeh.de natvan.com nejtilkrig.dk news.bbc.co.uk news.tahrir.net nilemedia.com nkusa.org noalaguerra.org nodo50.org nomorebushit.net normanfinkelstein.com norrkopingmotkrig.webbsida.com nowarforisrael.com october22.org omct.org omroep.nl on.starblvd.net opensecrets.org orient.art.pl ostara.org oz.net palestina.com.mx palestina.no palestinakomiteen.no palestine-france.com palestine-info.co.uk palestine-un.org PalestineCenter.org palestinechronicle.com palestinegd.fi palestinemonitor.org PalestineRemembered.com palkom.com palsolidarity.org passia.org pathfinder.com pbs.org PchrGaza.org pcrf.net peaceact.jca.apc.org petitiononline.com philosophie.org phrmg.org planet.edu pmwatch.org pna.net pnews.org politicalgraveyard.com prc.org.uk proletaren.se propagandamatrix.com protest.net prwatch.org psan.net ptb.be ptimes.org pub.alxnet.com pub26.bravenet.com public-action.com pubweb.acns.nwu.edu rami.tv rationalenquirer.org rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk realchange.org redbetances.com reseauvoltaire.net revolusjon.no rightofreturn.org ruf-ch.org russgranata.com sana.org sarbedaran.50megs.com seeingred.com serendipity.magnet.ch shaml.org sinnfein.ie site.voila.fr skrewdriver.org.uk sniper-records.net socialpolitik.com solidaritydesign.com soundofegypt.com speaktruthtopower.org sramota.com stop-fascism.org stop-us-military-aid-to-israel.net stopaidtoisrael.com stoppakriget.nu stoppakriget.webhop.net stopwar.org.uk sustain-campaign.org sweetliberty.org takebackthemedia.com tamilnet.com tamkeen.org tari.org tarpley.net tcaswi.org tfrebell.se thejerichomovement.com theunjustmedia.com thirdworldtraveler.com this.is titan.guestworld.tripod.lycos.com tmfife.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk transnationale.org trife.com uffp.org ukar.org un.org uni-klu.ac.at unitedforpeace.org us.geocities.yahoo.com user.domaindlx.com users.cgiforme.com users.otenet.gr users3.cgiforme.com ussliberty.org valet.nu vanguardnewsnetwork.com vanunu.freeserve.co.uk verity.nu vho.org vicpeace.org viequeslibre.org viva.palestyna.pl voy.com w1.523.telia.com w1.858.telia.com wafa.pna.net wage-peace.org warprofiteers.com wclac.org wco.com web.domaindlx.com web11.superb.net welcome.to wereldcrisis.nl whatreallyhappened.com womenspeacepalestine.org workers-party.org workers.org worldmessenger.20m.com wpb.be wrmea.com wsws.org xroads.virginia.edu xs4all.nl xs4all.nl. yilmazguney.com zaramis.nu zog.to zpub.com zundelsite.org

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First, in recognizing that our economic well-being depends to a significant part on our ability to buy energy from people who don't like us very much, and may at any time choose to stop selling it to us, or take military steps to keep other people from selling it to us. The nature of our response to this will determine a lot about our future: first in our willingness to accept the notion that people can boycott us, and that our response won't be - as the Japanese was - military; second in that we may well have to project military power to keep the 'people who don't like us' from militarily imposing their desire not to sell to us on others. And you betcha, I'm certainly aware of just how narrow and permeable is that distinction. Second, in realizing that in strategic military and economic conflicts such as the ones we seem to be in today, that our ability to resiliently respond to changes in circumstance - our ability to adapt our economy and our political and military responses - is going to be a more fruitful path to take than one that attempts to build ever more massive defenses of rigid economic and social structures. Third, in realizing that not all of the risks to our society through our use of energy come from hostile action. Happenstance (exemplified in the form of the recent blackout), our own bad behavior (as in the gaming of the California regulatory system),and unforeseen or unmanaged consequences (among others, environmental) all will come into play in trying to figure out how to approach these. I initially wrote a 4,500 word screed, and quickly realized that a) it was just too damn long to post on a blog (unless you're Bill Whittle!); and b) I was moving down into a level of detail not supported by my knowledge of the facts. So let me lay out a couple of summary facts, and then some policy challenges and the directions (60,000 foot strategies) I think we ought to be considering in response. First, we're getting better at using energy efficiently. The EIA has a history. In 1972, the year before the OPEC embargo, we used 18,650 BTU per 1996 dollar of GDP. This was a slight improvement on the 1949 figure of 20,620. By 1982, we were using 14,890 BTU/dollar, and in 2002, we were using 10,310 BTU/dollar. We're decoupling our economic strength from our direct consumption of energy, and that's a good thing. It implies a kind of 'systemic efficiency' that we need to keep working to improve. Second, our current exposure to Islamist boycott (what we're really talking about here) is not today critical. Here are just a couple of numbers; they are 2002 numbers from the great www.eia.doe.gov site, unless noted. Our total annual energy budget for 2002 was 97,350,684 billion BTU (bBTU). Of that, the following % of our total energy consumption was from |coal & coke: |22.9%| |natural gas: |23.7%| |oil: |39.2%| |nuclear: |8.4%| |pumped hydro: |-0.1%| (essentially, this consumes energy in order to create reserves for peak demand times ) |hydro: |2.7%| |total renewable: |6.1%| Of that total energy budget, 38,183,179 bBTU, or 39.2% of our annual budget was in the form of oil, and of that, approximately (I say approximately because the readily accessible numbers include other petroleum products that may not have been used for energy, but for chemical feedstocks, etc.) 19.7% of that was imported from the Persian Gulf states, and if you include Indonesia and Algeria, approximately 22.5% of our imports come from countries where the Islamist movement could feasibly take power. No natural gas was imported from Islamist states. That suggests that about 8.8% of our annual energy budget is exposed to Islamist control. That number probably isn't exact, but it probably isn't too far off (note that if someone who knows more than I could learn about this in three or four hours of searching wants to pitch in here, I'd love to have my back-of-the-hand numbers validated or corrected). Note that as domestic production flattens or declines, our demand for imports will probably increase, depending on the growth on the economy and efficiency in use. So we need to replace approximately 10% of our energy budget in order to be secure from energy blackmail by Islamist states. This would imply, as an example, a 50% increase in renewable energy (mix of biomass, wind, and geothermal) for a gain of 3%, combined with approximately a 10% increase in domestic oil and gas production. combined with a 3% increase in efficiency to completely shield ourselves from the economic and political risk of a boycott. 50% of those changes would make the effects of a boycott relatively insignificant, and would probably go a long way toward discouraging such a boycott. But a boycott isn't the only risk we face. First, our economic and social well-being is inextricably tied to the well-being of our wider community, which would include Europe and East Asia. Their political vulnerability is lower (i.e. they are less likely to be subject to a boycott), but they, like us, are vulnerable to disruptions in the infrastructure - which could be caused by a far smaller group than could effectively lead a peaceful boycott. So we need to work to secure the network at it's most vulnerable nodes - the transshipment points, pipelines, and shipping lanes. That won't be easy, as long as they run through areas that are thinly populated, hard to control, and immediately accessible to the people who don't like us very much. As long as we're talking about securing the network, let's talk about our domestic networks, which are underfunded and maintained, overly complex, and highly vulnerable to temporary collapse through accident or sabotage. I've talked in the past about redefining security to deal with 4G challenges; about creating, as Bruce Schneier says:

Where Schneier had sought one overarching technical fix, hard experience had taught him the quest was illusory. Indeed, yielding to the American penchant for all-in-one high-tech solutions can make us less safe—especially when it leads to enormous databases full of confidential information. Secrecy is important, of course, but it is also a trap. The more secrets necessary to a security system, the more vulnerable it becomes. To forestall attacks, security systems need to be small-scale, redundant, and compartmentalized. Rather than large, sweeping programs, they should be carefully crafted mosaics, each piece aimed at a specific weakness. The federal government and the airlines are spending millions of dollars, Schneier points out, on systems that screen every passenger to keep knives and weapons out of planes. But what matters most is keeping dangerous passengers out of airline cockpits, which can be accomplished by reinforcing the door. ... Good security [which] is built in overlapping, cross-checking layers, to slow down attacks; it reacts limberly to the unexpected. Its most important components are almost always human. "Governments have been relying on intelligent, trained guards for centuries," Schneier says. "They spot people doing bad things and then use laws to arrest them. All in all, I have to say, it's not a bad system."

Amory Lovins, at the Rocky Mountain Institute, is making these same points about our energy infrastructure.

The energy that runs America is brittle - easily shattered by accident or malice. That fragility frustrates the efforts of our Armed Forces to defend a nation that literally can be turned off by a handful of people. It poses, indeed, a grave and growing threat to national security, life, and liberty. This danger comes not from hostile ideology but from misapplied technology. It is not a threat imposed on us by enemies abroad. It is a threat we have heedlessly - and needlessly - imposed on ourselves. Many Americans’ most basic functions depend, for example, on a continuous supply of electricity. Without it, subways and elevators stall, factories and offices grind to a halt, electric locks jam, intercoms and televisions stand mute, and we huddle without light, heat, or ventilation. A brief faltering of our energy pulse can reveal - sometimes as fatally as to astronauts in a spacecraft - the hidden brittleness of our interdependent, urbanized-society. Yet that continuous electrical supply now depends on many large and precise machines, rotating in exact synchrony across half a continent, and strung together by an easily severed network of aerial arteries whose failure is instantly disruptive. The size, complexity, pattern, and control structure of these electrical machines make them inherently vulnerable to large-scale failures: a vulnerability which government policies are systematically increasing. The same is true of the technologies that deliver oil, gas; and coal to run our vehicles, buildings, and industries. Our reliance on these delicately poised energy systems has unwittingly put at risk our whole way of life.

He points out, in this document (pdf) that:

*Tightly coupled system: 20 years ago, U.S. had a few months’ usable total storage, well-head-tocar; refineries had 3 - 5 days, pipeline customers 5 - 10 days; generally far less now *>50% of U.S. refinery capacity was in three states (TX, LA, CA), >69% was in six states *Refinery concentration and specialization have increased markedly since 1981 *In 1978, sabotage of 77 refineries would cut cap. by 2/3, "shatter" economy (GAO); takes one RPG, wrench, rifle,...at each site *~84% of U.S. interstate gas flowed from or through Louisiana *A few people could shut off, for 1 y, 3/4 of gas and oil supply to eastern U.S. in 1 night w/o leaving Louisiana

Lovins' prescriptions are a little more extreme than the one's I'd advocate today - not because I think he's necessarily wrong, but because I think that a less-radical approach is both more politically attainable - but in a nutshell, his policy hierarchy looks like this:

Designing for resilience * Fine-grained, modular structure * Early fault detection * Redundancy and substitutability * Optional interconnection * Diversity * Standardization * Dispersion * Hierarchical embedding * Stability * Simplicity * Limited demands on social stability * Accessibility/vernacularity

His specific policy prescriptions are centered around: * Conservation * Dispersed Generation * Demand-based Pricing Basically, what he suggests is that we work to become intelligent about using energy (note that this isn't the Hard Green 'let's all go live in agrarian villages'-type conservation, this is the let's encourage fuel-efficient vehicles, rather than subsidizing the purchase of light trucks for passenger use, as we do today. Personal note: I needed a vehicle that had three rows of seats for trips with the three boys, plus storage behind the third seat for camping and ski gear, plus the ability to tow 1,500 pounds of trailer and racebike. In 2000, I had three options: Large SUV (Suburban, Excursion), Full-size van (Ford Econoline), or minivan (Honda Odyssey). I chose the Odyssey, which gets 24mpg in everyday use, tows the trailered racebike over Highway 14 to Rosamond without complaint, and has as much interior volume as a Suburban. But it's easy to park, and handles better. If everyone who bought a SUV between 2000 and 2003 made the same decision, we'd have made a dent in the 6% exposure we have to Islamist energy. Dispersed generation suggests that a strategy based on a fragile, complex, and undefendable energy infrastructure may not be the right way to go. The efficiencies of smaller package generators are increasing, and when combined with the flexibility of power-on-demand and the absence of transmission risk and loss, there can be some significant advantages to them. This suggests that nukes, which are by definition large and inflexible generators of power, may not be the best way to go. Note that I don't have the 'ohmigawd, uranium' issues around nuclear power (which kills far fewer people per kilowatt-hour than, say, coal). But I do think that large-centralized plants aren't where we should be putting our focus, and further that ramping down the economy in fissionables ought to be a good idea. But I'm not adamant about it. Demand-based pricing is also a critical feature of the model, in which we simply charge the true cost of the peak-load supply at times when it must be brought online. That's a key point; building economic policies that attempt, as closely as possible to mirror the true cost of the goods purchased. (On the Wal-Mart issue, one issue I have is the lack of health coverage for a substantial number of their associates - coverage which I help pay for, even if I don't shop there, because I pay for the public health care burden the employees impose through my taxes) So here's the mix of policies I'd support after a week of thought (obviously subject to change as I learn more from all the commenters who will pile on): * Improve vehicle fuel efficiency by doing four things: # Increasing CAFE standards, and setting a more-ambitious schedule of improvements; # Defining light-duty trucks (SUV's and pickups) clearly designed and sold for passenger use as passenger cars for CAFE and safety standard purposes; # eliminating tax incentives to buy fuel-inefficient vehicles; # explore tax credits for improvements in fuel efficiency in trucking (a large user of energy where there ought to be big incentives to save) Note that I'd trade all these for phased-in increases in gas (and diesel) taxes (maybe we could implement Andrew Tobias' notion of paying for a minimal vehicle insurance pool via a gas tax as well). * Improve residential and commercial fuel efficiency through changes in building codes. * Review of utility and building regulation to reduce the regulatory barriers to small-scale 'package' generation. Note that this last will get me in trouble with a number of enviro types, who want the smaller power plants (like the one in Redondo Beach near me) shut down. They'd rather have electric cars and power plants in remote areas; but the true cost of that kind of overcentralized system is blackouts and an insecure infrastructure.

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IRAN REPORTS * The International Atomic Energy Agency censured Iran for eighteen years of deception surrounding its nuclear testing program, yet somehow, Iran and the European Union emerged as the geopolitical victors. The Mullahs rejoiced over the IAEA resolution, and EU concerns over possible OPEC oil cutbacks (as had been threatened) were alleviated. Peter Brookes sees other reasons for the EU's Mullah-coddling. * The IAEA will further investigate Iran's nuclear relationships, but Iran's representative to the IAEA doesn't understand why the IAEA doesn't fully take into account "the turn of policy and action in Iran on the 21 October." Perhaps the last eighteen years are a factor. * A lively discussion about next year's presidential and parliamentary elections is going on over at Free Thoughts. Here's some meddling by a Western influence: Vote For Hoder in 2004! * The Israeli government may employ scare tactics to win some support in its geopolitical battle with Iran, but then it doesn't even need to manufacture its own material. And others play the same game with far less proof. * These websites covering Iran's human rights situation and the people's fight for freedom have received some well-deserved attention lately. Check them out! U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * The Global Partnership Against The Spread Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction (or the "GPATSOWOMD"), led by all of the G8 Nations, released its November Update. It warns that all the member nations must do more to prevent the acquisition of WMD's by terrorists. So it may be a good thing that there's a viable fallback option. The Pentagon plans to deploy a missile defense system in 2004. * A British judge declared Guantanamo Bay to be a "monstrous failure of justice," and The Guardian dotes. The Christian Science Monitor provides full coverage of the Gitmo issue, including a BBC article informing readers that "it is rare for British judges to speak on contentious political issues and almost unheard of for them to attack a foreign government." * The Pentagon reached a settlement with the Australia government over the military tribunal for David Hicks, an Australian currently detained at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, a deal between America and the United Kingdom over Gitmo's British detainees is wrapping up. * Criticism is much more moving when it comes from within rather than without, so it's vital that supporters of the Bush administration and/or this War on Terror level some when our government stumbles. One of the original architects of the Patriot Act drops concerns about its current application by US authorities. This terror war detainee deserved much better treatment. And on a historical note, coup orchestration is a costly business. THE WIDER WAR * Donald Sensing takes another look at al-Qaeda's strategy, and explains why he says that "al-Qaeda's primary war is against other Muslims." Belmont Club, meanwhile, explains that The War on Terror is really 2 civil wars in parallel: one within Islam, and a second in the West - and the outcome depends on both. * More good news and bad news. Saudi Arabian authorities managed to intercept a 1-ton bomb before it was employed. But now, Argentina is warning about terror threats on its land. * Andrew Sullivan links to a piece contemplating the 'Israelization' of Turkey. * Mark Steyn says that five regimes must go before this War on Terror is won. * This Asia Times interview with a Taliban recruiter is chilling, and this report on an Al Qaeda kidnap guide from the always entertaining, occasionally reliable DebkaFile is something to keep an eye on. * Afghanistan Update: The Coalition in Afghanistan has finally learned that active communication with the Afghan people is a necessity to win this War on Terror. They will be distributing 200,000 radios to people throughout the country. This battle rages on throughout the entire region, including America's allies - Saudi Arabia and Egypt. * Greece's defense minister says that NATO has offered to have troops available for deployment in case of a terror attack during next year's Summer Olympics. Now, betting on Olympic sporting events seems like a highly improper act (steroid abuse and other acts of corruption are rampant enough already), but would it be beneficial for there to be a gambling market on the likelihood of terrorist acts? It's a question worthy of serious debate, something this country does not always do very well. The quick dismissal is so much more effective. * The troops are still deployed around the world. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian, Polish. Anyone out there with more information? Email me. [updated Dec. 1, 2003] * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. President Bush served up some turkey on his trip to Baghdad. Not all Democrats fell for this dish, but those that did look like, well, turkeys. Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * JK: Trent Telenko notes that the "unsuccessful ambush" was an armored car bank heist gone bad. Trent's thoughts: "I bet that Operation Iron Hammer's intelligence was generated in large part by tracking Saddam faced and Western currency in the Sunni Triangle and this failed bank heist was a result of it." Good news if so, as it would imply the Ba'athists are beginning to have cash issues. * Blemont club has some thoughts on Iraqi lessons that can be drawn from Orde Wingates military experiences in the Middle East during the early 1940s. He also has a post on jihadi anti-air tactics in Iraq. * The perpetrators of the attacks against foreign forces and Iraqi police and civilians are clearly a mixed bag. Rantburg points to a possible Jordan-Chechnya terror connection. * JK: Hippercritical has a great article on Baghdad's new police force, and how they're coping. * Army Staff Sgt. Adam R. Irby of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of the 28th Combat Support Hospital, from Fort Bragg, N.C., deployed in Baghdad, got tired of waiting for $900 warming blankets to arrive to use to warm patients suffering from high blood loss, so he made "The Cuddler" a three-times-more efficient warming box. This medical device is likely to have immediate civilian applications in trauma care. RECONSTRUCTION & IRAQI VOICES * Reaction from around the blogosphere to the President's visit - and to Hillary's as well. Iraqi bloggers are included, a welcome trend to be sure. * Iraqi blogger Omar didn't travel over such a long distance, yet his Happy Eid greeting to everyone was just as sweet, and much sweeter than those of Iran's Supreme Leader. * In the streets of Baghdad, hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated against the terrorist attacks of the 'Resistance'. Glenn Reynolds rounds up the coverage. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * Japan's defense chief assured his country that the self-defense forces operating in southern Iraq were situated in stable territory, so news of the assassination of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq comes as a major shock. * Hans Blix expressed hope that America will learn its lesson in Iraq, as "they don't have much experience in reconstructing a country." I would like to express my hope that Mr. Blix learn this lesson before speaking out again on this topic. * Where is Saddam? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thinks he must be hiding somewhere in the haystack. Meanwhile, Saddam's wife and daughter have fled to Yemen. This may be a good thing, in the eyes of Andrew Olmsted, for it would be better for the U.S. military to remove itself from the dirty game of hostage-taking. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian, Polish. Anyone out there with more information? Email me. [updated Dec. 1, 2003] * As Christmas approaches, don't forget the Toys for Iraq drive.

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So we drank and snacked and chatted about all and sundry, with a substantial detour into politics - they're both big moveon.org supporters - when the game paused, and halftime began. The halftime show was elaborate, and somehow brought Larry McMurtry to my mind - and it featured a performance by country singer Toby Keith. I've talked about the divide between the country-music part of America and the non-country-music part of America before, and while my sister-in-law isn't too fond of Toby's politics (as expressed in his music), she does like him a lot. The show was - surprise - highly patriotically themed, and I recall that he chose both 'American Soldier' and 'Beer For My Horses,' both sung in front of a giant American flag backdrop, with video insets of troops in uniform. I looked at my brother and said - "That's why the Democrats are in trouble. The imagery right there is currently owned by the GOP, and until the Democrats figure out how to stand in front of it without looking silly, they'll have a hard time winning national elections." We'd been discussing the election. He & his wife are of the visceral hate-Bush crowd, and my mother wants desperately to oppose Bush, but is anxious about national defense - i.e. is in my mind the perfectly typical voter. I made my point, and they sat glumly watching the halftime show. I was reminded of this because I just caught something on my homepage, Google News. Liberal columnist Tom Teepen has an op-ed up: 'Nasty nonsense, yes, but Democrats must answer.'

The Democrats who would be president are fuming over a TV ad the Republican National Committee is running in Iowa, where the nominating caucuses are near. The Democrats' anger is understandable, but the ad is doing them a service. It makes plain, and inescapable, the challenge their nominee will have to meet if he is to have something better than the proverbial snowball's chance of contesting President Bush's reelection. ... It is not enough for the Democratic contenders to pound on the president's assorted missteps and misrepresentations in the Iraq War. An increasing number of Americans share that unease, but the terrorist threat remains real -- and the abiding question is how it can best be confronted, contained and defeated. ... The executive director of Amnesty International USA makes the same point the Republican ad does. William Schulz says junk slogans like "Regime change at home" and "No blood for oil" mask a liberal "failure to give necessary attention, analysis and strategizing to the effort to counter terrorism and protect our fundamental right to security." When you are hearing the same message from both your friends and your opponents, it would be wise to listen.

Word. I desperately want to want a Democrat to win in 2004 (no, that's not a typo). I'm unhappy as hell with Bush's domestic policies; I think the GOP 'hand the keys to the Treasury to our donor base' is arguably worse than the Democratic version of the same thing; I doubt that the kind of tax, employment, energy or domestic security policies that I want to see implemented will make the grade in a Republican Administration. But I've got two large roadblocks in my path. The first is that I need to see a credible response to what I see as a multinational Islamist threat. Note that 'using the criminal justice system' and 'seeking UN action' is not, prima facie, a credible response. Bush has done a lot wrong as I note, but he seems to be doing one thing right. Yes, the postwar was imperfectly planned. But perfect plans only exist in movies made by Joel Silver. reality is be definition messy, contingent, and frightening - as we are seeing today. His trip and speech meant a lot to me; I've demanded for a while that he show an 'iron butt', and I'd have to say it will be hard for him to get up from the table after what he's done now. The second is that I want to see a Democratic ideology that embraces America instead of holding it at arm's length. I know that one comment or one blog post doesn't define even the individual who wrote it. But I see things out there that lead me to believe certain things. Here's a post from Alas, A Blog, a major left blog (note that I've had some great and productive discussions with Barry; the quoted post is a Thanksgiving post by his co-blogger Bean):

...many of us (myself included) will also be telling ourselves that we aren't celebrating the "real" Thanksgiving and all its racist and genocidal history, but rather enjoying the long weekend that allows out-of-town friends and family to visit, the excuse to eat lots of good food, and treating it as any other holiday, with or without awareness of what this day has historically meant. Why should it be any different from the way we celebrate any other holiday -- Memorial Day, Labor Day, and (for some of us, at least) Christmas or Passover? But today is not Thanksgiving for many of our fellow Americans. And, while I will be spending my time with friends and eating good food today, I would like to take a moment to reflect on another "holiday" taking place today. This was written by a dear friend of mine, Nikkiru, and my thoughts will be with her today.

As many of you are aware, The official U.S. "Thanksgiving" is observed by many indigenous people and allies as the National Day of Mourning. Some may not be aware of the history behind that.

I don't single this post out to encourage people to rush over and hassle Bean or Barry. I don't even disagree with them that much of the history of this nation (as all other nations) is written in blood - even often innocent blood. I do completely disagree over the response to that history. And I do believe that my political party - the Democrats - and many of the supporters of their leading candidate - Howard Dean - are closer to Bean than to me in their view of how to value America. That's a problem for me. It's also a problem for them, since they are really damn unlikely to get the votes of the Toby Keith fans who stood and cheered him on during his performance. Even though those fans are the ones who would benefit substantially from policies tilted more toward the working and away from the owning. Because people don't just vote their economic interests. Sometimes they vote their hearts. And sometimes they vote their fears. Right now, both would seem to be in play.

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Andras Simonyi: Absolutely. That’s why I said I don’t think rock and roll is imperialistic. It has been influenced by so many – I remember in 1967 I met with Ravi Shankar in Budapest. A great talk – he didn’t know what the hell I was doing there. I was there because of his rock involvement. They have influenced Western music. So has the music from my country. So there’s nothing wrong with interaction. Those who say that through rock music we are importing an imperialistic attitude are wrong. I think those who are rejecting rock music, popular music, blues music in the Middle East and elsewhere are really scared of its power. A strong culture will not be defeated; it will be enhanced and it’ll only be better. And I do believe that the Muslim world should and could influence our cultures just like there is nothing wrong with us influencing and meeting their cultures. It’s not about pushing the other down, it’s about holding hands. It’s about the freedom of man. Skunk? Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter: It adds another color to the palette. Sting about two years ago took a Persian lead singer with him, and much of his music was influenced by the Middle East. I know that it sounds like we are coming up with an original idea; it is and it isn’t. There’s even codification. There’s a gentleman I’m sure you are familiar with, Joseph Nye, who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who wrote an incredible essay in the Foreign Affairs quarterly about eight years ago, which I read, called "Soft Power." Yes, the United States is militarily and economically strong but what’s the real power? It’s the power of the culture. And just as we melded all the different kinds of music in our culture, as soon as media and as soon as communications became worldwide again, that music took and picked and chose and drew from every other influence. And sooner or later we’re going to have that same kind of mind-meld with the Middle East. But as you know, there’s a tremendous amount of fear. The one thing that the fundamentalists of any religion or any philosophy are most frightened of is individuality and freedom. And they’re going to fight this tooth and nail. But what happened with Andras? The Berlin Wall was made of cement, barbed wire, landmines, dogs, guns, rifles, but it didn’t make any difference. As I said when I came out of Moscow at that time, you could build any ballistic missile system but you can’t build an anti-groove system. And everybody wants French fries, blue jeans, and Elvis Presley. (Laughter and applause.) Q2: Could you mention a little bit about what the culture is like in Hungary today? The music scene and the cultural scene? This kind of today’s environment. AS: Well, it’s mixed like everywhere else. Lot of classical music, lot of local and folk music, and of course pretty much rock music as well. In a way, you’d be surprised. The powerful attitude towards rock doesn’t seem to be there the same way. Maybe that’s natural. Maybe it’s because when you’re deprived of something, you want it so bad. Maybe it’s because free people get used to freedom so fast they don’t understand [what it is like not having it]. It’s important that my generation tells this story because 30 years later the younger generation doesn’t have a clue what it meant for me to sit there back home in Budapest dark at night and listen to forbidden radio. I think it’s an important message to get through. The music scene, by the way, is great. There’s more interaction between international musicians, world music, and Hungarian musicians than before. I just miss this real creative thing [in rock] and I think maybe with more international cooperation that can come back. Q3: First, I think you ought to be the first nominee from Hungary to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Laughter.) My question is: When you meet other ambassadors in Washington that you know that in their country they were denied the same freedoms of music, expression and many other things that you were denied, what do you tell them? AS: What I tell the others? The things that I told you are pretty much discussed for example with the Czech ambassador, who was in Charter 77 and who is a close friend of Vaclav Hável. I think my story could be told in other countries as well. For example in Prague, Vaclav Hável embraced Lou Reed and Mick Jagger immediately after the Velvet Revolution because he thought it was important for him keeping his free thoughts alive. So we talk about pretty much the same things. My story, you know, is a Hungarian story, with a slight Hungarian touch. Maybe Hungarians were a little more pushy towards freedom than others. Maybe we were a little ahead of others. Opening the borders for the East Germans in ’89 was pretty much a result of Hungary leading the pack in freedoms. But otherwise, the story is the same: Millions and millions of people behind the Iron Curtain longing to be part of the free world. That’s what we discuss. Q4: Piggybacking on the previous question, just to see if you might have had a little bit more to say. Thank you so much for your impassioned and wonderful recounting of the influence of rock and roll on Hungarian culture, particularly in your background. Some of your photographs were very moving. My original question was: What influence rock and roll had on your culture after the fall of communism? You’ve answered a little bit today but I wonder if you could flesh out a little bit more. What happened in that interim between the fall of communism and the role of rock and roll today? AS: This is what has happened. (Pointing to a photo behind him.) I am jamming with your NATO ambassador [Vershbow] and my daughter in Brussels at the American residence. But joke aside, I think what happened is that we went through a pretty turbulent time until we became members of NATO, and now we are about to become members of the European Union. And of course it also means that we wanted to embrace freedom and the West the right way. We wanted to make sure that while fully embracing freedoms, what you have to offer and what other free countries have to offer, we keep our own culture and we stay what we are. My story is really about freedom and not only about importing something form the West uncritically. That’s why all the things that I’ve mentioned to you was quality and the same thing should be true for today. So in the interim period, I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the importance of embracing world culture, opening the floodgates, let the world influence Hungary. But at the same time, as a proud nation, a country that has really nothing more to offer than powerful culture and science – we don’t have diamond fields and gold mines – what we can offer is interaction, cooperation with others. And I think this kind of cooperation that was established many many years ago should continue. Skunk? JSB: Well, we need other countries to help us because we get kind of loose sometimes. I remember back in the sixties and early seventies we were suffering here in the U.S. from the "Bobby Syndrome." Bobby B., Bobby Rydell, Bobby Sheridan, Bobby Bobby Bobby. Our music was going down the tubes. Luckily, we had the Brits. They came back to us and said "Oh, by the way, guys, here’s where it really comes from, here’s the good part of it." And what you see now, for instance when I travel in Southeast Asia, it used to be that the biggest-selling records in Korea and Japan were American records and British records. Now there are Korean records in Korea and Japanese records in Japan because those cultures have assimilated the pieces and the parts that they needed to assemble rock and roll music and put it into their own language. And it keeps going around and around and around. So I think what’s happened with Andras and the folks in Hungary, we’re going to see musicians coming out of Hungary joining up with American and British musicians because they will have learned, they’ll have been gone to the College of Musical Knowledge as I suppose you might want to call it and come back to us to show us skills that we thought we’d lost, things that we never understood, and new ways to do it. So that’s what happening in his country and any country that understands freedom and begins to take it in as their own and starts to create their own version of rock and roll and popular music. Q5: I sat and listened very attentively as you talked about what you were doing in Hungary and I’m just wondering, as you would listen to a song and play it, were you guys taught how to read music, or did you go by memory from just listening to the tunes on the radio and then playing it and not having the ability to actually read it and go from that point and improvise from it? And also, there was a Cleveland connection when you mentioned Tracy Chapman. Did you know that she is from Cleveland also? Well, I’m just pushing Cleveland right now. (Laughter) AS: Well, that’s nice. We’ll take her in as an honorary Hungarian from Cleveland. There are so may good Hungarians here, Laci Böjtös, our honorary consul general is here, representing our great Hungarian community. But to answer your question: You know, the interesting thing is that most people that played this popular music were sitting with a tape recorder and just copying it by ear. I do read a little music but honestly, this is the important stuff about it: Musicians who are very well educated in music, people who truly understand the theory like Jeff Baxter does and is technically also incredibly good, meet with people who are just good because it comes from the heart. We Hungarians are lucky because we are taught music at school. Maybe that is why so many mathematicians come out of Hungarian schools. And maybe that is why Edward Teller, who was a great mathematician, played music from an early age. These things go together. Frankly, I think the big thing is that people can embrace it. I don’t think Robert Johnson or maybe some of the Roma Gypsy musicians in Hungary are very good at reading music. But, oh my God, what is it that they play. They play from the heart. Q6: Thanks for the story. It was a great story and it really resonated with me. My father escaped in ’56 during the rebellion so I totally understood what you were talking about. Could you comment on current offshoots of rock, such as punk and metal? What do you think of that music? Any new bands or new artists that are popular now that you like? AS: Well, I didn’t take the courage to comment on the music scene later in Hungary because I was watching form the sidelines, I was not in it. But I have to tell you, punk music had an incredible impact on Hungarian musicians. Punk was the most politically radical and, for the authorities, the most scary kind of music that emerged in the seventies. You have to understand that for Hungary, for Hungarians, it was not just a shocking cultural innovation; it was not just an offshoot of rock music. For us, it was something really different. Punk music in Hungary was going against, not the cultural establishment, it was going against the political system. So punk and the underground scene in Hungary in the late seventies and early eighties was big. There was this great group called the Galloping Coroners. Isn’t that a weird name for a band in a communist country in 1979? They would go and tease not just the public, but much more the authorities. And I think these were the guys [along with others] we have to thank for expanding gradually, going after the limits. I cannot comment on some of the other offshoots but I can tell you there are efforts today to copy rap music, with limited success. I think Hungarian rock music has so much indigenous to offer, so many Hungarian rock groups have embraced folk culture from the past, gypsy music, and mixed it with western rock that I don’t think we should be trying to use vehicles that don’t work. Q7: Thank you very much for giving us information about music groups such as Locomotive GT, which I know well and is a truly a wonderful group, but other than LGT and some of the groups that you’ve mentioned what other groups would you feel are worth mentioning and recommending? AS: I’d rather not. I had a personal involvement with this group and that’s the only reason why I picked one group, because I think they were symbolic and emblematic of what I did and what I thought. They were a couple of good groups but I don’t want to comment on them. Also, because quality was a result of some fights between groups just like in the West. We did have our Beetle vs. Rolling Stone fight, and I took sides. The name of my band was clearly to mock some other groups that I didn’t like so much. If you walk into a record store in Hungary today, you will find some lovely music. I agree with Skunk that some of these blues musicians were educated and trained in other countries as well as in Hungary. Look for some good Hungarian groups and you’ll find them. JSB: Whether you are technically a student or not is really not the point. Bo Diddley only knows one chord but I can listen to that for hours because it’s so cool. And if I said to you "Hey man, why don’t you come down to my crib, jump in the fizz, […] my short and scarf, and you go "What?!" That was the guys back in the fifties who created bebop, creating a language of their own. What we’re talking about here is the ability to create a language so that a generation of people can talk to each other. Because I can’t speak Hungarian, and when somebody from Korea comes to me and doesn’t speak English, the point is have found a common language, melody, groove, tempo, feel. As you say, it’s not the texts, not the words so much because we’ve created a common language and melodies that brings people together and that’s constantly evolving. Now, I thought a turntable was something you played records on. I didn’t know it was a musical instrument until I started to listen to rap music. It constantly surprises me how people take what we take for granted and create something totally brand new. And I think that's part of the bridge that we’re talking about. As long as this keeps happening, as long as rock music, this communication between people, keeps creating something new, it's always going to stay alive. And that's why the bad guys want to stop it now, because they're frightened to death of it. AS: Thank you, Cleveland. (Applause) Of course, it was not my job and not my duty to give you a lecture about what rock and roll meant to you because let someone else tell that story. You have historians like Burt London from the Hudson Institute, who wrote a great book about that. That’s not my theme. But I do agree with you that it’s not over. When I walk through this museum, what I see, what Terry and his colleagues are doing, it tells me that I'm kind of right. This is an incredibly strong foundation. This is really much more than has been suspected or spoken of in the past. So therefore Jeff Baxter and I have decided that we want to announce here the establishment of an institute that will work to research and educate on the impact of this kind of music in its broadest sense – rock, blues, soul, American, British, Hungarian – on contemporary society, on the World. We will be establishing this institute and, no doubt, it will have to rely very much on what Terry and his colleagues are doing. Thank you. (Applause) All right, are there any more questions? Let's take one more question. Q7: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, your speech was wonderful, personal and very passionate. My question is: You were viewed pretty much as a radical of a kid, listening to Western radio and playing their music. How is it that you go from that to being an ambassador? AS: That’s a good question. It’s because these days ambassadors are radicals, too. Let’s conclude on a very personal note. I’m just as passionate about what I do as a diplomat as I was about my music. For me, the music that I embraced made me a passionate person in everything that I do. For me, talking about security policy, talking about trans-Atlantic relations, talking about improving ties between nations, talking about the importance of America and Europe keeping together – I speak about these topics just as enthusiastically and just as devotedly as I spoke about the music; if you want, our music, if you want, my music. Thank you so much. And thank you very much for coming.

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