Two fiction books: "The Secret Society of Demolition Writers," a short story collection, and "Two Trains Running," a modern take on Dashiell Hammet's great "Red Harvest" by Andy Vachss.

A couple of other books: "Run the Other Way," by Wellstone/ Ventura/ Nader adman Bill Hillsman; "The Creation of the Media," by Paul Starr; "From Oslo to Iraq," by Edward Said, and "Critical Mass," by Philip Ball.

I rescanned "Fourth Turning" as well.

They were all interesting and worth reading. As time permits, I'll blog about them over the next little while.

I also thought a lot about what I wanted to do here for the next little while, inspired in part by the juxtaposition of Vachss' picture of a corrupt, declining Midwestern city being fought over by rival gangs, and Hillsman's sniping at what he calls "Elections Inc." in his (admittedly self-serving) book on campaigns and advertising.

I think and have frequently said that the Democratic Party is as interested in maintaining the status quo as is the GOP; a status quo that simultaneously involves greater power for the state increasingly exercised on behalf of the powerful. The sociology of our political system is a part of the explanation of it; Schumpeter explains much of the rest.

This is not the only thing one could say about it, but it is, I believe a core truth. If it is true, the chorus of partisan hype raised by folks like Atrios, Yglesias, Armstrong and Kos is arguably as much about getting a seat at the table - becoming part of the well-paid machine - as it is about changing outcomes.

I think there is an audience for a different story, and a different future for the Democratic Party (the GOP, too, but that opportunity for change will have to wait until they are out of power for a while). I'd like to noodle a bit about what that future might look like and how we might get there.

One of the issues we will have to address head-on is the rise of virulent anti-Western action and belief, both within the West and outside it.

Part of it involves addressing the arguments that are launched by the Saids and Juan Coles of the world, and presenting counter arguments that are solid enough to survive and thrive in the ecology of ideas. I think I (and others) have presented glosses on those arguments, but haven't yet drilled deep enough into history and ideas and brought the arguments up to the light of day.

So that's the plan...I'm interested in folks' thoughts and comment, as always.

« ok, I'm done now

The Good

• A number of impressive victories on the law enforcement and intelligence fronts made it possible for events like 7/7 to be the exception rather than the rule in both Western Europe and the United States and the disruption of al-Qaeda cells internationally appears to be continuing at a pretty good pace.

• A number of senior al-Qaeda leaders including Abu Zaid (Abu Dzeit), Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Louai Sakra, Azahari bin Husin, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Abu Omar al-Saif, and Hamza Rabia have all been captured or killed in the course of 2005 through the efforts of the US and its allies.

• US and allied forces in Iraq have succeeded in at least partially disrupting the al-Qaeda infrastructure and "rat lines" in al-Anbar and adjacent provinces since the spring - the entire al-Qaeda network in Mosul appears to be seriously compromised at present. These successes have made it more difficult for Zarqawi to smuggle in suicide bombers, though his group continues to remain the most active and bloody terrorist organization inside Iraq. An impressive number of officer equivalents of al-Qaeda in Iraq were captured throughout 2005 including a number of key logistics, financial, and operational figures and the group's attempt to attack the January and December elections as well as the constitutional referendum were all unsuccessful.

• Progress in Afghanistan appears to be moving along fairly well despite continued attacks from both the Taliban and followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Neither the Taliban nor Hekmatyar's followers appear to be nearly as lethal or as well-financed as Zarqawi's fighters in Iraq and have been ineffectual at best in their efforts to overthrow the Afghan government.

• The Pan-Sahel Initiative and other US-backed efforts have helped to undercut the potential for a major al-Qaeda base in North Africa, while raids into Somalia have succeeded in capturing a number of mid-level al-Qaeda leaders in the anarchic country.

• Indonesia continues to engage in a serious domestic campaign against Jemaah Islamiyah and appears to now have at least some kind of serious political engagement with the Acehese GAM, a separatist group that al-Qaeda is known to have courted prior to 9/11. This increased Indonesian awareness combined with an internal schism within Jemaah Islamiyah itself over the wisdom of carrying out attacks in Indonesia has forced many of the group's surviving leaders to flee to Mindanao and left Hambali's successor Zulkarnaen with only a shadow of his predecessor's organization.

The Bad

• As the article notes, al-Qaeda remains active and a threat, as can be seen from the multiple mass casualty terrorist attacks that were noted. Apart from 7/7, Sharm el-Sheikh, the Amman bombings, the second Bali bombings, and the New Delhi bombings, al-Qaeda has carried out literally hundreds of attacks against US forces in Iraq and continues to act as the bloodiest insurgent group there. There are serious fears among counter-terrorism analysts of the threat posed by those al-Qaeda recruits who survive their jihad in Iraq and return to their home countries, though the actual number of such recruits varies considerably from analyst to analyst.

• Since Beslan, Shamil Basayev and his followers have been thankfully unable to conduct any mass casualty terrorist attacks inside Russia proper - their raid on Nalchik was apparently a failure. Russian brutality and political/religious oppression has given Basayev an already radicalized cadre of North Caucasus Wahhabis backed by al-Qaeda that he is now just as capable of carrying out attacks in any of Chechnya's adjacent republics as he is within Chechnya proper. While it has been overshadowed by Iraq lately, Chechnya remains a major cause for al-Qaeda and its allies - the eulogies posted in honor of Abu Omar al-Saif are testimony enough to how highly regarded the jihad there is internationally.

• While General Musharraf has cracked down on those jihadi groups that refuse to submit to his military regime, the Lashkar-e-Taiba continues to be active in Pakistan and appears to be flush with cash from all the donations that have flowed in since the South Asian earthquake. As a result, the organization appears to be in the process of rebuilding its infrastructure from the quake but appears to have made up for any serious losses and continues to train al-Qaeda and allied groups at training camps staffed in many cases by the same al-Qaeda instructors who worked for the network in Afghanistan.

• The GSPC has been seriously degraded thanks to the loss of Abderrazak el-Para and the Pan-Sahel Initiative but remains a threat to Africa as can be seen from its summer attack on a Mauritanian military base. Most of the group appears to have fled Algeria proper for the safety of northern Mali and appears to be in the process of networking with Malian, Moroccan, Nigerian, and Mauritanian Islamists in an effort to regain its strength.

• Bangladesh is currently undergoing a coordinated bombing campaign orchestrated by al-Qaeda's local allies in the Jamaat ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh that poses a serious threat to the poor country, where al-Qaeda training facilities appear to operate more or less openly thanks to the impotency of the central government and complicity of the local Islamist parties.

• The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) campaign against the Filippino government continues more or less despite the peace process as powerful commanders ally with members of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah to train recruits, engage in banditry, and continue to carry out terrorist attacks.

• Somalia remains more or less anarchic, enabling it to continue to serve as a terrorist haven for the immediate future.

• The recent bombings in the Sinai and some tentative indicators from the situation in the Gaza Strip suggest that al-Qaeda is establishing a presence in the region, the size and extent of which are still unclear.

• The after-effects of the Andijon Massacre have prompted the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan to become more and more repressive. While the government's actions against suspected IMU and Hizb-ut-Tahrir members are theoretically legitimate, the means through which it has chosen to proceed in that campaign (as with Russia in Chechnya) have only served to amplify rather than contain the threat.

• The "theological deprogramming" methods for dealing with captured al-Qaeda fighters pioneered by Judge al-Hitar in Yemen appear to have failed miserably and I expect that the Saudi therapy approach is going to meet with similar prospects.

The Ugly

• In addition to bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and Zarqawi in Iraq, most of the al-Qaeda ruling council remains at large, with a majority of it being based out of eastern Iran under the direction of Saif al-Adel. As long as the global leadership remains intact and able to direct strategy, they can continue to coordinate and support international terrorism against the United States and its allies. Iran has refused to extradict these individuals back to their countries of origin or restrict their activities to the extent that they are unable to direct operations or even within the bounds of the disciplinary measures the Islamic Republic routinely uses for peaceful political dissidents like Akbar Ganji.

• In addition to the threat of those jihadis who receive combat experience in Iraq, al-Qaeda and allied training facilities continue to remain active in northern Mali, Bosnia, the North Caucasus, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Mindanao to one degree or another. As long as these facilities continue to remain active, Islamic terrorism is not going to appreciably decline no matter how much public support it obtains in any given area - if even %1 of %1 of the population of Saudi Arabia participates in training at these facilities, that's still thousands of terrorists. According to former Senator Graham of Florida and Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, al-Qaeda trained 70-120,000 terrorists prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan. A lot of these individuals are now dead, but as long the training facilities remain active they continue to be a terrifying replaceable phenomenon.

• North Waziristan and likely parts of South Waziristan appear to have fallen under the de facto control of al-Qaeda, Taliban remnants, allied Pashtun tribes, and their allies in the MMA coalition since the defeat of the Pakistani military in 2004. So far, they haven't launched any further plots directly against Musharraf, which suggests either some kind of quid pro quo similar to that enjoyed between the Pakistani government and groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba or that they are busy planning someone else. In strategic terms, this represents the greatest success for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban since their overthrow in 2001 - while Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are making fantastical claims about having retaken much of southern or eastern Afghanistan, they have in truth established control over a sizeable chunk of northern Pakistan.

• The Golden Chain of largely Saudi magnates who bankroll al-Qaeda continue to operate more or less freely in the Kingdom, as does bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. They and a number of other al-Qaeda financiers have made a number of impressive legal victories in 2005 and are no closer to having their activities or assets disrupted than they were in 2001. The combination of al-Qaeda continuing to possess its leadership, training camps, and cash more than 4 years after 9/11 is a Very Bad Thing.

• The Muslim population of Europe continues to remain in danger of serious radicalization. The French riots, while not a jihadi initiative in and of themselves, were like the Van Gogh murder a rather ominous harbringer of what may be yet to come. Londonistan also appears largely intact despite the 7/7 and failed 7/21 bombings.

Sorry if this sounds somewhat depressing, but that's basically the year in review as I see it. A number of impressive gains have been made, but there is also a lot of work that is yet to be done in terms of dismantling the terror network that attacked us on 9/11, not all of which can be accomplished by the US alone. Feel free to add anything that you think I may have missed or overlooked and I'll try to touch on it in the comments.

« ok, I'm done now

Religious Hate:

• Palestinian suicide bombings continued last month (or as security-council sitting, veto-wielding China put out through their state press, "Israel provokes violence to disrupt Palestinian elections"). Suicide bombers attacked a Netanya mall and a West Bank checkpoint. The destination of the latter bomber was to be a children's party. Only the bravery of slain Lieutenant Uri Binamo prevented a catastrophic atrocity.
  Watching Palestinians joyfully march in the streets after savage murders should, even today, still be enough to shock and disgust. Forget the daily, political back and forth of border crossings and parliamentary elections and textbooks and incitement. These are people who embrace a deeply pathological culture that celebrates murder for murder's sake - and the world treats them as gentle and innocent victims.

• Islamist groups also committed religiously-inspired murders against civilians in India, Iraq, and Bangladesh.

• We take it as axiomatic that arguing that five million Jews should be wiped off the map is anti-Semitic. It is anti-Semitic whether the call appears in an Irish newspaper, at a Ukranian university, or on the stage of a United Nations event attended by Secretary General Kofi Annan.

• Not so long ago, Sartre famously diagnosed anti-Semitism as a pathology that affects the very body of the anti-Semite. For the true anti-Semite, there is something inherently dirty about Jewish people and Judaism. In the same way that homophobes are viscerally disgusted by seeing two men kissing, the anti-Semite is disgusted by the thought of seeing or coming into contact with anything Judaism. And so when a Lebanese actor risks his career and financial well-being by breaking a contract to play a Jewish role because he can't tolerate even pretending to be a Jewish villain, it should be taken as a symptom of just how deep the anti-Semitic rot has descended in Arab society.

• Fred Phelps is the execrable leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. The man and his followers are beneath contempt - in the past, they have protested the funerals of gay victims of AIDS and of Matthew Sheppard, screeching that the deceased were in hell. They have recently taken to protesting the funerals of fallen American soldiers. They joyfully celebrate those deaths with signs that proclaim that God killed the soldiers to punish America for its tolerance toward homosexuality. Homosexuals in his home town of Topeka, Kansas used to dress up for Halloween in Phelps costumes, with tire tracks running down the front, and walk around holding hands. We don't know if they do that any more, but it'd be a pity if the practice has been totally abandoned.

• Isolating and describing anti-Semitic rhetoric is not always straight-forward. When the Washington Post's Susan Schmidt and James Grimaldi write an article portraying Jack Abramoff as a beard growing, yarmulke wearing Jew who uses money to corrupt people's loyalty while converting a nice Christian girl to Judaism, that at least smacks of anti-Semitic. But when British cartoonists portray Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a naked savage who eats babies, that's almost certainly anti-Semitic. And now there is a London art shows to prove it.

• Anti-Semitic violence in Australia is 10 percent above average:

  The Herald Sun said that incidents recorded during the past year included arson attacks on synagogues, vandalism and Nazi graffiti on private property belonging to Jewish Australians, assaults on Jewish people, and anti-Semitic vandalism of Jewish schools and synagogues.

  The average, taken from figures starting in 1989, is 301 anti-Jewish attacks per year. In 2005 there were 445 attacks.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is totally batshit crazy:

  Ahmadinejad's comments were reported by the official IRNA news agency. "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail... Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, we ask the Europeans: Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem... If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it"

  Best part of this story: Iran demanding tolerance for their Holocaust denial in the spirit of multiculturalism.
  Under the threat of a nuclear-armed lunatic that half the world has armed while the other half issued pro-forma condemnations, Israeli newspapers have taken to openly mocking his ambitions to become a successful real estate agent. But maybe Europe is right - maybe more condemnations will do the trick.

• More Ahmadinejad wackiness: no more Western music in Iran. We were going to make a Britney Spears and K-Fed joke here and let the whole thing pass, but Daniel Pipes explains why this is a serious development in a link-rich post.

• Holocaust denial also appeared prominently in an Egyptian government outlet. Egypt, incidentally, is treaty-bound not to demonize Jews. And by "treaty-bound", we mean "largely able to do what they want because the international community expects nothing better".

• Hezbollah TV aired a children's cartoon depicting Jews turning into monkeys and pigs before being cast off into the sea - pathological, genocidal hatred being drilled into Muslim children at the youngest age. Years from now, we expect that Western liberals will look at Lebanese students like these and say that they only want to "burn Jews like Hitler" because of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

• Among the most consistent and tragic victims of Islamism are the women forced to live in societies either explicitly bound by sharia law or steeped in similar sensibilities. We're talking about a culture where it seems reasonable for religious authorities at the highest levels to blame tsunamis on women who don't wear headscarves. Just yesterday, the AP ran a story about Nazir Ahmed, who slit the throats of his three young daughters and their 25-year old stepsister to salvage his family's "honor".
  Meanwhile, virtually independent Islamist cultures exist today in the hearts of Old Europe. Seemingly every month we learn that an entire family has conspired to kill a daughter or a sister because of some imagined slight that tarnished their honor. And as the murders become more and more common, they of necessity become less and less shocking:

  On the night of Feb. 7, 2005, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed on her way to a bus stop in Berlin-Tempelhof by several shots to the head and upper body, fired at point-blank range... three of her five brothers are on trial for murder. According to the prosecutor, the oldest of them (25) acquired the weapon, the middle brother (24) lured his sister to the scene of the crime and the youngest (18) shot her... it is generally the youngest who are chosen by the family council to carry out such murders... German juvenile law sets a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment for murder, and the offender has the prospect of being released after serving two-thirds of the sentence...
  Often in such cases it is the father of the family who decides about the punishment. But... [there are] cases in which the mother has a leading role: mothers who were forced to marry forcing the same fate on their daughters...The mothers are looking for solidarity by demanding that their daughters submit to the same hardship and suffering. By disobeying them, the daughter calls into question her mother's life - her silent submission to the ritual of forced marriage.

  The cultural situation in Europe is even more dire - if not more tragic - than the personal one:

  Evidently, in the eyes of her brothers, Hatun Surucu's capital crime was that, living in Germany, she had begun living like a German. In a statement to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, one brother noted that she had stopped wearing her head scarf, that she refused to go back to her family and that she had declared her intent to "seek out her own circle of friends."

  In addition to being criminal and disgusting, these murders thus also serve a pernicious cultural design. They are the tangible enforcement mechanisms for a self-sustaining, rejectionist culture seeking to violently resist any kind of European assimilation.
  Even in Israel, where the understanding of Arab culture is significantly more advanced than in Europe - where Jewish and Arab citizens might live apart at night but often work side by side during the day - at least nine honor killings occurred in 2005. Jonathan Edelstein argues that the problem is compounded by the lack of female Arab leaders, but more influential Arab women might be of little help given the evidence of mothers' involvement in European honor killings.

Idiotarian Seethings:

• Part of the role of HateWatch briefings is to create a sort of topology of idiotarianism - we seek to identify and describe the distinct psychological dynamics that undergird various kinds of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. Since 9/11 and especially since the Iraq War, we have often seen an idiotarianism made up of equal parts myopia and hypocrisy - gay rights groups marching against Israel and in favor of Palestinian groups that brutally murder gays, feminist groups marching against US democratization efforts and in favor of Islamists that treat women as chattel, etc. But this shrill hypocrisy - subsuming one's progressive goals under vulgar anti-Americanism - is a relatively new phenomenon on the Left. Traditionally, rather than subsuming their goals, the Western Left has been prone to ignoring the risks of trying to achieve those goals at all costs - witness Western Leftists who embraced Stalin and dismissed evidence of his atrocities. This old fashioned kind of ideological myopia still crops up in idiotarian discourse: seemingly every month, a Leftist outlet can be trusted to celebrate Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. We point this out both as a theoretical exercise in categorizing idiotarianism and because Chavez is an anti-Semitic lunatic that is actually destroying Venezuela...

• Not to worry however: the new idiotarianism is alive and well. Witness Howard Dean's endorsement of Code Pink. Code Pink is an anti-war feminist organization so extreme that they pretty regularly flirt with open terrorist sympathizing. Because Islamists are so good to women.

• Perhaps it's too much to suggest that there's something revelatory about how eagerly the media and certain bloggers picked up the totally and completely fake story about Homeland Security officials interviewing a Massachusetts student for trying to acquire a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. Or maybe there is something to the idea that the Left, deprived of an actual dark night of fascism that it can bravely resist, has taken to making one up. Even the hollowest nut still wants to be cracked.

• The resentful ugliness of the Left on display: celebrating Dame Thatcher's failing health.

• Harold Pinter is an idiotarian:

  "Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it."
  Pinter mentioned Saddam only twice in his speech, once in such vague terms as to make you wonder if Pinter really thinks that the torture, rape, and murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis under Hussein’s rule mattered.

  ScrappleFace has the only reaction Pinter deserves, while Brendan O'Neill does the meta on the anti-Americanism of prominent literary figures:

  I reckon the reason why some commentators in the West seem drawn to bin Laden's prose is because at times - and I'm not going to beat around the bush here - he sounds an awful lot like them. Seriously, it is uncanny. What comes across most clearly in this 10 years' worth of rants is the extent to which bin Laden borrows and steals from Western media coverage to justify his nihilistic actions.

• German archaeologist Susanne Ostroff was kidnapped and held by Iraqi terrorists, yet afterwards she announced to everyone that she's on the terrorists' side. She did this because she is a lunatic.

• Cindy Sheehan insisted that she really believes that she received unfairly negative coverage from the media. She did this because she is a lunatic.

• When pathetic, therapeutic self-affirmation substitutes for a political ideology, you get children's books titled "Why Mommy is a Democrat". Turns out, Mommy is a Democrat because "Democrats make sure we all share our toys", because "Democrats always make sure we are safe", and because "Democrats make sure children can go to school". Republicans might argue that this proves that Democrats want the government to redistribute wealth, ban cigarettes, and lock children up in failing public schools. But then again, Republicans don't have talking squirrels on their side.
  
• No, no, no: Katrina was not the Holocaust. And if you needed to know why, Michelle Malkin has a race-based breakdown. Also: no gas chambers in the Convention Center.

• Once upon a time, an impotent academic Left tried to convince itself of its own importance by throwing around phrases like 'textual resistance is genuine resistance'. Much ostensibly intellectual sweat was expended trying to explain why the moral exhibitionism of graduate students sneering at conservatives in a seminar was the same thing as genuine political action. Today, it is largely agreed upon that this period was, on the whole, pretty stupid. But at St. Mary's college, fount of self-importance Ray Beldner has taught an entire course on culture-jamming. We want to avoid getting overly academic regarding the culture jamming debate (even though this game is a lot more fun when you strike a faux pose and nasally celebrate 'the fluid subject positions opened up by Foucauldian micro-resistance'). Suffice to say that culture jamming largely reduces to that scene in the South Park movie where the boys, thinking that the planned execution of Terrance and Phillip really "sucks," plan to "prank call a bunch of policemen [and]... have pizzas sent to them that they didn't order". That the entire existence of the South Park boys reduces to being 10 year olds that curse is also not immaterial to this analogy.

• It's almost comforting in its predictability - Leftist protesters reliably rioted at a WTO meeting. The lack of puppets on stilts was kind of disappointing though. It's almost like their hearts aren't in it any more.

• Though we live in an era when referencing psychoanalysis induces eye-rolling, it is still quite well accepted that the words and phrases that people rely on reveal much about their underlying ideology. Certainly, at least some thought should be given to the fact that John Kerry seems comfortable rhetorically equating American troops with terrorists.

• We think that creating an office in the Department of State to monitor and combat anti-Semitism is like setting a fox to watch a hen-house. Actually it's more like setting a fox's appeasing, oil-soaked, bureaucratized animal-buddy to watch a hen-house, but there's no tired and hackneyed metaphor for that. Regardless, we certainly don't think that it's a "threat to the Liberty (sic) of every American" like this far right group thinks it is. Another special comment from these boards: "aka Israeli-occupied U.S. Government, aka Neoconservativism, aka Dominionism, aka Zionism, aka Trotskyism, aka Communism". We don't even know what that means.

• Steven Spielberg's Munich: factually incorrect, terrorist sympathizing, moral equivocating garbage.

Race and Culture:

• War on Christmas: we don't care. We're not for, we're not against. We don't care. To ACLU-linked partisans: Christmas lights don't burn holes in your retinas, and rays from the sun bouncing off scenes of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus in a manger aren't more likely to give you cancer than other kinds of radiation. To our Fox News friends: no one is trying to take away your Christmas. We promise.
  There are a nuanced discussions to be had here: about the differences between the social sphere in which uncertainty and a little contradiction must be the norm and the legal sphere in which bright lines must be established; about the consequences of political communities constituted as pure opposition; about the depoliticizing of public deliberation; about the way that rhetorical tropes from the science wars are mapped on to the culture wars; and so on. But really, we don't care. Please just stop.

• New reports show that our friends the Saudis have radicalized 80% of US mosques:

  Before the 1970s, [Yehudit Barsky, an expert on terrorism at the American Jewish Committee] explained, "Muslim immigrants who came to the United States would build a store-front mosque somewhere... since the 1970s, the Saudis have been approaching these mosques and telling them it wasn't proper for the glory of Islam to build such small mosques."...
  For each mosque they invested in, the Saudis sent along their own imam... "These [immigrants] were not interested in this [Wahhabi] ideology, and suddenly they have a Saudi imam coming in and telling them they're not praying properly and not practicing Shari'a [Islamic law] properly."... this means that "the people now in control of teaching religion [to American Muslims] are extremists. Who teaches the mainstream moderate non-Saudi Islam that people used to have? It's in the homes, but there's no infrastructure. Eighty percent of the infrastructure is controlled by these extremists."
  The same is true, Barsky said, of many of the mainstream Muslim organizations in America. Many of them are "pro-Saudi and pro-Muslim Brotherhood organizations."

  There are undoubtedly strains of Islam that are peaceful and can comfortably exist within robust, diverse, secular democracies. Apparently they're not the ones being preached in most American mosques.

• Radical Islam has reached Sweden, and the authorities there are just as clueless and just as disabled by banal multiculturalism as the rest of Europe.

• In Saudi Arabia, a court has ruled that an Indian migrant worker is to have his eye gouged out because of a fight with a customer. Charming.

• Sectarian race riots rock Australia. There seem to be no good guys in this one - members of a certain religion attacked white life-guards on a beach, and white youth retaliated by attacking innocent members of a certain religion. Not to give away the ending, but fundamentalist Quakers were largely uninvolved.
  In France, meanwhile, more Muslim rioting remains a constant threat.

• Proving that the Left doesn't have a monopoly on seething, disgusting anti-Americanism, white supremacist Michael Crook has proudly confessed to sending a particularly ugly card to wounded American soldier Joshua Sparling.

• Professional hatemonger David Duke gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he denied the Holocaust and insisted that neo-conservative Jews manipulated the United States into Gulf War II. Snark is left mostly as an exercise for the reader. Except to say this: the statement "Israel Makes the Nazi State Look Very Moderate" makes little sense when you consider that Palestinians have started two domestic insurgencies and that Israel has responded by taking inordinate steps to shield their civilian populations from retribution (and more recently, has provided them with land for a state). Israel lost a soldier yesterday because he stopped a taxi he strongly suspected contained a suicide bomber. When the suicide bomber was asked to step out of the car, he blew himself up and killed the soldier. All this was done by the Israelis in an effort not to punish innocent Palestinians - even the ones in a car carrying a suicide bomber. The Nazis would have blown up the car as the bomber approached, and then liquidated the town from which he came. But David Duke's hyperbole as an exercise in demonization is given prominent play and respect throughout the Muslim world.

• The execution of Crips founder and multiple murderer Tookie Williams resulted in celebrations of his legacy in neighborhoods throughout America. Hollywood stars whose only contact with street life is when they caricature it on screen rushed to pontificate on various aspects of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's inhumanity.

A Hopeful Note:

• The true consequences of Middle East democratization are neither as largely irrelevant as some on the Left of the blogosphere imply nor as unconditionally positive as some on the Right of the blogosphere insist. The specter of "one man, one vote, one time" - of Middle East populations voting themselves into Islamofacism - remains a real threat. Nonetheless, it would be churlish to deny the outpouring of humanity and freedom that accompanied the parliamentary elections in Iraq and the parliamentary activity in Afghanistan.

• Britain's new Tory leader David Cameron knows that anti-Semitism is bad. So that's reassuring. If Britain wasn't a hotbed of intellectualized anti-Semitism, it would be even more reassuring. But c'est la vie.

• Ukraine's President Yuschenko knows that anti-Semitism is bad. So that's reassuring. If Ukraine wasn't a hotbed of violent anti-Semitism, it would be even more reassuring. But you take what you can get.

• We always have problems deciding whether to use these stories as punch lines to "Religious Hate" blurbs or to post them as legitimate "A Hopeful Note" bullet-points. This initiative actually seems genuine and so here it is:

  Leaders at the biggest-ever Muslim summit on terrorism vowed Thursday to fight extremist ideology, saying they would reform textbooks, rein in the issuing of religious edicts and crack down on terror financing. Kings, heads of states and ministers from more than 50 Muslim countries closed a two-day summit held in Islam's holiest city, Mecca, that had been convened in a bid to address terrorism that has increasingly confronted their own governments and to counter criticism that the Islamic world has been doing to little to confront extremism.

• Many of the most astute commentators on the war against global Islamism believe that Old Europe is lost. Germany is at least sometimes making an effort not to let that happen all at once.

• It's easy to mock Saudi Arabia's grandiose concession to think about maybe letting women drive (we certainly did at the time). But positive change comes slowly to insulated society and this is positive change.

« ok, I'm done now

I still haven’t seen U.S. troops engaged or encounter car bombs or explosives. But I did see them play backgammon with some local police and Iraqi soldiers. I saw them take photos with more locals and make jokes mostly lost in translation. They gave advice and expertise to local troops on how to conduct a neighborhood patrol. They drank the local customary tea, and many admitted they’ve become addicted to it. They know several locals by name. I didn’t hear one slight or ridicule of a very distinct culture. One soldier mentioned it might be a good idea to clean up the trash around one polling place, and another commented on the status of women in the culture, but they were nothing but respectful, friendly and buddy-buddy with the Iraqis they mingled with today.

And this is good stuff.

More than anything in the last few days I’ve heard from soldiers and commanders that people back home don’t quite get it. They don’t see the real picture. They don’t get the real story. Some of them, like Lt. Col. Gregg Parrish, look seriously pained in the face when he says only a part of the picture is being told; the part of car bombs and explosives and suicide bombers and death. It’s a necessary part of the picture, but not a complete one, he says.

I’ve listened to the soldiers and Parrish about the missing pieces of the puzzles that don’t reach home. My selfish, journalistic drive immediately thinks “Perfect. A story that hasn’t been told. Let me at it.”

But I have a slight hesitation; I need to keep balanced. I can’t be a cheerleader, even if I have a soft spot for the hometown troops, especially after the welcome they’ve shown me. I still need to be truthful and walk the centerline and report the good or bad.

But then I realize it’s not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one. It takes a minute to wrap my mind around it, as a news junkie that became a news writer. The great, career-making, breaking news stories usually don’t have happy endings; they usually revolve around disturbing news, deceit and downfall. Nasty political doings. Gruesome crimes and murders. Revealing secrets.

But I’ve come upon something that is none of those. Not this aspect of it. There are politics to this war and controversies and investigations. But there is another side.

Judging from this and other posts on her blog and her news pages that I have read, both she and the Daily News Miner are very much worth your time.

People in the blogosphere and elsewhere have complained bitterly that there is no "other side" from the main stream media on the good things happening in Iraq. Now there is one being reported. Rise, go forth and give them both the linkie love and e-mail encouragements they deserve.

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There are Mississippians in Gulfport, D'Iberville, St Martin, Biloxi, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Waveland that are sleeping in tents while waiting on a FEMA trailer. Small communities in Mississippi such as Waveland, Lakeshore, and St Martin no longer exist. The national news media has relegated my state to a footnote when Hurricane Katrina is discussed. Even The Weather Channel now fails to mention Mississippi when discussing Hurricane Katrina. The American people have not forgotten us and for that I am grateful. There are so many volunteers that are helping us rebuild our lives.

I've been troubled by the near-footnote status that Mississippi was given since, well, since about the day after Katrina missed New Orleans and hit Mississippi.

Not to minimize the trouble in New Orleans, or the scale of the city's population, but to focus almost solely on New Orleans when the truly epic damage was spread across the neighboring state's coastline was unforgivable.

Speaking of "unforgivable", why are people still waiting on FEMA trailers?

Here's a photo of downtown Pass Christian I was sent by a reader, who works with the spouse of the photographer, an Air Force Reservist sent to the Mississippi coast to help with relief efforts:

For many, many more pics of the devastation along the "footnote" coast, see Pictures from the air of Gulfport and Biloxi areas. Truly amazing. If anyone can look at these and then explain to me why Mississippi has been virtually ignored by the coverage, I'd be interested.

Also, don't miss Chuck Simmins' Carnival of Hurricane Relief #18.

--cross-posted by Murdoc

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Iran & the Middle East

• In response to Palestinian rocket attacks, the Israeli military will enforce a new off-limits zone in Gaza. Israel's deputy defense minister, Zeev Boim said the hope is that Palestinians "will get the message and that this will stop the rocket squads," adding "If we must, we will have to tighten the screw further." The BBC is calling the move an "aerial siege."

• Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is accusing Syria of terrorizing neighbor countries and "taking the path of terrorism in order to evade international pressure".

• Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Mahdi Akef has come out and declared the holocaust a myth, nearly echoing an earlier claim made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Akef complained that "Western democracies have slammed all those who don't see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust."

• Turkish authorities have arrested 14 people on suspicion of belonging to a banned Muslim group.

• Efraim Inbar of the Began-Sedat Center for Strategic Studies writes about the imperative to use force against Iranian nuclearization.

• Israel is preparing for the possibility that the Palestinian authority under Mahmoud Abbas, could be on the verge of collapsing.

• Iran is denying that Russia has made any formal offer to move Iranian enrichment facilities into Russia, maintaining the position that enrichment is Iran's right.

America Domestic Security & the America's

• A Canadian wanted by the United States for allegedly plotting to kill Americans abroad was denied bail Friday by a judge who said he posed a flight risk. Abdullah Khadr, 24, who is being held in Canada on an extradition warrant, could flee with the help of the al-Qaida terrorist network, said Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Moll

• Four years after September 11, the Bush administration has claimed some legal victories in its war on terrorism, but critics say there have been few major convictions and not a single trial of anyone caught trying to carry out an attack.

• A nationwide campaign by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents against unlicensed money transmittal businesses and underground "hawalas" has resulted in the arrest of 140 individuals, 138 criminal indictments, and the seizure of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds since the enactment of the USA Patriot Act, which requires such businesses to be licensed and registered.

• Colorado Springs is preparing what appears to be the first citywide radiation monitoring in the U.S.

• Drug seizures are up all along the US-Mexico border. The reasons for the success? Better intelligence-sharing, increased manpower, and improved technology that border officials have received in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

• Leader of the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen Yasin Abu Bakr will spend Christmas in jail as his lawyer prepares closing submissions for the hearing which resumes Thursday. The State closed its case in the preliminary enquiry against Bakr last week. Bakr is before Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls in the Port of Spain Eighth Magistrates' Court charged with sedition, terrorism and three counts of inciting the demand of property, money and the breach of the peace.

Russia & South/Central Asia

• At least 13 sailors have been killed in a mine attack on a convoy in north-western Sri Lanka, officials say. The army said a mine was detonated as a navy bus and truck passed by in Mannar district and blamed Tamil Tiger rebels. The killings would be the worst breach of the 2002 ceasefire, but on Friday the Tigers said they were not connected with the incident.

• In Sri Lanka, the government said two soldiers were shot, one fatally, in the Jaffna Peninsula on Saturday.

• Two militants and one policeman were killed last week in eastern Afghanistan after militants clashed with Afghan and US forces, officials say. The fighting started after the group attacked Afghan police and US forces in the province of Ghazni, they said.

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• Two bomb explosions toppled two electricity pylons in southwestern Pakistan Thursday, disrupting power supply but injuring no one, as militant tribesmen launched fresh attacks against government troops, an army official said.

• The Pakistani government and leaders of the five main chains of madrassas or Muslim seminaries have reached an agreement for new legislation for registering madrassas. Madrassas have also been allowed to include the comparative study of religions in their syllabus, while earlier this was banned in the name of checking sectarianism and militancy.

• In Bangladesh, State Minister for Religious Affairs Mosharref Hossain Shajahan asked the militants to return to normal life, expressing the hope that the militancy will come to end in a couple of months as the people and the government are united against the menace.

• U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base, where he said any early withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq would lead to new terrorist attacks on Americans at home. Earlier in Kabul, Rumsfeld said any reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will not weaken the campaign against Taliban fighters and Al-Qaeda terrorists operating in the country.

• Uzbekistan's hardline authorities consider the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan a hotbed of Islamic extremism, after a jailbreak and mass protest in May was crushed by troops. The events in Andijan have starkly emphasised the tensions which a revival of Islam has brought to Central Asia.

• Experts say a mystery mass illness in Russia's conflict-torn republic of Chechnya was caused by ethyl glycol - a toxic chemical found in anti-freeze. The symptoms prompted speculation that they might have been targeted by chemical weapons. Others rejected that explanation.

• At least seven people have been killed in what officials say was a battle between Islamic students and bandits in Pakistan's north-western tribal region. Reports say five bandits and two students were killed in the village of Shawal in North Waziristan, along the border with Afghanistan.

• Two soldiers have been wounded in a landmine explosion in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area, near the Afghan border, officials say. Around a dozen men have been detained over the incident, the officials say.

• A top commander of Pakistan-based Al-Badr outfit was killed by security forces in Srinagar on Sunday. Wasim, a Pakistani national and self-styled district commander of Al-badr outfit, was killed in a gunbattle with security forces at Bemina locality, Senior Superintendent of Police Muneer Khan said.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• According to reports, Jemaah Islamiah leader Abdul Rahman Ayub is believed to be training terrorists in the southern Philippines, after leaving Australia over a year ago.

• Muslim cleric Mohammad Omran is blaming Australian Prime Minister John Howard for radicalizing Muslim youths, saying "the Government is pushing the people to believe they can do all these major disaster things."

• Indonesian authorities are looking into a string of recent robberies, they believe may be tied to terrorism. According to Sr. Comr. Anton Bahrul, "Imam Samudra and his team members robbed banks and jewelry stores to raise the funds for the terrorist attack in Bali." Indonesian authorities are also looking for six foreign terrorists they believe are in Indonesia.

• The Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade has issued a new terror alert for Australians travelling in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

• A Chinese court has upheld the life prison sentence of Peng Ming, a U.S. based pro-democracy advocate who Chinese officials accuse of setting up a terror training camp in Myanmar, in order to carry out attacks in China.

• By a vote of 113-100, opposition Taiwanese parties blocked the special budget aimed at boosting defenses and the military through arms purchases from the United States. This marks the 42nd time the bill has been blocked, even after proponents have scaled it down from the original $ 18 billion dollars to $ 9 billion. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is accusing the opposition parties of placing Taiwan's security at risk.

• The United States has warned Thailand that two suspects of Middle East origin that are on the terror watchlist, may try to enter Thailand during the Christmas and New Years celebrations.

Europe

• Police in southern Italy arrested three Algerians on international terrorism charges, saying the group was planning attacks in Italy and Iraq. The three, Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama, are suspected of being members of the al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). According to Italian interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu, the group is also suspected of being linked to a plan for attacks in the United States.

• Italian courts have issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA agents allegedly involved in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect from the streets of Milan in February 2003.

• The British government has signed an agreement with Lebanon that will enable the deportation of suspects from the UK to Lebanon, with the understanding in place that their safety will be ensured.

• The Dutch government continues to face security challenges in fighting terrorism while also trying to protect civil liberties. In Amsterdam, a Dutch merchant was sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling chemicals to Iraq in the 1980s that were used in chemical weapons.

• A British court has convicted Abu Baker Mansha under the terrorism act, after it was revealed the man had a gun and the address of a British soldier who had served in Iraq, and planned to carry out an attack on him for his success. In Iraq, Cpl. Mark Byles won the military cross for leading an attack that killed five insurgents.

• Adel Yahya, a 23 year-old student in Britain, has been charged with conspiracy to cause explosions in connection with the failed July 21st bombing plot in London. Yahya is the 43rd person arrested for involvement in the failed bombings.

• The French parliament, by a vote of 202-120, approved a new anti-terrorism bill that will increase video surveillance in public areas, including airports and places of worship. Police authorities will be granted more time for questioning terror suspects, and in checking internet and telephone records.

• Spanish authorities have arrested six men suspected of recruiting militants to travel to Iraq in order to wage jihad. Three of the men have been charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, while the other three have been charged with collaboration with a terrorist organization.

• Susanne Osthoff, a German archaeologist, was kidnapped in Iraq in late November. She was released this past Sunday. In a troubling parallel development, though, last Thursday, three days before Osthoff was released, Germany had paroled a Hezbollah terrorist wanted by the US for the murder of US Navy diver Robert Stethem. Did Germany release a terrorist to free a hostage?

Africa

• Chad accused neighboring Sudan on Thursday of trying to draw it into the civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region and urged the U.N. Security Council to help prevent the conflict from spreading.

• Chad says it is in "a state of war" with neighbour Sudan over the security crisis in the east of the country. It accuses Sudan of being the "common enemy of the nation" after a Chadian rebel attack on a town last week.

• Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on 22 December ordered that all defence and security personnel in the Niger Delta be placed in a state of "high alert". The President gave the order at a meeting with senior members of the nation's security and intelligence communities. The meeting was called to review the security situation in the Niger Delta following two pipelines explosions in the region in the past few days.

• A report (available here) from the International Crisis Group says the fragile peace maintained by Ethiopia and Eritrea since they signed a comprehensive agreement at Algiers in December 2000 is fraying dangerously. Resumption would destabilize the entire Horn, fuelling flows of weapons to armed groups throughout the region, rekindling a proxy war in Somalia and undermining the fragile peace process in southern and eastern Sudan.

• A report at The Jamestown Foundation looks at Sierra Leone and its history of harboring Islamic militants.

The Global War

• Because terrorists are increasingly using peroxide-based explosives to carry out devastating attacks, the FBI is training some of the best noses in the U.S. to sniff them out. Meet explosive-detection dogs—an extraordinarily talented breed of anti-crime specialists.

• The U.S. Department of the Treasury hosted the inaugural meeting of a new international private sector outreach working group that unites public and private sector entities – both foreign and domestic – in an effort to strengthen defenses against terrorist financing and money laundering in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

• China's trade and oil interests in Sudan have induced the permanent U.N. Security Council member to provide diplomatic cover for the government accused by many of war crimes against its own people, analysts say.

• Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri praised the Taliban, saying the Islamic movement still controlled large parts of Afghanistan, according to an audio tape aired by Al Arabiya television on Saturday. Al Arabiya said the date of the tape, which it said it had just obtained, could not be determined and made no mention of recent events.

• On the SBS TV program yesterday, "Han Soo-jin’s Sunday Click," U.S. ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow claimed that he has evidence that a North Korean official had contacted an Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorist indicted for the circulation of counterfeit notes, and this evidence could reveal the connection between the counterfeit currency and the North.

From the Briefing 2,005 years ago

• A Jewish couple from Nazareth travelled to the West Bank town of Bethlehem in observance of the tax regulations instituted by Caesar Augustus, head of the Italian government. Housing shortages forced the couple to stay in a stable.

• King Herod ordered a massacre of all boys age 2 and under living in the Bethlehem area. Some families fled to Egypt to escape the slaughter.

• Dignitaries from the Iraq-Iran region had an audience with King Herod, and then visited a young Jewish boy, presenting him with gifts. In a diplomatic slight, the dignitaries returned without meeting with Herod as he had requested.

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. For ongoing tips, email "MondayWindsOfWar", over here @windsofchange.net.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• Michael Yon says, "Three times a charm."

• Check out the latest from Bill Roggio in Iraq.

• John Mallon, of Omaha, Nebraska, has something to say.

RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY

• The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved the institution's first-ever Stand-By Arrangement for Iraq, which is designed to support the nation's economic program over the next 15 months. The IMF arrangement, for an amount equivalent to SDR 475.4 million (about US$685 million), is being treated as precautionary by the Iraqi authorities.

IRAQI POLITICS

• Al-Arabiya satellite channel identified several high-profile detainees who were recently released from coalition custody. The report describes them as two former ministers of Saddam's government as well as an associate of Uday, Saddam's son.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad says pressure is still on Syria and Iran to prevent insurgents from entering Iraq.

• The British Royal Court of Appeal has ordered a Royal Military Police investigation into the death, while in British custody, of Iraqi hotel clerk Baha Mousa.

ETCETERA

• Like a lot of Iraqi Christians, Wasseem Dawood has adjusted to the new ways of marking Christmas. Like always, he will visit relatives, eat rich foods and buy new clothes. But this year, he will keep watch outside his church with a Kalashnikov rifle. Read the rest >>>

• It is reported that al Zarqawi was captured and then inadvertently released from custody.

• The US Fourth Infantry Division will return to Iraq. This time, with a new mission.

• Do you have your GI Bracelet? Many military families fall into financial hardship when the breadwinner is injured or killed. The entire purchase price of the GI Bracelet is donated to support our troops and their families! Please join us to give back to these brave people in their time of need.

• 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, contact us!

• Many American troops have taken it upon themselves to reconstruct schools and gather learning tools for the children of Iraq. Their efforts have been met with immense gratitude from the local Iraqis and their children. You can help too! Visit Operation Iraqi Children and get involved.

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

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. And if you have a tip for a future Iraq Report, email us at MondayIraqReport(at)windsofchange.net.

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And me in the easyboy,
so stuffed with latkes,
I stretched the elastic
which held up my gatchkes

When up on the roof
(and it has a steep pitch)
A fat alte kakker
was making a kvitsch.
I jumped up real quick
and I ran to the door,
Was it a bandeet,
or only a schnorrer?

He wasn't alone;
he had eight ferdelach,
And called them by name
as he gave a gebrach:

"On Moishe, on Yankel, on Itzik, on Sam,
On Mendel, on Shmendrik, on Feivush, on Ham;
My kidneys are kvelling;
do you give a damn?"

He had a white beard
and payyes to boot,
And to keep out the cold,
he had such a nice suit!

A second from Peerless,
I could tell at a glance,
But the cut was okay,
and so were the pants.

He was triple XL,
a real groisser goof,
So I yelled out,
"Meshuggener! Get off from Mein roof!"
He jumped down and said
as he shook hands with me,
"Max Klaus is the name.
You have maybe some tea?"

So I gave him a gleisel,
while he shook his white mop,
Mutt'ring, "Always the same thing,
They're dreying my kopp!"

From Vancouver to Glace Bay,
Outremont to Reginek,
Every shmo in the world
hakks meir a cheinik!

They're screaming for presents,
and challah with schmaltz,
And from Brooklyn alone,
the back pain, gevaltz!"

So we sat and yentehed,
and we spun the old dreydels,
(He took all of my money,
and one of my kanidels)

He said, "Business is not bad,
a living I make,
But I'm getting too old
for this Hanukkah fake;

And the cell phones, you see
how my pacemaker dings?
For two cents I'd quit,
and move to Palm Springs!"

And he gave a geshrei
as he fled mit a lacht,
"Gut Yontiff to All,
Vey is Mir, Such a Nacht!"

(Author Unknown)

Don't forget to send the ACLU a Christmas Card! Interested folks may wish to check out last year's post "A Jewish Christmas in America" for an authentic response to the holiday that transcends selfish secularist militancy.

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The Muslim Brotherhood was launched in 1928 to restore a Califate, a global religious government aimed at fighting the “non-believers” (specifically, Christians, Hindus and Jews) and spreading Islam. They oppose the existence of any secular states in all Muslim societies throughout the Middle East.

The Brotherhood killed Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi in 1948 and plotted to kill President Gamal Abd El-Nasser. Their offshoot, Islamic Jihad, led by Ayman Al Zawahiri, Usama bin Laden’s number two, assassinated the Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, and tried to kill President Housni Mubarak in 1995.

The Brotherhood MB remains extremely anti-Western civilization, opposes a political/peaceful settlement to the Arab Israeli conflict. Hamas is a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim MB Brotherhood.

In this latest round of elections, Egypt received the Muslim Brotherhood emerged as the principal opposition with one-quarter of all parliamentary seats, which controls one quarter of parliamentary seats, because all other political alternatives, especially secular and liberal parties, were marginalized and weakened for decades, while MB survived throughout the tens of thousands of mosques and madrassahs.

The proposed dialogue that is not based on thorough knowledge of the history of the Middle East, and the literature of Islamism might well take the USA for a ride. That is why, it is crucial that people who run this dialogue exchange, raise and ask the right questions and get them answered. Questions such as:

(1) Some of the MB's now expound that "Copts" are "Fully First Class Egyptian Citizens" - would this imply that a Copt (Egyptian Christians) could be, in principle, elected the president of Egypt?

(2) Would you follow the Saudi model of segregating "Girls" from "Boys" in schools & and universities?

(3) The Non-History-Related-Tourism (i.e. the Beach Tourism) generates in excess of 75% of Egypt's tourism- revenues. What are your views about "Drinks", alcoholic drinks, gambling and casinos, and women dressing in any way they choose?

(4) What is your opinion concerning the peace treaties between Egypt and Israel and between Jordan and Israel?

(5) What do you think of the different forms of economic cooperation between Egypt and Israel (the Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) for instance)?

(6) How do you describe the killing of Israeli civilians in Hamas or al Jihad suicidal operations?

(7) Do you believe that Sayed Qotb's doctrine known as "al Hak'imyia" (à system of government based exclusively on Allah’s law which rejects all democracy and human law as apostasy) - is still the basis of your political system? (Sayyed Qîutb, the leading ideologist of Muslim MB Brotherhood says that Hak’imiya is the declaration of total sovereignty and rule of Allah, a full revolt against human rulership in all its forms, systems and arrangements, the destruction of the kingdom of man to establish the kingdom of God on earth... A revolution based on this theory does not think of improving the existing system, of understanding it or participating in it, but of destroying it first and then building a new one. It is based on the assumption that there is nothing good in the current system.)

(8) What will beare your views on women occupying all high governmental offices sorts of positions including ministership, prime-ministership & and the Head of State position post?

(9) What are your views about President G.W.Bush’s vision of a two States (solution, with Israel and Palestine) living (peacefully) next to each other? .. Would you then accept recognize the right of Israel to exist? .. Would you also accept that the Jewish section of Jerusalem is Israel's capital?

(10) Egypt’s legal system (since 1883) has been based on the juridical notions of the continental legal system (Code Napoleon). - What are your plans in this regard? And what do you think of physical punishments, such as the thankstions applicable in Saudi Arabia?

(11) Like all modern societies, the Egyptian banking system is based on the notion of interests (for lending and savings). Will you keep it? - How do you see this particular point?

(12) Is Iran a factor of stability (or Instability) in our today's world ?

(13) Finally, the Americans who will be talking to the MB's representatives MUST be very well read in all Islamic history & and Jurisprudence. Otherwise, they may not know that MB is likely to use TAQQYIA, a principle that permits the Muslims are allowed to lie, if this doing so would assist them to ultimately DEFEAT THE INFEDLES!!! (i.e. YOU, THE READERS OF THIS ARTICLE !!!). The taqqiya it is permitted by some olama (scholars), such as Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taimmyia. Sending an ignorant American diplomatic team that is ignorant, or only superficially educated, in these crucial areas could prove a catastrophe.

I wonder why USA and Europe are not equally interested to support the civil/modern opposition and make sureassure that regimes throughout the Middle East pursue a real evolutionary path of institution building and economic and political reform. Only then may the Muslim Brotherhood may cease to be a totalitarian threat to my country .

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It was peacetime, the early 1980s - before cell phones or GPS to navigate. I was a first lieutenant assigned to Fort jackson, SC. My name reached the top of the installation-level duty roster just in time to be tabbed for NOK notification. I reported to the post's casualty office for instructions. There I was assigned a government van and driver and given a written packet of information about the deceased soldier, the address of his NOK, a map and a government credit card.

My instructions were simple: "Memorize this paragraph. You are required to state it verbatim, without notes, to the next of kin. That's all you have to do." Unlike the Marines, the Army assigns different officers to notification duty and survivor-assistance duty. An assistance officer (actually a senior NCO) would be assigned to help the dead soldier's parents with the funeral and settling his affairs; the soldier had not been married.

I got one final instruction before departing: "You must make the notification between 0600 and 2200. Use the credit card for any expenses related to this mission, including food and lodging if you need it. Don't come back until you have made the notification."

The dead soldier had been a member of the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC. He had died in an auto accident (fact was, he was DWI, but relating that fact was not my problem). The civilian casualty staffer at post HQ told me that tthe soldier's father already knew his son was dead (via unofficial grapevine channel from his unit), but that it didn't matter: the Army always sent an officer, in Class A uniform, to deliver the official word. Unlike Maj. Beck, I was alone; my driver was a driver, that's all. I was also distinctly forbidden to call the NOK by phone, even to ask directions.

We set out for rural northwest South Carolina. The NOK's address was an RFD box from a very small farming town. It was wintertime and well after dark when we arrived. Absolutely everything was closed for the day; there wasn't even a place to get a cup of coffee.

The van needed fuel and we did manage to find the town's one gas station. It was, thank heavens, still open. I asked the attendant where Mr. "Smith" lived and showed him the address without telling him why I wanted it. The man shook his head and said he'd never heard of "Smith," but that the RFD route started along a certain state route heading out of town, so maybe if we began at the first mailbox and kept going, we'd find it.

I remember clearly the RFD box number: 479. What a plan.

Refueled, I bought some snack crackers and a coke for my driver and myself and we drove off to find the state route. Much to our surprise, once we left the town the first mailbox was number 100. (Apparently, all the RFD numbers were three digits.) But the next was, yes, "101." We kept going.

Believe it or not we followed the mailboxes all the way to number 479. There were many stops, wrong turns and restarts as we tried to stay on the state road; intersections were often not marked which road was which. Many mailboxes also were not marked at all and we simply proceeded on faith. Sometimes we drove a long way withour seeing any box, then there would be one.

After almost four hours of navigating in the darkness, a mailbox marked 479 in simple handwritten, white paint ghosted into the headlights. It was 2145 hours. The house was set off the road about 40 yards. Every window was brightly illuminated from interior lights. We turned in and parked. I got out of the van and discovered that soul music was coming from the house very loud. I reached into the back seat and got out my Class A blouse (coat for you civilians).

"Good luck, sir," my driver called as I turned to go to the house.

"Thanks." I reached the house's door and knocked on it loudly so it would be heard over the music. Momentarily a middle-aged man (or so he seemed, hard farm labor can age you quickly) answered. He was bleary-eyed and I immediately saw why: there were several open bottles of liquor on side tables behind him.

"Sir," I said to him, "I am Lieutenant Sensing from Fort Jackson. I am told this is the home of Mr. 'George Smith.' If so, I would appreciate very much speaking with him."

The man motioned for me to come in and said, "That's me." I stepped inside two steps, removing my saucer cap as I did. A young man in the room yelled at a boy to turn off the music, which he quickly did. I recall that there were a couple of women in the room, too.

"Mr. Smith," I said very formally, "on behalf the secretary of the Army, I extend to you my sympathy in the death of your son, Sergeant 'Jim Smith.'" I don't remember after so many years the paragraph I had memorized then. I know I said that another officer would contact them about making arrangements and settling their son's affairs, and that he would be able to answer all their questions.

Uttering those words was 100 percent of my duties. I finished and Mr. "Smith" mumbled, "Thank you," and offered his right hand. I shook it and said, "I really am very sorry for your loss, sir." We dropped hands and regarded each other briefly: he a black, uneducated farm laborer who had toiled in tobacco or bean fields all his life, who had seen his eldest son graduate from high school and become a soldier with a bright future. But his son got killed in a rural road in North Carolina. And there I was, a lily-white young officer with no personal connection to his son telling him that the secretary of the entire US Army mourned the young man's death.

Mr. "Smith" turned away and so did I. There was nothing else for either of us to say to one another. I stepped out the door and walked back to the van. The driver asked, "Home, sir?"

"Yes," I answered, "if you're okay to make the drive."

"Roger that, sir." He turned the van toward the road where mailboxes were, or were not, marked with plain white numbers that haunted the roadside at 2200 hours, local time.

Before we reached the pavement, the former home of the dead soldier was reverberating again with loud soul music, booming through the darkness.

Crossposted at DonaldSensing.com

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"We need to mobilize a new generation of thinkers and leaders in the Middle East," Abdulhamid said. "This essay contest is a way to provide incentive for youth to share their ideas for promoting individual liberty and tolerance. We are asking young people to share their frustrations and their dreams, and to stand up for individual rights." The contest was formally launched to Middle Eastern audiences by AIC executive director Zainab Al-Suwaij at a conference of female human rights activists in Jordan. Al-Suwaij told conference participants from across the Arab world that effective partnership is key to advancing civil rights.

"Middle Eastern reformers need support from American activists," Al-Suwaij noted. "We are encouraging young Americans to think about how they can use their freedom to help people their own age in the Middle East. We need to extend our hands in support – and young Americans can play an important role."

The official website for the contest is http://www.Hamsaweb.org. Essays must address one of several questions posted on the site and can be submitted in English, Arabic, French, or Farsi. The deadline is February 28, 2006. A diverse panel of celebrity judges – including Gloria Steinem and civil rights veteran Normal Hill – will select the winning essays. See the website for a complete list of judges.

A few of our commenters may be young enough to enter, and I'd encourage them to do it. I'd like to read what they have to say.

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When "progressives" do this (and here I am not so much talking about Jim as "social activists" I know, but they share some traits), there is the added insult of hypocrisy; anyone has the right to be a curmudgeonly isolationist reactionary, but then don't tell me you care about the fate of the planet and oppressed peoples and rainforests and bunny rabbits. And these same "progressives" will give the Palestinians endless chances to stop acting like thugs, on very little evidence, and yet are indecently hasty to write off the Iraqis (and with smug satisfaction!) on the basis of one election, even though the Iraqis have in three short years demonstrated more desire and effort to create a lawful society than the Palestinians have since Arafat came back from Tunis.

Anyway, regardless of the outcome of this election, unless the new government attempts to shut down the proliferation of news and opinion and global communication that Iraq has grown accustomed to, there's no reason this shouldn't continue to be true:

This relentless progress of democracy is causing quite a commotion throughout the Arab world. While it is fashionable to denounce the American presence in Iraq, and what the Americans were doing, the Arab language buzz on the net is going in unexpected directions. Because of al Jazeera and the Internet, young Arabs everywhere are not only able to observe what it happening in Iraq, but to discuss it with young Iraqis.

These discussions are not noted much in the West, because they generally take place in Arabic, and often via email and listservs. The non-Iraqi Arabs are impressed at the proliferation of media in Iraq, and the eagerness of Iraqis to vote, and make democracy work. The economic growth in Iraq is admired, and is already attracting entrepreneurs from other Arab countries. The more cynical non-Iraqis believe that it will all come to nothing, and that another Saddam will eventually emerge and shut down all this democratic nonsense, as is the case in most of the Arab world.

But the pessimists appear to be in the minority. Arabs are tired of dictators, economic stagnation, the corruption and living in a police state. Moreover, there’s a nimble quality in Arab thinking that allows them to simultaneously blame the Americans for going into Iraq, and praising the result.

I'm sure the Arab pessimists are out in force this week, along with their Western fellow travelers. But if Iraq continues to have a relatively free press, if the structure of the Parliament allows for minority representation, and most importantly if the judiciary retains its independence, then Iraq will continue to act as a model for democracy in the Arab world, regardless of the platform of the party in power.

Those are big "ifs." As specialists in nation-building say, it's easy to hold one election, the real test is if the second election results in a peaceful transfer of power. But we simply don't know yet.

From everything I have read and heard, including repeated polls over the last three years, I am confident that this is true: Most Iraqis, even fundamentalist Shiites, really really don't want their country to be a client state of Iran. Many of those who voted for the Shiite list out of insecurity still have a stake in economic growth and interaction with the Western world. Even those who claim to want a strongman like Saddam aren't going to give up their new cellphones and modems without a struggle. And now their whole region is not only watching, but chatting with them about the process as it unfolds.

Pandora's box has been opened.

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According to this summary of Hurriyet's reporting, a major topic of the discussions centered around the PKK, which is currently subsisting in their Brave New World-style communes in northern Iraq and has launched a number of attacks into Turkey since the 2003 US invasion. Most Turks (correctly) regard the PKK the same way that most Americans do al-Qaeda, so this is understandably a big issue in Turkey and one that we have been trying to resolve together with them and the Iraqis for some time now, particularly because we do not want the Turks sending the several thousand troops and support personnel into Iraq that it would take to finally wipe out the PKK.

For those who are curious about this passage:

Turkey will warn that such a development would increase the influence of al Qaeda terror network.

What the Turks are referring to here is the various Kurdish Islamist groups that once banded together under the aegis of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan during the early 1990s but have since splintered into a number of different factions, one of which was Ansar al-Islam. I should stress that we are talking 5,000 Islamist fighters at the absolute maximum, as opposed to the 100,000+ peshmerga now fielded by the various Kurdish factions. With the exception of maybe Komala Islamiyyah (which jointly garrisoned Sergat together with Ansar al-Islam prior to the war), none of these other Kurdish Islamist factions have overt ties to al-Qaeda, but they are still a security concern for the Turkish government.

Then from Zaman we get a look at some of the Turkish pressure on the US to stop what they see as European tolerance for PKK activity in Europe, some of which more or less resembles the way that Israel criticizes the Europeans for drawing a distinction between the military and political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah. It also seems that Mueller raised the issue of Louai Sakra, which suggests that the CIA agrees with the Turkish assessment of him as a senior al-Qaeda leader.

The most interesting details of the meeting seem to have appeared in Cumhurriyet, which states the following:

During his recent visit to Ankara, CIA Director Porter Goss reportedly brought three dossiers on Iran to Ankara. Goss is said to have asked for Turkey’s support for Washington’s policy against Iran’s nuclear activities, charging that Tehran had supported terrorism and taken part in activities against Turkey. Goss also asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria. Goss, who came to Ankara just after FBI Director Robert Mueller’s visit, brought up Iran’s alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons. It was said that Goss first told Ankara that Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region. Diplomatic sources say that Washington wants Turkey to coordinate with its Iran policies. The second dossier is about Iran’s stance on terrorism. The CIA argued that Iran was supporting terrorism, the PKK and al-Qaeda. The third had to do with Iran’s alleged stance against Ankara. Goss said that Tehran sees Turkey as an enemy and would try to “export its regime.”

The implication here is that the US believes that it'll be using Incirlik in any aerial operations against Iran and wants to secure Turkish cooperation on that score - the visit of Turkish Chief of Staff General Yasar Buyukanit to DC is likely related here. I would also note that the issue of Iranian support for the PKK has long been the official position of both the US and Turkish governments, as can be seen in this excerpt from the 1999 Patterns of Global Terrorism that was completed during the Clinton administration:

Tehran still provided safehaven to elements of Turkey's separatist PKK that conducted numerous terrorist attacks in Turkey and against Turkish targets in Europe. One of the PKK's most senior at-large leaders, Osman Ocalan, brother of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, resided at least part-time in Iran.

With the Turkish capture of Abdullah Ocalan ("Apo"), Osman is now the de facto head of the PKK. As for Iranian support for al-Qaeda, revelations that al-Qaeda leaders based in Iran helped to finance the November 2003 Istanbul bombings (the "Syrian" referenced in the article is Louai Sakra) in direct contradiction to Iranian claims that such individuals are in detention and unable to direct or support terrorist operations.

I would note that for Turkey, Iranian support for Sunni Islamist terrorism against the Turkish state is not nearly as controversial an issue as it is in say, Europe. Since 1979, Iran has deployed every means at its disposal in an effort to undermine or otherwise destroy the secular foundations of the Turkish state. Indeed, the unyielding Iranian hostility towards Turkey is one of the reasons that the country has no problems maintaining close military ties to Israel - the two nations share pretty much the same enemies. Whether it's recent events or past ones, Turkish military and intelligence officials will have no trouble believing the US on this one - it's simply been part of their daily lives for the last 25 years.

Please note that what the Turks think is a different issue altogether from whether or not airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities are prudent or even wise at this point. I should note that myself am skeptical of the idea that limited airstrike on Iran would deter their nuclear program. Rather, I think that most likely outcome of such an attack would be to push back the date nuclear program with the unintended consequences of shoring up domestic support for the regime, an event that would but ensure the emergence of a nuclear Iran a little further down the line.

I see that Mehran Riazaty, a former CPA analyst now blogging out of Regime Change Iran, has some thoughts of his own on Iranian support for terrorism in Turkey, which he ties back to the Qods Force unit of the Revolutionary Guards that we've mentioned before.

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From what I can tell, the law (FSIA) allows the instant interception of communications - as long as, within 72 hours, a judge approves it. the track record of the judges in approving these things is pretty clear - they approve them. Per Orin Kerr, over at Volokh, what they did probably doesn't pass the FISA test, although there may be other legally sustainable arguments that defend the Administration's position. That's not good enough when there is a clear and clearly legal path to the same result.

Why the heck didn't the Administration go get those approvals?

It bespeaks either an insane arrogance, or more likely a sense of beleaguered isolation.

Both of those are good explanations of why it is that Bush has done so little, so late to maintain support for the war, and here I have been and am prepared to continue to be critical.

What is inexcusable to me is that no one inside the White House thought for a moment about the impact of revelations like this one on support for the war. It is a truism that this war will be won or lost here, at home, in our willingness to patiently move forward toward success.

Whatever undercuts that patience - whether the mutterings of Michael Moore or the blind arrogance of Administration officials who don't understand how bad this makes them and the war effort look - deserves to be pushed back.

I don't think the Administration has been competent enough in key areas like this. Sadly (or gladly, if you're a Republican) my party doesn't seem prepared to do any better.

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The Transport Workers Union opposes any real cost-cutting efforts, such as a plan to restructure all above-ground rail operations into a single new subsidiary, and all bus operations into another—a consolidation that could save $210 million over three years. Why the resistance? The new bus division would have the authority to cut civil-service protections for new employees—who would still have their union security, of course, but transit workers are accustomed to two layers of insulation from management.

The one modest consolidation that Kalikow did get labor to accept carried a stiff condition that means it will save only millions instead of tens of millions, as the MTA had first hoped. In 2002, bus lines in Brooklyn and the Bronx—formerly private lines that the MTA had purchased decades ago—were merged with the rest of the MTA bus operations. Until then, these lines operated as separate units, so that a mechanic from a Brooklyn depot could not repair a Bronx bus that had belonged to a private company decades previously, even if the bus had broken down across the street from the Brooklyn depot. But when the TWU accepted the consolidation, the MTA had to give legacy employees of the formerly discrete bus units full MTA benefits, including 12 days of sick leave each year instead of five.

The MTA has had scant success in pushing transit workers to boost their productivity in exchange for raises. Three years ago, Kalikow got the TWU to accept a few basic efficiency provisions—not enough to cover the cost of the raises, and nowhere near the cost-saving labor flexibility he wanted, which would have required workers who clean stations to perform extra duties, like removing graffiti and changing lightbulbs, as they clean.

Meanwhile, the agency’s heavy health-care costs for these same employees, $873 million this year, or 9 percent of the MTA’s budget, are expected to balloon to $1.15 billion by 2008. These costs include a new prescription-drug benefit for NYCT retirees who aren’t yet old enough to qualify for Medicare. “Local 100 may be the only union in the U.S. that can claim health benefit improvements this year,” union leadership exulted in 2002. And there are plenty of retirees, since most NYCT employees can quit working after only 25 years of service at a lavish pension of 50 percent of their average last two years’ pay. Switching to a system of 401(k)s, as most private-sector employers have, would cut these swollen costs and would give workers an incentive to stay on the job for more than 25 years to increase personal savings.

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Gellman lays out the humanitarian case for the war from a Jewish perspective (the connection to the Exodus seems blindingly obvious to me, but I never saw anyone but Joe Katzman make it):

The movement of which I am a member has just voted against a war that I support. This vote by the Union of Reform Judaism was the first vote by a major national Jewish organization or religious movement opposing the war in Iraq.

This war was and is being fought for American reasons, not Jewish reasons. However, to see this war that toppled one of Israel's fiercest enemies—an anti-Semitic dictator who sent $25,000 to the families of every jihadist who had been able to kill and maim Israeli children and other innocents—opposed by Jews is more than an act of ingratitude to this country and this president. This vote was an act of stunning and incomprehensible historical blindness.

One argument raised in support of the antiwar resolution passed in Houston was that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and was thus an illegal and inappropriate military target. This putative fact is both debatable and irrelevant. The idea that unless we have a credit-card receipt showing that Saddam Hussein paid for Muhammad Atta's plane tickets to New York, he must be presumed to be an innocent in the war on terror is ludicrous. He was a trainer, a protector and a funder of terrorists around the world.

Read the whole thing.

Yasher koach, Rabbi Gellman.

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Iran & the Middle East

• Palestinian terrorists shot and killed an Israeli settler in the West Bank on Friday, while he was passing near the Beit Haggai settlement immediately south of Hebron.

• Israeli analysts say that democracy is slowly taking hold in Iraq and the insurgency is losing its Sunni support-base. "Basically the U.S. efforts are working and progress is being made, which doesn't mean there aren't problems," said Prof. Barry Rubin, an analyst with the GLORIA Center at the Interdisciplinary Center near Tel Aviv. "The turnout is good because [it means] people think they're going to win. Intimidation isn't working. It shows that people want [democracy]," said Rubin.

• Palestinian authorities discover a bomb-packed vehicle outside of the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, West Bank.

• With the string of recent bombings in Lebanon and the Mehlis report results pointing at Syrian officials, there is a heightened sense of concern and caution on the streets in Beirut.

• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a mild stroke on Sunday and is expected to recover and be back at work in a few days. The seventy-seven year old never lost consciousness. News of his admission to the hospital drew cheers and celebrations from Palestinians in Gaza, who fired off weapons into the air and handed out candy.

• Six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) began a joint military exercise named Jazeera Hawk-1 in Qatar on Sunday, "aimed at practicing command missions, joint control, planning and executing joint air assignments." They also stated that a peaceful Iranian nuclear program was "not worrisome," but also warned of the potential security consequences of a nuclear weapons program.

• Hundreds of Jordanian security forces conducted security sweeps in looking for Islamic terrorists in the city of Irbid, following intelligence that pointed to a possible suicide car bomb threat. On Sunday, a Jordanian court handed down a second death sentence for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for a failed suicide bombing at the border a year ago.

America Domestic Security & the America's

• Senate Democrats blocked passage Friday of a new Patriot Act to combat terrorism at home, depicting the measure as a threat to the constitutional liberties of innocent Americans. The Senate voted 52-47 to advance a House-passed bill to a final vote, eight short of the 60 needed to overcome the filibuster backed by nearly all Senate Democrats and a handful of the 55 Republicans.

• The Justice Department's inspector general has found that FBI agents mishandled a counterterrorism case in 2002, falsified records to cover up their mistakes and retaliated against a whistleblower for exposing the problems.

• A House-Senate agreement reached Friday opened the way for Congress to approve a two-year extension of a post-9/11 law providing federal insurance backup for catastrophic losses suffered in a terrorist attack. The Senate approved the compromise by voice vote late Friday, and the House is expected to follow suit on Saturday as Congress moves to finish its work for the year.

• The House voted Thursday to add an amendment to the immigration bill HR4437 calling for the 700-mile fence to be built in five sections, leaving roughly 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border between the unfenced sections. One section would start five miles west of the Columbus, N.M., port of entry and end 10 miles east of El Paso. The bill, called the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, passed the House late Friday 239-182. Congress was still struggling over other aspects of the bill.

• At least 51 people who crossed the border illegally have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism since such tracking began 14 months ago, according to figures released to Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., by the Department of Homeland Security.

• A group linked to terrorist organization Hezbollah has cloned the cellphones of Rogers Communications executives, including that of CEO Ted Rogers, The Globe and Mail reported Saturday. The Rogers Wireless bill listed more than 300 calls made in the month of August, some to foreign countries, including Pakistan, Libya, Syria, India and Russia.

• Abdullah Khadr, accused of links to terrorism, was arrested by the RCMP Saturday night in Toronto on a provisional warrant issued by the United States. The warrant is issued when a foreign government makes an application to Ottawa for the arrest of an individual based in Canada.

• The hearing of the conspiracy to murder re-trial against Jamaat al Muslimeen leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr has been set to engage the attention of a High Court judge in January next year, officials at the Supreme Court said yesterday. Bakr was charged with conspiring to murder two expelled members of his Mucurapo Road mosque, Salim "Small Salim" Rasheed and Zaki Aubaidah, his son-in-law on June 4, 2003, at Citrine Drive, Diego Martin.

• The police officer who slapped five charges against Jamaat al Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr was grilled extensively last week by Bakr's lead attorney, Pamela Elder. Insp Christopher Holder of the Port of Spain Criminal Investigations Department laid five charges against Bakr, one for sedition, three for inciting the demand of money, property and the breach of the peace and a fifth count of terrorism. The charges all arose from Abu Bakr's Eil-ul-Fitr sermon at the Mucurapo Road Mosque in St James on November 4.

• A paper (available here as PDF) by Peter DeShazo of the CSIS says Bolivia is in the midst of a deep political crisis that may be further exacerbated by results of the December 18 elections. The very real prospect of a deepening crisis in Bolivia, with negative implications for regional development and security, poses a serious challenge to Bolivia’s neighbors and to the United States.

• Hundreds of fighters from three rebel armies united to attack a village in western Colombia, officials said Sunday, offering new details in the bold assault that killed at least five police officers.

Russia & South/Central Asia

• Police in Indian-administered Kashmir say two suspected militants and an army soldier have died in a gun battle. The fighting broke out on Friday morning when soldiers raided a hideout of suspected militants in Rajouri district of Jammu.

• A US soldier and a suspected Taleban fighter have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan in the northeast of Kandahar province, US military says. US troops were on patrol with Afghan soldiers when they came under fire, a US military statement says.

• An Afghan terrorist blasted himself in an attempt to set a bomb near a mosque in the town of Mazari Sharif, Reuters reported. The mosque was expected to be visited by the Minister of Youth of Afghanistan Amin Afzali.

• A bomb has exploded in a car near the new Afghan parliament in Kabul, killing a suspected suicide bomber. Friday's explosion took place just 500 metres from the building where MPs will meet on Monday for the historic opening of the new parliament.

• Four policemen and three suspected Taliban fighters were killed in two separate attacks in volatile southern Afghanistan, police and a provincial officials have said. About a dozen suspected insurgents stormed a police checkpost on a main highway late Saturday, sparking a fierce gun battle in which three policeman and a attacker were killed, highway police commander Mohammad Nabi Allahyar said Sunday.

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• Law enforcers continued the hunt for the hideouts of the activists and the masterminds of the outlawed Jamiatul Mujahidin Bangladesh (JMB) and arrested six persons for their alleged involvement in bomb terrorism from Sirajganjm, Chapai Nawabganj and Gazipur areas Thursday.

• Security forces in Bangladesh say they have arrested the military head of a banned Islamic militant group blamed for a series of suicide bombings. The suspected operations commander of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Ataur Rahman Sunny, was held during a raid in the capital, Dhaka, on Wednesday.

• Police in Bangladesh seized a huge amount of bombs and explosives and arrested four militants in the second major success this week against radicals fighting for Islamic rule, officials said on Saturday.

• The Rapid Action Battalion has been conducting a countrywide crackdown on the Islamist terrorist and arrested about 12 militants of banned Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) from different parts of that country on Friday. The arrested JMB cadres were identified as Jamil, Shamshuddin Aftab and Monirul Islam.

• Bangladesh's leading Ulema Saturday denounced bomb terrorism in the name of Islam and called upon the millions of religious–minded Muslims in the country to resist such heinous acts unitedly. Addressing a big rally at the city’s Paltan maidan the Islamic thinkers said the activists and masterminds of bomb terrorism are the enemies of Islam as well as humanity.

• A new law in Bangladesh having provisions for the prevention of 'terrorist financing' will soon replace the existing Anti-Money Laundering Act 2002. The final draft of the law titled, "Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act 2005", which is expected to be placed before the Cabinet tomorrow (Monday) for its approval, seeks to empower the Bangladesh Bank to suspend or stop operation of any account, for 30 days, involved in suspicious transactions without any prior notice.

• Scandinavian ceasefire monitors in Sri Lanka have blamed Tamil Tigers for shooting at an unarmed military helicopter earlier this week and said the attack seriously undermined the fragile truce. The Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) called Wednesday's shooting of a Mi-17 transport helicopter flying over the east of the island a "gross violation" of a ceasefire that went into force in February 2002

• Among the seven items in the latest issue of Chechnya Weekly from The Jamestown Foundation is a report the lower house of Chechnya's newly-elected parliament, unanimously voted on December 14 to rename the capital, Grozny, in honor of Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow president assassinated in May 2004.

• The main representative of Al Qaeda in the North Caucasus was killed in the Russian internal republic of Dagestan in November, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reported on Friday. The "ideologist" of the international terrorist network, Sheikh Abu Omar Al Seyf, came to the region about 10 years ago on the orders of Osama bin Laden, the FSB’s social communication center was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying.

• A report from the International Crisis Group entitled Kyrgyzstan: A Faltering State looks at the unrest and violence in that country. The government is losing control over public security.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• A magistrate in Australia refused to grant bail for two men who have been charged with terrorist offenses, saying that granting them bail would provide an unacceptable risk to society.

• The Communist New People's Army (NPA) detonated a roadside bomb on a Filipino military convoy in North Cortabato, killing three officers and wounding eleven other soldiers. The troops were headed to Nabubdasan to provide medical care to farmers in the region at the time of the attack.

• President President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo prodded the Filipino Senate to pass an anti-terrorism bill recently passed in the House of Representatives, saying "we appeal to the Senate to finish the job as a supreme act of patriotism to save lives from the scourge of evil."

• Thousands of Muslims, led by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, marched through the streets of Jakarta to protest against terrorism.

• Thai authorities continue to battle an Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, a conflict that has killed more than 1,100 people in less than two years. Security analysts describe the 3,000 armed insurgents as "committed, hard-core, Islamo-separatists."

Europe

• Counterterrorism raids in Paris this week have netted 25 Islamic terror suspects, as well as yielding caches of explosives, detonators and guns. One of the suspect had ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network in Iraq. At least fourteen of the suspects were released without charges, while 11 others are suspected of financing terror and remained detained.

• According to one report out of London, two of the four suicide bombers that carried out the July 7th bombings of the London subway, were scrutinized earlier by British intelligence and weren't considered a threat.

• A bomb exploded Saturday in the Basque region of Spain, after a threat was called in by the ETA. No injuries were reported.

• Four European nations led by Denmark, are preparing a reform initiative at the U.N. Security Council that would require disclosure to individuals targeted for sanctions as to why they are included on the list, and allow for appeals if requested.

• Rather than destroying weapon stockpiles left over from the 1992-1995 war, the Bosnian Serb government will donate them to the Afghanistan. The transfer will include 4,500 rifles, 400 machineguns, and one million rounds of ammunition.

• According to one report out of Germany that cites a German intelligence report, Iran has purchased eighteen BM-25 missiles from North Korea with the intention of using them to expand their own range on missiles.

• Following weeks of inflammatory rhetoric, many Europeans are now leaning towards sanctions against Iran over their nuclear program. The United States is pushing for a two front approach, isolating and marginalizing the Iranian government, while reaching out and offering assistance to the Iranian people.

Africa

• United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed on Ivory Coast have been extended by a year and imports of rough diamonds have been banned. Terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and civil war groups are reportedly getting funds from diamond trade proceeds in Africa.

• Investigations into Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad bil-Maghrib (the Monotheism and Jihad group in Morocco) cells broken up by Moroccan security have revealed the inroads al-Qaeda has made into the region.

• Ethiopia and Eritrea are still caught up amidst a messy decision to end the longstanding border conflicts between the countries. Events of the last couple of weeks indicate that both countries might well sort out their long-standing border dispute militarily again. Ethiopia earlier announced withdrawal of its troops from the tense Eritrea-Ethiopian border.

• A United Nations genocide expert Friday voiced disappointment in the efforts of Sudan’s Government to address the crimes committed in Darfur region, where conflict has been marked by massive displacement, rights abuses and widespread killings.

• A truth commission tasked with investigating more than four decades of human rights abuses in Morocco uncovered nearly 600 disappearances and the deaths of about 500 people during street riots or while in police custody, the state news agency reported Friday. The commission — the first its kind in the Arab world — called for reform of the country's judicial and security sectors, along with constitutional guarantees of human rights, presumption of innocence and fair, open trials, the MAP news agency reported.

• In an interview led by the Iqra channel — an Islamic satellite TV -, the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir denounced American hostility to Arab and Islamic countries. He also said the international Zionist movement is using all means to eradicate Arabs and Islam and target all Muslim countries, including Sudan.

The Global War

• U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will go to Afghanistan for the first session of its new parliament this week and also make stops in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Oman -- all allies in the U.S. war against terrorism. He will also meet with President Hamid Karzai and visit U.S. troops.

• The scientific community faces a new dilemma with the rapid biotech advances that could on one hand save lives, while on the other wind up being used by terror organizations to carry out biological attacks on a civilian population.

• The United States has warned of possible militant attacks on its interests in the Middle East and North Africa and urged Americans there to be vigilant, the US embassy in Kuwait said on Saturday. "Credible information has indicated terrorist groups seek to continue attacks against US interests in the Middle East and North Africa," the US embassy in Kuwait said in a statement dated Dec. 15 and posted on its Web site on Saturday.

• He hasn't been heard from in more than a year, but one news site reports that it has obtained a new tape of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But U.S. officials are skeptical of the report, CBS News reports.

• According to an article in the December issue of National Defense, only a few months ago, the primary message was the Navy’s relevance in the U.S. war on terrorism, homeland defense and maritime security, as well as preparing for a possible war in the Pacific. But naval contributions to relief efforts following major natural disasters during the past year—the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and a devastating earthquake in Pakistan—have prompted a rethinking of naval roles and missions, noted Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

• The Chinese petroleum company, Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPAEB), will start drilling the first exploratory well in the Gambela basin, in western Ethiopia, near the Sudanese border. ZPAEB is contracted by Petronas, the Malaysian company which signed an agreement with the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy (MoME) to explore and develop oil reserve in the Gambela concession.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• Michael Yon has information up regarding a couple of photos he took in Iraq. Also there is this interview (MP3) on Straight From The Hip with Steve Aiken, a radio show Joel Gaines contributes to.

• Anthony Shadid brings us a story of Professor Wamidh Nadhme and his view of Iraq's journey through modern time.

RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY

• First the White House outlined a strategy of building up Iraq's security forces as the ticket home for U.S. troops. Now the US is promoting a parallel vision that calls for progressively turning over control of U.S.-funded development projects, worth about $21 billion, to Iraqis.

• U.S. official says Iraqi economy shows strong growth.

• Here are some of this week's reconstruction highlights: The USAID-Funded Economic Governance II Project’s technical assistance has helped amend reserve requirement regulations, a percentage of a bank’s assets that must be maintained as liquid assets. This allows the CBI to influence the money supply by restricting the funds available for lending purposes; consequently, this will enhance the CBI’s ability to conduct sound monetary policy and achieve price stability. The second part of the changes made to the CBI’s new reserve requirement regulations is the creation of new enforcement guidelines. These guidelines include the imposition of fines on banks not meeting the reserve requirement, sending an important signal to the financial community that the CBI is assuming its role as regulator and supervisor. Business leaders from Ramadi and Falluja meet with USAID to plan economic development. Twenty-four Iraqi government officials recently participated in a training program at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. Grant to clean canals in Muthanna Governorate complete. USAID’s Agricultural Reconstruction and Development in Iraq (ARDI) project recently completed three grants to clean a network of irrigation canals and drains in Muthanna governorate. These tertiary level canals and drains, which total 109.5 kilometers, serve farmers’ fields in 35 villages. Grant to expand ARDI’s Animal and Zoonetic Disease Awareness program approved. Over 14,000 students have enrolled in the 2005/06 Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) throughout the Southern and Central governorates. Water and sanitation facilities have been rehabilitated in 411 schools. Work is continuing at an additional 186 schools. Training in the Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Strategy is beginning in central and southern Iraq. A USAID-funded income generation project in Fallujah has allowed 100 residents from six of the hardest-hit southern sectors of the town the opportunity
  to earn a living.

IRAQI POLITICS

• An Iraqi government search of a detention center in Baghdad operated by Interior Ministry special commandos found 13 prisoners who had suffered abuse serious enough to require medical treatment, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

• Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will not seek re-election after Thursday's parliamentary election because the new constitution has curbed his powers.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• Secretary Rice says the international community is becoming heavily involved in Iraq.

• Commentary - On December 8, 2005 Prime Minister Koizumi announced that Japan's Self-Defense Forces would remain for another year in Samawa in support of the US war in Iraq. Their mission: to provide "reconstruction and humanitarian assistance". What has the 500 person SDF mission accomplished and at what cost? How have local people responded to its presence?

ETCETERA

• Thousands of Iraqi Shias have staged demonstrations in several cities in protest against the Arabic satellite television channel al-Jazeera after the channel for allegedly aired an insulting remark about Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric.

• An Egyptian kidnapped in Iraq was found dead recently near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

• There is still no word on the Canadian hostages kidnapped by Swords of Righteousness Brigades in Iraq.

• An Army Reserve lieutenant colonel was arrested Thursday on charges she was part of a conspiracy to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts to a businessman in exchange for money and gifts, including a Cadillac SUV. She is the second arrested under these charges.

• Do you have your GI Bracelet? Many military families fall into financial hardship when the breadwinner is injured or killed. The entire purchase price of the GI Bracelet is donated to support our troops and their families! Please join us to give back to these brave people in their time of need.

• 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, contact us!

• Many American troops have taken it upon themselves to reconstruct schools and gather learning tools for the children of Iraq. Their efforts have been met with immense gratitude from the local Iraqis and their children. You can help too! Visit Operation Iraqi Children and get involved.

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

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. And if you have a tip for a future Iraq Report, email us at MondayIraqReport(at)windsofchange.net.

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While I certainly agree with the general thrust of the analysis, allow me to throw in some comments/analysis of my own:

• I agree with Christopher Brown's take on Rabia as being the head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, but I think it's a mistake to assume that he wasn't a major player simply because he wasn't on the most wanted list. Near as I can tell, in order to get on the list you need at least a US court indictment against you. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, Abu Zubaydah, Abd Rahim al-Nashiri, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, and all of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's murderous relations likewise didn't make the most wanted list, but it's foolish to assume that because of that they weren't a threat. Zarqawi, if I recall correctly, didn't make the list until 2004, more than 5 years after he had plotted to kill Western tourists in Jordan.

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sorta came out of nowhere too from being a player in the Oplan Bojinka plot (of whom the real mastermind was always characterized as being Ramzi Yousef) to being the head of the al-Qaeda military committee. There were media reports as of December 2001 stating that Saif al-Adel had succeeded Mohammed Atef as the head of the al-Qaeda military committee and he didn't really appear on the radar until the US identified him as the 9/11 mastermind. I would note that Zarqawi is likewise absent from media reports prior to October 2002 (though is mentioned under his real name in connection with the Jordanian trial of the Millennium Plotters), when the head of Germany's international counter-terrorism unit warned that he could be planning an attack on Europe.

• The evidence that the Iranians have Saif al-Adel under some kind of actual detention (like say, the way they hold people like Akbar Ganji) is exceedingly thin. At best, he is under extremely lax house arrest and is able to regularly use the internet given that he has been able to communicate with Arab journalists and publish articles in al-Qaeda e-zines as well as lengthy strategy documents. That is not, to put it bluntly, the way that you treat a man who has devoted the better part of two decades to the mass murder of innocent people if you are serious about putting a stop to his activities and the onus is on Iran to prove that they have done otherwise. As it is, they are now claiming not to be holding any al-Qaeda members and Saif al-Adel has not been extradicted back to Egypt. The fact that the CIA is unwilling to comment publicly on Saif al-Adel's status would seem to suggest that they believe he's still in the game too, as should be the case with any senior al-Qaeda leader until there is compelling evidence to suggest otherwise.

• B. Raman says that Rabia was trained by Midhat Mursi in the fine art of WMD at Darunta camp. I don't have any reason to doubt that, but it also adds another layer between Rabia and the senior al-Qaeda leadership since Mursi is someone that we know from the materials seized in Afghanistan reports directly to al-Zawahiri. Raman's contention that there is no evidence that Rabia was involved in international terrorism outside of Pakistan strikes me as being fairly compelling, which is why I'd been classifying him as the head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, a position that I noted puts him in a rather unique position to screw us over.

• Brisard's contention that Abu Faraj and Abu Hamza were both deputies of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tracks with my own info that I noted at the time of his death concerning of the composition of the ad-hoc military council set up by KSM post-Afghanistan consisting of members of both al-Qaeda and their Pakistani allies to rebuild the terror network and destabilize the Musharraf government. I hadn't heard of Abu Hamza as being described the liaison between Abu Faraj and Ayman al-Zawahiri, though this also confirms my suspicions that Brisard is the "French source" referenced in the recent Time Magazine article I dealt with a few days ago. I think his characterization of the role that Abu Hamza played in the terror network is also quite apt:

He was a high value target, a key al Qaeda member and one of the few who interacted between the al Qaeda historical leaders and foreign cells, and surely not someone we can downgrade to a simple 'ground commander.'

To put it another way, he was the Zarqawi for Pakistan who probably had the blood of countless Pakistani troops and civilians on his hands, which is one of the reasons why putting an end to him was a positive development.

• I agree with Evan Kohlmann that the whole practice of numbering al-Qaeda leaders is rather pointless - I think a much better idea is to go by committee since that's how they seem to organize themselves, but here again that would involve the administration taking more time to educate the American public about the nature of the al-Qaeda threat, something they appear rather want to do.

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The other 3 al-Qaeda leaders the Russians have killed this year are probably worthy of some mention on their own right. Jaber al-Taifi was the deputy and bodyguard commander to Abu Hafs al-Urduni, a Jordanian al-Qaeda leader who is currently the commander of the Chechen Arab contingent under Shamil Basayev, was featured during Collin Powell's 2002 presentation to the UN Security Council, and has also called for attacks on US forces in Iraq. Abu Dzeit/Abu Omar al-Kuwaiti is the Russified form of Abu Zeid, whose real name is Ahmad Nasser Eid Abdullah Fajiri al-Azmi and who was responsible for training Chechen suicide bombers as well as their special operations units like the group that orchestrated what happened in Beslan - the AP even got ahold of a video of him and Basayev planning the attack. Abu Jarah al-Urduni, who like al-Saif was affiliated with the al-Haramain Foundation, was Zarqawi's cousin and his older brother is supposed a member of the al-Qaeda ruling council.

I should note, as I always try to in these posts, that I do not support Russian actions or tactics in Chechnya but that the fact does not change the issue of there being a hefty international component amongst the Chechen rebels in the form of Shamil Basayev and his merry band of murderers. Most recently, for example, is the news that the Spanish are currently looking into the connections between 2 Chechens (almost certainly Basayev followers from the description) and the Hofstandt Group that murdered Theo Van Gogh or that they have been working together with their Dutch counterparts to thwart a possible terrorist attack by Chechen terrorists based in the Netherlands. While I certainly and loudly condemn the atrocities perpetrated by Russia, that doesn't change the fact that some Chechens have gotten into bed with some very nasty people whose agendas span far beyond the North Caucasus.

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Suits in equity (aka petitions for writs of mandate) by prisoners, especially class actions, seeking judicial oversight in requiring the federal government to comply with the McCain amendment will do far more damage to national security than suits for damages against the government or individual federal officers. The civil discovery involved in the mandamus proceedings will be of much greater scope than in the actions for damages. I.e., giving individual federal officers immunity from suits for damages won't help a bit.

Now that goes rather far beyond the scope that I addressed in both of my posts concerning why I don't think that torture is an effective interrogation tactic (something that we can debate later if one so desires) and, to put it bluntly, that's more than I signed up for when I supported the McCain Amendment. As soon as somebody wants to take Tom to task on this one, I'll be more than happy to reinstate my earlier (and enthusiastic) support for the Amendment. What I got out of my own thread asking for just was that was that we seem to be on rather unclear ground as far as the law is concerned on a lot of this stuff.

Similarly, the story that surfaced yesterday in the New York Times about the NSA tapping domestic phone calls without a warrant strikes me as more bizarre than anything else since none of the evidence gathered could ever be used in a court case, which is the means through which the only actual terrorism case cited in the article (Iyman Faris, an al-Qaeda member working at the behest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) was resolved. Moreover, at least part of the data for Faris, as I understand it, came from documents and the like that were found with KSM at the time of his arrest - how hard is it to get a warrant from a judge for a wiretap on Faris if you have someone living in the US who was in recent contact with the 9/11 mastermind, for God's sake?

The other thing that boggles me about this is that al-Qaeda regularly assumes that its members are under surveillance whether they are or not and take steps to avoid it. Just going off Gunaratna, one of the lessons listed in the al-Qaeda training manual Declaration of Jihad Against the Nation's Tyrants (the same document that also instructs members to claim torture whether or not they fact were if captured in the West) lists 2 of the 18 lessons as relating to this - how to conceal communications and means of transportation and security planning.

Gunaratna also notes on p. 78:

An overt member should not be curious or inquisitive about matters that do not concern him; he should not discuss with others what he knows or hears; he should not carry on him the names and addresses of members; if his appearance is Islamic, he should refrain from visiting known troublespots - especially during times of heightened security and crackdowns by the authorities - and remain at home. He should be extremely guarded in use of the phone and should burn all correspondence after reading it.

Now granted that's the theory and how well the group actually follows its own rules (given the obvious enforcement problems) is another matter entirely and Italian police and counter-terrorism agencies in particular have done a remarkable job at gathering fairly voluminous dossiers on any number of unsavory characters by bugging and wiretapping their hideouts, but they've also managed to do so well within the limits of the Italian legal system and a judiciary that, as I understand it, is pretty much still stuck in what we would see as a pre-9/11 mentality.

But in addition to the general oddity of this whole story, the most vexing thing about this case is the manner in which it was argued according to the Times:

Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said. Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds.

Now granted this is the Times so I'm quite prepared to believe that this isn't the end of the story or that people in Congress on both sides of the aisle weren't aware that this has been going on for the last several years. The problem is that the rationale as cited in the first paragraph strikes me as a pretty cheap legal excuse, but then so does a lot of the stuff that's justified on the grounds of the commerce clause these days. So I'll defer to wiser minds than my own on this but I just have to say that based on the initial reporting, something definitely stinks.

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"I don't totally disagree with you," said Pipes, noting the Bush administration has been "overly ambitious" in Iraq" and that he hoped the U.S. would "reduce our intense engagement" for a larger Iraqi role. He said Iraq is "looming as the key issue of the next couple of months" and that "the Bush Administration, frankly, has not been up to speed."

Ledeen pushed the perspective further back, arguing that "Iran has been the central issue from the beginning, but nobody wants to deal with that. Iran has been the key sponsor of terrorism."

Ledeen, who thinks Iran already has nuclear weapons, described the Iran leaders as "they're crazy but they{re not stupid." They have been able to act because no western government has acted to stop the regime, despite the West's knowledge of Iran{s plans and statements.

"It's like watching a psychodrama in slow motion and we know the outcome," Ledeen said in the most sobering moment of the afternoon. "We'll have to go after the Iranians." The framework for that is not a war against Islamic fundamentalism, but rather part of the older war against tyranny, with Ledeen noting that 70 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, hence suggest a willing audience for pro-democracy efforts by the U.S.

Any thinking about moves against Iran always involve Israel, the relentless focus of Iran's plans. Will Israel attack, as it did against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981? Will Israel team up with the U.S. or do the dirty work needed on behalf of the U.S., and more distantly, the supine Europeans?

Ledeen, again, provided the strongest thoughts, doubting that the U.S. or Israel would attack Iran and also doubting whether such attacks would even work, since he thinks the two countries lack non-nuclear weapons that could stop the Iranian program.

Ultimately, he said, nobody can know the consequences of an attack on Iran, or another attack on the U.S. Hence, the abyss looms, with no sense of its depth or a bridge across it.

The session, before a crowd of about 300 people, touched on other issues as well, beginning with the liberalesque question from Medved, who described himself as "a punk liberal activist (who became) a loveable conservative curmudgeon."

Responses to Medved's questions showed the range of beliefs among Jewish conservatives, with pointed disagreements with the Bush Administration's performance. Pipes expressed his concerns about Iraq, and when asked about tax cuts, Mona Charen said that Republicans in Congress "have failed to take the spending problems as seriously as they should," which she found "disappointing."

"Republicans have lost a tremendous amount of moral authority by not sticking to their principles" of tax cuts and lower spending," she said.

Panelists also lamented the Jewish bashing conservative Christians in the U.S., led most vocally by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. Ledeen commented, "Picking fights with Christians is insane. Christians are more pro-Israel than the Jews are." Charen echoed the point, noting, "So many Jews side with people who have nothing good to say about America. I find that reprehensible."

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Elections Part I
By Danjel Bout of 365 and a Wakeup

As our lead elements turned into sector I started to laugh at the absurd amount of military might rumbling into our AO. Our normal patrols carry a fearsome amount of weaponry, but this was something altogether different. The point element was composed entirely of M1 tanks and the impregnable Buffalo IED clearing vehicle, as they cleared the road ahead of us the resembled nothing more then the armored prow of an icebreaker. Their appointed task was to keep a watchful eye for the insidious IEDs that seem to metastasize along our routes, and they slowly moved out of sight until even the sound of their titanic engines was subsumed in the low din of morning.

A few minutes later our election day convoy moved out, a sinewy strip of armor and weaponry. The armored flanks of our element glinted in the morning light, as bright and hard as the scales of a storybook dragon. Our grim parade of vehicles were led out by the low, angry profile of M1 tanks, whose slewing turrets whispered hymns of hydraulic force. Following behind were a slew of M113s and armored HMMWVS, their irregular silhouettes studding the road like dull metallic beads. Sandwiched in between our bellowing war machines was the lanky profile of a HEMMT wrecker, its lines still sleek and graceful despite the thick slabs of armor plating its sides. It was an awesome spectacle, made all the more impressive by our mission. This assemblage had only one purpose – secure an election site in one of the worst areas in Southern Baghdad.

Our final destination was two nondescript schools sitting smack dab in the middle of our sector. The Iraqi election officials had turned a blind eye towards the entire region during the last elections out of fear for their personal safety. To ensure the citizens would have the opportunity to vote in this election we were assigned with the task of living on the election sites and providing security in the run up to elections.

But that of course, was our final destination. Our first hurdle was to link up with the Iraqi Public Order Battalion that would live with us on the election sites. As we pulled into the link up area I glanced at my watch and wondered aloud how long we would have to wait for the POB element to arrive. This was our first time working with this specific POB element, but if they stayed true to experience I figured we would be waiting quite some time. As the linkup time approached I noticed several HMMWVs speeding down the road followed by the POB’s white and blue chevy trucks. As they stopped and linked up with our rear security I looked at my watch in disbelief… they had made the hit time!

As I glanced at the POB element sitting there in their standard issue 4 door light pickup trucks I almost laughed, they seemed to be a cross between a college road trip and a collection of Chinese acrobats. It wasn’t the vehicles themselves; the trucks all shared the standard paint scheme of brilliant blue and gleaming white, and they are all crowned with the perennially flashing blue and red police light bar. What made me want to break into laughter was the sheer amount of personnel and equipment they managed to cram into a single vehicle. Each cab was crammed with six to seven POB soldiers huddled together as tightly as a coiled spring. They were so tightly packed that when you looked into the cab you couldn’t identify individual occupants, it just seemed like a collection of limbs and heads were sprouting out of a crumpled collection of uniforms. The beds of the trucks were equally overloaded. In the middle of each POB truck bed you will usually find a 4 foot high weapons pedestal to mount an RPK machine gun. The vehicles were so overloaded with vehicles and gear, all piled in one tottering mound, that the entire pedestal was covered. Piled on top of the blankets, supplies, and other equipment crouched 6 POB soldiers per vehicle. The majority of their bodies seemed to be hanging off the vehicle, but they managed to balance there with deft control of a gymnast.

Despite their cluttered vehicles they looked excited and ready to move to the election center, and once we finished our link up we moved into town to secure the election site.

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I can't imagine ever calling myself a Republican, but I can't imagine a California Republican Party that can win statewide elections without the votes of a whole lot of people like me.

But the party is run by clowns with bad haircuts more committed to some fantasy of ideological purity and grade-school sandbox power plays than actually winning elections and serving the people of California.

The best service they could perform would be - simply - to become competitive with the Democrats so that the strident and foolish among the Democratic Party would get shoved far away from the levers of power.

Somehow, I don't see it happening very soon.

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"Starting with the Vietnam War we began training soldiers differently," the anti-American actress says in an email to the Washington Post.

Fonda claims she learned of the policy switch in "secret meetings" she had with military psychologists "who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel."

One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."

"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."

"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.

It's not for a moment worth taking anything Jane Fonda says about anything more serious than movies, cellulite, and celebrity culture with any seriousness whatsoever. What, in her entire personal history, would demonstrate any measure of historical or political awareness?

The fact that this woman would bloviate about this in the middle of a war where our troops take immense personal risk to avoid killing where they easily could; a war with less collateral damage than any war in recent history; a war where our enemies commit atrocities and run schools to condition their young jihadi to do so - unremarked by Ms. Fonda, unsurprisingly - should remove whatever shred of seriousness people may have foolishly granted her.

Let me offer Ms. Fonda some relatively simple facts.

I'm not a soldier and have never been one. I have shot guns competitively, and trained in places where those who train soldiers train, sometimes alongside those trainers.

The exercises we've done - in clearing houses, crossing streets and moving through neighborhoods while engaging targets simulating enemies - are, I'm told, very similar to what troops undergoing training for fighting in urban terrain are given. In fact, they are probably more intensive than what a typical infantry rifleman would get.

One interesting thing that is a factor in all these exercises - not shooting certain targets is as important as shooting others. In my first, untrained exercise in Gunsite's training house, I did what a lot of novice shooters do when they are adrenalized and ill-trained. I shot everything in the house, often several times. Clint Smith was my training officer, and his sad, laconic question when he stopped me mid-drill - "Marc, why in the world did you shoot Bozo the Clown?" - has pretty much stuck with me.

The reality of it is that someone who is well-trained is likely to do two things that pretty much everyone - including Ms. Fonda, if she'd taken time to actually learn anything - would think are good things. They teach you to shoot the bad folks better and faster, and equally importantly, not to shoot the good folks.

I've been through maybe a dozen similar exercises since then, and I'm happy to say that I've never shot at a "no shoot" target again. Why? because of that awful "killing machine" training that I went through.

Go read any of the milblogs, or ask anyone who has contact with any of our troops. Go read some history about what war was like in the recent past, or what it's like in other parts of the world. Then realize that the restraint they take, and the risk they undergo to exercise that restraint, far exceeds that of any other army in history. We are not brainwashing our troops into mindless killing machines anywhere except in the fevered imagination of celebrity salons.

I'll also note that Fonda is largely basing her fantasy on the work of LTC Dave Grossman, author of "On Killing," a book I like a lot and which I think makes some interesting points. I also believe that some of the core premises of the book - based as they are on SLA Marshall's work on World War II - are potentially significantly flawed.

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The only people for whom the pre-war rationales matter are those who believe that the genesis of the war is so tainted that everything that happens - all the fruit of the crime - is irremediably tainted. People who can't answer whether Iraqis are better off today or not, because to admit that they are better off would make them complicit.

The other people to whom this matters are, sadly, my fellow Democrats, who see it as a lever to move the partisan dial in the country. They intend to do this, in among other ways, by voting pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman out of office.

I'm happy to ignore both groups, to be honest.

I'm more interested in the group with rolled-up sleeves that asks "Where do we go from here?" I'm genuinely interested in what Chris and others have to say in the matter; I'm not likely to change my tune of "We're In 'Till We Win" but that begs some critical questions (not to sound too much like a certain good-ole-boy) but ... what does "Win" mean? For that matter, what does "In" mean?

There's probably an interesting talk to have about the leadup to the war; I still believe, strongly that the "pro" arguments outweighed, and outweigh today, that "anti."

But watching the election news today, I suddenly don't think it's the best use of my limited time or your limited attention. I'm sure you'll let me know if you think I'm wrong.

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But we never got anywhere because of one small hitch: President Bush had spoken publicly in support of Ganji and called for his immediate release. And that, as far as a good part of the Western media is concerned, amounts to a kiss of death. How could newspapers that portray Bush as the world's biggest "violator of human rights" endorse his call in favor of Ganji?

To overcome that difficulty, some of Ganji's friends had tried to persuade him to make a few anti-American, more specifically anti-Bush, pronouncements so that the Western media could adopt him as a "hero-martyr.". . . Would Ganji adopt [this] tactic in order to get media attention in the West? The answer came last January and it was a firm no. The result was that Ganji, probably the most outspoken and courageous prisoner of conscience in the Islamic Republic today, became a non-person for the Western media.

But that's not the end of this tale of rampant narcissism disguised as social activism. Because when Ganji's plight finally received some recognition, prominent fashionista activist Bianca Jagger was there . . . .

(all links from Neo, since NYPost stores don't stay online very long)

(Crossposted to Kesher Talk)

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THE MIDDLE EAST & IRAN

• IAEA head and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei said that nuclear talks with Iran should include a U.S. security guarantee. But a US State Department spokesman said Iran will get no guarantees without first acting "like a responsible member of the international community." After both of those statements, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said any such guarantee would be condescending and unwelcome. It would not be condescending, it would be insane. ElBaradei wants to go the route taken with North Korea…also under his watch. Someone send him Pavlov's notes.

• Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Palestinians to continue their attacks on Israel. Khamenei has a special soft spot in his heart for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who Iran directly supports through the PIJ headquarters in Damascus.

• There has been a lot of reporting about Israel’s view that Iran could be nuclear capable in three months. Rather than a lot of links, there is a decent summation here.

• Just how serious is Mahmoud Abbas in his latest 'crackdown' on Islamic Jihad? People of power know people of power, especially in an area as small and confined as the Palestinian Territories. That his 'crackdown' has managed only to snare low-level PIJ terrorists has caused many to question his sincerity.

• Define 'trouble for Fatah': When your party has been successfully split by a candidate running from an Israeli prison serving 5 life sentences without a glimmer of hope of actually participating in the elected government. Meanwhile, quietly and unified, Hamas named their 62 election candidates.

• Security Watchtower offers a 'Final Analysis' of Egypt’s elections and how the Muslim Brotherhood managed to gain over 20% of the Egyptian parliament.

AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY & THE AMERICAS

• Proof that Rudy Giuliani (remember?) does not run Harvard or Georgetown, the two esteemed universities gleefully accepted $20 million each from Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has taken on the issue and provides clarity that should not be necessary to deliver.

• Mexican President Vicente Fox says that a US-Mexico border wall would be 'disgraceful'. If that is the measure, what of the pervasive corruption and persistently ragged economy in Mexico that drives his citizens to the currently un-walled border? But alas, our border security is just that: Security. Security first, economics second.

• The House of Representatives voted to extend the Patriot Act, setting up a showdown in the Senate. Some members of the Senate will call for a shorter one-to-three month extension for ‘more time to debate [read defeat] the Patriot Act.

• The House also voted to support the supposed 'Ban on Torture'. The dissent that follows has nothing to do with torture. What the McCain Bill actually does is make for a nice appearance that will be received by none of those [Europe] it intends to impress, while it effectively codifies on a National level the Army field manual on interrogations (which, if followed, means torture is already banned). So whenever the Army/DoD changes any of the content, so changes federal law. The Constitution is such a silly document anyway...a 'living, breathing document', or so I've been told.

• A Lebanese-born Swede, Oussama Kassir, was arrested in the Czech Republic and has been charged in a plot to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon. He chose Bly, Oregon because it “looks just like Afghanistan”.

• USATODAY.com - TSA chief Kip Hawley says bombs are the main threat to planes, not scissors. "It's not about scissors, it's about bombs...Small objects aren't going to enable a major terrorist attack." Really? The reason small, sharp objects (like, say, boxcutters for instance) are no longer a threat is because they are not allowed on the plane. Perhaps a few Marines can demonstrate for the TSA how a small pair of nail scissors can be employed effectively. By all means, look for bombs...but please...

AFRICA

• The UN is warning about potential war on the Horn of Africa as tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia continue to rise, making the prospects of renewed war between them more and more likely.

• Liberia says it is investigating reports of a coup plot as fans of the Liberian soccer star who lost the election have taken to the streets demanding 'justice'.

• Human Rights Watch charged that Sudan President Omar al-Bashir deliberately attacked civilians in Darfur. The group timed the statement with the UNSC's briefing from the ICC on atrocities in Darfur.

ASIA

• Sydney, Australia police are 'to get new powers' to combat the riots that have consumed the city for days.

• Few in China are even aware that twenty people were shot and killed by police in Dongzhou during protests over the government seizure of land.

• Ataur Rahman Sunny was arrested in Bangladesh and a cache of weapons was seized from his hideout. He is suspected to be the operations commander of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.

• First, there was ASEAN. Then came ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea). Now, meet ASEAN Plus Three Plus Three.

EUROPE

• Britain can't bring itself to deny citizenship to an Australian-born Islamic terrorist captured in Afghanistan and held in Guantanamo Bay.

• Germany's Merkel called Ahmadinejad's holocaust remarks 'incredible' and said that it surely will effect the current negotiations with Iran on their nuclear program. (One would think their nuclear program would have been enough, but apparently it takes a holocaust-German reference to jump start the gravity of the situation.)

• Speaking of Germany, have you wondered What Gerhard Schroeder's been up to? He's got a fresh new job with some old friends.

• Chirac called foreign coverage of the Paris riots distorted, biased and excessive. Thousands of cars burning, buildings being Molatov cocktailed, etc. etc. etc. In the media's defense, might the violence itself been excessive?

THE GLOBAL WAR

• If you are not aware of it, another good weekly round-up can be found at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies with the Global Jihad Monitor. Even though most of what he covers is also covered here between the Monday and Thursday Winds of War reports, a resource is a resource and Jonathan Snow should be commended for his excellent work.

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.

For ongoing tips, email "ThursdayWindsOfWar", over here @windsofchange.net.

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A rabbi of a Reform synagogue in Danbury, Conn., Clifford Librach, said the letter “amplifies the extraordinary alienation from Israel and Israel's security on the part of the American Reform elite.”

“There may be a majority of American Reform Jews who are currently opposed to this war under any circumstances,” Rabbi Librach said, “but the role of leadership is not to rubberstamp misguided popular opinion. The new peace process in Israel has advanced in part because Iraq has been neutralized and removed from the equation.”

. . . . the longtime senior rabbi of the Stephen E.Wise Temple in Los Angeles, Isaiah Zeldin, said the union had stepped over the line. “They surely don't represent me, nor do they represent my congregation,” Rabbi Zeldin, whose Reform synagogue is one of the largest in America, with 3,500 congregants, said. The union was wrong to take a collective stance on the war, he said. “I think that the union has a right, indeed an obligation, to speak out on various issues. But in this one, we happen to be divided,” Rabbi Zeldin said.

Another Reform rabbi, Jon Haddon of Shearith Israel in Ridgefield, Conn., said the union had “moved too far to the left.” “I do feel that they kind of came out with a harsh, blanket statement of the president's policy in Iraq, and I just don't buy it 100%,” Rabbi Haddon said. “I believe a democracy in the Middle East besides Israel is good for the Middle East and good for the world. If that could be accomplished, it would be a blessing for the world.”

(Cross-posted to Kesher Talk)

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What's Going On Here?

ITAR relates to Section 38 of the USA's Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2778), and creates a regulated weeks-long approval process for exports of a military nature. They exist to protect and oversee the transfer of American military technologies and secrets to other countries.

ITAR restrictons affect a long list of items, including mundane weapons parts and components. They can also place limits on authorized cooperation until waivers come through for each item involved, because "defense services" are covered as well. Furthermore, the delays involved in getting ITAR approvals for each item can be a real hindrance to allies whose firms are trying to work on joint defense development projects. The resulting stumbling blocks to cooperation essentialy impose an additional time and often an additional monetary cost on allied involvement.

Of course, the alternative of having no scrutiny or approvals process is a non-starter. But what about your closest allies? Is there a point at which you say: "on balance, it's better for us to generally trust folks on joint projects with X and Y"?

Britain, as the USA's closest defense partner, would like to have the ITAR restrictions waived in many cases, essentially conferring automatic approval on British requests. In 2000, Bill Clinton promised both Britain and Australia (another genuine ally who cooperates on a number of defense projects with the USA) that he would work to make this happen. George W. Bush and his administration have also worked to make this happen. Both Bill and W. have failed, however, largely owing to resistance from a few powerful congressional Republicans - esp. House International Relations Committee Chair Henry Hyde [R-IL], and House Armed Services Chair Duncan Hunter [R-CA].

The DID article "UK Warns USA Over ITAR Arms Restrictions" explains all this in more detail. I'll note in fairness that the Republicans involved aren't being completely irrational, and have some valid points. Hyde isn't doing this to play protectionist and get votes - he's retiring in 2006, which means he's doing this because he believes in it.

Which will be awfully cold comfort if the USA proceeds to do major damage to long-term relations with America's REAL allies over things that are frankly a lot less important - especially in the world we live in today.

The Stakes

A British pullout from the JSF at this crucial juncture could have seismic ramifications, at multiple levels.

Defence Minister Hoon, Britain's Parliamentary Defence Committee, and Prime Minister Tony Blair have all warned the USA that the problem's they're experiencing in this area go beyond the F-35, and affect Britain's overall relationship with the USA. What do you folks down there need, a freaking singing telegram?

Here's a hint: if you get one, it will be the French maid.

If America wants to work with allies in military situations, interoperability matters. A British pullout from the F-35 would compromise that in two ways: directly, and indirectly. The direct effect is obvious. The indirect compromise is worse.

It's one thing to decide that a program doesn't fit military needs, and pull out or reduce orders. It's another thing for your closest ally to more or less decide that they can't work with you on major defense development projects. Which is exactly what a JSF program pullout would represent.

Since going alone is not a financial option, Britain would look elsewhere for defense development cooperation - to European industry, and to EU-led programs to create both a common European defense industry and a European force independent of NATO or the USA. A British military that is more and more interoperable with its European partners, and less and less common with the USA, and also not fostering ties at the weapons program level because cooperation is curtailed... is a Britain that will find itself, slowly but surely pulled away from its special defense relationship with the USA. This will, of course, have ripple effects on its foreign policy. Especially given that broken promises and a breakdown of cooperation would be what led to this whole situation in the first place.

Finally, there's the stakes for the F-35 JSF program itself, currently one of the USA's largest weapons programs as it seeks to replace its aging F-16, F-18, and AV-8 Harrier fleets. Those planes were designed in the 1970s, and many were bought in the 1980s.

You can basically divide any weapons program in two: there's the development costs for the weapon, which you pay even if you never buy one (let's say $100). Then there's the production cost per weapon (let's say $10). If you buy 10 weapons, each costs $20 ((100/10)+10). If you bought 100, each would cost $11 ((100/100)+10). If Britain leaves, and a chunk of fighter orders go with it, the USA has to either choose to subsidize development of the F-35 for other nations, or raise the price. If it raises the price too high, however, other nations may find the F-35 too expensive and buy alternatives. Worse, the F-35 has parts from all the consortium members. Fewer F-35s sold means smaller industrial benefits for participating countries.

2006 is shaping up as a key year for European fighter decisions, and weakness or schism within the program could easily lead other countries to bolt. Countries like Norway and Denamrk are already scoping alternatives, and a British pullout would trigger a groundswell of unease and second thoughts in many of the program's European partners - helped along by the anti-American EUphiles to be sure. As more countries bolt, the development costs fall among fewer fighters andthe industrial benefits for each country shrink, intensifying the financial and political problems. And on it goes.

Obviously, this would be bad for an important US defense program, bad for US industry, and bad for US interoperability with its allies. If protectionism is a motivation here in any way, doing things that will cost several thousand American jobs in the near term doesn't strike me an intelligent way to go about it.

Technology Transfer and the JSF

As this August 2004 National Defense Magazine article noted:

"With JSF, "we had a difficult start to exchanging the necessary data and technical information on this vital program," said Lord William Bach of Lutterworth, U.K. undersecretary of state and minister of state for defense procurement.... Cooperation was reached on the system design and development phase, but the transfer of data and technical information has been way behind, he said.

A senior Pentagon official speaking to a defense industry conference in London said that some of these problems can be blamed on the U.S. bureaucracy. "The vast majority of acquisition PMs [program managers] were not cognizant of export control requirements until they were informed that a certain license application had not been approved, thereby delaying the next step of a critical international armaments cooperation program," said the official.

As the article notes, organizational workarounds were found for many of those initial problems. Nevertheless, the same issues will replicate themselves across the defense cooperation spectrum.

Other issues remain live within the JSF program itself. For example, Britain is seeking full independent maintainability and control over its F-35 fighters - and one of the most critical and contested areas lies in the plane's massive software source code. Since software will run so many aspects of the F-35's operations, access to the source code is necessary in order to debug many flaws, and may be required to integrate new weapons.

At the same time, the plane's dependence on software makes protecting the securtity of that source code an absolute must. To have even parts of it fall into hostile hands could be a disaster of the first magnitude. On the American side, there is also the quasi-protectionist angle of not wishing to have others copy the software and develop spin-off products in future that are based on US work. Even attempting to scrutinize that would be a challenge, however, creating intrusiveness, approval, and friction problems of its own. The option of American code control as the sole "clearinghouse" for the program is thus an attractive one.

On the other hand, with $2 billion invested as a "Tier One" partner, Britain may justly feel that a full partner should not have to go hat in hand to the USA every time a change is required.

The issue of technology transfers within a specific program is seperable in principle from the issue of ITAR. Nevertheless, in practice the two issues are merging into one broad politico-industrial complaint whose ramifications could be seismic.

Britain: So What's Britain's "Plan B"?

According to the Times of London, negotiations regarding Britain's 88 Tranche-3 Eurofighters are apparently discussing the possibility of a carrier-suitable variant.

Ironically, it was France's unique insistence on a carrier role for their future fighter, with the accompanying design and specification requirements, that contributed to French negotiating rigidity and broke up the original Eurofighter consortium in 1985. France would go on to develop the Dassault Rafale independently, including a Rafale M carrier version.

Creating a matching "Eurofighter CV" could be done, but contra the breezy confidence displayed in the Sunday Times, it would be a major undertaking. Many of the aircraft's original design decisions vs. the Rafale (increased weight, for instance) diverged precisely because designers were free to ignore the carrier requirement. Dr. Richard North is generally correct about the design and cost implications that a retrofit would create¹, extending not only to redesign of the Eurofighter but of the CVF future carriers as well.

Then again, Britain could also just buy the Rafale as its naval fighter, and turn the CVF program into a joint program with France. The latter idea was already under discussion even before the technology-transfer flap with the USA reared its head.

Opinions vary concerning Britain's F-35 JSF bombshell. Is it just a negotiating tactic meant to show seriousness and communicate the stakes? A dead-earnest intention, backed by those who wish to align Britain more closely with the EU? Anglosphere proponents and Atlanticists on both sides of the pond, meanwhile, would argue that it doesn't matter - just getting to this point is a failure of sorts, and could put issues in play that were better left as unspoken matters of trust.

The question is whether resolution of this impasse is possible in the near-term, and sustainable in the longer term.

Conclusion

My complaint with the Left's insincere definition of multilateralism isn't that the USA doesn't need allies. That's ridiculous. It's that the USA needs real allies, not people who pretend to be its friends for advantage, then stab their ally in the back when it becomes convenient. Senator Kerry was both the exemplar and a prime advocate of this definition, which is one of the reasons I opposed his candidacy in 2004.

When trouble comes, people - and countries - learn who their REAL friends are. It isn't always the ones you thought beforehand. Now more than ever, the USA needs real allies.

There's a corollary to this point, and it matters too. Real allies, who stand with you when the going gets tough, are special. The kind of people - and countries - worth being a friend like that FOR will go out out of their way for their real friends. Sometimes a long way out their way. The USA, and the Republicans in Congress who believe wholeheartedly in its larger mission, need to step back and focus on what's really important.

Cicero, and others here on Winds, have described the competing ideologies our world faces. Let me offer my take:

• The continental European EU model of top-down transnational socialism insulated from democracy is one. It is doomed by demographics, by the corrosive effects of its inherent unaccountability and inflexibility, and by the emptiness that lies at its heart. What is in question is what will come after, and whether its roots in the Enlightenment, Western Civilization and the dignity of man will prove strong and deep enough to overcome its failures.

• The authoritarian quasi-capitalism of China (which could morph into something either better, or far worse) and Asia is another option, one that will present a rising challenge both geopolitically and ideologically. Can material prosperity be insulated from political freedom? For how long? If so, there are many places where such a model will be attractive - and a resource-hungry colonialism that depends on its export is hardly out of the question.

• There is, of course, the Islamist alternative, which may acquire an ability to destroy that far surapsses their fallen civilization's utter inability to create. It has blended with the detrius of the 20th centry's failed totalitarian experiments, and that truth is now being observed in affiliation and action as well as in theory. In the end, what remains of Islamic civilization will either learn to love the kuffar [unbeliever] as its brother, or its own internal logic will lead to its death - at another's hands, or at its own. The Fascist death-impulse is strong, and intrinsic, but they rarely die alone. It is time for the decent people to choose, and make a stand.

• And don't forget the Anarchy alternative of warring tribes, artificial failed states, and the shadowy criminal organizations that both feed on and depend on them. for the foreseeable future they, too, will be with us. There are a number of plausible scenarios in which al-Qaeda is just the first challenge of its type, the early wave of a trend rather than the last wave of a long civilizational death-spiral.

Against all of these, there is another tradition. One of civic society organized of individuals, and characterized by accountability, flexibility, and the rule of law. It is not a tradition bound by ethnicity, geography, or past historical status - though it has many of its origins in the historical experiences of the British people and blends deeper Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian origins. James C. Bennett and The Anglosphere Institute call it The Anglosphere, and to the extent that Western civilization and its ideals retain a fighting chance in this world, this is where they reside most firmly.

It's a model that has proven its sustainability, and now it is learning the balance between respect for others, duty to others, and its own self-preservation. It is imperfect. It is also, I believe, the best hope for a world that represents a better future for ALL humankind.

Say it with me, Congressmen: I am a member of a civilization.

Britain is the leader that was, America, the leader that is. And if the USA plays its cards as well as Britain did, another will arise in time and become the leader that will be. Of a culture that values the creativity, exploration, freedom, and dignity of all. Perhaps one day, those values will be held by most of humankind. Perhaps one day, they will even extend beyond. I hope so with all my heart.

But not if we fracture now, when the world most needs us to stand together amidst the swirls and eddies of history. Not if we balk our true friends, instead of finding ways to deepen our ties and prepare, together, for what may come. Not if we ruin the opportunity before us in shortsighteness, And all over what, I ask you?

Madness.

These are your best friends we're talking about, Congressmen. Act like it.

Straighten up, and fly right.

Anglosphere Originator James C. Bennett Chimes In

See the full blog post at Albion's Seedlings:

"The ultimate solution may well be in what I have proposed in my book, an integrated "defense industry community" agreement between the US, the UK, and other nations willing and able to abide by its strict destination rules on thirrd-party transfer. (This would not be restricted to Anglosphere nations, but it's likely that such would be its core.) Within this community, technology transfer and cooperation would be essentially transparent, and mergers would be possible without many of the burdens that today limit and hedge foreign ownership of defense-sensitive companies in the US. Such a community would be a powerful carrot to the UK's high-tech and defense industries. However, it would almost certainly mean the curtailment of some portion of the UK's participation in pan-European mergers and combinations.

A combination of increasing (and largely valid) US concerns over third-party destination controls (fed by Clinton-era blunders in technology-transfer controls to China), and increasingly aggressive EU plans for defense integration, combined with a strategy of triangulation with the US's strategic rivals, is making the UK's position of choice over the past decades increasingly untenable. Blair, or perhaps Prime Minister Brown (or perhaps even Prime Minister Cameron, who needs to be addressing this issue) will soon have to make a choice. Americans should be thinking over a better offer to Britain than a continuation of the status quo, or the status quo minus further restictions. This is a moment for strategic, long-term thinking and an honest view of the real options. So far the only people doing this are the Europeanists, who already understand the choice and are working hard to ensure that Britain is pushed their way. It would be stupid of the US and the UK to let this happen by default."

UPDATE... F-35 Lightning II: Final Resolution

The US and Britain did get everything straightened out in the end, and their points of agreement became the basis for a multilateral deal with all of the program participants. All of whom went on to sign the F-35 Production Phase Memorandum of Understanding, which will put the industrial infrastructure for F-35 manufacture in place and determine work shares. The final stage will be actual military procurement contracts from the various partner nations.

• DID Focus Article - F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Events & Contracts 2007 (updated)

• DID (Dec 14/06) - Britain Formally Signs F-35 Production Phase MoU

• DID (Aug 4/06) - F-35 JSF Program: US & UK Reach Technology Transfer Agreement

Footnotes

¹ Dr. North's insistence that the USA would be happy to cancel the F-35B STOVL version, however, is grievously in error. The F-35B STOVL version is also required by the US Marines and by the USA's substantial set of LHA/LHD amphibious assault ships; the F-35A (standard) and F-35C (carrier) versions have had cancellation discussed, but even excluding foreign sales opportunities, the F-35B has both a substantial US constituency and no plausible substitute.

(Originally posted to Winds of Change.NET on Dec. 13, 2005)

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Links:

A Congressional Analysis of the McCain Amendment's language can be found here http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RS22312.pdf

Recent Winds threads with extensive comments on the McCain Amendment are:

Duly Chastened and Eager to Learn
by Dan Darling on December 11, 2005 06:57 AM

Count me out on that one, Trent
by Dan Darling at December 7, 2005 07:11 PM

Safe, Legal & Rare -- America's Political Parties Defined
by Trent Telenko at December 7, 2005 01:56 PM

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Also in the south, the threat of infiltration from Egypt in to Gaza has increased so much that the government has altered the rules of engagement to make it easier to open fire at individuals crossing the 'peaceful' border with Egypt. The IDF and Defence Ministry had presented a plan to seal the border, which included a fence, electronic sensors, and a force to patrol smuggling routes, estimated at $320m. Prime Minister Sharon vetoed the plan due to the cost.

The soldiers and police who patrol the border estimate that they stop about half of the smuggling/infiltration operations that they know of. Given the apparently firmly-rooted al-Qaeda presence in the Sinai, their well-established ability to strike multiple targets at once, and the growing terrorist presence in Gaza, one might think that a plan to seal the porous Egypt-Israel border wouldn't be referred to as an 'extra-budgetary request', as the deputy prime minister did.

In Gaza itself, the Qassams and mortars continue to be fired at Israeli communities on a daily basis. For their part, the Israeli artillery responsible for firing in response to Qassam attacks ensure that the fields they fire in to are empty of people, and even livestock. Yaniv, an Israeli artillery commander, says, with reason: "It would be inhuman to fire into the population". Indeed it would - so why bother firing at all?

In the 'west bank', a rocket has been fired near Afula. Rocket-fire from and within Yehuda and Shomron is rare; a Hamas lab was found and destroyed in March; another Hamas cell produced and even fired several rockets, before they were killed in Operation Defensive Shield in 2002; the three terrorists caught in the Negev were carrying Hezbollah Qassams-for-dummies booklets. The communities around Gaza aren't ideal targets for the Qassam's poor accuray and small warhead. The towns and villages within easy reach are small enough to miss altogether, and the suburb-style layout makes hitting a live target even less likely.

However, the towns and cities around the 'west bank' are large and densely populated. Rockets fired at those communities would cause more casualties than those fired in to the Negev.

So what do these incidents have to do with each other? Each of these items reflects quite clearly that Israel is in a defensive posture, more reminiscent of pre-intifada years, despite the heightened threat.

Take Majdi Amar from the Nablus area. Amar is a fully-salaried member of the PA's 'security forces' and - as a known member of the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades - a recipient of a PA stipend conditional on a promise not to engage in attacks on Israel. Togther with a local Tanzim leader and five others (all 'security forces' members), he organised funding from Hezbollah member Abu Raviya, based in Lebanon. Raviya contacted Amar in the last few months, telling him that all future contacts would be made through Abu Louay - based in Gaza.

This is from the communique issued by the Prime Minister's Office:

In recent months, Hizbullah has set up a forward HQ in the Gaza Strip to provide a direct link with terrorist in Judea and Samaria in order to transfer funds and instructions. Hizbullah conditions the receipt of such funds on the perpetration of terrorist acts against Israeli targets, regardless of the particular ideology of the cells and terrorists involved.

The regional character of the terrorist campaign against Israel was demonstrated further by the meeting in Damascus on November 15th, between Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, with Khaled Meshaal (Hamas leader) and leaders of Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the PFLP-GC. As Ahmed Jibril put it,

“We all confirmed that what is going on in occupied Palestine is organically connected to what is going on in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon.”

In other words, the suicide bombings in Israel, the assassination of anti-Syrian journalists in Lebanon, the attacks on Iraqi civilians and American forces in Iraq, and the development of nuclear arms in Iran are all part of the same campaign.

The policy of separation and negotiation pursued by the Israeli government ought to be viewed in the context of this regional war. Caroline Glick notes:

As many former and current Bush administration officials have acknowledged behind closed doors, the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, like the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria this summer, strongly influenced the terrorists battling the Americans and their Iraqi and international coalition partners in Iraq. For the terrorists, Israel and America are two sides of the same coin.

And the repurcussions of that? Glick again:

Abu Musab Zarkawi and his ilk in Iraq see that their Palestinian and Lebanese partners managed to demoralize the Israeli public to the point where it allowed its government to curb the IDF and hand victory after victory to the terrorists. By the same token, an American rout in Iraq would inspire terrorists fighting Israel to believe that through attrition they can destroy the Jewish state.

As the two main targets of the terrorist campaign against the West, the 'Great Satan' and the 'Little Satan' are in effect the flak jackets of Western civilisation, just as the Israelis of Gush Etzion take pride in calling themselves the flak jacket of Israel. The choices and actions taken in Israel are taken to heart by the same people blowing up buses full of Iraqis or using IEDs against American forces.

The links aren't just ideological or potential - they're well-established. Let's go back to Majdi Amar. Who paid him? Hezbollah. Who train and fund them? The IRGC's Qods Force. Who founded them? President Ahmadinejad. Or take the suicide bombing in Netanya - the Israelis and the PA say the orders came from Damascus.

What do you think Amar, his sponsors, their trainers and their president see when they read about the idiocy surrounding Gaza's borders? Having given up the Egypt-Gaza border to total PA control under heavy U.S. pressure, the Israeli government belatedly realises that the PA is unlikely to do anything to prevent terrorists operating in their midst. They find that al-Qaeda and listed palestinian terrorists are crossing in to Gaza through PA customs, so they aren't exactly keen to let convoys of trucks and buses cross from Gaza to the 'west bank'. The U.S. applies the pressure again.

Who's dumber - the Israelis for letting the PA have the Egypt-Gaza border, despite the obvious dangers, or the U.S. for pushing them to concede the basic security measures Israel tried to retain? The confrontation between terrorist forces and the West has long centered on Israel, a confrontation that 9/11 and the rise of al-Qaeda have brought in to stark relief. So when eve Israel won't protect its own backyard from the world's most dangerous terrorists, and the U.S. pushes for even more hazardous concessions, perhaps the faith terrorists across the world have in the brittle character of Western nations is not as misplaced as we might like.

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That said...

1. The attacks on September 11 proved that modern technology can act as a tremendous force multiplier, such that even a very small number of relatively unsophisticated enemies can do extraordinary damage to a modern society. By far, the most dangerous such force multipliers are Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), which can cause catastrophic destruction without relying on large organized support structures, such as nation-states and conventional armies. Once in the hands of terrorists, WMDs would be almost impossible to keep out of a large, open, trade-oriented country such as the United States. Therefore, WMDs must be stopped at their source: namely, nation-states which have the capacity to produce WMDs, and a possible motive for selling/giving said WMDs to terrorists. The nation-states at the top of such a list would be Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, with others such as Libya and Pakistan existing in the second tier. Out of that list, Iraq was the logical best choice to take on because of the following reasons:

1a. We had been in a state of hostilities with Iraq since the end of the Gulf War.
1b. We knew that Saddam continued to hold an animus against the US and its leaders (e.g. the assassination attempt on George Bush Sr.).
1c. We knew that Iraq was not above using unconventional means of attack, as evidenced by his support for various terrorist groups.
1d. Strategically, Iraq was far easier to attack than North Korea and Iran: we believed we could attack on at least two fronts, we had experience fighting the Iraqi army, and the risk of severe blowback was far less than with, say, North Korea.
1e. The plentiful oil reserves of Iraq would both help pay for the invasion, and for the reconstruction of the country.

2. It has been the goal of the United States since WW2 to spread democracy and free markets throughout the world. Our experience thus far has shown that societies which embrace these ideals tend to prosper. However, because of an unfortunate mix of historical accident, dependence on foreign oil, realpolitk and outright cultural prejudice, the US has not only failed to promote western values in the Middle East, but has frequently supported regimes that have, in turn, actively suppressed democratic reforms. From a generational standpoint, our battle with Al Qaeda will only be won when their culture of intolerance (radical Islam) has been supplanted by a culture of tolerance (Western democracy). Again, Iraq was the logical best choice to "flip" over to western values because:

2a. Iraq is centrally located in the Arab world. A democratic, vibrant Iraq would be a far more visible example to the rest of the Middle East than, say, Afghanistan, which is relatively isolated and ethnically dissimilar from much of the rest of the Middle East.
2b. Iraq, although visibly crumbling under Saddam's rule, still had a good deal of experience with modern technology and other trappings of modern culture. Again, compared to Afghanistan, Iraq would have much less of a distance to travel to be a true economic, cultural, and technological peer of the US and other developed countries.
2c. Iraq has a good deal of historical significance to the Muslim world: a Baghdad once more restored to its rightful place as a center of commerce and learning would be a huge blow to the insular ideals of radical Islam.
2d. A "flipped" Iraq would serve two strategic purposes: it would encourage our ideological allies (i.e. reformers) that positive change is possible, and it would frighten our enemies - neighboring countries would be discouraged from acting out, lest what happened to Saddam happen to them.

3. Simply put, the best defense is a good offense. Anti-US sentiment exists in the Middle East and will not simply go away: far better to focus it towards military forces capable of defending themselves, at a time and place of our choosing, rather than sitting back and waiting for the attacks to come to us.

4. The humanitarian case was extremely straightforward: Saddam was a tyrant who was harming his people, and the US-led sanctions were further penalizing the innocent victims in Iraq. Freeing Iraq in 2003 would both do a great deal of good, and make up for our failure to properly liberate the country in 1991.

5. Criticism of the war as "unjust" is misguided: Iraq was unquestionably guilty of several offences (firing on US fighter jets, attempted assassination of political leaders, a history of aggression against its neighbors, funding Palestinian terrorists), any one of which legitimately qualified as a casus belli. The presence of WMDs is beside the point: Saddam was unquestionably evil, and Iraq is better off without him. To complain that the war was justified to the American people on the basis of WMDs and not on other reasons is like complaining that Al Capone was jailed on tax evasion charges rather than murder, etc. Either way the formal reason is less important than the fact that the bad guy is gone.

6. Criticism of the war as poorly fought is likewise misguided. Comparing the traditional aims of virtually every war ever fought ("Kill 'em all until they can't possibly fight back, then dictate terms of surrender") vs. the goals of the US in Iraq ("Disable the command and control structure while taking great care not to harm civilians, destroy important infrastructure, or look particularly bad to the world media") indicates that by any reasonable standard, the Iraq war was a smashing success.

7. Current political, military, and logistical difficulties in Iraq are laughably light compared to what the US has had to deal with historically (say, in WW2). By far the greatest threat to the rebuilding enterprise is not internal or foreign insurgents or hostile governments (Iran and Syria), but a loss of political will here in the US. That being the case, the anti-war left and mainstream media have not been helpful in the slightest.

8. The Iraq war has freed the United States from outdated organizations that had essentially become antagonistic to US interests, such as the United Nations. By invading Iraq with the help of truly loyal allies, we have reaffirmed our national sovereignty and our right of self-defense. We have likewise reminded the world that nations are powerful because of their current vitality, and not because of the diplomatic respect historically accorded to them (i.e. France).

9. The attacks of 9/11 represented not merely a few malcontents, but were instead a harbinger of a far greater clash of civilizations that could eventually build to a conflict on the scale of WW2 or the Cold War. That being the case, if a successfully fought war in Iraq can forestall or entirely prevent such a conflagration, then the Iraq war should be embraced as the lesser of two evils by far, even taking the war's occasionally inept prosecution into account.

Beyond that, I think the arguments tend to get fairly marginal. I hope the pro-war folks find this a relatively accurate expression of their beliefs, and I welcome comments and corrections.

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In brief summary of my problems/contentions concerning the article:

• The sections on Saif al-Adel and al-Qaeda policy towards Shi'ites are a mess. Ignoring the issues of al-Adel's "detention" and status as a "former member" of bin Laden's inner circle (a view not supported by the very online document that Time quotes from - to read more excerpts from it you can go here and read Bill Roggio or my own treatment on it when it was first reported by al-Sharq al-Awsat back in June, which should give you an idea of how dated some of this stuff is), al-Qaeda has always stayed away from sectarian animosity against Shi'ites. I am extremely skeptical that bin Laden would have tried to order Zarqawi via Hassan Ghul to carry out attacks against Iraqi Shi'ites as a means of leverage against Iran (why not just attack the Iranians directly?) given that media reports as well as Michael Scheuer (still employed by the CIA during this period) have explicitly stated that bin Laden rejected Zarqawi's sectarian campaign in Iraq. The latter opinion is even upheld in the same Time Magazine article, which notes that the purported letter from al-Zawahiri to Zarqawi "reveals differences between the old al-Qaeda leaders and al-Zarqawi over tactics and ideology" - one of which is his decision to attack Shi'ites in Iraq!

• The "two dozen other terrorist groups in more than 30 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia" that Zarqawi has contacted "in an effort to raise funds for his network and coordinate international operations" are almost certainly the relevant members of bin Laden's terrorist coalition (basically everybody except the Southeast and Central Asian groups, which have their own problems to deal with at the moment) that have been working together at least as far back as the early 1990s in Sudan - take a look at p. 58 of the 9/11 commission report, for instance. All this means, if you can see past the hype, is that the old al-Qaeda infrastructure is still intact and being readily exploited by Zarqawi.

• The account of the 1999 meeting between Zarqawi and bin Laden is supported by Jean-Charles Brisard's account of the relationship between the two men in Zarqawi, which was quite unprofessionally trashed by Daniel Benjamin in his review of the book for the New York Times a few months back precisely because he disagreed with Benjamin on that point. I myself have long been of the opinion that bin Laden and Zarqawi were brothers in arms and it's nice to see that the press is finally catching on. Next step: will they be willing to admit that they were wrong to charge the administration with distorting the nature of the relationship between Zarqawi and bin Laden?

• My understanding is that the Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi in Iraq is a separate individual from the Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi in Afghanistan and that neither is the same as the other Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (Abu Abdullah) who was an al-Qaeda camp commander in Afghanistan who was reportedly captured in Afghanistan.

• I suspect that there's a lot more that was left out of Abu Faraj al-Libi's statements concerning the al-Qaeda "management committee" than what was leaked to Time by the French since there are currently two such committees - one based out of Pakistan that is more or less the same as the ad-hoc council that I wrote about here and another based out of Iran.

• The chronology is screwed up (either by Time or their senior ISI source, you decide which) concerning the departure of the "several hundred" al-Qaeda jihadis who left Afghanistan for Iraq to fight the US - that occurred prior to the beginning of the Iraq war.

As former Indian intelligence official B. Raman noted back in March 2004:

Even before the invasion, terrorist elements of the IIF started moving to Iraq via Saudi Arabia and Iran for starting a jihad against the Americans. The first group to go was from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). They went to Saudi Arabia as Haj pilgrims and from there crossed over to Iraq. Subsequently, Arab-speaking volunteers of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the LEJ also started going to Iraq in small numbers. Many of the Arabs of Chechen ancestry, originally belonging to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who were in the South Waziristan area of the FATA, also joined them.

*

• I'm rather skeptical of the contention that bin Laden is being phased out in favor of Zarqawi, if than nothing else than because we simply don't get that lucky. If you read over the al-Zawahiri letter, the distinct impression that I get is that he would be a far more dangerous opponent for us to fight inside Iraq than Zarqawi is. The fact that bin Laden has been able successfully evade the most sophisticated dragnet for the last 5 years is testimony enough to how adept he is at both secrecy and security and I'm more worried about the claim that we don't know anything about him than I am the idea that Zarqawi's the new supervillain on the block. I also don't think that anything should be read into the absence of public appearance on his part - prior to October 2004, that was sort of Exhibit A for far too otherwise intelligent people assuming that he was dead. Somebody seems to be working mighty hard to bulwark Waziristan into an al-Qaeda stronghold, for instance, and you can take your own guesses as to who that might be.

In somewhat related news, I see that Abu Khabab, al-Qaeda's resident mad scientist, is finally getting some of the popular notice that a madman of his stature deserves. As with bin Laden, the fact that we know far too little about where this guy is now and what he's up to now (his last appearance on the radar was in February 2003 - anybody care to guess what he's been doing the last 2 years?). As with Saif al-Adel, I think that the danger posed by Khabab and his students is under-appreciated in favor of Zarqawi at this point and that after either man successfully pulls off a major terrorist attack in the West (though I think you can see traces of al-Adel's hand in the 3/11 bombings through Rabei Osman Sayyid Ahmed and Abu Faraj al-Libi's in 7/7) all of the usual suspects will be scratching their heads wondering how exactly we missed these guys.

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Iran & the Middle East

• Hussain Assaf, a senior Hezbollah instructor, narrowly escaped assassination after his car exploded seconds after he got out of it in Beirut. A Hezbollah statement said "we blame the Zionist enemy for planning and executing this attack."

• Israel is keeping alive its threat to restrict the flow of trade in Gaza if the Palestinians do not reign in terrorists immediately. Meanwhile, Hamas is alleged to have held rallies at U.N. offices and schools.

• Two Palestinian terrorists were killed in the northern Gaza Strip in Israeli airstrikes, targeting Al Aqsa Martyr Brigades in the town of Jebiliyah.

• King Abdullah of Jordan is calling on Iraqi's to elect moderates to the government and to push forward with reconstruction. Abdullah's comments came while he was in Tokyo meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

• According to a UK Sunday Times report, Ariel Sharon has ordered Israel's armed forces to be ready by March for a potential strike on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran.

• Following older threats by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, only recently disclosed, Kuwait has boosted security around their oil installations.

• The Israeli defense forces detained 19 terror suspects in a series of raids in the West Bank, responding to the suicide mall attack last week. In the Balata refugee camp, an al Aqsa Martyr Brigades member was killed by his own bomb, as Israel rounded up 17 more terror suspects.

• A 15-year old Palestinian boy was detained after attempting to smuggle explosives through the Hawara checkpoint, south of Shechem. The detainee indicated that he was to bring the explosives to someone on the other side.

• According to a UK Guardian report, Syria was being urged by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt to relaunch peace talks with Israel. In response, the Syrian government has come out publicly and denied the claims.

• A new Palestinian law granting financial payments to the families of suicide bombers? Saddam Hussein would be proud.

America Domestic Security & the America's

• Concern is mounting over the connections between a Boston Islamic group and a high-profile Muslim activist, Abdurahman Alamoudi, after a recent statement by the federal government that Mr. Alamoudi had a "close relationship" with Al Qaeda and that he raised money for Al Qaeda in America.

• An Egyptian cleric arrested during a high-profile federal raid last year on his East Frankford mosque has finally been deported. Mohamed Ghorab, the imam or spiritual leader at the Ansaar Allaah Islamic Society on Wakeling Street, arrived in Cairo escorted by U.S. immigration agents Thursday.

• Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls had only two witnesses testify before him Thursday in the preliminary enquiry involving Leader of the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen Yasin Abu Bakr. Bakr reappeared before McNicolls at the Port of Spain Eighth Magistrates' Court. He is before McNicolls charged with one count of sedition, three counts of inciting the demand of money, property and the breach of the peace, and a fifth count of terrorism.

• A report from the International Crisis Group looks at Bolivia and its upcoming elections. The reports says "Bolivia is on the verge of national and social disintegration. [The elections] may be a final opportunity to start solving deep social and economic problems and profound ethnic divisions." The 2006 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations said that a US goal in Bolivia is to "ensure that Bolivia does not become an active transit point for international terrorism". Unrest in Bolivia might attract the wrong element.

• The Federal Court of Canada has rejected a suspected terrorist's bid to throw out the government's case against him. Adil Charkaoui, 32, was trying to invalidate the national security certificate the government issued against him under federal immigration law in 2003. He also tried to have parts of the immigration law declared unconstitutional.

• Impassioned questions and comments followed a controversial speech - provocatively titled Does al-Qaida exist? - at an event hosted Friday by the Mississauga Coalition for Peace and Justice and held at the University of Toronto at Mississauga campus. Asad Ismi, a writer specializing in U.S. foreign policy in the developing world, spoke to a group of about 30 people about his views on the American intelligence community's role in the global events since Sept. 11, 2001. There was no shortage of opinions at the event. Ismi's talked about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in which he argued the CIA was complicit; United States foreign policy, which he said is based around American attempts to gain control of Middle Eastern oil; and about the threat of terrorist organizations, which he said are exaggerated by the U.S. intelligence community.

• Federal authorities hit with a stunning defeat in a terrorism case against a former Florida college professor are considering deporting him instead of retrying him. Al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait, was accused of being a key figure in a Palestinian terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel. (HT: Jihad Watch)

Russia & South/Central Asia

• Police questioned eight suspects on Friday after a suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded Bangladesh street, killing himself and six others in the latest attack blamed on extremists wanting to create an Islamic state. The suspects were detained in Netrokona town, the site of Thursday’s bombing, said police investigators who can’t be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

• A leader of an opposition party (Awami League) in Bangladesh's Parliament has said that the people will launch a relentless movement to force the present four-party coalition if it fails to combat bomb terrorism. Sheikh Hasina called upon the people from all walks of life to get united and resist those elements indulging in bomb terrorism in the name of religion.

• The national dialogue on how to stop bomb terrorism in Bangladesh begins Monday in absence of the mainstream opposition parties and pro-opposition professional bodies. HM Ershad's Jatiya Party, the second largest opposition in parliament, ruling alliance partners, some minor political parties, and different pro-government organisations that include associations of lawyers, doctors, engineers, agriculturists, journalists and other professionals will join the dialogue amid boycott of the main opposition Awami League-led 14 party alliance.

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• The latest issue of Chechnya Weekly from The Jamestown Foundation contains seven items, including a look at the history of Islam in Kabardino-Balkaria, and reaction to a recent report that Iran may be training Chechen rebels.

• A Saudi man who is the purported spiritual leader of Arab fighters in Russia's rebel republic of Chechnya has been killed in fighting, an Internet statement said Saturday. "Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Jaber al-Buaynayn al-Tamimi, also known as Abu Omar al-Saif, the spiritual guide of the mujahedeen (holy fighters) in Chechnya, was martyred during a fight with the Russians, the enemies of God," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

• Law enforcers in separate drives have arrested 16 cadres of outlawed Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) including two suspected suicide squad members across the country. Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) claims one of the suspected suicide squad members arrested yesterday in Demra in the capital is a student of economics at Jahangirnagar University (JU). Meantime, law enforcers seized two powerful bombs in Patuakhali and Sirajganj, yesterday while a bomb hoax was reported in Chittagong.

• Bangladesh's elite security force said on Saturday it had arrested the main supplier of explosives to an Islamic group waging a suicide bombing campaign to establish Islamic law in the Muslim nation. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) also said it had seized a huge cache of explosives and bomb-making equipment sufficient to make 200 powerful bombs.

• Muslim clerics throughout Bangladesh read special 'khutba' (sermon) during the Friday prayer at mosques, condemmnng the recent spell of bombings and urged the militants to shun the path of violence using the name of Islam. Special police forces were deployed by the administration at different mosques to ward off any unpleasant incident.

• A suicide bomber set off explosives near a U.S. and Afghan military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday, killing himself and wounding a civilian passerby, a police officer said. The bomber appeared to be trying to blow himself up near an American vehicle, said Abdul Qadar, an officer at the scene.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) has accused the Philippines of violating a nine year-old peace accord. The accusation came at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) being held in Saudi Arabia. The controversy surrounds ties between the MNLF and Abu Sayyaf, and recent counterterrorism action taken by the Filipino government.

• The Philippine government is optimistic that a permanent peace agreement can be reached next summer with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). MILF has been fighting for a seperate Islamic state in the southern Philippines since the 1970s, but has distance themselves from more violent groups like Abu Sayyaf.

• Australian authorities have again raided the home of Saleh Jamal, a man who in the past threatened to fly a hijacked airliner into the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Jamal is currently jailed in Lebanon.

• The Malaysian government has indicated they will tighten restrictions on publications that promote terrorism and holy war. The move is being viewed as a preventative measure to ensure that jihad is not spread throughout the southeast Asian country.

• After a five year absence, the Australian special forces will renew joint-training with Indonesia's elite forces. In early 2006, Exercise Dawn Kookaburra will focus on counter-hijack and hostage recovery.

Europe

• Spanish police have arrested seven terror suspects in the Costa del Sol region of southern Spain, on charges the group helped fund Islamic terrorism. The group may be linked to a local al Qaeda network.

• Were the London oil depot explosions a terror attack?

• The French are renewing the call to lift the arms embargo the European Union has in place on China, a move the United States opposes. According to French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the embargo “does not reflect the reality of our relations with China, nor the reality of the strategic partnership which we are building with her.”

• According to a Human Rights Watch investigator, Poland was the CIA's main center in Europe for secretly detaining terror suspects, but they couldn't produce any proof. While the story has created somewhat of a feeding frenzy among journalists who are convinced that nefarious things are going on, Kirk H. Sowell offers a little perspective on the issue.

• Italian Intelligence and Security Services (SISDE) have issued warnings about Islamic terrorists in Albania, where they say an al Qaeda linked terrorist cell named Jihad al-Jihad, has recently appeared and maintains ties to Greece.

• A German court has convicted Mounir el Motassadeq on charges he helped the September 11th hijackers, and sentenced him to seven years in jail. Motassadeq was acquitted on 3,000 counts of accessory to murder.

• Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, an Egyptian facing terror related charges in an Italian court next month, was caught on tape claiming the Madrid attacks and celebrating the killing of Nicolas Berg. While watching the Berg beheading, Ahmed yelled "Go to hell, enemy of God, kill him, kill him, cut it well, cut off his head."

Africa

• Papers from the INSS 2005 Africa Symposium are available online. One paper (PDF) is entitled An African Perspective on the Global Fight Against Terrorism.

• The vicious cycle of violence in Darfur has resumed, says the United Nations, with Sudan army involvement increasing. A UN spokesperson said that last week had seen both government and rebel forces launch attacks, displacing 7,000 people and killing an unknown number.

• A ship has narrowly escaped being hijacked by pirates in northern Somalia. The vessel, mv Sirchai Petroleum II, was said to be on its way to deliver fuel to fishing vessels in southern Somalia last week. The hijackers sprayed the ship with bullets, but the speed saved the ship and her 10-man crew.

• Aid flights have been grounded in West Darfur as violence escalates despite hopes for a peace deal before the end of the year. Aid workers say humanitarian access to West Darfur is the worst it has ever been. The worsening situation again coincides with peace talks being held in Nigeria.

The Global War

• This week I interviewed Sam Pender, author of "Saddam's ties to al Qaeda", "Iraq's Smoking Gun," and three more publications on the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.

• Leaders of 57 Muslim countries have issued a warning that the Islamic world is in crisis because of the threat of terrorism. The event was hailed as a turning-point, a moment of Muslim renaissance. Using rather more mundane language, some called it a summit of moderation and modernisation. A Gulf Times article says "the OIC leaders expressed readiness to redouble and orchestrate international efforts to fight terror".

• Prince Turki Al Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, indicated the Saudi government has become increasingly convinced that bin Laden is "not as paramount" as he used to be, and may in fact not even be in charge of al Qaeda any longer.

• Former CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady has indicated he will go to Italy if necessary and fight an arrest warranted issues by Italian prosecutors over the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric back in 2003.

• According to the Strategy Page, the U.S. Department of Defense believes that some twenty countries have established Cyber War organizations, and are trying to develop tools and techniques for attacking American military and civilian targets, via the Internet. A lot of information on the Cyber War against the United States is kept secret, but what is known is that the U.S. Air Force has taken the lead in developing Cyber War weapons.

• Torture can never be an instrument to fight terror because it is an instrument of terror, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, in his annual Human Rights Day message. He decried the recent trend of countries claiming exceptions to the international prohibition against the practice and called for all states to honour the legally established ban on torture and to vigorously combat the impunity of those who perpetrate it. He also urged all countries that have not yet done so to ratify the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

• An article by Philip Cerny in the Winter issue of The Naval War College Review, entitled Terrorism and the New Security Dilemma, looks at the question of how states and great powers, acting in what is still to a large extent an interstate system, can deal with the increasingly diffuse character of threats.

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. For ongoing tips, email "MondayWindsOfWar", over here @windsofchange.net.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• Video footage of security contractors apparently firing on an Iraqi civilian vehicle has prompted an investigation by the U.S. military, a spokesman said Thursday, and by the company linked to the incidents.

• Catch up on Michael Yon - there are a couple of new dispatches up.

• There is no word yet on the fate of the four peace activists one day after terrorists threatened to execute them if prisoners were not released.

RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY

• Take a look at this week's reconstruction highlights: Iraq takes first step to rejoin World Customs Organization (WCO). Two Iraqi Customs Department officials recently met with WCO executives and attended the twice yearly Harmonized System Committee meeting, marking Iraq’s first step toward rejoining the Brussels, Belgium-based organization. USAID/Iraq has designed and is implementing a comprehensive program to provide access to credit to Iraq’s micro, small, and medium enterprises in a sustainable manner. USAID’s Agricultural Reconstruction and Development in Iraq (ARDI) program and the Ministry of Agriculture are implementing an integrated sheep nutrition program as an inexpensive model for improving the health of sheep flocks and increasing the production and sale of sheep meat, milk and wool. ARDI and the Departments of Water Resources in governorates throughout Iraq are cooperating to rehabilitate small hydraulic infrastructure in irrigation systems. Over 30 mud schools throughout Iraq have been replaced through USAID’s Education II program. Over 9,900 teachers have received training in Information Communication Technology (ICT), teaching Iraqi educators how to use computers effectively in the classroom. Nearly 7,500 educators have received ESL training, improving their ability to teach English as a Second Language courses to Iraqi students. A 12-day workshop for 70 Master Trainers in science recently began in Amman, Jordan, in partnership with the Amman Arab University. The course will equip the 70 master trainers to train educators in modern methods of teaching in the sciences. An Iraq Transition Initiative (ITI) improved the power supply – and powered a water treatment plant – in a large district in central Iraq. An ITI grant restored power to a children’s hospital. Located in one of Iraq’s poorest governorates, the children’s hospital suffered from frequent power outages. The Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) receives support from ITI to help build capacity. Created in December 2003 to address past crimes against humanity, the IST is working to establish the necessary evidentiary infrastructure to collect, analyze, and protect critical evidence. ITI grants have provided IST key equipment, materials, and stipends to support a secured storage facility to store evidence.

IRAQI POLITICS

• The results of the upcoming election may spur additional cries for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. These requests may be harder for the administration to resist, however, as they will be coming from the duly elected Iraqi government.

• With Thursday's elections approaching, the government has closed the borders and imposed a curfew intended to reduce threats to the voters.

• Former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi was chased out of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrine in Najaf on Sunday by an angry mob who hurled shoes, rocks, and debris at the former premier.

• The latest Carnival of the Liberated is up at Dean's World.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• President Bush says that the U.S. will be able to start bringing troops home in 2006 in the wake of the 15 December elections. Some Senators believe that talk of withdrawal must wait for Iraqis to work out their constititution first.

• The Japanese government approved an extension of its troop deployment in Iraq for one year, but said it might still decide to withdraw some troops before then.

• South Korea plans to withdraw 1,000 troops from its 3,200-strong contingent in Iraq in the first half of next year.

ETCETERA

• Curiosity may have killed the cat, but the Bush administration faces no such risk. Stephen Hayes wonders why the Pentagon is so remarkably incurious about all the prewar documents of the Iraqi government. Not only have they refused an FOIA request to release certain unclassified documents, but the Pentagon is apparently going to shut down the program of translating and analyzing the documents, eliminating any chance of learning where our prewar mistakes were.

• Jonathan Rauch says - "President Bush may not know it yet—or, then again, he may—but in Iraq he is about to do a Nixon. Psychologically and politically, the withdrawal phase has already begun. Militarily, the pullback will start within weeks or, at most, months after the December 15 Iraqi parliamentary elections." Do you agree with the Vietnam correlation?

• Back in court, Saddam Hussein said - "Give me time, give me room. I am defending not myself, but you all."

• Do you have your GI Bracelet? Many military families fall into financial hardship when the breadwinner is injured or killed. The entire purchase price of the GI Bracelet is donated to support our troops and their families! Please join us to give back to these brave people in their time of need.

• 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, contact us!

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

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. And if you have a tip for a future Iraq Report, email us at MondayIraqReport(at)windsofchange.net.

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To me, "Walk The Line" was a wonderful display of incredible, pitch-perfect, believable acting. The plot is unmemorable, except for one scene, where Cash and his band have managed to beg Sam Phillips of Sun records for an audition, and are playing competent country spirituals - old folk spirituals to a harder beat. Phillips is obviously bored, and stops Cash and says (something like):

"We've all heard those songs before. I'm not interested in recording them again. If you were dying in a ditch and could only sing one song, what would you sing?"

And Cash begins to awkwardly play "Folsom Prison Blues," gaining confidence as his band figures out the song - which they've never played - and joins in.

It's an incredibly powerful scene - where Cash finds his real voice - and it nails the image of America where we are most powerful because we are most ourselves; we believe that where we find the thing that is truly us, we are fulfilled.

In Cash's case, it is a pretty complex self, and the film works most of all because Joaquin Phoenix manages to make the contradictions - a man deeply in love who has affairs; a pious man who takes drugs; a deeply rebellious man who comes to a local church every Sunday - believable; he makes them something that one man could plausibly contain, and shows us the struggles between these contradictions inside himself.

America seems much the same to me; we accept and absorb contradictions in personal and national character that should shatter us.

We were then invited to Arianna Huffington's screening of "Syriana." (thanks, Arianna!)

The movie is another exercise (like Traffic) in a John Dos Passos-like fragmented narrative, centering around a fictional emirate in the Middle East, it's leaders, their oil, and the people who want it.

The fragments about the terrorist cell were actually quite good; it traces the path of two young terrorists from displaced oil workers to members of an Islamic school, to their final act. The facts are slightly different, in that many of the real jihadis aren't driven by the need to get a decent meal, but are in fact disaffected middle class kids - and that story would also have been a powerful one.

George Clooney's performance is a great one; it takes the young swaggering alpha male and runs him forward about twenty-five years, when he's been passed over for promotion because he won't play bullshit games, and he's physically headed down the curve. He's the reason to see the movie, surprisingly. He's been a star more than an actor for most of his career, but here he raises the bar and jumps over it. I'll never think of him in as limited a way again.

The core of the movie is the conflict between the emir's good son (the reformer), a greedy oil company (whose lobbyist explains that corruption is the American way of life), a noble oil analyst, and the CIA.

Simple plot explanation: CIA bad, oil companies bad.

Sadly that oversimplified plot is pretty close to what actually unfolds; had the film had more moral nuance (see "Walk The Line" above) it would have been far more interesting.

The audience we saw it with loved it (except for Marc Cooper, apparently); as I pointed out to TG as we pulled into the parking lot set aside for those attending the screening "every Prius in L.A. is here tonight."

The writer and director, Steve Gagan got up and gave a rambling speech, the nut of which was a simple sentence about halfway through.

"We've got problems as a people. We've got some kind of hole where our hearts should be; it used to be BMW-shaped, and now it's Iraq-shaped."

That pretty much summed up his views for me.

Which brings us to the next movie, which is really about hearts; the damaged heart of an obsessive old Kiwi motorcyclist (wonder why we went to see it?) and the warm hearts of the Americans who - literally in some cases - take him in and support him in pursuing his dream.

Bert Munro was a real man, who at the age of 63, went to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, after setting records in new Zealand and Australia, and - on a shoestring and a home-made motorcycle - set world land speed records.

The movie is the story of his first trip, and it's a simple narrative, as he is handed from one helpful American to another - from a transvestite motel manager to a pot-smoking used car salesman to an indian to an amorous grandmother to the Wendover land speed community, who at first rejects him and finally supports and embraces him.

Anthony Hopkins is Bert Munro, and he's unsurprisingly wonderful. the part is made for him; it's a man who completely shields his inner self from the world, and expresses himself only through action (think 'Remains of the Day' with sex and motorcycles).

The uniform kindness of those that Munro encounters - from the Immigration official who'd read about his motorcycle in Popular Mechanics and so gives him a visa, to the speed community that houses him and chips in to help fund his trip home - bothered me when I saw the film. It felt saccharine. Where's the antagonist? Where's the drama, I asked.

And, to be honest, it would have been a better film with more conflict - even if Bert's wonderful streamlined motorcycle has been more fragile and less twist-and-go fast.

But constant kindness to strangers is almost a uniquely American thing, and the community that converts gasoline to speed is also one that is intensely welcoming and helpful.

We do open our hearts frequently and widely, and from my experience in Europe, we do so more thoughtlessly - more automatically - than most other cultures.

Gagan may have a hole in his heart, but the ordinary Americans shown in "Indian' certainly don't. And, to be honest, I think more of us are like them than like him.

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AMERICAN MARINES:

People in general are hardwired to see obstacles or problems, find solutions for those problems, and execute those solutions. The American culture reinforces this natural instinct in what most other cultures consider an extreme manner. Americans focus on winning, achieving, succeeding, and producing. Our children learn and play aggressive, competitive sports from a very early age.

For example, football, arguably the most popular and widely played American sport is a linear, aggressive, goal-oriented endeavor that usually ends with concrete results. This is a simple construct that satisfies our basic needs. We see a problem (the other team, the goal line), we see a solution, (drive forward, score more points), and we can easily envision an end state -- unambiguous victory. Ties are a disappointment, not a means to an end. In professional football we have done away with ties entirely because they don’t satisfy our Manichean need for a concrete solution.

As children, most of us are taught that lying and cheating are wrong, and that “honesty is always the best policy.” You might say that “honor” to an American means never quitting, never betraying your word, living up to a high standard of performance and behavior. “Honor” on the athletic field means playing by the rules and giving your best performance no matter what the conditions. People who give excuses for poor performance are deemed weak and are shunned.

When we are presented with challenges, we are expected to overcome them with personal initiative. People who overcome personal disaster are held up as examples to the rest of us. The worse the disaster faced, the greater the comeback, the better the story. The skier who breaks both legs in a fall and drags himself five miles for help is a hero, but it’s even better if he crawls all the way back to save his dog from an avalanche. Most Americans are generous to a fault, but we tend to lack respect for those who don’t help themselves. Most of us can (still) relate to statements like, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” “Self-made man,” “I don’t take handouts.”

We see ourselves as separate and distinct individuals. Choosing our own relationships, memberships, associations, and path in life, we see it as standard practice to move 3000 miles across the country, away from family and friends, to “start over.” If we don’t like our families, we simply dissociate ourselves from them and seek other relationships. We marry and divorce with impunity, and often without input from friends or family. We decide what is best for ourselves. If we fail, we’re generally expected to view it as our own fault. We have responsibility to take care of our parents in their old age, but we often pay someone else to take this burden off our hands.

Most Americans are lucky enough to have a fairly high standard of living compared to the rest of the world. More than ninety percent of families can afford three full meals a day for their children and nearly everyone has an opportunity to go to school. Our safety is buffered by regulatory agencies that protect us from dirty water, dirty air, and even noise pollution. Although we have many bad neighborhoods, there is little threat from brutal torture, state-sponsored mass murder, oppressive martial law, or enemy invasion across our borders. Our health care isn’t perfect, but our life expectancy is high and most of us feel good about our futures.

In fact, our ability to envision our future is one of our greatest strengths. Because most of our basic survival needs are met, we have the luxury of a long-term view. Retirement planning is a normal part of life. Most Americans envision their children going on to college, and have no reason to expect they won’t be able to fulfill this expectation even if they have to take out student loans. We save money and plan our careers.

Our system of government gives us the perception that we also have a greater role in our collective future. Although many Americans say they feel disenfranchised, our ability to vote elected officials in and out of office gives us an avenue of participation. Our anger and frustration can be vented with the pull of a lever or a letter to our congressman. The fact that the congressman writes back and will probably look into each individual case would shock most people from the developing world.

The respect for the rule of law is the foundation of our way of life. We modify our daily behavior based on the belief that it’s our responsibility to follow laws, we will be punished if we don’t follow laws, and that most other people will follow laws. Law gives order, protects us from each other and from the government, and oftentimes from ourselves. Our faith in this system of laws is reflected in the amount of time we dedicate to following the creation of law in congress and the adjudication of law in the courts. Publicly, corruption is unacceptable, and when discovered it is usually rooted out.

We take great pride in being a free people. Our unquestioning belief in our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness make us uniquely American. Unencumbered by the shackles of tyranny, our hearts host the seeds of generosity and altruism. Most of us have an unfailing belief that we make the most of our freedom, living good lives, helping others and trying to live up to our personal standards.

Our altruism and earnestness often make us somewhat naïve. We expect that everyone else can see that our hearts are pure, and we expect them to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules that we try to live by ourselves. When we find out that people in the rest of the world necessarily live by a more survival-oriented set of rules, we’re often overly disappointed. We have trouble adjusting to other people’s way of life because we think our way of life is the ideal. We have trouble seeing things from other people’s eyes because we think they should always see things from our perspective.

Our sense of moral superiority comes from a real desire to help others and do the right thing, but it also gets in our way when we have to deal with those that live by more nebulous rules. Our earnest overtures are seen as false and naïve instead of moral and brave. Europeans cannot believe that we would sacrifice so much in Iraq just to prevent a WMD attack and to help the Iraqi people, because they would never do it themselves. If they have a hidden angle, we must have one too. Sometimes our lack of street smarts catches up to us. When we don’t live up to our own expectations on the national stage, we are our own worst enemies. The shame-fest over Abu Ghraib is a case study in American guilt.

Our national character is built on high moral concepts that not many of us live up to, but most of us aspire to. Our nature is to be strong, moral, and productive. We set the bar high.

American Marines take these characteristics and drive them to a new level. With notable exceptions, we tend to be exceptionally aggressive, mission focused, and strong believers in the American ideal. We do not accept weakness, indecision, laziness, or incompetence because we know that these things lead to death in combat. We drive ourselves past normal points of endurance, often damaging our own bodies just to reach a finish line or save a buddy. We expect no less from anyone else, a point that often leads to friction with our old high school friends, our families, and especially other Marines. We have been called extremists, and in many ways we are. Marines can best be described as “extreme Americans.”

…American Marines have unusually high expectations…

IRAQIS OF AL-ANBAR:

Although we don’t like to call ourselves “Arabs,” the Iraqi culture is an Arabic culture. We are a communal people, and our lives revolve around our family; close, extended, and tribal. The paths of our lives are less lineal than the Americans, less “A to B,” more nebulous. Our sport of choice is also football, but not the American variety.

We play the sport played extensively everywhere in the world except America. Soccer isn’t a direct, aggressive kind of sport like the game you play. In fact, we spend a lot of time kicking the ball backwards instead of towards the goal. Much time is spent on the field lining up shots, less time shooting. The goal is to win, but a tie is okay as long as it was a good tie. We often view a tie as a victory if it is against a better team.

Our perception of victory and success is often malleable to the circumstances. Our honor demands victory, we have trouble accepting anything less. We’re not lying to ourselves; we just adjust the standards to fit the situation. The Gulf War was a victory for Saddam because we prevented you from driving into Baghdad. Despite the fact that we were losing on the field, Fallujah is a victory because you could not finish the attack -- our will to hold out defeated your will to crush our forces. If you push us into a position where we have obviously lost, we become distraught and angry, and our honor demands that we seek a victory to balance things out. This is no different from you -- Americans hate losing as well. It is different from you because to us it is all that matters.

This sense of honor permeates everything we do. This isn’t the Western definition of honor; it’s more like Hispanic honor. Perception of manhood is vital, and in fact it can be a matter of life and death. A man without honor gets no wife, often no work, and in Iraq he may be shunned or killed by his family depending on how grave the offense. Defending honor is part of our cultural heritage and it is a focal point for our behavior. We protect the virtue of our women and the pride of our family. We are disgusted that American men allow their women to act and dress like “sharmuta,” or whores. If our wives dressed in public like Brittany Spears we would kill them or burn them with cooking oil.

An Iraqi man unable to support his family has no honor and must take action to counterbalance this loss. It doesn’t necessarily matter how we support our families as long as we provide. In many cases, we are pushed out the door by our wives to conduct attacks against the Coalition to regain our honor and to make money. An Iraqi woman knows that a husband without honor is worthless to her and her children.

Saddam was a terrible father, but many of us loved him as an abused child loves the parents who beat him. We still act like abused children, playing one side against the other, looking for an advantage, support, and acceptance. We will play you against your boss, against the CPA, and against the government to get what we want. Don’t expect loyalty from us, we are survivors. When we give loyalty to a cause it is to God’s cause. When we give loyalty to people it is to our family.

When we are presented with challenges, we accept the fate prescribed by God. Acceptance of fate is an Islamic trait, and it guides almost everything we do. If we are poor, then it is Gods will that we are poor. If there is a task to be completed, then by the will of God it will be completed -- In Sha Allah. In many cases, except for those of us educated in Baghdad or the west, we see no reason to put extra effort into succeeding beyond the norm. Getting by is good enough because that is our lot in life. We have basic expectations and these are tied into our honor -- we need food, shelter, water, electricity, and medical help just like everyone else.

Don’t expect any miraculous stories of hardship overcome, “personal best” in the Marathon, or an “I can make it on my own” attitude. These concepts are luxuries for people who live in pampered societies like America. Even when we are poor we have our families and that is enough to keep us happy. When you ask us to do something, we rarely think to ourselves, “Gee, how can I do a great job?” We are answering the call of our stomachs and our screaming wives. After that, a little coffee, some shisha, and leave us alone.

Our families make us who we are. The family is everything, and only those on the margins of society live without family support. Because we live in a developing country, and our needs are more survival oriented than yours, we have to rely on common survival techniques. People group together to survive, to protect each other, to look out for each others interests. The closer the grouping, the closer the interest of the group. Our immediate families are most important to us, then our larger families, then sub-tribe, then tribe, then tribal confederation.

Our loyalty expands and contracts based on our survival needs, but we almost always work within this construct. If you kill or imprison one of us, you have taken some of our pooled resources and reduced our chance of survival. Because we survive as a group, an attack on one is an attack on all. This is why we demand blood money for death, injury, and damage. You must replace the resource you have taken from our pool to balance things out. As long as you recognize that need, we can work together. Here’s a real-life example of how seriously we take our tribal resources:

The tribal feud started when three members of one tribe borrowed some money from a sheikh of another tribe. They had borrowed the money because they could not find jobs to support their families. After allowing sufficient time for repayment of the loan, the sheikh attempted to collect the money he was owed by taking possession of a vehicle that the three borrowers had purchased in an attempt to start a small business carting groceries from the market to surrounding towns. An argument ensued between the two groups, and the sheikh threatened to harm members of the three men’s families if they didn’t repay the money. Upon hearing this, the three men shot and killed the sheikh. The sheikh’s tribe immediately vowed revenge. Soon, all three of the borrowers had also been killed by a member of the sheikh’s tribe. The feud will continue until blood money is paid, balancing out the losses on each side. Very much like your Hatfield and McCoy’s, no?

Pooling resources and interest within a family means that there is little room for individualism. We rarely choose our own path in life. If a father owns a business, the son will almost certainly work for his father. If marriage to another tribe solves an inter-tribal conflict, we marry who we are told. Our parents pick our spouses, and we often have little or no input in who we marry. Only the rich and the elite choose their own life. This lack of individuality further reduces our sense of individual responsibility. Again, don’t expect us to act like independent Americans.

Our tribalism is tightly bound to our sense of honor. Just as honor is vital to each one of us, it is also vital to the tribe. A dishonored tribe loses “wasta” and therefore influence. Less influence means less money, less power, less ability to support the members of the tribe. Therefore, a tribe’s honor is jealously guarded as a group resource. Mistreating a sheikh of our tribe makes him less powerful, making all of us less powerful. Less power means fewer contracts, less money, less food, angrier families. We must regain this honor any way we can. Because Iraqi tradition is violent, we often choose violence to regain our honor. If you dishonor our tribe, we have to negotiate with you…. or attack you until our honor is restored.

We don’t ask for much. Our standard of living is low compared to the Western world. If you put us in the United States, most of us would fall well below your poverty level. Since the collapse of the economy last year, many of us cannot afford to feed our families without finding odd jobs, begging money from family members, or supporting the ACF. Look around -- most of us live in humble homes, farming small plots with a few animals and a broken down car. If we have a big home, we may have had a good job before the war and now we have nothing and are twice as angry as our poor neighbors.

There are certainly rich people amongst us, but they don’t represent the majority. When you tell us you can improve our lives and make us rich, you have an image of your own homes in mind. Most of us cannot even imagine what your lives must be like in America, and we do not necessarily value what you value. We don’t dream of Outback Steakhouse. We are proud of our lives even if they don’t meet your expectations.

Unlike you, we do not enjoy the protection of concerned government leaders. Nobody cares if there is lead in our water or pollution in the air. Sometimes our leaders feign concern about our healthcare system, but that’s only because our harried tribal leaders take up our cry. Your system is so refined that every little whimper draws the ire of a champion congressman. Our system is so broken our raging screams barely make a sound. We must use the power of our tribes and our religious groups to effect any change, so again, if you weaken our affiliations you weaken our only hope of being heard.

Where you have been protected from invasion, martial law, and torture for nearly two centuries, we have experienced nothing but invasion, martial law, and torture for our entire lives. We have been in a state of almost constant warfare with either the US or with Iran. When we weren’t fighting you, we were fighting ourselves in the north and the south. Our sons and brothers were killed fighting to keep Saddam in power, and our lives seemed painfully short. At any time, a government official, police officer, or secret policeman could decide that we had done something wrong and have us killed. They might have to pay off some blood money, but so what?

Just as many of you have become callous about death in combat, we have grown up to be callous about death in everyday life. We are not the Baghdad elite. All of us have seen animals slaughtered and have helped pull their guts from their bodies, so blood is nothing new to us. Beatings are a part of life, pain is a part of life, and death is an ever-present part of life. If pain and death are our lot in life, we accept that as part of God’s plan. This is how we are able to accept money for a relative you have killed -- we accept God’s will, and you have balanced out our resources. What can we complain about?

Because our lives are so brutal, we have almost no capacity to view the long term. Our inability to envision our own futures is our greatest weakness. We are faced with a simple hierarchy of needs. One must breathe before he can think about shelter and security, shelter and security before water, water before food, and so on. It is only by building a normal, healthy society that you can extend that focus into the long range, to think about things like education, leisure time, investment, and retirement. You have heard our complaints. We want shelter, security, water, and food. Your talk about democracy and culture and prosperity mean little to people who are simply surviving.

With this short term view, if you give us money we spend it. If you give money to one of our public officials, he’ll steal as much as he can because he doesn’t even know if he’ll have a job next week. He has to get more, now, to fulfill basic needs. He can’t see into the long term, to see the effect his corruption will have on the future of his community. He may even be a good person, but he has to look out for his family first.

What you see as corruption we see as part of the normal process of doing business. Because most jobs underpay, we always take a cut. This is built into the price of the job. Iraq follows the trend of many other Arab countries -- there aren’t enough jobs for the expanding population so the government hires everyone. The government can’t afford high salaries for so many people, so the pay is low. Because the pay is low, it’s expected that you accept bribes and cheat to get by. Everyone knows the rules, even the government.

Typically, we’ll take a slice of 10% to 15% off the top of a contract or a work order. Nobody will really get too upset if we keep things in this “normal” range. If we go too far, and take 30% or higher, then we know we are stepping over the line. However, unless you catch on we’ll take what we can get. If you’re too stupid to figure out what we’re doing, it’s your fault, not ours. There is no real shame in corruption; after all, we’re looking out for our families as expected.

Corruption is natural in a country without the rule of law. We do not respect law the way you do because for us law comes from the end of a gun. In the absence of the gun, we try to respect our families and friends and live by God’s will. If the government passes laws, or you give us a transitional law, we don’t respect it because we don’t respect the government. Government to us means corruption, violence, dictatorship, and rule by fear. In the absence of fear, there is no rule.

We know that Saddam lied to us often. We feel that he did this to protect us, but also to protect himself. We have never trusted our social institutions as much as we trust our families and our friends. It all comes back to the family and tribe. If the government tells us that the Americans are going to enter our town in peace, but our cousin tells us they are coming to murder everyone and rape our women, we will almost always believe our cousin. You have made many promises to us, but kept so few. Why should we believe you? In the absence of trusted institutions, our lives are ruled by rumor, and rumor is spread by word of mouth.

In such a nebulous society, where life is a tenuous prospect, we rarely take responsibility for our own actions. “Owning up” for our poor performance or behavior would be a stupid thing to do if it reduces our chance of survival and success. If we can put off our mistakes on others, we’ll do it in a heartbeat not because we’re lazy or incompetent but to avoid damaging our honor and possibly losing our jobs. Remember, without honor and a job, we are nothing. So we break a few rules and lie about our mistakes. We don’t care about rules anyway; we do things to achieve an effect not because they’re right or wrong.

We’re masters of achieving effect. Everything we do is designed to coax, cajole, trick, or steer you into doing what we want you to do. This is a standard survival skill, one that you obviously haven’t mastered. Your naiveté never ceases to amaze us. You either take us at face value, or you get mad when we “lie.” It’s not lying if you get what you want, and we almost always get what we want from you. We are in a constant state of negotiation, and there are no permanent solutions to any problem. You pretend to be so honest, but we see you as the biggest liars of all. You promised us security, jobs, and peace. All we have is crime, unemployment, and war. Who’s the liar?

You may have noticed we have a very emotional nature. There’s no imperative to control our emotions, and in fact we’re encouraged to express ourselves. We wear everything on our sleeves, and we change our minds at will. We can be furious at you one minute when you offend us, and truly love you the next minute. Every death is a massacre, every accident a murder, every threat is an impending disaster.

Iraqis are complicated people. We can be kind, generous, and forgiving in the worst circumstances. If you are a visitor in our homes, we will feed you our last morsel of food. If you become a true friend, we will die for you. But we see no future for ourselves or for our families.

We are stuck in a rut, and we need someone who has the capacity to see a better future to guide us onto the right path. We may take your hand, or we may bite your hand because we do not trust you. It is on your head to be patient and forgiving, not ours. Do not expect us to be American Marines. If you expect too much from us, you will be disappointed. There is nothing worse than unmet expectations, my friend.

…Iraqis will never live up to the Marines’ expectations because they are Iraqis, not American Marines. We haven’t lived up to their expectations either…

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But just as staying indefinitely is not an option, so too is an immediate pullout of most American forces. We are not able to keep order with the number of troops we have there now. Withdrawing most of our forces immediately would effectively turn Iraq over to Al Qaeda, or perhaps Iran, leaving in our wake civil war, increased human suffering, and a far-more dangerous place than we found 31 months ago.

Thus, the most prudent exit is a steady efficient drawdown of U.S. troops beginning after the Iraqi elections in December. Exactly how many and at what pace? Those numbers may be important but only for symbolic – not necessarily strategic – reasons. Troops signify intentions, and the American people (and the Iraqi people, for that matter) are concerned about our intentions.

For that reason, America must clarify its intentions if this drawdown – this exit from Iraq – is to succeed.

First, President Bush should state unequivocally that the U.S. does not seek and will not maintain permanent military bases in Iraq. Our 60-year presence in Germany and our 50-year presence in Korea rightfully make people nervous that a half-century from now, American Marines will be living on a base in downtown Baghdad. President Bush should put that to rest – and make clear that U.S. policy is to leave Iraq completely.

Second, President Bush must clarify our intentions with respect to Iraq’s oil. We have no designs on Iraq’s precious natural resource, but Iraqis don’t believe us. We should state clearly that oil revenues belong to the people of Iraq and no one else. At the same time, we should also help Iraq get the oil flowing and encourage its neighbors, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to assist.

Third, we should redouble our diplomatic efforts to get allies and partners to come into Iraq to share the burden for security and infrastructure. Internationalizing our efforts will take the target off our back and make it easier for us to leave. But it will only work if we invite others in – and if the offer to cede control is genuine.

Fourth, President Bush should ask a high-level personal envoy to focus on nothing but ironing out the political conflict between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Creating a weakened, balkanized state is not our intention, despite the conspiracy theories of some. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Dr. Zalmay Khalizad, who engineered the Sunni “buy-in” to the recent Constitutional referendum, is a natural choice for this role, but it will mean reducing his other responsibilities.

And fifth, we must set forth a clear plan to have a fixed number of Iraqi military units trained to operate independently by a certain date. Establishing metrics for success, and sticking to them, will send the unequivocal message that the Iraqi people will be the defenders of their own country.

These five statements of American intention, backed up by concrete action, must accompany any drawdown in troops. No one – not in the Muslim world or here at home – will believe us unless we begin to leave, but no one should believe us unless we state now that we want a future for Iraq that is free of American involvement.

America seeks no empire, yet we give the impression to some that we do. Putting that issue to rest, once and for all, will allow the democratically elected Iraqi government to gain control over their country and will let our brave men and women finally come home.

Regards,

JANE HARMAN
Member of Congress

While I actually agree with parts of this (esp. the "Your oil belongs to you"), once again, her objective isn't success against the insurgents; it's "what does it take to get us to come home," as clearly stated in the opening paragraphs.

Her notion that internationalizing the war - involving ceding control - is a good idea mystifies me. Who, in the feckless UN or EU, has shown any measure of resolve in dealing with this?

And this just makes no sense to me at all...can anyone help?

These five statements of American intention, backed up by concrete action, must accompany any drawdown in troops. No one – not in the Muslim world or here at home – will believe us unless we begin to leave, but no one should believe us unless we state now that we want a future for Iraq that is free of American involvement.

I'm composing a new letter and will get it to her by the 14th.

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On the other hand - there's always another hand - I'd have no qualms seeing Saddam executed. Or Hitler.

It's not to prevent recidivism; it's not likely that the 1950's would have presented Hitler much chance to retake the reins of power in Germany.

It's because certain acts are so far beyond what we can and should accept that they deserve some special, significant sanction. It's not because I believe that vengeance should be served, or blood repaid; Saddam could never - not if he were tortured unimaginably for decades - repay the debt that he's incurred.

It's a way of setting up boundary stones at the edges of our human culture. You and me, over here. Saddam, Hitler, over there. Ted Bundy...over there as well, I'd say.

There are criminals whose crimes are so great, and whose guilt is adequately certain, that I'd probably put them on the other side of the markers as well.

Not ordinary criminals; not the ordinary stickup-gone-bad killer, or the sullen wife murderer. Not even the glassy-eyed killer of one's own child.

But the extraordinary criminals. The truly evil.

And, I have to say, I'd put Tookie in that camp, which puts him on the far side of the marker, and scheduled for the table, restraints, and sharp needle.

Not because of the four people he killed in cheap stickups, and mocked to his friends afterward.

Those were cheap crimes, and not worthy of more than a locked door and a forgotten man behind it.

Because of the twenty thousand young black men (and women) who died in the gang wars he helped trigger.

For that crime, he should pay.

It may well be that if Tookie hadn't come along, the social conditions would have given that role to someone else.

And if someone else had bought Sierra DOS, Bill Gates would be an upper-middle class techie.

Yes, he's written books, and lectured. I've read them, and read his work. And I've listened for the voice of redemption in it, and not heard it.

He may be redeemed; I hope he is. But he's still on the wrong side of the boundary marker. His redemption is a matter for him and whatever God he may accept, not for the powers of this world.

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Just look at what she brings to the surface of the stagnant ponds of academe. One of the groups that played into her hands at UConn was called "Students Against Hate." The AP quoted its leader -- "Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major" (!!! look for that byline in the New York Times in a few years) as saying, "We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech."

Meanwhile a campus newspaper article about the speech before it happened quoted Ali Langston, a "member of the Muslim Student Association," as saying "ignorance is something that divides us as a people," and then in the next paragraph inadvertently gives an example of ignorance.

"Islam is a word that means peace," Langston said.

BUZZZZZ!! It means "submission;" it comes from the Arabic root of aslama "he resigned, he surrendered, he submitted," a causative conjugation of salima "he was safe." It is related to salam "peace," like English history is related to story. But it is not the same word, and Islam decidedly does not mean "peace." When she spoke at Kansas University, "Some of the protesters, such as Robert Richardson, said they were members of the Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics."

"We're just not open-minded enough to like Ann Coulter," Richardson, 28, of Lawrence, said.

When she spoke at University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis, the university's president "issued a statement condemning Coulter's speech as 'hateful,' " even though he never said what he found hateful in it, and in fact it turned out he had not even attended the speech. Daily Kos, meanwhile, takes its usual position on the high ground of the left by speculating Coulter either is just out there looking for a man, or else she really is a man:

Somewhat more trivial or perhaps pruriently motivated critics have suggested that her positions amount to trolling and that because of her pronounced trachea due to her being extremely underweight, appears to have an Adam's apple and therefore might be a transvestite or transgendered person.

Because, you know, real hot blonde chicks just can't be that wicked and focused and sharp and mean to nice noble-souled liberal boys like us. When a university community does manage to keep its wig on long enough to let her speak and ask her civil, but pointed questions, it learns how easy it is to puncture her polemical balloon:

Coulter was asked why she condemns the terrorists so strongly, but not those who kill abortion doctors. She said that the latter have been extremely frustrated by the fact that they can’t vote on this issue, thanks to Roe vs. Wade, and that they worked within the system for twenty years without success before turning to murder. She said that those individuals believe they had been left with no other routes for dissent in the face of an ongoing atrocity. Coulter further suggested that although she would not take it upon herself to take extreme actions on the abortion issue, she will not condemn those who do.

But that so rarely happens, because her mere presence magically transforms ivy-mantled walls into a Jerry Springer set.

If anyone has an interest in drowning out Coulter, it's conservatives. She's intelligent and articulate, but so driven by the lust for the jugular that she only absorbs enough information about anything to make a weapon, not an argument. She's as bad as the comic who only bothers to memorize the punchlines, not the jokes.

As a result, she inadvertently poisons the waters of perfectly valid positions by wielding them too crudely. The McCarthy book, for instance, which took acclaimed new looks at the post-war struggle against communism by historians such as Arthur Herman and Ron Radosh and ran with them to places that made the historians cringe. If you want to use that argument now, you have to make an elaborate detour to explain why you're not actually saying the same thing Ann Coulter said, even though it looks like it on the surface. Complexities of issues, and occasionally even the facts of them, are lost on her, in her eternal search for the zinger. It's as though she took a delicate but deadly ray-gun weapon and used it to pistol-whip her opponents, so when she hands it back to you it's bent and useless.

Right-wingers seem to have an intuitive knack for recognizing this type, at least when it appears on the other side of the debate. The opposition teammate who is most likely to throw an interception or miss a free throw is someone to be cherished, nurtured. It's why some conservative bloggers I know dutifully contribute to Air America fund drives. But they tolerate Ann Coulter.

On the other hand, she's useful for just such moments as this.

Ann Coulter comes onto a campus one night, gives a lecture students are free to attend, or not, as they see fit, and is gone the next day. The left's equivalent of Ann Coulter tend to be ensconced in tenured teaching positions. Students have to endure them day after day, and craft essays and reports that suit their ideologies. Yet these obstacles to a bachelor's degree can be every bit as mean and partisan as Coulter, a newspaper columnist. Consider Columbia University's Joseph Mossad's infamous retort to a student, "If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom."

UCLA professor John McCumber informed The New York Times that “a successful career in academia, after all, requires willingness to be critical of yourself and to learn from experience,” qualities “antithetical to Republicanism as it has recently come to be.” In another Times article, Berkeley professor George Lakoff asserted that Leftists predominate in the academy because, “unlike conservatives, they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake.”

As Montclair State professor Grover Furr put it after reading the above article,

“Conservatism” champions racism, exploitation, and imperialist war. It’s the enemy of 90% of the human race. We need LESS of it, not more. Sure, it should be “represented” in classes — but only for the sake of exposure and refutation.

Juan Cole in defending Mossad (and resorting to exactly the tactics he accuses Mossad's accusers of using), proudly proclaims the purity of the academic mission:

University teaching is not about fairness, and there is no body capable of imposing “fair” views on teachers. It is about provoking students to think analytically and synthetically, and to reason on their own.

How, in such an atmosphere, do you justify killing only certain unpopular messages? Emily Salsibury, executive director of the College Republicans at UConn, wrote a defense of the speech in advance of the event, pleading for dialogue, not denigration.

To define a speech as hateful or racist simply because you do not agree with the point of view is a lowbrow tactic. It is ironic that some preach tolerance and diversity, but cannot practice it well. We must all learn to deal with dissenting voices, and this is just what Coulter is. Disagreement with a voice should never lead to silencing that voice.

Or, as another famous modern American academic figure puts it,

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

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Iran

• Russia says the sale of over $1 billion worth of some of the world's most advanced SAMs and radar is perfectly legitimate, and won't shift the regional balance. Evariste had it right: this is Osirak insurance, pure and simple.

• I don't think I've ever posted an op-ed on Winds of War, but this one is IMO vital reading: The cost of incompetence.

• The Media Line has a great video on Iran's nuclear program, provided by an Iranian opposition group.

• Iran says that there is literally not one member of al-Qaeda in the country - all 'prisoners' have been extradited.

• An Iranian C-130 has crashed in to a Tehran apartment block, killing over 130.

• Kurds and Iranian police have clashed in northern Iran after, according to the police, a local youth committed suicide after being found in possession of a few grams of hashish. No, really.

The Middle East

• Hezbollah is boosting its ties with al-Qaeda and palestinian terror groups. The Iran-backed terror gang is now thought capable of opening a military front against Israel in a regional war.

• Syrian forces have apparently clashed with terrorists in northern Syria, leaving 8 terrorists dead.

• Despite (or perhaps because of) the questioning of five Syrian officers, the substance of the Mehlis report is unlikely to be altered.

• The Muslim Brotherhood has won 19% of parliamentary seats, during an election with six deaths and hundreds of injuries.

• Abu Mazen has approved a salary from the PA to the families of suicide terrorists. Sorta related, Fatah are polling at 36.1%, while Hamas have 45.8%.

• Israeli intelligence has told Israelis to get out of the Sinai immediately, due to a heightened threat of kidnapping.

Iraq and the Gulf

• Al-Zawahiri has called for attacks on Gulf oil facilities.

• The Carnival of the Liberated is up. This week: Saddam's trial, the upcoming elections, Israelis training Pershmerga, and a lesson in Arabic.

• Saddam skipped his trial on Wednesday, while terrorists kidnapped the 8 year-old son of one of the judges' bodyguard. I expect Abu Qatada is recording his appeal for the release of Karim Salam as I type.

• Pajamas Media has an exclusive from Iraq the Model's Mohammed on the Iraqi elections.

• A suicide bomber has blown up a bus en route for Nasiriyah, killing at least thirty Iraqis.

• Joe Katzman notes al-Qaeda's diplomacy in Iraq leaves something to be desired. I'd have thought it obvious that, if you want to the co-operation of a particular tribe, you shouldn't murder that tribe's leader. A-Q haven't figured that one out yet, to their disadvantage now that Iraqis in Samarra are now co-operating with U.S. troops.

• Four of Saudi Arabia's most wanted were last seen in the Al-Kharj province, from which many terrorist attacks have been launched within the Kingdom.

• Here's an interesting development: Saudi TV - New weapon against extremism.

• According to the UN, half of Iraqis seeking asylum in Syria are Christians.

The Americas

• Saudi cash and influence may have radicalised 80% of U.S. mosques.

• Princeton U. has decided to bar a speaking event featuring three self-described former-terrorists (including Walid Shoebat), because the inclusion of the word 'terrorist' in the event's title is 'inflammatory'. Meanwhile, a less-than-reformed (though still-in-denial) ex-PLO member is due to be hired as a history professor.

• Jamestown on Radical Islam in Latin America.

• On the torture thing: Condi says the U.S. is bound by U.N. law not to use torture at all, whether abroad or at home. Dan comments here.

Europe

• Spanish PM Zapatero is 'prudently hopeful' for an ETA ceasefire, despite five bombs being placed to mark Constitution Day.

• Sweden's rising Muslim tide: a distubring look at Malmo, one of Europe's most Muslim cities.

• The Italians claim that the CIA reported a radical cleric had moved to the Balkans, even as they had kidnapped him and taken him to Egypt.

• The Danish al-Aqsa Foundation has been charged with funneling money to Hamas.

• The terrorists responsible for the murder of Theo Van Gogh watched videos of beheadings and bantered about how to slit someone's throat for 'maximum suffering', a Dutch court has heard. Much more on this landmark case here. The Syrians, by the way, have again denied that the Hofstad group's leader is in a Syrian prison.

• Fjordman postulates: did Samira Munir, a Pakistani-born Norweigan politician and outspoken critic of maltreatment of Muslim women, really commit suicide?

• French police intelligence believe the recent rioting across France was spontaneous, and not pre-planned by gangs.

Central and Western Asia

• The Indians have discovered that Lashkar-e-Taiba have infiltrated Kashmiri political parties in order to obtain identity cards, which can shield them from searches by police and military forces.

• Pakistani intelligence have discovered a joint Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashmakr-e-Jhangvi plot to murder Shi'ite politicians.

• Had you come across Radio Free Afghanistan? I hadn't.

• At least 22 Taliban were killed by Afghan and U.S. forces on Wednesday.

• In February, Canada is due to deploy 2,000 troops to Afghanistan. The Canadian Defence department is buying up mine-resistant armoured vehicles, light artillery, UAVs, ie, the usual kit. But not only are they cutting it kinda close - they're not buying any helicopters.

• Trent comments on the Cope India 2005 exercise, in which the USAF clashed with the Indian Air Force. He has some good points about the handicaps the USAF duelled under.

Australasia and the Orient

• A Chinese newspaper says that the government will hint at full democracy for Hong Kong by 2017, in order to win democrats over to the government's election reforms.

• The Jamestown Foundation has a worthwhile summary of the terror plot thwarted in Australia last month.

• Jamestown has another interesting analysis, this time examing China's modernisation. ...the Chinese government acknowledged last week that “sudden public incidents” such as industrial accidents, social safety accidents, and natural disasters are responsible for over one million casualties and the loss of six percent of GDP every year.

• John Negroponte and Filipino intelligence officials say that Jemaah Islamiyah is still protected by elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

• North Korea is to host an international conference of journalists - no, really. Reporters Without Borders says the North Korean press is the least free in the world.

• The U.S. has delayed the purchase of 25,000 tons of food promised to North Korea as aid, because the North wants 'development assistance' instead.

Africa

• Moroccan politicians have recieved death threats from what might be an al-Qaeda group. The analyst quoted by the article says that the post-Casablanca bombing clampdown in 2003 has led to the arrest of the top-tier of Moroccan jihadis, meaning anyone can declare themselves a terrorist leader. He also mentioned that the jihadis are trying to re-organise themselves along the same lines as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

• China is now the leading supplier of arms to Sudan.

• The UN says its peace-keeping force on the Eritrea-Ethiopia are in danger, after they were told by the Eritreans to get out.

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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Ted is notorious most recently for circulating his perverted sexual fantasies about returning veterans (in fact, I think Googlebombing "Ted Rall perverted sexual fantasist" might be fun). And seeing him in all his glory on the editorial pages tends to tip me toward dropping the subscription.

But then I had a better idea. As I understand it, much like television has "sweeps week" newspapers have periodic circulation audits.

So why don't we do some research, find out when they are, and publicly drop our subscriptions for a month?

It's a free country, and Rall is free to trail his slime, and the Times free to print it. And I'm free to organize boycotts to try and change their mind.

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In addition, might I be the first one to note that most of the conservative movement has been arguing for the last several years that what goes on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and so on did not in fact constitute torture to begin with? The implication here, at least as I understood it, was that torture was in and of itself a Bad Thing. I think there's a very comfortable middle ground that can be staked out between treating suspected terrorists like either common criminals or enemy soldiers and arguing that they should be subjected to torture. I myself prefer narco-interrogation as a preferred method of extracting information, which I think is a lot more accurate in terms of obtaining information.

One thing that I'll also say (and that I think many of the more hysterical opponents of torture have completely missed) is that interrogations of pleasant terrorists are not going to be pleasant experiences for the individuals in question under the provisions of the McCain Amendment and that extracting information from a senior al-Qaeda leader is never going to be pretty to watch - that's why they call it "breaking." Moreover, people also need to understand that under the McCain provisions, the secret detention facilities, the snatch and grab operations, all of it are still going to be in effect. McCain understands, as I do, that these facilities and operations are in many cases essential for the intelligence aspects of US counter-terrorism strategy. All the McCain provisions do is sychronize US interrogation policies under the standards provided by the relevant army field manuals which, while not allowing torture, are still not going to ensure a pleasant life for those in US detention.

Public opinion polling on this issue is also something that I have a lot of problems with, in large part because I have no desire to see our national security strategies played out in the polls the way you do regular domestic issues (and I consider the conflation of the two a bane to serious discourse on the former). Should we change or revise our interrogation policies every time some new polling data comes out? Dear God, I hope not.

As to the "ticking time bomb" scenario, McCain (who has spoken with Israeli intelligence and security officials on this issue) has made it quite clear in interviews with Newsweek and other publications that in those rare situations you do whatever you have to and deal with the consequences afterwards. The president has the power to pardon people and no one is going to fault an interrogator who saves millions of innocent lives in doing so. I believe that this is more or less the same standard that the Israelis, who are in far more immediate danger from terrorists by virtue of their proximity to the people who wish to do them harm, use in their own counter-terrorism operations.

Furthermore, I think that there is also a governmental duty to the men and women fighting against al-Qaeda in our military and intelligence agencies to give them a uniform standard as far as interrogation techniques are concerned rather than the current "play it by ear" method that seems to be employed to date. While it is extremely unlikely that anyone at the upper echelons of the government is ever going to get into serious trouble over detainee abuse in my view, I can easily see a lot of people a lot further down the food chain getting screwed over because of the current confusion on the subject. So instead of waiting until that happens, why not dodge that bullet right now and leave it at that.

Trent's point about the hypocrisy of the German Social Democrats and other European parties that love to loudly condemn US policies in public while giving a wink and a nod to them in private is both candid and true but it is also irrelevant. I myself have long considered European anti-American attitudes (and the moral outrage that goes with them) to be both hypocritical and extremely self-serving. However, Europe doesn't determine American foreign policy and the mere fact that the Europeans disagree with an does not make it good anymore than their agreement with an action (such as the military support of numerous European states for the Iraq war) makes it good.

Finally, and this is a major point for me, I don't want to have to write about this. My time is somewhat limited and there's quite a few things that I do want to follow as far as the war on terrorism is concerned - arguing about the cost/benefits of certain interrogation techniques or why the US shouldn't torture people isn't one of them. The McCain amendment provides a uniform standard of interrogation techniques that I expect will affirm to both the nation and the world through the overwhelming affirmation of our duly elected representatives as to what our interrogation standards are and leave no room for doubt in anyone's mind. Will it satisfy NGOs like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch as far as how the US handles terrorist detainees? No. But it will be enough to satisfy most people while providing a uniform standard for our soldiers and a valid criteria that will enable us to serve our needs as far as interrogating our enemies are concerned.

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• Flies on the Butter: _{A Day to Remember}
• Cigar Intelligence Agency: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
• Delusions of Adequacy: Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in Infamy
• Cup of Coffee Talk: December 7th, 1941
• A Texan Abroad: I do not forget
• The Polituburo Diktat: A Pearl Harbor Hero
• Dean's World: December 7, 1941
• TacJammer: Pearl Harbor, and a Lesson
• blogs4God: 64th Anniversary of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
• Digger's Realm: "December 7th ... a date which will live in infamy"
• PsychoPhil: December 7th 1941
• Lone Star Times: Day of Infamy
• The Sheila Variations: Today in History
• Donald Sensing: Remember Pearl Harbor
• Red State: A Day That Lives in Infamy
• Right Wing News: In Remembrance Of Pearl Harbor Day
• Pirate's Cove: Dec 7, 1941
• bRight & Early: Remembering Pearl Harbor
• Rand Simberg: A Long War

There are many more. Leave a comment or trackback with those that I missed. I'll try to update this list as I get time and I find more links.

--posted by Murdoc

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The first is that you can separate the current interrogation controversy from the issue of revealing CIA locations and I think that this is a key thing to understand in that one is entirely reasonable and should occur while the other has in all likelihood weakened US national security, at least if you consider the continued detention of the individuals named in the original ABC News reporting to be in the national interest of the United States. Assuming these Eastern European sites hadn't been evacuated, they could have been subject to possible attack at some future date by al-Qaeda members seeking the release of their leaders. As it is, I am far more concerned about the leaking of the current housing of these al-Qaeda operatives in North Africa rather than any past facilities in Europe, since it isn't that terribly hard to imagine the GICM or GSPC mounting some kind of operation to liberate their bretheren, especially given that the GSPC has fought and won against both Algerian and Mauritanian troops in the past. While I realize that it may sound improbable (and it does even to me) to argue that such an event could have occurred, I would have thought just the same until Omar Farouk escaped from US custody this past summer. The bottom line would be that I certainly don't want someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed out on the loose again, nor do I want him dead until the US has picked his brain for every valuable nugget of information that will assist us in neutralization of his colleagues.

The second issue that I think everybody needs to understand (and this is what I meant when I said that the interrogation controversy needs to be divorced from the issue of revealing CIA locations) is that unless you believe that members of the al-Qaeda leadership need to be accorded the rights of either an enemy soldier of a standing army or a criminal (which as I understand it is the position of NGOs like Human Rights Watch), we are going to need these types of interrogation facilities for the immediate future, including if the McCain Amendment is codified into US law with respect to the CIA. That is one of the reasons why I find the decision to leak this information so reprehensible to begin with.

Finally since, political tribalism being what it is, someone is going to bring up the issue of how this relates to the outing of Valerie Plame, let me just say that I've been largely silent on the Plame Affair except noting on my own blog that I think whoever outed her should go to jail if they broke the law in doing so. I'm not familiar enough with the law here to know the specific statutes, if it were violated (though as Scheuer notes at the end of Imperial Hubris, almost all of these leaks are against the law to begin with), but that doesn't make the decision to do so any less stupid or reprehensible.

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Now Tony Pierce is an O.G. blogger here in Los Angeles, and while I read his blog a lot when I was starting out - which was an interesting mix of fantasy concerning his love life and cold fact concerning work, money, and life in L.A.

But now he's joined Joseph Mailiander and Juan Cole - who raised similar, more scurrilous (because more dangerous), charges against the ITM brothers in claiming that Pajamas might, just might be on the government payroll.

Now as far as Pajamas is concerned, I was there at the funding, so to speak. And I absolutely didn't see anyone from Washington D.C. in the room; there was no one there but Chernick and his lawyers.

It's certainly conceivable -if you watch too many movies - that a reclusive Los Angeles centimillionaire would be on the CIA payroll. But somehow I think the CIA tends to work through less colorful channels. because it's certainly more likely that a reclusive Los Angeles centimillionaire saw something that has investment possibility, fit into his view of the world, and had the potential to be exciting.

Tony Pierce could have spent 60 seconds with Google and found out who was funding Pajamas and what he was about. I'm not sure if it is a more interesting fantasy to think otherwise, just laziness, or a desire to stir controversy (and traffic).

But let's put a stake through the heart of this silly claim, and go on to discuss serious issues about blogs, the CIA, and the world in general.

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"Would it matter if the [Army's recruiting] materials said ‘no blacks allowed?' ‘no Communists?'"

Setting aside the difference between "no gays allowed" and "Don't ask, don't tell," (as well as the absurdity of letting a genuine Communist take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution) the answer should be perfectly obvious: No, it does not matter if the military is racist, sexist, homophobic, discriminates based on political views, or is offensive in a hundred other ways. Protesting injustice in the military by making it harder for the military to recruit the people it needs is stupid and—here it comes—unpatriotic.

Simply put: it is more important to the cause of freedom and justice that the U.S. Armed Forces be powerful than that they be just. Service is not a right of citizenship in the manner of voting. The purpose of the Army is to kill people and blow things up, period. That which makes it more effective in doing so should be mandatory; that which makes it less effective should be forbidden. The Army helps to safeguard our right to attend antiwar demonstrations and lobby Congress for the changes we want in military policy; making it less effective makes those freedoms less secure. None of our current enemies have more gay-friendly societies then ours; defeat will not advance the cause these universities are defending, but rather set it back (if not here, then in the places we are currently fighting).

Now, as it happens, I think that racism and most other forms of discrimination are not only morally wrong, but weaken the military, so I am glad that they are not practiced. I'm agnostic on the question of gays in the military; it strikes me as morally wrong but possibly militarily correct in some circumstances (and militarily wrong in others). But regardless of the moral status of any particular policy, it is deeply foolish to sacrifice military effectiveness to some notion of moral purity. Even the gay-rights supporters who oppose the current policy must recognize that while it is wrong to discriminate against obese law students in, for instance, hiring new associates for a corporate-law firm, it makes perfect sense for the Army to enforce minimum fitness standards even on JAG recruits.

At all times, but in wartime especially, the military deserves the support of all patriots; nobody who claims to love this country should stand in the way of the best recruits entering the service. By all means, let us debate the wisdom of the war in Iraq, and for that matter the wisdom of timetables for withdrawal, and the wisdom of a policy which makes it hard for qualified gay men and women to use their skills for the nation's defense.

But let us also be clear about what opposition to the military's existence (which is impaired when recruiting is impeded), rather than the political decisions on how to use it, is: placing a higher value on a non-existent gay "right to serve" than the defense of the country itself.

If that can't be called "unpatriotic," then I am at a loss to figure out what the word might mean.

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Any halfway serious student of history will have encountered the Hundred Years’ War of 14th and 15th Century Europe. Begun in the late 1330s by the English king Edward III the Hundred Years’ War was at its heart a battle for TERRITORY, comprising a series of smaller Anglo-French wars lasting until the 1450s. An overview and chronology are available.

Many historians also reference a Second Hundred Years’ War beginning in the late 1680s and ending at Waterloo in 1815. As with the first, the second comprised a series of wars, including both the American and French revolutions, orbiting around the question of who would rule particular swaths of territory. In that respect the Second Hundred Years' War can perhaps best be seen as a battle for DYNASTY.

A brief chronology is available, and though Americans have typically named the wars of this era after the sitting British monarch at the time, their European names -- e.g. War of the Spanish Succession and War of the Austrian Succession -- make the dynastic nature of the ongoing struggle rather more clear.

I believe we are now in the latter phases of what will eventually be known as the Third Hundred Years’ War: the battle for DEMOCRACY. Beginning about 1912 with the Balkan Wars of liberation against Turkish despots we see a series of wars in which democracy of one type or another has had to defend itself against assorted forms of absolutism.

In the Great War of 1914-18 through the Russian civil war of 1918-22, we find that democracy was obliged to defend itself against monarchial absolutism. By the 1930s absolute monarchy was in decline or retreat across much of the globe, yet while democracy strengthened so also did two competing forms of absolutism. With the rise of Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini democracy faced a concerted attack from what we now call the ‘Right.’

In World War II expanding democracy was forced to fight for survival against fascist absolutism. Though after the war fascist absolutists such as Franco and Peron lingered on, the world saw continuing expansion of democracy, most importantly in India. Democracy also witnessed the effective rise of a newly powerful and hostile force on the 'Left' -- one that had been quietly in play since the 1920s -- and which eventually snuffed out emerging democracies in eastern Europe.

During the Cold War, which was often fairly 'hot' (Korea, Viet Nam, Central America, etc), democracy was once again forced to defend itself, in the event against communist absolutism. This is familiar territory to most adults alive today, and was the defining conflict during the formative year of most Baby Boomers. Though after 1991 some communist absolutists have lingered on, democracy has continued to expand while witnessing the rise of yet another form of absolutism bent on its destruction -- one that had been quietly in play since the 1970s.

Though it continues to spread and inspire people around the globe, democracy now faces a clear and credible threat from an islamist absolutism which has made abundantly clear its intentions to impose itself across as much of the planet as possible. There are ample references here on Winds of Change. In the same way that communism and fascism struggled for dominance in Europe before the fascist phase of the war, islamism and communism struggled for dominance in central and southwest Asia.

In the communist phase of this long war we generally understood the enemy’s capabilities. What was at issue were their intentions and we devoted a lot of energy to figuring those out and preparing for the possibility we might be wrong. In the current phase, the islamists' intentions are unmistakable. What is at issue are the enemy's capabilities.

Amongst other things this means the potential downside to being optimistically wrong is substantial. Consequently we must devote significant and persistent effort to minimizing his ability to harm anyone.

One reason opponents of the Iraq Campaign often seem so oddly out-of-key is that they look at the islamist phase of this war with the experience and outlook of the communist phase. More often than not they’re also looking at it from the communist perspective, which is the side they chose back in about 1968. It carries all the poignant anachronism of Japanese soldiers stranded on remote islands encountering Americans in the 1960s. That’s why so little of what they say makes much sense to people who have managed to move beyond 1972, but to the extent such opponents are successful they will delay the end of the islamist phase and vastly increase its bloodiness.

History suggests that after the end of these century-long paroxysms the western world has enjoyed something like a century or so of relative peace. I thus hope rather fervently that humankind is nearing the end of this Third Hundred Years' War. On several levels, however, history indicates that the crisis and climax will more likely come in about 2017-2019.

We might also have another phase beyond the current one, for we must not rule out the alarming possibility that democracy may yet have to defend itself militarily against some form of corporatist absolutism. Such a threat from non-state actors would certainly be a logical extension beyond the islamist phase. For now, however, we need to concentrate on the current phase, much as Reagan more or less ignored the deeper implications of the Beirut barracks attack in the early 1980s as he focused on the Cold War.

The price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance, a fact of life repeatedly ignored and opposed during each phase of this long, grinding, remarkably bloody war in defence of democracy. The second overarching theme of the last 90 years has been that those opposed to robust military action in defence of democracy have been repeatedly, consistently, and persistently 180-degrees bass-ackwards wrong. That would be somewhat funny, were it not (without fail) so remarkably dangerous.

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Here are some of the things the Christian Science Monitor did say that I regard as hype:

"Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn't perform well," says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. "That myth has been blown out by the results" of these air exercises.

and

US fighter prowess slipping

Military experts say the joint exercises occurred at a time when America's fighter jet prowess is slipping. Since the US victories in the first Gulf War, a war dependent largely on air power, the Russians and French have improved the aviation electronics (avionics) and weapons capabilities of their Sukhoi and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft. These improvements have given countries like India, which use the Sukhois and Mirages, a rough parity with US fighter planes like the F-16 and F-15C. China, too, now has 400 late-model Sukhois.

Yet, while the Indian Air Force designed the exercises to India's advantage - forcing pilots to fight "within visual range" rather than using America's highly advanced "beyond visual range" sensing equipment - both observers and participants admit that Indian aircraft and personnel performed much better than expected.

The Su-30 MKI "is an amazing jet that has a lot of maneuverability," Capt. Martin Mentch told an Air Force publication, AFPN. Maneuverability is key for missions of visual air combat.

If it turns out the US Air Force did, in fact, get their clocks cleaned, it will have been the second time. In Cope India 2004, an air combat exercise that took place near the Indian city of Gwalior, US F-15s were eliminated in multiple exercises against Indian late-model MiG-21 Fishbeds as fighter escorts and MiG-27 Floggers. In the 2005 exercises in Kalaikundi air base near Calcutta, Americans were most impressed by the MiG-21 Bisons and the Su-30 MKIs.

This hype is something that the Indian commenters bharat-rakshak.com ate right up, as the Christian Science Monitor also noted.

F-16s 'got their clocks cleaned'

Tell that to the participants of bharat-rakshak.com (Guardian of India). On any given day, this website seems devoted to which Indian fighter plane uses which missile, with occasional grumblings about why Saurav Ganguly is still playing on the Indian cricket team. But during Cope India '05, Bharat Rakshak was a veritable cheering session for the underestimated Indian Air Force.

Typical was a posting by a blogger who called himself "Babui." Citing a quote from a US Air Force participant in Cope India '05 in Stars and Stripes - "We try to replicate how these aircraft perform in the air, and I think we're good at doing that in our Air Force, but what we can't replicate is what's going on in their minds. They've challenged our traditional way of thinking on how an adversary, from whichever country, would fight." - "Babui" wrote, "That quote is as good an admission that the F-16 jocks got their clocks cleaned."

There are some points here for people to chew on that Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, and some of the commentors on bharat-rakshak.com, did not take into account.

First, The USAF is not bringing all of it latest equipment to the Cope India exercises. In neither Cope India 2004 nor Cope India 2005 did the USAF bring in its AIM-120 "Slammer" fire and forget radar guided air to air missile. This makes a huge difference in exercise outcome.

For example, in Cope India 2004 the F-15 were using Sparrow semi-active radar guided missiles, which require the F-15s to illuminate a target rather than turn away immediately after launch and avoid visual range combat entirely. Using Sparrow, the F-15s have to close to visual range in order to guide the Sparrow all the way to target. More importantly they can only illuminate one target at a time while multiple fire and forget Slammers can be fired at several different targets.

The result of being limited to the Sparrow allowed a numerically superior Indian force in Cope India 2004 to tie up the F-15s in dogfighting Mig-21s after the initial Sparrow volley while the strike group of Mig-27's got to the target the F-15s were defending.

Second, the Cope India 2005 exercise was set up so the USAF was not using its latest doctrine. The wide spread deployment of the Link 16 data link and AIM-120 Slammers in the American F-16 force is revolutionizing how it does air combat. Voice control is rapidly shifting to data link control of beyond visual range (BVR) combat.

In the Cope India 2005 exercise, the F-16s were limited to voice only air control without Slammers. From the article:

One USAF controller working aboard an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) plane told reporters at Kalaikundi Air Base that he was impressed by the speed in which Indian pilots responded to target assignments given them by AWACS. The AWACS, while operated by Americans, was acting as a neutral party, feeding target assignments to both Indian and American pilots during the exercise. In most cases, the Indians responded to target assignments faster than the American pilots did - a surprising fact, given that this was the first time Indian pilots had used the American AWACS capability.

Training and Doctrine

Let me walk you through the equipment and doctrine variables here that the Christian Science Monitor either ignored or used as throw away lines out of context.

1) Equipment

a) The Indian SU-30 Flankers's are Russian F-15 analogs, air superiority fighters, with French electronics. The F-16s, in contrast, are multi-role strike fighters. The Flanker was designed after the F-16 was with the full intelligence the KGB provided on the to Soviet Design bureaus. The Flankers have bigger diameter radomes for the air superiority mission so their radars will see the F-16s sooner than the F-16s will see them given equivalent vintage electronics.

b) Russian Su-30's have long-range infrared search and track telescopes so the Su-30's would have visual engagement at longer-range than F-16s, which lack them. (Those sites are standard equipment for the under development F35.) This means the Flankers can engage with their Russian made AA-11 Archer infra red dogfight missiles sooner than the F-16s can with their Sidewinders.

c) The Russians sell their Su-30's with A-11 Archer off bore sight dogfight missiles and helmet-mounted sites. The USAF hasn't yet achieved full deployment of its AIM-9X Super Sidewinders with the equivalent helmet mounted site on F-16s. I suspect the F-16s involved in Cope India 2005 did not have these toys.

2) Doctrine

a) The rules of engagement (ROE) were all within visual range. The USAF avoids visual range air-to-air combat if it can help it. This is because exercises have shown that two modern fighters with well trained pilots, modern off bore sight dog fight missiles and helmet mounted sights to aim them tend to commit mutual suicide when they come in visual range of one another. The ground combat ditty "That you can see you can hit, and what you can hit you can kill" applies in spades to visual air combat.

b) The USAF F-16s are almost all Link 16 and AIM-120 Slammer equipped. USAF BVR engagements with AWACS are now increasingly data and not voice. In this exercise the AWACs were "neutral" and gave voice only instruction to both sides pilots. The Indians are trained regularly to use to ground based voice controlled intercepts. The F-16s pilots were less well trained at this.

c) Air to mud is the primary training mode for F-16 jocks due to wartime demands and USAF operation budget driven training hour’s cuts. The air-to-air training the F-16s do get concentrates on the most likely air-to-air combat the USAF intends to use -- BVR engagements with full AWACS digital support. The upshot is that in Cope India 2005 the F-16s were not using their primary air-to-air training to engage the Indians.

d) The USAF does not fight "Fair." When the USAF shows up to air to air combat with lethal intent, as opposed to international exercises, it also shows up witht the full panoply of electromagnetic combat capabilities. The non-US side of any air-to-air combat will have difficulty establishing radio communications between aircraft sections, let alone the command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) necessary for ground controlled or AWAC controlled intercepts.

So lets sum up the implications here. The Indian Su-30's were operating within their services training and doctrine to full equipment capability -- which exceeded that of the F-16 in the air-to-air role.

While the F-16s were not using their best equipment and were operating on back up air-to-air procedures that were outside the majority of their training. Nor were they operating with the full combat support environment they use in war.

Reporting

My conclusion from reading the CSM article is the reporter knew nothing about any of the above. He wanted headlines to grab eyes and sell advertising.

Frankly, even if the reporter did learn enough to understand the implications, he would have wrote it the same way. Even if the F-16's did well vs. the Su-30s, he would not report it that way because it does not grab eyes.

Lets face facts, if the reporter used the following 'throw away' paragraphs from a retired Indian Air Marshal, and Indian blogger and an F-16 pilot as the basis of his article:

Indian Air Marshal:

"The Sukhoi is a ... better plane than the F-16," says Vinod Patney, a retired Indian Air Force marshal, and former vice chief of air staff. "But we're not talking about a single aircraft. We're talking about the overall infrastructure, the command and control systems, the radar on the ground and in the air, the technical crew on the ground, and how do you maximize that infrastructure. This is where the learning curve takes place.

"So let's forget about I beat you, you beat me," he adds. "This is not a game of squash."

Indian blogger:

Another blogger, Forgestone, advised against such "chest-thumping." "Coming out on the winning or losing side of a scorecard doesn't change their large technological edge, their resources, their experience, their talent, their geostrategic position," he wrote, referring to the US Air Force. More recently, an American pilot who participated in the exercise, added his own two cents on the blog.

USAF Pilot:

"It makes me sick to see some of the posts on this website," wrote a purported US "Viper" pilot. "They made some mistakes and so did we.... That's what happens and you learn from it." The point of the exercise, he said, was for the USAF and the IAF to train, learn, and yes, play golf alongside each other. "For two weeks of training, both sides got more out of their training than they probably would in two months."

The headline would have read:

Indian Fighters 'Beat' American F-16s Under Severe Handicaps In Exercise -- both sides learned much

That headline frame just does not grab eyes to sell advertising, which is the primary job of the Main Stream Media. Remember that fact the next time you read a gloom and doom story about the American military.

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Iran & the Middle East

• According to reports, Iran has signed a deal with Russia to acquire 29 TOR-M1 surface-to-air missile systems.

• Special Report - Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia: 2002-2003

• Local Fatah primaries were halted in the West Bank town of Salfit "because of problems and divisions" among different groups that included the burning of ballot boxes. Mahmoud Abbas is vowing to end the violence and is promising security and transparency for upcoming elections.

• King Abdullah is urging the Jordanian parliament to pass a new set of anti-terrorism legislation, calling it the "largest security challenge" that Jordan has ever faced. Meanwhile, Jordanians are seeking to get back to their everyday lives.

• Fighting between rival clans broke out in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun, leaving five dead that included a policeman. The Palestinian police chief is demanding more weapons to combat criminals and terrorists.

• Israeli helicopter gunships fired on targets in the Gaza strip, after Palestinians fired three Qassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza the day before. On Sunday, Palestinians again launched rockets into Israel from the Gaza.

• The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced they will hold partial elections in the Federal National Council in the future and "comes amid growing American pressure on Arab countries to adopt democracy."

• Saudi security officials arrested 17 suspected militants in a series of raids around Riyadh on Saturday. Weapons and explosives were also confiscated in twelve seperate homes.

• According to reports, Syrian security forces clashed with terrorists in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, leaving five wounded.

• Israeli's military chief, Lt-Gen Dan Halutz doesn't believe diplomatic efforts will succeed in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Halutz pointed to Iran thwarting international pressure time and time again. In response, Iran has threatened counter-strikes against Israel.

America Domestic Security & the America's

• The Homeland Security and State departments are trying to come up with a cheap, convenient way for U.S. citizens and Canadians to prove their identities while crossing the border. Faced with growing opposition to a proposal requiring people to show passports or other similar IDs, the Bush administration will propose new forms of identification next spring, Homeland Security spokesman Jarrod Agen said.

• Representatives from various Lowndes County agencies and businesses in Georgia attended a workshop last Wednesday on agrosecurity awareness, and the ways to prevent agroterrorism. Mickey Fourakers, coordinator with the Lowndes County Extension, said the training is in connection with the Homeland Security Department and is designed for first responders like firefighters, deputies, emergency personnel, food processors and farmers.

• U.S. counterterrorism agencies have not detected a significant al-Qaida operational capability in the United States since the 2003 arrest of a truck driver who was in the early stages of plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Nevertheless, al-Qaida's capabilities aren't clear and the group remains dangerous, the new deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kevin Brock, said in an Associated Press interview.

• A report by Chris Zambelis at the Jamestown Foundation looks at radical Islam in Latin America, and examines possible evidence for Al Qaeda and even Hezbollah involvement in Latin America.

• High Court judge Herbert Volney spent the weekend viewing a video-taped copy of the November 4, Eid-ul-Fitr sermon delivered by Jamaat-al-Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr as he considers if he should hear a fresh bail application. The same judge had refused to grant Bakr bail on November 11 on the basis of objections raised by the State that if the 64-year-old Imam was released he would carry out the threats he made during the sermon.

• A new blog from the Center for Security Policy and Frank Gaffney reports that Venezuelan strongman Hugh Chavez is funding militantly anti-US political movements across the hemisphere. Chavez's government has also provided Venezuelan identity papers to many hundreds of Islamist extremists, to allow them to enter the United States.

Russia & South/Central Asia

• In Bangladesh Friday, police questioned 58 suspected Islamic militants in bombing attacks outside government buildings this past week that killed at least nine people and wounded scores of others, authorities said. Police said they also discovered and defused nine bombs that were left in plastic bags Friday near government buildings in the city of Khulna in southwestern Bangladesh and the central town of Sirajganj.

• A remote-controlled bomb ripped through a vehicle in volatile southern Afghanistan, killing a district government chief and two police officers, and wounding three others, authorities said Saturday.

• In another attack in Afghanistan, at least one police officer was killed and five others wounded when the vehicle they were travelling in was ambushed in neighbouring Helmand province.

• A New York Times article has some details on the escape of Omar al-Faruq and three others from Bagram last July.

• Here are the updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• An update from CDI last week summarizes news and analysis about the events in Afghanistan and the U.S. war on terrorism in the surrounding region in the month of November.

• An article by Michael J. McNerney in the Winter issue of Parameters, the Army War College Quarterly, looks at how Provincial Reconstruction Teams are at work rebuilding Afghanistan, and how they can be used to stabilize that country.

• At least two people have been killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, police say. There were no reports of casualties among Canadian members of the US-led coalition who are thought to have been the target of the attack.

• Sri Lanka's government has blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for weekend attacks in which at least nine soldiers died. A landmine blast in northern Jaffna peninsula which killed six troops was a "terrorist attack" in breach of a truce accord, a government statement said.

• A joint investigation in India by the Intelligence Bureau and Jammu and Kashmir Police has discovered disturbing new evidence that mainstream political parties in the State have been infiltrated by operatives working for the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and are being used to provide cover for the terrorist group's operations.

• The Jamestown Foundation's view on the Chechnya parliamentary elections is that there were no clear winners. The pro-presidential United Russia party won 33 out of 58 seats, but turnout was low.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• Following the destruction of several camps belonging to the communist New People's Army (NPA) by Filipino troops in Mindinao, Colonel Alfredo Cayton says the rebels are on the run.

• The United States' Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is requesting the Filipino government freeze the assets of four people associated with Osama bin Laden.

• An agent with the Philippino Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) was shot to death in Zamboanga while on the way to the Hall of Justice for a court hearing.

• Thailand's Phuket Island resort has turned down an offer to become the "sister city" of Bali, citing concerns over associating with an area struck by frequent terrorism.

• Indonesian police officials travelled to the Philippines and met with security officials in central Mindanao to discuss counterterrorism cooperation over reports that Indonesia terrorists were building training camps in Mindanao.

• The Australian parliament is preparing to adopt new anti-terrorism laws that civil liberty opposition groups characterize "as terrifying as terrorism itself."

• Tens of thousands of protesters marched for full democracy in Hong Kong on Sunday, as the city's legislature mulls over constitutional reform proposals.

Europe

• Recent arrests in Europe have pointed back towards Bosnia, where officials believe a terror cell is based with Euro-wide reach. The cell is described as a "series of overlapping networks" and recruits from Scandanavia.

• Belgian authorities are saying that France endangered an anti-terrorism operation targeting an al Qaeda cell in Brussels by leaking that a recent suicide bomber in Iraq was a Belgian woman.

• Member nations of the European Union have agreed to revise and update their strategy of counterterrorism initiatives and but still harbor disagreements over where to balance counterterrorism and civil liberties.

• The Netherlands will decide this week whether to deploy troops to southern Afghanistan, where questions and reluctancy remain.

• Spanish security forces are on alert after the recent detention of a group of Algerians believed to be linked to al Qaeda, were caught trying to exchange drugs for explosives. Authorities believe there may be two active al Qaeda cells in Logroño and Vitoria.

Africa

• The Polisario Front, the last remaining liberation movement fighting for independence in Africa, contested an earlier UPI report that it could be turning to Islamist organizations and organized crime. In an article titled "New danger in Africa" published earlier this week United Press International cited a European intelligence think tank stating that the Polisario could be turning to radical Islam.

• A Belgian national arrested by anti-terrorist police in Morocco in November claims he offered Samir A. the services of female suicide bombers to attack the headquarters of the Dutch security service AIVD. Mohamed Reha, a Belgian of Moroccan ancestry, said A. was prepared to co-operate in a suicide attack on the AIVD but only wanted male bombers.

• In the final round of parliamentary elections held Thursday, Egypt's most popular opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, failed to win any direct seats, according to official results. The final poll round was marred by the killing of one opposition activist, police attacks on the opposition and a crack-down on the press.

• The UN's World Food Programme on Sunday delivered its first aid shipment to starving Somalis since pirates prowling its lawless coast forced them to take a dangerous and slow land route. WFP operations in Somalia were sabotaged this year by the hijacking of two ships carrying food, which forced the UN food agency to opt for an equally treacherous and longer route over land.

The Global War

• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go on the offensive next week to rebut European concerns over reports of a secret CIA prison system in Eastern Europe, making the case during a five-day trip to Europe that intelligence cooperation between the United States and Europe is essential to prevent future attacks, U.S. officials said.

• The latest CrisisWatch from the International Crisis Group says nine conflict situations deteriorated in November, and three improved. The situation in Ethiopia/Eritrea is still identitifed as a Conflict Risk Alert.

• Shadowy al Qaeda chemist Midhat Mursi (aka Abu Khabab) remains a source of concern, with little new information on his location. Mursi was last known to be running a rudementary chemical weapons testing camp in Afghanistan in 2001.

• Newsweek has an article examining the increasing number of female suicide bombers. Dan Darling of Winds of Change offered his own views.

• An Orlando Sentinel editorial looks at a Senate bill that would provide funds to secure loosely guarded weapons depots.

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. For ongoing tips, email "MondayWindsOfWar", over here @windsofchange.net.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• Iraqis in Samarra are turning on the insurgency in the wake of the murder of a local tribal chief.

• MG Rick Lynch takes some time to explain the two-track strategy of the Iraq war: killing foreign fighters while trying to draw the Sunnis into the political process, separating the two main prongs of the insurgency.

• The first female European Muslim convert to commit a suicide bombing in Iraq was a former bakery worker from a middle-class Belgian family who joined her husband in an extremist network that sent them to fight and die, authorities said Thursday.

• President Bush is concerned about the U.S. practice of paying Iraqi newspapers to publish positive reports and may shut the program down.

RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY

• An Army Reserve lieutenant colonel was charged with laundering money, conspiring to take bribes and violating firearms laws while on active duty, the Justice Department announced Thursday, as part of a criminal corruption case connected to the reconstruction of Iraq.

• Three suspects have been arrested in Iraq after aid shipments stolen by an unidentified group in Iraq in September were found and retrieved from a store in Baghdad.

• The Air Force committed a "gross error" last year when it rushed to sign a contract for New York-based REEP Inc., a private translation company also known as Operational Support Services, to help plan and implement Iraq's January 2005 elections. There should have been a competetive bid process involving two other interested companies, the Government Accountability Office has ruled.

• Take a look at this week's reconstruction highlights: Nine Iraqi academics are currently studying and conducting research at U.S. universities with the support of USAID’s Higher Education and Development (HEAD) program. Iraq’s leading business association, with assistance from the Izdihar project, develop and distribute a Code of Ethics. Circulated to over 1,500 member business and leaders, the new Code of Ethics outlines expected guidelines and business practices, committing organizations and their members to the highest ethical and professional conduct. Economic Governance II completes a financial sector assessment of state-owned banks. Izdihar recently held a seminar for 165 business leaders on the inner workings of Iraq’s capital markets. Over 50 engineers from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) completed training to operate and maintain highly efficient irrigation equipment. Repairs for dilapidated Iraqi tractors began this week at four workshops in Baghdad, Wasit, Ninawa, and Arbil. Iraqi civic coalitions, supported by USAID and the International Republican Institute (IRI), have begun election preparations.The Iraqi Election Information Network (EIN) has announced plans to deploy up to 15,000 election monitors for the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. An Iraqi non-governmental organization (NGO) sponsored by ITI hosted Iraq’s first international film festival. In central Iraq, village members voiced a pressing need; their water system had suffered years of neglect and was no longer providing quality water to village residents. ITI responded to the community’s request for help by providing a grant to renovate the water station. Residents had previously depended on untreated river water despite health risks. Now, more than 1,500 people in the village have direct access to clean water.

IRAQI POLITICS

• Former Prime Minister Allawi had to flee a hostile crowd in Najaf when he tried to visit the Imam Ali shrine. Allawi called the attack an assassination attempt, but given the numbers of the crowd, it seems more likely the crowd simply wanted to express their disapproval of Allawi's policies.

• Iraqis are getting a chance to do something unprecedented in Iraq's history: weigh the performance of their government while deciding whether or not to keep it.

• The latest Carnival of the Liberated is up at Dean's World.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari will visit Japan next week. Tokyo is considering whether or not Japan should extend troop deployments to help rebuild Iraq.

• Israel's leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, has reported the involvement of Israeli companies and former special services personnel in infrastructural work and defense training in semi-autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq.

ETCETERA

• The US military on Thursday defended its policy of feeding articles to the Iraqi press as part of a campaign to counter what it said were lies spread by Al-Qaeda militants.

• Theater is returning to Baghdad - in baby steps perhaps - but with great hope for the future.

• Do you have your GI Bracelet? Many military families fall into financial hardship when the breadwinner is injured or killed. The entire purchase price of the GI Bracelet is donated to support our troops and their families! Please join us to give back to these brave people in their time of need.

• 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, contact us!

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

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. And if you have a tip for a future Iraq Report, email us at MondayIraqReport(at)windsofchange.net.

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To put it simply, the Chechen "black widow" phenomenon (like all of the other mass casualty terrorist attacks in Chechnya) have been overseen by Shamil Basayev and his followers. These are the guys for whom the recently deceased Abu Omar al-Saif served as the paymaster of and bin Laden even saw fit to list the Moscow theater seige among the terrorist attacks he took credit for in his November 2002 audiotape. While I can understand the argument that Basayev is probably more of an opportunist and has decided that al-Qaeda and Salafism are the most likely ways to get him ruling the North Caucasus, it is indisputable that they have been widely embraced within international jihadist circles. Under such circumstances, I think it's naive at best to assume that bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the rest of the senior al-Qaeda leadership doesn't approve of these actions, though they might refrain from saying so openly for fear of alienating some of their more traditional supporters. These are people who have used mentally handicapped teenagers as suicide bombers, for God's sake. Are we really supposed to think that they'd refrain from using women the same way simply because they purport hold to some chivalric ideals of protecting a lady's virtue? Talk about over-intellectualizing an understanding of the enemy.

One of the things that people tend to forget in course of this discussion is that suicide bombing is an extremely recent phenomenon that only dates back about 20 years and that it's only come into vogue recently, in large part due to al-Qaeda. With the exception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (where suicide bombing has even been utilized by Marxist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian), the fact that you're dealing with an Islamist group that favors mass casualty suicide attacks should be one of your first clues that you're dealing with an al-Qaeda-influenced group. One of the more disturbing things that has emerged since 9/11, however, is the sheer number of al-Qaeda and allied recruits willing to blow themselves up with little if any exposure to the kind of "death cult" environment that exists inside the Palestinian territories.

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There had been talk of basing the forward-deployed carrier at Guam instead of Japan, mostly because the Japanese have been opposed to having a nuclear-powered ship based on their territory. The Kitty Hawk and the John F Kennedy are the last two conventionally-powered carriers in the US Navy. The JFK will be retired next year now that an expensive 15-month overhaul has been cancelled, leaving only nuclear flat-tops in the fleet after 2008. Mostly, though, the Guam talk was about an additional forward-based carrier, not a move back from Japan. Hawaii is also an option for an additional carrier closer to potential Pacific action.

Recently, protesters did their thing in Japan over the decision to allow nuclear ships to be home-ported in Japan. The city council of Yokosuka, the port city, also voted unanimously to reject the Japanese national government's decision.

Meanwhile, Japan's 54th nuclear power plant is about to go online. Japan gets 30 percent of its power from nuclear plants.

Last week, a short announcement about "suspending the operation of the nuclear reactor while docking" the carrier was made. The Navy noted that it meant "while docked" and that it was standard procedure.

Carrier Air Wing Five will remain the forward-based air wing after the Kitty Hawk retires.

Have I mentioned that I don't think 11 carriers are enough?

--cross-posted from Murdoc Online

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Mustafa Setmariam Nasar

In a word, he was one of the most viable successors to bin Laden other than al-Zawahiri within the senior al-Qaeda leadership. An old-time member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Nasar was apparently active in international terrorism at least as far back as 1985, when most of the future al-Qaeda leadership was busy fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. He was a strategist, an ideologue, a bombmaker, and commanded a great deal of respect among the al-Qaeda rank-and-file. A charismatic figure, he spent the last several years writing Dawaa lil Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah al-Alamiyyah (A Call for Global Islamic Resistance), a 1,610 page al-Qaeda strategy document that outlines the group's future plans in detail in accordance with Saif al-Adel's 7-phase plan for al-Qaeda's victory. If Dr. Paz's analysis of al-Qaeda supporter Abu Mohammed al-Hilali's own commentary on the Sinai bombings is accurate, we are likely already seeing the first products of Nasar's magnum opus.

The capture of Nasar is also important because he has been identified in media reports as having been actively involved with the al-Qaeda leadership in Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, meaning that he can provide the US with actionable intelligence on who is doing what, why, as well as the degree of coordination between them. His capture is thus a major blow to al-Qaeda and will be of major benefit to the US and its allies. It is no small exaggeration in my view to describe Nasar's capture as being one of the most severe blows to al-Qaeda since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

Hamza Rabia

According to both US and Pakistani media reports, a CIA missile attack on an al-Qaeda safehouse in Asorai in Waziristan has resulted in the killing of Hamza Rabia, who is an Egyptian rather than a Syrian as suggested in the Dawn account.

In order to understand Rabia's significance, some history of al-Qaeda in Pakistan is useful. After al-Qaeda's operations were disrupted in Afghanistan, the group's military committee appears to have splintered into two autonomous nodes, one based in eastern Iran and the other in northern Pakistan. Working independently but in coordination with one another, these two leadership groups appear to have since supervised the network's regrouping and reorganization efforts, such as the most recent decision to appoint Khalid Habib and Abd Hadi al-Iraqi as the new leaders of the network in Afghanistan to augment their most active domestic allies Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, in some cases even using tactics modeled after those used by Zarqawi in Iraq.

With the help of Pakistan's existing terrorist infrastructure, the Pakistani al-Qaeda leadership has tried, with varying degrees of success and failure, to reestablish the group's terrorist training capacity by outsourcing its training programs to allied groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), maintain alliances with disaffected members of the Pakistani military and intelligence community, mount a domestic terrorist campaign against General Musharraf, and support the terrorist campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kashmir as well as other locations. Before his capture in March 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the undisputed head of the Pakistan leadership, but following his loss an ad-hoc council seems to have sprung up consisting of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Hamza Rabia, Amjad Farooqi, Osama Nazir, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, and at least half a dozen other Pakistani and foreign al-Qaeda big-shots. As I noted here, it's probably incorrect to describe Rabia as being the #3 leader in al-Qaeda, but he certainly was the head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, which puts him in a rather unique position to do all of us here some major damage if one stops to appreciate what could happen should several high-ranking Pakistani officials be assassinated - and let me stress that Rabia and his co-conspirators have come damned close to killing General Musharraf on a number of occasions.

Abu Omar al-Saif

This tidbit comes by way of Evan Kohlmann over at the Counterterrorism Blog, who recounts al-Saif's final moments in Dagestan as follows:

According to various reports from credible mujahideen sources, Abu Omar Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Saif (a.k.a. Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Jaber)--a top tier Saudi Arabian Al-Qaida commander in Chechnya and personal military advisor to Shamil Basayev--has been killed during a Russian counterterrorism operation in neighboring Dagestan. Unable to escape after Russian soldiers backed by helicopters surrounded his temporary hideout, Abu Omar allegedly detonated an explosive device he was carrying and collapsed the building on top of himself.

Good riddance, in my opinion. While some observers may find it odd that al-Saif would kill himself rather than be taken prisoner given the fact that the majority of al-Qaeda leaders don't do this, it should be noted that most al-Qaeda leaders captured by the US aren't facing a Russian interrogation either ...

In any case, al-Saif is a Saudi (anybody surprised?) and has been active in Chechnya at least as far back as 1995, which means that he even predates the arrival of bin Laden's protege Khattab. As Kohlmann notes in his extremely useful chart that identifies the al-Qaeda leaders operating in Chechnya under the banner of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, al-Saif was formerly the Chief Justice of the Mujahideen Sha'riah Courts in Chechnya and is usually referenced as the main conduit from which cash flows from al-Qaeda's Gulf backers into the pockets of Basayev and his followers. As with a number of other al-Qaeda figures active in Chechnya, al-Saif has supported Zarqawi's jihad against US forces in Iraq and has appeared in a number of al-Qaeda propaganda videos since 9/11.

Now given that this scum financed group that was responsible for what happened in Beslan, I'm not particularly inclined to shed any tears for him. Still, it is worth noting that the agenda that he, Basayev, and the late Khattab first plotted to achieve back in 1999 as far as the establishment of an Islamic emirate stretching across the entire North Caucasus is already, as much because of Russian brutality as any genius on their part, is coming into focus and the implications are quite disturbing. One thing that'll be interesting to learn is whether or not the US had anything to do with assisting the Russians in locating al-Saif, given both the precedent of our helping them to hunt down Ruslan Gelayev and al-Saif's status in al-Qaeda.

Either way, the capture of Nasar and the deaths of Rabia and al-Saif represent both a potent blow to the enemy and an impressive counter-terrorist victory for the US and its allies.

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It's "The Institute For Global Communication," home to:

PeaceNet

WomensNet

EcoNet

AntiRacismNet

Hmmm.

Look, Arkin's a pretty good writer, and a veteran. But if you look at his opus in Google, you find him on the anti-military side of almost every issue that's come along since the 1980's.

And to appoint him lead blogger on military affairs for arguable the leading newspaper in the country certainly looks a lot like appointing 'Focus On The Family's' James Dobson as the lead rap music critic.

I'm not saying that the major media are liberal, or biased against the military or anything. But this sure makes a good case for it.

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Bio

• The National Biodiesel Board has announced that, thanks to generous government sponsorship, US biodiesel production will reach 75 million gallons in 2005, three times as much as produced in 2004. Not only that, but there are currently proposals to more than double the 45 biodiesel plants currently operating in the US, with some of the newest plants under development weighing in at 30 million gallons/year capacity (compared to an average of 6.5 million gallons for current biodiesel plants).

• To accompany its 2006 launch of four car models with a flexible fuel option, Ford has teamed up with VeraSun Energy Corporation, the nation’s second-largest ethanol producer, to convert gasoline pumps in the Midwest to E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. Currently, only 0.3% of the United States's 180,000 fuel stations offer E85.

• A former malting facility in Jefferson, Wisconsin will be converted to house an innovative, $200 million ethanol production plant that, in addition to 140 million gallons of ethanol a year, will produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel and, yes, 8 million pounds of tilapia fish filets. The biodiesel will actually be produced from the byproducts (leftovers, frying oil) of the fish farm, conveniently located on the same site as the ethanol/biodiesel plant. This talented multitasker will also produce its own electricity with a cogeneration facility, not to mention 325,000 tons of liquid CO2 which for beverage carbonation.

• The Engineer-Poet notes news (via Green Car Congress) that an Illinois fertilizer plant that previously used natural gas as a feedstock is being converted to utilize gasified coal instead, and will produce 87 million gallons/year of synthetic gasoline and electricity to boot. E-P proceeds to discuss the potential for these converted plants to be fueled by either charcoal or raw biomass produced by agricultural wastes like corn stover - in trademark Ergospheric style, it's a feasible concept backed up with lots of usable numbers, well worth the attention of bloggers as well as elected officials from corn-producing states.

• Shell is collaborating with the German company Choren to build a biomass-to-liquids plant to that will produce synthetic diesel using waste biomass as a feedstock for in a modified Fischer-Tropsch process. Shell estimates that this process yields almost double the CO2 reductions of biodiesel, although it projects that the synthetic fuel will be more expensive to produce at $3.10 a gallon. (via Peak Oil Optimist)

• Also via Peak Oil Rob, Richard Branson has announced plans to build cellulosic ethanol plants to fuel the Virgin Atlantic Airways fleet. While details are sketchy, he hopes to replace 'some or all' of the 700 million gallons of jet fuel Virgin uses annually within six years. Give the man credit, he's not just complaining about fuel costs, he's dropping some serious cash on the problem - in September, Branson similarly announced plans to build his own oil refinery.

• Increased producer interest in Canola in southern states like Texas led to increased participation in this year’s National Winter Canola Variety Trial, an annual research trial sponsored by Kansas State University whose aim is to develop varieties of the plant suitable for growing in southern climates (it’s mostly grown in the northern US and Canada). Because of inflated prices for soybean oil due to demand for soybeans for food products, canola will become a cheaper biodiesel alternative as more competitors enter the market and drive prices down.

• Researchers in Tokyo have discovered a carbon catalyst for use in the biodiesel production process – created from sugar, starch or cellulose – that will further reduce the costs and ecological impacts of producing biodiesel fuel. The catalyst commonly used is liquid sulfuric acid, which is costly and wasteful to separate out from resultant fuel in the reaction mixture.

• New Scientist ran a much linked-to article this month publicizing the ostensibly 'perverse' fact that demand for biofuels in the EU and North America is accelerating the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon rain forests in order to grow soybeans and palm oil. Gary Jones, who has been forcefully arguing against biofuels for some time for a whole host of environmental reasons, elaborates this angle and adds a few more sharp ones; Jamais Worldchanging, meanwhile, looks to new technologies, particularly for refining biofuels from waste biomass, to reduce environmental impacts.

Electricity

• Complementing the efforts of the plug-in hybrid hackers at CalCars, a new group of automotive component suppliers has formed a new organization called the Advanced Hybrid Vehicles Development Consortium, which will develop a prototype plug-in hybrid vehicle in 2006 that will include more powerful electric motors, lithium-ion batteries, and ultracapacitors for improved acceleration. The Consortium claims that the prototype vehicle will cost about as much as current plugless hybrid-electrics, and that they will be able to travel up to 50 miles without using gasoline. Perhaps most interestingly, the consortium is looking to package the plug-in technologies to license to car manufacturers that don't already manufacture hybrids, allowing them to "jump in the game without having to do 15 years of research and development." (via Energy Blog)

• Some open source PR would help, too - check out the Engineer-Poet's plug-in hybrid talking points, suitable for blogging, letters to your local paleopapers, smart small talk for use at your next green drinks mixer, etc.

• Two physicists at the University of Pittsburgh are utilizing sophisticated computer simulations to improve their understanding of why heat renders superconductors useless. Currently, superconductors can only operate at extremely low temperatures - even “high-temperature” superconductors must be kept at temperatures of around -300°F.

Fossil Fuels

• WattHead notes a recent CSM piece reporting that the US refining bottleneck may be eased in the near future. In the past two months, US refiners have announced plans to expand existing capacity totaling almost 1 million barrels of oil per day - nearly 6 percent of the US's current total. The planned expansions, which are still pending approval, would come online within the next 3 to 5 years.

• As boom in Canadian oil sands continues, Green Car Congress takes a long look at the scale of new investments in oil sands development as well as new research on the environmental impacts of energy-intensive oil sands extraction operations. Geoff Styles suggests that these environmental effects could be significantly reduced by powering oil sands production facilities with small nuclear plants, which would provide cleaner and more efficient electricity while freeing up more natural gas for use in Canada (and the US).

• New advances in the field of geoscience by the University of Houston's John Castagna will allow for the direct detection of oil and gas reserves using seismic data. Current techniques only detect potential reservoirs for fossil fuels below the surface, but new algorithms developed by Castagna will allow for direct hydrocarbon indicator (DHI) analysis, which indicates not only whether nor not fossil fuels are actually present but can determine what kind of fuel is present, advances which promise to significantly lower exploration costs in the future.

• Green Car Congress (and the NY Times) have been all over a flurry of news in recent weeks on various Fischer-Tropsch synfuel plants that have been proposed or are under construction around the world. Major stories include Gov. Brian Schweitzer's efforts to bring coal-to-liquids plants to Montana, a coal-to-liquids plant being planned in Mississippi, a coal-to-liquids plant under construction in China, a coal-to-liquids plant under consideration in New Zealand, and potential Syntroleum gas-to-liquids plants in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Egypt. The US Senate apparently recognizes a good party when it sees one and has called for the the Department of Energy to prepare a development plan for a national coal-to-liquids program.

• A joint project between the Canadian government and the US Department of Energy has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of sequestering carbon dioxide in oil fields to enhance oil recovery. Carbon dioxide from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota was piped into the Weyburn oil field in Canada. Not only was the CO2 safely stored out of the atmosphere, but the increased pressure in the oil reservoirs increases the field's production by 10,000 barrels a day. As Watthead notes, neither carbon sequestration from coal gasification nor using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery are new, but this is the first time they've been combined (via Jamais Worldchanging, who has reservations).

• Geologists at the Idaho National Laboratory are studying the feasibility of sequestering carbon dioxide in volcanic rocks located below the Columbia and Snake river plains. Basalt was originally thought to be too dense for the injection of CO2, but researchers using computer models have recently hypothesized that layered basalts may be well-suited for secure, long-term CO2 storage. Volcanic basalt covers more than 85,000 square miles in the 'Big Sky' states in the US - enough to sequester 20 years' worth of CO2 emissions from (current) US coal plants - and there are similarly massive deposits elsewhere in the world.

Geothermal

• WattHead has a lengthy post up on new work in Australia exploring the viability of hot-dry rock (HDR) geothermal power generation. In contrast to current commercial geothermal plants which utilize the heat from underground hot water reservoirs, HDR geothermal uses the heat generated by layers of mildly radioactive underground granite to operate steam-powered turbines. Australia has potential HDR resources equivalent to tens of billions of barrels of oil, and construction on the project's second pilot site is well underway.

Hydrogen

• A new collaboration between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Flexible Manufacturing Center (FMC) and Center for Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS) aim to develop an automated robotic "workcell" that will (some day...) enable the mass production of fuel cell stacks at greatly reduced costs.

Nuclear

• The US Department of Energy announced this month that it will hold a public workshop to receive comments on the nuclear construction risk insurance provisions included in this year’s Energy Policy Act. If you can’t make it to the workshop, which will be held in Bethesda, Maryland on December 15, you can still submit a formal comment on the subject until December 23rd here.

• Australian diversified mining and energy firm BHP Billiton expects global demand for nuclear energy to support its proposed quadruple increase in uranium production at the company’s Olympic Dam site in southern Australia. The move, which is being made in anticipation of quadrupling demand from China over the next fifteen years, would increase output at the world’s largest reserve of uranium from its current level of 4,000 tons a year to 15,000 tons.

• This year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mohammed ElBaradei, has recently been touting the potential of small, low-maintenance nuclear power plants to bring the benefits of nuclear power to developing countries that while avoiding the massive construction costs (not to mention, in many cases, the cost of building an extensive electricity grid) required to build traditional, large-scale regional plants. The MIT Technology Review article includes details on ElBaradei's proposal, including questions about proliferation concerns, as well as a brief discussion of current designs for such small-scale plants. (via Peak Oil Optimist)

Solar

• Alt-E James points to an eye-opening story from South Florida, where residents with photovoltaic panels and/or solar water heaters were able to avoid electricity and heating outages during Hurricane Wilma. Via the Engineer-Poet, who had a detailed post on this last month - 'Alternative Energy is Civil Defense.'

• Plans for large solar thermal power plants have recently been approved in Nevada and California, with a 64 MW plant planned near Boulder City and a 4,500-acre, 500 MW plant north of Los Angeles.

• Green oenophiles take note - wines from California's Cline Cellars or through the Wine Service Co-Operative were made and/or stored with solar power.

• PV solar roofs have taken a small but significant step towards mass marketability, as the US's largest homebuilder has begun offering Kyocera's building-integrated solar system as an option for one of its California housing developments.

• At 400' tall, Manchester’s landmark Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) tower is the largest building in the UK outside of London, and it's in the process of being sheathed in photovoltaics. The tower went LIVE November 4 as the 7,000 solar panels covering the south side of the building were switched on by PM Tony Blair himself. Though only one face of the building’s solar covering is functional as of now, the building will eventually produce enough energy per year 'to make nine million cups of tea', charmingly.

• The Indonesian government will be deploying 15,000 household solar-powered generators and 200 microhydro power plants to electrify remote areas on its eastern islands.

• Shell Solar has set a record – in the laboratory, at least – for efficiency in thin-film Copper-Indium Sulfide (CIS) solar cells, claiming a full percent increase in efficiency (from 12.5% to 13.5%).

Water

• A new 25 MW "run-of-river" hydroelectric power plant has begun operating in British Columbia, Canada. Unlike large-scale hydroelectric plants that require the construction of environment-disturbing dams to create large storage reservoirs, the run-of-river design relies on the natural downward flow of the Mamquam River, which is guided through pipes to turn turbines in a generating station.

• Ocean Power Technologies is testing its wave energy device, the 40 kW PowerBuoy, off the coasts of New Jersey and Hawaii. The PowerBuoy, a simple technology which generates electricity from the bobbing motion of the buoy, is being considered for use a megawatt-scale array off the NJ coast and to provide power to the US Navy off the coast of Oahu.

• Worldchanging takes a look at a new feature that the Australian company Energetech has added to their prototype wave energy technology - a reverse osmosis desalination system, which will use wave pressure to push water through a separation membrane. The system (which is actively being considered for use in the US, the UK, and Spain) is now attracting more attention in Australia for its potential to reduce the need for electricity-hungry desalination plants than it is for its potential to generate electricity.

Wind

• New projections from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) show record-breaking growth of 35 percent in US wind power capacity this year. A total of 2.5 GW of new wind power capacity was added in 2005, for a total of 9.2 GW installed nationwide. The AWEA press release also includes handy links to a lists of wind power projects coming online in 2005 (PDF) as well as a state-by-state map of US wind projects.

• The great and free state of Texas - not Long Island or Cape Cod - may be the home to the US's first large-scale off-shore wind farm. The state has sold a lease for an 11,000 acre tract in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston Island to a subsidiary of Louisiana's Wind Energy Systems Technologies, which plans to build a 50-turbine farm with 150 MW of capacity over the next five years at a cost of $250-300 million. Due to Texas's long history of private development in the Gulf (and general independence from the feds), the state has jurisdiction over land 10 miles off the coast, which should help clear the way of the kinds of obstacles that have delayed large projects in federal waters off LI and the Cape. (via Wind and Wave Energy Weblog)

• Construction is underway on the Big Horn Wind Project, a 200 MW wind farm in Washington State. The project is notable not only for its size but because it will be constructed on existing farmland - the 133 1.5-MW turbines have a 70-acre footprint that will be spread out over 15,000 acres of farmland that will otherwise to be used for wheat farming and grazing. The landowners will receive royalties from the electricity generated on their property, and the project will create 200 construction jobs as well as 6-8 full time positions when the wind farm begins operation in summer 2006.

• This Reuters piece discusses the similar trend towards siting wind turbines in the midst of corn and soybean fields in the US midwest.

• Worldchanging has a great post up on the Native Wind project, which is bringing together wind energy experts and tribal leaders to explore the potential to build wind farms on tribal lands in the US. Just two small projects have been built so far on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation and the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, but 110 MW of wind farms are currently planned or in development, and the Fort Berthold Reservation alone is estimated to have over 17 GW of wind power potential.

• On that same tip, the Native Renewable Energy Summit was held in Denver from November 15-17, where tribal leaders from across the US met to discuss cooperation with US cities - 178 of which have signed up to voluntarily pursue Kyoto's reduction targets as part of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' US Mayors Climate Change Protection Agreement - to develop wind farms and other renewable energy projects on tribal lands. The conclave was attended by the mayors of Boulder and Aspen, CO as well as Seattle's Mayor Nickels, who have already begun to explore such partnerships with neighboring tribes.

• Norsk Hydro has announced plans to build a prototype sea-based wind turbine that may offer a solution to persistent concerns about the visual impact of off-shore wind farms in Europe and America. The 5 MW turbines stand 80 meters above water (and 120 below) with 60 meter-long blades, but they will be located too far away to be seen from the shore. Although installation costs for the floating turbines will be more expensive than near-shore turbines, stronger winds will increase electricity production.

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At first, the web tried to be like Big Media (Slate, Salon, MSN, Yahoo), and to a large extent, it has succeeded. Centers of mass have been created on the Web that rival traditional media outlets in reach, and those traditional media outlets - network television and newspapers - have been fragmented in one case, and starved in the other.

Then blogging.

Blogging is, in a way, simply the maturation of the 'personal web' vision of Geocities and all those Dot-Bomb pioneers.

But, unlike Geocities, it has ignited, in authorship and readership. So now what?

Well, there are two visions.

One is centripetal, gravitational. The other model is centrifugal, dispersive.

The gravitational model implies that the big will get bigger, congregate, consolidate. The 'community' of bigger sites will increasingly drive conversation between themselves - much as the Washington Post and New York Times did - and, in theory risk starving the smaller blogs of attention and traffic.

It's a pretty traditional model, and it seems like a logical, somewhat safe bet is to assume that this is the direction that blogging should head. It becomes more like Big Media, as Big Media gets bloggier.

The dispersive model implies that the big will themselves begin to be starved for traffic as traffic is continually dispersed between large sets of smaller sites. Technology (my notion of a 'follow me' button on browsers, as well as some other things I cooked up) begins to make it possible for me to have sites suggested to me behaviorally, rather than as the result of my searching for specific concepts or ideas. I can find them by searching for like-minded people, and by looking to see what they are looking for and at.

This is much more of an emergent model; it imposes no order, deliberately selects no up-and-comers, it simply builds an infrastructure and turns people loose within it to act as people always do.

There was a story I recall hearing in grad school about a landscape architect who never laid down paths when first designing the landscape for campuses of buildings. He'd simply plant the whole thing with grass, and wait a year or so to see where people made the paths.

That always seemed like a good idea to me. So does the centrifugal model, and building tools to both facilitate and profit by that model.

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Religious Hate:

• Because of the ""shame and dishonour" brought on the family of his 16 year old girlfriend, 19 year old Arash Ghorbani-Zarin apparently had to be stabbed 46 times and killed by her two brothers. The young woman had refused to bow to her father's pressure for an arranged marriage.

• Some people believe that the suicide bomber movie Paradise Now is a celebration of genocidal violence worthy of Nazi Germany. We believe that it is a powerful, complex, but flawed film which is nonetheless well worth seeing. Some Palestinians believe it's an excuse to dress up their children in suicide bomber costumes. Go figure.

• Turns out, Muslim rioting in Paris really was kind of anti-Semitic:

  Moslem riots in France have fanned anti-Semitism, and four synagogues and Jewish schools have been firebombed, despite Jewish media reports that Jews are not being targeted more than others.

  Such actions have caused French Jews to flee France in ever greater numbers.
  In addition to hatred directed at other religions, one of the more general acts of seething hatred during the riots bears particular repeating (even a month later): the apparent need of the "disaffected youth" to douse a disabled woman with petrol and light her on fire to demonstrate their "disaffected-ness". All the national landmarks must have been too well guarded.

• Islamists linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq murdered dozens by exploding three suicide bombs at a Jordanian wedding.

• Somehow, an atmosphere in which the Jewish State is demonized and Stars of David are equated with swastikas has led to an increase in anti-Semitism on college campuses. One of the campuses picked out by the Zionist Organization of America as being of particular concern is the University of California Irvine. You can see pictures and other evidence of the rank anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism on that campus here and here and here.
  A push to make public colleges accountable for the intimidation brought to bear on students by professors and for the anti-Semitic speakers that their organizations sponsor failed in Congress this week.

• UK Indymedia is passing on information from Al Jazeera that purports to prove that Jews were behind the Amman terrorist bombings. So we're adding this to the list of things that Muslim and Arab sources have accused Jews of doing in the last five years: the 9/11 WTC bombings, the 3/11 London subway bombings, the 7/7 Madrid bombings, the Beslan school massacre, and the death of Jesus Christ. The NYT's write-up of how Jordanians believe that Israel was involved is here, and if you want to see the sick conspiracy theory in all its glory, it can be found here. In fact, when you type Amman bombings into Google, two of the first ten hits are sites which claim to prove that Israel was behind the bombings.

• An Egyptian Christian eye specialist has accepted an undisclosed sum of money after being fired from the hospital he worked at in Britain because he wasn't Muslim enough.

• Anti-Semitic violence and vandalism is now so common in Germany that it's barely worth commenting on:

  Spiegel quoted provisional German Interior Ministry figures showing some 4,600 racist or anti-Semitic offences in the first half of this year. Between 2000 and 2004, nearly 60,000 such offences, including 4,000 involving violence, appeared in police statistics. He said attacks on Jewish cemeteries, nasty graffiti on walls and hate-filled letters to the Council of Jews or to Jewish communities were "so common that the news media hardly reports them".

• The Gujarat state in India has published textbooks for school-children which focus on all the good things Hitler did but fail to mention any of the bad things - like the Holocaust.

• Palestinian anti-gay atrocities receive virtually no attention from the typical anti-American / anti-Israel / anti-capitalist / anti-etc coalitions that have formed on the Left since 9/11. But they should:

  Much criticism has been leveled at gay organizations for their reluctance to make much ado about the Iranian government's public hanging of two gay youths this past summer. The incident was not a rarity in the Islamic world... While the outrage over gay organizations' indifference to the plight of Iranian gays was necessary, it ought to be directed toward a political situation
  where gay Americans can have more influence: the Arab-Israeli conflict... In the disputed territories run by the Palestinian Authority, gays are routinely harassed, tortured and murdered.
  A 2002 article in The New Republic magazine documented the dire predicament of several gay Palestinians. A 21-year-old recalled that he "was forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see." One man fled to Tel Aviv, only to be captured by the Palestinian police upon his return to Nablus, a city in the West Bank. "They put him in a pit," a friend of the man recalled. "It was the fast of Ramadan, and they decided to make him fast the whole month but without any break at night. They denied him food and water until he died in that hole." Tel Aviv, Israel's flourishing gay hub, has become for Palestinian gays what Miami is for Cubans: a refuge of freedom from tyranny...
  Not surprisingly, gay rights groups have ignored gay Palestinians, as has the pre-eminent human rights organization Amnesty International. The Palestinian "struggle" has long been a cause celebre for the left.

• A few weeks ago, The Tehran Times gave prominent attention to Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. Presumably, this was the result of simple anti-Semitism, and not any complicated plot to assuage their consciences as they prepare to launch nuclear weapons at five million Jews.

• Michael Jackson will fit right into his new home in Bahrain.

• Two judges have been murdered in Bangladesh for not refusing to allow the Koran to trump the laws that were passed by, you know, elected officials.

• There's nothing like a massive earthquake to boost jihadist recruitment:

  Children orphaned by the Kashmir earthquake are being “adopted” by terrorist groups that hope to train them to fight in the jihad, or holy war, writes Dean Nelson. Pakistan’s leading human rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, said jihadi groups fighting the Indian government were taking orphans off the streets and putting them in training camps. The organisation said it also had evidence that sympathetic government officials were passing children on to the jihadis to be looked after.

  We haven't worked through all the logic yet, but in the aftermath of a devestating act of God, aren't the people who claim to be God's representatives the default bad guys?

• Mechelen striker Patrick Goots believes that his team would have done better in a soccer match between Mechelen and Antwerp if the Germans had done more "with the Jews in the gas chambers during World War One". This begs the question: if you're going to be an anti-Semite, is it better or worse if you're especially stupid?

• In New York, Jimmy McMillan is promising that, if he's elected mayor, he will lower rent by taking power back from the Jews.

• The Vatican has published its much anticipated - albeit unenthusiastically - paper on the role of homosexuals in the church. Andrew Sullivan says that the "no social value" portion of the paper effectively mandates outright hatred of gays and lesbians. Kathryn Lopez says that the document requires no such thing. Sullivan's response is devestating on this point.

Idiotarian Seethings:

• Former United States President Jimmy Carter - having taken the memo that said that former Presidents do not attack sitting Presidents, burned it, encased the ashes in lead, and then dropped them into a volcano - is accusing President Bush of planning to invade Iraq before 9/11 and degrading the standards of American foreign policy. This is Jimmy Carter giving people advice on how to run a successful foreign policy. The punch line is left as an exercise for the reader.

• Well this is just stupid:

  The riots in France that started in the Parisian suburbs are ringing alarm bells throughout Europe. These incidents of civil disobedience should serve as lessons to neighboring countries on how not to treat a minority population.

• There is a theory that holds that one of the hallmarks of the intellectualized New Anti-Semitism is the move to marginalize atrocities committed against Jews (and thus remove the taboo against committing future ones) either by linking Jews to Nazis or by linking Muslims to Jews. The former tactic can be seen in the crude and hateful "Sharon = Hitler" and "Star of David = swastika" posters so often brandished by Leftist college activists. The latter is on display in this article from a Maine newspaper.

• Ted Rall believes American troops are murderers and rapists and torturers - and he's willing to draw crude cartoons to prove it.

• Chris Matthews is not an idiot. But sometimes his over-enthusiasm makes him sound like one:

  "The period between 9-11 and (invading) Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing," Matthews said.” If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil. They just have a different perspective.

• At some point, these stories will become so tiring that the boredom will outweigh our need to know that there are still lunatics like this out there. But for now, we refer you to this BYU professor who believes that bombs planted inside the buildings - and not planes - brought down the World Trade Center towers. He also believes that "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all" (he doesn't offer a theory as to who he thinks was responsible, but you don't have to try very hard to guess). This one is particularly dangerous because he adds the veneer of scientific language to what - no matter how much physics is attached to it - is just total moonbat craziness. Popular Mechanics dismantles his theory here.

• Seriously, this guy just doesn't seem very smart:

  Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design” and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

Race and Culture:

• In Saudi Arabia, saying nice things about Jews is an insult to Islam:

  A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced a teacher to 40 months in jail and 750 lashes for "mocking religion" after he discussed the Bible and praised Jews, a Saudi newspaper said on Sunday. Al-Madina newspaper said secondary school teacher Mohammad al-Harbi will be flogged in public after he was taken to court by his colleagues and students.

  750 lashes for "praising Jews."

• What with Jews priding themselves on a 4,000 year history of scholarship and erudition, banning the Internet makes perfect sense.

• When you live in a world of moral exhibitionism and facile elitism, where jokes about President Bush's intelligence have replaced small talk about the weather as the grease the oils chit-chat, pathetic and gratuitous slams at the Commander in Chief are just something you do:

  The school superintendent whose district includes Mount Anthony Union High School has labeled "inappropriate" and "irresponsible" an English teacher's use of liberal statements in a vocabulary quiz. "I wish Bush would be (coherent, eschewed) for once during a speech, but there are theories that his everyday diction charms the below-average mind, hence insuring him Republican votes," said one question on a quiz written by English and social studies teacher Bret Chenkin.

  Indeed, all Republicans are stupid and the reason this guy will be living the rest of his life as a failed high school teacher somewhere in rural Vermont is because of the vast rightwing conspiracy that successfully "shut him up" when he tried to expose the truth about the Bush administration's manipulation of simplistic Americans. But at least he'll feel better knowing that a fill-in-the-blank quiz that he wrote proves to him that he's smarter than the man occupying the highest office in the land.

• Professional racist David Duke wants everybody to know that he's on Syria's side:

  Former US Louisiana Representative David Duke on Monday expresses solidarity with Syria in face of the pressures and threats against the country. Duke told a news conference at the 'Nation's Tent' at Rawda Square in Damascus that "I have come to Syria to express my support to the Syrian people and their just stances...it's the duty of every free man to reject the conspiracies and threats Syria is exposed to." He added that the pro-Israel neoconservatives in the US have influence on their country's foreign policy and have been working behind the scenes through their mass media in the US to hide "the reality of Israeli terrorism against the Arabs."…
  Duke expressed appreciation of Syria under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, saying he would do his bets to convey "the real peace-loving Syrian" stances to peoples across the world.

  Do you want to know a secret? By "neoconservatives", he means "Jews".

A Hopeful Note:

• As Indonesian Muslims marched to condemn terrorism, new polling data showed that sentiments were turning against terrorism across the Muslim world. Instapundit has the goods.

• In the aftermath of the Amman bombings, many Jordanians have at least temporarily turned against Al Qaeda.

• A landmark victory for women has taken place in Saudi Arabia, where Lama al-Sulaiman and Nashwa Taher have been elected to the chamber of commerce.

• Despite the almost unbearable sexual temptation that their totally covered presence posed to men, women participated in the recent Egyptian elections – which took place. Which is itself probably a good thing.

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From the looks of the interview, Masirokhov was recruited by one of Khattab's followers in Uzbekistan (Khattab fought at bin Laden's behest in Tajikistan during the civil war, so he already had a presence in Central Asia) and sent to a madrassa and training camp in Chechnya for further instruction along with a group of 50 other Uzbeks. This tracks with what we already know about Khattab and Basayev turning Chechnya into a training camp before they launched their 1999 invasion of Dagestan. He makes a distinction between the training camp that he attended (which was almost certainly run by Khattab's International Islamic Peacekeeping Brigade) that was focused on training Central Asians and another al-Qaeda training camp that serviced the Arab and European recruits, but this is more or less a semantics distinction than anything else. His anecdote that instructions and information are still relayed to jihadi groups from the al-Qaeda ruling council via the Internet is quite interesting, as is his remark that he ranked higher than Abu Musab Zarqawi when he met him in 2003.

We also get this portrait of bin Laden's interactions with the IMU leadership (at an al-Qaeda summit?) and how he viewed their goal of overthrowing Karimov:

He said that he was pleased to see representatives from 56 countries there and that we should unite. Some people proposed a series of attacks in a number of countries, for example, blow up a dam near Tashkent or explode a “dirty bomb”. But he said that “we will have time to do that yet.” He asked whether there were any physicists among us. There was also talk to the effect that the raw materials for a “dirty bomb” had been bought in Russia and Ukraine, specifically from a scrap-yard for decommissioned nuclear submarines.

There's also an AQ Khan connection:

Are you saying that al-Qaeda has a “dirty bomb”? Yes, I think it does. At least Takhir (Takhir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who is now in Pakistan or Afghanistan. — Editor.) told me that bomb material had been acquired from Dr. Abdul Kadyr Khan in Pakistan, who, as is known, met with bin Laden in Kandahar. I also know that the Americans found two nuclear research laboratories in Kandahar, but for some reason the fact was suppressed.

And the al-Qaeda WMD program:

In 2000, I took a 20-day training course in making chemical agents and explosives. A poison can be made literally from any material — cigarettes, honey, and even bread. We worked at a special laboratory near Jalalabad. Our instructor was Abu Habbob Misriy, a former chemistry teacher from Egypt. There were about 200 men taking that course, including 14 or 15 from the North Caucasus who returned to Russia a year later. There was a similar laboratory in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, where chemical agents were synthesized by a hired scientist, apparently a Russian. That laboratory was then supposed to be moved from Georgia to Pakistan. There were plans to start using bacteriological and chemical weapons. The first targets for attack were to be in Italy and Moscow — why, I do not know.

"Abu Habbob Misriy" is Abu Khabab al-Masri, the head of al-Qaeda's WMD program. That last anecdote also seems to verify this anecdote from the 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism:

In the past year, al-Qaida operatives in northern Iraq concocted suspect chemicals under the direction of senior al-Qaida associate Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and tried to smuggle them into Russia, Western Europe, and the United States for terrorist operations.

The Pankisi Gorge set-up (as well as its counterpart in the Ansar al-Islam enclave in northern Iraq) appears to have been a subset of broader 2002 al-Qaeda plot to carry out chemical attacks in Russia, Europe, and the US. The Norwegian intelligence document Jihad in Europe that I analyzed last year also seems to support this conclusion.

Also, check out this report on how easy it was for Masirokhunov to get in and out of Iran:

Generally, money was not a problem. I spent seven years in Afghanistan and I regularly sent money home — often quite large amounts, up to $10,000. To do that, I had to travel to Iran since Western Union did not operate in Afghanistan. I often went there on business trips. We had no problem crossing the border: A vehicle from the other side would come and take us there.

Or his discussion of Pakistan:

Do you know how special operations against militants are conducted in Pakistan? They will pin us down in some place and the situation seems to be hopeless, but then the Pakistani soldiers show us an escape route.

If Pakistan goes to war with us, the country will explode because the people sympathize with us. So they pretend to be helping the United States, while in fact they are helping us.

Where is bin Laden? In Pakistan. They cannot catch him? That’s because they do not really want to catch him.

But you were detained in Pakistan, right?

Yes, in Peshawar. I was certain that the Pakistanis would let me go. They promised not to extradite me to Uzbekistan. When I was in a local jail, U.S. intelligence officers talked to me on several occasions. I was blindfolded and taken somewhere. I did not see their faces, but they spoke Farsi with me.

Why would US officers be speaking Farsi during the interrogation of an Uzbek terrorist? One of the things to keep in mind here is that this is just his inference (and keep in mind that he was blindfolded at the time by his own account) that it was CIA guys who were interrogating him - it's far more likely that they were in fact ISI, which makes the next passage far easier to recognize.

Did they interrogate you?

No, they tried to recruit me. I was offered cooperation. I was to take part in some operations in the Caucasus, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and in return for that they promised to get me into Europe or some Arab country. They also said that it was senseless to fight against the Americans in Afghanistan and that our common enemy was the Karimov regime: it had to be brought down for democracy to be established there.

I refused since I thought that the Pakistanis would release me. I also thought that Takhir would bail me out. It turned out that he had ditched me.

Then there's this part:

Have there been other contacts between the Americans and your men?

They tried to get in touch with Takhir Yuldashev. They met last winter in Kabul. In addition to Takhir, there was also Mawlawi Sayyed (the leader of the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan. — Ed.), as well as other field commanders. They promised to help us.

The Americans are also playing a double game: They are fighting us but also trying to set us against others.

Note that this isn't exactly as far-fetched as some might think. There's been a concerted effort by the US to exploit ethnic rifts within al-Qaeda, particularly Uzbek vs. Arab (which was how we captured Abu Faraj al-Libbi earlier this year), and I think that this should be understood within this context.

He also claims that IMU is now being supported by a Kyrgyz drug baron named Erkinbayev, an MP, as well as Khattab's old Tajik followers from the civil war era. A lot of this has a general ring of credibility to it and I think the interview is worth a read.

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THE MIDDLE EAST & IRAN

• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the US and EU hopes that Russia can take the enrichment process from Iran: “We're prepared to see if the Russians can explore something that may bring the Iranians around to the recognition that they cannot enrich and reprocess on their territory, that they have a credibility problem with the international community as to the fuel cycle.”

• There are many who remain less than impressed with the latest delay in referring Iran to the UN Security Council.

• Iran may yet still be seeking fresh North Korean missile help. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has naturally denies a cooperation proposal to North Korea. Meanwhile, their satellite program is back in the news…with the primary supplier once again…yup…Russia. It’s not necessarily as sinister in nature as many opine (though they are no friends, to be sure). Russia’s economy is in such shambles, they’d probably sell SatTech to the Chechens if they could pay the tab. Maybe if they win the elections down in Chechnya…naaah…

• Even ABC says it: Ahmadinejad's Radicalism Hurts Even His Allies. (Shameless alert...) I took a closer look at the dangers of his religious radicalism with Understanding Ahmadinejad.

• At least 16 ‘rebels’ were killed in Yemen clashes, as the battles between the government and followers of killed cleric Hussein Badreddine al-Huthi continue.

• Kirk H. Sowell takes a closer look at the developments surrounding the Egyptian elections: ”It is now clear, if it was not before, that there are two political forces in Egypt of consequence - a corrupt, authoritarian ruling party, and its Islamist opponents.” Sowell illustrates how Egypt is the prime example of those who feared, “What if the Middle East adopted democracy but the bad guys actually won?”

• Fatah has decided to resume their primaries, interrupted by violence and cheating. It does appear that the Old Guard will be booted in those primaries, as Marwan Barghouti won from Israeli Prison. The Old Guard was apparently not aggressive enough with the Israelis. The Fatah-Hamas tug-o-war continues…who can be the most violent?

• In Bethlehem, Israeli forces and the Palestinian Authority exchanged fire when Israel tried to arrest a terrorist.

AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY & THE AMERICAS

• President Bush addressed the issue of immigration in Arizona and Texas, calling for more Border Patrol agents, continued improvements in technology, an end to the ‘catch and release’ policy…and amnesty. (Sorry, Mr. President, it’s amnesty.) It was, for the most part, a welcome change to those concerned about illegal immigration. Not everyone was entirely impressed.

• U.S. Set to Loosen Rules on Objects Allowed on Airliners

• Conflicting views on the severity and likelihood of sophisticated network attacks on the US.

• There has got to be something wrong with an act proposed by a Senator from Washington State dealing with port and shipping container security called The GreenLane Maritime Cargo Security Act.

AFRICA

• Lord’s Resistance Army calls for peace talks in northern Uganda.

• Somaliland has a new Parliament. They seem to be fond of fist fighting.

ASIA

• More Islamist terror in Bangladesh as bombs killed eight in two cities.

• Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will keep his army post until 2007 “because the country was facing many challenges.”

• North Korea demanded compensation from the United States over a scuttled project to build two nuclear reactors. Don’t hold your breath, Dear Leader.

• The Tamil Tigers gave an ultimatum to the Sri Lankan government. Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said the Tamil people had "lost patience [and] hope".

EUROPE

• 14 people suspected of links to a Belgian female suicide bomber who struck in Iraq three weeks ago were nabbed in Belgian terror raids.

• Spain is selling military planes to Venezuela, including 10 C-295 transport planes and two CN-235 patrol planes, as well as four ocean patrol boats and four coast patrol vessels.

• The EU-Euromed summit failed to agree to a final declaration. It backed a “code of conduct”, but omitted a definition of “terrorism” the EU had worked on for months.

THE GLOBAL WAR

• There are many things we fight for in the War on Terror. Freedom of speech is one of them.

• For those who are fighting the War on Terror, you can help more of them call home during the holidays by helping the USO supply soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines with calling cards. Trust me, when you are deployed thousands of miles away, nothing makes your month like a call home...and when it's in the theater of operations during a war, the family is even more excited to receive it.

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Right now is, I believe, the critical window for our national attitude toward the war. We’re tired of it, horrified by it, subject to the endless litany of those who believe it to be a failure. And so we will decide - to push forward and (I believe) prevail, or go "Oops! My bad..." and pull back, amid hollow declarations of victory.

Can you tell which side I’m on?

But at the same time, it’s not enough for me or anyone else to simply stand on our self-perception of rightness. So let’s have a discussion.

First, what I’d like to do is simply list the core arguments against the war. Then I’d like to list my own response to each of them and let the fur fly.

So here goes. These are, in my own mind, the strongest, most central arguments against the war. Please add your own in the comments, and I’ll generate a final list. Note the rules, however:

1. America has never before engaged in a pre-emptive war; this war was pre-emptive and thus morally outrageous.

2. We entered the war because of the Administration’s lies.

3. The war was illegal.

4. The war was a distraction from the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the fight against terrorism.

5. The war used up money and manpower which could/should have been used to secure our borders, airports, and ports.

6. The war has cost us allies in Europe and the Middle East, and damaged our standing and ability to lead in the world.

7. The pre-war planning ignored postwar humanitarian issues.

8. The war is unwinnable, because the insurgency is too powerful politically and militarily.

9. The war is unwinnable because the Administration has no coherent plan.

10. The war is costing too many casualties, both in our own forces and Iraqi civilians.

There are certainly more, and I’d like to ask you to list them in the comments below. But - this is my house, and there are house rules.

1. No snark. If you have to ask, don’t post it. We’re looking for honest, direct expressions of the best arguments against the war. If, like me, you’re pro-war, you’ll have a chance to counter later on. If you’re anti-war, you’ll have a chance to defend later on.

2. No moonbattery. Yes, there were Jews in the WTC, and no, the Pentagon wasn’t hit by a missile. If you post this kind of stuff, I reserve the right to mock you within your own comment, and others certainly will in the comments that follow.

That’s about it. Let’s see what develops...

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I see the White House has released its National Strategy for Victory in Iraq that you can all read and weigh the merits of yourselves. It's a lot better than anything that the White House has released to date as far as its strategy for Iraq is concerned and as such I welcome its publication, but I still share the misgivings I discussed in my previous posts that a lot of the timetables for US withdrawl in Iraq appear to be heavily influenced, if nothing else, by the 2006 Congressional elections that I will continue to address in this post. As a political strategy it sort of makes sense (though I would hold that it's both morally and politically repugnant because it allows the Democrats to get away with accusations that the administration has been assuring us are both false and detestable for about 3 years now) - Democrats have made the war one of their key political themes, so deprive them of that by bringing large numbers of troops home and you can literally cut the ground out from under their feet. The problem is, in order to accomplish that, you more or less have to do one of the things that the GOP argued that Senator Kerry would do in reasonably short order if elected and of late has extensively criticized Representative Murtha for, i.e. the idea of cutting and running.

Eric Martin, in his latest take on this trend, writes the following:

The indispensable Hilzoy has a great post on the fast food helpings of "crow" being served to some of the blogosphere's usual suspects. Poor guys got all worked up about Biden's planned withdrawal timetable, only to be left high and dry by the Bush administration which was quick to claim Biden's plan as their own. Doh!!! Any Bush administration led withdrawal could create a double inverted, reflective loop of cognitive dissonance for the partisan hacks. After all, aren't Bin Laden and Zarqawi waiting for the conclusion of the timetable to take the throne in Iraq? Isn't our presence in Iraq allowing us to "fight 'em over there" not "over here"? What gives?

Since I'm not one of the ones singled out by Hilzoy, let me just reinterate yet again that our leaving Iraq before the new Iraqi military is ready to take up the proper responsibilities as far as counter-insurgency are concerned is still a Very Bad Thing, particularly if we're now so eager to leave that we're now willing to leave the Iraqis to deal with an established al-Qaeda network (with Zarqawi still at its head, no less) so entrenched that we ourselves were unable to crush it - not exactly my idea of a good parting gift. Cordesman writes that even if things go swimmingly in Iraq that the country is still in for at least another year of violence from Zarqawi and his followers, bottom line. These are serious reservations I am have about the current strategy, particularly since I was pointing out just last week that I don't consider the establishment of an al-Qaeda enclave inside Iraq to be half as implausible as much of the commentariat seems to be saying.

As I noted before, I have no particular desire for US troops to remain active in Iraq in their current military-security capacity once either the new Iraqi military is ready or the government states that they want us to leave. Unlike others, I'm not opposed to the idea of a negotiated US military presence inside Iraq, since I think that can be negotiated the same way we do with every other state, though if we are in fact running away from Iraq as fast as we possibly can that issue would seem to be irrelevant in any case.

Now the usual counter-argument to this is that we can't stay in Iraq because the American people don't have the political will, that the military is over-stretched, and so on. I'll agree that these are definite problems to any long-reaching Iraq policy, but pardon me for saying that if we actually believed all that stuff we said about wanting to provide a safe future for the Iraqis, let alone defeat an enemy that has sworn to destroy us, we cannot let political expediency trump either victory or principle on this one, especially since failure in this particular instance is altogether likely to lead to the re-introduction of US troops in Iraq at some future date.

One other element that is also being completely ignored in all of this discussion is what exactly a swift 2006 withdrawl in Iraq for political considerations tells our enemies. While there are some who would argue, perhaps correctly, that al-Qaeda will claim victory no matter what we do, some claims ring louder than others, particularly, as in the case of Somalia in 1993, when they're sort of, you know, actually true. As any number of commentators have pointed out, bin Laden has long sought to draw the US into a protracted guerrilla conflict modeled after the Afghan War against the USSR. What few have discussed, however, is what the implications are going to be if it appears that this kind of approach works and what lessons that a lot of people in the Middle East and other parts of the world who have previously been more or less on the fence as far as al-Qaeda goes. This is particularly true given all of the claims that have come out as far as the issue of Iraq increasing the global terrorist threat is concerned. If there is indeed a far greater pool of terrorists today than there was in 2003, are we honestly supposed to believe that there will be less of them or that the threat is going to decrease if they are seen as having sent the US home with a bloody nose? Note that their own success or failure in Iraq is irrelevant to this equation - Afghanistan turned into even more of a hellhole than it already was after the Soviets vacated, but that fact in and of itself does not appear to have dampened their fame across the rest of the Arab world.

What bin Laden understands, even if a majority of Western pundits do not, is that popularity is irrelevant when you're leading a totalitarian movement so long as you're able to present the impression that you're winning. A premature US withdrawl from Iraq gives them just that, emboldening al-Qaeda that their tactics have merit, and sending a horrible message to our allies and additional enemies alike in the region. Also, pace praktike, there is more than sufficient reason for believing that a premature US withdrawl from Iraq will end any serious efforts at democratic reform in the Arab world, particularly if the regions' governments feel that they are going to be under seige from a renewed terrorist wave.

All of this has been said again and again, sometimes by me, often by others, when discussing the prospect of premature withdrawl from Iraq. I don't think I need to reinterate them or my concerns, as well as my continuing skepticism towards the Pape-esque that occupation causes terrorism. As such, I want to emphasize before I'm accused of either hackery or defeatism that I'm going to raise these same concerns until I'm satisfied that our withdrawl is based on the performance of the new Iraqi military rather than some preconceived political timetable.

One final point that does need to be made, however, namely that it has long been a conservative assertion that things are going better in Iraq than the media has generally been reporting. Near as I can tell, this belief, rather like any claims of US military success against the insurgency, are regarded as something akin to a collective delusion in some quarters. For myself, I do think on the basis of conversations with soldiers who have served in Iraq and some who still are that the situation there is far from ideal, but nor is it the hell on earth that some would have it be. Building a new Iraqi military, security forces, and police from more or less scratch involves a good deal of time, money, training, and effort. Cordesman has written quite excellently about how ignoring any one of these areas is ultimately going to come back and bite you in the butt and I think we are seeing some of what will happen if we move too fast on that process now with the discoveries that have been recently been made concerning some Shi'ite Interior Ministry units that have detained and tortured Sunnis.

Premature withdrawl must be avoided at all costs if we have any serious concern for the sacrifices that both our own soldiers have made as well as those of the Iraqi people.

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