A Second Hand Conjecture

At least according to this website.

Why are we blessed with this scandalous rating?

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* suicide (9x)
* bomb (5x)
* torture (4x)
* dick (3x)
* gun (2x)
* dead (1x)

So, we talk about suicide bombers and Dick Cheney?

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• A really good look at what happens when the military and intelligence functions of the federal government are outsourced to the private sector.
• Plastering our cities with CCTVs doesn’t deter crime, as London has found quite to its chagrin. But especially when it comes to terrorism, spy cams won’t stop anything, because how will monitoring normal people halt a suicide bomber? It won’t. Spy cams are just back door tyranny, a way for the government to establish a permanent record of everything you do in public.
• On the symbolic importance of Trident subs.
• The military seems to have missed the actual lessons from the Algerian insurgency: in a modern war, it is impossible for westerners to force themselves on an unwilling populace without such wanton slaughter it would turn them into international pariahs. The very fact that we have rules of war and limits on what we consider proper in combat and occupation means we do not have “what it takes” to beat down an unwilling people. France learned its lesson when it withdrew from a Muslim country it couldn’t occupy; the U.S. claims to “learn from France,” while insisting it can fight and win with its hands tied. And withdrawal will not be unmitigated disaster, it is a smart self-preservation maneuver that will end the biggest reason the rest of the world currently hates us.

Around the World

• Happy fun awesomeness in Central Asia, as Uzbekistan gears up for a much more interesting presidential election, and Turkmenistan stumbles upon the value of hedging. Good times.
• Hahahaha, no one likes Hugo Chavez! That being said, despite the overwhelming presence of Argentines in the stadium, at the US-Argentina Copa America opener last night in Venezuela, a surprising number of people were cheering… for the U.S. Even though we lost, that was cool.
• I rather doubt Al-Qaeda had a direct hand in that ham-fisted bomb attempt in London (was it a fuel-air explosive?)—they’re usually more professional than that, and employ suicide tactics, which this guy clearly did not. Rather, it’s more worrisome: most likely a homespun group, composed, like the 7/7 group, of disaffected British Muslim citizens. It has been a growing problem around Europe, as they’ve refused to deal with the pervasive racism and ghettoization of Muslim immigrants. And what’s crazier is the longer a brown-skinned family lives in Europe, the more radicalized its children are likely to be—second and third generation Arab children, whose parents show no indicators of craziness, tend to join up with the hate clerics. That’s seriously bad news for Europe, and will create tremendous problems over the next decade.
• Ethiopia is having second thoughts about its invasion of Somalia. This is perhaps tied to the quite unwinnable insurgency it’s encountered, and the fact that Somalia was acting on our behalf and at our behest—not the finest hour for either country. That being said, I’m glad the ICU are not in power, as they were vicious and petty. But I don’t know that Somalia’s actions have made things any better. And the African Union’s complete impotence, both here and in Darfur, should be shameful. It seems the continent can’t collaborate on peacekeeping, and most countries will only use their troops for domestic slaughter.
• It’s interesting to see how the Turks and Kurds seem to be parasitically dependent on each other, locked in a shame spiral of sorts and wedded to permanently self-destructive behavior. It’s also sad.
• This is a fascinating look at a dam just outside Dushanbe, Tajikistan. I wanna go!
• Finally, the sad slow destruction of the Kalasha, in Chitral Pakistan.

Back at Home

• Hooray, the Reason Foundation put out a big, useless survey of state highways! Here’s why: I refuse to believe that California has fewer miles of highway than West Virginia. Plus, looking at a place like “Virginia” as a measure of highway performance is a bit silly&38212;the quality, experience, and layout of the highway differs dramatically if you’re on the I-95 corridor, anywhere within 50 miles of the DC, or Hampton Roads. The southwest of the state has pristine, unclogged highways with really pretty views. But I hate driving up here near the DC. And, having lived both here and in Colorado, I don’t understand why Colorado is ranked so far below Virginia. A broad swath of highway from DC out to Warrenton, from DC down through Richmond, and from Richmond out to VA Beach sucks beyond my ability to describe. Also, they marked Delaware as Maryland, New Jersey as Delaware, the Altantic Ocean as New Jersey, and their methodology for ranking various indicators doesn’t seem to make much sense (i.e. West Virginia is rated so poorly because its rural roads have narrow lanes). Good job, libertarians! Let’s see the free market put out a better survey!
• Count me among the people who don’t want an iPhone. I’m not ideologically opposed to it or anything, I just don’t see the need for it in my life, what with my regular mobile, my work Treo, and two laptops, I think I have enough portable electronic devices, thank you. And the iPhone can replace none of them except my regular phone—for which $600 is beyond the pale.
• I think it’s funny that Fred Thompson’s two primary crimes are not being sufficiently pro-life, and belonging to Angelina-supporting CFR.
• Whoops, the White House website lists Cheney as a “cabinet rank” member of the administration. So he’s part of the executive then? Despite the very literal accuracy of his weasel statements, yes. If you receive funding, instruction, and sanction from the executive, act on behalf of it, and are treated as a representative of it, then you are, for all intents and purposes, a member of it. Even if not legally.

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Good question, and I happen to agree with what Ed Morrissey says today…

So what should happen now? The problems of immigration did not disappear with the failure of the cloture vote a few moments ago. Congress needs to act to resolve them — but they need to do so in a manner that respects the processes of representative democracy, and in a manner that builds the confidence of Americans rather than fuel their cynicism.

They need to address border security and visa-program problems immediately. Congress has left these problems simmering for over 21 years. Their failure to address the issue over two decades has demonstrated that Washington does not consider those issues a very high priority, and the Senate’s insistence on tying them to normalization underscores that. Poll after poll shows that Americans don’t believe Congress when it says it will do something — and so Congress needs to demonstrate their competence first before we take a flyer on creating another vast bureaucratic nightmare.

Secure the borders. Fix the visa program. Do those tasks by using the proper legislative processes in both chambers, allowing for real debate, honest and open amendment opportunities, and quit using clay pigeons and other parliamentary tricks to hide the bill and railroad it through Congress.

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Or at least, investigate them to death. That does seem to be a central theme with the Democrats overarching strategy.

For being the “party in power” they are still operating as the “opposition.” They’ve yet to pass much with any real substance. Their leaders are prone to illogical outbursts at nearly anyone. Corruption, darkness, and arcane process are still just as much a problem as last year. In other words, business as usual.

Investors Business Daily has an editorial up on the long term consequences with regards to the path the Democrats are setting themselves on.

Congress has a constitutional duty to provide oversight, and that often requires investigations. But this Democratic Congress has taken that responsibility and turned it into a political blood sport and ignored another part of its job: crafting sound public policy.

Americans need genuine Social Security and Medicare reform. They need a comprehensive energy bill that allows them to make use of their own natural resources. They need a Congress that is interested in protecting them from terrorist attacks.

…

But the way the Democrats are acting, and have acted for decades, these are issues that don’t require attention. It’s the same way they’re treating the war on terrorism — in their minds, these problems don’t exist.

Yet the threats of large-scale loss of life from terrorism, and economic misery caused by entitlement liabilities that can’t be met in any reasonable way, and energy shortages created by a trendy obeisance to fanatic Greenshirts are real.

But this is what we should expect from lawmakers who get strong support from voters who think that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are terrorists, feel that driving an SUV is nearly criminal and think of government as a generous nanny.

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Defense

• It saddens me to see that a general neglect of our soldiers has a long and storied tradition in this country. I honestly think us to be better than that.
• Uh-oh, is our new strategy in Iraq geared for cutting and running? Those defeat mongers at the Pentagon must want Al-Qaeda In Iraq to win. Except they’re now choosing to focus on it. Umm… should that have been the plan, I don’t know, years ago?
• Booz-Allen is facing scrutiny for a no-bid contract at DHS everyone except Booz-Allen think is “beyond the scope” of what’s appropriate. In fact, no-bids of all kind are coming under increasing scrutiny, and that’s a good thing—in 2006, the federal government for the first time handed out more sole-source contracts than open-bid contracts, implying a major net-loss in transparency, fraud-prevention, and so on.
• The F-35C, the Navy variant of the new Joint Strike Fighter, looks like it is doing well. Far better than its retarded older brother, the F-22. In other Navy news, I’m sure Cebrowski’s ghost is tickled pink that network-centric warfare is making a comeback.
• Adaptive optics sure do seem cool.

Around the World

• In a lot of cultures, there is the idea of sins of the father—if a parent commits some crime, his children can be held responsible. In fact, the idea was so widespread that in the Old Testament God would brag of not killing the children of the men who had sinned against Him to demonstrate His mercy—indeed, it was considered a great virtue not to punish children for what their parents did. So, given how much the Right brags of being good faithful Christian leaders, why have we disappeared the young children of Al-Qaeda leaders?
• As the world urbanizes, we will face many choices: finding housing materials, adapting economies, tremendously higher energy demands, pollution, transportation… Really, now’s the time to get a Master’s in Urban Planning or some such.
• When the Russian opposition is in such disarray, it should be no surprise that Putin is able to maneuver with impunity.
• Things in the Central African Republic are so bad people are fleeing to Chad, which is where people from Darfur also flee. Chad is no picnic, either. Just further south, in Congo, UN relief workers are being attacked as well. All of which means we’re looking at a humanitarian disaster of unimaginable scale. Again.
• Peru’s former dictator, still living under house arrest in South America, will run for parliament… in Japan. That whacky Fujimori, always keeping us on our toes.
• Those Russians sure did know how to torture, didn’t they? Good thing we learned from them before we began abducting innocent men, women, and children off the street to go to secret prison.
• Another story on the Christian victims of the Islamists unleashed by Bush’s war… which he refuses to help through granting refugee status or emigration rights.

Back at home

• Yes, that is staggering: At the height of Apartheid, South Africa imprisoned 851 of every 100,000 black men; At the height of the War on Drugs, the United States imprisons 4,419 of every 100,000 black men. Although the U.S. contains only 5% of the world’s population, we constitute 25% of its prison population. As of December 2006, there were 2.2 million people in jail, or one for every 133 of us—an increase of 62,000. Land of the free, indeed.
• According to Jonah Goldberg, if the Germans liked something (in this case, organic produce and environmentalism), then it was fascist to like that as well. Ignoring Rod Dreher’s entire body of work on “crunchy conservatives,” the idea to fundamentally stupid: considering Goldberg used to drive a VW Passat, he doesn’t have much room to complain about what Germans like or don’t like. And since when is a luxury grocery store (or, for that matter, Hegel) totalitarian in any way? This confirms my years-long complaint about Goldberg, and extends to most of my complaints with National Review: who the hell pays these people to write?
• Hey, did you know Exodus, the Christian ministry devoted to praying really hard to become straight, is a crock of sh*t? I sure did. So, too, does their leadership, at least the honest bits of it.
• Warren Buffet pays a smaller portion of his income as taxes than his secretary.
• Something funny in this otherwise extraordinary article about how Google Maps is changing our world: Hanke, one of the main brains behind the invention, is said to have “spent four years working in Washington, DC, and in Burma on what he will describe only as “foreign policy type of stuff” for the US government before eventually joining a video game startup.” Umm… you weren’t in Burma like that if you aren’t intelligence. So Google Earth was most likely started by a former spook, and now those same agencies contract out with Google Earth and the affiliated satellite imagery companies for their services. Google Maps really has changed our world. For the better, I’d say.
• But if the new RFID/GPS future scares you (or causes worry, as it does in me), there’s always the faraday-shielded wallet. This of it as a SCIF in your wallet.

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You’ve seen LOLcats. Then there was loldogs and lolhamsterz. Now there are even lolterrorists (or lolterizt if you prefer). So it seemed to me that the next logical progression was lolpolitishunz: (more…)

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Fred Thompson ruminates on the Captain’s Quarters blog talk radio spot:

Thompson answers attacks on his past work as a lobbyist. Short, but worthwhile to check out.

Technorati Tags: Election 2008, Fred Thompson, presidential campaign, politics

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• A look at the operations in Baquba, with entire blocks of booby-trapped houses wired to explode for the troops. These kinds of delays are just what happen in warfare. But it speaks to how the insurgents are once again switching tactics: is this a new scorched earth-type policy?
• Related to this is David Kilcullen’s explanation of the intent and strategy behind the surge-in-a-surge. And it is a good idea: even taking into account reports that local security forces aren’t doing their jobs, this is a radical and much-welcomed departure from the previous doctrines behind the Iraqi war. But it’s the reliability of the locals that remains the achilles heel here: if they can’t be relied on (and, it too many cases, they can’t be), then we’re stuck with the same problem as before—too many jobs for not enough troops. And Kilcullen is mature enough to see that this isn’t guaranteed success (which is beyond what many war supporters have offered up).
• Related to that is this interview with John Robb on system shocks like terrorism and how they’re a problem to be managed, not an organized enemy to destroy. I have come to agree with him. Just like the French!
• I may have figured out why there are Iranian weapons in Afghanistan. Maybe.
• SBINet, the hilariously impossible “virtual fence” along our souther border, is so impossible it will never be built.
• Upgrading the Yak to resist IEDs is a great idea. But we need to focus more on why insurgents use them, rather than jumping into a never-ending arms race we really can’t win—unless maybe they decide to actually implement the ionized force fields under development to thwart RPGs. Since the EFPs use shaped charges as well, the plasma jets should respond to the same ionization effect and dissipate around, rather than penetrate through, the vehicle.

Around the World

• So, Indian politics are kind of corrupt. This we already knew, though it’s not usually publicized in the States. Luckily, Nitin, whom I have come to rely on for keeping me informed on the country (along with the piddling 15 minutes of SouthAsia Newsline on MHz), is flippin’ mad. From what I’m reading, he’s right to be.
• It makes for an interesting contrast: Australians are harassing their aborigines for possessing porn and booze, while Sweden grants a prisoner his inalienable right to possess porn. Then again, Scandanavian attitudes toward sex have always amused me—from a distance. To kind of see what I mean, check this years-old post at the much missed Beautiful Atrocities, Anal for Trees.
• I’ve speculated at length that Iran probably does need nuclear energy, if only because it is far cheaper than modernizing and updating its dilapidated oil infrastructure. That one of the world’s most oil-rich nations is so incapable of producing the gunk it resorts to fuel rationing is, sadly, not unexpected (a few months back, the DOE predicted that by 2015 Iran will have decayed to the point where it would need to become a net importer). The rioting, however, took me by surprise. I don’t recall hearing of gas riots here during the 1973 oil embargo, though that was also eight years before my birth. If all it takes is a line at the gas station to prompt rioting, what other pressure points might exist in Iranian society?
• Clearly, the one thing that has been holding Zimbabwe in 8000% inflation is not having enough nationalized companies.
• Well, China will remain a one party dictatorship for the time being. It’s a pity—they make such great laptops.
• It’s interesting to read about the plight of Christians in the Middle East—from Baghdad to Gaza, to Jedda, Christians are harassed, threatened, assaulted, tortured, and executed. For the crime of not being Muslim.
• Celebrating 10 years of not-war in Tajikistan, which is more of a truce anniversary than a cessation of conflict.
• An incredible series of drawings of Kandahar.

Back at Home

• Oh look: Instapundit linked to a cool story on outsourcing one’s own job and pocketing the difference like it’s something new. Trick is, that story is from 2004. And if your employer ever found out you were doing that, he’d fire you and keep the Indian guy coding at $12k a year.
• Jezebel hits on why I hate the Edwards: “SHOOT US NOW. The Edwardses just made us defend Ann Coulter on grounds of FEMINISM.” There’s more.
• Three cheers for counter suing the RIAA for malicious prosecution. May we have more of them.
• Ooooh, Henry Farrell, of the GW, has created a repository of sorts for political science papers “for a general audience.” I’m not really sure how he’s defining that, as 90% of the polisci papers I read are boring, dry, and poorly written—and that’s coming from a guy who enjoys the subject and wants to read them. Unfortunately, instead of a broad look at the practice of political science in general, so far it seems to be just “oooh! oooh! read this journal!” So, I don’t get it. Polisci professors already read the journals in question; people like me who are not professors but have maintained an interest in the subject still read the theory books and essay collections. Who is he appealing to? And will that blog turn in to anything other than a collection of abstracts?
• It’s funny, to see how often Kevin Drum writes things like “if you hire people who hate the government, you’ll get bad government” while complaining about the horribly inefficient Postal Service. He wants fully socialized healthcare (and is a fan of Sicko, which is, umm, sick). So he hates the Post Office, but thinks if the government takes over his medical care, it won’t be run in a similarly slapdash fashion? I don’t get it.
• We also find out Christie Todd Whitman actually resigned from the EPA in protest over Dick Cheney meddling in the administration’s environmental affairs. For a legislative official, he sure does have a lot of influence in the executive, doesn’t he?

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Lee at postpolitical has video of Fred Thompson speechifying at the Nashville Airport.

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It seems that a would-be pick-pocket chose the wrong mark:

Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash.

He immediately grabbed the person’s wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened.

“I guess he thought I was an easy mark,” Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday.

He’s anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden Gloves boxer and retired after 20 years as an iron worker.

Marine, Golden Gloves boxer, and an iron worker to boot. Yeah, the thief picked the wrong guy to mess with.

I loved Barnes’ comment as to whether he would have the same reaction in the future:

Barnes said he’d probably do the same thing again under the same circumstances, if for no other reason than what he would face back home.

“I wouldn’t want my wife to give me hell for lettin’ that guy get my money,” he said with a smile.

Heh.

Technorati Tags: Marines, Semper Fi, pick-pocket, Golden Gloves, stupid criminals, self-defense

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The Senate voted down an amendment to the much-maligned immigration bill that would have required adult illegals to return home before being able “to qualify for permanent lawful status” in the US.
The vote was 53-45 to table an amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that was one of several proposals designed to respond to conservatives who decry President Bush’s immigration bill as a form of amnesty.

Per McQ in the comments, there are other “Touchback” provisions being debated, so “touchback” is still a live issue.

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I missed this report from earlier in the week about a young boy whom Taliban operatives attempted to employ as a suicide bomber:

The story of Juma Gul [a 6 y.o., Afghan boy], who says he thwarted an effort by Taliban militants to trick him into carrying out a suicide bombing against U.S. troops provoked tears and anger at a weekend meeting of tribal leaders. Though the Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when U.S. and NATO forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, both Afghan tribal elders and U.S. military officers said they were convinced by his dramatic account.

Taliban fighters fitted a 6-year-old street kid with a bomb vest and told him to go “spray flowers” at the American soldiers. But, instead he went to an Afghan checkpoint and asked the guards, “‘Hey, can you help me? Somebody gave me this jacket, and I don’t know what’s inside, but maybe something bad.”

From the AP report:

The account from Juma Gul, a dirt-caked child who collects scrap metal for money, left American soldiers dumbfounded that a youngster could be sent on such a mission. Afghan troops crowded around the boy to call him a hero.

Juma said that sometime last month, Taliban fighters forced him to wear a vest they said would spray flowers when he touched a button. He said they told him that when he saw U.S. soldiers, “throw your body at them.”

[...]

“When they first put the vest on my body, I didn’t know what to think, but then I felt the bomb,” Juma told the Associated Press as he ate lamb and rice after being introduced to the elders at the joint U.S.-Afghan base in Ghazni. “After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help.”

Smart kid. And a hero to boot. This whole incident captures in a nutshell just how monstrous and inhumane the Islamists are, and demonstrates with perfect clarity that there are no depths to which these wastes of breath will not stoop. Putting a minimum of six feet of earth between them and the rest of mankind is truly a humanitarian mission. Unless, of course, you have a political agenda to pursue:

When they won control of Congress in November, Democrats pressed their case to withdraw troops from Iraq and refocus on Afghanistan, but some are growing impatient with U.S. operations in Afghanistan as well.

[...]

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior defense authorizer, wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan immediately, calling operations there “futile” in trying to effect political change in a country with a tangled history.

[...]

“We are finished there, militarily speaking,” said Abercrombie, the chairman of the Air and Land Armed Services subcommittee.

“There is no useful purpose for our troops there,” Abercrombie stated in a recent interview. “The military should withdraw now,” he said, though he stressed that the U.S. could keep “isolated pockets” of special operators.

Instead of using the military to effect political change, the U.S. should have a complete diplomatic re-engagement in the region, “with an understanding that our role there should change,” Abercrombie added.

Murtha stressed that NATO forces should take a bigger role in Afghanistan. So far, the U.S. military has been the leading presence.
“I have not made the recommendation yet on withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan,” said Murtha. “Every commander I talk to still thinks that we have a chance.”

But Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, said that it is time for the U.S. military to start leaving Afghanistan and the Middle East altogether.

“We are not securing America by being there,” she pressed. “The longer we are there, the more plots start growing in our country.”

[HT: Hot Air, via McQ]

Whatever one may think about the war in Iraq, it’s difficult to conceive of any rational reason why we would abandon the people of Afghanistan to these death-cultists.

Maybe we should have Juma Gul testify before Congress. At least then the anti-war Dems could claim that finishing our job in Afghanistan is For The Children^TM.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Taliban, terrorism, NATO, anti-war, Juma Gul, suicide bombers

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Closely following the third assassination of a senior Iranian official in two months, Tehran is suddenly burning. The long smoldering tension between citizens and tyrannical mullahs shows no signs of abating, with the latest development being riots over gasoline-rationing [HT: Insty]:

Following the rationing of gasoline in Iran, many people waited in lines to fill their tanks before the price hike until the last hours of Wednesday, June, 26, 07 in Tehran and other Iranian cities. The rationing caused angry mobs to attack the gas stations and set them on fire.

BBC and Reuters initially reported that at least one Tehran gas station is burning in protest. But Pajamas Media has learned the number is more like fifteen.

[...]

According to [left-wing Iranian website] SJK, more than 15 gas stations were set on fire in the early hours of morning. People have also attacked one city hall building in Tehran

The areas include Sohrevardi, Azadi Square (Shahyad), Pirouzi, Tajrish, Vali-Asr, Tehra-No, Shariaty, Imam Hossein (Fouzieh) Square and some other Tehran neighborhoods.

Demonstrations have leaped to other Iranian cities like Karaj, Mashad, Tabriz, Bandar-Abbas, Ardabil and Kermanshah.

Cries of “Death to Ahmadinejad” were heard.

Meanwhile, Anti-Mullah reports that the northwestern city of Sanandaj has been overrun (please digest with large grain of salt):

While Islamic government forces of Iran fired shots into protesters in Kermanshah, reports indicate that the populace of Sanandaj, a largely Kurdish city, have taken over control of the township and are now in charge.

Other cities throughout the nation are experiencing unrest and protest against the Mullahs.

Stepped up suppression and arrests over the past few weeks of any dissenting voices – students, teachers or workers show that the regime has been expecting trouble and tried to head it off.

Whether something comes of this or extended bloodshed by Ahmadi-Nejad and his Revolutionary Guards snuffs out the sudden opposition still remains to be seen.

Gateway Pundit has much, much more, including this:

UPDATE 2: The Regime in Iran says the rationing will continue despite the violence and blamed the rioting on the US!

There is video available at both PJM and Gateway Pundit.

How will this all shake out? Your guess is as good as mine. In the very least the unrest may dampen Iran’s ability to cause more trouble in Iraq for the time being. But I am skeptical of these riots turning into anything bigger. Hopeful, but doubtful. It seems to me that a large co-ordinated effort will be necessary to overthrow the mullah-cracy and these sorts of riots (and their catalysts) just don’t provide any organizing principle. Without something akin the motivation underlying the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it’s hard to see how the recent unrest will change anything. There are already a lot of Iranian citizens who are unenamored with the government, and if they haven’t revolted by now I don’t see why gasoline rationing will tip the balance.

MORE: Alex Tabbarok focuses on why Iran, one of the largest oil producers in the world, is having to ration gasoline.

Technorati Tags: Iran, riots, mullahs, Ahmadinejad, Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iraq War, burning gas stations

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• Declassified documents reveal one of the CIA’s biggest fears during the Cold War was the illicit wiretapping of American citizens—precisely what has happened under Bush’s war rules. All for freedom!
• An absolutely fascinating look at the insurgent media machine. It’s not as efficient or as effective as you’d think… yet remarkably, it still helps them to dance circles around our troops.
• The whole Flickr set is amazing, but look at this guy’s smile. I don’t even know what seems so special about it; maybe it just seems familiar somehow—joyous, even?
• Given the shrinking sub fleets around the world (even “rising” China is seeing a major long-term decline), I’m not so sure “only 40” attack subs is the major weakness it’s being spun as—especially considering that, even considering Russia and to miniscule extent China, no one else has the blue water submarine capability we would. So while we won’t have as much flexibility to sink other subs in dispersed locations simultaneously, we won’t exactly be helpless.
• Some scary things about intelligence: given how truly ineffective it is in the wars we’re fighting (as opposed to the wars we’d like to fight, against China and Russia), just how much are we actually spending? And more importantly, how much are we spending on revolving door private spies?

Around the World

• Tom Cruise being denied filming rights in Deutschland = LOL.
• Oh, to be an in-demand stock analyst in India. Fans of Nassim Taleb take note: even if the practice is a crock of sh*t, you can still make a ton of money at it. India’s caste system, on the other hand, isn’t as universally successful.
• Murderous Tyrant chi—a subject near and dear to my heart—just recently bit Cameron Diaz in the pooper. At least she’s not smearing poo on the walls anymore.
• Stomatologbashi went and made things marginally better in Turkmenistan, the creep.
• Oh, what WTF is China trying to do in Central Asia? I offer an answer, over at Registan.net.
• Michael J. Totten takes an axe to the journalists covering the Middle East. He is a very effective communicator.
• Foreign Policy seems to misunderstand why the U.S. doesn’t ratify some treaties—when the Senate ratifies something, it takes on the full force of U.S. law. If some of these treaties—for example, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, include provisions that run counter to American law or tradition (such as the statements conferring legal protection to children before birth, the “right” to know one’s parents regardless of adoptive state, its allowance of coercive religious and ethical teachings “if local customs allow”, and requirement that the state “encourage” mass media to edutainment), why should we support them? Even (or perhaps especially) if they are deceptively warm and fuzzy in most other regards?

Back at Home

• Boy, farm subsidies must really suck.
• Though I like Vonage, I’m not sure they’ll be able to be strung along, since a judge allowed Verizon to patent the fracking Internet.
• Those unaccountable judges sure don’t like shredding the Bill of Rights, those liberal weenies. What that judge seems to miss is that the Bill of Rights isn’t very well respected anymore—especially if it might defend Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
• LOLZ0R over right wing cruises and drinking habits. Strangely, THE HITCH went unmentioned, perhaps because he’s never not-drunk (note: for me, this is much of his appeal).

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This is not the binky you are looking for…

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• (HT: the ever-excellent Bonnie Boyd) The way we treat the disabled veterans we create is our shame. What’s worse is, war supporters tend to write off these kinds of stories as “anti-Bush lefty shilling” or some such, while the left tends to see it as another way to twist the knife—the end result of which, of course, leads to polarization and the complete negligence of the actual people involved. Our vets are people, people we damaged for the wars we chose to wage. We owe them whatever care they need—without politics.
• One thing Lance keeps tagging me on is that more troops won’t help the surge work, not even in the new surge-in-a-surge in the Baghdad area. I will of course entertain the idea… that is, until news comes out that there aren’t enough competent troops to hold seized territory. Oh, and that most of the al-Qaeda guys they wanted to kill had already vacated the areas. Where will the moles pop their heads next? Alas, the military won’t venture a guess.
• John Robb sums up the insurgency thusly: “essentially army of Davids [sic] experimenting, sharing innovations, and iterating towards a successful cascade of failure that topples Goliath.” The insurgency is not Maoist, yet the tactics Petraeus is using are for defeating a traditional Maoist insurgency. That is why I am so very skeptical of its likelihood of success.
• The DoD’s sentient world simulator sounds really cool until you rewatch Terminator (ditto all the autonomy programs under way at DARPA).
• Also, what do you think it means when not even our friends in North Africa want to play host to AFRICOM?
• An impassioned plea not to privatize our intelligence services.

Around the World

• Pakistan tries to use a UN resolution to force Britain into renouncing its recently-conferred knighthood on Salman Rushdie. Of course, while doing so, Pakistani officials basically say they support murdering Rushdie, which doesn’t speak well to international dialog and understanding. Indeed, the million dollar bounty probably isn’t meant to foster tolerance, but then again very little that comes out of Pakistan’s madrassas is.
• Meanwhile, some grim and disturbing news: NATO has killed more innocent civilians this year than the Taliban. NATO even “accidentally” pursued some fighters across the border, and managed to kill more civilians in Pakistan. Meanwhile, it’s nearly impossible for qualified area experts to get security clearances because… well, we don’t quite know. As one currently waiting for my SF-86 to process (and considering I have smoked the ganj in the last five years… I lived in Boulder, recall), I’m suddenly nervous I might be randomly disqualified as well.
• And it’s important never to forget just how many hopeless Afghan women think their only way out is self-immolation.
• China might soon face in Sudan what Shell is facing in Nigeria: angry, desperately poor locals who would like just a little bit of the oil money to be spent on them not starving to death within sight of the executives’ helipads.
• An interesting look at the hyper-cheap cars soon to be seen in India, and what they might mean for climate change—but not energy. Interestingly, India is cozying up to Iran for just that purpose, with the potential for collaboration with Pakistan over oil supplies. Considering their past collaboration over nuclear technology, this is unsurprising. But it does add a neat wrinkle to U.S. strategic calculations in south and southwest Asia.

Back at Home

• The farm bill: bad for you, bad for the country, bad for developing countries, good for a few well-connected lobbyists. And one of many reasons why I hate politics in this country.
• Related is Michael Moore’s latest, Sicko—succor for those who think the bankrupt and inefficient European systems are super fabulous, outright propaganda for the thinking set.
• The way Dick Cheney has taken over the White House is deeply troubling. Especially given his bizarre contention that he is not quite executive, nor quite legislative (he could probably make a case for either, but making a firm choice would entail not behaving like a puppet master). As such, if he is part of the legislative, then his office should not be funded as part of the executive and he should have no executive privileges. If he is executive, then he should comply with the other mandatory disclosures and limitations on executive power. He cannot be neither, unless he is some how a part of the judicial (in which case, he should have no role whatsoever in policymaking or law writing). We have three branches. He must belong to one, and obey that branch’s limitations on power. But Cheney hasn’t been very interested in limited power since being in office.
• When Instapundit accuses the left of wanting to lose the war (not “exactly,” as he clarifies it), and the left reacts with “umm, what?” I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to coyly ask what they’re so defensive about. Contrary to the book Instapundit refers to, war crimes are not a shell game used to destroy Bush; given the number of very real war crimes committed in the course of the war—including, should one stretch, the use of illegal abductions, detention, and torture. In fact, the deep amorality with which Bush has waged his war at all costs is precisely what has turned me into an opponent of it—I’m not opposed to confronting and killing terrorists on a battlefield (like in Afghanistan), and I would still not be opposed to invading Iraq… but only if I knew there was evidence of competency or a desire to “win”. I don’t see that from the Bush administration. Pointing that out is not wishing to lose, it is pointing out the obvious.
• Some of my friends started LOLgays.org, a kind of icanhascheezburger for the post-gay set. It’s decently funny, but possibly NSFW, since it’s, ya know, kinda gay.

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Instapundit links to an article in Reason about how the increased production of ethanol is leading to higher prices for food.

I also think it could lead to increasing reliance by America on foreign grain. Which, as we saw with the pet food recall, could mean a riskier supply. You can poison grain, but you can’t poison oil…

Congress evidently believes that American energy independence depends, in part, on turning massive quantities of food into fuel. The energy bill being debated in the Senate would mandate that 36 billion gallons of ethanol be produced for transport fuel by 2020. President Bush is more or less on board since he proposed a 35 billion gallon mandate in his last State of the Union speech. This is on top of the 2005 requirement that 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol be produced by 2012. Almost one-third of the U.S. corn crop will be used to produce ethanol in 2012.

Some energy hawks might argue that breaking our dependence on foreign oil is worth higher food prices. After all, on average Americans spend about 10 percent of their incomes on groceries. Doubling that would bring us back to the good old days of the 1950s when families spent about 20 percent of their incomes on food. Doubled food prices would not mean mass starvation for Americans. However, our biofuels frenzy will not only starve oil despots of cash, but it could end up literally starving millions in poor countries.

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Michael Totten has some interesting thoughts on the changing state of affairs in the Middle East. Well worth the read.

Arab governments are finally taking notice that the Islamist radicals they have been tolerating, appeasing – and sometimes even nurturing – are clear and present dangers to them. Their winking and subtle support for Israel during last summer’s war with Hezbollah may have been explainable by the Sunni-Shia conflict, but their sudden fear and loathing of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, cannot be.

…

Apparently none of the Arab governments, except the one in Syria, ever expected or even wanted Hamas to dominate Palestine or even defeat Israel. (Hamas could not do the latter without first doing the former.)

Arab regimes have been playing appeasement games of their own to keep the radicals busy fuming at somebody else.

You could even argue that the Syrian regime has been appeasing Islamists, that support from Damascus is really just a life-insurance policy so the Islamists don’t gun for the Baath Party as they did before Hafez Assad flattened large parts of the Sunni city of Hama. Bashar Assad’s regime is overwhelmingly Alawite. They belong to an extremely deviant and heretical branch of Twelver Shiism that is no longer really even Islamic. The Alawites probably figure that have no choice but to ride the Islamist tiger so they won’t be eaten. Assad also, quite cleverly I must say, whips up Islamists to deter the U.S. and Israel from terminating his regime. No one wants to see the Hamasification of Syria after the departure of the Assads.

I don’t expect most Arab governments to wise up and follow the lead of Jordan’s King Abdullah and forge an actual alliance with Israel any time soon. Some, none more than Syria’s, have gone too far to turn back.

But if Lebanon falls, and if Iran gets nuclear weapons, and if maniacs wearing ski masks take over Iraq after the U.S. withdraws, most of them will eventually figure out who their real enemies are. What’s happening to Abbas, Seniora, and Maliki can happen to any and all of them, even Assad.

The fact that Arab governments threaten to build nuclear arsenals to counter Iran’s, but not Israel’s, all by itself tells you who and what they’re really afraid of. Blowback isn’t just for Americans anymore.

UPDATE:

Iraq the Model ponders why Sadr is now saying that Iran is supporting al Qaeda…

In our last post at ITM we briefly mentioned a statement in which Sadr’s office accused Iran of hosting and assisting al-Qaeda, today I’ll talk about that statement in more detail.

The claim itself is not strange. What’s strange is whom it came from. Sadr was the last voice we’d expect to say such a thing. Accusing Iran of interfering in Iraq’s affairs is one thing, but accusing it of hosting and assisting al-Qeada is a whole new ballgame. It opens the door for speculation and analysis, especially since Sadr only weeks ago returned from a long stay in Iran in which he was a guest of the top leaders of the Islamic Republic. So why make this statement now?

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Confederate Yankee counters Greenvalds meme that the military is blowing smoke in its press releases…

It’s getting too easy to counter these claims. The internet doesn’t forget.

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• Air Force planes are being used to scour for IEDs. This is related to the Inside the Air Force piece I mentioned a few months ago, about the use of “show of force” operations to hopefully dissuade insurgents. Only, it seems now AF Gen. Keyes, who didn’t buy the F-22 for Iraq, remember, finds this a terrible use of time and fuel. This is probably because pods can’t detect what ground-based sensors can’t detect: deeply buried, or small shaped charges (rather, they still can’t tell the difference between a cell phone and a cell phone activated detonator). But it’s not that much of a surprise the Air Force is being graded on its fulfillment of task orders rather than its effectiveness—that’s kind of how the DoD works.
• Are we in such dire straits that we have to offer early bird sales for the JSF? Can it not actually stand on its own against the EuroFighter?
• Here’s an interesting look at the activities of CJTIF-HOA’s work in Djibouti. There is hope their model of security through development might be adopted by AFRICOM—you know, by turning the DoD into USAID. They need to be careful, however—aside from the problems of militarizing aid, watering down the military, and having soldiers in charge of humanitarian projects, there are the inescapable problems of misplaced or poorly-administered aid causing panic and riots instead of fostering calm. A big job? Why, yes.
• I really can’t say it any better: “isn’t it kinda screwed up that the Pentagon is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on “network-centric warfare” — the idea that speedy information flow may be the most crucial advantage in combat — while its head honcho is wasting his time writing off notes in long-hand?” That right—Defense Secretary Bob Gates doesn’t “do email.”
• I share Doug Bandow’s skepticism of the new surge-in-a-surge: yes, it’s great to see us killing a few dozen insurgents in a tiny part of Iraq. But how does this dissuade the other three dozen insurgent groups, when they’re not only not interdependent but quite aware of U.S. manpower limitations? Clear Hold Build is a great strategy in a California-sized country of 22 million… if you have 500,000 troops committed to it. Otherwise, you’re forced into allowing unguarded regions to serve as safe havens for the many insurgent militias. Exactly what is happening (and yes, despite all the conservative angst against the term, very much like a whack-a-mole).

Around the World

• Anyone who discusses the Soviet Union with me will know that despite my deep fascination with it I deplored its existence. However, Soviet engineers were probably the most creative on the planet. They also had a strange, almost gothic-industrial style, very sinister and sci-fi, and that appealed to me for some unknown reason. Anyway, one of their weirdest inventions—the ekranoplans, a gigantic (double a 747) air transport designed to skim just above the water and fly at 250 mph—can be found, explored in depth, here. The dissolution of the USSR and attendant military spending crush has made strange creations like this a thing of the past… and that inspires an ounce of regret.
• Seven questions with the husband of Haleh Esfandiari, imprisoned in Iran for the last 44 days.
• Russia’s Gas Games continue: BP is on the verge of ceding its Russian gas project to Gazprom.
• I love Almaty, Kazakhstan—it’s kind of like a more exotic version of Denver, only closer to the mountains and with more ethnic diversity and double the population. According to the latest Mercer COL survey, it is now more expensive than Los Angeles or my home of Washington, DC. Considering how ludicrously expensive DC is, I find that stunning, though I suspect the methodology.
• Here are some amusingly incorrect Russian Army advertisements, using American and Nazi equipment and landscapes.
• A take a look at corruption and Iran in Afghanistan.
• Sometimes I wonder if blogging’s implicit incentives for snark impacts “professional” blogs, like Passport. A puzzling look at an Australian naval buildup includes throwaway lines like “ever heard of the North Korean navy? Me neither,” and an attempt to draw a connection between China’s January ASAT test and naval forces. Of course, China has entirely unclear naval intentions, given the strange state of their sub fleet and continued inability to field a blue water navy. And anyone who glibly says they’ve never heard of the North Korean navy probably never heard of the USS Pueblo incident (in which a U.S. naval ship was boarded and its crew detained for months), nor are they likely aware of the decades of skirmishes between the South and North Korean fleets—as recently as 2003. These incidents happen regularly, and often produce casualties, and the North’s belligerence over “naval skirmishes” is more or less constant. So really, that Passport author was either ignorant (unlikely) or trying way too hard to be cute (more likely). Either way, what’s the point? Just be professional.

Back at Home

• Isn’t it great to know that the DMCA has given corporations the right to write the laws which govern then? I certainly think it is.
• Aren’t you glad we live in a system where the Vice President exempts himself from disclosure rules by saying he is not a part of the Executive Branch?
• Did we win while they lost? If we is “the 75% of the country against the war” and they are “the Victory Caucus” then the answer is yes.
• Christians hate your booze.
• I’m sure this survey says something interesting: every single institution in American life is less trusted than a year ago—save Big Business and HMOs, which were already pretty hated anyway.
• Bush’s biggest crime isn’t wearing Crocs with socks; it is wearing Crocs at all. It should also be noted that Crocs originated in Boulder, where their ubiquity among the hippies and freshman was exceedingly painful. More here.

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That’s not even according to me, but instead an accusation leveled at The New York Times and The Washington Post by … wait for it … Reuters:

Hamas scores publicity coup in U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Shunned by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, the Islamist group Hamas scored a publicity coup this week by defending its policies in Gaza with opinion pieces in two of the country’s most influential newspapers on the same day.

The New York Times and The Washington Post gave space to Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas figure, on Wednesday to argue that the United States should not interfere in Gaza, where Hamas took control after six days of bloody fighting against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah fighters …

Hamas leaders rarely have access to major U.S. media to express their views unfiltered, and getting an opinion piece into the Times and the Post on the same day appeared unprecedented.

Both Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor and David Shipley, the Times’ deputy editorial page editor, said they would not have carried the articles had they known of the other paper’s publishing plans.

The Washington Post Op-Ed can be found here.

In light of some of the discussion that went on yesterday, it seemed important to note just how oblivious the MSM is to propaganda from anti-American forces. The Yousef essay is nothing more than sanitized apologia for the violent and repressive actions of Hamas. It’s true that playing host to diverse views is the job of the Op-Ed page, but one can only wonder to what avail when such pieces are merely a means to spread disinformation and vilify enemies. An even greater question arises when, as with the Yousef piece, that enemy is us.

Even Reuters found Yousef’s piece to be a bit over the top with it’s slant:

Neither op-ed piece mentioned what the United States, Europe and Israel see as the key obstacle to dealing with Hamas: its refusal to recognize Israel and a world view of Jewish conspiracies and domination laid out in the organization’s charter.

You can find some more breakdown of the Hamas Op-Ed here; round-up here.

One last bit of advice for the NYT and WaPo: when Reuters is accusing you all of helping terrorist organizations land a “publicity coup” maybe it’s time you took a little stock of the situation. Remember, admitting that you need help is the first step.

Technorati Tags: Media bias, New York Times, Washington Post, Hamas, Fatah, Palestinians, Ahmed Yousef, middle east, propaganda

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I think the trio of Hersh, Fisk and Crooke might best be termed an axis of bias.
– Stephen Pollard, The Spectator Blog

I’ve never been a fan of Seymour Hersh, and am somewhat mystified as to why he’s considered such a great reporter. Sure he uncovered the My Lai massacre and cover-up, but he’s been resting on his laurels since then. Many consider him to be an authoritative source for matters military and covert. I basically consider him a sensationalist. Stephen Pollard reveals why he thinks Hersh and his ideological brethren should be deemed the “axis of bias” (HT: Sully):

Emmanuel Sivan (professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has an analysis in Haaretz of the origins of Hersh’s ludicrous allegation that the Bush administration, “embracing realpolitik, was siding with the Sunnis in their conflict with the Shi’ites. This led the administration to cooperate even with those who are hostile toward the United States, including groups linked to Al-Qaida. To back up his claim, Hersh wrote that the United States was transferring funds to the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, even though it knew some of the money was going to the Palestinian group Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon.”

According to Sivan, “sharp-eyed reporters in Lebanon were quite shocked at Hersh’s revelations so they started checking it out. What did they discover? Sivan again:

Hersh said he heard the story from Robert Fisk, the bureau chief of The Independent’s Beirut office. But Hersh did not check out the story himself. For his part, Fisk said he heard the unconfirmed report from Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent and the founding director and Middle East representative of the Conflicts Forum, a non-profit organization that aims to build a new relationship between the West and the Muslim world. Crooke, who gained his reputation through his involvement in the conflict in northern Ireland, does not know Arabic. When Lebanese journalists spoke to Crooke about the report, they said he told them only that he had heard it “from all kinds of people.”

Again, why anyone listens to Hersh is beyond me.

Technorati Tags: Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, Alastair Crooke, Lebanon, Iraq, Middle East politics, Sunni Shi’ite tensions, media bias, unsourced reporting

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McQ catches Speaker Pelosi touting increased aid to veterans, highlighted with picture of soldier … a Canadian soldier.

Seriously folks, if you can’t tell ‘em apart, just keep your yap shut.

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Yep, there were valid reasons for investigating the CIA in the 70’s. I think the direction the agency went after those investigations and the resulting oversight and laws put on them, was overly reliant on technology, and less on getting eyes, ears and brains on the ground where they could learn about what was going on. But, then when their main foes were large states, such as Russia and China, one can argue that what we needed to know most from them were where their troops, tanks, planes and missles were.

Well, BIG news today as the CIA has published “The Family Jewels.”

CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s “Skeletons” File, Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975, With White House Memcons on Damage Control

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA’s illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973–the so-called “family jewels.” Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called today’s release “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency.”

“This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency,” commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive’s director.

I can only imagine the rush of boomers searching these documents for their names…

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Bill Roggio has an excellent synopsis of the scope of the current operations.

Basically, anywhere the enemy has previously had a safe-haven is now being squeezed, either with the large scale operations in and around Baghdad, or smaller intelligence directed missions elsewhere.

Operation Phantom Thunder, the name of the overarching operation to secure the Baghdad Belts, is now in its fifth day. As noted yesterday, Phantom Thunder is a corps-level operation, with multiple U.S. and Iraqi divisions engaged on multiple fronts. Iraqi Security Forces and Multinational Forces Iraq are engaged in intense fights in four main theaters: Baghdad proper, and the belts regions consisting of Diyala and southern Salahadin provinces to the north, northern Babil province to the south, and eastern Anbar province to the west of Baghdad. The fighting has been the most intense in the city of Baqubah, the provincial capital of Diyala.

The concurrent operations in each theater have been named in most cases. Operation Arrowhead Ripper, managed by Multinational Division North is underway in Baqubah and greater Diyala province. Multinational Division Central is running two operations: Operation Marne Torch southwest of Baghdad and Operation Commando Eagle to the southeast. The current operation in eastern Anbar, managed by Multinational Forces West has not yet been named. Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (otherwise known as the Baghdad Security Plan), which officially kicked off in mid-February, is managed by Multinational Division Baghdad and the Iraqi Baghdad Operational Command.

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• Follow up to the story on the pathetic number of fluents in Arabic currently stationed at the Baghdad Vatican-Embassy (and shame on me for not noticing this): the 3/3 proficiency level is virtually useless—both because it is not advanced enough for technical or legal matters, and it of a sort not actually spoken in Iraq.

Around the World

• China cut rebates on some export sectors, slightly reducing its trade subsidies. It still has that nasty problem of child slavery to contend with, but who knows—maybe we’ll be so busy driving the new Everest Highway next year we’ll forget to ask about it.
• I am deeply sympathetic to the cause of overthrowing tyranny around the world. However, my reason for no longer advocating it in quite the same way relates to a more practical matter than stability: resources. We don’t have the resources, whether people money or equipment, to invade and topple every nasty leader on the planet. The world combined might, but the world combined doesn’t care. So we’re left caring very deeply about the oppressed, but mostly impotent in terms of solutions.
• Strikes over gas prices and a nasty insurgency have had the effect of raising the price of oil. Ironic.
• Though officially speech is restricted, the blogosphere in Kazakhstan is vibrant and lively. What’s better is, there’s no active crackdown on it, either. This leaves me with hope for Kazakhstan, that maybe, once Uncle Nazzy kicks it, the country might slowly normalize itself.

Back at Home

• If Bush’s presidency were defined by his vetoes… well, I wouldn’t want that legacy.
• A fascinating look at the history of gays in the military—to be distinguished, apparently, from the infamous Monty Python skit Swanning About by Numbers.
• Are Romney supporters easily impressed by old web tech? Yeah. But so is everyone else. Argh. Is it 2009 yet?
• This look at Google’s Greenness reveals a fundamental misconception about environmentalism: profit. For too many, environmental protection is equated with anti-capitalism, and thus see profiting from the practice as somehow “impure,” or immoral. In reality, there is not only nothing wrong with profiting from environmental preservation and green measures, it is the only way to ensure other companies will adopt the practice on a permanent basis. If there is more money to be made through being green, more companies will be green. So what if it isn’t for anti-profit, altruistic reasons? The result is the same.

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Send a letter of support to
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/06/roundtable_with.html

GRIM: Is there anything that you and your Marines need that we could send you?

COL. SIMCOCK: (Chuckles.) I’ll tell you what, the one thing that all Marines want to know about — and that includes me and everyone within Regimental Combat Team 6 — we want to know that the American public are behind us. We believe that the actions that we’re taking over here are very, very important to America. We’re fighting a group of people that, if they could, would take away the freedoms that America enjoys.

If anyone — you know, just sit down, jot us — throw us an e- mail, write us a letter, let us know that the American public are behind us. Because we watch the news just like everyone else. It’s broadcast over here in our chow halls and the weight rooms, and we watch that stuff, and we’re a little bit concerned sometimes that America really doesn’t know what’s going on over here, and we get sometimes concerns that the American public isn’t behind us and doesn’t see the importance of what’s going on. So that’s something I think that all Marines, soldiers and sailors would like to hear from back home, that in fact, yes, they think what we’re doing over here is important and they are in fact behind us.

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Well, all the attention crashed their web servers, so they’ve hosted the simulation on YouTube.

I must say I’m impressed with the animation. You can certainly see why a collapse was near inevitable with what looks like 1/3 of the major inner columns destroyed or damaged. And this story makes me wonder how some “Truthers” are handling the “fact” that fire couldn’t have possibly melted or deformed structural steel.

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Gee, parts of N’Awlins are still under sea level (and unlikely to change.) You would think the above headline was a given.

And why does it NOT surprise me that what the local leaders were most concerned about…

As part of the report, the corps plans to make available a Web site that allows New Orleans residents to study the city on a block-by-block basis, and learn what kind of damage they might expect with different kinds of storms. As a result, it could potentially lead insurers and investors to think twice about supporting the rebuilding efforts in particularly vulnerable areas, or even in the city as a whole. But it also shows that some areas are less vulnerable than earlier thought.

Major General Don Riley, the head of civil works for the corps, said in an interview that local leaders were initially wary of the report and how it would be used, and some said, “Oh, boy, I’m not sure we can do this – because we’re trying to get people to move back in.” But, he said, “after we worked with them and showed them, they said, ‘This can really be a good tool for planning.’ ”

The new report, more than a year behind schedule and still a work in progress, is an enormously ambitious attempt to figure out just how risky it is to live in New Orleans.

Some of the risk has clearly been reduced, largely because of the construction of enormous gates across the mouths of the city’s three main drainage canals. In other parts of the greater New Orleans area, where the hurricane protection system was restored but not upgraded in a major way, the probability of damage does not shift nearly as much.

Seems it’s a constant fact of life that safety will be shorted in the name of economic progress after major disasters. From the great quake and firestorm in San Francisco, all the way up to present day.

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According to the current headlines, (see below the fold,) the only thing worth mentioning in Iraq, is a suicide bomber that killed 13. Gee, I wonder what Michael Yon and Bill Roggio are getting all worked about then. I mean, it’s only being described as the biggest offensive operation since the spring of 2003. But, I guess, when you’re relying on Iraqi stringers, or worse, what you see out your hotel window in the green zone, you’re going to miss stuff like this…

Four days after the announcement of major offensive combat operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and its allies, the picture becomes clearer on the size and scope of the operation. In today’s press briefing, Rear Admiral Mark noted that the ongoing operation is a corps directed and coordinated offensive operation. This is the largest offensive operation since the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom ended in the spring of 2003.

The corps level operation is being conducted in three zones in the Baghdad Belts — Diyala/southern Salahadin, northern Babil province, and eastern Anbar province — as well as inside Baghdad proper, where clearing operations continue in Sadr City and the Rashid district. Iraqi and Coalition forces are now moving into areas which were ignored in the past and served as safe havens for al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent groups. As the corps level operation is ongoing, Coalition and Iraqi forces are striking at the rogue Iranian backed elements of Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army and continuing the daily intelligence driven raids against al Qaeda’s network nationwide.

UPDATE: To give some context on the area of operations…

Here is the current area of operations as detailed by Bill Roggio.

Here is Iraq, with the AO in red, and where the majority of violence has been occuring outlined in blue. You’ll also notice the 2 spots in the south, which are detailed in this NYT article as receiving military attention as well.

So it would seem, we are concentrating our efforts on where most of the violence is, and where most of the terrorists and insurgents are. We’ve made a very large ring around the city, an area roughly 8000 square miles. Thats about the size of New Jersey. (Updated to take into acct Najaf.)

Update II: One of the leads on the Time’s website: Turning on al-Qaeda in Baquba (H/T Hotair)

The news from the battle was good. That was no surprise: in a war like guerrilla war like Iraq, every engagement that can be described as a “battle” is inevitably won by the superior force, which is part of the frustration. Baquba, the capital of Diyala province just northeast of Baghdad, had been infiltrated by al-Qaeda over the past year—between 400 and 500 al-Qaeda fighters were estimated to be in the city when the U.S. forces attacked on Monday, and now those who remain are surrounded, in a slowly tightening cordon. These sorts of operations have taken place multiple times in multiple cities during this war, to little effect—usually the terrorists slip away, as they did in Falluja in 2004, only to turn up elsewhere. That may well happen again this time. But there is one promising development in Baquba.

A lieutenant colonel named Bruce Antonia told Odierno about preparing to attack the Buhritz neighborhood a few nights earlier when he was approached by local Sunni inusurgents—members, they said, of the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades—who were streaming out of the neighborhood. “They said they’d been fighting al-Qaeda but had run out of ammunition and asked us to supply them. We told them, ‘Show us where AQ is and we’ll fight them.’” The insurgents did and the neighborhood was cleared.

A second lieutenant colonel named Avanulis Smiley picked up the story from there, “Sir, they’ve also showed us seven buried IED sites. They gave us specific information—description of the houses, gate color, tree trunks.”

After the briefing I asked Colonel Antonia if he’d asked the Sunnis why they had turned against al-Qaeda. “They said it was religious stuff,” he said. “AQI demanded that the women wear abayas, no smoking and they preached an extreme version of Islam in the mosque. They’d also spent the winter without food and fuel because of the violence al-Qaeda was causing. One guy said to me, ‘We fought against you because you invaded our country and you’re infidels. But you treat us with more dignity than al-Qaeda,’ and he said they’d continue to work with us. I’ve been involved in many operations here and this is a first—usually everybody’s shooting at us. This is the first time we’ve had any of them on our side.” (In web postings, the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade has denied it is cooperating with the Americans.)

Headlines on AP/Yahoo right at this moment…
(more…)

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense:

• Ever wanted to know what a budget “free fall” looks like? here.
• The increased use of biometrics in Iraq is, like all things, a double-edged sword: it’s great to be able to identify certain militants, but it’s unclear it will be comprehensive enough to weed them out of the population without angering the locals into rebelling again. Still, this seems like a reasonable way of getting around the depressing “they all look alike” complaints I hear from OIF vets back here.
• The Army is withdrawing 20 helicopters (a mixture of Chinooks and Blackhawks) from Afghanistan. This is enough to put a serious dent in ISAF and NATO operations. How pathetic! Not only are the other countries involved just not interested in using their own equipment to do the job (except for Spain, which is sending two Cougars), but our equipment is so spare we can’t afford to rotate out combat vehicles. Seriously, this is pathetic, and further evidence that Afghanistan is so critically underfunded we might as well pack up and go home.
• Meanwhile, David Axe shares my desire to travel into dangerous areas for reporting. Only, instead of just looking at combat, I would want to embed with locals, in Taliban territory—get their stories, their opinions, and their perceptions out there.
• Yes, Britain joins the illustrious list of countries using military service as a vehicle for getting bizzay (it’s better than “Army of One”), but what fascinates me is, they have an option where you can text the MoD for information about signing up. That’s crazy.
• JEIDDO has managed to reduce the number of casualties per IED blast, but the number of blasts has increased so much the same number of people are wounded and killed. Again: you don’t “solve” IEDs, you change the reasons why people would want to use them.

Around the World

• What? The French shouldn’t use their crackberries because the NSA might hear them? You know they can listen through windowpanes (possibly from orbit), and view computer monitors through walls, right?
• Sierra Leone might finally start seeing some justice.
• Bride-napping, popularized by Borat’s attempt at Pamela Anderson’s honor, has become a hot topic in Kyrgyzstan.
• Meanwhile, ol’ Uncle Berdi is making waves with his low-key visit to Tehran.
• A more in depth look at the failed states index, and what it might mean about Central Asia.
• If my Russian were better, I’d so volunteer for the ESA space lab thingy.

Back at Home

• I’d also work for the Smithsonian, if I could retire in luxury after resigning in disgrace.
• Medical Marijuana can go somewhere that isn’t New England, thank you very much.
• I think they were saying, “Boo-urns.”
• Did you know Iraq and the housing bubble are the same?
• Supposing I ever go on another cruise, I now know how to properly smuggle booze. Or, I could do what I normally do, and make my grandma pay for it.

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For all you Star Wars geeks out there…

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You’ll laugh! You’ll Cry! You’ll kiss 10 minutes good-bye!

But you’ll mostly laugh. Enjoy, the latest episode of “The Ratings Always Drop Twice: The Return of Inspector Rather.”

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Probably the most confounding thing about the majority of modern journalists is their unsupportable claim to objectivity. They hold themselves out as above the fray, elusively detached from the world around them except as impartial observers designated to convey the “facts.” Writers’ determination to be uninvolved with the subjects of their stories and to restrain themselves from behaving in a manner that would alter the course of the events the reporters are covering is chalked up to an inviolable “journalistic duty.” Of such paramount importance is this duty that two former giants in the field declared they would not warn our soldiers of an impending attack should the intrepid newsmen be lucky enough to be covering the story in the company of our enemy (subscription link here; excerpt from Armed Liberal):

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening’s panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to “Roll tape!” as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t,” he finally said. “I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.” Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.

Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. “But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That’s purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction.” Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. “I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover.” “I am astonished, really,” at Jennings’s answer, Wallace said moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American”-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.” Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!” Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. “I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror.

That was from a roundtable discussion in 1987, but things have not changed much in the world of the mainstream media, although some independents are trying.

I noted the L.A. Times article on Michael Yon, and the author’s (and, to be honest, most of the audience’s) distaste for Yon’s not-well-considered actions in picking up a rifle and attempting to get involved in a firefight. What journalist would do anything like that?
What journalist would have, as the writer put it,

…ignored the barriers that traditionally separated the press from its subjects. He openly rooted for soldiers and helped them collect the wreckage after roadside bombings.

Well, I suppose you have to admire the devotion to impartiality exhibited here, eh? A willingness to divorce oneself from the vagaries of the world to such a degree as to leave one without a national allegiance of any sort must be a difficult way to go through life. We should all be awed by the sacrifice of such brave men and women.

Or not.

Did a liberal television network correspondent cause the 2000 Florida recount debacle?

When all eyes were on Florida and it wasn’t looking good for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, his campaign was warned by a senior network correspondent that conceding on Election Night would be a bad idea. That intervention stopped Gore from conceding the election according to a top Democratic strategist.

Interviewing Shrum about his new book, titled No Excuses, CNN host Howard Kurtz brought up Shrum’s revelation that he was warned by a “senior network correspondent” to stop Al Gore from giving his planned concession speech on the night of the 2000 election.

“A senior network correspondent, you said, called you and warned, ‘The Florida numbers are wrong. Don’t let him concede.’”

Shrum confirmed: “Someone I knew … I think this happened not only with me, someone else called Carter Eskew and, who was in a different place than I was at that point.”

So warning a Presidential candidate that conceding the election at at the time might be hasty: A-OK in the book of journalism.

Warning American soldiers they’re about to be ambushed by the enemy: serious dereliction of “journalistic duty!”

And if you didn’t have enough contempt for journalists already, Shrum waves off any objection to the journalistic intervention perpetrated during the 2000 presidential election with this howler:

I don’t, I don’t, I actually think that if the situations had been reversed, there would have been correspondents who would have called the Bush campaign and said, “The numbers are wrong, don’t let him concede, you shouldn’t concede,” something like that. I don’t think it was in the nature of giving advice, actually.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s how it would have worked out. [/sarcasm]

MORE: Gateway Pundit highlights how European Media bias serves to foster anti-Americanism there.

Technorati Tags: 2000 Election, Michael Yon, Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, war reporting, media bias, Bob Shrum, Al Gore, George Bush

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Defense

• The Vatican-embassy in Baghdad is too understaffed and too restricted to be useful, Ambassador Crocker told SecState Rice. He said we are either at war or we are not at war, and the priorities of the Department must reflect that. Naturally, he’ll be ignored.
• Taxi to the Darkside, a documentary about the “accidental” death of an innocent man under torture in Bagram prison in Afghanistan, certainly looks haunting from the trailer. I eagerly await seeing it.
• News of a hotline between the DoD and the Chinese MoD is certainly welcome, but the accompanying image makes it priceless. “Umm, hello, hello Dmitri?” lulz.
• An intense video of some of the scarier aspects of military R&D. Not sure the Diesel Boy soundtrack (at least, that’s who it sounds like) was necessary, but it’s totally Matrix-cool, which is to say, not very.
• An explosive quote from tonight’s Frontline report on Iraq: ‘”We never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option. We took down the regime, and we thought what we had to do then was occupy then country, stabilize it, and in the mater of a few months we could reduce the force,” says [former General Jack] Keane, the former Army Vice Chief of Staff and intellectual co-author of the current troop “surge.”‘ Hrm.
• Continuing to indicate John Robb’s inherent correctness about the changing state of terrorism, terrorists, superempowered non-state actors, and so on is this piece on for-profit terrorists. No, Blackwater is nowhere to be found.

Around the World

• The UNHRC continues its slide into pathetic irrelevance by ending permanent investigations of Cuba and Belarus. Castro and Lukashenko must be tickled pink. UNHRC are opting instead to “name and shame” countries year after year. No word yet on whether the number of condemnations of Israel will increase or decrease, or if they might bother to bring Uzbekistan back under scrutiny.
• The Taliban have overrun another town in Uruzgan. They also occupied a district in Kandahar, and to the best of my knowledge still control the town of Musa Qala. In other words, we are steadily losing ground.
• An amusing fit of empty symbolism: China plans to build a highway to their Everest Base Camp in time for the 2008 Olympics.
• Have the Somali insurgents gotten hold of advanced MANPADS? If so, it’s bad news bears.
• When has a country ever developed through aid? I dunno—ask Bono. End conspicuous compassion; begin actual compassion, yes?

Back at Home

• Kevin Drum on “free market follies.” He’s a bit wrong—student loans are hardly a free market—but his main point is right. The system is corrupt. As one caught up in it, I can attest to that. And I’m not looking forward to jumping back into yet more student debt in the future.
• Ms. Boyd continues to track down the major corporations receiving subsidies under the excretable Farm Bill.
• It’s almost as funny to hear Michael Moore describe the Pentagon as “only 5 stories high” and therefore impossible to ram with a jet unless you have “expertise” as it was to hear Rosie O’Donnell breathless declare that fire doesn’t steel. Since he was bragging about how often he’s filmed the Pentagon, Moore must be aware that is fracking gigantic, and remains to this day the world’s largest office building. I also like the idea of a man who is obsessed with having the government dictate to us what to eat, watch, and how to be healed thinks it may not be trustworthy in this one instance. But I like what a Reason commenter had to say: “I like his new hipster glasses. I bet he’ll be at the next Arcade Fire show.” LOL. Clown.
• Hillary Clinton picked Canadian Celine Dion for her theme song, because (I guess) she thinks an old smelly French lady won’t drive youth away from her. As usual, Wonkette gets it exactly right.
• The Bush Administration more or less wantonly disregards laws it finds inconvenient, a new GAO study says. Surprise Surprise.
• Planet Mantis, heyyy…

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General Petraeus gave an interview with Chris Wallace over at Fox News this Sunday. I can already imagine the vapors some people are getting into from reports such as this.

Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush’s new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied: “I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do.”

Of course, the General (IIRC) didn’t say things would be over by September, only that he was confident he would be able to give a realistic assessment of the progress of the new tactics by then. He was cautioning people, as he is still doing, not to prematurely judge our efforts there.

WALLACE: There are reports that you and General Odierno would like the surge to continue until at least early 2008, that if it’s going to work, it needs to continue into early next year. Is that true?

PETRAEUS: We’ve got a number of different options that we have looked at, Chris, and it really is premature at this point in time to try to prejudge that.

Again, I would suspect that late in the summer, early September, that we will provide some recommendations on the way ahead up our chain of command as well.

WALLACE: But you surely don’t think the job would be done by the surge by September, do you, sir?

PETRAEUS: I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do. The damage done by the sectarian violence in the fall and winter of 2006 and early 2007, as I mentioned, was substantial. And this is a tough effort.

WALLACE: So then it would be fair to assume that the enhanced troop levels would continue for some months after that and into 2008.

PETRAEUS: Chris, again, premature right now. A number of options out there. And not about to announce what we might do here today, I’m afraid.

WALLACE: Well, you can’t blame me for trying, sir. There are also some…

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: There are also some reports that you believe that we’re going to need at least 130,000 troops in Iraq through the end of 2008. Is that true?

PETRAEUS: Chris, there’s some wonderful mind-readers out there. I’d love to know who they are. But they seem to know what’s in my mind better than I do.

Again, our first focus is on doing all that we can as we’ve truly now launched the surge and we have some reasonable expectations for what we can achieve.

Beyond that, we will obviously provide that assessment in September along with, I would suspect, at that time some recommendations on the way ahead. But you’re looking out well beyond that, and we’re not prepared to address that yet.

WALLACE: Well, let me look out even further than that, General. Some administration officials have talked about needing to make — and basically squaring with the American public, saying, “Look, this is going to be a long-term commitment,” and even comparing it to the situation in South Korea, where we have had thousands of troops for decades.

Do you see this to stabilize and achieve what we want in Iraq as that kind of a long-term commitment?

PETRAEUS: Well, I think the real question, Chris, is at what level. I think just about everybody out there recognizes that a situation like this, with the many, many challenges that Iraq is contending with, is not one that’s going to be resolved in a year or even two years.

In fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years.

The question is, of course, at what level, how much will we have to continue to contribute during that time, how much more can the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government pick up as this goes along. And I think that’s the real question. And I’m not sure what the right analogy is, whether it’s Korea or what have you.

I think all that the folks in Washington were trying to indicate by that was that there is some possibility of some form of long-term security arrangement over time.

And I think in general that that’s probably a fairly realistic assessment, assuming that the Iraqi government, in fact, does want that to continue. And of course, it is very much up to them, and their sovereignty is paramount in all of this.

So, we may be there for years. But as always, it is what level of violence we face that will determine public opinion about the mission. If the level of violence is low, and progress is being made, America will shuffle behind the effort, except for the die hard “anti-war”, anti-Bush ideologues.

And yes, Petraeus, consistent with earlier statements, only now feels like the operation is beginning. All the pieces are in place, and some major operations are beginning.

WALLACE: This week you finally got your full complement of forces in Iraq. How is the surge working so far? And to some degree, do you feel as if the operation is only now beginning?

PETRAEUS: We actually do. In fact, a lot of what we have done to this point has been so-called shaping operations for what we have just recently launched in the last 48 hours and some additional operations that we’ll launch over the next 48 or so hours.

That’s not to say that we have not used those forces as they have come in, but we just recently got the fifth and final Army surge brigade, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, and our combat aviation brigade, which add considerable combat power.

And they are enabling us now to launch operations into sanctuaries, areas in which we have had very little coalition force presence other than raids in recent years.

These are areas where Al Qaeda has established car bomb factories and other bases from which they have issued forth and then moved into Baghdad to attack targets, often indiscriminately.

Operations such as the following, which Michael Yon writes about in his latest dispatch.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,284233,00.html

About 10,000 U.S. soldiers launched an offensive against Al Qaeda in Iraq northeast of Baghdad early Tuesday, killing at least 22 insurgents, the U.S. military said.

The raids, dubbed “Operation Arrowhead Ripper,” took place in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, and involved air assaults under the cover of darkness, the military said in a statement. The operation was still in its opening stages, it said.

Ten thousand U.S. soldiers were accompanied by attack helicopters, Strykers and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the statement said.

The operation was part of new U.S. and Iraqi attacks on Baghdad’s northern and southern flanks, aimed at clearing out Sunni insurgents, Al Qaeda fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation, military officials said.

A top U.S. military official said Monday that American forces were taking advantage of the arrival of the final brigade of 30,000 additional U.S. troops to open the concerted attacks.

And for an overview of the operations, there is this report from Bill Roggio…

With the last U.S. combat brigade to hit the ground over the last two weeks as part of the surge, Multinational Forces Iraq has declared the beginning of “major combat operations” in the belts regions surrounding Baghdad. The Baghdad Belts, which included Eastern Anbar, northern Babil, and southern Salahadin and Diyala provinces, has long been a staging area for al Qaeda and insurgent operations into Baghdad, and a key part of the Baghdad Security Plan is denying these regions to the enemy.

In the June 16 briefing given by Defense Robert Gates, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, General Petraeus explained that the past four months have set the stage for the “large, coordinated offensive operations” which kicked off over the weekend. The combat, logistics and intelligence pieces have been “put in place over the past several months,” while a clear intelligence picture was developed of the regions surrounding Baghdad. “We have been doing what we might call shaping operations in a lot of these different areas [in the belts], feeling the edges, conducting intelligence gathering, putting in special operators.”

The picture on the Battle of the Belts is still developing. Based on the available open source information, current operations are ongoing to the north, west and south of Baghdad. Multiple U.S. and Iraqi units are operating at the brigade and division level.

There is a lot going on right now. Until these large operations are over, expect US and Iraqi casualties to rise, as we will be in direct contact with the enemy. The enemy to fight back harder. The last throes of a dying animal, or enemy, are often the most viscous. Don’t expect to make sense of it all, or to be able to judge how things are going by any reports from here through September.

UPDATE:

Confederate Yankee tells us something else we should expect:

The “Mahogany Ridge” media is tied up in the latest suicide bombing in Baghdad (simply look at the title, lede, and focus of the CNN article cited above as an example), and even those who chose to feature the Baquba assault clearly don’t understand the magnitude of the just-joined battle.

Once reality slowly dawns on the media that they are misunderestimating the scope and scale of the assault, steel yourself for a rush of inaccuracies as they seek to get something, anything published, much of it based upon rumor, some of it based upon outright propaganda and lies.

We saw the same during and after Fallujah, when the U.S. military was accused of using napalm on civilians. We don’t even have napalm.

The ignorati claimed that white phosphorus was a “chemical weapon,” of a “poison gas” and ascribed horrible wounds to it. These claims turned out to be completely untrue.

There may also once again be claims that using .50-caliber machine guns and the cannons of Bradley IFVs and helicopter gunships against terrorist personnel somehow violates the Geneva Conventions. It doesn’t.

This is one reason why I don’t read the mainstream media to find out about the war, lack of expertise. Just as I don’t read Home & Garden to find out about hot rodding, I choose to find out about military matters from people who’ve been there and done that.

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Defense

• Adaptability matters in guerilla conflict. That’s why I’m glad to see the DoD modifying COIN guidelines to make standard maneuvers more effective at combating the militants in Iraq.
• Remember that one time General Petraeus said we should wait until September to judge whether or not THE SURGE is working? I guess he meant September 2009. My bad.
• The newest priority at ODNI? Acquisition. While it is shocking, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. After all, DNI McConnell is a classic case of the revolving door, moving between higher and higher government positions and executive jobs at various contractors. He moved into ODNI after being in charge of Intelligence and National Security at Booz-Allen, and after running a lobbying group for intel contractors. That he has made utilizing intel contractors a new keystone of ODNI isn’t really out of character, though it is most certainly outrageous.
• From a new briefing by the Oxford Research Group: “Perhaps the most significant aspect of all of this is the extraordinary lack of understanding within the Bush administration of the impact of its policies in Iraq. For the administration and its supporters, it is utterly reasonable that the United States should occupy Iraq… There is simply no recognition that the view from across the Middle East, and indeed in large parts of the majority world, is of a form of overt imperialism backed up by the rigorous and uncompromising use of military force that has already resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people.” Read it in its entirety.

Around the World

• Four months in, the Agreed Framework 2.0 has still done nothing to “solve” the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. Still hotly debated is the order of responsibility for that piddling $25 million in Banco Delta Asia—were we to release it first, followed by the shutdown of Yongbyon, or was Yongbyon to be shut down before the money was released? This is all part of a larger grand financial strategy adopted under the PATRIOT ACT, which allows the Treasury Department to flag and essentially embargo foreign banks. I’m curious to know if it will be allowed to be effective—Kim Jong-il only returned to the negotiating table once his expensive toys were embargoed and his laundering fronts were frozen.
• I hate comparing the incident to Battlestar Galactica, but the bus bombing in Kabul yesterday was eerily reminiscent of a similar scene from the beginning of Season Three, in which the local “collaborator” police were targeted for a suicide bombing. Meanwhile, militants in Paktika province have taken to hiding behind children. That the children were killed in air strikes is unsurprising; it is an unwinnable situation for the Coalition, which is probably what the Taliban intended.
• I take a peek at Iran’s possible meddling in Afghanistan.
• Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, our new BFF for their invasion of Somalia, there is a nasty insurgency in the Ogaden, along with the accompanying accusations of brutality.
• Ahmed Rashid goes on and on about our not-so-good relationship with Pervez Musharraf. A more balanced take on why that relationship needs to change is in the newest Foreign Affairs (not yet online), by CFR scholar Daniel Markey. It’s worth a read.
• Via Passport comes this satellite’s-eye-view of villages in Darfur, before and after sweeps by the murderous janjaweed.
• The strange, insane world of Gulnara Karimova, and her tea-connection to Andijon. Also, does anyone know why Islam Karimov is still running Uzbekistan?
• Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index is out for 2007, and it’s mostly worth a read.
• Is Bono an enemy of freedom? Well, kinda. And I thought that before he began demanding the middle class sacrifice for Africa by buying exciting novelty red iPods at full price. Because, SRSLY, what good is ending poverty if you can’t also listen to 1,000 songs in your pocket?
• The NYT has finally discovered the videogame sweatshops of East Asia.

Back at Home

• Reuters thinks Gore lost the 2004 election to George Bush.
• Cathy Young thinks we are weakened as a nation by using torture. I agree wholeheartedly. It was Abu Ghraib that made me reexamine my opinion and interpretation of Bush. As I have done so, both have deteriorated.
• Even Jim Gilmore now is parting ways with the President over Iraq.
• The cops can’t even get the right house if they investigate it for a month.
• I wonder if my brother in law is one of those 300,000 people awaiting the pleasure of the FBI to become a citizen. He has lived here well over 10 years, and has been married to my sister for several. He teaches high school German and is still a citizen of Germany; after two years still cannot become naturalized. How pathetic on our part.
• California is a proto-fascist state.
• My G-D DID HE JUST COMPARE PARIS HILTON TO JESUS???!?
• In case you’re wondering why our children are turning into cold, affectionless achievement bots, look no further than my own Fairfax County, and its hatred of affection. Ugh. Since when did the school system that served me so well I hated it turn into a fascist monster?

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“Kyoto, we have a problem.”

Few things annoy me more than the modern Lysenkoism of Anthropogenic Global Warming^TM and its rapturous congregation who viciously condemn any who dare challenge their scriptures. Each day it seems that we are bombarded with yet more bald-faced propaganda designed to scare us (and especially our children) into submission to the will of the environmental elite. These mullahs of climate change brook no dissension amongst their ranks, and harbor no compunction against destroying their enemies, by whatever means necessary. The Grand Imam himself jets around the world, in seeming hypocrisy, to deliver the message that the planet is doomed at the hands of evil capitalist oppressors unless we submit to the daily regimen prescribed for us at the site of his own personal Night Flight, and embodied in the Kyoto Protocol.

But lately, it seems, the dissenting voices have grown stronger. More and more scientists are speaking up about the corrupted process that went into the IPCC report on climate change, the infamous Stern Report was rather openly challenged, and “An Inconvenient Truth” was widely panned. Huzzah! I say. “It’s about time,” says I. Not that I have any real doubt that the Earth is getting warmer, but I’m not at all confident that humans can, much less are, causing said warming. And then today I read that, perhaps, we aren’t even warming:

Remember in January when the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its good friends in media trumpeted that 2006 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States?

NOAA based that finding – which allegedly capped a nine-year warming streak “unprecedented in the historical record” – on the daily temperature data that its National Climatic Data Center gathers from about 1,221 mostly rural weather observation stations around the country.

Few people have ever seen or even heard of these small, simple-but-reliable weather stations, which quietly make up what NOAA calls its United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN).

But the stations play an important role in detecting and analyzing regional climate change. More ominously, they provide the official baseline historical temperature data that politically motivated global-warming alarmists like James Hansen of NASA plug into their computer climate models to predict various apocalypses.

The information gathered from those 1,221 weather observation bases provide the basis for claiming that the Earth is warming, and according to the AGM faithful, at an alarming rate. According to people like Hansen, these weather stations “have been providing reliable temperature data since at least 1900.”

But Anthony Watts of Chico, Calif., suspects NOAA temperature readings are not all they’re cracked up to be. As the former TV meteorologist explains on his sophisticated, newly hatched Web site surfacestations.org, he has set out to do what big-time armchair-climate modelers like Hansen and no one else has ever done – physically quality-check each weather station to see if it’s being operated properly.

To assure accuracy, stations (essentially older thermometers in little four-legged wooden sheds or digital thermometers mounted on poles) should be 100 feet from buildings, not placed on hot concrete, etc. But as photos on Watts’ site show, the station in Forest Grove, Ore., stands 10 feet from an air-conditioning exhaust vent. In Roseburg, Ore., it’s on a rooftop near an AC unit. In Tahoe, Calif., it’s next to a drum where trash is burned.

Watts, who says he’s a man of facts and science, isn’t jumping to any rash conclusions based on the 40-some weather stations his volunteers have checked so far. But he said Tuesday that what he’s finding raises doubts about NOAA’s past and current temperature reports.

“I believe we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment.”

You have to see the pictures to understand exactly how useless some of the stations appear to be, such as this one surrounded by asphalt and air conditioners. Those of you who approach this story with a libertarian bent, will of course have no problem understanding how such incompetence could be allowed not only to form the basis of scientific studies but to also be one of the driving forces behind AGM and the draconian policies being pushed by its adherents.

What will be really interesting is to see how this is explained away by Al Gore and his disciples. Will they loudly shout down and seek to excommunicate the whistle-blowers in this story (much like the slanderous machinations used against Bjørn Lomborg), or will they studiously ignore the challenge, chalking it up to radical skeptics (as was done to those who pointed to flaws in the famous “Hockey Stick” graph)? Whatever is done, if the crux of this story is true in that the temperatures relied upon to demonstrate a dramatic heating of the Earth are completely unreliable, then we may yet see the remaining pillars holding up the science of AGM collapse beneath the Gorites like brittle ice from under the feet of castaway polar bears.

It will be sweet.

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Is it really any mystery? The Senate Majority Leader is nothing more than a partisan hack who is solely interested in keeping power firmly in the hands of the Democrats. (Supposedly for the wonderful perks.) He is the spearhead for no real legislative issues or causes to speak of, and does not seem to be the least bit concerned about his country or the matters that most affect the people (you know, the ones whose business is supposedly being conducted by Congress). Instead, Reid rather slavishly promotes the agenda of those whom he has deemed will help the Democrats stay on top, no matter what the consequences for our nation as a whole, much less the troops in theater.

On that last point, Harry Reid again took aim at Gen. Petraeus, this time out in the open for all to hear, essentially calling the leader of our forces in Iraq a liar (my emphasis):

The Senate majority leader took aim yesterday at the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who until now has received little criticism from Capitol Hill over his statements or performance.

Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charged that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command in Iraq four months ago, “isn’t in touch with what’s going on in Baghdad.” He also indicated that he thinks Petraeus has not been sufficiently open in his testimony to Congress. Noting that Petraeus, who is now on his third tour of duty in Iraq, oversaw the training of Iraqi troops during his second stint there, Reid said: “He told us it was going great; as we’ve looked back, it didn’t go so well.”

As Bill Ardolino notes, Reid claiming that Petraeus is out of touch with what’s going in Baghdad is beyond ridiculous:

Harry Reid considers himself more “in touch with what’s going on in Baghdad” than Petraeus? Beyond the mindblowing, bizarro hubris of such an assertion, this comment is made sinister or incompetent by the fact that Reid misrepresents the meaning of Petraeus’s comments …

Ardolino goes on to point out that Reid is calling Petraeus a liar by conflating what the General has to say about the state of Baghdad with what’s going on the whole of Iraq:

A. Petraeus was talking about Baghdad proper, which has indeed earned a bit of a breather as much insurgent activity has shifted to areas immediately surrounding the capital.

B. Petraeus was “astonish[ed at] signs of normalcy” because of the conditionally noted violence surrounding (in both time and now close geography) said normalcy.

C. Petraeus hasn’t sugarcoated (much) his carefully equivocal reports, making it a point to set realistic expectations and place the focus on the Iraqi political process.

Compounding Senator Reid’s latest attack is the fact that he’s declared the Surge a failure … days before the deployment of troops to support the strategy (much less the strategy itself) was completed.

Whether his aggressive stance winds up validated by unwritten events or not, his timing is objectively incorrect. On intellectual, political and nakedly cynical grounds, Senator Reid is a disgrace.

I’d go a bit further and call Reid a national embarrassment on every ground. As I said before, his only apparent concern is retaining power. Accordingly, he sees no downside to denigrating our commander in the field since he does not want to win in Iraq, is blithely uninterested in Iraq achieving any sense of political stability, and firmly ensconced in a fantasy world where “if we ignore the terrorists, they will go away” is not just a mantra, its a motto.

His fellow travelers are equally unconcerned about the consequences of undermining Petraeus. For example, in the view of Hollywood progressive Miles Mogulescu, Petraeus needs to be taken down a notch or two because he is just too revered by the rightwing dead-enders, and he really can’t be trusted to give an honest assessment of the “surge” anyway:

Republicans have been portraying Gen. David Petraeus as an almost God-like figure, the man who will carry finally lead an American victory in Iraq and, come September, will report back on the progress brought by the “surge” he advocated and is in charge of. Congressional Republicans constantly repeat that Gen. Petraeus’s report in September will be the key to their decision on whether to continue to support unlimited funding of the Iraq War or to join Democrats in calling for a phased withdrawal.

[...]

White House spokesman Tony Snow attacked Reid saying “at a time of war, for a leader of a party that says it supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward…the man who’s responsible for the bulk of military operations in Iraq.” But by making Petraeus the man whose word in September will be the deciding factor in their decision on whether to support further unlimited funding of the Iraq war or to join Democrats in supporting a phased withdrawal, Republicans have turned Petraeus’s credibility into fair game. If his depictions of progress this week are contradicted by the Pentagon and his own generals, why should his word in September be the primary factor in evaluating the success of the “surge”?

Does anyone really think that the General who devised the strategy for the “surge” and led its implementation is going to come back in September and say “I made a mistake. The surge is a failure. 1,000 more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqi’s have died for my mistake.” Come September, he is almost certain to report a mixture of good and bad news and say he needs more time.

Notice how this is just a political game to Mogulescu. If the Republicans hadn’t been so gung-ho about Petraeus leading the “surge”, and announced their intention to rely upon his assessment of the situation in Iraq in deciding on funding of the war, then presumably Reid’s comments would be out of bounds. Nevermind the fact that it was Harry Reid himself who declared “listen to the generals”, which is just what the Republicans are saying that they’ll do. Just disregard the fact that of anyone in Iraq, Petraeus will be the best position to comprehend what effect, if any, the surge is having. And please ignore the facts that the Iraqis and the U.N. Security Council have agreed to extend the stay of our troops, declaring it to be in the best interests of the nation. No, what matters more than any of that is Harry Reid’s assessment of Petraeus’ credibility, which he apparently deemed non-existent some time ago (although after confirming the General’s appointment). In Mogulescu’s world, if the Republicans are behind him, then he deserves to be torn down.

Gen. Petraues may be a distinguished soldier. But so was Gen. Douglas McArthur who was relieved of his command of the Korean War by Pres. Harry Truman for insubordination. So was Gen. William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, under whose command, the American military “won every battle until it lost the war” and who was relieved of his command by Lyndon Johnson after the Tet Offensive turned the American people against the Vietnam War. If Gen. Petreaus is to join Pres. Bush as the “decider” for Congressional Republicans on their future support of the Iraq War, then his credibility is very much an issue.

Funny how Mogulescu doesn’t mention any other cases where a Congressional leader openly called the leader of our troops in theater a liar. Could you imagine if FDR or Truman had challenged the credibility of Eisenhower during WWII? Would anyone in the country or amongst our allies in Europe have stood for that? I think not.

I also love the comment about “the Tet Offensive turn[ing] the American people against the Vietnam War.” How did that happen again? Using a well-known case of propaganda demoralizing our military efforts, so much so that we eventually quit the fight altogether, is supremely ironic. Do Reid and Mogulescu want the same thing here? Apparently so.

I don’t know what the precedence is for replacing the Senate Majority Leader in the middle of a term, and just months after taking control of the legislative body, but perhaps its time for the Democrats to explore setting one.

(HT: for everything to Confederate Yankee).

Technorati Tags: Harry Reid, Gen. David Petraeus, War in Iraq, Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite

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To all of you fathers out there raising your kids, here’s wishing you a happy Father’s Day. Now that I too am a father, I have a much greater appreciation for the devotion it takes. So, in partial payment of the incredible debt due to the man who helped raise me, the only hero I’ve ever had, I want to describe how proud I am of my own dad. First, some background. (more…)

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• A damning graph of violence in Iraq since the surge began. Growing pains, or signs of impending failure?
• The Air Force is tracking aggressive “sounding” of IT infrastructure from China, leading them to suspect China is busy developing its cyberwarfare capability. Luckily, they’ve had Cisco and Yahoo’s help.
• The Arms Control Wonk has more on the missiles-for-Azerbaijan deal.
• Time does something useful for once: an interview with an IED-maker in Iraq. As John Robb has posited, it is exactly along the lines of the open source war.

Around the World

• HAMAS executed a few dozen Fatah members, and in response the government in Gaza has been dismissed. At least this is actual combat, as compared to when they were bombing shopping malls. Still, I hope it ends (and did anyone else lol when they saw Hamas promise not to become like the Taliban?). Somehow Wonkette makes this hilarious.
• North Korea has taken to executing more cell phone users, most likely because cell phones allow contact with the outside world. I know I obsess over this, but there are some chilling videos. A 2005 CNN documentary, Undercover in the Secret State, happens to be on YouTube: , , and . I highly suggest watching them (note, too, the atrocious behavior of the UNHCR, which continues to do nothing to help refugees and defectors).
• Still more nastiness brewing in Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s two separatist provinces (and heavily influenced by a Russia eager to embarrass and beat down its uppity former vassal).
• I think this look at the disconnect between Afghanistan’s opium production and world demand makes one big mistake: while it’s true opium seems to be price inelastic, there is another possibility: what is global demand were improperly gauged? More ominously: what if opium, against intuition for other types of commodities, response to supply-side economics, rather than a classical demand-side model?
• Whoops—David Axe thinks we’re in the Third Afghan War, but we’re really in the Fifth (the third was fought with the British in 1919).
• The favorite language for Sudanese students? Chinese.
• Ms. Boyd on the continuing family saga of Uncle Nazzy and Rakhat Aliyev.
• Some folks in Venezuela have emailed me to say the students at government-controlled universities who were protesting Chavez were expelled.

Back at Home

• Dan Drezner hates economic illiteracy among the chattering classes. Hey, me too!
• The courts hate your privacy, unless I guess you want an abortion. The way the TorrentSpy case is evolving, though, can offer some useful guidelines for future services, and Google. And users, too (namely, be very aware of a site’s privacy policy).
• Whoops, the cops who murdered an old lady when they broke into the wrong house after lying to a judge to get a warrant are all in bad shape. And Atlanta has stopped abusing its citizens quite so much. Related: Balko asks: “how many other cops are fudging the numbers due to incentive systems that reward cops who make lots of arrests?” Indeed, we’d like to know that as well.

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Via Samizdata, it looks like it is much worse in Lebanon:

A Lebanese TV news presenter has been sacked over comments in which she gloated over the assassination of anti-Syrian politician Walid Eido.

The presenter, who has not been named, then went on to name a Lebanese MP who would be assassinated next.

She was unaware that her microphone was on and that the comments were being broadcast live.

Yeesh! Makes Rathergate seem pretty tame in comparison.

Technorati Tags: Media bias, Lebanon, Rathergate, Killian forgeries

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The liberal blogosphere pulls its best imitation of Sargent Schultz in failing to hear, much less report, on the severely irony-challenged statements of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a phone call with liberal bloggers, Harry Reid was reported to have referred to Generals Peter Pace and David Petraeus as “incompetent.”:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

Denials were immediately issued and the prevarications began:

But we’ve just spoken with three of the prominent liberal bloggers who say they were on the call, and they all say they don’t remember Reid saying anything like this. One flatly denies that he said it.

[...]

We asked Joan McCarter, who blogs at DailyKos under the name McJoan and wrote about being on the call here, if she recalled Reid calling Pace “incompetent.”

“I don’t remember him saying anything like that,” she answered. “I can’t swear he didn’t say it. But I have no memory that he actually did. It’s not in my notes.”

Asked if Reid had disparaged Petraeus at all, McCarter said: “No. He said something about [Petraeus] coming back in September to deliver a report.” But on the question of whether he’d said something disparaging, McCarter said: “Not that I recall, no.”

“I don’t even recall Pace’s name specifically being mentioned,” adds Barbara Morrill, who blogs at Kos under the name BarbinMD and says she was on the call. “If it was, he did not say that he was incompetent.”

Asked if he’d criticized Petraeus, Morrill said: “Not that I recall. I checked my notes,” and there was nothing like this. “He mentioned the report that Petraeus is supposed to be coming out in September. I only recall him saying something along the lines that the Bush administration had run the war poorly. Any criticisms were against the Bush administration.”

Finally, here’s what MyDD’s Jonathan Singer, who wrote about the call here, told us: “I don’t remember him calling Pace incompetent.” He added that while he couldn’t promise that he hadn’t done it, “I just don’t recall those statements.”

Later, Greg Sargent followed up with more denials:

Okay, we’ve just spoken to two more bloggers who were on the conference call with Harry Reid.

John Aravosis, who founded and runs the popular AmericaBlog, and Joe Sudbay, a D.C. political strategist who also writes for AmericaBlog, told me in interviews that say they don’t remember Reid describing General Pace as incompetent or hear Reid disparaging Petraeus, as The Politico is reporting.

“I don’t remember him saying this,” Aravosis told us when asked about the assertion that Reid had called Paced “incompetent.”

Sudbay, meanwhile, added: “If he had said something really juicy, we would have posted that ourselves.”

Afterwards, not only did an audio tape of the conversation emerge, Reid admitted to making the statements as alleged:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is “incompetent.”

Reid acknowledged similarly disparaging Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.

But Reid, whose comments to bloggers first appeared in The Politico, also told reporters: “I think we should just drop it.”

Captain Ed added:

I’ll bet he does. I’ll bet Greg Sargent thinks so as well. How could all of the bloggers who sat on this call miss this quote, and then so vociferously deny Reid said it? I’d say they all owe Bresnahan an apology. (h/t: CQ readers Del Dolemonte and Steven Den Beste)

My question is, how is it that none of the bloggers on the call heard this statement? How can it be that every single person that Greg Sargent contacted about this could deny such statements? Could it possibly be that even the netroots nutballs who participated in this call understand the ramifications of the Senate Majority Leader calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “incompentent”? Perhaps they know just how demoralizing and contrary to American interests it is to referring to the current leader or our armed forces in Iraq by “similarly disparaging” remarks? Can anyone with an ounce of honesty deny that the participants on this call knew just how perfidious Reid’s statements were, so much so that they denied, to a blogger, that Reid made the statements he did?

To be honest, I feel bad for Sargent who quite diligently, and honestly, tracked down the story. He was burned by his interviewees who quite obviously lied about what they heard and reported. Accordingly, it’s difficult to understand why Sargent would provide just a transcript of the audio-taped conversation (promising not to post the actual tape), as well as why he would try to minimize Reid’s statements:

Okay, as we noted below, we’ve been trying to find out as much as possible about the conference call that Harry Reid held with liberal bloggers that’s created so much noise today.

Now we’ve obtained a tape of the relevant chunk of the call. Reid did call Pace “incompetent,” so The Politico story was factually right about that. But the context does raise questions about whether its placement and headline were overblown.

Seriously? The context explains it all? I’ be more sympathetic to the notion if it weren’t for the fact that every person contacted by Sargent lied. Period. Exclamation point! They all burned you, Greg. So why would you pretend that Reid’s staements were overblown? If they weren’t that big of a deal, the nutroots morons would have been honest, right? But they lied. Repeatedly. If that doesn’t clue you in, nothing will.

As for Reid, you are a pathetic shadow of a man who does not deserve to be the leader of pack of boy scouts, much less the most powerful legislative body on Earth. At least the boy scouts believe in America last I checked.

MORE: Jon Henke here, and McQ follows up. And see this bullseye analysis by J.D. Johannes (HT: Insty):

U.S. Foreign policy as directed by the Senate Majority leader is not about the soundness of the policy, it is not about what is best for the country, it is not about designing a policy that will lead to victory in Iraq.

It is all about winning elections.

I’ve said my piece already about those who put partisan gain ahead of national interests:

… those who wish us to fail should expect to have their patriotism challenged, and indeed they may want to question it themselves (if you really want us to fail, why are you here?). As should those who place political considerations above our national interests in defeating the insurgency in Iraq, stabilizing the government, and getting into a long stare-down with Iran and Syria. If you are more concerned with your political party winning (or with a hated candidate losing) in the elections than with your country winning in the war, your patriotism is suspect at best. That goes no matter whether you are Republican (11% want us to fail), Democrat (34%) or Independent (19%).

Technorati Tags: Harry Reid, General Peter Pace, General David Petraeus, incompetence, blogosphere, liberal dishonesty

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• Three months in, the surge has had no noticeable impact on violence in Iraq. I really wish the Pentagon would stop undermining the war by talking it down to the liberal media.
• The FBI has broken the law 1000 times in its attempts to spy on us. Because the war on terr-uh is for liberty, natch.
• Of course, when you have an invisible bomber with a perfect operational record, updating it is the first priority. Actually, I’m being unfair; 30 years is a reasonable time frame over which to develop new aircraft.
• But whenever I feel over-frustrated at our own DoD, I imagine what it’s like to have to fight and wrangle over a few aircraft carriers.
• Following up on that GI Guide for Iraq: it’s useful to compare the version in 1943 and 2003. Somehow the one from 64 years ago seems more realistic.

Around the World

• How Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of my heroes, accidentally sold out Russia.
• Heh: Lou Dobbs has been hating the wrong kind of immigrant. Bastard.
• Interesting news from India: labeling one’s political philosophy can be problematic, especially when it seems to be impossible to register a non-socialist political party. I don’t know enough about India’s political system to comment further, but it makes for interesting reading.
• The challenges and concerns of Caspian energy politics.
• Along the Tajik-Afghan border, there remains a problem with drug smuggling warlords.
• Afghan bodybuilders love the Ah-nuld.
• Meanwhile, David Axe keeps burying the lede, barely mentioning the police intimidation of people who speak to the press in Kabul. He also mentions the obvious, that Iraq is not Afghanistan. Umm, I agree. And we need to stop accusing Iran of things it might not be doing—like directly supporting the same Taliban it once nearly invaded.
• What lessons can we draw from the growing drug-fueled insurgency in Mexico? Perhaps lessons for Afghanistan and Colombia. Though it’s worth noting the ambassador to Mexico isn’t being sent to South Asia.
• Markel hates doggies (boo!). I loves doggies. So does our friend Dear Volodiya. And he uses doggies to intimidate Merkel.
• U.S. Congress: trade protectionism for me, but not for thee. Maybe they’re worried about China’s insane desire to have a modern military?

Back at Home

• Yes, we should ask the candidates better questions on foreign policy. I would include more, however, on the developing dynamics in Central and South Africa, and see if they had any ideas for the Horn of Africa—namely how to minimize their impact on the U.S. I think there is a real danger in these kinds of things of turning into “if you ruled the world, what would you do?” The responses are usually as immature, extremist, and useless as “I’d give everyone puppies and make the bad men stop.”
• Ron Bailey looks at China and asks, “What the Fukuyama?”
• Boeing thinks there will be a tripling of air traffic over the next 20 years. Of course they would—they make planes. But it might be true anyway.
• So do you think there aren’t any workers to harvest cucumbers because Mexicans stole the jobs? Or, hrm, is that backwards…

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• An interesting take on how we’re not discrediting extremist Islam: ” To date, the State Department, the White House and the Defense Department — and even the otherwise excellent new COIN Manual itself — have studiously avoided [attacking the pseudo-religious claims of al-Qaeda style terrorism in Islamic religious terms] in favor of Western secular words only.” He goes into greater detail, but this is worth a serious look. It shows how the government has fundamentally misconceived the war, and how its efforts to right it miss the point.
• Why is it the military seemed to understand Iraq better in 1943 than it does today?
• The Congressional Research Service complains in a report that the CIA doesn’t like doing its job outside cocktail parties. Lames!

Around the World

• Whenever I wonder just how bad communism really was, I run across one of these attempts to figure out how many people it destroyed. Using mid-estimates from a range of reputable scholars, we arrive at about 150 million for the 20th century, with the majority clustered just before and just after WWII (Stalin, then Mao). That is to say, communism is responsible for the murder of 150,000,000 people—which is why I’m baffled that we express horror when Prince Harry wears a Nazi costume to a party, yet we laugh and wink about bowling teams in Lenin’s honor. Lenin’s legacy is light years beyond Hitler’s, the suffering he caused orders of magnitude more severe than Hitler’s crusade to exterminate the Jews. (Brought about by Roger Williams’ thought-provoking post.)
• Did President Bush authorize the imports of goods made in Kaesong? If so, then it is yet one more reason to despise him—Kaesong is a slave labor camp, like all sites in North Korea, that makes cheap Korean goods for South Korean companies. The State Department has declared it is a site of forced and exploitative labor (last year, that is, as this year they didn’t despite no changes there). Why do they get a pass on everything?
• Back in April, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. wrote a hilarious op-ed in the NYT about how Pakistan and the U.S. were on the same side in the GWOT. While picking it apart, I said the best thing for Pakistan would be open elections, with the understanding that the solution would be imperfect as it wouldn’t necessarily diminish the power of the military or ISI. Monday, the NYT ran a wide-eyed editorial calling for almost the same thing, except they seem to have swallowed the Benazir Bhutto line that democracy (meaning, democracy which results in her reassumption of power) will result in eternal sunshine of the spotless Pakistani mind. It was quite ably picked apart here.
• Though he got lost at night (and remembers it with a sense of humor, which is nice), David Axe briefly recounted an interesting, and perhaps horrifying to some, benefit of the Taliban’s defeat: gays are no longer executed. In fact, though disapproved of by many, openly gay relationships are often tolerated, even in the countryside. According to Axe, many Afghans would rather focus on oppressing their daughters than making sure their sons aren’t bottoms. I explore this a bit more at Registan.net. Heh. I knew there was a reason I was so obsessed with that country.
• The CIA has decided to muck up East Africa. Meanwhile, there was a big explosion in Nairobi.
• Kymyz (I’ve seen it spelled kumis)—the Bailey’s of Kyrgyzstan (and other Mongol societies). For my money, I prefer Amarula, a delicious cream liquer from South Africa that mixes extremely well with Frangelico (and a touch of shaved dark chocolate on top).

Back at Home

• While it’s tempting to catch the Paulsey (i.e. the feverish Internet buzz surrounding Ron Paul), he does want to abolish the Federal Reserve and all aspects of central banking. Well, like many things wrong with doctrinaire Libertarian philosophy, such a thing might be fine in theory but in the real world the consequences are horrific. Take well known libertarian paradise Somalia, whose currency is among the worst on the planet, thanks to a collapsed central banking system, unregulated currency speculation, and oh yeah—no central government to regulate transactions and contracts. Sorry Ron Paul—much like Harry Browne, your insane fiscal policy will probably be what keeps me from actually wanting you in office (which still won’t preclude me from voting for him in the primary as a protest against the other GOP nutjobs).
• This is a strange map. Why is Wyoming like Uzbekistan? Alabama like Iran? DC like New Zealand? Well, they’re not—the map uses bad numbers.
• On closer inspection, they didn’t steal his watch. Too bad, that would have been hilarious.
• The USPTO hates your database searches. I’m going to patent certain keyword searches on google. Only, I need cash to do it. Anyone wanna help?
• The first sentence says it all: “In an article headlined “Cocaine: Hiding in Plain Sight,” The New York Times detects signs of a resurgence in cocaine use, although it concedes there’s not much in the way of statistical evidence to back up its anecdotes.”
• Mr. Wizard, R.I.P. You will be missed. Especially because you were 100x better than that Bill Nye dickwad. How will impressionable, curious, friendless children (IOW the next me) learn about centrifugal motion and how to crush cans with nothing but chilled water?

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I don’t pay much attention to foreign politics, except in the general sense, but I thought that this was interesting:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the overwhelming favourite of grassroots British Conservatives to be the next American President. More than three times as many UK Conservative Party members opted for him than chose Senator John McCain.

Even more fascinating is who comes in third:

These are the full results:

* Joe Biden: 0.3%
* Sam Brownback: 0.7%
* Hillary Clinton: 10.1%
* John Edwards: 2.2%
* Newt Gingrich: 4.6%
* Rudy Giuliani: 43.9%
* Al Gore: 5.9%
* John McCain: 14.4%
* Barack Obama: 10.1%
* Bill Richardson: 0.6%
* Mitt Romney: 2.3%
* Fred Thompson: 4.9%

As Britain and America explains, the social issues that confound American conservatives are not so important in Britain, which may tend to explain why candidates such as Hillary and Barack are favored tertiary choices.

All of the issues that make Giuliani a difficult choice for many Republicans – abortion, gay rights and gun control – are not big issues in British politics. His tough approach to crime, fiscal conservatism and national security credentials give him obvious appeal with British Tories. Many Brits will also see the ‘Mayor of 9/11′ as the kind of competent communicator that can begin to restore America’s standing in Europe. If ‘brand Bush’ is toxic for many Europeans many see Giuliani as the candidate as well equipped as any Democrat to tackle anti-Americanism.

I have nothing to add to this really. Just found it interesting.

Technorati Tags: Tories, British conservatives, Election 2008, conservative politics

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• Could the shakeup at JCS be an indication of a possibly positive move toward skepticism on Iraq? Possibly. I’m more intrigued with putting two Navy guys in charge of our insurgency campaigns—what kind of insight might they bring a more traditional land warrior cannot?
• Then again, the DoD does have a habit of doing things like funding what can only be called The Manhattan Chelsea Project.
• Why keep Nicholas Burns around? Because gratuitous, groundless accusations that Iran is arming the Taliban said in the context of Iraq is totally productive.
• The EA-6B Prowler, the Navy’s electronics countermeasures workhorse, has been running anti-IED duty the last few years. I’m glad it’s been more successful than other ideas. It’s also worth noting: the A-6 airframe has been in use since the early days of Vietnam. Though old, it is highly effective, and new uses are being found for it. Kinda makes you wonder why we keep needing $100 billion new airframes.
• Or, come to think of it, magical impossible non-nuclear ICBMs.
• Craziness over the CSAR-X program, with the Air Force making puzzling decisions and no one really knowing what they want or how much they want to pay for it. Just another Manic Monday, I suppose, even if it’s Tuesday.

Around the World

• Last month, we learned that Nigeria’s corruption has cost the troubled, impoverished nation over $380 billion. This month, however, is a much more reasoned look at why corruption arises, and what it might actually mean. More here.
• Japan hates immigrants so much, it’s making its grandmothers work longer. Maybe Tom Tancredo should move.
• Sure communism was brutal and murdered almost 100 million people last century, but it made the trains run on time, and you got free healthcare. That book, which is a history of communism, deeply interests me. Only, I worry it is about as depressing as Anne Applebaum’s Gulag, which I still cannot read for any length of time without tearing up.
• An excellent look at the soft power maneuvering of Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Gary Kasparov managed to avoid another beating and imprisonment at an opposition rally. Siberian Light has some more crazy links from around Russia.
• Bad communication and what I’ve come to see as an over-reliance on air strikes have resulted in seven friendlies killed just south of Kabul, Afghanistan. It is all part of a larger picture of mismatched munitions and sloppy strategy. Meanwhile, David Axe reports that road construction has turned into the latest priority for PRTs.
• Child labor in the fields of Uzbekistan.

Back at Home

• The 4th Circuit Court has ruled that President Bush cannot hold legal residents indefinitely without charging them, even if his administration claims he is somehow an “enemy combatant.” Let’s say it all together: FINALLY. We are made stronger through due process, not weaker. Odious as Islamists are, if they cannot have a definitive legal case built against them, they probably haven’t committed a crime, and therefore don’t deserve incarceration. And if they have committed a crime but the government cannot prove it, then it needs to do a better job of proving it, without throwing any old suspect into prison for six years in blatant violation of habeas corpus.
• It’s not just the Bush administration that hates your freedom. AT&T hates your freedom, too. And why do cops seem to think, nearly across the board, that they are above the law? Or that their actions are not subject to scrutiny by their employers (i.e. taxpayers)?
• An interesting look inside the fundamental Libertarian incoherence on all matters military: in a post mentioning the rescue of several U.S. soldiers in Iraq by PMCs, the commenters seem split between “privatize the military,” “they are just mercenaries,” and “they are overpaid mercenaries” (emphasis mine). The idea of a Libertarian complaining about overpayment is deeply amusing—such a thing should be impossible to them, as people are paid what others are willing to pay. The calls to privatize the military mixed in with deep disgust at the idea of private soldiers for profit is similarly amusing: isn’t self-interest—which includes working for profit—the height of Libertarian morality? This is why, despite my preference for libertarian (note the small-l) philosophy, I do not subscribe to it as a controlling philosophy. There is too much willful denial of reality involved.
• Albanians stole President Bush’s watch! Maybe they can give it to the Uyghurs he falsely imprisoned for five years then deported to a dirty refugee camp outside Tirana. And, just for flavor: LOLz iPhone liberals!!!1!
• Also, John Ashcroft H8s Ur Kidz, lulz.

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• I sure wish our generals would stop wishing defeat upon us by supporting the enemy through their criticizing of the Iraqis.
• I had a weird flashback to my early childhood (the 80’s, mind you) upon hearing that we’re now basically arming both sides of a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites on the plains of Babylon.
• Meanwhile, we’re dependent on spies… from Sudan, the same Sudan we condemn for genocide, the same Sudan which threatened to starve the world of Coca-Cola if we don’t stop calling them murdering fascist pigs. BFF FOREVS!
• Naturally, Pace was replaced at JCS because the Democrats hate Marines. Where the hell does NRO dig up these sycophants? General Pace, while a fine Marine, was a mediocre at best Chairman, and he carried a massive stink from his close association with Donald Rumsfeld and his involvement in the invasion and wrecked occupation of Iraq (something about which he seemed to deeply deny). The language SecDef Gates used in picking Admiral Mullen (”the vision, strategic insight and integrity to lead America’s armed forces”) indicates he had lost all confidence in Pace’s leadership. But of course, please blame the Democrats, who are a much better target than the man who helped to botch the war (yes, I’m aware Gates consulted both parties and concluded a confirmation fight wasn’t worth it; but that should say something, too, that Pace did so much to destroy confidence in his leadership).

Around the World

• It’s almost like we couldn’t see it coming: the Kurds get uppity and demand they no longer be treated as animals by resisting Turkish persecution, and Turkey responds by teaming up with Iran to quash them. I hope those who advocate a three-state solution for Iraq take note of this: creating an independent Kurdistan, however much they deserve it, will result in a far wider war than we could handle. The inimitable Michael Totten has more.
• Jaap de Hoof Scheffer wins the “No Duh” award today. In his comments on the proposed Russian missile shield, he said, “I am not a technician but I do think that the geographic location of Azerbaijan is different from other choices that the United States has made.” ORLY. Azerbaijan is a different location from Poland? Who can tell those people apart anyway? Meanwhile, a look at a map shows by the original placement—in Eastern Europe, not Azerbaijan—is the only defensible option if the goal is actually useful missile defense. And, to revisit an older topic, why Putin’s counter-plan is both so ingenious and so dangerous.
• Azerbaijan, meanwhile, looks eager to accept the prestige and money it would naturally get while serving as a Russo-American defense bridge.
• The CIS recently held a meeting, but English-language media didn’t stoop to cover it. So we have to guess what was discussed, which almost certainly should be of strategic interest to the U.S. Oh well. I suppose weeping gash jail bait Paris Hilton was far more deserving of coverage.
• In the latest Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows poo-poos people who accuse of China running slave labor camps. The BBC politely disagrees.
• Meanwhile, the five innocent Uyghurs trapped in Guantanamo are on their way to enthusiastically pro-America Albania. Why? Even though the men committed no crime beyond being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they could not be returned to China for quite legitimate fears of their mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese authorities (remember the sad case of human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, whose children are in prison for the crime of her request to not be tortured). No one really knows why the Uyghur Five weren’t allowed to settle in the U.S., though I suspect it is because the 20 innocent men (15 of whom remain in prison, even though they are certified to have committed no crime) would be a visible and inescapable reminder of the fundamental injustice of not just Guantanamo, but much of the War on Terror. And Bush can’t have that. So dozens of innocent men continue to suffer our neglect and apathy.
• Why does Russia hate teh gays? You’d think they’d love what we did with Halloween.
• The melting glaciers of Tajikistan. And, for narcissism’s sake, I take a peek at the Napoleonic tendencies of our dear friend, good old Uncle Nazzy.

Back At Home

• This is probably indicative of the Bush Administration’s priorities: allow AT&T to reform its horrible monopoly that was once broken up, but freak out when Whole Foods tries to buy a competitor. Because nothing says “competition” like redundant luxury food suppliers and monopoly telecoms.
• Cops break into wrong house, steal $2000, apologize without returning money. All in the war on drugs. Consider this in context of a recent ruling allowing cops to steal cars and lie to victims when conducting warrantless searches. All in the name of liberty, natch.
• It should surprise no one that Michael Medved cannot distinguish between love and rape.
• Ms. Boyd hits it out of the park on our disastrous farm subsidies.
• Quote of the Day definitely comes from this Alan Vanneman review of The Devil Wears Prada: “We Americans seem to have a longing for a bitchy fairy who will make us look in a mirror, turn us into something fabulous, and then get the f*ck out of our lives.” Amen to that, gurl.

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Take up your arms, sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirigible
We’ll leave our tracks untraceable now

- Sons and Daughters, The Decemberists

I see that our dear friend Mona is once again firing shots across our bow. A few weeks ago she tried to (apparently) goad me into an argument, and now she is taking aim at Lance. Specifically, Mona crows that a comment by Michael Ledeen, whom Lance interviewed, is Exhibit A in her never-ending case to prove him a liar:

Michael Ledeen has never, ever advocated a military invasion of Iran. Those (like me) who have claimed he is being coy and that that is and has always been his entire objective, have been pilloried for denigrating the honor of this oh-so-decent man. Calumny most foul, it has been! We do not understand his genius, his wisdom, his commitment to democracy and “peaceful change.”

Last fall, Leeden told the neolibertarian blog, A Second Hand Conjecture, which reverently finds him to be among the most “consistently misrepresented public intellectuals,” my emphasis:

ASHC: You have written that in order to win this war we would need to defeat Syria and Iran. In my reading you explicitly reject major military action against these states. First of all, why are these two states the most important in your mind? Second, why would you caution against an attempt at regime change through military force?

Michael Ledeen: I’ve always said invasion of Iran would be a terrible mistake, and it would demonstrate a failure to design and conduct a rational policy toward Iran.

Mona claims that Ledeen was lying above, as evidenced by his recent statement regarding Sen. Lieberman publicly pondering the efficacy of bombing Iran:

Now, let us look at what Michael Ledeen wrote today about Joe Lieberman’s call to militarily invade Iran, in a post titled Lieberman for Secretary of State, my emphasis:

On Face the Nation, he just called for military strikes against terrorist training camps inside Iran, echoing, ahem, myself lo these several years…Meanwhile, the appeasers over at the State Department, from the spokesman to the secretary herself, are reassuring the world that we’re going to continue our conversations…

So, it is not a “terrible mistake,” or a “failure of rational policy” to bomb Iran after all! Now, Ledeen is one of those who “imagines we are going to invade Iran.”

Because we are blessed with so many intelligent and insightful readers, I am sure that I do not need to point out the rather obvious flaw in Mona’s “evidence.” However, for posterity’s sake, I’ll just note that “bombing Iran” does not equate to “invading Iran.” Indeed, the two actions are not even remotely close. And yet, to Mona, this is evidence of Ledeen’s disingenousness.

Undermining her supposed point even further is that fact that Lieberman did not call for bombing Iran indiscriminately, as a means of curbing Iran’s assistance to terrorists operating in Iraq:

“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers …

“We’ve said so publicly that the Iranians have a base in Iran at which they are training Iraqis who are coming in and killing Americans. By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers,” Lieberman said. “Well, we can tell them we want them to stop that. But if there’s any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can’t just talk to them.”

He added, “If they don’t play by the rules, we’ve got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they’re doing.”

Finally, in direct opposition to Mona’s claim that “Joe Lieberman[] call[ed] to militarily invade Iran,” we have this from the horse’s mouth (my emphasis):

Lieberman said much of the action could probably be done by air, although he would leave the strategy to the generals in charge. “I want to make clear I’m not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran,” Lieberman said.

Hear all the bombs, they fade away
Hear all the bombs, they fade away
- Sons and Daughters, The Decemberists

So, to recap,

IF:

(a) Lieberman is not advocating for an invasion, but

(b) Lieberman is calling for a limited air strikes on operational military targets, and

(c) Michael Ledeen claims to not support a military invasion, but

(d) does approve of Lieberman’s call for air strikes,

THEN:

Neither Lieberman nor Ledeen are advocating nor calling for an invasion of Iran.

ERGO:

Anyone who claims that Michael Ledeen has somehow reversed his position on an invasion of Iran based on the evidence above is either (1) just plain wrong, (2) as mendacious as she claims Ledeen to be, (3) reading-challenged, (4) just plain stupid, or (5) all of the above.

You decide.

To top it all off, Mona chides us here at ASHC with the following:

Ledeen defenders have been played for the worst sort of suckers, and it really is past time to admit it, guys.

Mona’s condescension lost all of its luster for me quite some time ago, but I do find it amusing every now and then. Despite the fact that Mona has no ethos or philosophy of her own, and regardless of her inability to comprehend those whose thoughts she adopts for herself, she has absolutely no problem raining down insults from above upon those she has deemed her intellectual inferiors. Mona imagines herself with a front seat at the oracle, and is bewildered by anyone who does not see what the gods have revealed to her, much less when they do not do so with the same ferocity and conviction.

The problem for Mona is that she is not the great thinker she assumes to be, but instead an egotist posing as an intellectual. She apparently has neither the capacity for original thought, nor the depth to understand the thoughts (much less words) of others. She is an intellectual wasteland devoid of growth or the means of life. So when she takes aim at one of us here at ASHC, I can only be amused at the fact that she seems inexhaustibly possessed of the notion that she has even the slightest effect on anyone who does not share her delusions. I see her much as the windmills must have regarded Don Quixote.

Nevertheless, attack us she will, and I wish her good luck in that endeavor. If someday she happens upon a real argument, I shall be sure to thank whomever she borrowed it from.

P.S. Just for fun, I’ll leave you with two bits of funny:

(1) MONA: “And don’t miss what Greenwald has to say about Lieberman’s deadly insane position.”

Does anyone else recall the grief visited upon Brit Hume for calling Murtha’s ramblings “dotty” and the subsequent vitriol aimed squarely at Lance for pointing out the obvious?

(2) As indicated in the post above, Mona severely misunderstands the definition of “bombing.” As yet more evidence of that fact, this time pertaining to “google-bombing,” see the following:

The guy calling for it should be Secretary of State, says documented liar Ledeen.

Three guesses as to whose name shall forever be associated with “documented liar” on Google thanks to Mona. Come to think of it, you could make three guesses and have all of them be right!

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As yet another sign of the coming Apocalypse, politicians and political hacks are now channeling their energy (albeit a very small amount of it) into creating video games about politics. Have a look at this article detailing two of the newest games in this field. While the actual interfacing of politics and the gaming world is not exactly fresh news (recall all the Joe Lieberman v. Rockstar Games fights in the past few years [Rockstar, btw are the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series], along with older fights over Doom and even pre-video game era fights over Dungeons and Dragons), the idea of institutions that directly shape (or try to) the political scene in America today making video games is. I am excluding America’s Army since that is a recruiting tool, not an attempt to shape the political process. Notice, however, the number of complaints dealing with the fact that Ron Paul isn’t included in the Pong game. Apparently, the youth of America have suddenly become energetic libertarians. I’m not sure if that says more about them or about libertarianism as a whole. I suppose we’ll just have to see how energetic they really are at election time (the question being : can they tear themselves away from Starcraft II [currently scheduled for a Q3/4 2008 release] long enough to go to the polls to make a difference?).

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