Brits accuse China of espionage against banks

Times:

The Government has openly accused China of carrying out state-sponsored espionage against vital parts of Britain’s economy, including the computer systems of big banks and financial services firms.

In an unprecedented alert, the Director-General of MI5 sent a confidential letter to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at banks, accountants and legal firms this week warning them that they were under attack from “Chinese state organisations”. It is believed to be the first time that the Government has directly accused China of involvement in web-based espionage. Such a blunt and explicit warning from Jonathan Evans could have serious diplomatic consequences and cast a shadow over Gordon Brown’s first official visit to China as Prime Minister early in the new year.

A summary of the MI5 warning, a copy of which has been seen by The Times, was posted on a secure government website. It says that Mr Evans wrote to business leaders “warning them of the electronic espionage attack”.

The summary, on the website of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, says: “The contents of the letter highlight the following: the Director-General’s concerns about the possible damage to UK business resulting from electronic attack sponsored by Chinese state organisations, and the fact that the attacks are designed to defeat best-practice IT security systems.”

It adds: “The letter acknowledges the strong economic and commercial reasons to do business with China, but the need to ensure management of the risks involved.”

Access to the site is limited to groups that form part of the country’s critical infrastructure, which include telecoms firms, banks and water and electricity companies. The document gives warning that British companies doing business in China are being targeted by the Chinese Army, which is using the internet to steal confidential commercial information. The Home Office refused to comment last night on what it called leaked private correspondence. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in London said he was unaware of the allegations and that the embassy had not received any complaints from the British authorities.

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German suffered similar attacks recently and China has also tried to attack Defense Department computers in the US. Recently hard drives manufactured in China were found to have Trojan horse software built into them that sent the contents of the hard drive to a computer in China.

These are not the acts of a friendly commercial trading partner. China needs to decide whether it is going to be an adversary or a country with open trade relations. The latter would be much more beneficial to China and the rest of the world.

Army's new ship named for slave who became a hero

Washington Post:

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As the West Point cadets and Annapolis midshipmen descend on Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium for tomorrow'sgame, one of the Army's newly commissioned ships -- a hulking, 314-foot long beast of a boat, large enough to carry nearly 30 Abrams tanks -- will slip into Baltimore's Inner Harbor at about 5 knots, its Army colors raised, lest anyone confuse it with a vessel from that other service branch.

The Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls, a logistics support vessel, was commissioned Sept. 15 as the first Army watercraft to be named for an African-American citizen. Smalls was a slave who escaped, became a Civil War hero and eventually a U.S. congressman whose amazing story, the Army hopes, will inspire more than its football team.

Smalls worked as a pilot on a Confederate transport steamer based in Charleston that delivered supplies to forces up and down the South Carolina coast. Late one night in May 1862, Smalls, then 23, commandeered the ship, which was loaded with armaments, while the white crew was onshore.

With 15 other slaves, including his wife and two children, he navigated the ship out of Fort Sumter, giving the correct whistle signal as he passed Confederate forts. He surrendered the steamer, known as the Planter, to the nearest Union ship, and was heralded as a hero.

"One of the most daring and heroic adventures since the war commenced was undertaken and successfully accomplished by a party of Negroes in Charleston on Monday last night," wrote the New York Herald. The New York Daily Tribune called the ship "the first trophy from Fort Sumter." "What white man has made a bolder dash, or won a richer prize in the teeth of such perils during the war?" asked the Daily Tribune.

Smalls later met with president Abraham Lincoln and went on a speaking tour in New York to drum up support for the Union. In 1863, he became the first black captain of a U.S. vessel. Later, he became a major general in the South Carolina militia, and a state legislator.

He went on to serve five terms in Congress, and eventually bought the house where he had served as a slave. While the Daily Tribune predicted that "history will delight to honor" him, Smalls has remained a largely unknown figure in American History -- something Kitt Alexander has been trying to change ever since she met Smalls' great grand daughter Dolly Nash nearly 12 years ago and heard his story.

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It is an interesting story and there is a picture of the ship which is designed to so the tanks can be driven on board. It is too bad that they did not give more details on the ship, but if you are around for the Army Navy Game this weekend you can take a look. I am reading Bruce Catton's trilogy on the civil war and the navy played a surprisingly effective role in the war at a time when the army was having trouble doing much of anything. I am sure they appreciated Smalls' contribution.

The horrors of existence in Zimbabwe

Times:

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Over nine days spent travelling clandestinely around this beautiful, once-bountiful country, The Times found a nation where millions now struggle to survive on barely a bowl of sadza (a mealie-meal porridge) a day, the most basic services have all but collapsed and thousands die every week in a perfect storm of poverty, hunger and disease. Aids, like corruption, is rampant.

We found paupers’ burials, starving children with stunted bodies, orphans left to fend for themselves in the most brutal environments. It is a country regressing from commercial farms to vegetable patches, from the light bulb to the oil lamp, from the tap to the well. Feet – often bare – are replacing the wheel as the most common form of transport. Once Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe can no longer provide its citizens with bread and water.

“This is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur,” said David Coltart, an opposition MP. “We lose more people a week to preventable illnesses than are lost in Iraq, but because there’s no blood on the streets, little attention is paid to what’s going on here.”

Zimbabwe, like Sarudzai, has deteriorated dramatically since March. It is closer than ever to complete collapse, according to the International Crisis Group. Inflation has soared from 1,700 to 15,000 per cent. Draconian price controls have emptied the shops because producers cannot cover their costs. Though millions are starving, farmers are slaughtering dairy herds because they cannot sell milk at a viable price. But those who still have money can buy almost anything on the flourishing black market.

Petrol is virtually unattainable without foreign currency. Power cuts are frequent because Zimbabwe no longer has the foreign exchange to repair its decrepit generating stations or buy electricity from its neighbours. Taps run dry for days on end, and when the water does flow – even in the capital – it is contaminated by sewage.

In Mabvuku, a township east of Harare that has had no proper water supply all year, we found hundreds of women gathered on a patch of wasteland, waiting with their buckets for tiny, muddy pools to form in the bottom of half a dozen 15ft holes. “Some of us get up at 4am because there is more water then and it is cleaner. Some of us wait the whole day,” Joyce Dando, 46, said.

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In one rural clinic, a 20-month-old boy lay dying of marasmus, another disease caused by malnutrition. He weighed 11lb. There was no hope, said the doctor in charge. The clinic treats hundreds of villagers who come from far and wide each day on buses, donkey carts or foot. More than 80 per cent are HIV-positive. Half are medically malnourished. That lethal combination has destroyed their immune systems and caused an explosion of other diseases such as TB, malaria, meningitis and pneumonia.

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There is much more including a video that you can play at the link. That 20 month old boy weighs about the same as my one month old grandson. When you read this tragic report you have to wonder why Mugabe has not been hauled before the International Criminal Court. Incredibly he still has the backing of other African leaders which tells you something about their morals too. Was the intent of the treaty of Westphalia to permit a ruler like Mugabe to abuse his country so much? Zimbabwe is a stark example of the failure not only of institutions in that country, but multilateral institutions also.

Nut at Clinton headquarters captured

CNN:

Police took into custody a man who walked into Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, and took several people hostage Friday.

The man, Lee Eisenberg, claimed to have a bomb strapped to his chest.

By 4 p.m., three people, including a young child, had been released.

The captor was also still inside the office and negotiations were taking place, according to reports.

The released hostages were not harmed, CNN affiliate WCVB reported on its Web site. Watch video of a hostage being released »

The situation began when a man walked into the office at about 1 p.m., Maj. Michael Hambrook of the New Hampshire State Police told CNN affiliate WMUR-TV. Watch police take up positions »

Don't Miss

• WMUR: Man takes hostages at Clinton office
• WCVB: Man claims to have bomb

New Hampshire Department of Safety Assistant Commissioner Earl Sweeney said the man's name is Lee Eisenberg. Sweeney said Eisenberg was upset with the mental health care situation in the United States. Watch Rochester Police officials brief reporters on the incident »

Shortly before 2 p.m., police officers were gathered across the street from the office, some kneeling behind police cruisers with guns drawn.

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Everyone can be happy that this was resolved without violence. There has to be some irony that this would happen on the same day that Gallup reported that:

Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.

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Obviously this guy should be rating his own mental health as poor. It will be up to the voters to rate the mental health of the candidates. The Gallup study does confirm my own feelings about the two parties.

Fox News has a photo of the suspect.

The real cause of the Huckabee surge?

LA Times:

AN A-list celebrity endorsement can lift a presidential campaign. But Chuck Norris' seal of approval can kick-start the Airbus.

Take Mike Huckabee's political efforts, for example. A month ago, few even knew that Huckabee was a former governor of Arkansas, let alone a Republican candidate for president. Then karate-movie tough guy Norris -- with a cult following big enough to populate three continents -- announced he was in Huckabee's camp. (They share evangelical Christian views.)

Suddenly, Huckabee became the presidential example of tough-guy cool. You thought Fred Thompson was going to be the law-and-order candidate? He was looking like a worn-out hound dog Wednesday night as Huckabee strode into the debate with the still buffed-up, 67-year-old Norris by his side.

"If you are going after those evildoers, you want Norris with you," said longtime Democratic strategist Rick Taylor, only half-joking. "That's how I look at it. Norris for secretary of Defense. I feel safer already."

To understand the Chuck Norris phenomenon (and why it's a factor in Huckabee's popularity surge), you've got to be hip, Web-savvy or age 13.

As strange as it may seem, the Norris cult seems to have begun in the generally liberal precincts of late-night television when NBC's Conan O'Brien began satirizing Norris' famous TV character, "Walker, Texas Ranger," in 2004. The fad quickly spread to the Internet, where sites were created extolling Norris as the ultimate alpha male and the international symbol of implacable macho.

Most of these sites revolve around satirical descriptions of the karate champion, who got his start in Hollywood in 1969 with a small part in the Dean Martin movie "The Wrecking Crew."

Some of the best lines about Norris on the Web:

* "Chuck Norris doesn't wear a watch, He decides what time it is."

* "When the boogeyman goes to bed, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris."

* "Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he's never cried. Ever."

* "Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits."

* "There's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. This is only another fist."

Norris has responded to all the attention with good humor, poking fun at the phenomenon in columns he's written for the conservative WorldNetDaily Internet site. (In June, he released a satirical list of the things he would do as president. Among them: "Increase jobs in America by sending ninja teams to steal them back from other countries" and "Tattoo an American flag with the words, 'In God We Trust,' on the forehead of every atheist.'")

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So now you know. Norris is something of a neighbor of mine by Texas country standards anyway. His Lone Wolf Ranch is a few miles away just on the other side of Navasota, from Washington. But as the name of his place implies, he kind of stick to his own company. Friends who have met him do speak highly of him.

The Democrats Iraq problem

The Politico:

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), one of the leading anti-war voices in the House Democratic Caucus, is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the "surge is working." This could be a huge problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, who are blocking approval of the full $200 billion being sought by President Bush for combat operations in Iraq in 2008.

Murtha's latest comments are also a stark reversal from what he said earlier in the year. The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the powerful Defense Subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, has previously stated that the surge "is not working" and the United States faced a military disaster in Iraq.

Murtha told CNN on July 12, following a Bush speech, that the president's views on the success of surge in Iraq were "delusional."

"Well it's delusional to say the least," Murtha told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "As I said earlier, and you heard me say it, it's a failed policy wrapped in illusion. Nothing's gotten better. Incidents have increased. We have had more Americans killed in the last four months than any other period during the war."

Murtha added: "I don't acknowledge there has been any progress made. Maybe in Baghdad. But it just breaks out someplace else. We called for extra troops two years ago. We put money in for 30,000 troops. They haven't even been able to raise the 30,000 troops they have. So they have to break all their guidelines. But there's no progress being made."

Back on June 3, during an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Murtha bashed the White House for "making excuses" on Iraq.

"They [the White House] keep saying the news media is being negative," Murtha said. "They keep making excuses for the lack of progress. I've been hearing this month after month and I'm absolutely convinced right now the surge isn't working and I'm convinced that if they don't pay attention to what I'm saying and a lot of other members of Congress are saying they're going to have a disaster on their hands because the American public want the troops out of Iraq."

More Murtha comments from the same interview: "I'm absolutely convinced the first step to stability in Iraq is redeployment and what they're saying, when you look at the figure, the figures that you and I see, the figures that we use all the time, oil production below pre-war level, electricity below pre-war level, a couple of hours of electricity in Baghdad some days and 60 percent unemployment some parts of Iraq. I mean, there's no way you're going to have success."

And here's Murtha from an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" on April 29: "The progress that they talk about is not there. Any of the economic things that I've seen doesn't show any progress. We've had 330 people killed since the surge began. More people killed in the last four months that were killed at any other time during the war. Fifty-three percent increase in American deaths. And this White House keeps saying we're making progress."

Murtha even yelled at a reporter during a recent press conference, telling the reporter that the news coming out of the Pentagon regarding Iraq is not believable.

"They don't need to do the things — you're missing the point — because the Pentagon says it, you believe it?," Murtha yelled. "You believe what the Pentagon says? Huh? With all the things that they have told us, you believe what — I mean, go back and look — 'mission accomplished,' Al Qaeda connection, weapons of mass destruction, on and on and on, and you believe the Pentagon?"

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There is other bad news for Democrats on Iraq. It is no longer an issue in the districts of the Democrats who have made the war an issue. H'mmm apparently illegal immigration is a bigger issue.

This Rasmussen poll explains much of their problem. "In what may be just as significant a finding, only 24% of voters now believe the terrorists are winning. That’s down from 30% a month ago and represents the lowest level of pessimism recorded since 2004." The number who believe we are winning if 47%. These numbers reflect just the early response to our victory on Iraq. As more people come to realize how wrong the Democrats have been about the war this year, the more they are going to turn against those who invested in our defeat.

Muslim mob throws teddy bear tantrum

AP/Fox News:

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said.

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.

"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.

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Shame on Sudan and these throwing an tantrum who should be a serious embarrassment to Islam as well as an insult to the intelligence of any defenders of Islam. It is time for more Muslims to condemn these emotionally immature fools on display.

The Telegraph comments on the farce. "Yesterday's jailing of Gillian Gibbons is a disgrace which blackens even further the name of a country already notorious for genocide in Darfur. The charge against her, that she allowed children in the school where she taught to name a teddy bear Mohammed, should never have been brought to court. That it was suggests that the judicial proceedings were politically motivated, a means of censuring the Brown government for making a solution of the Darfur tragedy a keystone of its foreign policy." It also says something about how some Muslims insult Islam.

"We are winning in Afghanistan"

Canada.com:

Canada is winning the war in Afghanistan and is making significant progress in rebuilding that South Asian country, says the general who commands the Canadian Forces mission in Kandahar.

But Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, who heads the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in Ottawa, warns that because Afghan insurgents are losing ground, they likely will resort to increasing the number of roadside bombs and suicide attacks in an attempt to inflict more casualties on troops.

"From a military perspective in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar specifically, we are winning," Lt.-Gen. Gauthier said in an interview with CanWest News Service. "We are winning where it matters most, where the people live. Where 90 per cent of the population is, we have a strong security influence in concert with our Afghan partners."

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The state of the security situation in Afghanistan has been a hotly debated topic over the last several months. A recent United Nations report warned security in Afghanistan has deteriorated. In early November, Taliban forces captured three districts in western Afghanistan, undercutting NATO claims the insurgents were unable to conduct large-scale operations.

Last week the Senlis Council released a report that noted Taliban insurgents have a permanent presence in a little more than half of Afghanistan. "The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries," added the report from the think-tank with operations in Kandahar.

It warned the insurgency had reached "crisis proportions" and that there will be an increase in "asymmetric warfare" techniques such as improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the Senlis report was not credible but the study was embraced by opposition MPs on the Commons defence committee who accused the Canadian Forces of deliberately painting a positive picture of the situation in Afghanistan while ignoring the reality.

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Gauthier said the insurgents are on the run, backing away from any head-to-head clashes with coalition forces. At the same time, he said, their ability to direct operations has been disrupted. "Our expectation (of) what we will see in the coming months is the continuation of more asymmetric approaches, IED attacks and so on," said Gauthier.

But he noted better intelligence and improvements in technology are increasing the number of improvised explosive devices found before they can be detonated. "We're finding more and more in advance of a strike which is why, in part, you're seeing a reduction in Canadian casualties over the course of the last several months," he added.

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I think the general is in a better position to understand the state of the war than a bunch from a council that is not in day to day contact with the enemy forces. The enemy in Afghanistan has lost every engagement sustain casualties at ratios as much as 100 to 1. A fighting force that is taking that kind of casualties is not winning.

More tortious twists for the tort bar

Opinion Journal:

The barons of the tort bar must have thought 2007 would be a very good year: Some of their biggest cases (Katrina, Enron) were set to pay out, and a Democratic Congress meant no more worries about legal reform. Talk about reversal of fortune: As the year ends, we are witnessing nothing short of the dismantling of what are alleged to be major tort criminal enterprises.

Bill Lerach, the king of class actions, stands disgraced as an admitted felon. His former partners at Milberg Weiss face trial for being part of the same kickback scheme as Lerach. Federal prosecutors continue to pursue a criminal probe into asbestos and silicosis litigation fraud. And now comes the indictment of Mississippi tort legend Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who is trying to soak insurance companies the way he once did Big Tobacco.

On Wednesday, Mr. Scruggs and four cohorts were indicted for trying to bribe a state judge in exchange for favorable rulings. The indictment reads like something out of a bad John Grisham novel, complete with piles of cash delivered secretly and wiretapped conversations featuring phrases like "bodies buried." The accused claim to be innocent, but our reading of the indictment is that they are going to need very good defense counsel.

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The evidence seen so far appears to be "compelling" to use a popular phrase. That is not to say that attorneys can't spin their words to mean something else. As the Lerach case and a recent "silitosis" case in Texas demonstrate, the tort bar has become so arrogantly self righteous that it acts as if the rules for mere mortals do not apply to them. Untold wealth from persuading poor people on a jury to stick it to a deep pocket defendant can lead to that kind of hubris.

Pakistan's unappealing alternatives

Mansoor Ijaz:

Pervez Musharraf finally bowed to international pressure Wednesday and resigned Pakistan's most powerful government position: army chief of staff. On Thursday, he was sworn in as a civilian president, and he promises to lift "emergency rule" in December and hold free and fair parliamentary elections in January. Whether he keeps those promises, and whether Pakistan can be returned to a path of civilian government under the rule of law -- rather than rule by a dictator's decree -- will depend heavily on what its political party leaders and former prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, do in the next weeks.

Bhutto, like Sharif a political exile until recently, returned home to suicide bombers as well as throngs of supporters in Karachi. She has since spent more time writing opinion pieces than restructuring and regrouping her fractured party. Sharif, at first denied entry but allowed back last week, returned aboard a royal Saudi jet, with Saudi-provided bulletproof limousines and a helicopter for campaigning. He immediately started name-calling, attacking Bhutto and Musharraf. Back to the future, with the most corrosive politicians on Earth.

Sharif is the most problematic proposition for Pakistan's future. In the early 1990s, he was the prime minister of choice of Pakistan's Islamist movement as it was first getting a taste of power on a global scale. In April 1991, Sharif announced Sharia law as the law of the land, before being forced into retreat by the judiciary. Before the 1990 elections, Sharif reportedly met with Osama bin Laden in Saudi Arabia to ask for support in stopping Bhutto from winning her first term as prime minister. A woman's ascension to power was anathema to Bin Laden and the Afghan mujahedin as well as Sharif's key Islamist partners inside Pakistan.

After Sharif was elected for a second time, in 1997, he tested Pakistan's nuclear bomb, albeit after being provoked by India's nuclear tests. He also personally approved the army's invasion of Kargil in Kashmir, provoking a near nuclear confrontation with India in early 1999. In the months before the coup that put Musharraf in power in October 1999, Sharif set a path for Pakistan's Islamists to win unprecedented power. They believed then, as they do now, in a "one man [no women need apply], one vote, one time" concept of democracy -- in which there's an election but the winner becomes ruler for life. Sharif, with Islamist support, wanted to be emperor of Pakistan, not its democratically elected leader.

As prime minister, Sharif took control of most of Pakistan's industry and resources, putting his people in managerial positions, rewarding cronies and cementing his power while the broader economy suffered -- a model that Musharraf has followed closely. Sharif also suppressed the media in a manner not very different from what we are seeing today under "emergency rule" (martial law by any other name) in Pakistan.

In short, Sharif was never Pakistan's savior.

Of course, neither Musharraf nor Bhutto is a better choice to fix what ails Pakistan. During two terms in office, Bhutto, the Harvard-educated progressive, looted the treasury, sparked conflict with India in Kashmir to cover her financial misdeeds and ignored the fundamental needs -- jobs, education, basic healthcare -- of her people. As for Musharraf, his imposition of emergency rule on Nov. 3, which allowed him to dissolve the court that preferred the rule of law to his dictates, betrays his true colors.

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They are all deeply flawed, but Musharraf has shown himself to be the most benign of the group. I think electing the other two to power again may result in another general stepping in to "save" Pakistan. The sad thing is, that he will probably be better.

Diplomatic genocide

Con Coughlin:

Is diplomacy dead? Given the perils of the modern age, this might seem an absurd question. The more threats and crises we face, the more we need our suave, smooth-talking diplomats to get us out of trouble. It is only when every possible diplomatic avenue has been exhausted that it is permissible to reach for the proverbial big stick. At least, so goes the theory.

But does modern diplomacy actually work? Careful consideration does not make for comfortable reading. Kosovo, Darfur, North Korea and Iran suggest that more progress might have been made had a little more stick been employed than endless talk.

All the main aid agencies estimate about two million innocent civilians have been the victims of the Sudanese Islamic militias that have waged a genocidal campaign against the Christian and Animist tribes that predominantly inhabit the south of the country. There are 700,000 people in refugee camps in the Darfur province of western Sudan and eastern Chad and it is universally agreed that this is the one issue that demands immediate and effective attention.

But four years after the start of a conflict former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called "little short of hell on earth", the killing and deprivation goes on - despite the UN passing a resolution last summer which finally authorised the establishment of a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force to stop the bloodshed.

Much of the blame for a conflict that Tony Blair, in typically melodramatic fashion, described as "a scar on the conscience of the world", must lie with the UN and those Western governments - such as Britain - that have assumed responsibility for resolving the conflict.

The UN must take much of the blame for refusing to describe the wilful persecution of Sudan's non-Muslim population by government-backed militias as "genocide", which would have given the West the right to intervene militarily to bring the Sudanese government to its senses.

Instead the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum has been allowed to continue its persecution of anyone deemed to live or act contrary to Islamic law, whether they are sub-Saharan Animist hunters or naive English teachers like Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in prison yesterday for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed.

As John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the UN writes in his new book, Surrender is Not An Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, Darfur "was the worst example of the UN's inability to address critical problems in Africa".

As Mr Bolton was keen to point out when I met him during his British book tour this week, the world's diplomats have failed on virtually all the major issues they have tackled, even when the Americans have assumed the lead role.

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The multilateral framework for conflict resolution is a colossal failure that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, because it bows to the intransigence of the few who defend the wickedness in the name of "self determination." We do nothing about vile regimes like those in Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran and Sudan because a few countries without moral compasses prefer doing commerce with evil. Multilateralism is a failure in these situations, yet its proponents are not willing to use "other means" to achieve a worthy objective.

Stem cell politics and science

Charles Krauthammer:

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough."

-- James A. Thomson

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful.

The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy.

The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated.

Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because, as Thomson puts it, Bush was made "a little bit uncomfortable" by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity -- a "moral ayatollah," as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn -- between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

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That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because of the astonishing good fortune that nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt -- and that George Bush forced the country to confront -- helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

We would do well to look back on the demagoguery of Democrats on this issue in the 2006 congressional race. It should be a reminder of the lack of content in their character. The passion they brought to the debate did not spring from wisdom but from political opportunity based on misguided science. One day the same will probably be said about the climate "science" that animates their global warming hysteria. For too many Democrats hysteria has become a political art form.

The black opposition to Obama

Juan Williams:

BARACK OBAMA is running an astonishing campaign. Not only is he doing far better in the polls than any black presidential candidate in American history, but he has also raised more money than any of the candidates in either party except Hillary Clinton.

Most amazing, Mr. Obama has built his political base among white voters. He relies on unprecedented support among whites for a black candidate. Among black voters nationwide, he actually trails Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points, according to one recent poll.

At first glance, the black-white response to Mr. Obama appears to represent breathtaking progress toward the day when candidates and voters are able to get beyond race. But to say the least, it is very odd that black voters are split over Mr. Obama’s strong and realistic effort to reach where no black candidate has gone before. Their reaction looks less like post-racial political idealism than the latest in self-defeating black politics.

Mr. Obama’s success is creating anxiety, uncertainty and more than a little jealousy among older black politicians. Black political and community activists still rooted in the politics of the 1960s civil rights movement are suspicious about why so many white people find this black man so acceptable.

Much of this suspicion springs from Mr. Obama’s background. He was too young to march with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His mother is white and his father was a black Kenyan. Mr. Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, then went on to the Ivy League, attending Columbia for college and Harvard for law school. He did not work his way up the political ladder through black politics, and in fact he lost a race for a Chicago Congressional seat to Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther.

In an interview with National Public Radio earlier this year, Mr. Obama acknowledged being out of step with the way most black politicians approach white America. “In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community,” he said. “By virtue of my background, you know, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.”

The alienation, anger and pessimism that mark speeches from major black American leaders are missing from Mr. Obama’s speeches. He talks about America as a “magical place” of diversity and immigration. He appeals to the King-like dream of getting past the racial divide to a place where the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners can pick the best president without regard to skin color.

Mr. Obama’s biography and rhetoric have led to mean-spirited questions about whether he is “black enough,” whether he is “acting like he’s white,” as a South Carolina newspaper reported Jesse Jackson said of him. But the more serious question being asked about Mr. Obama by skeptical black voters is this: Whose values and priorities will he represent if he wins the White House?

...

The "black enough" question speaks to the wrong headedness of the "down with the struggle" remnants of the old civil rights movement. Bill Cosby begins his new book Come On People, On the Path from Victim to Victors, with a discussion of whether he is "black enough." This is really a sad commentary on where many in black America are.

What is it about the "down with the struggle" civil rights movement that cannot accept the successful achievers who are black? I think some of it is jealousy and some of it is a fear that if they accept the path to success used by these achievers it will mean the loss of not only their power, but their ability to exploit white guilt to extort money and concessions from business and government. If people find a way to success without them they lose their power and influence. It is one reason why they are willing to forgive and forget the gaffes made by white politicians who are "down with the struggle," like Joe Biden.

The "down with the struggle" civil rights movement has embarrassed itself with its lynching of the white boys on the Duke Lacrosse team and has sought to redeem itself with a campaign to save some boys who behaved badly in Jena, Louisiana. But you don't see them trying to solve the really serious problems in the black community where young black men are killing each other at extraordinary rates. They are not down with the struggle caused by the failure of too many young black men to take responsibility for the kids they abandon.

Anyone asking if Obama is "black enough" is part of the problem in the black community.

CNN "screening" process

Michele Malkin:

IF any more political plants turn up at CNN's presidential debates, the cable-news network will have to merge with the Home and Garden channel.

At CNN's Democratic debate in Las Vegas two weeks back, moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as "ordinary people, undecided voters." But they later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada and a far left anti-war activist who'd been quoted in newspapers lambasting Harry Reid for his failure to pull out of Iraq.

Yet CNN failed to disclose those affiliations and activism during the broadcast.

Behold - the phony political foliage bloomed again at Wednesday night's much hyped CNN/YouTube GOP debate.

Oh, CNN did make careful note that Grover Norquist (who asked about his anti-tax pledge) is a Republican activist with Americans for Tax Reform. But somehow the network's layers and layers of fact-checkers missed several easily identified Democratic activists posing as ordinary, undecided citizens.

The tallest plant was a retired gay vet, one "Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr," who questioned - or rather, lectured - the candidates on video and in person about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that bans open gays from the military.

Funny. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was exactly the policy CNN adopted in not telling viewers that Kerr is a member of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual- Transgender Americans for Hillary.

Sen. Clinton's campaign Web site features a press release announcing Kerr and other members of the committee in June. And a basic Web search turns up Kerr's past support as a member of a veterans' steering committee for the John Kerry for President campaign - and his prior appearance on CNN in December '03.

...

It appears that CNN's research on the back ground of the questioners focused on recent campaign contributions according to Howard Kurtz who tries to explain the screw ups.

...

Bohrman said network staffers, struck by Kerr's "very powerful" question, verified his military service and determined from federal records that he had made no campaign contributions. He said CNN never spoke to Kerr and had Google, which owns YouTube, bring the retired general and about a dozen other questioners to the debate because their videos were likely to be used, although no decision had been made.

...

That CNN thought it was a "very powerful" question demonstrates its bias. It is in fact not a very important question at all. Kerr's on career demonstrates how unimportant a question it is. The guy is a retired general. Maybe he could have enjoyed his lifestyle more if he could have been more open about, but the same could be said for heterosexual swingers whose advancement is impeded if they practice that lifestyle openly while in the military. Besides that, it is just not an important question for a presidential campaign. Gays are a small minority and gays who want to be in the military are an even smaller subset. As Kerr's career points out, they can achieve success in the military already.

CNN obviously needed to look beyond campaign contributions and call on the resources of YouTube's parent Google to find obvious affiliations that disproved assertions of being undecided.

David Limbaugh has more on the Clinton News Network. The Union-Leader and Rich Galen also hits CNN for its failures to disclose.

This Instapundit excerpt from a John fund report shows just how dedicated CNN was to the "screening" process. “We don’t investigate the background of people asking questions (by submitting video clips). It’s not our job,” The quote is from Anderson cooper before the debate. There is much more.

Fed looks at rate cuts

Washington Post:

The chairman of the Federal Reserve said last night that the central bank would take into account recent deterioration in the financial markets as it decides whether to cut interest rates next month.

Hours earlier, the White House released its economic forecast that acknowledged housing would be a drain on the economy next year, but it said tightening credit conditions would not stall business expansion.

The separate developments show how the Fed and the administration are grappling with a deterioration in the housing and credit markets as they set a course for the nation's economic policy. This month, new strains on global markets for debt have emerged, leading many economists to think there is greater risk of a recession.

Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, laid out in a speech to the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce how he is thinking through the economic situation as the central bank's policymaking committee prepares to meet Dec. 11. He noted that, by many measures, the labor market is doing well, with job growth and wages both on the rise.

But he said household spending appears to be softening, and that "the combination of higher gas prices, the weak housing market, tighter credit conditions and declines in stock prices seem likely to create some headwinds for the consumer in the months ahead."

Bernanke said that the central bank was monitoring inflation closely, but he notably did not repeat language describing the risks of inflation and slower growth as "roughly balanced." Rather, he indicated that worsening conditions in the markets for many kinds of debt could slow the economy.

...

The bad loans made to borrowers who could not pay over the long term have already caused borrowers to tighten credit standards, but the ripple effect of bad loans has resulted in losses by lenders that has effected the supply of money they have to lend. Democrats have shown a remarkable ignorance of this problem by focusing their ire on "predatory" lenders. They overlook the fact that the people who may be losing the house they bought which they can no longer afford are not the biggest losers. A so called predatory lender loses far more when the asset he loaned money on is not worth what he is owed. That is why all those financial companies are having to write off billions and why the have billions less to lend to even good borrowers with sound assets.

Lower the discount rate and increasing the money supply is one way to deal with this problem. While there are inflationary pressures from energy cost caused by Democrats restriction of the energy supply, there is deflation in the housing market where prices have fallen. That is probably what the chairman meant when he talked about a "rough balance."

The Clinton political culture

Peggy Noonan:

I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, "Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus. Given a few more months, it will be a baby you could hold in your arms. You all say you're 'for the children.' I would ask you to look America in the eye and tell us how you can support laws to end this life. Thank you."

They were momentarily nonplussed, then awkwardly struggled to answer, to regain lost high ground. One of them, John Edwards I think, finally criticizing the woman for being "manipulative," using "hot images" and indulging in "the politics of personal destruction." The woman then stood in the audience for her follow up. "I beg your pardon, but the literal politics of personal destruction--of destroying a person--is what you stand for."

Oh, I wish I weren't about to say, "Wait, that didn't happen." For of course it did not. Who of our media masters would allow a question so piercing on such a painful and politically incorrect subject?

I thought of this the other night when citizens who turned out to be partisans for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards asked the Republicans, in debate, would Jesus support the death penalty, do you believe every word of the Bible, and what does the Confederate flag mean to you?

It was a good debate, feisty and revealing. It's not bad that the questions had a certain spin, and played on stereotypes of the GOP. It's just bad that it doesn't quite happen at Democratic debates. Somehow, there, an obscure restraint sets in on the part of news producers. Too bad. Running for most powerful person in the world is, among other things, an act of startling presumption. They all should be grilled, everyone, both sides. Winter voting approaches; may many chestnuts be roasted on an open fire.

In New York I find more and more people who think this week's political scandal, Rudy Giuliani and the cost and means of payment of his visits to the Hamptons, following so closely the indictment of his former police commissioner, will fatally damage his candidacy. I don't know. The specifics on both stories aside, I'm not sure scandal is what it used to be.

...

Add to that the fact that in the past decade, concurrent with the rise of new media, the Clintons perfected a new method of scandal management that starts with "These are lies spread by a partisan conspiracy," proceeds to "That's old news," and ends a few years later, when detailed books come out, with "That's rehash for cash." This strategy is not a constructive contribution to our political culture, but it has worked in the new environment. They'll teach it in political science media management courses in the future.

...

Like debates, there is also a different standard for scandal in the media. Will a Rudy scandal get traction where the use of the Clinton campaign as a prop in more than one fraudulent scheme continues to be ignored? Based on history, the Clintons have the ability to practice the politics of personal destruction using their surrogates in the media in a way that Republicans just do not have. I am sure that CNN did not even comprehend the double standard it was imposing on Republican candidates by choosing Democrats posing as "undecided"to ask questions at the debate. Those were probably issues that the Democrats at CNN thought were the most interesting for Republicans.

It would never occur to those same Democrats at CNN to ask the abortion question posed by Noonan. That would, no doubt, seem unfair to them. Nor are they likely to ask the Democrats who are proposing to provide health care to the uninsured why they are willing to spend American tax payer dollars on the third of the uninsured who are illegal immigrants. Nor will there be a follow up on whether by doing so they will be giving an incentive for more people to come here illegally.

I have no problem with Republicans being asked the questions asked, but I do object to the dishonesty of having those asking pretending to be undecided voters, when they are already committed to Democrat candidates.

Then there is the ridiculousness of the questions.

What would Jesus think about the death penalty? Well, he was uniquely qualified to discuss it since he was executed and then lived again to talk about it, but instead had more important things to say and never mentioned it. You would think that if he really opposed it he would have said something upon his resurrection.

What about the Confederate Flag? It is the battle flag of a failed rebellion that some have allowed to become a symbol for something else and no one should give it any importance beyond being the battle flag of a failed rebellion. It should be remembered as a symbol of failure.

Gays in the military? Gays make up a small minority in this country. Gays who want to be in the military make up an even smaller minority of that minority. They can serve if they want to under rules set by Congress. Why are we wasting time asking Presidential candidates about this subject? And, what a poor choice for a person to ask it. His sexual orientation did not stop him from achieving the rank of Brigadier General. Only a small number of officers ever achieve that rank. His lifestyle did not impede his advancement in any material way.

Other lifestyles do impede advancement in the military. There may be more heterosexual swingers in this country than gays. But, swingers are not openly represented in the higher ranks of the military. When it is discovered that high ranking officers engage in that lifestyle it is usually a career killer. Will a presidential candidate ever be asked about the discrimination against swingers? Well, maybe Mitt Romney might, but it would be a not too subtle attack on his religion. BTW, the reasons swingers cannot openly practice their lifestyle in the military are the same as the reasons the don't ask don't tell policy was adopted.

Huckabee has problem with immigration groups

Washington Times:

Groups that support a crackdown on illegal aliens haven't settled on their champion in the race for the White House, but there's little doubt which Republican scares them most — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"He was an absolute disaster on immigration as governor," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that played a major role in rallying the phone calls that helped defeat this year's Senate immigration bill. "Every time there was any enforcement in his state, he took the side of the illegal aliens."

As Mr. Huckabee rises in the polls, his opponents are beginning to take shots at him on immigration. Just as problematic for the former Arkansas governor, however, is that the independent interest groups that track the issue are also giving him the once-over, and don't like what they see.

"Huckabee is the guy who scares the heck out of me," said Peter Gadiel, president of 9-11 Families for a Secure America, a group instrumental in fighting for the REAL ID Act that sets federal standards for driver's licenses.

Some leaders said Mr. Huckabee reminds them of President Bush, who pushed for legalization of illegal aliens and a new supply of foreign guest workers, despite his base calling for better border security and enforcement.

"I would say that Huckabee comes from the same perspective on the issue that George W. Bush came from — that out of a strong sense of compassion, he tries to identify with someone who comes to the United States, even if they came illegally," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Mr. Huckabee yesterday defended his record, but he said if voters are looking for the toughest guy, he's not their man.

...

I think this is going to be a problem for him eventually. Many of the same voters who are attracted to him because of his religious beliefs are the same people that want the immigration laws enforced. Romney and Giuliani understand this desire on the part of the voters and have bent their past support for immigrants into a strong push to enforce the law. If Huckabee can't commit to enforcing the rule of law against people here illegally, he will have a problem.

Interview with winner in Baghdad

Ralph Peters:

THE US Army's has had a remarkably successful year in Baghdad, turning around its slice of the long troubled Dura neighborhood. In an e-interview earlier this week, the unit's commander, Lt. Col. Jim Crider, explained how his troops did it.

Question: Congratulations on the superb work "Quarter Cav" has done for us all - Iraqis and Americans. When you arrived in Iraq this time around, did you think you'd be able to make such progress?

Lt. Col. Crider: Our initial experiences upon arrival in March '07 were very discouraging. The enemy controlled the ground - the people - in southwest Baghdad. I saw more combat in the first six weeks than in the entire year of Operation Iraqi Freedom I.

We realized that we'd never kill or capture every enemy, so our goal was to change the conditions on the ground that allowed the insurgency to flourish. Three key factors contributed to our success:

A sufficient number of troops to deny the enemy a sanctuary.

A focus on security where the people live.

The restoration of essential services - it was a revelation that the people viewed us as the government, so when there was no electricity, garbage pick-up, etc., it was our fault in their eyes.

Q: Which achievements do you see as solid? What has to happen next?

A: Our personal relationships with the Iraqi people are solid. They love American soldiers. This is a significant achievement - it's important that we don't let them down.

...

Q: What are the keys to working with Iraqis?

A: The key is to focus on building a relationship. Our squadron didn't hold every Iraqi responsible if a roadside bomb went off. We didn't wait for good behavior before helping with essential services - we just did it and positive behavior followed.

Second, we kept our promises. If we said it was going to happen, it did. Third, our actions were always justified and proportional. If we detained someone, he was bad - and the people knew it.

Q: You've gotten to know our enemies pretty well - what are their strengths and weaknesses?

A: Initially, the enemy's greatest strength was the ability to hide in plain sight - by co-opting or intimidating the people. We turned the tables. People in our area are now pointing out insurgents who did their deeds one or two years ago. They can hide from us, but not from their neighbors.

The enemy's greatest remaining strength is the central government's slow pace, measured against the impending US troop draw-down. If the people get discouraged, they'll turn elsewhere.

Q: This has been a learn-as-you-go fight. Can you identify three key counterinsurgency decisions you and your subordinates made this past year?

A: We've been on the ground 24/7 in the neighborhoods, not just holed up in an outpost. We also have an ongoing operation, Close Encounters, in which platoon leaders and NCOs literally go into living rooms and kitchens to sit down with people and get to know them, house by house. We learned about their concerns and broke down misconceptions about American soldiers. We not only found people who were willing to talk about the insurgents in their neighborhood, we also found doctors, businessmen and others with the skills essential to rebuild the area.

We aggressively emplaced walls to restrict the insurgents' ability to move, while providing physical protection to vulnerable people on the outskirts of dangerous areas.

If you'll allow me a fourth - we handed out small business grants. This was huge. It quickly produced tangible results. People here believe what they see. If they see businesses open, full streets and US soldiers on patrol, then it must be normal and safe.

Sorry - there's a fifth, as well: We embraced the Sunni turn against the insurgents.

...

This is the essence of counterinsurgency warfare that worked and it is very different from what critics to the strategy proposed. Start with his first point of being on the ground 24/7. Critics wanted to keep the troops in the forward operating bases and use them to play whack a mole with al Qaeda. Instead by being with the people we were able to get real time intelligence on enemy activities and deny them access to the people and their ability to hide among the people.

This is the big lesson of fighting an enemy using an insurgency strategy and by showing we can defeat this kind of enemy it makes it less likely that we will have to fight others who want to use this kind of strategy. The problem with the Democrat strategy of not fighting insurgencies, means that we and our allies will continue to be challenged by insurgencies. Defeating the one in Iraq not only benefits us and the Iraqis now, but will benefit us in future potential confrontations.

Venezuela showing signs of rejecting Chavez grab

NY Times:

Three days before a referendum that would vastly expand the powers of President Hugo Chávez, this city’s streets were packed on Thursday with tens of thousands of opponents to the change. The protests signaled that Venezuelans may be balking at placing so much authority in the hands of one man.

Even some of Mr. Chávez’s most fervent supporters are beginning to show signs of hesitation at backing the constitutional changes he is promoting, which would end term limits for the president and greatly centralize his authority. Other measures would increase social security benefits for the poor and shorten the workday.

New fissures are emerging in what was once a cohesive bloc of supporters, pointing to the toughest test at the polls for Mr. Chávez in his nine-year presidency.

In the slums of the capital, where some of the president’s staunchest backers live amid the cinder-block hovels, debate over the changes has grown more intense in recent days.

“Chávez is delirious if he thinks we’re going to follow him like sheep,” said Ivonne Torrealba, 29, a hairdresser in the gritty Coche district, who has supported Mr. Chávez in every election since his first campaign for president in 1998. “If this government cannot get me milk or asphalt for our roads, how is it going to give my mother a pension?”

Both Mr. Chávez, a self-described socialist who has won elections by wide margins, and his critics say opinion polls show they will prevail, suggesting a highly contentious outcome. But departing from its practice in last year’s presidential election, Venezuela did not invite electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the European Union, opening the government to claims of fraud if he wins.

...

Chavez has always had emotional opponents who can pack the streets while Chavez packs the ballot boxes. Will he cheat to win. I think so. His whole legacy is riding on this election. If he loses he is over and his commie revolution is over. Corruption in Venezuela has been rampant since he took charge and the dope dealers have turned it into a rout to the US and Europe. He is unlikely to give something like that up as well as his role as a bully.

CNN's debate performance

Kate Phillips and Ariel Alexovich at the NY Times Blog Talk do a good job of summarizing the complaints lodged by bloggers against CNN's performance.

Some of bloggers they report on suggested punitive measures against some of the people at CNN or the network itself. I don't think that is necessary. They have damaged their reputation enough that the market for news will decide what will happen to them.

CNN has been in a steep free fall for a decade and this event is not going to change that trend. If anything it just confirms the judgment of many news consumers. Perhaps they can get Dan Rather to do some consultation for them on improving their image for fairness.

I do have a hint for CNN. If you are going to use ringers, disclose it up front and people can make their own judgment as to the fairness of the question. I do thin the segment of the population that thinks gays in the military don't ask don't tell is important is pretty small. As for the battle flag of a failed rebellion both sides of the controversy are investing far too much emotion in this symbol of failure.

Murtha admits surge is working

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration still must develop an exit strategy.

"I think the 'surge' is working," the Democrat said in a videoconference from his Johnstown office, describing the president's decision to commit more than 20,000 additional combat troops this year. But the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves."

Violence has dropped significantly in recent months, but Mr. Murtha said he was most encouraged by changes in the once-volatile Anbar province, where locals have started working closely with U.S. forces to isolate insurgents linked to Al Qaeda.

...

An admission of the blindingly obvious is some progress for the anti war Dems. It will be interesting to see how this admission effects their strategy to cut and run.

It loses something in translation

The Daily Mail has a photo collection of Chinese signs with English subtitles which require their own subtitles. Some examples:

"When old man's child go up the hand ladder temporary need the family to accompany," which means "Children must be accompanied on the escalator."

"Don't press the glass to get hurt," means "don't put your head through the glass."

"I like your smile, but unlike you put your shoes on my face," means "Don't walk on the grass."

"Slip and fall down carefully" means, you can probably guess.

"Deformed mans toilet" means they have facilities for the disabled.

"The store be sterilized inside, please be contented," means the store is clean.

There are more that are pictured on the actual signs with the Chinese characters too. The Olympics should be interesting.

Marines cut order for MRAPs

AP:

The Marines plan to buy fewer bomb-resistant vehicles than planned despite pressure from lawmakers who are determined to spend billions of dollars on the vehicles.

The Marine Corps' requirement for mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles would drop from the planned 3,700 to about 2,400, The Associated Press has learned. The Marines would not comment on the decision, but defense officials confirmed the cut. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced.

About a month ago, Marine Commandant Gen. T. James Conway signaled the possibility of a new examination of the commitment to the vehicles, saying he was concerned his force was getting too heavy. "I'm a little bit concerned about us keeping our expeditionary flavor," he said.

At the same time, an independent study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington questioned whether the Pentagon was buying too many of the pricey vehicles, which can cost as much as $1 million each. The study found that in some cases, the heavily armored vehicles, with their bomb-deflecting V-shaped hulls, might not be the answer that many believe they are.

Military officials and other experts have said that while the vehicles, known as MRAPs, are lifesavers in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are not as useful or mobile in some terrain.

The Marine Corps was criticized this year for not responding quickly enough to urgent requests for the vehicles from troops in Iraq. In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the vehicles were the military's highest priority acquisition program.

...

"Can I give a satisfactory answer to what we're going to be doing with those things in five or 10 years? Probably not," Conway said at an event sponsored by the Center for a New American Security. "Wrap them in shrink wrap and put them in asphalt somewhere is about the best thing that we can describe at this point. And as expensive as they are, that is probably not a good use of the taxpayers money."

...

It appears that the lack of attacks in Anbar where the Marines are currently working in Iraq has made the MRAPs a less urgent acquisition. Some in the Marine Corps are still pushing for a switch of their mission to Afghanistan, but the mobility issue may dictate a different vehicle there too. Conway is obviously not a big fan.

How top schools raise kids math and science scores

Jamie Story:

...

Contrary to the teacher associations’ rhetoric, improved student performance does not require increased taxpayer dollars and across-the-board teacher pay hikes. In fact, schools identified in the report spend 16 percent less per student than the state average. At the same time, they pay their teachers more than the typical Texas teacher.

How is this possible? First, these best practice schools commit 68 percent of resources to classroom instruction, compared to 58 percent statewide. The most successful schools also have slightly larger math and science classes, which enable them to pay teachers more while spending less money overall. With prior research showing much greater results from increasing teacher quality than from decreasing class sizes, these schools are making a logical tradeoff.

Teachers must agree, as average teacher experience at these schools is higher than in other Texas high schools. Forty percent of the surveyed schools provide stipends to recruit and retain math and science teachers. And the science coordinator at the school producing the greatest improvement in science, Kerr High School in Houston, cited low turnover as one of the reasons for the program’s success.

Differences for these schools extend beyond spending practices. In a finding that teacher associations may celebrate, the best practice schools give TAKS benchmarks – or practice tests – fewer than 3 times per year, compared to 6 times per year in the typical Texas school. Successful schools place an emphasis on teaching the curriculum well; TAKS preparation is focused on the students who need it most.

One of the most important, if less tangible, findings is that best practice schools foster high parental involvement, largely through frequent communication with parents. Several of the schools have implemented online systems through which parents can check their child’s progress in real time. At Health Careers High School in San Antonio, students and parents can even set email or text message alerts to trigger when the student’s grade falls below a certain level.

Schools of choice fared especially well in the study. One-third of the schools include magnet programs, in which students choose to enroll in a school other than the one to which they’re assigned. These schools reported that school choice results in particularly high parental involvement, fewer discipline problems, and greater student motivation.

...

I think the class size argument has always been bogus. When I was at the University of Texas many of my classes were in huge auditoriums with well over a hundred students. I liked having the big classes. If anything it meant the teachers would leave me alone so I could concentrate on the classwork.

The study shows the importance of focusing on quality where it counts the most and also how important choice is to success of a program. Usually to get people to make that choice a school has to offer a quality education.

Finally, without parental involvement some students will not achieve their potential. This can vary from student to student. I never really needed a push nor did my daughters, but my son had to be reminded to take in the homework we had watched him do the night before.

Bin Laden asks Euros to retreat from Afghanistan

Reuters has a brief blurb on Osama's latest cowardly tape recording. He says the Taliban were not aware of his attacked on 9-11. He does not explain why they refused to turn him over to the US after they found out about the attack. That refusal made them an accessory after the fact which justified our attack on Afghanistan.

Bloomberg has more on the content of the tape. Only days after the Taliban murdered and mutilated some Afghan prisoners bin Laden makes the laughable charge that "The European countries in this war don't respect the conventions of war...." The Taliban use of human shields is turned on its head to imply a violation by western forces. It is all part of the Muslim victim strategy used by this terrorist organization.

More plants at CNN YouTube debate

Michele Malkin has a roundup of the yo-yo Dems who were allowed to ask questions at the Republican debate. It pretty much confirms the original suspicions of those who thought the format was a bad idea. Besides Hillary's gay general, there was a John Edwards supporter who has her on you tube piece wearing an Edwards shirt, an Obama supporter who says he is a Log Cabin Republican, a United Steele Worker whose union has endorsed Edwards. There is much more with links to their previous vids.

James Joyner ask "So What?" at about the gay general's affiliation, and posts comments from those who thought it was a "powerful moment." I disagree. Gays in the military are not important enough to waste time at a presidential debate. At most the issue effects a minority of gays who make up a small minority of the public. It obviously was not an issue that prevented the questioner from spending a life time in the military.

Gateway Pundit has more on the Dem Youtubers questioning GOP candidates.

Perhaps this is why more than 60 percent don't trust campaign coverage.

Readiness vs. war fighting

John Brinkerhoff looks at the arguments presented by some who are concerned about the deterioration in readiness of the military. On the Small Wars Journal board I described this complaint as saying that war interferes with the military's primary mission of training. Brinkerhoff has written a good piece in response to the concerns expressed earlier. What we are really seeing are excuses for quitting.

Current Taliban strategy

Strategy Page:

...

But the Taliban have a plan for getting rid of the smart bombs, and it depends a lot on foreign journalists. These folks are always looking for an "exciting" story, and nothing is more exciting than "atrocities" committed by NATO or American troops. Defeats by NATO or American troops also plays well with the foreign reporters. So the Taliban endeavor to feed the foreign journalists as many suitable stories as possible. The Taliban understand that the story doesn't have to be true, just plausible. The news cycle is short, and the media proceeds on the assumption that news consumers have no sense of history. If the Taliban can get a story out there, they have succeeded, no matter how much the story is later discredited. Recently, for example, Taliban propagandists got some journalists to run with the story that the Taliban actually controlled most of the country, and were ready to take over. This was absurd, but too good to pass up for headline starved reporters. Atrocity stories move well, as do rumors of NATO troops misbehaving with the locals. The Taliban may be medieval in their social thinking and economics, but they are out in front when it comes to spinning the media.

The "we are doomed" (or disgraced) stories the Western media gobble up, are meant to convince Western government to pull their troops out. To move that process along, the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies are making a major push to kill NATO troops. Normally, this is very hard to do. But suicide bombers have proven more effective, and are now used in larger and larger numbers. This is dangerous for the Taliban, because these suicide bombers tend to kill more Afghan civilians than NATO troops. Thus the importance of having lots of Taliban gunmen out there to keep the Afghan population from getting out of line in their outrage (and reporting the presence of Islamic terrorists). The Taliban believe that most Western nations can be convinced to withdraw their troops if enough negative media and dead troops can be generated. That will mean fewer smart bombs to deal with.

...

The Taliban are desperate to get the western forces to pull their punches on the precision guided munitions. One of their favorite tactics is to make bogus claims of civilian casualties are provoke civilian casualties by taking human shields in their operations. The media has been somewhat gullible in this scam, but information officials with the military have been better about pointing out the tactic than they were in Iraq.

The Taliban have had better luck with some of the Brit and Euro "Think Tanks" in pushing the "we are doomed" meme. It is divorced from the reality on the ground where the Taliban have suffered unsustainable casualties for months now.

There human bomb attacks have not been militarily significant, but they have to some degree achieved their PR purpose. Military officials need to do a better job of explaining the PR campaign that animates the human bomb attacks.

Swat news from Pakistan?

Stanley Kurtz:

If you thought the mainstream media didn’t want to report on the Iraq surge, try finding stories on the Pakistani army’s offensive in Swat. I know it’s an important issue, because the New York Times ran an op-ed yesterday claiming that Pakistan never does anything about Islamists in its northwest. So where is the Times’s coverage of the gains made yesterday by Pakistan’s army in Swat? Clearly the Times has been put to shame by the Washington Post, which devoted at least three whole sentences to the issue today.

How many people in the United States know that for the past week or so Pakistan’s army has been shelling Swat, attacking with helicopter gunships, cutting off food to the area, taking strategic hills, and reportedly, yesterday, driving Taliban opponents out of their headquarters and several key entrenched positions, and forcing them into the mountains. Much of the civilian population of the area fled some time ago, after being warned by the army of an imminent offensive. Where are the in-depth stories on all this in our mainstream outlets?

The reports of Pakistan’s apparently significant gains in Swat come from major sources, like Pakistan’s Daily Times, the widely quoted Malaysia Sun, China View, and of course the ever-popular Adnkronos. Granted, with the valley closed off and communications shut down, word from the front has been sketchy. Yet somehow these lesser-known sources managed to carry the story. Where are the West’s major media outlets?

The mainstream media has repeatedly made the supposed lack of fighting in Pakistan’s northwest into an issue. But in fact Pakistan has been carrying out a significant offensive in Swat for the greater part of the emergency. The Western media has simply ignored or downplayed it.

...

Bill Roggio is a good source of information on developments in Pakistan. He was one of the first to write about the deterioration in the area. Kurtz's report suggest that Pakistan is at last engaged in the battle and is using its better troops to confront the enemy instead of the weaker regional forces who have a tendency to surrender quickly. What happens in Swat will tell us how serious Pakistan is about the changes in fighting the terrorist it is hosting.

Will Kindle make NY Times bestsellers list?

Daniel Henninger:

Time-pressed Christmas shoppers who visit Amazon.com nowadays see a homepage pushing Kindle. Kindle is Amazon's "revolutionary wireless reading device." This ambitious ($400) and ultimately admirable gadget springs from the hopes of Amazon's visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, whose e-company began with books but in time found that profitability required the selling of things that people prefer to do with their ever-dwindling free time.

It was hard not to notice that Kindle was born unto us about the same moment the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on reading's sad lot in our time. Amid much other horrifying data, it revealed that the average 15- to 24-year-old spends seven minutes daily on "voluntary" reading. Cheerfully, this number rises to 10 minutes on weekends.

An earlier, equally grim NEA report, "Reading at Risk," announced the collapse of interest in reading literature--basically books. This newer study widened the definition of "reading" to include magazines, newspapers and online leisure. No matter. Even if the definition of literate life includes persons who spend their seven voluntary minutes with InStyle magazine or online reviews of HDTVs, the report still suggests that unmandated reading is heading for the basement.

As someone whose professional hero up to now was Johannes Gutenberg, I'm obviously cheering for Mr. Bezos's Kindle, whose pages appear in a book-like technology called E-Ink. It must be counted as good news that Amazon's Web site says the first run of the Kindle machines is sold out. (A spokesman said they won't disclose how many. Hmmm.) Still, one must ask:

Are Kindle's early adopters the leading edge of a new literate future, or a small, fanatic band of bookish monks, like those in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 sci-fi classic, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (not yet available on Kindle) who preserved books in a post-nuclear apocalypse? Are we in a post-digital apocalypse for serious reading?

And if so, does it matter?

...

Obviously it is not overpriced if it sold out so quickly, but I think eventually for this product to succeed, Amazon is going to have to take the Gillette razor, or ITunes approach lowering the price of the device in order to push the sale of main product books. I probably read more than most people and I think the device makes sense particularly if it gives you away to store your books in a more compact format. It might also be helpful in retrieving information you want to discuss in your writings.

But, at this point the economics do not make sense to me. Most books I purchase cost less than $20 which means it would take 40 books for the device to pay for itself. That is a pretty healthy pile of books to plow through.

Marine general says insurgency is withering on the vine

North County Times:

The insurgency in Iraq's Anbar province is "withering on the vine," the new commanding general of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force said Wednesday.

In his first interview since assuming command of the 50,000-troop force, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland gave an optimistic view of the war based on a visit to Anbar this month in advance of 11,000 local troops scheduled to deploy in the coming weeks.

Helland said he found a sense of normalcy on the streets throughout his visit.

"In Anbar we are being very, very successful," the Minnesota native said during a luncheon with reporters at a base officer's club. "We are defeating the enemy, forcing them out of the region, and they are withering on the vine."

Five weeks from now, Camp Pendleton and Miramar Marine Corps Air Base troops will deploy from Regimental Combat Teams 1 and 5, and a headquarters group will go to Anbar province to replace the North Carolina-based II Marine Expeditionary Force.

What those troops will find in former insurgent-laden cities such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Haditha will be a much more peaceful environment, Helland said.

"People are on the streets, telephones are working and buses are starting to run again," he said. "People want to get back to normal. Instead of us finding (weapons) caches, they are turning them in.

"They are cooperating with the Iraqi police and the military is now able to move out of the cities."

Underscoring Helland's remarks was a published report Tuesday from Marine Col. Stacy Clardy, head of a combat force now in Iraq, that said the number of "enemy incidents" in Anbar has fallen by 75 percent since the first of the year.

How much longer the Marine Corps will remain in the Anbar region, where they have been responsible for security since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, is unclear heading into 2008.

...

Helland assumed command of the 50,000-strong I Marine Expeditionary Force this month, taking over for Gen. James Mattis, who is now working for the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.

...

There is much more including his take on the Osprey now in service with Marine units in Iraq. He is high on the new craft. Helland will also be responsible for some important decisions on the Haditha cases that are coming up this Spring. His take on the insurgency is one of the most upbeat I have seen by the US military.

Slovaks make arrest in sale of dirty bomb material

AP/Fox News:

Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian arrested in an attempted sale of uranium were peddling material enriched enough to be used in a radiological "dirty bomb," Slovak authorities said Thursday.

First Slovak Police Vice President Michal Kopcik said the three suspects, who were arrested Wednesday afternoon in eastern Slovakia and Hungary, had just under half a pound of uranium in powder form that investigators believe came from somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

"It was possible to use it in various ways for terrorist attacks," Kopcik told reporters.

Kopcik said investigators were still working to determine who ultimately was trying to buy the uranium, which the trio allegedly was selling for $1 million.

He said police had intelligence suggesting that the suspects — whose names were not released, but were aged 40, 49 and 51 — originally had planned to close the deal sometime between this past Monday and Wednesday. One of the Hungarians had been living in Ukraine.

Police moved in when the sale did not occur as expected, he said.

Kopcik said three other suspects — including a Slovak national identified only as Eugen K. — were detained in the neighboring Czech Republic in mid-October for allegedly trying to sell fake radioactive materials. It was unclear to what degree, if any, they played a role in the thwarted uranium sale.

...

It is interesting that the Russian underground is having so much trouble selling illicit materials and that the obvious buyers, i.e. Islamist religious bigots, do not have the cash for the transactions. Both factors are good news considering the desires of the two parties.

Saudi lawyer fights back against Saudi "justice"

Washington Post:

A human rights lawyer who has defended a gang-rape victim sentenced to jail time and lashes said Wednesday that he is suing the Justice Ministry for revoking his license and for defaming his client by accusing her of having an affair.

Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem's license was suspended this month in the eastern town of Qatif, where his client was sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes on a morals charge after she and a male companion were kidnapped by seven men and raped.

The Justice Ministry said in a statement last week that the 20-year-old married woman had "confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with." The statement also said she was not fully clothed when she and her male companion were seized at knifepoint.

"The Justice Ministry's accusing my client of adultery, without proof, is illegal. It is a crime, and they, better than anyone else, should know that," Lahem said. "I am suing them to protect my client's honor and because no one, including the Justice Ministry, should be above the law."

The Saudi National Human Rights Association, a government-financed group, has requested an explanation for the revocation of Lahem's license by the Qatif court.

"We are questioning the legality of them taking his permit," said Saleh al-Khathlan, a member of the group. "We are hoping that this is not a reaction to his being so active in the field of human rights and his criticisms of the system, and that they're not trying to punish him for being so outspoken."

...

The judiciary has accused Lahem, 36, of ignorance of the law, disrespecting the courts and seeking undue media attention.

On a satellite television program Tuesday, Abdul-Mohsen al-Obaikan, a Justice Ministry consultant and former judge, said the woman was to blame for the sentences, which he described as lenient. "Nobody accepts that his wife cheats on him, and that she betrays her marital vows and sullies her marital bed," he said.

...

Midway through the show, the woman's husband called in, saying his wife was guilty only of trying to get her photos back. "I have forgiven her for that. I know why she was there. Why can't you forgive?" he asked.

...

The case has put a spotlight on the Saudi judicial system, which is run in accordance with the country's official Wahhabi school of thought, a strict form of Islam. The kingdom follows Islamic law, or sharia, and many sentences are left to the discretion of judges, a practice recently criticized by a growing number of Saudis.

...

The Saudi judicial system is making a mockery of the term justice. It is also demonstrating the depravity of Shari'a law. At a time when Saudi Arabia is recognizing violence against women, it is perpetrating it with this heinous verdict against a victim. The official on al Jazeera demonstrates the blame the victim mentality of the Saudi culture.

Bill Clinton told Bush administration he supported Iraq war

Washington Post:

A former senior aide to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice disputed Bill Clinton's statement this week that he "opposed Iraq from the beginning," saying that the former president was privately briefed by top White House officials about war planning in 2003 and that he told them he supported the invasion.

Clinton's comments in Iowa on Tuesday went far beyond more nuanced remarks he made about the conflict in 2003. But the disclosure of his presence in briefings by Rice -- and his private expressions of support -- may add to the headaches that the former president has given his wife's campaign in recent weeks.

Hillary Mann Leverett, at the time the White House director of Persian Gulf affairs, said that Rice and Elliott Abrams, then National Security Council senior director for Near East and North African affairs, met with Clinton several times in the months before the March 2003 invasion to answer any questions he might have. She said she was "shocked" and "astonished" by Clinton's remarks this week, made to voters in Iowa, because she has distinct memories of Abrams "coming back from those meetings literally glowing and boasting that 'we have Clinton's support.' "

Leverett, a former career foreign service officer who said she is not involved in any presidential campaign, said the incident affected her because of her own doubts about the wisdom of an attack. "To hear President Clinton was supportive really silenced whatever questions I had," she recalled. Leverett, who worked in the same office as Abrams at the time, said Rice and Abrams "made it a high priority" to get Clinton's support, meeting with him at least twice. Abrams was tasked to answer Clinton's questions and "took the responsibility very seriously," Leverett said. "Elliott was then very focused on making sure that we followed up on Clinton's questions to keep Clinton happy and on board."

One of the specific questions Clinton asked, Leverett recalled hearing, is what the United States would do if Iraq's "military used chemical weapons against our Gulf allies.

She recalled being told that Clinton made it clear to Rice and Abrams that they could count on his public support for the war if it was necessary.

Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said that "she is not going to comment on past conversations with former presidents in either capacity as [national security adviser] or secretary of state." White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on behalf of Abrams.

Leverett added that the White House at the time had little concern about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for the war and "they discussed inviting her to various White House events as a sort of reward for her support."

Leverett and her husband, Flynt Leverett, also a former top Rice aide, have become critics of the Bush administration since they left the White House, accusing the administration of trying to censor their writing because of their criticism of Iran policy.

In an interview last night, Sen. Clinton said of her husband's comments, "There was nothing new in what he said."

...

Look for the for Clinton to redefine the meaning of the word support. In Clinton's world, support probably means he is with you if it turns out OK, otherwise he has serious reservations. Bill clinton is a guy with his own dictionary and it can diverge from the ones used by the rest of us.

Why the credit market is tightening

NY Times:

Credit flowing to American companies is drying up at a pace not seen in decades, threatening the creation of jobs and the expansion of businesses, while intensifying worries that the economy may be headed for recession.

The combined value of two leading sources of credit — outstanding commercial and industrial bank loans, and short-term loans known as commercial paper — peaked at about $3.3 trillion in August, according to data from the Federal Reserve. By mid-November, such credit was down to $3 trillion, a drop of nearly 9 percent.

Not once in the years since the Fed began tracking such numbers in 1973 has this artery of finance constricted so rapidly. Smaller declines preceded three recessions going back to 1975; at other times such declines tended to occur in conjunction with an economic downturn.

Policy makers at the Federal Reserve are growing increasingly alarmed about the problem, which is an outgrowth of the woes of the housing and mortgage industries. Just yesterday, the Fed’s vice chairman, Donald L. Kohn, said that the latest market turbulence appeared to be reducing credit to businesses and consumers, hinting that the central bank, in response, was prepared to cut interest rates further.

Mr. Kohn’s unexpected pledge that the Fed would pursue “flexible and pragmatic policy making” that might help counter the trend and shore up the economy spurred a rally on Wall Street that sent stocks soaring. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 331 points, to 13,289.45, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 2.86 percent, to 1,469.02.

...

Democrats are making proposals which will only worsen the situation. They have this irrational belief that the companies that are losing billions of dollars because of bad loans were engaged in "predatory" lending. It should be blindingly obvious that they did not make money off the loans that went bad, when they had to write off billions. But, Democrats want to turn trial lawyers loose on the not so deep pockets of lenders to punish them for making bad loans to people who defaulted.

Because of all the bad loans and the substantially losses incurred by the large financial institutions, they have less liquidity to make loans to begin with. In recent days Citi bank had to get an infusion of capitol from Abu Dhabi just to remain competitive for much of its business. Compounding the problems of the write offs is the natural tendency of business who have lost money to be more conservative in future lending to avoid future losses. This means some loans just will not be approved.

There is a reason why many of the large Houston banks will not loan money on drilling rigs. They are relatively high cost items whose scrape iron value is minimal if they are no longer needed for their intended purpose. Consequently, these deals are usually financed by people with a larger risk tolerance and an expectation of higher return. That same thing will probably happen on a lot of the deals that banks are not willing to do at this time.

This Washington Post story describes how the credit insurance business is having a ripple effect in the public finance sector.

...

The municipal bond market has been squeezed by steep losses among bond insurance firms. Towns and cities with poorer credit ratings often rely on these insurers to back their bonds, enabling them to pay lower interest rates. But now bond insurers are facing massive write-downs because they promised to cover losses in the mortgage industry, leading some to stop insuring new projects.

...

So far Congress has not accused the insurers of predatory insuring. But many of the loans that turned out to be bad were insured by these companies and the substantial losses they incurred make it difficult for them to insure new projects. The credit insurers made the same mistakes the lenders made by in effect investing in over valued real estate assets.

CNN's YouTube humiliation of Republicans

Fred Barnes:

When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and singing, my wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad." Of course she was right. And then things got worse. This debate not only was mortifying to the candidates. It also should have been embarrassing to the viewers, especially Republican voters who might have been watching.

I don't know if the folks who put the debate together were purposely trying to make the Republican candidates look bad, but they certainly succeeded. True, the candidates occasionally contributed. For the first few minutes, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney continued their debate over their records on immigration and did so with the kind of intensity that this trivial matter didn't warrant. These are two fine candidates who have only themselves to blame for looking petty.

But it was chiefly the questions and who asked them that made the debate so appalling. By my recollection, there were no questions on health care, the economy, trade, the S-chip children's health care issue, the "surge" in Iraq, the spending showdown between President Bush and Congress, terrorist surveillance, or the performance of the Democratic Congress.

Instead there were questions - ones moderator Anderson Cooper kept insisting had required a lot of time and effort by the questioners - on the Confederate flag, Mars, Giuliani's rooting for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, whether Ron Paul might run as an independent for president, and the Bible. The best response to these questions was Romney's refusal to discuss what the Confederate flag represents. Fred Thompson discussed it.

The most excruciating episode occurred when Cooper allowed a retired general in the audience to drone on with special pleading in favor of allowing gays in the military. This was a setup. The general had asked a question by video, then suddenly appeared in the crowd and got the mike. The aim here could only have been to make the Republican candidates, all of whom oppose gays in the military, squirm. As it turned out, they didn't appear to. The general turns out to be a Clinton supporter, by the way.

By my count, of the 30-plus questions, there were 6 on immigration, 3 on guns, 2 on abortion, 2 on gays, and one on whether the candidates believe every word in the Bible. These are exactly the issues, in the view of liberals and many in the media, on which Republicans look particularly unattractive. And there were two questions by African Americans premised loosely on the notion that blacks get nothing from Republicans and have no reason to vote for them.

...

At the end of the debate, I was left with one question. Why would Republican candidates with a chance of actually winning the presidential nomination subject themselves to two hours of humiliation? I wish the candidates had been asked that. It would have the highlight of the evening.

Barnes thinks Huckabee handled the circumstances of the debate the best. He is quick on his feet and funny. He would be a pretty good trial lawyer. But the debate did not really test whether he or the other candidates would be good a President. This is a format that deserves to die. Barnes is also correct about the Giuliani-Romney cat fight over immigration. They should both just stop it. It is more important to talk about how Hillary and other Democrat health care programs would spend a lot of money on those in the country illegally giving other illegals a greater incentive to come here rather than follow the rule of law. That should be a huge issue in 2008. It will be much more important than who hired whom or who protected illegals in the past.

The Obama religion issue

Washington Post:

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.

The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, and he talks more about his multicultural background than he does about the possibility of being the first African American president, in marked contrast to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who mentions in most of her stump speeches the prospect of her becoming the first woman to serve as president.

"A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It's actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live," he said earlier this month in Clarion, Iowa.

...

You mean Democrats are sponsoring a whisper campaign against a black candidate's religion? Who knew they were such bigots?

The church he currently is a member of bares little resemblance to the churches of Christ in the South.

Some have suggested that because of the Muslim background of some of his family he might be better able to deal with the Muslim world. I suspect the opposite is the case. The biggest problem with the Muslim world today is their religious bigotry. They are the most intolerant group on the planet and they are especially intolerant of apostates. For an example of that intolerance recall the treatment of the teacher in Sudan over the naming of a Teddy Bear.

People born of Muslim families are not permitted to have a change of faith. Recall the death sentence in Afghanistan for the former Muslim who became a Christian. My speculation is that many in the Muslim world would have a greater hatred for Obama because of his ancestors. Because they are so intolerant they may pose a significant personal risk to a President Obama.

Illegal immigrants impact health care debate

NY Times:

Immigration over the past seven years was the highest for any seven-year period in American history, bringing 10.3 million new immigrants, more than half of them without legal status, according to an analysis of census data released today by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

One in eight people living in the United States is an immigrant, the survey found, for a total of 37.9 million people — the highest level since the 1920s.

The survey was conducted by Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the center, which advocates reduced immigration.

Mr. Camarota has been active in the national immigration debate. Independent demographers disputed some of the survey’s conclusions, but not Mr. Camarota’s methods of data analysis.

A large proportion of recent immigrants, both legal and illegal, are low-skilled workers and about one-third of those have not completed high school, giving them significantly less education than Americans born in the United States, according to the study, which is based on census data as recent as March of this year.

The survey focuses on public costs associated with the new generation of immigrant workers. It does not, however, analyze contributions they make by paying taxes and taking undesirable, low-income jobs — an omission criticized by some immigration scholars.

Still, the survey provides a panorama of the effects of immigration since 2000.

About 30 percent of all immigrants and their children lack health insurance, Mr. Camarota reports, compared with 13 percent of native-born Americans. One of every three uninsured people in the country is an immigrant or a young American-born child with at least one immigrant parent, he found. Immigrant families account for almost three-quarters of the increase in the uninsured in the past 15 years, he concludes.

Immigrants are employed at higher rates than Americans, according to the survey. But because of their low educational levels, many work in low-paying, entry-level jobs that do not provide health insurance or other benefits.

“Immigrants have had an enormous impact on the lack of health insurance,” Mr. Camarota said. “If we are going to have a debate about health insurance, we should recognize that most of the growth in the uninsured comes from recently arrived immigrants and their American-born kids.”

...

This study is likely to have a significant effect on the general election because polling has shown that one aspect of the immigration debate that people are most angry about is the paying of benefits to illegals. This was seen in the debate of drivers licenses which is more about privileges than benefits, but it fits the pattern. Since all the Democrat health care proposals are focused on the uninsured, that would mean that a major portion of the proposed expenditures would be going toward illegal immigrants. I think the Republicans can make a lot of hay with this issue. You can see the full Camarota report at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Promiscuous storm naming driving up insurance costs

Houston Chronicle:

With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.

Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.

"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."

Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.

Any inconsistencies in the naming of tropical storms and hurricanes have significance far beyond semantics.

The number of a season's named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners' rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.

Forecasters at the hurricane center deny there's any inconsistency in the practice of naming tropical storms.

...

Scientists generally agree that prior to the late 1970s and widespread satellite coverage, hurricane watchers annually missed one to three tropical storms that developed far from land or were short-lived.

But this season's large number of minimal tropical storms whose winds exceeded 39 mph for only a short period has ignited a separate debate: whether even more modern technology and a change in philosophy has artificially inflated the number of storms in recent years.

...

There is much more. The QuikSCAT satellite makes it easier to spot these minimal storms, many of which are not even formed in the tropics. One reason we are seeing "increased" numbers of "storms" is that it fits the agenda of the globo warmers who want to blame them on warming. Even with the increased naming of marginal storms they were disappointed this year in the lack of activity. It appears that the agenda of the globo warmers is having a real cost for home owners along the coast who have to pay higher insurance rates because of their obsession.

Hillary plants questioner at GOP debate too

Patterico's Pontifications:

Rule #1. Google the questioners:

“So, the fellow who just asked the Republican candidates about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, retired Brigader General Keith Kerr, is a member of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency.”

Adam Yoshida has more. Will CNN have an explanation for using a Hillary plant?

Most ridiuclous question at debate

What would Jesus do about the death penalty? How ignorant of the Bible do you have to be to ask that ridiculous question? Jesus received the death penalty and endured it. He did not complain about how cruel and in humane it was to be nailed to a cross. Even though he was innocent of the charges brought against him he was executed. Now you know what he would do about the death penalty.

While Jesus is the only person executed who is recorded as coming back to life, he is not reported to have said anything about abolishing the death penalty after experiencing it.

Sudan embarrasses Islam with ridiculous charges

NY Times:

The Sudanese government decided Wednesday to charge a British primary school teacher with blasphemy, inciting hatred and insulting Islam after she allowed her 7-year-old students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad.

If found guilty, the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, who taught at one of Sudan’s most exclusive private schools, could be sentenced to six months in jail and 40 lashes.

“She will be brought in front of a judge, and now she must prove her innocence,” said Rabie A. Atti, a government spokesman.

The British government responded by summoning the Sudanese ambassador to the Foreign Office in London.

“We are surprised and disappointed by the developments,” said Omar Daair, spokesman for the British Embassy in Khartoum, the capital. “This isn’t the way we were hoping it would go.”

The charges were made as Sudanese government officials continued to resist efforts to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur and accused several Western countries of being anti-Islamic.

On Tuesday, the British ambassador to the United Nations asked the Security Council to address warrants against a Sudanese official and a militia leader accused of war crimes in Darfur, a troubled region of western Sudan where more than 200,000 people have died. Some Sudanese analysts wondered if charges had been filed against the teacher in retaliation.

...

It is hard to imagine circumstances more likely to bring ridicule to Islam than the preposterous charges of the Sudan government against this teacher. If Sudan wants to make Islam look ridiculous they are succeeding. The charges brought against the woman are an insult to the world's intelligence and to Islam itself. Those responsible for these charges against this woman should be charged by the International Criminal Court with idiocy.

The American Islamic Conference has slammed the Sudan action in the Teddy Bear case.

“We denounce this fabricated outrage,” stated Nasser Weddady, the organization’s Civil Rights Outreach Director. “The Sudanese government’s ridiculous case trivializes the feelings of Muslims around the world.”

Good for them. British Muslims also object to this nuttiness.

UK seeks permission to attack Somali pirates

Telegraph:

Britain has launched a drive for an international accord granting the Royal Navy and Western warships rights to enter Somali territorial waters in pursuit of pirate gangs linked to al-Qa’eda.

Pirate activity has soared off the Horn of Africa this year with the emergence of highly sophisticated gangs that use fast patrol boats, launched from “mother ships” to board cargo vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

The lucrative multi-million-dollar kidnap and ransom trade, which is dominated by al-Qa’eda, according to terrorism experts, threatens to disrupt international shipping lanes used to carry cargo from the Far East to Europe.

A meeting in London of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United Nations’ watchdog of the seas, is to consider a resolution today instructing Somalia’s interim government to drop its legal right to block foreign navies from entering its waters.

A declaration would pave the way for Royal Navy vessels to rescue ships held for ransom in Somali coves or pursue pirates involved in attacks on ships in international waters.

A spokesman for the regional naval command in Bahrain said that passage of the IMO resolution would be an important step to “help deter piracy off the coast of Somalia”.

There have been 26 attacks or attempted boardings by pirates so far this year, up from a handful in 2006. Somalia has been plagued by civil war. It has seen a succession of weak, temporary administrations run by warlords or hard-line Islamic factions sympathetic to al-Qa’eda, unrecognised by the international community and with little remit on the coastline.

Pirates used the haven provided by Somalia’s lack of leadership to defy 46 warships from 20 countries in the international coalition centred around America’s Bahrain-based 5th fleet.

“Piracy has become a lucrative business based on ransom demands and cargo theft inside Somali territory,” said Cdre Keith Winstanley, the deputy commander of the coalition. “It has not been possible to suppress it because vessels pirated, sometimes a long way off the coast, are held somewhere in the vicinity of the Somali coast.”

...

What took them so long. This has been an ongoing problem for years and there is no reason that efforts to stop the pirates should be confined to the high seas. Somalia is certainly in no position to protest. Can you imagine the Royal Navy asking for permission to chase pirates in the 1800s?

Palestinians behave badly at the thought of peace

Times:

President Bush’s hopes for Middle East peace were given a sobering reality check yesterday, with violent protests in the West Bank and Gaza and apparently intractable opposition from hardliners against his efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks.

As Mr Bush held White House meetings with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, 24 hours after they agreed to start immediate peace talks, opposition politicians in Israel were already plotting Mr Olmert’s downfall and Islamic militants in Gaza fired rockets into Israel.

In Jerusalem opposition politicians claimed that Mr Olmert was so politically weakened at home that he would be forced from office next year, destroying any chance he has of delivering a peace settlement by the end of 2008, the stated goal of the parties at Tuesday’s Annapolis conference.

An official for Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Mr Abbas in June, vowed to continue fighting Israel. Israeli missiles struck a Hamas security post in southern Gaza, killing two Hamas naval police officers, the group said. Hamas was not invited to Annapolis.

Clashes broke out in the West Bank city of Hebron between Mr Abbas’s security forces and protesters at the funeral of a man killed in an Islamist antiAnnapolis rally on Tuesday. At least 29 people were wounded.

...

Since those throwing tantrums have no clue as to what the final terms of an agreement will be, you have to conclude that the prospects of the agreement itself has set them off. I continue to believe that way too much time and effort is spent on trying to placate some very emotionally immature people.

Three Brits plead guilty in Enron fraud case

Guardian:

A trio of British bankers dubbed the "Natwest Three" face 37 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $7.3m (£3.65) in a highly sophisticated transatlantic fraud tied to the collapse of the energy trading behemoth Enron.

Less than 18 months after their extradition to America prompted a political storm and allegations of injustice, the three men - David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby - abandoned their protestations of innocence at a hearing in Houston's federal courthouse.

All dressed in dark suits, the men stood before judge Ewing Werlein for the duration of a 45-minute hearing. They faced close questioning from the bench about their sobriety, mental fitness, free will and understanding of the charges.

Turning to each in turn, judge Werlein asked: "How do you plead to the charge set forth in the indictment – guilty or not guilty?"

In a clear voice, Mr Bermingham replied: "Guilty, sir." His two former Natwest colleagues echoed: "Guilty, your honour."

The men, who worked for Natwest's investment banking arm, concocted a deal in 2000 with two senior Enron executives who have since been jailed.

They recommended that Natwest sold its stake in an Enron-related venture in the Cayman Islands for a knockdown price and shared a secret profit on the side of $20m with their Enron counterparts.

Under a deal struck with the US government, the bankers owned up to only one of seven charges of wire fraud. Both sides have provisionally agreed to a penalty of 37 months in jail, although the judge has the leeway to alter this. They must also repay their ill-gotten gains of $7.3m to Natwest's owner, Royal Bank of Scotland.

...

For some reason they want to try to serve their sentence in the UK, probably because they can have weekend dates. It is interesting how for and wide the Enron fraud was, but despite all the caterwauling no one close to the President was found to be involved and it was learned that most of Enron's contributions were to Democrats.

High tech German battle gear not so great

Telegraph:

Their high-tech body armour, computer chip equipment and shiny black visors were meant to transform German infantrymen into the soldiers of the future.

There is just one problem, they say. It doesn't work.

The expensive outfits, each with a price tag of £14,000, looked fantastic on the training ground. But, according to German soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and quoted in an internal army report, the new super uniforms cannot stand up to the heat of the battle.

They complain that the equipment is riddled with flaws that even make it painful to use, especially at the extreme temperatures the troops encounter in Afghanistan.

The army report, details of which have emerged in the German press, says the body armour vests are so big and heavy that the soldiers are unable to sit comfortably in vehicles and instead have to squat "in extreme discomfort".

As for the shiny black goggles, instead of protecting from dust and glare and providing crystal clear vision, they apparently steam up as soon as the soldiers start sweating, leaving them blind to dangers.

The radio earpiece - part of the crucial communications package that commanders vaunted as a "forward leap in quality" - "constantly" fell out, troops said.

...

It is surprising that these flaws did not show up in testing. The goggles problem is pretty common and should have been noticed. The protective vest sounds like the gear the Democrats and NBC News tried to force on the military. It was so heavy it effected mobility to the point it was dangerous. The Germans have come a long way from when they had some of the most advanced equipment in the world. This stuff may be advanced, but it does not sound like something anyone else would want.

Update: Strategy Page has more on he fiasco as well as how US forces have incorporated new gear.

Are we still losing World War II?

James Taranto:

...

Critics sometimes accuse the Bush administration of "moving the goal posts" on Iraq--that is, of changing the definition of victory so as to justify America's continued presence there. But on "Hardball" yesterday, host Chris Matthews redefined "defeat" in such a way as to make victory impossible:

Lots of publicity lately, and maybe it's fair, maybe it's not, that things may have calmed down over there, less Americans killed in action in the last several of months but before. But my definition of a defeat is you can't leave. If we can't leave that country in the foreseeable future, we are losing. The purpose of the American Army is to get home and be ready to defend this country against possible threats to this country.

As long as we're stuck over there, it seems we're losing.

Of course, the U.S. still has troops in Germany and Japan. By Matthews's definition, we're still losing World War II.

...

I have labeled Democrats and some in the media as desperate for defeat in Iraq, but Matthews takes that desperation to new depths. You can see why the definition of the word "is" trips up some liberals. You can also see why they do not comprehend the definition of the words "lie" and "disaster." If they did they might recognize what a disaster the current Democrat Iraq policy is.

Opinion shift on effect of surge?

Financial Times:

US public opinion on military progress in Iraq has improved sharply since the troops “surge” started in February but a majority of Americans still want soldiers brought home, according to a new poll.

Some 48 per cent of Americans now believe that the US ­military effort in Iraq is going well, compared with 30 per cent in February, according to the latest poll by the Pew Research Center.

But the poll found that the “rosier view of the military situation in Iraq has not translated into increased support for maintaining US forces in Iraq”. Some 54 per cent of Americans want the Pentagon to bring troops home, compared with 53 per cent in February.

The improved public perception coincides with the military’s reporting of a significant decline in attacks against it, particularly since June when the five combat brigades that made up the surge had arrived. While 575 US soldiers lost their lives in the first half of 2007, the total since the beginning of July is fewer than 300.

The number of Iraqi deaths has also dropped ­significantly, although some critics suggest the data do not take into account violence in the south, where the US does not have a large military presence.

...

You have to ask what kind of denial the other 52 percent of the people are. You also have to wonder how long it will take to get a majority to see the importance of our victory in defeating al Qaeda in their central front of their war against us.

Saudis arrest 200 in terror plot

CNN:

More than 200 Saudi and foreign militants have been arrested over their alleged involvement in plots that included assassinations and an attack on an oil facility, Saudi officials say.

The arrests took place over the past few months but were kept secret so as not to jeopardize ongoing investigations, a Ministry of the Interior official said Wednesday.

The 208 militants were alleged to be plotting an attack on an oil facility in the Eastern Province, where much of the nation's oil industry is based, and had set a date for the attack.

Another militant cell is alleged to have planned to assassinate Saudi religious figures and security officials, while a separate cell allegedly planned to smuggle eight shoulder-fired rockets into the kingdom from Yemen for terrorist operations.

The official said 112 of those arrested were "linked in with elements stationed abroad who facilitate the exit and travel of those to conflict zones" such as Iraq.

...

This is announced only a day or so after announcing the release of 1,500 Islamist who had supposedly reformed. It will be interesting to see if these guys will be treated as harshly as a gang rape victim in Saudi Arabia.

Bill Clinton's stealth opposition to Iraq war

NY Times:

During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” — a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.

Before the invasion, Mr. Clinton did not precisely declare that he opposed the war. A week before military action began, however, he did say that he preferred to give weapons inspections more time and that an invasion was not necessary to topple Saddam Hussein.

At the same time, he also spoke supportively about the 2002 Senate resolution that authorized military action against Iraq.

Advisers to Mr. Clinton said yesterday that he did oppose the war, but that it would have been inappropriate at the time for him, a former president, to oppose — in a direct, full-throated manner — the sitting president’s military decision.

Mr. Clinton has said several times since the war began that he would not have attacked Iraq in the manner that President Bush had done. As early as June 2004, he said, “I would not have done it until after Hans Blix finished the job,” referring to the weapons inspections there before the war.

...

Bill Clinton always favored removing the WMD through a bluff. That is exactly what he did in the 1998 confrontation where he did make war against the Iraqi janitors who were working late in some of the facilities. But if he really opposed the war in 2003, it was certainly muted and there are many on the web who have found statements to the contrary. Don Surber has some specifics, as does Captain Ed.

Pakistan becomes the central front after al Qaeda loses Iraq

The Strata-Sphere says Pakistan is fighting back. There are certainly mixed reports on how effective the Paks have been in fighting back.

South Carolina moves away from Rudy to Mitt and Huck

Byron York:

... the big news here is a new Palmetto Poll of the presidential race in South Carolina by Clemson University political scientists. The scholars warn that the numbers are close, and there are a lot of undecideds, but the headline is that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have shot upward in the South Carolina standings, while Rudy Giuliani has taken a big dive.

The poll shows Romney in the lead among Republicans with 17 percent – up from his fourth-place, 11 percent finish in the same poll in August. Fred Thompson is in second place at 15 percent, down from his first-place, 19 percent showing in August. Mike Huckabee is in third with 13 percent, well up from his fifth-place six percent in August. John McCain is in fourth place with 11 percent, down from his third-place 15 percent in August. And Rudy Giuliani – who was virtually tied with Thompson for first place with 18 percent in August – is in fifth place with nine percent in the new poll. Giuliani's nine-percentage-point drop is the biggest in the field. Finally, Ron Paul is in sixth place with six percent – up from one percent in August.

...

There are 28 percent undecided in the poll, which means there is great potential for change. It also suggest that the Giuliani strategy of no advertising in the early states is not working. He may have to spend some money to earn back the votes he lost. Romney has been advertising heavily and that is how he improved his poll position. However, Huckabee has spent nothing, but has had good word of mouth with the church goers. Rudy will not be able to get his word of mouth support for free.

A CNN Florida poll stills shows Rudy with a three touchdown lead (21 points). He is probably going to need it. Rasmussen is also saying Huckabee is now in the lead in Iowa. Huckabee is getting almost half of conservative Christian vote.

Iraq after al Qaeda's defeat

Austin Bay:

Quoted material removed. You may read the original at the link above.

The elections probably precipitated al Qaeda's desperate attempt to start a civil war by blowing up the Shia holy site. Without the UN mandate, the US probably could have done a better job of securing Iraq and avoided the election of a passive aggressive Shia government. However, we have over overcome the problems that came with this mandate and we have overcome al Qaeda more importantly.

For those who claim we had no plan for post war Iraq, they need to look at the impositions of the UN on our operations as well as the enemy's reaction to those impositions and to our effort. War takes place in a dynamic atmosphere and the winner is not always the one with the best plan, but the one who can adapt to the enemy's war plan and get inside his decision loop.

Pelosi thwarts Hispanic success

John Fund:

Should the Salvation Army be able to require its employees to speak English? You wouldn't think that's controversial. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding up a $53 billion appropriations bill funding the FBI, NASA and Justice Department solely to block an attached amendment, passed by both the Senate and House, that protects the charity and other employers from federal lawsuits over their English-only policies.

The U.S. used to welcome immigrants while at the same time encouraging assimilation. Since 1906, for example, new citizens have had to show "the ability to read, write and speak ordinary English." A century later, this preference for assimilation is still overwhelmingly popular. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 87% of voters think it "very important" that people speak English in the U.S., with four out of five Hispanics agreeing. And 77% support the right of employers to have English-only policies, while only 14% are opposed.

But hardball politics practiced by ethnic grievance lobbies is driving assimilation into the dustbin of history. The House Hispanic Caucus withheld its votes from a key bill granting relief on the Alternative Minimum Tax until Ms. Pelosi promised to kill the Salvation Army relief amendment.

Obstructionism also exists on the state level. In California, which in 1998 overwhelmingly passed a measure designed to end bilingual education, the practice still flourishes. Only 29% of Latino students score proficient or better in statewide tests of English skills, so seven school districts have sued the state to stop English-only testing. "We're not testing what they know," is how Chula Vista school chief Lowell Billings justifies his proposed switch to tests in Spanish.

Yet the public is ready for leadership that will forthrightly defend reasonable assimilation. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won plaudits when he said last June that one way to close the Latino learning divide was "to turn off the Spanish TV set. It's that simple. You've got to learn English." Ruben Navarette, a columnist with the San Diego Union-Tribune, agreed, warning that "industries such as native language education or Spanish-language television [create] linguistic cocoons that offer the comfort of a warm bath when what English-learners really need is a cold shower."

...

There is much more.

I graduated from high school in San Benito, Texas where Hispanics out numbered the "Anglos." One thing was clear from that experience. The most successful Hispanics learn to communicate in English. That made it easier for them to attend good colleges and universities and get good jobs.

This was when English immersion started in the first grade and there was no bi lingual education to hold the Hispanic students back. You can still see the same thing today in businesses. Even in businesses which are dominated by Hispanics the ones who rise to the top speak English so they can communicate with their customers. That was really what the Salvation Army was trying to achieve with its requirement.

One way around the silly EEOC requirement would be to pay sales representatives on commission. That would certainly give them an incentive to be able to communicate with customers.

Whither the values voters?

Tony Blankley:

Quoted material removed. You may read the original at the link above.

Anyone interested in energy independence should vote against Democrats. They have a visceral hatred of energy production of all types. They are primarily responsible for the current energy shortage. They have this goofy idea that if we restrict production someone will invent a perpetual motion machine that will solve everything. In the mean time we can't drill in Alaska or off shore for production that would drive down the cost of energy and keep money out of the hands of terrorist. Nor can we build refineries or nuclear plants or even wind turbines off of Cape Cod. I think the Democrats are really vulnerable on this issue if Republicans are willing to challenge them. When they are challenged they will think it is a wedge issue trying to separate their environmental wacko voters from the mainstream.

Saudis to review rape victim's sentence?

AP/Houston Chronicle:

A Saudi court will review the case of a teenage gang rape victim sentenced to jail and flogging after she was convicted of violating the country's strict sex segregation laws, the foreign minister said Tuesday.

The remarks by Prince Saud al-Faisal, made in the United States and carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, were the latest in response to a salvo of international condemnation of Saudi judicial authorities' handling of the case.

It was also a sharp turn from a statement Saturday in which the Saudi Justice Ministry condemned the 19-year-old woman — raped by seven men and then sentenced to six months prison and 200 lashes — as an adulteress who had allegedly confessed to cheating on her husband.

In the statement, the ministry said the flogging sentence would be carried out and condemned foreign interference.

On Tuesday, SPA quoted al-Faisal as saying "the Saudi judiciary will review the case."

But al-Faisal was also on the defensive. "What is outraging about this case is that it is being used against the Saudi government and people," he said, speaking in Annapolis, Md., where he was attending the Mideast peace conference.

...

Al-Faisal's statement is not encouraged. He is more outraged about the outrage than he is about the sentence of the victim. While in the US the Saudis might be called tone deaf, the problem is really the idiocy of Shari'a law, which the victim is alleged to have violated. Muslims tend to see women as seductresses who can drive a man to rape by their very presence or by revealing their hair. It is this culture that is responsible for the ridiculous sentence as well as the Shari'a legal code.

Can students stop Chavez?

Houston Chronicle:

Eschewing revolutionary rhetoric and wearing Gap and Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts to their protests, members of Venezuela's student opposition hardly fit the stereotype of campus rabble-rousers.

But in the run-up to Sunday's referendum on constitutional changes, tens of thousands of university students have taken to the streets and emerged as the oil-rich country's leading voices of dissent.

Claiming that the 69 amendments on the ballot would give too much power to President Hugo Chavez — who is accelerating his efforts to turn Venezuela socialist — the students have led nationwide marches urging voters to reject the referendum.

Along the way, they have given a boost to the political opposition, which is on an eight-year losing streak at the ballot box.

"The students will be a huge help in building an alternative," said Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition mayor of the wealthy Caracas municipality of Chacao. "This is a revolutionary government, but one that doesn't have the students on its side."

But just how far the movement can go is unclear, said Carlos Correa, a leading human rights activist in Caracas. The students can't replace political parties in the task of organizing communities and grooming candidates, he said, and the breaks between college semesters can halt their momentum.

What's more, students, like the rest of Venezuelans, are deeply divided over Chavez.

His government has spent huge sums of petrodollars on literacy campaigns, adult education classes and so-called "Bolivarian'' universities that have opened their doors to people who can't pay the tuition at traditional colleges. These newly minted working-class scholars vigorously support Chavez and the referendum.

"Before, we lived in darkness, but under Chavez we now have rights," said Isaur Mota, 48, a janitor and father of five who studies law at a Bolivarian university. The opposition students, he said, live in a bubble.

On several occasions in the past month, pro- and anti-government students have clashed in the streets of Caracas and other cities, leaving several people injured. Yon Goicoechea, one of the main leaders of the opposition students, said he has received death threats on his cell phone.

...

Although the constitutional changes on Sunday's ballot would have relatively little impact on universities, they would open the door for Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely and would expand his powers over the economy, the military and the political system.

"I'm a journalism student," said Freddy Ramos, as he led a protest march through an upper-class Caracas neighborhood. "It's my future that they're playing with."

Chavez has described the student protesters as spoiled rich kids doing the bidding of their reactionary parents.

In fact, the opposition students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and they are hardly dupes of Venezuela's much-maligned and sometimes disloyal political opposition.

...

Students launch in effective protest in Iran too. That is probably were this movement is headed unless the results of this election are much more surprising than anticipated. The fact is that the students are doing well to organize themselves, but they are hardly in a position to organize a vote drive that generally takes a party apparatus. Chavez is quickly getting a monopoly on that aspect of elections.

The Pakistan front

Arthur Keller:

IN the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in the Pashtun tribal belt, in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. His first piece of advice: “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.” This was written decades before the advent of suicide bombers, when the Pashtuns had little but rifles yet nevertheless managed to give their British overlords fits.

These same tribal areas are now focus of Pakistan’s struggle with the Pakistani Taliban, particularly the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the Afghan border and the Swat region further north. The government trumpets it has more than 80,000 troops in the tribal areas, fighting bravely to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, these troops — supported with tens of millions of dollars in American aid — appear even less able to police this wild frontier than were the canny British.

Despite the government’s claims of a successful offensive over last weekend, for the most part the Pakistani Army is totally on the defensive and doing almost nothing to bring the fight to the militants. Yes, there have been heavy casualties in recent months, but this is very misleading: they are largely coming from roadside-bomb attacks against convoys and Taliban assaults against Pakistani military bases and checkpoints. There are relatively few reports of casualties during foot patrols, raids or any offensive assaults.

The only consistent reports of offensive action by the Pakistani Army involve the use of helicopter gunships and artillery to attack militant compounds. Aerial assaults, when carried out without support from “boots on the ground,” serve but one purpose: they help sustain the illusion that the Pakistani government is taking effective action.

The truth is that the soldiers have lost the will to fight. Reports in the Indian press, based on information from the very competent Indian intelligence agencies, describe a Pakistani Army in disarray in the tribal areas. Troops are deserting and often refusing to fight their “Muslim brothers.”

Nothing illustrated this apathy more clearly than the capture of hundreds of troops in August by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud with nary a shot fired in resistance.

While the Pakistani Army has been giving up, the Taliban has been on the offensive, and not just in combat operations. The Pakistani Taliban churns out a stream of propaganda videos and radio broadcasts from “black” stations, aimed at undermining morale within the army while cutting away support for the military within wider Pakistani society. If the Pakistani Army is too weak to act effectively, what about cooperation on the intelligence front? After all, most major Qaeda members now in United States custody were captured with Pakistani cooperation. Unfortunately, that relationship, too, now appears to be losing steam.

...

Keller is a former CIA agent writing an op-ed in the NY Times. He is really restating some material seen here previously as well as in Bill Roggio's blog. In defense of the Pakistan army, most of the surrenders have been done by local militia and not the regular army. The focus of the new counterinsurgency effort should be on training and upgrading these militia to the point where they can defend people from attacks by the Taliban. They will never really be an offensive force as Pakistan is trying to use them now. For that the government must be willing to commit the army and they must be willing to destroy the infrastructure of Taliban terror.

Will GOP base sit on its hands?

Howard Fineman:

In the midst of a shaky economy and an unpopular war, it is nothing short of astonishing that the Republican Party’s contenders run neck-and-neck with Democrats in test matchups. But the GOP is going to lose next fall if it cannot reunify the three pieces of its conservative base: evangelicals, libertarians and hawks.

As Republicans head into one of the last televised debates before the voting starts, the cracks in their Reagan-Bush coalition not only are showing, they’re getting wider. The ideological ala carte candidates – Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani – are generating buzz; the one-size-fits-all conservatives – Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson – have yet to show they can unify the party.

Just look at the TV ads and polls and you can see what I mean. Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher, is fast becoming the semi-official candidate of the evangelicals, and is rising in Iowa as a result. In a new TV ad running there, he touts his religion. “Faith doesn’t influence me,” he says. “It really defines me.” Even Pat Robertson didn’t say that in 1988.

Among libertarians – the anti-tax, small-government crowd that worships at the altar of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman – Paul is the baptized hero. His TV ad in New Hampshire (where he is about to crack double digits) features local voters praising his “Live Free or Die” attitude, and he is on course to raise $12 million via the Internet by the end of December.

For the hawks – law-and-order crusaders against Communism and now terrorism – Giuliani is the Man.... The implication: what he did to squeegee men, criminals and welfare cheats he can do to al-Qaida, Hamas and Hugo Chavez. Rudy is making a serious play in New Hampshire, lured by some positive poll numbers.

...

The reasons for the lack of passion for the so called unifiers has to do with their own either lack of passion or misdirected passion. Romney is a candidate with ambiguous passions that seem poll tested more than real. Thompson is a clever guy who seems to have no real passion for the position. McCain has had too many misdirected passions that anger the base such as campaign finance reform and immigration reform.

I think Giuliani can make his case to the libertarians with his record in NY York, which was about more than squeegee men. He has a good record on tax cuts and spurring growths in jobs and cutting entitlements. He has tried to address the faith voters with his commitment on judicial appointments. Whether that will be enough will be tested at the polls soon enough. The real question for the libertarian and faith voters is do they think they will like Hillary Clinton better?

Fuzzy math and grading on effort

Michelle Malkin:

Quoted material removed. You may read the original at the link above.

Actually we did discover that with my oldest grandson, when we put him in a private school at the start of his fourth grade year. He had never been required to learn the multiplication tables. What that means is that students who stay in the public schools are going to be behind in a critical area of knowledge needed to to future math work. Perhaps they can get by if they have a calculator handy, but will they know enough to recognize an input error?

Alina Tugend, writing in the NY Times, discusses whether it is more important to be right or to have to struggle to achieve results.

...

“Studies with children and adults show that a large percentage cannot tolerate mistakes or setbacks,” she said. In particular, those who believe that intelligence is fixed and cannot change tend to avoid taking chances that may lead to errors.

Often parents and teachers unwittingly encourage this mind-set by praising children for being smart rather than for trying hard or struggling with the process.

For example, in a study that Professor Dweck and her researchers did with 400 fifth graders, half were randomly praised as being “really smart” for doing well on a test; the others were praised for their effort.

Then they were given two tasks to choose from: an easy one that they would learn little from but do well, or a more challenging one that might be more interesting but induce more mistakes.

The majority of those praised for being smart chose the simple task, while 90 percent of those commended for trying hard selected the more difficult one.

The difference was surprising, Professor Dweck said, especially because it came from one sentence of praise.

They were then given another test, above their grade level, on which many performed poorly. Afterward, they were asked to write anonymously about their experience to another school and report their scores. Thirty-seven percent of those who were told they were smart lied about their scores, while only 13 percent of the other group did.

“One thing I’ve learned is that kids are exquisitely attuned to the real message, and the real message is, ‘Be smart,’” Professor Dweck said. “It’s not, ‘We love it when you struggle, or when you learn and make mistakes.’”

...

The real problem with the effort approach comes down to results eventually. If you were going into brain surgery, would you want a doctor who would be perfect or one who tried hard? If you have a lawyer handling your case, do you want one who is quick on his feet and knows teh subject, or one that just works hard. In the latter case, you want both. that is the difference between law and medicine. Medicine deals with finite diseases and procedures, while the law deals with persuasion and findings of facts. Sometimes all the acts are not obvious. But the pest law professors still do not give points for effort, if you don't know the law. Encouraging effort without requiring the correct answer is worse for the child than making him think it is important to be smart. The key is to develop both a knowledge an efforts based approach.

BTW, when I told my four and half year old grand daughter she was smart she responded "I know it." At least we do not have to worry about her self esteem.

Fear is a great motivator

The most effective method of bailing water from a sinking boat is a frightened man with a bucket. When the bilge pumps fail the man with the bucket usually gets the job done. Tom Friedman sees the same factors at work in the Middle East now.

The Middle East is experiencing something we haven’t seen in a long, long time: moderates getting their act together a little, taking tentative stands and pushing back on the bad guys. If all that sounds kind of, sort of, maybe, qualified, well ... it is. But in a region in which extremists go all the way and the moderates usually just go away, it’s the first good news in years — an oasis in a desert of despair.

The only problem is that this tentative march of the moderates — which got a useful boost here with the Annapolis peace gathering — is driven largely by fear, not by any shared vision of a region where Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Jew, trade, interact, collaborate and compromise in the way that countries in Southeast Asia have learned to do for their mutual benefit.

So far, “this is the peace of the afraid,” said Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al Arabiya, a satellite news channel.

Fear can be a potent motivator. Fear of Al Qaeda running their lives finally got the Sunni tribes of Iraq to rise up against the pro-Al Qaeda Sunnis, even to the point of siding with the Americans. Fear of Shiite thugs in the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army has prompted many more Shiites in Iraq to side with the pro-U.S. Iraqi government and army. Fear of a Hamas takeover has driven Fatah into a tighter working relationship with Israel. And fear of spreading Iranian influence has all the Arab states — particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — working in even closer coordination with America and in tacit cooperation with Israel. Fear of Fatah collapsing, and of Israel inheriting responsibility for the West Bank’s Palestinian population forever, has brought Israel back to Washington’s negotiating table. Fear of isolation even brought Syria here.

But fear of predators can only take you so far. To build a durable peace, it takes a shared agenda, a willingness by moderates to work together to support one another and help each other beat back the extremists in each camp. It takes something that has been sorely lacking since the deaths of Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein: a certain moral courage to do something “surprising.”

...

The question to be answered is whether the parties will do anything with the momentum that the conference is suppose to generate. It is possible, but the real fear that prevents an agreement is the Muslim religious bigotry that has pushed the conflict to begin with That will be the counter fear that Iran and its allies will be pushing. At least this effort has not been met with exploding Palestinians like the last effort. That is some progress already.

Cabs reflect security improvements in Baghdad

Washington Post:

Haider Abbas, a 36-year-old taxi driver, had only a few moments to answer what is often a life-or-death question in this city: Would he drive a passenger home?

The home, on that scorching afternoon last month, happened to be in Adhamiyah, a notoriously dangerous neighborhood where several cabbies had been gunned down. Abbas hadn't been there in two years. But the fare pleaded that it had become safer, so the cabbie reluctantly agreed to go.

"To tell you the truth, I thought I had just traded my life for 5,000 dinars," or $4, said Abbas, who was shocked when he arrived in the traffic-jammed streets of Adhamiyah to see shops open and people strolling in the road. "Then I suddenly realized that security really is returning to Baghdad."

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers.

After years of sectarian warfare whittled down the list of neighborhoods where they could safely work, cabbies are once again crisscrossing nearly all of Baghdad. Every day they assess the constantly shifting boundaries between danger and security, hoping that life will return to normal, but mindful that this is still a city where anyone could be killed at any moment for no particular reason.

...

The office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says the number of attacks in Baghdad has plummeted from 1,442 in April to 323 last month. But instead of official pronouncements, the cabbies rely more on friends, family members, fellow drivers and what some consider a sort of innate intuition about the roads.

"We call the taxi driver in Iraq a roving reporter," said Haider Abbas, the driver who was surprised by the bustle in Adhamiyah. "We know every single neighborhood, and we can read the minds and hearts of the people who hire us."

Cabdrivers still disguise their identities to pass through neighborhoods of the opposite sect. Omar Hussein Fadhil, a Sunni with a first name that clearly identifies his sect, said he takes passengers to every area of the city, but often pretends to be a Shiite to do so.

Fadhil carries a fake ID card bearing a Shiite name. He leaves cassette tapes with Shiite music in his car. And he follows the Shiite custom of tucking a piece of green fabric in his shirt pocket.

...

Cabbies gripe that the improved security situation also makes it harder to eke out a living. A growing number of Baghdad residents now feel comfortable driving their own cars around the city, obviating the need for taxis. The skyrocketing cost of fuel has made it harder to make ends meet. And high unemployment has led many young men to plop a yellow "TAXI" sign atop their vehicles, adding to the competition for passengers.

...

Muntasir Rasheed, 24, who worked for two years driving Iraqis to Damascus, said he is now unemployed. Almost no one is going to Syria anymore. The demand is so high in the reverse direction that $500 taxi rides from Damascus to Baghdad now cost $1,000, he said.

...

A story told by the cab drivers of Baghdad suggest that things have really changed in Iraq. It is too bad the Democrats are not on board with those changes. they might understand just how wrong they have been about the situation in Iraq. But, I am not sure I want them to make that leap yet. It is better that the rest of the country realize just how wrong the Democrats have been about Iraq first so they can reject them at the polls.

Goods shortage makes measuring Zimbabwe inflation impossible

Times:

Zimbabwe can no longer calculate the rate of inflation because there are not enough goods left in the shops to allow price comparisons, the Central Statistical Office claimed yesterday.

Moffat Nyoni, the Director of the CSO, said that it had been impossible to compile reliable data for the past month because of “the unavailability of required information such as prices of goods, due to their shortage on the formal market”.

According to leaked figures, the annual inflation rate in October stood at 14,840 per cent — almost double the 8,000 per cent in the previous month. The CSO usually publishes its statistics in the middle of the month, and its failure to do so this month led to allegations that they had been deliberately suppressed. Each passing month’s figures openly contradict the Government’s constantly trumpeted claim that it is beating inflation.

But Moffat Nyoni, the director of the CSO, said inflation in Zimbabwe could no longer be measured, because there were not enough goods in the shops.

“There are too many data gaps,” Mr Nyoni said. “We went to too many shops to observe and so compilations have not been completed. Some of the goods used in the inflation basket were not available in the shops.”

Goods have been scarce since July, when businesses were forced to slash their prices to well under what it cost to buy or produce them. President Mugabe hoped that the strategy would beat inflation, which he believes is a plot by businesses in collusion with Western governments to create economic chaos that would lead to open revolt and bring about his overthrow. Thousands of businessmen were arrested for “overcharging”. Shops that refused to lower their prices were raided by soldiers, police, state secret agents and often price inspectors in an orgy of legalised looting.

...

A true measure of inflation would require shopping on the black market where the prices are substantially higher than the stores normally checked. By dictating prices Mugabe has probably moved even more goods to the black market where he has no control. Eventually even dictators have to learn that they can not dictate the law of supply and demand. they may be able to manipulate for a while but they cannot control it.

Former Woman Marine has feeling with bionic arm

Telegraph:

Soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan have been given new hope after doctors fitted a former US marine with a "bionic arm" that can be controlled by thought alone.

Scientists who developed the mechanical arm are now working with other soldiers who have been injured during fighting.

They hope that they can improve the technique so it can be available to all those who lose limbs.

Last year the research team fitted former US marine Claudia Mitchell with the bionic limb after she lost her arm in a motorcycle accident.

The new arm allowed her to regain the sensation of having her lost hand touched, and gave her the ability to carry out simple tasks such as cutting up food, eating a banana and doing the washing up.

She could perform tasks four times quicker than with a conventional prosthetic arm.

The scientists, led by Professor Todd Kuiken from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, believe that as their methods become more sophisticated amputees will be able to carry out even more tasks.

Prof Kuiken is now working at Brooke Army Medical Centre, at Fort Houston in Texas, and the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington.

"We're excited to move forward in doing this surgery with our soldiers someday. We've been able to demonstrate remarkable control of artificial limbs," said Prof Kuiken.

He added that the method "provides a lot of hope".

The technique - called Targeted Muscle Reinnervation (TMR) - involves re-routing nerves that once controlled the patient's arm to a patch on the chest, where they grow into muscles.

Electrodes on the surface of the chest skin pick up brain signals from the nerves and send signals to operate the artificial arm.

When a patient such as Miss Mitchell thinks about moving her hand or arm, the nerves react as if they were still leading all the way down her arm and into the elbow and fingers. If someone touches the patch of skin on her chest, it feels as if they are touching her hand.

...

We are on verge of even greater breakthroughs in human bionics similar to those we are experiencing with robotics on the battle field and above it. Much of it takes advantage of computers and processors as well as advances in the understanding of nerves and muscles in the body. This Woman Marine may do more than she knows to help those wounded on the battlefield. You can click on the image for a larger view. It should be noted that these advances took place in a free market atmosphere and not in any national health care system.

Wyatt gets year for oil for food violation

Houston Chronicle:

Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt was sentenced today to 12 months and a day in prison on a criminal charge stemming from illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's regime under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

He pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin had been flooded with letters from supporters of the 83-year-old oil legend asking for leniency, and the sentence is shorter than the 18-to-24 month range called for in federal sentencing guidelines.

Wyatt can shave up to 55 days off his prison time for good behavior. The extra day on his sentence qualified him for that credit, Chin said. The judge recommended that Wyatt serve his time at a federal facility in Beaumont, but the final decision on that rests with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Wyatt choked up as he addressed the court during an hour-long hearing in Manhattan, saying he loved the United States and never would do anything to hurt its interests. But his opinions about policy toward Iraq, he said, "caused me to skirt too close to the law. I was wrong and for that I am truly sorry."

Wyatt — the founder of Houston-based Coastal Corp., now owned by El Paso Corp., — was accused of funneling millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam's regime to purchase Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food program.

...

Some believe that Wyatt has always "skirted too close to the law." Ne is notorious for reneging on contracts to supply natural gas to Texas cities back in the 70s during the first energy shortages. It resulted in a case that took years and reams of testimony before the Texas Railroad Commission. He has also been a generous contributor to Democrats and a few Republicans.

Revealing response to Olmert's Jewish state demand

Daniel Pipes:

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel's permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response.

Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state," Olmert announced on November 11, the Annapolis-related talks would not proceed. "I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state."

He confirmed these points a day later, describing the "recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people" as the "launching point for all negotiations. We won't have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people." The Palestinian leadership, he noted, must "want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state."

Raising this topic has the virtue of finally focusing attention on what is the central topic in the Arab-Israeli conflict – Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement, a topic that typically gets ignored in the hubbub of negotiations. Since nearly the birth of the state, these have focused on the intricacies of such subsidiary issues as borders, troop placements, armaments and arms control, sanctities, natural resources, residential rights, diplomatic representation, and foreign relations.

The Palestinian leadership responded quickly and unequivocally to Olmert's demand:

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee in Nazareth unanimously called on the Palestinian Authority not to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Salam Fayad, Palestinian Authority "prime minister": "Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state."

Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee: "This issue is not on the table; it is raised for internal [Israeli] consumption."

Ahmad Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator: "This [demand] is absolutely refused."

Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department: "The Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity. … There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined."

Erekat's generalization is both curious and revealing. Not only do 56 states and the PLO belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but most of them, including the PLO, make the Shari‘a (Islamic law) their main or only source of legislation. Saudi Arabia even requires that every subject be a Muslim.

...

There is more. I have maintained for some time that the war against Israel is motivated by Muslim religious bigotry and Olmert has smoked them out with this demand. He has also revealed their rank hypocrisy.

Republicans should make Iraq an issue in 2008

David Limbaugh:

Quoted material removed. You may read the original at the link above.

It appears the Democrats have Swift boated themselves on Iraq and hopefully the Republicans will be smart enough to remind voters by replaying these Defeatocrats own words back to them. Their desperation for defeat should be an issue in every election for a generation.

Nagin disgusted with himself?

NOLA:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin recently pronounced himself "disgusted" with apathy among city residents, saying it was "unacceptable" that only about a quarter of registered voters bothered to cast a ballot in the Oct. 20 primary.

Turns out the mayor himself has skipped a few elections, according to state records.

Nagin did not vote in the October primary, or in two citywide elections in March and May, according to Secretary of State Jay Dardenne's office.

Turnout in the Oct. 20 primary -- when Nagin could have had a say in electing key officials he would work with, including the governor, local legislators and one of two at-large City Council members -- was 26.4 percent, records show.

In a television appearance earlier this month, Nagin said he was disheartened that so many people appear to have lost interest in civic life.

"It was kind of offensive to me, because here I am busting my butt every day and all I'm asking citizens to do is to plug into the democratic process," Nagin said, exhorting his fellow New Orleanians to do better on Nov. 17.

"Take 20 minutes of your time and decide," he said. "Don't just let this thing happen without you voicing your opinion."

...

Oh well. I am sure I have been disappointed in myself before too. But I don't think I have ever castigated myself in public before.

Hillary's McAllen bundler

Lee Cary looks at Mr. Cantu's persuasive bundling campaign and is reminded of another Texas padron from the past who secured Lyndon Johnson's first Senate election.

ACORN's fraudulant amicus brief

Amanda Carpenter:

ACORN, a group with a track record of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms, says it is unjust to enact voter identification laws until it is proven that “voter impersonation fraud” is happening.

The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) submitted an amicus brief, also called a “friend of the court” document, to the Supreme Court on November 13 in opposition to Indiana’s new voter identification laws.

ACORN’s amicus brief disputes the existence of “voter impersonation fraud” in which a person would assume someone else’s identity in order to vote, but not “voter registration fraud” which ACORN employees have been found guilty of several times.

“In no instance has it been demonstrated that an incorrect registration form resulted in a vote being cast by someone impersonating a voter, or even was intended to make possible,” ACORN’s amicus brief states.

...

For an organization with a history of voter registration fraud this brief takes a lot of chutzpahs. Voter ID would of course make it much easier to identify those who have engaged in voter registration fraud, which is against ACORN's interest. Democrats apparently think they need fraudulent voters despite what the polls are telling them.

Syria has not been flipped into Annapolis

Bret Stephens looks at Syria's motivation for attending the Middle East Summit in Annapolis and finds little reason for optimism.

...

What price will the U.S. be asked to pay? Contrary to popular belief, recovering the Golan is neither Syria's single nor primary goal; if anything, the regime derives much of its domestic legitimacy by keeping this grievance alive. What's urgently important to Damascus is that the U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri be derailed, before the extensive evidence implicating Mr. Assad and his cronies becomes a binding legal verdict. No less important to Mr. Assad is that his grip on Lebanese politics be maintained by the selection of a pliant president to replace his former puppet, Emile Lahoud. Syria would also like to resume normal diplomatic relations with the U.S. (which withdrew its ambassador from Damascus after Hariri's killing), not least by the lifting of economic sanctions imposed by the 2003 Syria Accountability Act.

No doubt the Syrians believe the U.S. can deliver on these items: Dictators rarely appreciate the constraints under which democratic governments operate. Yet there is no credible way the U.S. can deliver on the first demand, and only discreditable ways in which it could deliver on the second. The administration may be tempted to re-establish normal diplomatic relations and ease sanctions, which is about as much as it can do. Yet Damascus would view these concessions either as signs of niggardliness or desperation, and hold out for more.

...

We have to remember that Syria has become a tool of Iran. So it is important to look at what Iran's interest in the meeting are. Iran's main interest is to see that no agreement be reached and Syria has probably been sent to stick its nose under the tent and find ways to scuttle any agreement. For such a precarious operation that should be low hanging fruit.

The Clinton attack machine

Dick Morris:

...

How will they do it?

Their favored method of getting out negative material about their foes is to hire private investigators to dig up dirt, which they then release through feeds to friendly journalists.

Consider the Lewinsky scandal. When Linda Tripp got to be a danger, the Clinton people released her Pentagon personnel file to Jane Mayer (then a reporter for The New Yorker). A federal judge later reprimanded two Clinton operatives for this violation, and the government had to pay Tripp more than $600,000 - but the damage was still done.

Meanwhile, Clinton staffer (and Hil- lary favorite) Sidney Blumenthal peddled the line that Monica was a stalker to journalist Christopher Hitchens. And White House operatives told ABC News' Linda Douglas of incoming House Speaker Bob Livingstone's infidelity scandal before it was made public.

In the '92 presidential campaign, the Clintons openly disclosed their use of private detectives to dig up ammunition on women who had accused the presidential candidate of having affairs with them, disclosing that they paid detective Richard Palladino over $100,000 in campaign funds. But, of late, they avoid such embarrassing disclosures by hiding their detective bills in their legal expenses.

The likeliest theme of the Clinton attack will be Obama's inexperience. They'll seek to portray him as naive and way over his head in a world of terrorists and threats. But the risk here is that a woman is normally seen as weakest in the military/national security arena, so Hillary might find it difficult to make the issue work for her.

A better choice might be to argue that her political experience (i.e. in defeating the GOP "attack machine") makes her the better candidate for the November election. With the Democrats anxious for victory, using Obama's politeness and gentility against him could be an effective strategy.

She would, in effect, suggest that he is too nice to beat the Republicans - an accusation she can be confident nobody will ever make about her.

The Clintons have achieved political success because they are completely ruthless in a campaign. Hillary will try to make that an asset in this one, but the fact is their ruthlessness does not extend beyond those who threaten their political viability. Bin Laden would have little to worry about from her.

The calm in Fallujah

Michael Totten:

“You're probably safer here than you are in New York City,” said Marine First Lieutenant Barry Edwards when I arrived in Fallujah. I raised my eyebrows at him skeptically. “How many people got shot at last night in New York City?” he said.

“Probably somebody,” I said.

“Yeah, probably somebody did,” he said. “Somewhere.”

Nobody was shot last night in Fallujah. No American has been shot anywhere in Fallujah since the 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment rotated into the city two months ago. There have been no rocket or mortar attacks since the summer. Not a single of the 3/5 Marines has even been wounded.

“The only shots we've fired since we got here are warning shots,” said Lieutenant J.C. Davis. Another officer didn't agree. “We haven't even fired warning shots,” he said. “It's too dangerous.”

It's dangerous because anti-American sentiment still exists in the city, even though it is mostly passive right now. It isn't entirely passive, however. Someone has been taking pot shots at Americans. A few days ago somebody threw a hand grenade at Marines. Two weeks ago an insurgent was caught by Iraqi Police officers while planting an IED near the main station. He freaked out, accidentally connected the wires, and blew himself up. “That's what he gets,” Private Gauniel said.

Even so, almost all patrols in the city are routine and uneventful affairs.

...

None of the Marines I've spoken to are nervous while walking the streets. “Complacency kills” is the new catchphrase in Fallujah, and it's drummed into the heads of the Americans here every day. The Marines may not have yet won the war in this city, but it sure is starting to look like it. The insurgency in Fallujah is over.

...

There is much more including several pictures of the city and the people. Totten is an independent reporter who courageously goes where many reporters will not. He is definitely worth reading.

A messenger for the desperate for defeat Dems

Jack Kelly:

In his weekly radio address, President Bush gave thanks for American servicemen "who risk their own lives to keep us safe."

Democrats chose retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez to deliver a rebuttal.

"I saw firsthand the consequences of the administration's failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States. That failure continues today," he said.

LtGen. Sanchez endorsed the Democratic measure pending in Congress to condition continued funding for the war on a timetable for troop withdrawal.

"Although we cannot withdraw precipitously from Iraq, we must move rapidly to minimize our force presence," he said.

Martin Peretz of the New Republic suspects Democrats want to withdraw troops from Iraq quickly because they don't want to win there.

"I suspect that so many Democrats are so deeply hostile to a forward foreign policy and their minds so deeply embedded in the notion that you can negotiate successfully with fanatics and tyrants that they wouldn't mind a prophylactic victory for the enemy," he wrote Monday.

If you want to lose a war, who better to deliver that message than a loser?

...

Historian Victor Davis Hanson likens Gen. Sanchez to other "whistleblowers" such as former CIA officer Michael Scheuer and former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke who were failures at their jobs.

"In all these cases there is a dismal pattern: a mediocre functionary keeps quiet about the mess around him, muddles through, senses that things aren't going right, finds himself on the losing end of political infighting, is forced out or quits, seethes that his genius wasn't recognized, takes no responsibility for his own failures, worries that he might be scape-goated, and at last senses that either a New York publisher or the anti-war Left, or both, will be willing to offer him cash or notoriety -- but only if he serves their needs by trashing his former colleagues in a manner he never would while on the job," Mr. Hanson said.

Sanchez statement about the lack of a plan condemns himself and his staff. It also is an attempt to avoid responsibility. It is an attempt at upward delegation of responsibility for plan. President Bush did not come up with the counterinsurgency plan used by Gen. Petraeus. It was devised by Petraeus and his staff.

Presidents can tell the military they want certain objectives taken and want certain results, but it is up to the military to devise the plans to achieve them. this is where Sanchez failed the President and the country and he is now trying to blame the President for that failure.

It may work with the Democrats who want President Bush to be blamed for everything that goes wrong while they ignore all that goes right. It will not be accepted by history and Sanchez is putting himself in the ranks of other failed generals like McClellan who would not take responsibility for his failures and sought political validation instead.

The irrelevance of the passions of the Paul voters

Stuart Rothenberg:

Thank goodness for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and his campaign for president.

Single-handedly, the quirky libertarian Republican from Texas has unintentionally exposed the over-hype that accompanies much of the talk about politics and the Internet.

Paul has been doing well in post-debate call-ins and Internet "polls" for months, and his Web site has been scoring more hits than a bong at a Grateful Dead concert.

Recently, he received a wave of publicity because of a single day of fundraising, when some 35,000 contributors gave more than $4 million to the Congressman's presidential bid.

But big-sounding numbers can be deceiving, and politics is more about breadth of support than depth. Ultimately, elections are about winning votes, not Web visitors or even campaign dollars.

Yes, $4 million is a lot of money to raise in a single day.

But it pales in comparison to the overall fundraising of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who didn't need a one-day fundraising event to get media attention. Still, let's give the Texan credit for his fundraising.

But what does that mean if he also has no chance of becoming the GOP presidential nominee, or even of winning a single primary contest?

Yes, I know. This statement alone is enough to generate far too many e-mails and telephone calls from Paul supporters accusing me of being anti-democratic and of violating the Constitution. When I wrote months ago in this space that it was time for Paul and other third-tier candidates to be excluded from televised debates, more than a couple of reporters made it clear that although they agreed with my view, they didn't want to be swamped by angry e-mails and phone calls.

The result is that many in the national media have treated Paul casually. Some media types surely find him interesting, especially given his views on Iraq. And people who cover "new technologies," including the Internet, have a self-interest to hype Paul's Web hits and Internet fundraising. But you hear very little about his kooky votes.

Hardly anyone is bothering to talk about his votes against resolutions calling on the government of Vietnam to release political prisoners and on the Arab League to help stop the killing in Darfur. Nor do they note that he said during his 1988 Libertarian bid for president that he would do away with the FBI and CIA, abolish the public schools, eliminate Social Security and all farm subsidies, and withdraw from NATO.

Reporters don't talk about his views and philosophy because they know he isn't a credible contender, but at the same time they refer to his fundraising and Web presence as if he's relevant.

...

Paul is a libertarian idealist. His fellow idealist are very passionate about their ideas and they guy who espouses them, but those passions have not persuaded voters to accept those ideas and the internet hyperactivity cannot substitute for that lack of acceptance. Another element of his attractiveness to some is his anti war stance. The anti war left is another passionate group that has raised a lot money for MoveOn.org and other groups who want to lose the war. I suspect that some of his financial backers are from that group who want to see his message in Republican debates, to make it appear that their views are more widely shared. It is not working, but they will continue to flog their points until the votes are counted.

The Sanchez-Pelosi alignment

Washington Post:

It may be among the strangest of political alliances: a former commanding general in Iraq, blocked from a fourth star and forced into retirement partly for his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the speaker of the House, desperate to end a war that the general helped start.

But in partisan Washington, the enemy of one's enemy can quickly become a friend, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the new marriage of convenience between Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.

On Saturday, Sanchez delivered the Democrats' weekly radio address. He excoriated what he called the Bush administration's "failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq," then embraced Democratic legislation linking continued war funding with a timeline aimed at ending U.S. combat operations by December 2008.

Other senior military figures have turned on the White House, but none as senior as Sanchez, whose command of coalition forces in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 coincided with an explosion of violence, the emergence of a brutal insurgency and a prison-abuse scandal that still haunts the war effort.

For Democratic leaders, Sanchez's address has been a triumph, covered by the media nationwide. It interrupted a stream of stories about declining violence, which had stalled efforts to force a shift of war policy.

But for critics of the war and of Sanchez's command, the radio address was curious. Andrew Bacevich, who was an Army officer in the Vietnam War and now teaches at Boston University, said Sanchez fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the conflict he faced. Sanchez's troops employed "kick-down-the-door" tactics that hardened resistance to the U.S. occupation, and helped turn an insurgency in its infancy into a guerrilla war spinning out of control, he said.

"Why he has chosen all of a sudden to attempt to return to public attention, and why he would do it in an overtly partisan way, frankly baffles me," said Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq. "And why the Democratic leadership would say, 'Yes, this is the guy who is going to deliver our message' is just baffling. He is a largely discredited figure."

In August 2004, when an independent panel faulted the Pentagon's top civilian and military leaders for detainee abuse in Iraq, Pelosi was one of the first to accuse the administration of a whitewash, calling for an independent commission to investigate further. The Army inspector general cleared Sanchez in 2005 of any culpability for Abu Ghraib abuse, but the issue still hangs over his head.

...

In an interview with the Monitor in McAllen, Tex., last year, Sanchez called the prison-abuse scandal "the sole reason I was forced to retire." He has said since retiring in late 2006 that he long believed that the war was severely under-resourced and strategically flawed, but that he should not speak out while wearing the uniform. He did not return e-mails yesterday requesting comment.

The sequence of events that led to Sanchez's pick began on Nov. 17, when Pelosi and Sanchez appeared at a fundraiser in San Antonio for endangered Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (D-Tex.) at the home of lawyer Frank Herrera.

Herrera, who has contributed more than $100,000 to Democrats since the early 1990s, said Sanchez was a surprise guest of another invitee. Sanchez knew Rodriguez casually, but the general had become close friends with House intelligence committee Chairman Sylvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), said Peter Brock, a Reyes spokesman. The Reyes connection had put Sanchez into the orbit of Texas's Latino Democratic power players.

...

"I'm beyond perplexed," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who criticized Sanchez at Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in 2004. "He's chosen to play politics here. He's opened himself up to what happened on his watch. He's made himself a political figure, and I hope he understands that those of us who were on the ground watching at that time are going to push back."

Graham said that he repeatedly asked Sanchez in private whether he needed more troops to pacify the fledgling insurgency, and that Sanchez always said no. "He never said any of these things when it could have made a difference," Graham said of Sanchez's criticism.

...

Sanchez stated publicly that he did not need additional troops, he just needed better intelligence. The irony is that Petraeus got better intelligence when he put more troops on the streets to defend the Iraqis, the very thing Sanchez rejected.

The meeting in San Antonio is filled with irony. Ciro Rodriquez is one of the beneficiaries of the largest donations from MoveOn.org. Silvestro Reyes is the intellectual light weight that Pelosi put in charge of the Intelligence Committee. Sanchez's affiliation with these two light weights should have been a tip that he is not that smart.

That he would let Pelosi use him for an attack on the current operations just proves his lack of intellect. The closer you look at the mess he made in Baghdad and Iraq, the more he looks like a diversity hire than someone who got their on merit. By joining the anti war left he has exposed his incompetence to a public debate which will further isolate him. That Pelosi thinks he is smart, tells you a lot about her own lack of intelligence.

Democrat foreign policy retreat

James Kirchick:

Accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised “an America that will not coddle dictators from Beijing to Baghdad.”

Weeks later, his running mate, Al Gore, delivered a speech detailing the now long-forgotten history of the first Bush administration’s support for Saddam Hussein and Iraq’s weapons programs (which shamefully continued long after the ostensible purpose for America’s initial support of Saddam — his war with Iran — ended).

Gore said the first Gulf War was a necessary consequence of President George H.W. Bush’s failed diplomacy and coziness with Saddam all the way up to his invasion of Kuwait (tacitly encouraged by the first Bush administration) and declared that “coddling tyrants is a hallmark of the Bush foreign policy.”

Observers would be forgiven were they to mistake Clinton’s and Gore’s campaign speeches as part of the dreaded “neo-con” oeuvre.

The specific targets of Clinton and Gore were the Republican realists — a breed of the foreign policy establishment embodied by Bush, along with his secretary of state, James Baker, and national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

In their talk of “coddling dictators from Beijing to Baghdad,” Clinton and Gore faulted the Bush administration for its feckless response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and cooperation with Saddam Hussein.

How ironic, then, that in his column last week attacking Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, self-identified “progressive” and former Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont would hail Bush, Baker and Scowcroft — the latter described by Lamont as “Bush No. 1’s top foreign policy adviser” — as offering the prescription for the Democratic Party’s foreign policy woes.

Lamont focuses his critique on Lieberman specifically, and this is reasonable given his understandable bitterness over losing an election.

But the Connecticut senator has become a foil on whom many Democrats project their political frustration and lack of ideas about the role America should play in the world.

Lieberman is a convenient punching bag for Democrats; attacking an otherwise liberal senator who sides with the president on the war allows Democrats to avoid the unpleasant truths about the self-defeating narrative they have constructed about Iraq.

Pathetically, today, this reigning element of the Democratic Party attacks Gore’s running mate and simultaneously rallies around a Greenwich, Conn., dilettante as some sort of sage on foreign policy.

While faulting Lieberman for historical ignorance in his recent claim that the Democratic Party has abandoned its “muscular tradition” of “Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and the Clinton-Gore administration,” the commentary by Lamont in last Tuesday’s Politico underscores his own lack of political knowledge.

Praising the first Bush administration and “our bipartisan foreign policy tradition,” Lamont neglects to mention that the vast majority of Democrats in Congress opposed the first Gulf War; Gore and Lieberman were two of just 10 Democratic senators to vote in favor of authorizing the use of American force.

...

Amid his effusive praise for GOP realists, Lamont betrays an astounding degree of obliviousness to the fact that he epitomizes the death of the Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy tradition that Lieberman bemoaned earlier this month.

...

Kirchick is giving the anti war left, as represented by Lamont, more credit for rational thinking than they deserve. They are embracing the realist as an excuse for inaction, and not because they actually agree with them.

Their primary motivation is to avoid the use of force for any reason other than to stop the Mexican army before it gets to LA.

They seek to discredit the use of force period. That is why they cannot admit the success of the surge in Iraq. That is why they are so desperate for defeat in Iraq. If they secure that defeat they will move on to seeking our defeat in Afghanistan.

They want the Military to return to a meals on wheels humanitarian assistance program. When it comes to foreign policy one should never give the anti war left credit for operating in good faith on anything.

The Annapolis hudna conference

Ralph Peters:

SHORT of intolerable carnage, there's no durable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. None. The best all parties can hope for is an occasional time-out.

A respite between rounds isn't worthless, of course - lives are saved, Israel's economy improves and the Arabs get one more chance to get their act together. But we're forever disappointed because we're convinced there's a good, permanent solution, if only we can figure it out.

That's the American way: a can-do spirit, the conviction that no problem's too tough for us. But, in the real world (and in the bizarre fantasyland of Arab culture), some foreign problems can't be resolved equitably. They can only smolder on, occasionally erupting in flames.

In the Middle East, you can't buy peace. You can only buy time. If we want to help at all, the fundamental requirement is to have realistic expectations.

...

For their parts, Arab leaders and their representatives assume we're sufficiently honored if they just show up. We hear no end of nonsense about the great political risks they're taking, etc. We're suckers for any fat guy in a white robe with an oil can.

Today's session in Annapolis may or may not result in a we-the-undersigned statement or a few unenforceable commitments. And yes, there's merit just in bringing folks together and keeping them talking. But the baseline difficulty is that we want to solve problems for people who don't really want those problems solved.

Mahmoud Ab- bas and his Fatah Party, for example, couldn't accept a genuine peace tomorrow morning - even though Hamas' coup in Gaza has put them up against the wall. Their problem? The most successful jobs program in the Arab world has been Palestinian "resistance" to Israel.

Consider what peace with Israel - real peace - would mean in the West Bank and Gaza, in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley: Tens of thousands of gunmen (and terrorists) out of work, with no marketable skills - and radicalized by decades of fanatic rhetoric.

...

Generations have grown addicted to the struggle - and its perks. It's the only bearable justification for their individual and collective failures in life. Real peace with Israel would probably spark a convulsion throughout the Arab world - as tens of millions realized that their sacrifices were a travesty that merely empowered thieves.

...

Oh, and even if there's some sort of agreement, only the Israelis will honor it. Grudgingly.

...

At best we can achieve a hudna, which is Muslim for a temporary halt to a war to regroup before the next attack. The war against Israel is driven by Muslim religious bigotry. that is why so much of what the Palestinians do is so irrational. If they were rational they would have taken the deal that Clinton and Barack offered them back at the end of his term. If they were rational, they never would have elected Hamas, which postponed further negotiations. If Abbas agrees to a rational deal the Palestinians will go to war with him and Israel. But, we must go on pretending they are rational for the sake of their irrational friends in the Arab world.

Hillary's Social Security amnesia

Washington Times Editorial:

Hillary Clinton once again asserted during the latest presidential debate that "the American people know where I've stood for 35 years." Yet, she repeatedly refuses to tell us where she stands on Social Security reform. And when she does, Mrs. Clinton misrepresents the condition of Social Security when she and her husband left the White House.

During the Nov. 15 debate, Mrs. Clinton again declared that "the Social Security system was on a path to be solvent into 2055" when her husband left office. In fact, as the Social Security trustees reported in their assessment as of Dec. 31, 2000, the projected insolvency date was 2038, nearly a full generation before the year that Mrs. Clinton has been citing. The trustees' latest assessment, which was issued in April, projects insolvency to occur in 2041.

Whenever asked to detail her views on Social Security, Mrs. Clinton says she is "for getting back to fiscal responsibility" first. But she has offered no coherent plan to achieve that goal. Indeed, the tax increases she favors will be used to partially finance her plan for universal health care, while the spending on the numerous other social programs she has embraced would, if implemented, surely lead to further fiscal irresponsibility.

...

"Fiscal responsibility" is Hillary code for raising taxes. That is her plan and the Democrats plan for Social Security reform. By the time the program reaches the insolvency point it will take one taxpayer for every recipient. That is not a sustainable program and it is not fiscal responsibility. What should be done is put the program on an invested basis as proposed by the Bush administration so that recipients will not have to put all their hopes in the tax payer basket.

The legal immigrant surge

NY Times Editorial:

About the only point of agreement on immigration in this country is that newcomers who play by the rules — fill out their forms, pay their fees and wait their turn — are welcome. But that great American dogma is being sorely tested by the inability of the federal government’s feeble citizenship agency to deal with a flood of applications that arose this summer.

The agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, is telling legal immigrants that applications for citizenship and for residence visas filed after June 1 will take about 16 to 18 months to process. The agency was utterly unprepared for the surge, and so tens of thousands of Americans-in-waiting will have to keep on waiting. Many, gallingly, may have to sit out next November’s election, even though that civic act was what prompted many of them to apply in the first place.

This was not supposed to happen. The director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Emilio Gonzalez, promised this summer that the era of bad, slow service was over. He said a whopping increase in fees that took effect July 30 — an average of about 66 percent across the board, with naturalization now costing $675 per person, up from $400 — was about to make his agency fit for the 21st century. Speaking to newly naturalized immigrants, Mr. Gonzalez promised immediate results.

One immediate result was entirely predictable: people rushed to get their paperwork in. The agency received nearly 2.5 million naturalization petitions and visa applications in July and August, more than double from those months last year. But Mr. Gonzalez’s spokesman, Bill Wright, told Julia Preston in Friday’s Times: “We certainly were surprised by such an immediate increase.” Surprised and swamped. The agency’s processing center in Vermont is only now acknowledging naturalization petitions that came in by July 30.

...

.... The country should summon the will, the resources and the basic administrative competence to carry out one of its most vital functions, the making of new citizens. Mr. Gonzalez’s agency says that the new revenue will allow it to eventually add 1,500 employees to its work force, an increase of about 10 percent, and that staff members have volunteered to work overtime to handle the latest backlog.

The agency has made such vows before, and the volunteerism doesn’t cut it. This is not a benefit car wash or a canned-food drive. Turning immigrants into citizens demands better than platitudes and broken promises.

Congress should not wait on the new fees to appropriate money for the needed staff. Take away a couple of John Murtha's earmarks and pay for it. These are potential Republican voters and we should not delay their eligibility.

I think the surge is about more than the increased fee. It is also a healthy by product of increased enforcement of the immigration laws. It is what we want to happen from increased enforcement and we need to make sure that it works.

Sudan's Muslims lash out at teddy bear name

AFP/Washington Times:

A British teacher in Sudan yesterday faced lashes and deportation as she languished in police custody, accused of insulting the Muslim prophet for allowing young children to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Sudanese police arrested Gillian Gibbons in Khartoum on Sunday after parents complained that she allowed 6-year-old boys and girls at an expensive English school to name the bear, and so "insult" the prophet Muhammad.

The penalty carries the death sentence for Muslims in Sudan, where Islamic Shariah law is enforced in Khartoum and the north, but a non-Muslim could face a maximum penalty of lashes, prison, a fine and deportation if found guilty.

A shaken Ms. Gibbons, whom a British Embassy spokesman said yesterday had not yet been charged and who never intended that naming the bear would cause offense, was poised to spend a second night in police custody.

...

Sudanese officials yesterday closed the fee-paying, Christian-run Unity High School until further notice, one teacher told Agence France-Presse on the condition of anonymity.

...

This is another example of the idiocy of Shari'a law and why it should be banned. Other reports have indicated that this may have been a back door attempt to intimidate the school which had been in a dispute with the government over taxes, but if the school has been shut the government is unlikely to get any tax revenue from it. There is something wrong with the Muslim culture that they would want to inflict corporal punishment on a teacher for such an incident. This is just sick. It will lower respect for Islam around the world.

Iran announces missile with range to hit Israel

AP/NY Times:

Iran said Tuesday it has manufactured a new missile with a range of 1,200 miles capable of reaching Israel and U.S. bases in the Mideast, the official news agency IRNA reported.

Iran's Defense Minister Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Ashoura missile was produced by factories affiliated with the ministry, according to IRNA. He did not say whether Iran has test fired the missile or has plans to do so.

Many of Iran's weapons development claims have not been independently verified.

...

If Iran tested this missile the US would know about it. The report indicated that Iran is working on a missile with a range of yp to 1,900 miles which would put much of Europe within reach. Such a missile would make missile defense for Europe all the more important. It would also counter the Russian assertion that Iran was not a threat to Europe.

French car burning cult goes wild, injures 77 police

AP/NY Times:

Rampaging youths rioted for a second night in Paris' suburbs, firing at officers and ramming burning cars into buildings. At least 77 officers were injured, a senior police union official said Tuesday.

The overnight violence was more intense than during three weeks of rioting in 2005, said the official, Patrice Ribeiro. He said that ''genuine urban guerillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons'' were among the rioters.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town in Paris' northern suburbs.

Residents claimed that officers left the crash scene without helping the teens, whose motorbike collided with the car. Officials cast doubt on the claim, but the internal police oversight agency was investigating.

Rioting first erupted in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday night. It grew worse and spread Monday night to other towns north of Paris. Rioters hurled stones and petrol bombs at police, authorities said.

The use of firearms added a dangerous new dimension. Firearms are widespread in France, and police generally carry guns. Guns, though, were rarely used in the 2005 riots that spread to poor housing projects nationwide.

Police are facing ''a situation that is far worse than that of 2005,'' said Ribeiro, national secretary of the Synergie officers union.

''Our colleagues will not allow themselves to be fired upon indefinitely without responding,'' he warned on RTL radio. ''They will be placed in situations which will become untenable.''

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is visiting China, appealed for calm and called a security meeting with his ministers for Wednesday on his return to France. The violence and the use of firearms against officers presented his government, in office since his election victory in May, with a stern test.

...

"Youths" is the French expression for Muslims. In the UK the term "Asian" is usual. Earlier reports indicated that the two killed were on bikes that were stolen and they were fleeing arrest. This sounds more like urban warfare by a Muslim insurgency. It also has the appearance of a violent tantrum by groups who fill they should get away with crimes. The French cannot afford to let that condition fester. It has to suppress the car burning cult now.

CNN has more on the violence. "Some residents, populated largely by immigrants and their French-born children, accused police of fleeing the crash scene. However, three eyewitnesses, interviewed on TV, said the police stayed and tried to revive the two boys with mouth to mouth resuscitation." Facts matter little to a mob that rejects the rule of law.

Gateway Pundit has more on teh car burning cult including several photos.

Olemert, Abbas optimistic on eve of talks

Times:

Israeli and Palestinian leaders appeared close to a breakthrough last night in efforts to kick-start the Middle East peace process.

As President Bush opened a three-day summit in Washington, Israel and the Palestinians said that they were near agreement on a joint document outlining the terms of new negotiations. The document, which the parties had previously failed to agree, could trigger within days the first formal peace talks between two sides for seven years.

Yesterday Mr Bush held separate White House talks with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President. According to White House press secretary Dana Perino, he called on them to “seize the moment.”

“He said history is full of missed opportunities because people just looked to the downside,” she said.

The summit, which aims to lay the ground for new talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is being attended by nearly 50 countries, including a record 17 Arab nations. Both Syria and Saudi Arabia are present — the first time Saudi officials have sat with Israelis to talk about peace in the Middle East.

Mr Bush, who says he is “personally committed” to resolving the conflict, told Mr Olmert before their meeting: “I’m looking forward to continuing our serious dialogue with you and the President of the Palestinian Authority to see whether or not peace is possible. I’m optimistic.”

Mr Olmert said: “We and the Palestinians will sit together in Jerusalem and work out something that will be very good.” Later, before his meeting with Mr Bush, Mr Abbas said: “We have hope that this conference will produce negotiations . . . that will lead to a peace agreement.”

...

The real question is whether the Palestinians can live up to any agreement they enter with Israel. Is the PA ready to go to war with Hamas and the other factions to stop their attacks on Israel? If not Israel has gotten nothing from its bargain. Right now Hamas is worried about Israel wiping them out. Perhaps that is an area of agreement already between Israel and the Palestinian authority.

Zimbabwe running out of cash

Telegraph:

After running out of basic foods like bread and milk, Zimbabwe is now running out of bank notes.

The soaring inflation rate - the world's highest at 15,000 per cent - means locals are being forced to use more bank notes to buy less.

The largest denomination note, the Z$200,000 bill, is worth about eight pence and the standard unit of exchange is a packet of 100 wrapped in plastic bands.

Cash is in such short supply that ATM withdrawals have been limited to Z$10million (about £4) per person per day and huge queues form outside banks every day.

...

It is as if Mr Mugabe, having failed to control inflation by neo-communist price controls, has converted to Thatcherite monetarism.

But the reality is more prosaic.

"They can't print it fast enough," said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare. He suspects the presses are secretly being used for soon-to-be issued Z$500,000 and Z$1million notes.

The government was still driving up the money supply with cheap credit and the absence of goods to buy was fuelling inflation, he said.

"It's just become such an inefficient mess because of incredible shortsightedness on the part of the government," he said.

The story seems to suggest that the current shortfall is cause by the presses switching over to the new zero chopped currency. I think they are bumping up against the limits of their ability to print money which has little value. What a wretched mess Mugabe has made of the former bread basket of Africa.

Update: The BBC reports that Zimbabwe is having difficulty calculating inflation because the shops have too few goods to sale.

Burglary a dangerous profession in Texas

AP:

The cha-chick of a shell entering a shotgun's chamber rattled through the 911 line just before Joe Horn stepped out his front door.

Horn, 61, had phoned police when he saw two men break into his neighbor's suburban Houston home through a window in broad daylight. Now they were getting away with a bag of loot.

"Don't go outside the house," the 911 operator pleaded. "You're going to get yourself shot if you go outside that house with a gun. I don't care what you think."

"You want to make a bet?" Horn answered. "I'm going to kill them."

He did.

Admirers, including several of his neighbors, say Horn is a hero for killing the burglars, protecting his neighborhood and sending a message to would-be criminals. Critics call him a loose cannon. His attorney says Horn just feared for his life.

Prosecuting Horn could prove difficult in Texas, where few people sympathize with criminals and many have an almost religious belief in the right to self-defense. The case could test the state's self-defense laws, which allow people to use deadly force in certain situations to protect themselves, their property and their neighbors' property.

Horn was home in Pasadena, about 15 miles southeast of Houston, on Nov. 14 when he heard glass breaking, said his attorney, Tom Lambright. He looked out the window and saw 38-year-old Miguel Antonio DeJesus and 30-year-old Diego Ortiz using a crowbar to break out the rest of the glass.

He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and called 911, Lambright said.

"Uh, I've got a shotgun," he told the dispatcher. "Uh, do you want me to stop them?"

"Nope, don't do that," the dispatcher responded. "Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over, OK?"

Horn and the dispatcher spoke for several minutes, during which Horn pleaded with the dispatcher to someone to catch the men and vowed not to let them escape. Over and over, the dispatcher told him to stay inside. Horn repeatedly said he couldn't.

When the men crawled back out the window carrying a bag, Horn began to sound increasingly frantic.

"Well, here it goes, buddy," Horn said as a shell clicked into the chamber. "You hear the shotgun clicking, and I'm going."

A few seconds passed.

"Move," Horn can be heard saying on the tape. "You're dead."

Boom.

Click.

Boom.

Click.

Boom.

Horn redialed 911 and told the dispatcher what he'd done.

...

There will be little to no sympathy for the burglars by a Texas jury. Pasadena is nothing like the community in California with the same name where the Rose Bowl takes place. It is a heavily industrialized area along the Houston ship channel with several refineries. It is mostly a blue collar neighborhood. Obviously many have a low tolerance for criminal activity. It is a place where if you are caught doing a burglary you could get the death penalty on the spot.

Osama to posture before the tape recorder again

AP:

Al-Qaida's media wing said Monday it will soon release a new message from Osama bin Laden. It said the message will be addressed to European countries, but did not elaborate.

...

"Soon, if God allows, the lion sheik Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, (will give) a message to the European nations," it said.

The militant Web site carrying as-Sahab's announcement urged Islamic militants to advertise bin Laden's new message to Western sites to "give them the unseen truth of their failed war."

...

The message did not indicate why Osama would be doing a Harry Reed imitation, nor did it say why Osama was not giving a public presentation in Baghdad or Kabal to celebrate al Qaeda's "win." I suspect it is the same reason he still cowers behind the tape machine. If he is focusing on the Euros it is probably a vain attempt to peal them off from the coalition in Afghanistan.

Terrorist in drag pretends to be bride

CNN:

Soldiers manning a checkpoint near Baghdad stopped a wedding convoy to find that the purported bride and groom were wanted terror suspects, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Monday.

...

The soldiers became suspicious of the convoy because its members -- save the "bride" -- were all male and because one of the cars in the convoy did not heed orders to stop, the official said.

Also, soldiers said, the people in the car seemed nervous and the groom refused to lift his bride's veil when soldiers asked him to, according to the official.

...

Upon inspecting the convoy, soldiers found a stubbly-faced man, Haider al-Bahadli, decked out in a white bride's dress and veil.

Bahadli was wanted on terror-related charges, as was his groom, Abbas al-Dobbi, the official said.

...

Cross dressing terrorist are usually a sign of desperation or, perhaps, the guys were just trying to show off their kinky side. At least he did not say he was Corp. Klinger. CNN does have a couple of cute photos of the "bride" if you follow the link above.

The Huckabee bed tax on nursing homes

Don Surber has a post on Huckabee tax increases in Arkansas including one imposed on beds filled in nursing homes. This is an interesting tax, because most nursing home patients pay for their care and bed from their Social Security checks which are signed over to the nursing homes. It looks like an indirect way to get more Federal money.

Al Qaeda running out of money?

Andrew Cochran:

...

On 20 November 2007, Andrew Cochran reported on this blog about the success of the U.S. ITFC in shutting down elements of Al-Qaeda's financial network in Iraq, and that the government of a key Gulf state has assisted in these efforts. On the same day, the Washington Post published a report of its own about the U.S. efforts to break Iraqi insurgents’ financial networks, and the growing interest of insurgents in money rather than ideology.

A significant evidence for the U.S. successes in this field has recently appeared from an unexpected direction - Al-Qaeda itself. The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF)—the primary indoctrination and propaganda means of Al-Qaeda, published on the same day - 20 November 2007, on the main Jihadi forum of Al-Hesbah, an unprecedented announcement, which we may title A CALL FOR DONATIONS. It was not the first time that Jihadi elements posted material on the significance of the Jihad bil-Mal (financial Jihad). However, past writings on the issue have had the religious and indoctrination nature. This time it looks as a genuine call resulting out of a real stress. The post by the “official” GIMF provides it also a nature of an official call by Al-Qaeda, not just some group belonging to the Iraqi insurgency. It does not refer to Iraq or any other place in particular, and therefore, it might also indicate the stress in which the organization is found in other regions of Jihadi fight as well, in the field of finance.

...

The author of this call is not hiding or coloring the financial situation of the group in the battle field:

“Oh Muslims !! this is a call for you from the fighters to the entire Muslims. Following the campaign against Islam to dry its sources, many of the people who support this religion suffer from lack of equipments and basic means for their Jihad, after the belief in Allah. The situation became really bad. Imagine brothers, that some of them carry weapons with no ammunition. Sometimes they have no food or place of refuge. I see you calling for Jihad day and night without implementing it, as if the Jihad is just carrying weapons.

Brothers, in many cases the financial Jihad is not less than Jihad by fighting (Al-Jihad bil-Nafs). How could the Mujahid fulfill his huge tasks without weapons? Or without the support for his family while he is away or martyred?

The Noble Qur’an gave the financial Jihad a great priority. It is always compared to the Jihad by fighting as two sides of the equation. Moreover, in all the Qur’anic verses that record the two, except for one verse, the financial Jihad has a priority over the fighting Jihad.

… From these verses and stories, the significance of the financial Jihad is clear. The infidels spend their money to fight [the supporters of] Allah, and their reward, at the end of the day, is only defeat. Should not the believers spend their money to strengthen the basics of religion and enable its spread in the world? No one can claim that he owns nothing. I tell him, don’t you know any wealthy Muslim? Approach him and encourage him [to donate]. We know how far the infidels (Taghout) are suffocating the finance of the Mujahidin, and how dangerous it is.”

The picture is clear and the call seems to be genuine. There is also an interesting element in using the term Taghout for “those who suffocate the finance of the Mujahidin.” This term is used for the Arab or Muslim governments, rather than the U.S. or other Western “enemies.” This might be an indication to the cooperation of Arab governments in this field.

...

This is more bad news for al Qaeda. Reports of communications between Zawahiri and Zarqawi suggested several months ago that al Qaeda central was running out of money and needed help from Zarqawi's Iraqi operation. Now that operation is being destroyed which may have been al Qaeda's last cash cow. It is somewhat Ironic that al Qaeda hoped to draw the US into a war that would be so costly that it would be unfordable. While it has certainly been expensive, al Qaeda is learning the lesson of the former Soviet Union. Do not get in a funding war with the US.

Loss of faith in faith

Melanie Phillips:

Oh God! Tony Blair has confessed to religious faith being ‘hugely important’ to him during his tenure as Prime Minister.

The full force of the secular inquisition will not hesitate in pronouncing its anathema upon him for committing this heresy of religious belief.

For as Mr Blair also admitted, he was previously unable to be open about this key element of his character because ‘Frankly, people do think you’re a nutter’.

Too right they do. Especially these days when people turn themselves into human bombs and blow countless innocents to bits in the expectation that they will be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise.

Islamic terrorism and the demented beliefs that fuel it have given all religion a bad name. But this kind of death cult can scarcely be equated to the ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ pieties of Christianity.

Besides the antipathy to religious faith goes far wider and deeper than fear of terrorism. It is the outcome of a dominant secularism which claims that faith and reason are irreconcilable, and that belief in a supernatural creator is the equivalent to believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Though most people still say they believe in some kind of God, religious faith has become progressively more enfeebled and unable to resist the secular onslaught. Hence the enormous success of books such as The God Delusion by the biologist and militant atheist Professor Richard Dawkins.

He and his followers have created a climate of rampant intolerance towards religion, in which to acknowledge personal faith is to risk professional and social ostracism.

Yet the foundations of British society and Western civilisation rest upon the Bible and Christianity. It is the concept of a rational creator that lies behind the rationalism of the West. The idea of equality — fundamental to Western liberalism — derives from the belief that all human beings were created in the image of God.

...

There is much more. There is not just intolerance toward people "of faith." There is a perception of venality an charlatanism that pervades this intolerance. Attempts to make moral equivalence arguments about devout Christians and exploding Muslims also show the prejudice. But, I have never seen a story about an exploding Christian engaging in mass murder of non combatants.

Texas corporations still backing GOP

Houston Chronicle:

Bucking a national trend, Texas-based corporations have remained loyal to Republican congressional candidates in the 2008 campaign.

According to a Houston Chronicle analysis of Federal Election Committee data, the 46 Texas companies that are included in the Fortune 500 gave 73 percent of their political action committee contributions to Republican House and Senate candidates in Texas, while donating just 27 percent to Lone Star Democrats in the first nine months of 2007.

Nationally, the largest Texas companies sent more than $1.8 million, or 58 percent of their overall campaign cash, to congressional Republicans. Democrats received about $1.3 million.

"Texas is still Republican locally, and Texas businesses remain committed to the Republican Party," says Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

But Jillson notes that even in Texas, "interest trumps ideology," and Texas companies have increased their donations to influential Democratic committee chairs and other power brokers in Washington.

...

The cash flow toward Capitol Hill Democrats is far more pronounced among businesses in the other 49 states. In the months since Democrats gained control of Congress in January, the 50 biggest American industries have given 57 percent of their contributions to Democrats, according to a Nov. 15 analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Just last year, when Republicans controlled Congress, business interests favored the GOP by a margin of 2-to-1.

"This is when you find out who your friends are," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., a former chairman of the House Republicans' campaign committee. "In the business community, everybody is anteing up to who they think will win."

Analysts said Texas businesses are more likely to stick with Republicans because Lone Star State businesses tend to be more ideologically conservative than corporations in other states.

...

Donations to Democrats are more akin to a protection racket to get them to leave you alone. Companies need to recognize that in the long run this is self defeating that Democrats are going to screw them anyway.

Democrat denial and Iraqi results

Donald Lambro:

...

The pessimists and defeatists who declared the surge doomed and said we were digging ourselves into a deeper hole have been proven wrong. The story of Iraq now is that terrorists have been killed, captured or driven out of territory retaken and cleansed by American and Iraqi forces — a coalition that has stabilized much of the country.

But statistics are one thing, and the response of the Iraqi people is quite another. The most dramatic sign of improvement in Iraq can be seen in the number of Iraqi refugees who fled the violence at the height of the war and are now returning home in increasing numbers. Most of these returning Iraqis do so knowing their land is still a dangerous place, that the war is not over and that al Qaeda killers still have the power to strike.

But there is a sense that the tide has turned in the Iraqis' favor, at least for now. There is renewed hope for their country's future, hope that Iraq will one day be united and safe. And hope can be a very powerful ally to a people beset by war, imparting a strength that can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges, hardships and grief. Little by little we are beginning to see a rebirth of hope in Iraq.

Perhaps the key part of Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency has been his efforts to cement nationalist alliances with Shi'ite and Sunni tribal leaders who have turned against their common al Qaeda enemy.

One of the most interesting trends that has followed the offensive has been a growing confidence among many Iraqis, a feeling they are responsible for their country's destiny and must fight back when threatened by the thugs and killers in their midst.

...

You would never know anything had changed for the better in Iraq if you listened to the Senate Democrats this month. They refused to even acknowledge that the situation in Iraq had vastly improved.

Indeed, despite all the evidence proving President Bush's surge has been successful, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid is still pushing legislation to set a timetable for the quick withdrawal of all U.S. forces. Mr. Reid and his cohorts do not want a successful conclusion to the war in Iraq. They want a political issue that will fire up their party's antiwar base in 2008.

But Mr. Bush, Gen. Petraeus and the Republicans are seeking something very different. They want to achieve enough progress there, and buy enough time, to allow the Iraqi military to take over the defense of their country so we can start bringing our men and women home.

As of last week, the surge was working better than anyone could have possibly predicted and the Democrats' political exploitation of the war as a campaign issue was losing.

...

Republicans need to turn Iraq into a losing issue for Democrats. So far they have been passive in that regard. I think Giuliani may be the best to attack Democrats on the issue, though Fred Thompson has also shown an instinct for attacking them on the issue in his own droll way. Romney has been ambiguous on the war issue as well as other issues and McCain, while proven right on Iraq is much too respectful of his Senate colleagues to attacking them the way they should be on the issue.

The Politico reports that McCain actually does get tough on Sen. Clinton:

...

“Is that the same Sen. Clinton that said she had to suspend disbelief in order to acknowledge to that the strategy of the surge was succeeding?” McCain said in reference to Clinton’s statement that the United States should stop trying to intervene in a “civil war” in Iraq. “Clearly, it’s succeeding. You would have to suspend disbelief to believe that it’s not.”

McCain later said Clinton’s support for a phased withdrawal from Iraq “would have been a catastrophe for the United States of America.”

“Look, now the same people who were saying seven or eight months were saying you can’t succeed militarily, we’ve succeeded military. Sen. Edwards used to call it the ‘McCain strategy.’ He doesn’t call it that anymore,” McCain claimed. “Their record is wrong on this. My record is right.”

...

We need more of this.

Lott to resign from Senate

Washington Post:

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) will announce this afternoon that he's retiring from the Senate late next month, stunning Republicans who had only last year reinstated the 67-year-old to their leadership ranks.

Lott, the minority whip, made the decision over the Thanksgiving weekend with his family in Pascagoula, Miss., according to a senior Republican insider. Lott's move shocked Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have seen a wave of veterans announce their decision to not seek re-election next year as the GOP looks increasingly certain to remain in the minority. But Lott is the most senior Republican to retire, and his decision comes barely a year after he won re-election to a six-year term.

Lott's departure is equally stunning because, after cruising to his re-election last year, he completed a political rehabilitation from allegations of racial insensitivity because of remarks he made at a 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond in December 2002, which led to his banishment from GOP leadership. Last November, after four years as a back-bench Republican who burnished his image as a deal-maker, Lott won a narrow race to become GOP whip, the No. 2 post in leadership.

"Fatigue has set in," said the GOP aide, requesting anonymity to speak freely about a decision that will not be formal until a noon press conference in Pascagoula, Miss. (Check back to Capitol Briefing during the day for updates on Lott's press conference.)

Lott, 67, grew tired of the political infighting in the Senate as Republicans have been forced into a position of merely blocking a Democratic agenda, the aide said, stressing that the decision was not connected to any health or ethical issues.

Gov. Haley Barbour (R) will be allowed to appoint a successor to the seat, but a special election to fill the remainder of the term is likely to be scheduled for next November. Barbour and Lott are both close to Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), who worked for the senator before winning his own House seat. Pickering had decided earlier this year to retire at the end of next year rather than run for re-election to his House seat. Democrats had been wooing former state Attorney General Michael Moore to run against Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) next year but Moore demurred. (See "The Fix" for more details about the race to succeed Lott in Mississippi.)

...

Cilliza says Rep. Roger Wicker is also in the picture with Pickering. Pickering is probably the one with the most national name recognition because his father was the subject of a bitter fight over his appointment to the circuit court. While the Post sees this as more Republican problems, it has the potential of bringing in fresh blood from a state that is still trending Republican.

The cap and trade scam

Sebastian Mallaby:

The good news on climate change is that the world wants to do something. It's no longer just the Europeans and a few fellow travelers; a recent survey suggested that 96 percent of South Koreans and 66 percent of Ukrainians regard global warming as an important threat. The latest report from the Nobel-anointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got the blanket media coverage it warranted. In the United States, business and congressional leaders have decided action is inevitable.

Then there is the bad news: None of these fine sentiments will matter unless a critical mass of countries unites around a real policy. And unity is miles away. Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers remarked recently that today's climate debate is like the U.S. health-care debate of 15 years ago. People agree that action is essential, but they disagree so fiercely on the details that action may prove impossible.

Start with the international arena. Delegates from around the world will meet next month in Bali, supposedly to launch negotiations on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. But there is no consensus on what these negotiations should accomplish. Should they aim to create some kind of global cap-and-trade system? Should they go for a series of narrower agreements on biofuels, forest conservation and so on? Should they help countries adapt to global warming, since some warming is inevitable, or emphasize efforts to stop the warming in its tracks? The first task in Bali will be to negotiate what to negotiate about.

The one certainty in Bali is that excessive ambition will backfire. The failure of the Doha trade talks has shown that the multilateral system is clogged: It cannot deliver tariff cuts even though the intellectual case for trade is more widely accepted than at any time in recent history -- think of the transformation of once autarkic nations such as Brazil, India and China into successful globalizers. Given Doha's failure, the idea of negotiating a global cap-and-trade regime seems absurdly ambitious. Trade boosts countries' prosperity, so a deal should in principle be doable. But climate action imposes costs, and negotiators are likely to argue forever about who pays what.

Faced with that prospect, some argue that the United States should force collective action on foreign foot-draggers. The leading Senate climate bill, written by Joe Lieberman and John Warner, would threaten countries that fail to curb emissions with a quasi-tariff. The logic is that, if rich countries limit emissions while developing countries don't, greenhouse-gas-intensive industries will migrate to developing countries. And if developing countries have dirtier factories than rich ones, the perverse effect of limits on greenhouse gases in the United States might be that global emissions go up.

...

Recall how salary caps are supposed to level the playing field in Baseball? Paying over the cap requires the Yankees and the Red Sox etc. to pay a tax distributed to the other teams. It really hasn't worked and the rich teams keep driving up salaries. Cap and trade will drive up the cost for some businesses but will not reduce the overall production.

The Warner-Lieberman "solution" looks like the Taft-Hawley tariffs that were responsible for the depression with a green bow on it.

I don't think we are going to find a solution to reducing CO2 emissions in any form of restrictions, because there is too much incentive to ignore them and no real method for enforcing them other than tyranny. The best answer lies in efficiency of production and adaptation to a warmer climate. With the temperature here in the 40s all weekend, warmer sounds better anyway.

There are too many reasons to believe that this is an artificial crises anyway. Other planets with no men on them are warming up too, which suggest a certain hubris by those who think men are responsible for the warming.

Driving up Romney's negatives

Jonathon Martin:

In a big strategic shift, Rudy Giuliani hammered Mitt Romney’s record on three fronts, saying it was time to “take the mask off and take a look at what kind of governor was he.”

Using some of the toughest language of his campaign, Giuliani, in an interview with Politico, slammed Romney on health care, crime and taxes. At the same time he portrayed the one-time moderate as a hypocrite on a host of social issues who lives “in a glass house.” It was easily the most sweeping attack Giuliani has delivered against Romney in this campaign.

“He throws stones at people,” Giuliani said in an interview on his campaign bus. “And then on that issue he usually has a worse record than whoever he’s throwing stones at.”

The Romney camp responded by calling Giuliani's attack "nasty" and offering a point-by-point rebuttal.

Judging by Giuliani's rhetoric, he has appeared for weeks to be running more against New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, than any of his Republican foes. But as his poll numbers have dipped in this critical state, the former New York mayor has stepped up his campaign schedule and TV presence and also begun to take dead aim at Romney, whom polls show as the GOP front-runner here.

“I think there’s a difference between a guy who gets results, real results, that were applauded nationwide and somebody who had a mixed record at best as governor,” Giuliani said.

...

The story gets into the specifics of the attack on Romney's record. I am not sure how effective this new tact will be for Giuliani. Romney has certainly been the most promiscuous in criticizing his opponents and he should not be surprised to see attacks on his own record. Most of the previous attacks on Romney have been on the ambiguity of his passions, i.e. flip flopping on issues. However, Rudy's above the fray posture seemed to have been working, but perhaps they saw something in polling in New Hampshire that they believed gave them an opening. I frankly like both better when they are attacking Hillary.

Byron York looks at how, “The oppo is all online now.” He describes the current clash as between " The Cronyism Narrative vs. The Authenticity Narrative."

2008 and the coming primaries

Michael Barone:

Six weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, the presidential race looks more uncertain than ever. Only last week did the schedule of contests become certain: The day before Thanksgiving, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner set the state's primary on Jan. 8, and the day before that, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Michigan primary can proceed on Jan. 15. Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani continue to lead the competitions in national polls and in the large states, but on the Democratic side, there is a virtual three-way tie in Iowa, and on the Republican side, Mitt Romney leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. As for the general election, national polls show Democrats generally doing better than Republicans, but recent Rasmussen and Mason-Dixon polls show Hillary Clinton trailing in what was, in 2000 and 2004, the key state of Florida.

...

Some Republican insiders are talking about the possibility that none of the candidates gets a majority of delegates. Presumably the nomination will be brokered, probably long before the convention, but not before the party goes through considerable turmoil. I think that's possible; unlikely things can happen (Florida 2000).

What about the general election? Consider two poll results: When the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked voters which party they preferred to win the race for president, Democrats led 49 percent to 36 percent. When the FOX News poll asked which of two specific candidates would do the better job of protecting the country, Rudy Giuliani came out ahead of Hillary Clinton by 50 percent to 36 percent. Those numbers suggest to me that the range of possible outcomes in November 2008 is much wider than it was in November 2004.

What we have not seen yet is a debate between the two parties on ideas. The Democratic candidates have been busy pounding George W. Bush, who will not be on the ballot. The Republican candidates have been busy pounding Hillary Clinton, who may or may not be on the ballot. And candidates in each of the parties have gotten started pounding each other. These arguments are mostly about the past. We haven't heard much yet about the future.

I still think that Texas may get a chance to be the decider in the Republican race with its March 4th primary. By not moving up, Texas may have enhanced its importance.

Between the ...'s Barone discusses the scenarios for each candidate getting the nomination. However his comparison of the generic ballot to the Fox ballot on protecting the country explains both the generic poll bias and the reason Democrats should lose in 2008 and every other election. There is a large segment of the country that quite rightly does not trust them on issues of national security. Certainly their various positions on defeating the enemy in Iraq confirm the good judgment of those who think they are wrong on national security.

Iraq and the Democrats

Clive Crook:

...

The better news, though, poses a challenge for Democrats as the election approaches. Opposition to the war has been their chief theme. This still commands broad and strong support, of course, but the intensity could continue to fade. Republicans will seek opportunities to accuse Democrats of wanting the US to fail, or of wishing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – and those charges will acquire some force if the view that the surge has worked takes hold. For Democrats, even putting the recent fall in violence in its correct context poses a political risk, because it can be portrayed as failing to recognise the military’s efforts and achievements. If the Republican presidential contenders have any sense, they will tread very carefully here – while hoping that Democrats fall into the trap and helping them to if the opportunity presents itself.

Up to now, Democrats have been stinting in their recognition that the situation in Iraq has improved: “Yes, violence is down a bit, but . . .” That is the wrong posture. They need to celebrate the success, as long as it lasts, as enthusiastically as the Republicans. They also need to stop harrying the administration with symbolic war-funding measures demanding a timetable for rapid withdrawal, as though nothing has changed. This would take little away from their larger valid criticisms of the war and of its conduct until very recently. And it is not as though Iraq is all the Democrats have going for them in this election – they are on to a winner with health care. Any suspicion that they are rooting for defeat in Iraq could sink them.

Crook grudgingly admits he was wrong about the surge being a failure and acknowledges the grass roots reconciliation that is taking place. So far Democrats have not been this honest about their mistakes on Iraq. In fact they argue that the administration has an exclusive on mistakes about Iraq. That is looking less like a credible argument everyday and Crook is trying to warn them off of it.

I do think crook is wrong about health care too. The so called solutions of the Democrats are demonstrated failures in Canada and elsewhere. If free health care were so wonderful all those Cubans would not be risking their lives to leave home and Brits would not be taking vacations to get treatment unavailable at home. Click on the HEALTH CARE tag to see a collection of rationed health care horror stories. When Americans recognize that "free" health care means rationed health care and less care they will reject what the Democrats are offering.

A Texas connection in Annapolis

Roger Cohen:

The Palestinians are the cause of exiting and ex-presidents. There’s no electoral payback in supporting them. Jews and Israel-loving evangelicals dwarf any Arab lobby to the extent it’s not even funny.

President Bush is on the exit track. It’s time to rectify the fundamental error he made in allowing war-on-terror rhetoric to discredit the Palestinian national movement.

His best hope in Annapolis may be the Texas connection. If Bush gets behind Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister who attended the University of Texas, things may move. But he has to stick with him.

Fayyad, 55, is the can-do face of the Palestinian movement. Like his people, he’s long been in the wilderness. Unlike many of them, he hasn’t succumbed to the culture of the victim. “One year,” he said in an hour-long conversation, “is more than adequate to come to a peace treaty and end this conflict.”

...

The Palestinians are desperate because they are at a dead end. They’ve been the losers over six decades through ineptitude, corruption, Arab hypocrisy and their susceptibility to victims’ hollow consolations. As Fayyad noted, “Last year more than 50,000 Palestinians emigrated. How is that consistent with ending the occupation?”

Israeli desperation is quieter. The economy has blossomed, but not the Israeli soul. Four decades of occupation since the 1967 war have been a scourge. Jewish precariousness persists. The diaspora Jew did not go to Zion to build the Jew among nations.

Bush faces Palestinian weakness and compromised Israeli strength. He must offset weakness by standing with the Palestinians on core demands. He must insist on Israeli sacrifice — territorial and ideological — in the name of U.S.-guaranteed security. “Without peace,” Bush should tell the Israelis, “the Arab birth rate and the jihadist tide will eventually wash over you.”

...

I asked Fayyad how he’d reassure Israel about security. He became animated. “Political pluralism is fine, but I can’t tolerate security pluralism. There’s no such thing as militias running around taking decisions! That has led to catastrophe. Law and order is basic. I said in a speech the other day that Nablus is more important than Annapolis! It is. The people of Nablus need security, just like Israelis.”

And Hamas? “The Palestinian state will be in the West Bank and Gaza, so the current situation is a big problem for implementation. But we’re not there yet. We are talking about a binding agreement with the state of Israel. Our domestic situation will be sorted out by then.”

Fayyad continued: “I want to end the occupation yesterday! I feel no less strongly than these Hamas people talking about resistance. But we have to mean what we say. In 1993, we renounced violence and recognized Israel. We must stick with that.”

...

Cohen is writing on the NY Times Op-ed page so he is obligated to through in a great deal of Bush basing which makes his piece somewhat incoherent. He leaves out the part about all the exploding Palestinians that accompanied the earlier Bush administration efforts in the conflict. The NY Times rewrite of history is that no effort was made until now. These omissions make much of their criticism fraudulent.

There is also the incoherence of within two paragraphs discussing Palestinian migration away from the area, but arguing later that their birthrate would overwhelm Israel. Perhaps exporting people may be the Palestinians more productive area. It is certainly better than sending them out to explode around Israelis.

If the new Palestinian leader is a graduate of UT good for him. Perhaps Bush can flash the "Hook'em Horns" sign when they meet and they can talk about what went wrong in the A&M game on Friday. Fixing that problem will probably be easier than fixing what is wrong with the Palestinians. At least Fayyad understands the security problem, but whether he can do anything about so that he will be offering Israel something of value is the real question on which an agreement hinges. All those issues where Cohen wants Israeli concessions are meaningless if Fayyad cannot deliver on security.

The Washington Post talks about why Annapolis was chosen for the conference. It is a beautiful city and the nautical theme may disconcerting for a group of people from the desert. The site of the conference features "the dying command of James Lawrence, captain of the USS Chesapeake, who was mortally wounded during a naval battle with the British during the War of 1812." Don't give up the ship may become a metaphor for the conference.

Peter Brooks discusses the low expectations for the conference. Barry Rubin in Israel has similar low expectations.

Violence is not the only metric of progress in Iraq

Amir Taheri:

'A TORRENT of good news": So The New York Times described the reports of a significant fall in violence in Iraq. But reducing all Iraqi news to measures of violence can hamper understanding of a complex situation.

Those who opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 prefer to focus on violence, for it has seemed to confirm their claim that the war was wrong. They've downplayed all good news from post-Saddam Iraq - the end of an evil regime that had oppressed the Iraqi people for 35 years; the return home of a million-plus Iraqi refugees in the first year after liberation; the fact that the Iraqis got together to write a new constitution and hold referendums and free elections - for the first time in their history - and moved to form coalition governments answerable to the parliament.

The drop in violence is certainly a good thing. But other Iraq news, both good and bad, needs to be taken into account.

On the good side:

* More than 70 percent of the cells created by al Qaeda in Iraq have been dismantled, with vast amounts of money and arms seized from terrorists and insurgents. The so-called Islamic State in Iraq, set up by al Qaeda in parts of four provinces, has collapsed.

* Iraqis who'd sought temporary refuge in neighboring countries are returning home in large numbers - 1,000 a day returning from Syria alone.

* Thanks to mediation by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite coalition, the three groups that had withdrawn from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government are expected to return to the fold.

* The British forces' handover of Basra to Iraqi authorities was completed without a hitch; Iraq's second largest city is rapidly returning to normal.

* Iraq's national currency, the dinar, is trading at its highest level since 1990 against the Iranian rial, the Kuwaiti dinar and the US dollar.

* Iraqi oil production is at its highest since 2002. Oil Minister Hussein Shahrestani recently notified OPEC that Iraq intends to produce its full quota next year.

* There's a rush of applications to set up small and medium businesses. In Baghdad alone, the figure for October was 400, compared to 80 last August.

* The fourth American university in the Arab world, and the first in Iraq, has started work in Suleymanieh, close to the Iranian border.

And on the bad:

...

IRAQ today is a hundred times better than what it would have been under Saddam in any imaginable circumstances. Statistics of violence don't begin to measure the efforts of a whole nation to re-emerge from the darkest night in its history. And in that sense, the news from Iraq since April 2003 has always been more good than bad.

What is new is that now more Americans appear willing to acknowledge this - good news in itself. As long as the United States remains resolute in its support for the new Iraq, there will be more good news than bad from what is at present the main battlefield in the War on Terror.

His list of the bad is actually longer than his list of the good, but it does not seem as critical to Iraq's survival. Violence has always been overrated as a metric for success in wars like the one in Iraq. Its importance can fluctuate with which side has the initiative and whether the casualties resulting from the violence are weighed toward one side or the other. For exam[le in Afghanistan the casualty ratio is running up to 100 to 1 in our favor so any violence should suggest the Taliban are suffering.

One of the main reasons to stress the decrease in violence in Iraq is that it undercuts the main metric of the loser lobby in the media and the Democrat party.

Huckabee's big government conservatism

Robert Novak:

Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the motive force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is no doubt about Huckabee's record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he decided to lose 100 pounds and pressed his new lifestyle on the American people, he was far from a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax and has more recently signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit in normal boundaries of economic conservatism, as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed the cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

...

Novak's critique seems a bit overwrought. Huckabee did after all create one of the most unique anti tax programs in history with his clever "Tax Me Some More Fund" for those who wanted to donate more of their income to government through higher taxes. The few donations it received was elegant testimony to how unpopular tax increases were.

Still calling the Club for Growth the Club for Greed was over the line. The real Club for Greed are the liberals who want to raise your taxes to that greedy governments can use them to buy more votes. Anyone who thinks global warming requires a biblical duty does not know much about the Bible or global warming. It does reinforce the iea that it is a religion for some and not really science.

Islamist terrorist threaten Fort Huachuca, AZ?

Washington Times:

Fort Huachuca, the nation's largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort officials changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were to be smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high-powered weapons to attack the Arizona Army base, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times.

"A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States," according to one of the documents, an FBI advisory that was distributed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, Customs and Border Protection and the Justice Department, among several other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. "The Afghanis and Iraqis shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners."

According to the FBI advisory, each Middle Easterner paid Mexican drug lords $20,000 "or the equivalent in weapons" for the cartel's assistance in smuggling them and their weapons through tunnels along the border into the U.S. The weapons would be sent through tunnels that supposedly ended in Arizona and New Mexico, but the Islamist terrorists would be smuggled through Laredo, Texas, and reclaim the weapons later.

A number of the Afghans and Iraqis are already in a safe house in Texas, the FBI advisory said.

Fort Huachuca, which lies about 20 miles from the Mexican border, has members of all four service branches training in intelligence and secret operations. About 12,000 persons work at the fort and many have their families on base.

...

The FBI report is based on Drug Enforcement Administration sources, including Mexican nationals with access to "sub-sources" in the drug cartels. The report's assessment is that the DEA's Mexican contacts have proven reliable in the past but the "sub-source" is of uncertain reliability.

According to the source who spoke with DEA intelligence agents, the weapons included two Milan anti-tank missiles, Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles, grenade launchers, long guns and handguns.

"FBI Comment: The surface-to-air missiles may in fact be RPGs," the advisory stated, adding that the weapons stash in Mexico could include two or three more Milan missiles.

The Milan, a French-German portable anti-tank weapon, was developed in the 1970s and widely sold to militaries around the world, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Insurgents in Iraq reportedly have used a Milan missile in an attack on a British tank. Iraqi guerrillas also have shot down U.S. helicopters using RPGs, or rocket-propelled grenades.

...

The Sinola cartel appears to be the one believed to be working with the terrorist. All the Mexican cartels appear to be taking lessons from the Islamist insurgency down to their terror PR campaigns and had chopping. They have been waging an insurgency of their own against the Mexican government for years and each other in turf wars. Spreading their terror through Islamist attacks just demonstrates how corrupt they are.

The choice of target is interesting. It is probably a recognition of how effective military intelligence has been in penetrating their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The description of the weapons and the number of terrorist suggest it would be merely a terrorist attack and had no chance of having any long term effect on the operations of the base or the training of intelligence officers and men.

Columbia rebuffs Chavez attempt to establish FARC government

AFP:

Tensions between Colombia and Venezuela soared Sunday, with President Alvaro Uribe charging Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was seeking a Marxist FARC government in Bogota and the spread of leftist regimes across Latin America.

"Your words, your positions, suggest you are not interested in peace in Colombia, but rather in Colombia becoming the victim of a terrorist government of the FARC," Uribe said after Chavez announced he was "freezing" relations with Bogota.

Chavez earlier said he was putting bilateral ties in a "freezer," after Uribe dropped him and a dialogue facilitator, Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, in negotiations toward the swap of leftist rebels for high-profile hostages guerrillas hold.

"We need a mediation with terrorists, and not people who try to lend legitimacy to terrorism," Uribe said referring to Chavez.

Chavez had said in Venezuela: "I declare to the world that I am putting relations with Colombia in the freezer. I do not believe in anyone in the Colombian government," Chavez said in a speech.

"They have spat brutally in our face when we worked heart and soul to try to get them on the road to peace," Chavez added.

In Bogota, Cordoba said Sunday she was being investigated by her country's Supreme Court for treason.

"They notified me yesterday; I am being investigated for treason and collusion," Cordoba told Radio Caracol from Caracas. She did not say if the charges against her were related to her work as mediator or to unrelated allegations.

...

Chavez is quick to take offense and quick with insults. Those are not character traits normally associated with a mediator. The chances of a successful mediation are remote. With chavez commie leanings, he was not a good choice when negotiating with the communist FARC movement. both belong on the ash heap of history.

Gateway Pundit has extensive coverage of the row.