PrairiePundit

Behind the New Delhi bombing NY Times: An apparently coordinated succession of powerful explosions tore through two crowded markets and a public bus in the Indian capital early Saturday evening, killing dozens of people on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. Mansoor Ijaz on Fox News notes that both the London bombing and the New Delhi bombing followed both governments condemnation of the Iranian nuclear program.

Hugh Hewitt makes the case for Justice Luttig and Nat Hentoff discusses his opinon on a murder manual book

New Orleans loses it shade and its people NY Times: ... "It's like a Weed Whacker went through here," said Joshua Mann Pailet, a photographer and gallery owner in the French Quarter. Once shady, Esplanade Avenue is now sun-dappled. And it suddenly has a night sky. "I don't think I've ever seen the stars in front of my house before," said Robert Tannen, an artist and urban planner whose yard on Esplanade was buried in tree branches. ... Indeed, so much of the city's outward face is currently altered, either temporarily or permanently, that its overall look is disorienting. Planners debating the best way to bring back lost neighborhoods and protect them are discussing how to sustain the city's visual integrity. Rebuilt levees, for example, will affect the sightlines and shadows on the waterfronts. For the time being, though, it is almost impossible to see past the aesthetic of cataclysm. In flooded areas, all of civilization has been seemingly red...

Iran said that it will wipe Israel off the map with unintended attacks? BBC: Iran says it has no intention to attack Israel despite a call by its president to have it "wiped off the map". Iran's foreign ministry said Tehran respected the UN charter and had never used or threatened to use force. But it also rejected a UN Security Council statement condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his remarks. The comments were seen by the outside world as a threat and the reaction from Iran is an effort to calm the outcry, says the BBC's Tehran correspondent. The BBC's Frances Harrison says this is the closest Iran has come to saying it will not attack Israel. ... Iran's intentions since 1979 have been to attack Israel using proxy warriors like Hezballah and other terrorist organizations. Iran still has to use covert attacks because it is not strong enough to attack directly. Perhaps that is why Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

The Delhi quagmire BBC: At least 48 people have been killed and scores wounded in a series of suspected bomb blasts in India's capital, Delhi. Two near-simultaneous blasts took place in markets in central and south Delhi, crowded with people shopping ahead of religious festivals next week. The third blast occurred in the area of Govindpuri which is in the southern part of the city. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "terrorists" for the blasts and said he would not tolerate militant violence. ... India immediately agreed that it would pull all of its troops out of Iraq, but this was seen as a rather hollow promise since it had none there to begin with.

Take him at his word Boston Globe: BY TELLING a conference in Tehran Wednesday that ''Israel must be wiped off the map," Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was not only revealing the hate-twisted face of the Islamist hard-liners who took over key government posts following his suspect election last June. He was also throwing down a challenge to the governments of the world. Ahmadinejad mocked every country that accepts the United Nations' principle of respect for the sovereignty of all other member states. For if Iran's president can openly call for the annihilation of Israel without censure or penalty, the bedrock purpose of the United Nations -- to create a world order rooted in collective security -- will be emptied of meaning. Several governments have issued statements denouncing Ahmadinejad's outburst. It was called stupid, offensive, unacceptable. But it was not merely a rhetorical faux pas. The nations of the world need to take what he said a...

Syria told to close offices of Islamic Jihad AP via Fox News: Taking a strong stand against Palestinian extremists, the United States joined Friday with the United Nations ( search ), Russia and the European Union in demanding Syria immediately close the offices of Islamic Jihad in Damascus and prevent use of its territory for terror actions. The so-called quartet ( search ), which has devised a road map to prod Israel and the Palestinians into a negotiated settlement, also condemned the bombing this week in the central Israeli town of Hadera in which five Israelis were killed. Islamic Jihad ( search ), which is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization, took responsibility for the attack and said it was in revenge for the slaying by Israeli troops of a leading Islamic Jihad militant. ... Linking Islamic Jihad to other deadly bombings in Israel, as well, McCormack said "This is a terrorist group tha...

"Terrorism is terrorism" John Moody, Fox News: Iraq’s prime minister Friday asked Americans to be patient and, for the first time, acknowledged a clear connection between the Iraqi insurgency and the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. "Terrorism is terrorism," said Ibrahim al-Jaafari ( search ) in an interview with FOX News. "You cannot separate it by region, or divide it into different parts of the world. Defeating terrorism now will benefit all democracies. Failing to defeat it will put all democracies in peril. It will come back to America as it did on Sept. 11." Al-Jafaari spoke in the Jordanian capital, Amman, after a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II ( search ), less than a week after Iraqis approved the country’s new constitution. Nationwide elections are set for Dec. 15. Al-Jaafari said he recognized there was growing unease in the United States...

The special counsel's code of the Samurai David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey: ... It is clear that, at least by sometime in January 2004 -- and probably much earlier -- Fitzgerald knew this law had not been violated. Plame was not a "covert" agent but a bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters. Instead of closing shop, however, Fitzgerald sought an expansion of his mandate and has now charged offenses that grew entirely out of the investigation itself. In other words, there was no crime when the investigation started, only, allegedly, after it finished. Unfortunately, for special counsels, as under the code of the samurai, once the sword is drawn it must taste blood. ... By being assigned to investigate one individual, or a small group, the prosecutor is deprived of normal constraints such as resource limitations and the perspective of having to choose from a range of cases to pursue. Another vital missing ingredient is supervision. Normally federal prosecutors have polit...

Criminalizing politics Opinion Journal: ... Mr. Fitzgerald has been dogged in pursuing his investigation, and he gave every appearance of being a reasonable and tough prosecutor in laying out the charges yesterday. But he has thrust himself into what was, at bottom, a policy dispute between an elected Administration and critics of the President's approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA. Unless Mr. Fitzgerald can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Libby was lying, and doing so for some nefarious purpose, this indictment looks like a case of criminalizing politics.

Two year investigation for this? John Podhoretz: SO, after 28 months, what we are told is this: Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, lied about his conversations with two reporters. He lied about those conversations first to FBI investigators in the fall of 2003 and then to a grand jury in the spring of 2004. And in telling those lies, says independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby sought to impede the investigation into the public exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. That's all, folks. The grand jury in the most hotly watched Washington political-legal investigation since Whitewater concluded its business yesterday by returning charges against one man and one man alone — who, the grand jury alleges, didn't tell the truth about when and how he discovered a piece of classified information. Scooter Libby was not charged with the misuse of that information, or with the unlawful exposure of an undercover agent, or with involvement in a conspir...

Earle subpoenas MoveOn.org leader R.G. Ratcliffe: Travis County prosecutors issued a subpoena Friday for the head of a liberal political organization to testify in a hearing next week on whether state District Judge Bob Perkins should be removed from hearing the criminal case against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. DeLay lawyer Dick DeGuerin has asked to have Perkins removed because of donations to Democratic organizations, including $200 Perkins gave to MoveOn.org in 2004. Perkins said he made the donation because the group was supporting Democrat John Kerry's bid to unseat Republican President George W. Bush. DeGuerin said the donation makes it impossible for Perkins to escape the perception of bias because MoveOn.org recently has been using attacks on DeLay, R-Sugar Land, to raise money. Last week, DeGuerin said in court that MoveOn was selling T-shirts with DeLay's mug shot on it. Perkins replied that he was unaware of the T-shirt and had not bought one. MoveOn later accused DeGuer...

Syria tries border diversion NY Times: The barbed wire was new, so new in fact it was still being rolled out Friday as Maj. Gen. Amin Soliman Charabeh pointed toward the swirling barrier as proof that his country was doing all it could to stop weapons smugglers and infiltrators from slipping across his country's border into Iraq , fueling the insurgency there. Border policemen in military uniforms stood in front of the rolls of wire, each armed with an automatic weapon. They were young men, four in a row, and each said it was his first day at that post. This was a trip organized by the Syrian government for a group of foreign reporters, and it quickly became clear that the official message Syria was trying to promote was not that it had sealed its borders. On the contrary, Syria was trying to make the point that the border remained porous, and that it was not Syria's fault. As Syria braces for possible sanctions after a United Nations investigation implicated top Syrian officia...

The corporate dictatorship of Syria Washington Post: The brother is an impetuous officer, who wields control over the praetorian Republican Guard. The sister is nicknamed "the Iron Lady." Her husband is a burly general who rose methodically through the ranks of Syria's feared intelligence services. Presiding over them is Bashar Assad, the Syrian president who runs what some have called "a dictatorship without a dictator." Diplomats and analysts say that together, the four represent the corporate leadership of Syria, a country facing its greatest crisis in decades following the release of a U.N. investigation that implicates senior officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. In this crisis, they say, the Assad family circle is a source of the president's strength. It may also be his weakness. If his relatives are directly linked to the killing, the scandal could bring down his government. Both Assad's brother Maher and h...

Ilamic terrorist smuggle missiles into France Telegraph: An Islamic terror cell has smuggled two surface-to-air missiles into Europe in a plot to shoot down planes at one of France's main airports, it was claimed yesterday. French and Algerian extremists with links to al-Qa'eda bought the Russian SA-18 Grouse missiles from Chechens in 2002 and smuggled them via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro. Both missiles and several of the extremists are reportedly still at large. French anti-terrorism investigators learned of the missile terror plan while interrogating a Jordanian al-Qa'eda operative close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the Islamic terror group in Iraq. ...

Iran's president marches with mob in anti Israel rally Telegraph: Iran was on a collision course with the West yesterday as its president defied a diplomatic onslaught led by Washington and London to withdraw his calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map" . Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supported by more than a million of his countrymen attending annual anti-Israel protest rallies in all major cities across Iran, said he stood by his remarks. The president marched alongside a mob of noisy students in Teheran waving placards carrying the exact words he used at an anti-Zionism rally earlier this week, and mocked Israel's strongest supporter, the United States. "They become upset when they hear any voice of truth-seeking, " he said. "They think they are the absolute rulers of the world." By returning so bluntly to the old anti-Israel rhetoric common during Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, the president has radically changed Iran's relations with t...

A progress report for the area around Tikrit

Arab leaders shot down Saddam exile plan prior to 2003 war Reuters: Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had secretly accepted a last-minute plan to go into exile to avert the 2003 Iraq war, but Arab leaders shot the proposal down, Al Arabiya television reported on Friday. UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan made the proposal for Saddam to go into exile at an emergency Arab summit just weeks before the U.S.-led war began in March 2003. But the 22-member Arab League, led by Secretary-General Amr Moussa, refused to consider the initiative. "We had got the final agreement from the different parties, the main players in the world and the person concerned -- Saddam Hussein -- within 24 hours," Mohammed bin Zayed, deputy head of the UAE armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi, told the UAE-based channel in a documentary. "So we were coming to put facts on the table, and there would have been results had it been discussed," he said. Egypt's President H...

What happened outside the Palestine Hotel Army New Service: A coordinated terrorist attack was thwarted Oct. 25 by U.S. Soldiers at the Fidoros Square traffic circle in downtown Baghdad. The attack, which occurred in three phases, began at 5:25 p.m., when under the cover of small arms fire, a vehicle packed with explosives tried to pierce the defensive barriers between the Sheraton and Palestine hotels. Seconds later, a vehicle moving toward the traffic circle from the east was engaged by a private security firm and immediately detonated. Spc. Darrell Green, a machine gunner from 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, was pulling security from an observation post at the Sheraton. Upon hearing the explosions of the first two vehicles, Green stood ready for what was to come. As dust and debris from the explosions subsided, he noticed the defensive barriers had been breached and a cement truck was heading through the gap toward the Sheraton and Palestine hotel compl...

Desertion charges brought against 51 from New Orleans PD