PrairiePundit

BBC: Zimbabwe's central bank has said it will introduce a new currency on 1 August as part of efforts to fight the effects of hyperinflation. The bank's governor, Gideon Gono, has announced zeros will be lopped off the Zimbabwe dollar, making 10bn dollars one dollar. Only last week, the government introduced the Z$100bn note. ... I think this was necessary because too many people were getting dizzy trying to keep up with the zeroes.

Salim Mansur: Before resting its recent case against Mohammed Momin Khawaja under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, the prosecution presented Momin’s former fiancée, Zeba Khan, as the final witness via a video link from Dubai. Ms. Khan reportedly stated in her testimony: “You will not meet a young Muslim man in the world who is not angry about something. Anyone who watches the news, if he wasn’t mad then, a) there’s something wrong with him, or b) he’s ignorant.” Obviously, not all angry young Muslim men are engaging in violence — nor, of course, are all Muslims terrorists. But many terrorists are found to be Muslims. Ms. Khan’s remark purports to explain the linkage. It is perhaps no coincidence that Mr. Khawaja has Pakistani roots. In recent years, Pakistan has become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists. For longer than that, jihadis have recruited Pakistani boys and men to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan. These brainwashed men may be volunteers headed out to fight infidel “invaders” and “oc...

Amir Taheri: On Monday the Iraqi Army launched a large-scale offensive in Diyala north of Baghdad to wipe out al-Qaeda's last remaining hideouts in the country. Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of al-Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq. Some returned home and resumed normal life. Others, looking for new places to pursue their holy war against “Zionists and Crusaders”, ended up in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Thailand and helped to reignite the fires of jihad. However, North Africa appears to have attracted the largest number of returnees. According to the buzz in jihadist circles, confirmed by officials and analysts, a new arc of terror is taking shape in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania - the five countries of the so-called Arab Maghreb in North Africa. Algeria was first struck by Islamic terror in 1986. Seven years of violence were triggered by the Front for the Islamic Salvation (FIS) in 1992, but by 2000, the Army and groups of armed ...

LA Times: Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran. In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution. At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledged that there is a rare divergence in the U.S. and Israeli approaches, with Israelis emphasizing the possibility of a military response out of concern that Tehran may soon have the know-how for building a nuclear bomb. ... The possibility of a US strike is remote. We don't have the forces in place for such an attack and it does not look like the administration is close to ordering them to be in place, much less ordering a strike. If ...

Kathleen Parker: John McCain and Barack Obama seem to occupy different universes. In McCain's universe, the planets rotate around the sun in a predictable pattern. In Obama's universe, he is the sun -- and we are but minor planets revolving around his brilliant countenance. Rarely have the different orbits of these two men been more vivid than last week. While Obama was enacting the rapture before 200,000 worshipers in Berlin, McCain was grinding out economic policy with fellow earthlings at Schmidt's Restaurant and Sausage Haus in Columbus, Ohio. Its motto: "The Best of the Wurst!" One is a Sun God -- a young deus ex machina who entered the national stage just four years ago; the other is an old soldier rendered witness to the shifting tides. Yet, despite Obama's amazing miracle tour last week through the Middle East and Europe -- and despite McCain's recent missteps -- the veteran is still not losing to the novice. Why not? Given Oba...

MNFI: This past June, Iraqi Army Soldiers in Taji recovered two broken down humvees on their own and restored them without any help from Coalition maintenance. “Probably the most exciting thing for me is I compare (today) to our partnership with the IA in 2006, and it’s night and day,” said Capt. Steve Chadwick, and Iraqi Security Forces coordinator with Multi-National Division – Center, who was stationed in Tal Afar and Ramadi at that time. Just two years ago, Coalition mechanics took care of the bulk of repairing vehicles and replacing parts. Not anymore, said Chadwick. Maintenance is not the only area where ISF are more proficient. There are now more Regional and Divisional Training Centers in Iraq than ever before, with classes taught by either Iraqi noncommissioned officers or civilian instructors expert in a specific field. “The future is the IA taking up training all on its own. It’s already begun,” said Capt Kyle Kirby, an ISF coordinator with the 10th Mtn. Div....

Terrence Jeffrey: Barack Obama has joined the party of war. Since it became clear that he would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Obama has left behind his peacenik rhetoric and seems eager to inform anyone who will listen that as president he would escalate U.S. military intervention -- in Afghanistan. Last week, immediately after completing his first-ever trip to Afghanistan, Obama made a pronouncement from that most sacred of liberal precincts, the op-ed page of The New York Times. "As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan," he wrote. "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there." In other words, Obama would order a surge -- in Afghanistan. ... What was most revealing about Obama's statement on "Meet the Press," however, was Obama's imp...

Washington Post: Bush administration officials have responded with skepticism to an appeal by visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani for increased intelligence cooperation, which he said would help his country attack militant groups and terrorist encampments near its border with Afghanistan . "The problem from our perspective has not been an absence of information going into the Pakistani government," said one Bush administration official familiar with discussions this week between the two governments. "It's an absence of action." Both governments stressed that their meetings have been cordial, and public statements underlined a shared commitment to counterterrorism. President Bush , in an appearance with Gillani after a White House meeting Monday, twice noted U.S. respect for Pakistani sovereignty. In an interview yesterday, Gillani emphasized Pakistan's desire "to maintain excellent relations with the United States." But ...

Dick Morris: If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest. Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain and a disinclination to support Obama. According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama's 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary. The problem is that older women don't like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in ...

NY Times: The number of times Senator John McCain ’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds. The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen. Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery. ... The campaign’s success in getting such wide coverage of the ad, evident through new tracking technology, comes as it seeks to maintain parity with Mr. Obama’s better-financed campaign in their intensive television advertising war. ... One of the ways you can tell it was a successful ad is that the NY Times ran its lead editorial condemning the ad and making allus...

From the NY Times: Obama Warmly Received by Democratic House Caucus Surprise, surprise. I am sure they embraced the chance to stand in his aura.

Houston Chronicle: A draft report of a new federal audit questions the Dallas Housing Authority's spending $20 million on suspicious rental assistance payments, including subsidies for 45 people who are dead. On the heels of the soon-to-be-released audit, the head of the housing authority, Ann Lott, resigned Tuesday without warning after the agency's board met to talk about the report along with possible disciplinary action. Lott, the agency's president and chief executive officer, had no comment about the resignation which is effective immediately, The Dallas Morning News reported today in its online edition. ... Among the audits findings: "The DHA spent $167,000 on 45 clients whose Social Security numbers identified them as dead. Between January 2006 and December 2007, the agency paid assistance for 235 clients whose Social Security numbers indicated they were dead as of April 2007. The authority confirmed that it provided assistance on behalf of dead clients and wil...

Houston Chronicle: Rather than risk getting caught, turn yourselves in. That's the latest government strategy in its ongoing effort to dramatically reduce the nation's ballooning population of illegal immigrants. Scheduled to be unveiled next week, it was announced Sunday by Julie Myers, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an interview with a Spanish-language television network. Myers told the network that "Operation Scheduled Departure" will allow illegal immigrants without criminal records a chance to literally "self-deport" by turning themselves in to her agents. She said the idea derived from a common complaint voiced by immigrant detainees: If given the opportunity, they'd rather just go home than be holed up in immigration prisons. Under the new program, those still walking free will have the chance to walk into ICE offices, be processed and get a few weeks to arrange their affairs, pack their belongings and ship out of th...

Washington Times: Some 1.6 million people were forced to use an emergency shelter or transitional housing at some point between 2006 and 2007, but the number of people who are chronically homeless dropped nearly 30 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to a report made public Tuesday. ... The NY Times reports: ... Housing officials say the statistics, which are collected annually from more than 3,800 cities and counties, may reflect better data collection and some variation in the number of communities reporting. But officials also attribute much of the decline to a policy shift promoted by Congress and the administration that has focused federal and local resources on finding stable housing for homeless people suffering from drug addiction, mental illness or physical disabilities, long deemed the hardest to help in the homeless population. Under the strategy, known as “housing first,” local officials have over the last eight years increasingly placed the chronically homeless into perm...

The indictment of Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens is not a particular surprise. The facts on which the indictment is based have been well known for some time. It is too bad it could not have come sooner. I think Stevens is probably as responsible as anyone for the GOP loss in 2006 with his ridiculous overreach on earmarks along with his bridge to nowhere. Alaska Republicans would be wise to refuse to renominate him this year. If Stevens were smart and had the interest of the Republicans at heart, he would resign now. As his conduct demonstrated in 2006 shows he is neither.

NY Times: A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan ’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials. The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said. The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants. The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Dir...

Dana Milbank: Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee. Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally. Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid ...

The unquotable news agency hints that is the case in a story about the use of extortion and kidnapping are their main fundraiser events. This is not likely to endear them to the Iraqis. It is another sign of how weakened al Qaeda has become in what was once described as its central front in its war against the US.

It is a quality that McCain still exhibits. When he supported the surge and the Democrats were pandering to defeatist McCain again showed courage. He was a man who would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. He now has a chance to win both because of his courage.

The Scotsman: Psychological warfare soldiers are using a series of subtle – and not so subtle – leaflet campaigns to turn the insurgents' messages against them. The hardline militants routinely curse British troops in Helmand as infidels and foreigners who do not respect women and ignore local customs. British soldiers insist that's not true, but they understand it resonates with ordinary people and they have responded with a series of leaflet campaigns designed to remind local people that most of the Taleban commanders are from outside Helmand as well. "We place an idea in their mind and tell them what they can do about it," said Lieutenant- Commander Shamus MacLean, at the dedicated "psy-ops" cell in the British headquarters at Lashkar Gah. "The Taleban understand the target audience far better than I ever can," he added. "If they do something that works particularly well, I am going to copy it." Psy-ops is often known as one of war...