PrairiePundit

Victor Davis Hanson: If Hamas is seriously talking of a truce, was that slight change in attitude because we "engaged" them and continued material aid, or because we cut funds, they are near broke, and isolated from their erstwhile international supporters? And did Syria leave Lebanon because American diplomats went to Damascus, as in the past, with more talking points? And did Iran finally become the focus of the Security Council because America dialogued with Teheran? And why did all those years of engaging Khadafi suddenly come to fruition circa 2003? I don't think shuttles back and forth, special envoys, and one-on-one summits-for all the American weariness with Iraq and the desire for calm-will do much to change the behavior of either Syria or Iran, when their present posture surely furthers their own national interests and agendas. Sectarian jihadism and constant violence in Iraq enhance both Teheran and Damascus, and that is why they promote it: whatever worries th...

Seattle Times: ... "It was an overwhelming feeling of 'Wow!' " Murray said. "The sun was shining again. There was hope and opportunity." For most of her 14 years in the Senate, Murray has been waiting for a chance to exercise power. Now she has a lot of it. Murray has just been named secretary of the Democratic caucus, a nebulous title that makes her part of the Senate Democrats' leadership quartet. More important, Murray is poised to become chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee for transportation and other areas. That puts the third-term senator in a position to pursue several major priorities for the state: $750 million for Sound Transit's "University Link" extension; $690 million for cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation; money for a joint port-security operations center for Seattle and Tacoma. She also wants more for veterans programs, including money for a new clinic in Whatcom County. ... Like wow! Why is she going to wa...

Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney: IN January 1968, Americans turned on their televisions to find scenes of chaos and carnage as Vietnamese communists unleashed their surprise Tet offensive. It would go down in history as the greatest American battlefield defeat of the cold war. Twenty-five years later, in December 1992, the United States began a humanitarian intervention in Somalia that would be viewed as the most striking failure of the post-cold-war era. Then, in March 2003, American tanks charged across the dunes into Iraq, beginning, in the eyes of many Americans, the worst foreign policy debacle of the post-9/11 world. Tet, Somalia and Iraq: the three great post-World War II American defeats. Except that, remarkably, Tet and Somalia were not defeats. They were successes perceived as failures. Such stark divergence between perception and reality is common in wartime, when people’s beliefs about which side wins and which loses are often driven by psychological factors that have n...

Newt Gingrich: ... I took some friends to Mount Vernon to see the new education center. It is an amazing tribute to George Washington and the creation of America. We watched a movie about George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve and surprising the Hessians (German mercenaries) on Christmas Day in Trenton. As I watched, I was struck by the amazing difference between the attitude of the father of our country and the current attitudes in the city that bears his name. General Washington had had a long and painful summer and autumn of defeat in 1776. His American Army had been defeated across New York--in Brooklyn, in Manhattan, and in White Plains--and then driven across New Jersey and forced to flee across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Washington's forces had dwindled until he had only about 4,000 effective soldiers left. There were another 6,000 men present but they were so sick they were unable to go into battle. Faced with declining morale, rising desertion...

AP: A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan. Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said. "Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday. Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing." ... Well I am glad she is getting no peace over the international chicken foot symbol. There is a certain arrogance by anti war activist that presumes they are superior to those who w...

David Limbaugh: ... ... rumors are circulating -- and have gained a measure of credibility with a recent op-ed from the president's former economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey -- that President Bush is considering compromising on his no-tax-increases policy in exchange for cooperation from Democrats on entitlement reform. If the rumors are true and the president does cave on the income tax issue -- even if it involves only the payroll tax and even if done for the noble goal of achieving much-needed entitlement reform, conservatives will be livid. Though few conservatives expect pure Reagan conservatism from President Bush -- mainly because he always telegraphed that he wasn't quite the purist -- we certainly do expect him to be true to his supply side ideology. He couldn't have been clearer in the last six years about his unwavering commitment to reducing the income tax burden across the board. He couldn't have been clearer that he had learned from and would not repeat h...

Cliff May: Iraq is a mess. We have come to that conclusion because virtually every day we see innocent Iraqis slaughtered by suicide - bombers. Of all the possible responses, the most perverse may be this: To propose that Americans pull out of Iraq, abandoning innocent Iraqis to the tender mercies of those dispatching the terrorists. Yet that is what many Americans now favor, perhaps because they have been persuaded that when Sunnis and Shites kill one another, Americans must be to blame. With apologies to Carly Simon: We're so vain, we probably think this sectarian strife is about us. An insurgency led by Saddam Hussein loyalists also inflames Iraq. If the insurgents succeed in driving Americans out of the country, Saddam will be pleased but perhaps not astonished. He has long maintained that the United States lacks the will to prevail against a determined enemy. Years ago, he told Americans: "Yours is a society that cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle." Many America...

Washington Times: Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials. Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix. "I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department. Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin. "That would alarm me," said a federal air mar...

Reuters /NY Times: President Bush deflected talk of civil war in Iraq on Tuesday and said Washington's conditions for talking to Iran remained unchanged -- Tehran must first suspend nuclear fuel enrichment. Asked what the difference was between the current bloodshed in Iraq and civil war, Bush said the latest bombings were part of a nine-month-old pattern of attacks by al Qaeda militants aimed at fomenting sectarian violence by provoking retaliation. He said that while the Iraqi government was free to talk to Iran about helping end the violence, U.S. conditions for direct talks with Tehran remained unchanged. ... Talking with Iran has never lead to anything of value with the US. Even when the hostages were released it was not as the result of talks but the result of Ronald Reagan's election. The diplomatic flurry of recent days is more likely tied to doing something about Iran and Hezballah's ties to Sadr and the trouble he is stirring in Iraq.

NY Times: A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr . The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon . A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said. Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria. The claim about Hezbollah’s role in training Shiite militias could strengthen the hand of those in the Bush administration who oppose a major new diplomatic involvement with Iran. The new American account is consistent with a claim made in Iraq this summer by a mid-level Mahdi commander, who said his militia had sent 300 fighters t...

The Washington Post is doing a rerun on its August story about a Marine intelligence report on enemy activity in Anbar province. It is still making the claim that things are out of control and al Qaeda is in charge. This appears to be going along with the media campaign of false stories in hopes of prevoking a retreat from victory in Iraq. The famous intel report was done before the Anbar Shieks turned on al Qaeda and started making war on death cult. Here are just a few of the recent posts on al Qaeda's problems in Anbar. Anbar tribes and US have big day against al Qaeda This post is based on a Reuters story that actually ran in the Washington Post. Al Qaeda loses it base in Anbar Al Qaeda's Anbar leader captured Al Qaeda's cleric in Anbar Marines dispute gloomy Anbar report 25 of 31 Anbar tribes join forces against al Qaeda These are stories from mainstream publications or are based on reports from them. It seems strange that the Washington Post wo...

JunkYardBlog: Taking CENTCOM's list of bogus sources the AP often relies on, originally published in Update VIII of this Flopping Aces post , I notice this name: Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, police Maj. Firas Gaiti said. Hmm...a bogus medic at Ramadi hospital...where have I heard about something at Ramadi recently? Oh yeah... Patterico has just been driving this story into the ground for a week now . Hey, I just noticed something. The suspicious Ramadi medic shows up in [edit] the AP version of Patterico's story --about how the LA Times manufactured an "air strike" in Ramadi (and dozens of casualties) that CENTCOM denies ever happened. [EDIT] In the AP version ,The bogus medic says: Meanwhile, Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, said those killed were civilians who died in shelling by U.S. tanks. A police spokesman said 20 people were killed, but gave no information about their identities or how they died. Hey, I just noticed soemthing el...

Centcom /Flopping Aces: Dear Associated Press: On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally. We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important. We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team. Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spo...

Strategy Page: The sale of Russian Tor-M1 missile system to Iran have generated a fair bit of hype, but a closer look reveals that the sale is not as big a deal as some try to make it out to be. While the Russians are selling 29 missile systems, it is not nearly enough to reliably defend all of the key sites in Iran's nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear program is scattered throughout the country – some around Tehran, some around Bushehr, some in other locations. In other words, these launchers will not be bunched up, they will be scattered across Iran. Can the Tor-M1 cover all of it? Not quite. The reasons are easily discovered when one looks closely at the system involved. The Tor-M1 – known to NATO as the SA-15 Gauntlet, has a maximum range of 12 kilometers. It is only effective up to 6000 meters altitude.... ... Against a Tomahawk cruise missile, which goes as fast as 880 kilometers per hour, and comes in at very low altitudes, the Tor-M1 is a very marginal system. A single T...

Richard Holbrooke: While the United States is otherwise preoccupied, this small former Soviet republic has become the stage for a blatant effort at regime change, Russian-style. Vladimir Putin is going all out to undermine and get rid of Georgia's young, pro-American, pro-democracy president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Putin is assuming that the United States, overwhelmed by Iraq and needing Moscow's support on North Korea and Iran, will not make Georgia a "red-line" issue and that the European Union, fearful of endangering energy supplies from Russia, will similarly play it down. Much is at stake: Putin's long-term strategic goal is to create a sphere of Russian dominance and hegemony in the vast area the Soviet Union and the czars once ruled. If he succeeds in bringing down the most independent and pro-Western leader in the former Soviet space outside the Baltics, he will have gone a long way toward his goal. Also at stake: President Bush's "freedom agenda,...

Mark Levine: What exactly are Carl Levin, Chuck Hagel, and the other defeatists after? These men, and many more like them, have blown the horn of surrender almost from the beginning of the Battle of Iraq. And they've used their public office not to help win the battle, but to undermine it virtually every step of the way. Do Levin, Hagel, and their likes understand that a defeat in Iraq is a victory for our enemies — al Qaeda, Iran, Syria, and the Bathists, as well as such adversaries as the Russians and Chinese? Do they understand that a defeat will weaken all our allies in the region, including Israel and friendly Arab states like Jordan and Egypt? Do they understand that a defeat will destroy our future diplomatic efforts if we cannot back up our positions with military resolve? Do they understand that the enemy will gain enormous resources and geographical advantages should we lose this battle? Do they understand the extent of the genocide in Iraq that is likely to follow...

Max Hastings: In Moscow shortly after 9/11 a clever Russian academic told me: "Don't believe all that stuff Putin is dishing out about how sorry we all are about what has happened. A lot of people here are thrilled to see the Americans get a kicking." A few months ago I heard a cluster of diplomats lament the difficulties of doing business with the Russians. "They still see negotiation in the old cold-war way, as a zero-sum game," said one. "If the west wants something, it must be bad for Moscow." Few of us today want to see the Russians as enemies. We admire their music and literature, sympathise with their appalling history and, a few years ago, delighted in their emergence from the sour, brooding seclusion in which they languished for most of the 20th century. It is precisely because we feel goodwill towards them that there is something of the bitterness of rejected courtship in our response to their recent behaviour, of which the apparent murder of...

Michael Barone: ... ... Democrats have sworn to reintroduce "pay-go" rules on tax cuts. That's a backward-looking move: It would have made it harder for recent Republican Congresses to cut taxes. But it will force Democrats, if they want to cut low earners' tax rates or extend the middle class portions of the Bush tax cuts beyond 2010, to find compensating spending cuts or tax increases. It will also make it harder for Democrats to do something they must do for political reasons -- adjust the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT was passed in 1969 to ensure that no one could totally avoid taxes. It sets up a separate income tax system, without many normally applicable deductions. Because it has not been indexed for inflation, it's slated to apply to rapidly increasing numbers of taxpayers with incomes around $100,000 and lots of deductions in high-income Democratic states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and California. Congress has been adjusting the...

Peter Brookes: THE death of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, last week from radioactive Polonium-210 poisoning is the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks on the outspoken opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin. No one has been able to offi cially implicate the Russian FSB - the domestic successor of the old Soviet KGB - in the assaults. But old-school KGB and CIA veterans are pointing fingers in the direction of the Kremlin and its supporters, the siloviki (powerful ones). You can see why. For starters, "wet works" (i.e., politically motivated assassination by security services) originated in the early 20th century with the Soviet secret service, the NKVD. (The term comes from the notion that you'd get your hands "wet" with the victim's blood.) And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence linking Russian spetzsluzhba (special services) in political "hits" using poison: * In 2003, Yuri Shchekochkin, a journa...

AP /Washington Post: Iranian state television reported that a plane crashed in the capital early Monday, killing members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, including high-ranking officers, in the third military air plane crash in the last year. The plane crashed shortly after taking off from a Tehran airport for Shiraz, about 600 miles to the south, state television said. "Some 30 members of the elite Revolutionary guards and six crew members were killed in the crash while they were heading for a military site," state-run television said, reading a statement from the Guards. ... In January, a military Falcon, a small passenger jet, crashed in northwestern Iran, killing the commander of the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards. In December, a U.S.-made C-130 military transport crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport, killing 115 people. ... Iran has a history of aircraft accidents involving a heavy loss of life. The government has blamed a U.S....