Down The Tubes

clipped from www.rogerlsimon.com I am embarrassed to think back now on the days when I thought Condi Rice was presidential material. For those of you who weren't reading me then or don't remember, yes, I did a fair amount of cheerleading for Ms. Rice on this blog. Shame on me for that and shame on her for continuing to kowtow to the religious-fascist-misogynist-homophobes who rule Saudi Arabia. How repellent is the thought of a modern American female Secretary of State offering twenty billion dollars in weapons to a regime that doesn't even allow women to drive. Whatever happened to the idea of a democratic Middle East? Down the tubes in the name of the phoniest realpolitik imaginable, the same old same old, but this time utilizing the excuse of standing up to Iran.

Global Warming

clipped from article.nationalreview.com According to a senior American military intelligence source, Iranian factions are debating whether they would like chaos to embroil multiple areas in August and September in a bid to force the United States out of Iraq. Some factions disagree, arguing that it would be foolish to fight a war on so many fronts, and that they should conserve their resources for the U.S.’s withdrawal from Iraq. Expect Iran to turn up the heat in Iraq in August. But don’t be surprised if Tehran’s “global warming” agenda reaches far beyond that.

Democrats Go To 11?

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Smith clearly finds the recent decisions of the Supreme Court not to his political taste and states that there is nothing "sacrosanct" about having nine justices on the Supreme Court. This may be true. But what is sacrosanct is that the judiciary is an independent branch of government, the selection of judges is within the purview of the elected President of the United States, and it is merely the responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent regarding their appointment. As the kerfuffle over the selection of US attorneys reveals, the Democrats are intent to take away the unfettered power of a President to appoint US attorneys. This is a power long vested in the President, and is a power that the Democrats had no problem seeing exercised when President Bill Clinton unceremoniously fired and replaced US attorneys during the early years of his Presidency - including one who was investigating the Whitewater controversy.

War In Waziristan ... Finally?

clipped from powerlineblog.com In North Waziristan, the wild border land that America hopes will be Osama Bin Laden’s graveyard, the normally busy roads are almost deserted and the fear is pervasive. Army helicopters sweep the valleys at night hunting for Al-Qaeda militants as troops and gunmen exchange artillery and rocket fire. America and Britain regard this usually autonomous tribal area - where Bin Laden is long believed to have been hiding - as the logistics centre of Islamic terrorist attacks around the world. Last week soldiers sealed all the roads into Miran Shah, the provincial capital, occupied the hills around it and fired the first artillery salvo in what Musharraf’s many critics have called a war on his own people. It's always hard to evaluate these reports; we've heard similar things before. But if Musharraf is serious about going after the extremists hiding in Waziristan, it can only be a good thing.

Wannabe Jacobins

clipped from neoneocon.com How did intelligent, cultivated people, then and later, come to excuse these abominations which ordinary simplicity sees for what they are? One answer, of course partial, seems to be the deep shift, anticipated by Rousseau, of moral feeling away from concern for liberty to concern for social justice. For “social justice” please substitute any of the following: social equality, racial equality (or “justice”), ethnic equality (or “justice”), cultural equality (or “justice”), and economic equality (or “justice”) and you have the motivation behind much of Leftist thought and action. The fact that such equality is a fake “justice,” the fact that it cannot actually be attained by human society, and the fact that all efforts towards achieving it end up profoundly compromising liberty are ignored by its champions, who have as much difficulty now giving up their Utopian dream as they did then. Perhaps more.

Petraeus V Nitwits

clipped from neoneocon.com Aspects of Insurgency; Aspects of Counterinsurgency; Integrating Civilian And Military Activities; Key Counterinsurgency Participants and Their Likely Roles; Civilian and Military Integration Mechanisms; Tactical-Level Interagency Considerations; Intelligence Characteristics in Counterinsurgency; Predeployment Planning and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations; counterintelligence and Counterreconnaissance; Intelligence Cells and Working Groups; Protecting Sources; Host-Nation Integration; Designing Counterinsurgency Campaigns And Operations; The Nature of Counterinsurgency Operations; Logical Lines of Operations; Targeting; Learning and Adapting; Developing Host-Nation Security Forces; Police; Leadership and Ethics;

That's just a partial chapter list of Petraeus' Counterinsurgency Field Manual. His nitwit overseers in Congress need to read it...

The Marlboro Men

clipped from www.nypost.com A trusted source in Baghdad confirmed several key developments that've gone largely unreported. Here's what's been happening while "journalists" focused on John Edwards' haircuts: * Al Qaeda lost the support of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The fanatics over-reached: They murdered popular sheiks, kidnapped tribal women for forced marriages, tried to outlaw any form of joy and (perhaps most fatally, given Iraqi habits) banned smoking. In response, the Arab version of the Marlboro Man rose up and started cutting terrorist throats. But let's be fair: Congressional Republicans, terrified of losing their power and glory and precious perks, haven't rushed to applaud our progress, either. They'll give up Iraq, as long as they don't have to give up earmarks. What were you, the American people, told about all this? Well, The New Republic published a pack of out-of-the-ballpark lies concocted by a scammer claiming to be a grunt in Baghdad.

Did I Forget To Mention That We're Overlawyered?

clipped from forums.macleans.ca 1) An end to the near universal reliance on plea bargains, a feature unknown to most other countries in the Common Law tradition. This assures that a convicted man is doubly penalized, first for the crime and second for insisting on his right to trial by jury. The principal casualty of this plea-coppers' parade is justice itself: for when two men commit the same act but the first is jailed for the rest of his life and dies in prison while the second does six months of golf therapy and community theatre on a British Columbia farm and then resumes his business career, the one thing that can be said with certainty is that such an outcome is unjust.

On Sleeping At Night

clipped from blogs.news.com.au AT LEAST 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release. How many people have now been murdered by fanatics set free from Guantanamo Bay, at the urging of so many civil libertarians and Leftist activists? How many deaths do those civil libertarians now have on their conscience?

Environmentalists "Know Better" Than The Natives

clipped from www.nytimes.com The Navajo president, Joe Shirley Jr., said his tribe felt similar pressure. Mr. Shirley said the plant here would mean hundreds of jobs, higher incomes and better lives for some of the 200,000 people on the reservation. The tribe derives little direct financial benefit from the operation of the existing coal-fired plants and it has not yet invested heavily in casinos. “Why pick on the little Navajo nation, when it’s trying to help itself?” he asked. The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, teaming with local groups like the San Juan Citizens’ Alliance, point to environmental shortcomings in the federal government’s tentative blessing of the plant, as laid out in a 1,600-page draft environmental impact statement and an analysis by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Did I forget to mention that China has now passed the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions? Whoops...

How To Win The War

clipped from blogs.dailymail.com When foreign countries prop up their inefficient industries in an effort to maintain or expand global market share, we call it dumping. When we do it, we call it saving the family farm. Never mind that dead farmers, millionaires and dead millionaires rake in millions from this bogus, socialistic practice. We’re at war. End the farm subsidies. American lives are on the line.

New Gravitas For "Deer In The Headlights"

clipped from www.classicalvalues.com Before writing this off as Alzheimer's Disease or "senility," I think it should be borne in mind that Senator Byrd is: a) a dog owner, who b) lives in an aread where Lyme Disease is known to be present, and who c) shows signs consistent with neurological symptoms of Lyme Disease infection. Is it too much to ask that he be tested? I mean, doesn't the guy vote for and against all kinds of important stuff? If a mere course of treatment with antibiotics could clear this up, why, there might even be positive implications for national security!

RTWT.

BTW, I hit a deer and was lucky enough to just have it glance off my car -- it was actually trying to out-race me! It left a dent and hair in my car bra and must have gotten a nasty bruise. I called the police and the officer had a grand old time searching for the deer up the hill with his flashlight and even wrote up a ticket to "Deer, owner State of Colorado".

Naturally, I didn't think it was very funny at the time being horrified by the realization that if the angle of intercept was different, I could have been injured or killed.

Like I said, RTWT.

Corruption Is As Corruption Does

clipped from www.strategypage.com July 28, 2007: In Iran, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is rapidly losing popularity and respect. It's feared that his only option is to somehow get the United States to attack Iran. This would instantly boost Ahmadinejad's popularity, and save his political career. For a while, anyway. Why is this happening?   Ahmadinejad has made a fool of himself, with his constant calls for the destruction of Israel and, worse yet, claims that he would turn the economy around and reduce corruption. Ahmadinejad has been inept in running the economy, and has made things worse. He has not been able to make a dent in the corruption, because so many of the dirty officials are senior clerics. These fellows have no intention of getting prosecuted and jailed, and have been able to fend off Ahmadinejad.

An Immolation Tale

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tells the Marine Corps association about his most embarrassing moment -- it has to do with Nixon, the Pope and a cigar -- then moves to a more serious topic: what America is doing right and needs to do better, in the War on Terror. First the cigar. For the next 10 minutes or so, I’d like to offer some thoughts on where our military – and our government – must apply the lessons that we’ve learned from the ongoing conflicts to build the capabilities we will need in the future. These points are clear:  Our military must be prepared to undertake the full spectrum of operations including unconventional or irregular campaigns – for the foreseeable future.  The non-military instruments of America’s national power need to be rebuilt, modernized, and committed to the fight. And third, we must think about, envision, and plan for, the world, the future – of 2020 and beyond. All of these points will be familiar to the readers of this site.

Pick Any Two

clipped from anglosphere.com Democracy, Immigration, Multiculturalism -- Pick Any Two So now we are seeing beach riots in Sydney between grievance-bearing, unassimiated Muslim youth and other young Australians. It's a story that echoes thoughout the developed world. Like the rule of law, like a public service ethic , like a high radius of trust and all the social benefits that go with it, assimilation is not just something one can pick from a list of "would-be-nice" social characteristics, it is something that must be worked at consistently over time.

An Open Letter

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Sorry to bother you Maam, I mean Your Majesty, (sorry I am an American from the South) something that has happened in your government that has saddened and outraged me in such a manner I felt compelled to write to you on this matter, though I have been dead for five years.  I know it sounds crazy but this matter has upset me so badly, that I have invaded my son's consciousness and I am compelling him to write you. My name is Donald L. Cox, I died in 2001, but that does not matter.  What matters is that your government in its infinite wisdom has decided to delete Winston Churchill from your required secondary school curriculum.  Winston Churchill! Get rid of the Battle of Hastings, Henry the Eighth, or the Black Plague, but Winston Churchill? For my Uncle Russell and all those lions lying in their graves over in Europe, do not let this stand. We Americans could dump all the tea of England in Boston Harbor, but we would never dump Churchill.  Can Britain?

You Can't Have Both

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com I often remind my liberal friends in the mainstream media and non-profit advocacy communities who believe Washington has become too secretive that you can have open government or you can have big government, but you can't have both simultaneously. That was the absurdity of "compassionate conservativism" -- not that conservatism can't be compassionate, but because in the version offered over the last six years, it's amounted to a miniature version of the Great Society. Thompson gives a clear indication of how federalism can apply to today's government to reduce its reach and to allow more control over self-government by communities and states. The founders included the 10th Amendment because they knew the farther power traveled from the voters, the less accountable the powerful would become. The nightmare bureaucracy of Washington DC today would be their worst nightmare come to life, with its control over all aspects of American life far outside the boundaries of the Constitution.

Most Excellent

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Three Arab princesses were thrown off a packed British Airways flight after refusing to sit next to male passengers they didn't know. The dispute - in which the three princesses from the ultra-conservative Qatar royal family demanded segregated seating - left the London-bound plane delayed on a baking Italian runway for nearly three hours. Furious passengers whistled and clapped as the row intensified before the captain eventually ordered the women to be escorted off the plane. Cabin crew tried to rearrange the seats but passengers travelling together refused to give up their allotted places. The captain tried to mediate but after more than two and a half hours of wrangling he ordered the bulk of their royal party off the plane.

And kudos to the passengers for holding firm. A minor victory against both Islamist supremacy and the horsehsh*t pretense called royalty. If it was a western royal family the same should have happened -- although in that case the excuse would have been "elbow room" or something similarly concocted...

Overlawyered (Part 92365)

clipped from instapundit.com For example, it is a specific federal crime to use the symbol of 4-H Clubs with the intent to defraud. And don’t even think about using the Swiss Confederation’s coat of arms for commercial purposes. That’s a federal offense, too.

Mental Midgets Security Watch

clipped from powerlineblog.com To understand why, keep in mind that we live in a world of fiber optics and packet-switching. A wiretap today doesn't mean the FBI must install a bug on Abdul Terrorist's phone in Peshawar. Information now follows the path of least resistance, wherever that may lead. And because the U.S. has among the world's most efficient networks, hundreds of millions of foreign calls are routed through the U.S. That's right: If an al Qaeda operative in Quetta calls a fellow jihadi in Peshawar, that call may well travel through a U.S. network. This ought to be a big U.S. advantage in our "asymmetrical" conflict with terrorists. But it also means that, for the purposes of FISA, a foreign call that is routed through U.S. networks becomes a domestic call. So thanks to the obligation to abide by an outdated FISA statute, U.S. intelligence is now struggling even to tap the communications of foreign-based terrorists. If this makes you furious, it gets worse.

No Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Die

clipped from www.blogtalkradio.com A review of news and developments with AEI fellow Michael Ledeen

The Saudi Sixth Column

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we’re going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I’m talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America’s K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East. While we’ve had only limited success paring back education for Islamist fundamentalism abroad, the Saudis have taken a surprising degree of control over America’s Middle-East studies curriculum at home. How did they do it? Very carefully...and very cleverly. It turns out that the system of federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) has been serving as a kind of Trojan horse for Saudi influence over American K-12 education.

The Tilted Picture

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com This is all good news, but there is something wrong with this picture. The diplomats, the aid-workers, professional information warriors, the "nation-builders" are all missing from the scene. Yon describes how the military had been forced to discover hidden political and administrative skillsets within themselves. It was not something they had signed up to do when they joined the Armed Forces. This involuntary retooling probably occurred because they had no choice but to learn it and kept at it like a man learning to hammer tacks for the first time, however sore his thumb got. And the retooling was necessary because the State Department, the aid agencies and other civilian agencies, for reasons related to their organizational culture and inability to provide their own organic security, were unable to do the job.

How Exotic!

clipped from powerlineblog.com

Those Who Cannot Remember History...

clipped from www.opinionjournal.com Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq. Mr. Obama is engaging in sophistry. By his logic, if America lacks the capacity to intervene everywhere there is ethnic killing, it has no obligation to intervene anywhere--and perhaps an obligation to intervene nowhere. His reasoning elevates consistency into the cardinal virtue, making the perfect the enemy of the good. the 27-year-old Mr. Kerry said, "There's absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath According to a 2001 investigation by the Orange County Register, Hanoi's communist regime imprisoned a million Vietnamese without charge in "re-education" camps, where an estimated 165,000 perished. a million Cambodians, and perhaps as many as two million, died

Where Are They Now?

clipped from hotair.com And finally this one, which is predictable in the aggregate and shocking in the specific instance of which country it is that places highest for satisfaction. Exit question: Is that because all the people who are dissatisfied have already crossed the border and are living here now?

Terror Fatigue Update

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Lowry: Why are the Sunnis turning against al Qaeda? Gen. Keane: Al Qaeda has overplayed their hand. What the al Qaeda do when they go into a town, or village or a neighborhood inside a major city is they get a stranglehold on the people themselves. They force the men to wear beards and the women to be properly costumed and essentially completely covered up. Men cannot smoke or drink, and obviously women can’t do the same. They actually even change their diet, and they force compliance. They change the curricula in the schools to their version of shari’ah law and radical Islamic fundamentalism. And they get such a strong hold on the day-in, day-out lives of the people that they use power and intimidation to do it. They normally immediately kill a leader or two who is respected in the neighborhood to strike fear and intimation in the hearts of the people. What has happened after four years of this is that they are willing to take more risk to get rid of it than they were initially.

Merry Christmas ...

... and a Happy New Year!

We Want To Use Children To Behead Infidels And Spies

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com LGF operative Kasper shares another video clip from UK Channel 4, an interview with Taliban terrorist leader Mansour Dadullah. It’s the face of the enemy. These creatures do not hide anything about their intentions, their depravity, or their love of killing—and Dadullah, who was released in a hostage deal made by Italy, makes a point of noting that kidnapping is a tactic that very obviously works for them, and promises more.

Any more questions?

Complete With Comparison Table

clipped from www.techcrunch.com With the Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry 8820 coming soon to an AT&T store near you, business folks around the country will be faced with the decision of switching to the trendy new iPhone or upgrading to a more iPhonesque version of their trusty CrackBerry. To determine whether the grass really is greener on the iPhone side of the fence, we have chronicled the experience of a venture capitalist (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has been using an iPhone and a BlackBerry 8800 side-by-side for the past few weeks. His conclusion: despite the overall attractiveness of the iPhone, it lacks too many vital features to replace the BlackBerry as the corporate weapon of choice.

Nuclear Priorities

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Located on the Persian Gulf, the Bushehr complex is the most visible symbol of Iran’s nuclear program, but it is not the most important element. Those can be found at Esfahan (where yellow cake uranium is produced) and Natanz, where uranium is being enriched in centrifuges. Eventually, those facilities will yield sufficient quantities of feedstock and enriched uranium to produce nuclear weapons. That’s why activity (and construction) at those sites continue unabated. Even in tough economic times, Tehran has ensured that both Esfahan and Natanz receive full-funding, even if it means slowing the pace at Bushehr.

After All, Rathergate Was Such A Smashing Success...

clipped from powerlineblog.com CBS's report creates a conundrum. It is inconceivable that CBS's reporters would broadcast this segment without reading President Bush's speech of January 10. It is equally inconceivable that they could read that speech without realizing that there is, in fact, no contradiction between it and the President's speech in South Carolina yesterday. The obvious inference is that CBS has deliberately chosen to mislead and misinform its viewers on the most vital issue of our time. I would much rather not believe that. But what other explanation can there be?

I'll Take Green For 400 With A Side Of Crow

clipped from www.futurepundit.com Ausubel argues that nuclear energy uses the smallest land footprint by far. Ausubel has analyzed the amount of energy that each so-called renewable source can produce in terms of Watts of power output per square meter of land disturbed. He also compares the destruction of nature by renewables with the demand for space of nuclear power. "Nuclear energy is green," he claims, "Considered in Watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors." Ausubel sees the need for large amounts of land as the flaw with renewables. On this basis, he argues that technologies succeed when economies of scale form part of their evolution. No economies of scale benefit renewables. More renewable kilowatts require more land in a constant or even worsening ratio, because land good for wind, hydropower, biomass, or solar power may get used first.

Good Luck With That

clipped from instapundit.com As Mickey Kaus observes: "They're in the business of killing stories these days, not publishing them, apparently." Good luck with that.

Almost Plugged In Now...

clipped from www.engadget.com Apparently taking a cue from drivers that have already modded their Priuses for plug-in capabilities, Toyota's now gone and created a plug-in version of the Prius itself, and it's set to soon test the vehicle on public roads. Dubbed the Toyota Plug-in HV, the vehicle can be charged simply by plugging it into a standard electrical socket, although you won't get much farther than 8 miles on a single charge (the gasoline engine will kick in after the batts have been exhausted). While Toyota says that a commercialized version will "depend largely on advances in battery technology," the company is planning to test the vehicle in its current state in Japan shortly, with tests in the US and Europe apparently also in the works.

The Most Educated Person In The World Knows Nothing

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com

Not Socialist For Nothing

clipped from volokh.com Putting the Socialism Back Into National Socialism: The idea that Nazism was an extreme form of "capitalism" and Hitler primarily a tool serving the interests of "big business" is a longstanding myth that even now retains a measure of popularity in some quarters. This, despite the fact that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and that Nazi political strategy was explicitly based on combining the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism (thus the choice of name). Once in power, the Nazis even went so far as to institute a Four Year Plan for running the German economy, modeled in large part on the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans.

Lewis Again ... C.S. This Time...

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com C.S. Lewis wrote: "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." Many people never completely resolve all the tension between the two poles of narcissistic development; thereby never reaching a fully integrated and cohesive self. While most would not meet specific criteria for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, such people have extremely dysfunctional narcissistic traits that continually interfere with their own and other's lives.

Al Qaeda In Iraq Theatre Redux

clipped from powerlineblog.com A few weeks ago, we captured a senior al Qaida in Iraq leader named Mashadani. Now, this terrorist is an Iraqi. In fact, he was the highest ranking Iraqi in the organization. Here's what he said, here's what he told us: The foreign leaders of Al Qaida in Iraq went to extraordinary lengths to promote the fiction that al Qaida in Iraq is an Iraqi-led operation. He says al Qaida even created a figurehead whom they named Omar al-Baghdadi. The purpose was to make Iraqi fighters believe they were following the orders of an Iraqi instead of a foreigner. Yet once in custody, Mashadani revealed that al-Baghdadi is only an actor. He confirmed our intelligence that foreigners are at the top echelons of al Qaida in Iraq -- they are the leaders -- and that foreign leaders make most of the operational decisions, not Iraqis. Foreign terrorists also account for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq.

Boring Doesn't Exist

clipped from instapundit.com Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad. . . . “This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said. “Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

The Rap

clipped from powerlineblog.com As Marsalis puts it in the title of a 2006 song, when you look at the underclass, it seems that all the progress blacks have made is to go “from the plantation to the penitentiary” and to be, as the song puts it, “in the heart of freedom...in chains.” Those chains are not only the chains that bind prisoners but also what the poet William Blake called “mind forg’d manacles”—beliefs, attitudes, and habits of feeling that imprison you even when you are outwardly free. For the underclass, those manacles are the beliefs that they’re victims, that they’re entitled to be angry and resentful, that the law is an oppression, Rap didn’t cause [the disintegration of the black family], but it doesn’t merely reflect it, either, just as it doesn’t merely reflect ghetto lawlessness. It is part of a culture that reinforces, normalizes, and perpetuates a self-destructive, pathological way of life. From soul to funk to rap the descent is steep.

The Sickness Turns Them

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood. “They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace,” said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area. “It is only after al-Qaeda has become truly barbaric and done things like, to teach lessons to people, cut their face off with piano wire in front of their family and then murdered everybody except one child who told the tale afterwards . . . that people realise how much of a mess they are in,” Lieutenant James Danly, 31, who works on military intelligence in Doura, said.

You might argue that it's just a tall tale about the piano wire. But it doesn't matter as long as it's in range of truth. And the inviolable truth includes decapitated heads paraded around on poles. Unfortunately, the Nazis have now been exposed as amateurs...