How The Marches Will End

Will somebody please explain to me how it is that placing a ballistic missile defense system in Poland has any hope of stopping a Russian ICBM attack against the continental U.S.? Putin is ROFL.

And how out of all of our options outside of Russia itself (let me hold my breath) an American President would consider placing a missile defense against Iran for the American homeland anywhere other than Poland or the Czech Republic?

We have such an epic educational fail in this country that people apparently can't even pick up a globe and trace an ICBM trajectory a line on it.

The only good news is that we're soon going to be able to save money out of our precious family budgets by no longer funding marches on Washington. Because since stupidity is self correcting there won't be a Washington left to march on.

Unless the Green Revolution succeeds. Which seems closer to happening than I dared hope. It's very interesting about the timing of Iran acquiring nukes and the people throwing caution to the wind -- “Tanks, rape and torture have no effect anymore”. Moussavi certainly knows how close his fellow nut-jobs really are to the bomb. He started them down the path after all.

Pray for the success of the Green Revolution. (No, not the Van Jones one.)

And pray for America as well.

Nuttier Than...

"ZAWAHIRI: One percent of the way to his goal. Looking at Zawahiri's quota for American casualties in Iraq, Don Surber is not impressed: "At this rate, al-Qaeda will meet its goal . . . in about 2353. I’ll be 400 years old then."" [ ... a room full of Cuckoo Clocks. Of course, there could be more follow-ons to the chlorine bombs they've been using on the Iraqis lately. But it wouldn't change my verdict of course. Oh, and did I mention there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq? Sigh. -ed. ]

I'm Sure Everyone Will "Help"

"You have to hand it to the Pakistanis. When they lose something important -- such as nuclear material -- they don't keep it a secret. They want everybody, no matter how militant or crazed, to be on the lookout for it." [ Move along now. Nothing for you to see here... -ed. ]

Drum Jumps The Truther Shark?

"Nuclear and biological weapons? What nuclear and biological weapons, or genuine threat of same exists in the Middle East, Kevin? Iran assures us they only [want] nuclear power for peaceful use. Iraq ... well, do you even want to go there? I thought there was no WMD threat in Iraq, Kevin. Do tell, what have I missed? Or are you simply conjuring this threat to America up out of whole cloth, the way the Left always insists the Right has been doing all along?

And as for, how to reduce Arab resentment of the West? You mean, as in talk, the way we did with North Korea until one day the weapons miraculously one day just ... emerged from the ground?" (HT Glenn) [ I'm sure Kevin will retract it quickly. Otherwise he'd have to learn to think independently... -ed. ]

About That War For Oil

"Iraq is currently the central battlefield in a complex struggle to over ideology, geopolitics and energy. It is a test of strength between radical Islamic ideology and the West. It is about sectarian conflict within the Muslim world. But it is also about Russia's place in the Middle East and Europe's energy future. Those issues are not bound up by anything local to Baghdad. Blocked or diverted from one place, it is like a current that will move somewhere else." [ Like I just said, just go camp at Wretchards. No war for oil? How about war for survival then? And you were so certain the Cold War ended weren't you? Fred gets it too. -ed. ]

I See Nothing!

The Dems would have you believe that this video doesn't exist. Or that they were so stupid as to be brainwashed by W. Including back in '98. Sigh.

Omar On Stakes And (Tinfoil) Consequences

"Instead coming up with ideas to help the US Democrats are trying to stop the effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.Time to leave’.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five other million Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy, although its tools are not yet even fully deployed, is showing promising signs of progress.

General Petraeus said yesterday that things will get tougher before they get easier in Iraq. This is the sort of of fact-based, realistic assessment of the situation which politicians should listen to when they discuss the war thousands of miles away.

We must give this effort the chance it deserves. We should provide all the support necessary. We should heed constructive critique, not the empty rhetoric that the ‘war is lost.’

It is not lost. Quitting is not an option we can afford—not in America and definitely not in Iraq.

I said it before and I say it again; this war must be won. If it is not the world as you in the United States know it today (and as we here in Iraq dream for it to become) will exist only in books of history. The forces of extremism that we confront today are more determined, more resourceful, and more barbaric than the Nazi or the communists of the past. Add to that the weapons they can improvise or acquire through their unholy alliance with rogue regimes, combined with their fluid structure and mobility… well, they can be more deadly than any forces we have faced in the past. Much more." [ Democrats think they can cut and run and everything will be fine (well, not counting the immediate genocide that will ensue in Iraq -- what Cambodia? -- and renewed pressure on Afghanistan as the Islamists refocus there afterwards). They forget that AQ keeps coming back again and again to their favored pressure points -- inevitably NYC and DC. Remind me again whether those places are predominantly red or blue? Getting it yet? -ed. ]

They Will Follow

(link) "“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”

I seriously doubt Iran would actually nuke Israel, as many fear, if the regime acquires nuclear weapons – although I’ll admit I’m a bit less certain of that than I am of, say, Britain and France not nuking Israel. The Iranian regime, most likely, wants an insurance policy against invasion and regime change. The ayatollahs will then be able to ramp up their imperial projects in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf with impunity."

What War?

"As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war.

Now, less than six years later, that day has arrived.

Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream."

Alaa On The Core Of The Gap

"The U.S. army maintains about 150,000 troops in Iraq, the numbers on the enemy side, most certainly, are not less than this figure if not much higher. If we estimate that the cost of the upkeep of the average terrorist is only one tenth of his American counterpart including the cost of weapons, operations, logistics etc., which is surely an underestimate, we conclude that the budget of the “insurgency” is consequently 10% of the American budget of the war. And we all know that this budget is almost $ 100 billions annually. It follows that the “insurgency” requires at least $ 10 billion annually. That is almost a quarter of the annual budget of the Iraqi State that has been recently announced with much fanfare as being one of the biggest in our history. This kind of financing is orders of magnitude beyond the means of any local Iraqi group. No amount of kidnap money, extortions, thefts; or even the amounts looted previously by the Baathists can provide such finance.

It follows from the previous point by elementary reasoning (my dear Watson), that there must be a powerful source of external financing for this sustained terrorist campaign that has been going on and escalating for the past four years. Iran and Syria, you might say. Well perhaps, to some extent, but considering the finances of these particular two, the full burden is well beyond their capabilities. Who else can do it? It is not difficult to discover that, if you really look around in the neighborhood. If we, poor ordinary people can easily answer this question, it is difficult to imagine that the financial wizards of the greatest World economic power can fail to solve this “mystery”. It should be clear even to an idiot that without the financial backing the insurgency cannot possibly continue and thrive, at least not on the present scale. But how little do we hear about this aspect of the “War on Terror”?! It makes you really wonder. Perhaps the matter is deeper than we think, and is way beyond our poor ordinary-man comprehension.

I shall not elaborate any further and leave it to the imagination and wits of my friends to ponder upon this issue; an issue which is at the very core of the problem." [ Yes. Alaa has placed his finger on the very lungs of the Tinfoil Apocalypse. -ed. ]

Chemicals For The Untermenschen

[Nobody cares] "...about chemical weapons, do they? For the ninth time in recent weeks WMDs are used by the terrorists in Iraq:

BAGHDAD - A suspected al-Qaida in Iraq suicide bomber smashed a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas into a police checkpoint in Ramadi on Friday, killing at least 27 people — the ninth such attack since the group's first known use of a chemical weapon in January.

But, just like women stoned to death in Iran, or the mass starvation of the people of Zimbabwe, these horrors are greeted with the silence that racists reserve for the less-than-humans who behave in an uncivilized way. Their unspoken attitude is, well, what can you expect of these untermenschen?

And anyway, it's all Bush's fault."

Offside Farcical Worms

"The flagrant and outrageous Iranian seizure of 15 Royal Navy personnel on patrol in the Shat al-Arab, well outside Iranian waters (we needn’t waste time discussing absurd Iranian claims) is not necessarily connected with anything. The Iranians often pull stunts like that, without fully thinking through their purposes. Rather it should be taken as the latest indication of how unpredictable they are. This is, after all, a country whose president utters public fantasies about nuclear war, in the context of Shia Islamic apocalyptic hallucinations.

But even in this comparatively small matter, in which the Iranians have behaved, yet again, in defiance of all norms of international conduct, just what do the British propose to do about it? Prime Minister Blair said yesterday that efforts to obtain the sailors’ release will enter a “different phase” if diplomatic negotiations fail. In other words, the British will start yelling louder.

What else is possible? It may make no sense for any politician in the West to sink himself, doing what really needs to be done now, to prevent Armageddon farther down the road. It may make more sense to let the catastrophe happen. Whenupon, pretty much everyone will be onside for doing something fairly definitive about Iran." [ Unfortunately, I'm beginning to believe that everyone won't be "onside" when this happens (notice the missing "if"). How I wish I could be more optimistic. We have come to believe that we're history buffs if we can remember the last five minutes and have forgotten that even in WWII there were only 9 Allies. We now ignorantly refer to it as the grand coalition rather than the close run thing it was. The second time a farce and all that... -ed. ]

Go Read Walid. Now.

"The capture of British Navy servicemen by Iranian forces is not simply an incident over sea sovereignty in the Persian Gulf. It is a calculated move on behalf of Teheran's Jihadi chess players to provoke a "projected" counter move by London and its American allies. It is all happening in a regional context, carefully engineered by the Mullahs strategic planners. Here is how:

The Iranian regime's master plan is to wait out the remainder of Tony Blair's mandate (few more months) and the remaining "real time" of President Bush (till about the end of 2007). For the thinking process in Tehran, based on their Western consultants, believe that Washington and London have reached the end of the rope and will only have till 2008 to do something major to destabilize Ahmedinijad regime. As explained by a notorious propagandist on al Jazeera today the move is precisely to respond to the Anglo-American attempt to "stir trouble" inside Iran. Anis Naccash, a Lebanese intellectual supporter of the Ayatollahs regime, appearing from Tehran few hours ago on the Qatari-based satellite and "explained" that the "US and the UK must understand that Iran is as much at war with these two powers in as much as they support the rise of movements and security instability inside Iran." He added that Khamenei is clear on the regime's decision to strike: "we will be at war with you on all levels: secret, diplomatic, military and other." Pro-Iranian propagandists in the region, via media and online rushed to warn that this movement is part of Iran's counter-strike against any attempt to destabilize the regime. Two major tracks emerge from these statements, the Iranian military maneuvers and the capture of British Navy personnel."

In Which Glue Melts To Glass?

"See also this Roggio article on the larger situation in Pakistan, which is rapidly coming unglued; even guys like Carl Levin are beginning to sound the alarm.

There are significant implications here for NATO's Afghan operation, and indeed for the future course of the global war. Musharraf's phony accord has handed Osama and his Taliban allies a base comparable to pre-2001 Afghanistan. One they've been busy consolidiating; there are reports that America has no human intelligence left in those sanctuaries. Sanctuaries protected by the nuclear weapons Pakistan was unwisely allowed to obtain - and with the potential for future access to those weapons as al Qaeda and the Taliban further consolidate their strength within Pakistan."

The Ghosts Clowns Of Chamberlain

"On the airplane on his way to Iran Khomeini was asked by reporter Peter
Jennings: "What do you feel in returning to Iran?" Khomeini answered "Hic ehsasi
nadaram" (I don't feel a thing).

In other words, Khomeini (and most of his followers) are not Iranian nationalists. They are Islamists doing "God's work." National borders do not exist in their eyes. There can be no separation of church and state, because there is no state. Parts of Iraq like Najaf and Kerbala are God's territory to them. They are key Shiite holy places.

And yet the semi-literate partisans in our Congress voted yesterday to withdraw from Iraq and give the mullahs what they originally sought in the Iran-Iraq War (those same holy places). Moreover, that same Islamic Republic of Iran will soon be nuclear.

Perhaps we should call our Congress the Chamber of Clowns."

Not A Chance

"The indictment of British sailors in uniform as spies will violate the GC. Can we expect the same level of outrage over this explicit violation as the supposed violations of the US government?" [ After all, they're the murderous thugs victims. -ed. ]

Hitch: The Original Totten

"Well, as it happens, I decided to check this out, and did spend most of the Christmas holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan, bringing my son along with me, and had a perfectly swell time. We didn't make any investments, though I would say that the hotel and tourism and oil sectors are wide open for enterprise, but we did visit the ancient citadel in Erbil, where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians—my son is a Greek-speaking classicist—and we did sample the lovely mountains and lakes and rivers that used to make this region the resort area for all Iraqis. Air and road travel were easy (you can now fly direct from several airports in Europe to one of two efficient airports in Iraqi Kurdistan), and walking anywhere at night in any Kurdish town is safer than it is in many American cities. The police and soldiers are all friendly locals, there isn't a coalition soldier to be seen, and there hasn't been a suicide attack since May of 2005.

It wasn't my first trip. That took place in 1991, in the closing stages of the Gulf War. With a guerrilla escort, I crossed illegally into Iraq from Turkey and toured the shattered and burned and poisoned landscape on which Saddam Hussein had imprinted himself. In the town of Halabja, which has now earned its gruesome place in history, I met people whose hideous wounds from chemical bombardment were still suppurating. The city of Qala Diza had been thoroughly dynamited and bulldozed, and looked like an irretrievable wreck. Much of the area's lavish tree cover had been deforested: the bare plains were dotted with forbidding concrete barracks into which Kurds had been forcibly "relocated" or (a more accurate word) "concentrated." Nearly 200,000 people had been slaughtered, and millions more deported: huddling in ruins or packed into fetid camps on the Turkish and Iranian frontiers. To turn a spade was to risk uncovering a mass grave. All of Iraq suffered terribly during those years, but its Kurdish provinces were among the worst places in the entire world—a howling emptiness of misery where I could catch, for the first time in my life, the actual scent of evil as a real force on earth.

Thus, I confess to a slight lump in the throat at revisiting the area and seeing thriving, humming towns with multiplying construction sites, billboards for overseas companies, Internet cafés, and a choice of newspapers. It's even reassuring to see the knockoff "MaDonal," with pseudo–golden arches, in the eastern city of Sulaimaniya, soon to be the site of the American University of Iraq, which will be offering not only an M.B.A. course but also, in the words of Azzam Alwash, one of its directors, "the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison." Everybody knows how to snigger when you mention Jeffersonian democracy and Iraq in the same breath; try sniggering when you meet someone who is trying to express these ideas in an atmosphere that only a few years ago was heavy with miasmic decay and the reek of poison gas." [ Kurdistan doesn't exist you know. And the MSM is happy to keep it that way lest it dampen the narrative. -ed. ]

Nuclear Poker Today

"The threat has military significance, and it would be both prudent and appropriate for the Americans and their allies to have responded militarily — if only by “leaning forward” a bit more. The Persian Gulf is now one big game of chicken. When the Iranians get belligerent, we have to respond in kind. Iran is getting ready to expel the IAEA inspectors. The United States needs to make it clear that the expulsion of the inspectors will be considered an act of aggression, and that we will respond appropriately.

So, long story short: It wouldn’t surprise me if the British sailors were detained because the British did something to make the Iranians really angry. Khamanei dramatically upped the ante this week. We probably raised. And they probably raised back. The stakes in this nuclear-poker game just got a little higher."

Looking Past The Tea Party...

"And the danger, of course is that Rashid's recommended center won't hold and Pakistan enters an ever sharpening spiral of extremism that will make events in Iraq look like an English tea party on a summer's day."

Welcome To The Depths

"Between this and the chlorine dirty bombs, the surge has really brought out the artist in them."