A Fine State

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com The biggest spectacle of the week, was the “breakout” from Gaza of several hundred thousand Palestinians, after Hamas agents took out much of the high wall that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt, in a series of explosions after months of undermining the structure with acetylene torches and similar labour-intensive tools. The media accounts of this event were incoherent, and understandably so. For even people in the Bush administration were puzzled, and I found myself being asked if I could explain it to more than one of them. When the people who supposedly control the CIA and the State Department are reduced to asking armchair journalists to explain breaking news, well: the world is in a fine state, isn't it? My first comment, at least to them, had to be: “So why did you fire all your neoconservatives?”

The Unadmitted 30s ... And Counting ...

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com While President Bush was throwing money into a recession in Washington, unprecedented Islamist demonstrations were erupting across Egypt, almost unreported in our media. As I was beginning to explain in my Saturday column, it is not generally appreciated that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is of Egyptian descent. And by the brilliant stroke of blowing down the wall at the Egyptian border, they have now invaded Egypt proper. Among the slogans being shouted in Egypt's streets: “Arm us, train us, send us to Gaza!” The rhetorical target is Israel. The actual target is the “moderate” Egyptian government, and the response to these rallies, from the authorities, and from Egypt's formerly-articulate “middle class,” is panic. In Egypt as elsewhere, to say that “the great majority of Muslims are peaceful, unaggressive people, just trying to get on with their lives” is to utter something deeply fatuous. The great majority of Germans were likewise, in the 1930s.

We Can Only Hope

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The Iraqis in Anbar have completely rejected Al Qaeda. A while back I told the police chief in my town that I thought the reason the terrorists are weak is because their ideas have been rejected. He said, "In 2002 and 2003, we thought Al Qaeda was just another Muslim group. Now, you can go far out into the desert and talk to even a shepherd, and he will tell you that he hates Al Qaeda. One hundred years from now, you will be able to go into the desert and talk to a shepherd and he will still tell you that he hates Al Qaeda." So, having rejected extremism, what is left? They are still Muslim in my town, but I wouldn't call them devout -- they go to the mosque and pray, and mention God in everyday conversations -- as do I to them -- and granted, I certainly don't know or interact with all of them, but I don't think that "moderate Islam" fully captures who they are. In fact, religion is almost irrelevant in the conversations I have with local leaders.

Pigs A Leapin'

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com What’s gotten into Newsweek magazine? This article by George Weigel is way off their usual politically correct line: The War Against Jihadism. What kind of campaign is this? Six-plus years after 9/11; while the Taliban attempts an Afghanistan comeback; as Islamist terrorists cause mayhem in Algeria and occupy huge swaths of tribal Pakistan; despite “United 93” and “The Kite Runner,” a library-full of books, presidential commissions, congressional hearings, and four election cycles—despite all of that, a strange, Victorian reticence about naming the enemy in the contest for the human future in which we are engaged befogs this political season. Such reticence is an obstacle to victory in a war we cannot avoid and in which we must prevail.

Houses Like ATMs

clipped from instapundit.com SO I'M WATCHING MCCAIN TALK ABOUT THE SUBPRIME CRISIS, and how there may be some "greedy people on Wall Street who need to go to jail." But I heard a typically sad-toned NPR story on subprimes tonight, and despite their best efforts to evoke the Joads it was a story of people who "used their houses like ATMs," taking out home equity loan after home equity loan when they started with a subprime mortgage, only to wind up owing far more than their houses were worth and unable to make the payments. Boo hoo. Shouldn't there be a price for being an idiot? And -- despite not being on Wall Street -- a greedy idiot? Why does McCain want to bail these people out? Why does he want to put Wall Street people in jail?

The Political Storm (Worm)

clipped from blog.washingtonpost.com Dmitri Alperovitch, director of intelligence analysis and hosted security for San Jose, Calif.-based Secure Computing, said federal law enforcement officials who need to know have already learned the identities of those responsible for running the Storm worm network, but that U.S. authorities have thus far been prevented from bringing those responsible to justice due to a lack of cooperation from officials in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the Storm worm authors are thought to reside. Alperovitch blames the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the political influence of operatives within the Federal Security Service (the former Soviet KGB) for the protection he says is apparently afforded to cybercrime outfits such as RBN and the Storm worm gang. when you have the whole money aspect injected into it, this changes the playing field and may make it a bit more difficult to track down who it might be or prove more succinctly that they wrote it."

One Bomb State Update

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com Here is an interesting news item regarding Israel's analysis of Iran's nuclear capability: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, in an interview published Saturday, that Iran is "quite advanced" in its work on atomic weapons and may already be fashioning a nuclear warhead. "Our interpretation is that clearly the Iranians are aiming at nuclear capability," he said. "It's probably true that ... they may have slowed down the weapons group in 2003, because it was the height of American militarism." But he said Israel now believed that Iranians "are quite advanced, much beyond the level of the Manhattan Project." Call it the Tehran Project, if you will.

Kick The Can (Part 72355)

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com There seems to be a bipartisan political consensus not to examine the subject of political Islam publicly. It is the most verboten of foreign policy subjects. But like other "open secrets", its exclusion from formal discussion doesn't banish it from public consciousness. It merely pushes it underground, like Barack Obama's middle name. The key problem with subjecting the question of political Islam to debate is that every other conclusion except that of regarding it as a "religion of peace" implies consequences no one dares face. Concluding that Islam is a 'religion of war' would precipitate a revolution in diplomacy, energy policy and military strategy. It's a bottle of nitro nobody wants to shake; it's a can of worms nobody wants to open: not a Republican administration and most especially not a Democratic one.

Deja Vu All Over Again

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Like the Jedi Knights in Star Wars, much of Israel's safety depends on an absurdly small number of daring pilots and their jet planes. The Israel Air Force has managed to use that capacity with amazing skill and daring, as it showed last September when a dozen fighter bombers and support aircraft jammed Syria's Russian-supplied air defenses and destroyed a secret nuclear facility on the Euphrates river --- not far from Iran.  The nature of that target has still not been revealed, but it must have been important enough to risk triggering a missile attack from Syria. That means the target was believed to be very important: most likely a joint Iranian-Syrian-North Korean nuclear facility. In a very odd move, the Syrians are now rebuilding that mysterious concrete cube in exactly the same location --- even though the whole world knows about it now.  Why should they spend vast amounts of money doing that, if it would only become another fat target?  One possibility is that it's a trap

Looking For That Outreach Award

clipped from www.nysun.com Well, yes, one sort of sees what she means. Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" — in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity." But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen. Still, it should add a certain surreal quality to BBC news bulletins: "The Prime Minister today condemned the latest anti-Islamic activity as he picked through the rubble of Downing Street looking for his 2008 Wahhabi Community Outreach Award.

Report From Hell

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Surprisingly, being cut off from the outside world was actually somewhat enjoyable for the five days I spent in North Korea. I quite liked the freedom of not being tied to my cell phone and email and relished in the ignorant bliss of not being exposed to troubling international news. This isolationist cocoon where the state controls everything you hear and see, however, would not have been fun for too long. Living an entire life under such conditions would be hell.

The Same Name

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com Consider the "great" Rousseau, who had five children with his companion, but abandoned them all without a moment of remorse. In a letter, he casually commented that they were all "put out as foundlings. I have not even kept a note of their dates of birth, so little did I expect to see them again." None of his contemporaries -- including enemies -- chided him for this. Even under the best of circumstances, about half of children had lost at least one parent by the time of adolescence. So to say that attachment, bonding, and intimacy could not flourish under such circumstances is not to criticize them. Again, the great mystery is how modern people broke through that emotional barrier and became.... modern people. In fact, multiple children would often be given the same name, assuming that only one would survive to carry it into the future.

As I recall, even my mother recounted the story of how "the first Audora died".

Amazing

clipped from eddriscoll.com Yes, how did the Swift Vets, on their budget, talk Industrial Light & Magic into digitally inserting Kerry into footage of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations back in 1971, and pay Rich Little for doing an outrageously over-the-top Boston Brahmin accent? (But c'mon Rich--JJJJJennnghis Kahn? isn't that a bit too much? Nobody will believe it!) To complete the ultimate scam, ILM then digitally inserted Kerry, much like Hollywood's Forrest Gump a decade ago, onto the set of the Dick Cavett Show from that same year. And they talked C-Span into running that footage in 2004. Amazing!

Derangement Reconsidered

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary: The Clinton campaign is trying to make it seem as if the complaint is about negativity, and it is pointing out that Obama has criticized Hillary as well. That's what politicians are supposed to do when they compete for votes. But criticism isn't the same thing as lying and sleaze-mongering. Lying. Sleaze-mongering. False claims. Well, no one can say that conservatives didn't warn everyone -- repeatedly -- about these Clinton characteristics.

Appeasement: Deja Vu All Over Again

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Wait a minute; Spain withdrew all her troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings, and Spanish politicians have been doing their best to bash Israel and appease resident Islamists ever since. So why the suicide bombing plot? MADRID, Spain - Police acting on a tipoff that a radical Islamic group was plotting suicide attacks in Barcelona moved against the cell last week even though it had not amassed enough explosives to make bombs, Spain’s police chief said Thursday. “They had the will but not the means,” National Police chief Joan Mesquida said a day after a judge in Madrid sent 10 suspects to jail pending further investigation. Judge Ismael Moreno said the cell had been planning suicide attacks last weekend on the public transport network in Barcelona, Spain’s second-largest city.

Chinese Cherish Copperheads (Part 92635)

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The Chinese would first launch “concentrated and unexpected” attacks ... Chinese fighter jets would scramble to intercept aerial refueling tankers and cargo planes sent to shuttle in fuel, munitions, supplies or troops. High-explosive cluster bombs would target pilot quarters and other personnel buildings. But these would take out only a fraction of American combat power. Most US strength is deployed far back. In fact, Chinese military planners have expressed the professional opinion that any such surprise attacks would be like “throwing an egg against a rock.” If so, why are the Chinese even contemplating such scenarios? Because the American public is “abnormally sensitive” about military casualties, according to an article in China’s Liberation Army Daily, killing U.S. airmen or other personnel would spark a “domestic anti-war cry” on the home front and possibly force early withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Memory Hole: The Collapsing Context

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Janes reports that North Korea is in a bad way -- in a really bad way -- bad even by its own abysmal standards. "Kim Jong-Il's regime could collapse within six months, bringing chaos to North Korea, observers and intelligence sources in Asia have told Jane's. ... The centrally controlled economy has also now ceased to function and the food distribution system is near breaking point. With loyalty to the regime at an all-time low, another sign of trouble is the regime's diminishing ability to prevent people from leaving the country." But the most alarming sign involves Kim Jong-Il himself. "Tellingly, the 'Dear Leader' is in the process of moving financial resources to ensure that his assets are portable should he have to go into exile, according to some sources." Kim, who amended the North Korean constitution in 1996 to declare himself "president for eternity" is estimated by the CIA to have "$5 billion in Swiss bank accounts, six villas in Europe, one in Russia and one in China".

Condi Jong-Il's Memory Hole

clipped from pajamasmedia.com A note about that terrific speech on North Korea, delivered last Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute by the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz. In his speech, Lefkowitz broke ranks with the State Department’s charade of progress in disarming Pyongyang. Explaining that four years of Six-Party Talks on North Korea have been a failure, he urged a change of course. Coming from someone at State, it was an extraordinary exercise in facing facts; more in my post last Friday on “Man Bites Dog — State Department Envoy Speaks the Truth About North Korea.” On Friday, as can still be found in the cached version on google, Lefkowitz’s speech was posted on the State Department web site, as an entry under “Remarks” for 2008. But today — hey, presto! — the speech has vanished! As I write this, there are no Lefkowitz “Remarks” for 2008. They’re down the Memory Hole.

The Faker?

clipped from www.cbsnews.com Saddam still wouldn't admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, "For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq," he tells Pelley. He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. "Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there," says Piro. "He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program." This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

And Here's Why Bill Is An Economic Moron

clipped from mjperry.blogspot.com The top chart above shows the decline in the U.S. share of world stock market capitalization from more than 50% in 2001, to less than a third in 2007 (32.8%), using data from the World Federation of Exchanges. Even though the U.S. Stock market capitalization has increased in each of the last five years, the explosive growth in many of the emerging markets has caused the U.S. share of world stock value to decline. In other words, the relatively poor countries are getting richer, and the relatively rich U.S. gets richer, but the "poor" are getting rich even faster. That's great. Likewise, even though U.S. GDP has increased this year at a healthy 3.1% rate, our share of world GDP growth has fallen below 30% (see bottom chart above), due to the even greater growth in the emerging economies like China and India.

The Big Guilt Hits Bill

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com According to the front-page of today’s Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates is issuing a clarion call for a kinder capitalism to aid the world’s poor. Mr. Gates says he’s grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He thinks it’s failing much of the world, and he’s slated to say as much in a speech later today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This from a guy worth around $35 billion. (Give or take a billion.) It appears Gates is ignoring the global spread of free-market capitalism that has successfully lifted hundreds of millions of people up from poverty and into the middle class over the last decade or so. Think China. Think India. Think Eastern Europe (and maybe even France under Sarkozy). Gates wants business leaders to dedicate more time to fighting poverty. But the reality is that economic freedom is the best path to prosperity. Period.

The Iceberg

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Perhaps one reason why the West has proved so helpless in the face of threats like al-Qaeda is that it is culturally unable to resist, or even to condemn, extremist Islamic agitation in its pre-militant phase. By fighting only those who have crossed the sharp legal border between religious hate-mongering (which is tolerated as a multicultural right) and actual belligerency it is permanently restricted to chipping away at the tip of the iceberg, while nine-tenths of it is allowed to grow unchecked beneath the surface. The West Point analysis points out that many of the problems which beset Iraq have their origins elsewhere; in so-called allied countries and even within communities in the West. A foreign suicide bomber is man who by definition was ready to explode before he even got to Iraq. The country itself provided him with a graveyard, but the process which gave him birth is still in full swing.

Ignorance Is Strength

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com "I think the Pope's visit is not a good thing because science doesn't need religion. The university is open to every form of thought but religion isn't," said Andrea Sterbini -- a computer science professor who was one of 67 academic signatories of a document protesting the pope's visit. In those two sentences my reader may see exposed the grounding assumption of every politically-correct proposition in the post-modern, so-called “liberal” mind. The speaker assumes there is an official "open-minded" position, that must be protected by law or force. He then insists on banning any deviation from this official “open-minded” position. George Orwell made it his life's work to expound the way in which the plain meaning of any English word could be inverted in minds contaminated by ideology. The “open mind” becomes indistinguishable from the closed one. “Peace” means war. “Freedom” means slavery. “Ignorance is strength.”

Welcome To Canada -- Land Of Kangaroos

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com A great Mark Steyn piece on the insanely Orwellian Canadian “human rights” commissions: It’s all very odd, ‘that’s for sure’. Who has availed themselves of the “human rights” protected by Section XIII? In its entire history, over half of all cases have been brought by a sole “complainant,” one Richard Warman. Indeed, Mr. Warman has been a plaintiff on every single Section XIII case before the federal “human rights” star chamber since 2002 — and he’s won every one. That would suggest that no man in any free society anywhere on the planet has been so comprehensively deprived of his human rights. Well, no. Mr. Warman doesn’t have to demonstrate that he’s been deprived of his human rights, only that it’s “likely” (i.e. “highly un-”) that someone somewhere will be deprived of some right sometime. Who is Richard Warman? What’s his story? Well, he’s a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission: an investigator. Same as Shirlene McGovern.

Good On Spencer

clipped from www.jihadwatch.org On November 15 of last year, I wrote this about the controversy over whether anti-jihadists should support the Vlaams Belang party or not: But there is cultural defense and then there is a white supremacism that is based on some idea of racial superiority and inferiority, and has via Hitler a historical link to genocide. They are not the same thing, and a distinction needs to be made between the two. If VB and SD have really made a clean break with the past, make it a complete one: let them deal with the ties to LePen and Haider, and make a distinction between cultural defense and white supremacism that is completely clear and distinguishes their position from the neo-fascists.

Phoney Liberal Update

clipped from www.samizdata.net Thank you for trying to offer us high quality, low cost agricultural products. However I am sorry but we would prefer it if you remain dependent on tax funded handouts from First World governments and their anointed NGOs. And speaking of NGOs, if you People of Colour start getting involved in horrid global trade, what will happen to the people who work for NGOs? We need NGOs so that our children can go work for them in that pesky gap year, helping you poor ignorant dark people with your Third Worldie Problems, and thereby allowing our kiddies to develop self-esteem and feel good about themselves.

The Battlefield Near You

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Ten new friends have just linked to your profile'. We all get these cheerful notifications from our favorite social networking software. But just who are your friends? And why are they interested in you? The Daily Telegraph reports, "British troops have been warned not to post personal details on internet websites amid fears that they will be targeted by British-based al-Qaeda terrorists. The warning, which states that al-Qaeda cells are increasingly using the Internet to track down potential targets, appeared in a "restricted" military security document distributed to Army units across Britain. The document reveals that troops using the Facebook, MySpace and Friends Reunited sites may potentially be most at risk. The tactic of attacking British military personnel while off duty was used to great effect by the IRA. the Internet plus the radical Islamic diaspora now means that there is no neat distinction between the battlefield and "home".

Go Fred!

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com It may have, where it counts, in South Carolina. Via Campaign Spot, the American Research Group poll taken over the last two days has Fred Thompson powering out of the doldrums and into the 20s, good enough for a clean third-place spot: Mike Huckabee leads among Republicans with 37%, followed by John McCain and Fred Thompson with 22% each. McCain leads among self-described independents with 48%. I picked Huckabee because I figured the last-minute pandering on the Confederate flag might be enough to push him over the edge. McCain's paying for his vacillation and final rejection of the issue in 2000. Thompson's score won't be enough for him to gain many delegates, but it does appear to be enough to prevail over Romney for third place, and that should keep him in the race through February 5th.

Yasser's Stage

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com Joel Pollak (no relation) reports on his blog that Charles Enderlin, the France 2 television reporter implicated in the Mohammed al-Dura fabrication, admitted at a talk at Harvard last night that the famous scenes of Yasser Arafat donating blood after the 9/11 attacks were, like the footage of the IDF killing al-Dura, staged: Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. The blood donation story made headlines around the world. It was reported by esteemed news agencies like the BBC, and photographs of Arafat lying with an outstretched arm ran on many front pages. But the whole scene was staged, Enderlin said. Arafat didn’t like needles, and so the doctor put a needle near his arm and agitated a bag of blood. The reporters took the requisite photographs.

Underlings

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com We in California, given the past budget implosions, know the script to follow. We expect that police, fire, prisons, parks etc will be threatened with cut-backs and closure while the state-funded "Center for this" and the "Department of that" will remain untouched, since cutting the essential while protecting the politically-correct superfluous is the only way to scare the voter and achieve higher taxes. At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world's richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation's largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

The Light Is Better Here

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The problem with this approach is that the "core issues" identified by Secretary Rice are not, in fact, the core issues. There is actually only one core issue: the fact that most Palestinians do not accept Israel's right to exist or the right of Jews to live in the region, and therefore support those who are constantly trying to kill them. But for the Palestinians' genocidal dreams, all other "issues" would have been resolved many years ago. The Bush administration, like administrations before it, is now in the position of the man in the old joke who, late at night, is inspecting the ground around a street light. Another man comes by and asks what he is doing; he says that he is looking for his lost watch. The man asks, "Is this where you dropped it?" The first man answers "No, I dropped it over there, but the light is better here."

And More Chirping

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com Members of the military line the path to the stage as President George W. Bush appeared Saturday, Jan. 12, 2008, at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. An estimated 4,000 troops heard the President say "…History will say, it was when you were called upon, you served, and the service you rendered was absolutely necessary to defeat an enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at home..." (White House photo by Eric Draper) Sadly, this very important news today from Kuwait is being buried by the mainstream news. You could imagine the headlines if the news from Iraq was not favorable. What a shame.

Surging To A Fait Accompli

clipped from www.newsweek.com The upshot is that the next president, Democrat or Republican, is likely to be handed a fait accompli that could well render moot his or her own elaborate withdrawal plans, especially the ones being considered by the two leading Democratic contenders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But Bush may have the upper hand now. The president touted the surge's success on Saturday, and he reiterated that "long-term success will require active U.S. engagement that outlasts my presidency." The "enduring relationship" he is building with Iraq, Bush added, "will have diplomatic, economic and security components--similar to relationships we have with Kuwait and other nations in this region and around the world." Some of those relationships have now lasted decades. And as in Japan, Germany, Korea and Kuwait, they include a substantial troop presence. Far away in the Persian Gulf, Bush is creating facts on the ground that the next president may not be able to ignore.

And Chirping

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com The Interior Ministry announced Friday that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been successfully penetrated by means of a recently formed government security apparatus and is virtually an "open book," confirming that the sectarian sedition in the country was at the end of its rope. If the Iraqi government has penetrated AQI, doesn't that mean something for their ability to fight terror and to stand on their own two feet? Isn't a free and stable Iraq the victory we have awaited, and doesn't this suggest that we're coming close to achieving it? Doesn't the joint military operations conducted in Iraq this week tend to confirm this Interior Ministry statement? The silence is becoming deafening.

Crickets Chirping

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Those who claim that the surge strategy in Iraq has paid no dividends because it hasn't met Congressional benchmarks may wish to skip to the next post. The Iraqi National Assembly has passed one of the two most critical benchmarks that the American government had pressed for Baghdad to adopt, the de-Baathification reform that will allow Sunnis to once again enter government jobs: This looks like progress to me. It's progress that wouldn't have come without lowering the violence and removing the provocations and depredations of al-Qaeda in Iraq. That wouldn't have happened at all had we not ramped up our efforts and taken a much more aggressive posture against the terrorists -- and the Sunnis would not have cooperated if we hadn't signaled so strongly that we intended to beat AQI and stick it out. I wonder how the anti-war crowd will spin this. My guesses: 1. It's too late -- the sky is already falling! 2. Too many people have died to make freedom worth it. 3. (crickets chirping)

Kick The Can Update

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com US President George W. Bush arrived in Israel at the start of an eight-day tour of the Middle East at an interesting moment. In the lead-up to his trip, enemy forces, of both the terrorist and state variety, clarified their strategic outlook and the scope of their ambitions. Unfortunately, the president seems not to have noticed. For the past several weeks, the leaders of the global jihad and their state sponsors in Syria and Iran have escalated their rhetorical and military attacks against Israel and the US. Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and his American lackey Adam Gadahn all issued video and audio appeals on the eve of Bush's trip. Their messages were devoted mainly to the campaigns against US forces in Iraq and against Israel. Bin Laden labeled Iraqi opponents of al-Qaida in Iraq apostates and called for Iraqis to rally around his allied forces. Gadahn called for Bush's assassination.

Utterly Nauseating

clipped from www.ft.com “Not at all,” he replies enthusiastically. “With her it’s too many of the virtues. She’s a perfect example of how the 1960s have mutated into – I hate the term political correctness but I suppose it’s unavoidable. In other words they have changed from people who said they wanted complete freedom of speech on campus, into people who now want to police the campus. She represents that mutation to mere perfection.” Hitchens is in the familiar, articulate form I recognise from his television appearances, and is being quite unreasonable. I have no intention of stopping him. So he goes on: “And then going from sexual freedom to saying that any unwanted advance is a case for the dean or the rape crisis centre – all of this re-infantilising – ‘put that fag out, don’t drink, or wait for a drink until you’re 21’ – all this is an absolute negation of it but with the same complete sense of rectitude. I find it utterly nauseating.”

The Reason You Didn't Hear About This Was What Again?

clipped from www.aircraftresourcecenter.com OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (ACCNS) -- An A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot deployed with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing safely landed her "Warthog" at her forward operating base after it sustained significant damage from enemy fire during a close air support mission over Baghdad April 7. Capt. Kim Campbell, deployed from the 75th Fighter Squadron at Pope Air Force Base, N.C., and her flight leader had just finished supporting ground troops and were on their way out of the area when her aircraft was hit with enemy fire.

Oh yeah. The Iraq good news blackout. Silly me.