Time to say "so long" to Blogger for my site. As of today, the new and improved Petrified Truth has a new address and is powered by Movable Type. The focus will be the same: politics, international affairs, and our culture -- plus anything else that may come up.

Thanks to John at Blogs of War for helping set it up and copying the database of prior posts.

Please visit and then change your bookmarks. Also feel free to express yourself (within the normal bounds) using the Comments feature.

Cheers.

The NY Times has a lengthy article about the new conservative movement on college campuses. The Times writer is alarmed by the fact that the right-wing kids are not only articulate, effective, and growing in popularity, but also -- egad -- connected to conservative organizations. Although the author can't help but discuss the leftist culture prevalent on almost every college campus, there is not one mention in a 6,000-word article about left-wing organizations and support networks, which are easily as well-funded and relentless as those on the right. The young conservative women in the article were impressive. And I learned a new phrase: ''stiletto conservatives.''

One Bucknell conservatives club member, Allison Kasic, buys it. She's a 19-year-old who just finished her sophomore year, and she writes a regular column in The Counterweight and has her own rock-music show each Monday on the college radio station. Raised in Littleton, Colo., the daughter of an administrative judge, she is a confident, tough young woman who wears little makeup and favors jeans and T-shirts. As a management major concentrating in marketing, she sees the importance of selling a new brand of conservatism to female students. ''There's the old stereotype of the WASP-y country-club wife or the Bible-study mom from the Midwest,'' Kasic says. ''But that's not what conservative women are anymore.'' Kasic, instead, points to ''stiletto conservatives'' like Hoff Sommers and Coulter. ''We have role models now,'' she says. ''Hip, strong women who exude the message: 'I don't need hand-holding just because I'm a woman.''' Kasic herself plans to be a working woman when she graduates (''I'm no soccer mom,'' she laughs; ''I don't even like kids''), but she respects women who choose a different path -- to be homemakers, like her own mother. ''Conservatives are inclusive in a way that liberals are not,'' she says, voicing a central theme of the Independent Women's Forum ethos. ''We say that women can be executives or stay-at-home mothers.'' Kasic extends this notion to the abortion debate. Herself an anti-abortion Catholic, she says that the Republican Party today nevertheless supports candidates who espouse the right to abortion. ''But the National Organization for Women has never supported a pro-life candidate,'' she says, as proof of the left's narrowness and the right's ''diversity'' (a term the conservative movement has deliberately co-opted from the left).

It can be disorienting to hear conservatism advanced as the ideology that frees women, but such is the skill with which the right has reframed the issues for the campus crowd, and such is the degree to which the left has allowed its own message to drift into rigidity and irrelevance for many college-age women. Another Bucknell conservatives club member, Denise Chaykun, typifies how some young women are only driven further to the right by what they see as the pieties of the left. Chaykun, with her shoulder-length blond hair, faded jeans and rock T-shirt, could have stepped out of a 1970's campus sit-in. But she is one of the most combative and hard-core conservatives at Bucknell. ''You come to college, and the message they give you is 'Your parents are racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, and we're going to take you and change that,''' she says. ''A lot of the courses are mushy stuff about sex and gender and social relations. You can't take a class about a war. We don't have a military historian at Bucknell. Everything is so dumbed down because no one wants to offend anyone.''

via The New York Times Magazine

"A new Jim Carrey movie is coming out about a man who acts like God. I think it’s called "The Bill O’Reilly Story."

- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

Bill Gertz reports that Donald Rumsfeld is continuing his efforts to tame the Pentagon and cut through the layers of bureacracy. It's amazingly hard. I hope Rumsfeld will stick around for the second term.

Stephen Cambone has assumed sweeping power over the Pentagon's intelligence bureaucracy as the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence. We obtained a copy of a May 8 memorandum from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz setting up the new office. It states that the office takes over all 286 persons and policies attached to the intelligence, counterintelligence and security, and other intelligence-related issues that were in the portfolio of the assistant defense secretary for command, control, communications and intelligence, once the Pentagon's top intelligence official.

Mr. Cambone, a protege of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who has little intelligence experience, will have several deputies, including three charged with intelligence warning, war fighting and operations, and counterintelligence and security.

The key phrase of the implementing guidance memorandum relates to the office's power over other Pentagon intelligence agencies that in the past have resisted control by Pentagon policy-makers. It states that the new undersecretary will "exercise authority, direction, and control over the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Security Service (DSS) and the DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA)."

The job of whipping the Pentagon intelligence bureaucracy into shape is formidable. Pentagon intelligence agencies consume the lion's share of the amount spent on intelligence overall, estimated to be about $35 billion annually.

Additionally, the memorandum states that the Pentagon's chief information officer has been given a new title — assistant defense secretary for networks and information integration — and will report directly to the secretary of defense, an unusual arrangement because most assistants report to an undersecretary. The post also comes with new authority over Pentagon space activities.

via The Washington Times

Quote of the Day:

"The advance of freedom is more than an interest we pursue. It is a calling we follow. Our country was created in the name and cause of freedom. And if the self-evident truths of our founding are true for us, they are true for all. As a people dedicated to civil rights, we are driven to defend the human rights of others. We are the nation that liberated continents and concentration camps. We are the nation of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift and the Peace Corps. We are the nation that ended the oppression of Afghan women, and we are the nation that closed the torture chambers of Iraq. (Applause.)

America's national ambition is the spread of free markets, free trade, and free societies. These goals are not achieved at the expense of other nations, they are achieved for the benefit of all nations. America seeks to expand, not the borders of our country, but the realm of liberty."

- President George W. Bush, in commencement address to the United States Coast Guard Academy

via The White House

Jim Hoagland makes more explicit a point that few journalists have understood so far: the Baathists in Iraq are working very actively to turn back the liberation. As his headline says: "The War Isn't Over." It seems to me that, like in the overall war on terror, we have the advantage right now, but not victory. Not yet. The struggle will continue.

U.S. intelligence initially tended to portray a wave of postwar attacks on coalition forces and civil disturbances as ad hoc, spontaneous events. But on May 16 a secret CIA memorandum pulled together a number of incidents involving former leaders in Hussein's Baathist Party and analyzed them in the same way that many Iraqis see them: as an organized, systematic guerrilla campaign to drive out U.S. forces.

That analytical delay compounded the problems created by the failure of the administration to train and deploy with the invasion force enough U.S. civil affairs officers and Iraqi exiles to act as guides and interpreters. This prewar political decision -- not to put exile forces on a par with renegade Baathist politicians and generals whom the CIA expected to be able to install in power -- has undermined postwar operations.

"The Iraqis saw that we were not prepared to be ruthless in dealing with their jailers and killers, who were reorganizing before their eyes. So, many of the people who could have helped us kept their heads down," said one senior U.S. official. "It is hard to blame them. Threats that Saddam will come back can be dismissed easily in Washington, but not if you live in Baghdad."

Another senior Bush aide would acknowledge only that "there may have been too much desire on our part not to look like an occupation force. We are meeting that problem by reconfiguring our military units there."

But the war is not over, as even the CIA now reports: Ex-Baathists declared the formation of a new national secret movement on May 1. In Mosul on May 12, the Iraqi Vanguard Organization established a network of cells for northern Iraq. The agency has also turned up evidence of a Baathist plot to force a halt to aid shipments by attacking Western and Iraqi relief workers. And so it goes.

via The Washington Post

It's too early to tell for sure, but the Saudis may be taking action at last against the terrorists in their midst. Now if they'll just root out the clandestine supporters and financiers, we can all be safer.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- The kingdom's three major cities -- Riyadh, Dammam and Jidda -- have been turned into near-garrison towns in recent days as the royal family confronts the biggest threat to its authority in more than 20 years. Special armed forces patrol the streets and set up posts outside Western residential compounds. By evening the kingdom's streets are deserted, with Saudis and foreigners alike now certain that a major al Qaeda attack is imminent.

Already reeling from last week's attacks on three housing compounds that claimed 25 victims, authorities yesterday confronted reports that three Moroccans arrested on Monday had planned to hijack an airliner and crash it into a building in Jidda. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef denied any such plot, but a security source who spoke on the condition of anonymity stood by the claim.

Either way, the government has been forced after months of denials to admit to the presence of a terrorist network on its soil. Three cells are said to have been formed -- one that carried out the attacks in Riyadh, one that has fled across the border and a third that is planning another assault.

via The Washington Times

Quote of the Day:

"The United States military is now using the music of Metallica and other heavy metal bands to break the will of Saddam Hussein supporters to get them to talk. They’re blaring heavy metal music at them. That should make the artist feel pretty good, huh? Put your heart and soul into your last CD and the Army is using it to torture people."

- Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

The admirable Norwegians are "puzzled" to learn that their sincerity, good works, and progressive attitudes don't buy them protection from Islamo-fascists. Welcome to the new reality, neighbors.

Norwegians, proud of their role as a global peacemaker, were puzzled and concerned Wednesday that a leading Al Qaeda member singled out their country in a terrorist threat. The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired an audio tape purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahri, the top lieutenant of Usama bin Laden, urging renewed attacks on the United States, Britain and Australia, which participated in the war against Iraq. But the inclusion of the Scandinavian nation in his warning drew questions. Norway didn't support the war in Iraq but sent troops and fighter planes to help oust Al Qaeda and the Taliban forces from Afghanistan.

"We were surprised," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said, adding that experts were racing to try to figure out why Al Qaeda would want to threaten Norway.

via the AP and Fox News

Newly-freed people have decided to take some matters into their own hands. This is a somewhat raw form of throwing off the shackles of state oppression, but sounds like they are getting the job done.

Iraqis have begun tracking down and killing former members of the ruling Baath Party, doubtful that the United States intends to adequately punish the mid-level government functionaries who they say tormented them for three decades.

The assassinations appear to have picked up since the United States issued a decree last Friday that prohibits senior Baath Party officials from holding positions in Iraq's postwar government. A senior U.S. official said the order was intended to "drive a stake through [the Baath Party's] heart," but many Iraqis who continue to see party officials walking free believe it did not go far enough.

The killers appear to be working from lists looted from Iraq's bombed-out security service buildings, which kept records on informants and victims alike. But others are simply killing Baathist icons or irksome party officials identified with the Hussein government.

via The Washington Post

Quote of the Day:

"Each day the conditions in Iraq are improving, and life is slowly beginning to return to what one might call the normal pre-war standard. There are difficulties, to be sure, but that difficulties exist should not come as a surprise to anyone. No nation has made the transition from tyranny to a civil society -- has been immune to the difficulties and challenges of taking that path. As Thomas Jefferson said after our revolution, 'We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.' "

- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Another biased journalist got what he deserved this weekend. I'm sure the Left will say this is "intolerance."

A New York Times reporter cut short a keynote address to graduates at a private Illinois college over the weekend after audience members shouted down his comments about the war in Iraq. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of a recent book that describes war as an addiction, was booed Saturday at Rockford College, a small liberal arts school 80 miles northwest of Chicago. After protesters rushed the stage and twice cut power to the microphone, Hedges cut his speech short.

"He delivered what I guess I would refer to as a fairly strident perspective on the war in Iraq and American policy," college President Paul Pribbenow said Tuesday. "I think our audience at commencement were not prepared for that." Many audience members turned their backs on Hedges, while others booed and shouted, said Pribbenow, who at one point pleaded to let the speech continue.

The local paper printed a transcript, which should be read in full to appreciate the degree of self-loathing this guy feels for his own country. The speech began:

I want to speak to you today about war and empire. Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now. We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

This was before he got around to using words like "occupation," "poison," and "betrayal." And then he said the following. What a way to celebrate graduation from college.

Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated.

Quote of the Day:

"What's funny about using Microsoft Chat is that everybody has to choose an icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too."

- Lieutenant Colonel Norman Mims, intelligence officer for the 11th Signal Brigade, Kuwait

via Wired

The new issue of Wired Magazine arrived today and Joshua Davis files a report from the field about the ground-level impact of new communications technology on the war in Iraq.

The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology - the triumph of the longbow at Crécy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and - above all - a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute.

Listen to the sound of a stereotype being debunked. Moderation seems to be a casualty of contemporary mores and corporate marketing. There may be a special circle in hell for advertisers.

Alarmed that Ireland has become one of the hardest-drinking countries in Europe, the government announced Monday it plans to require health warnings on alcoholic drinks and limit liquor ads that invade every corner of Irish life. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern insisted in a speech to European brewers in Dublin that young people shouldn't be exposed to saturation marketing of alcohol, which he said was fueling a new "drink to get drunk" culture in a country where the pub has been the hub of life for generations. To that end, he said, the government plans to ban alcohol ads from buses, trains, cinemas and sporting events involving young people, while no ads for beer or other alcoholic beverages would be permitted before 10 p.m. on Irish television. Such ads currently face few restrictions — and adorn just about every public space and event brochure in Ireland, where more than 10,000 pubs serve a population of 3.8 million.

The Irish have long been stereotyped as heavy drinkers, but past surveys have suggested the reputation was undeserved and Ireland was actually one of Europe's more moderate drinking nations. In the past decade, however, figures show that has changed and Ireland has become a leading alcohol consumer.

New details today from the Associated Press about the terror attacks in Morocco. Remember: nothing is what it seems in the first accounts.

The suicide bombers attacked a Jewish community center when it was closed and empty. A day later, the building would have been packed. Another attacker blew himself up near a fountain, killing three Muslims. He apparently mistook it for one near a Jewish cemetery not far away. The cemetery was undamaged. These and other miscalculations indicate that the 14 suicide attackers who killed 28 people in Casablanca in five near-simultaneous assaults Friday were not as well-trained as first believed. One attacker survived and was arrested.

The apparent missteps "could explain a number of things'' about planning and execution of the attack, or indicate the attackers were simply recruited from poor neighborhoods, government spokesman Nabil Benabdellah said. "The experts were the ones behind the scenes,'' Benabdellah said. The attackers "were used, they were simply trained how to act,'' he said.

A high-level Moroccan official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity, that investigators suspect the bombings were the work of homegrown Islamic groups working on instructions from al-Qaida.

Quote of the Day -2:

"Let's not mince words. Hillary Clinton is never going to be president of the United States. There is no more divisive figure in the Democratic Party, much less the country, than the former first lady. And I like her. But many women don't. Even Democratic women. Even working women. Not to mention non-working, independent, non-political women."

- Susan Estrich, Democratic Party strategist

Quote of the Day:

"They say that parents often have to get out of the house when their kids leave because it gets so lonely. Everyone deals with it in different ways. But I told George I thought
running for president was a little extreme."

- First Lady Laura Bush, to graduates of the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies

The New York Times is horrified to discover that popular culture is slipping away from the control of Leftist elites and that the nation has... conservative (ugh) tendencies. Their discomfort is hilarious.

The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains -- they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers.

"They have obviously reached the Bush-red audience in a big way," said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, chairman of AOL Time Warner's books unit, referring to the color coding used on television news reports to denote states voting for President George W. Bush during the last election. "It has been a seismic shift in the business, and to some of us in publishing it has been a revelation."

But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales. What is more, the chains' buyers -- especially at Wal-Mart -- carefully screen content to avoid selling material likely to offend their conservative customers.

Music executives say the chains have helped turn country performers like the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith and Faith Hill into superstars. And major book publishers say the growth of the mass merchandisers has helped produce a string of best sellers by conservative authors like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.

The Telegraph (UK) says al Qaeda has thoroughly infiltrated the Saudi heirarchy. That's consistent with comments last weekend by Mansoor Ijaz that there is a deadly conflict underway between various factions in the royal family and elsewhere in Saudi society. Glad no one serious was thinking the war on terror is over -- we're just beginning.

Al-Qa'eda has infiltrated Saudi Arabia's military and security forces at the highest level, including those entrusted with the protection of western residential compounds, American intelligence officials believe. They are convinced that Tuesday's suicide bombers depended on a significant level of "insider" knowledge of the compounds that were hit and that al-Qa'eda even infiltrated the elite National Guard, which is involved in compound security.

Intelligence sources said several bombers were wearing National Guard uniforms to help them get into the three bombed complexes. "The only area where there is no evidence of a significant al-Qa'eda presence is in the Saudi air force," one intelligence official said. "The police, army, navy and National Guard have all been infiltrated."

American military and intelligence officers say the attack on the residential quarters of the Vinnell corporation, whose ex-US army officers train the National Guard, must have had detailed insider knowledge.

Quote of the Day:

"There are killers on the loose."

- President George W. Bush

Quote of the Day:

"We're going to continue to hunt them until they get so tired of running that they give themselves up or we catch them. I think it was very successful. We got one top-55 guy and about a dozen fairly bad guys off the street. And again we sent the message that we know the shadow regime is out there and it won't be tolerated."

- Major Mike Silverman, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, following the successful conclusion of "Operation Planet X," a raid near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit before dawn Thursday, and the seizure of more than 260 prisoners.

This is pretty serious.

SARS has caused more damage to the global airline industry than the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq combined, the world's airline association said Thursday.

"This is a crisis of major proportions," Thomas Andrew Drysdale, regional director for the International Air Transport Association, told a meeting of Asian airport managers in the Philippines. The world's airlines have lost more than $10 billion this year, he said. He told reporters that the combined effects of the September 11 terror attacks, the war in Iraq and the foot-and-mouth-disease in Britain did not cause as much damage to the industry as SARS. "At no time in the history of aviation have we ever seen declines of the magnitude that we are now seeing in the Asian region as a result of SARS," he said. "Virtually every airline in the world is affected."

Such a relief to hear from Margaret Thatcher again. Her clear voice has been in self-imposed exile (for health reasons) but she's come out swinging. Iron Lady indeed.

Baroness Thatcher returned to politics last night with an attack on the French, whom she accused of collaborating with “enemies of the West” for short-term gain. In a one-off comeback speech in New York, which broke a medical ban on speaking in public, the former Conservative Prime Minister attacked those who use environmentalism, feminism and human rights campaigns to fight capitalism and the nation state. She praised Tony Blair, but above all President Bush, for overriding the “rot” that “paralysed” the United Nations.

Baroness Thatcher was speaking at a meeting of Atlantic Bridge, an Anglo-US free market think-tank set up by Liam Fox, the Shadow Health Secretary. Her audience included Michael Ancram, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, and Michael Howard, the Shadow Chancellor.

Lady Thatcher said: “For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain — but enough about the French. So deep had the rot set in that the UN security council itself was paralysed.”

She spoke of her pride at the way Britain stood by America over Iraq: “Our own Prime Minister was staunch and our forces were superb. But, above, all, it is President Bush who deserves the credit for victory.”

Lady Thatcher said that she had “drunk deep from the same well of ideas” as her great ally, the former US President Ronald Reagan. Both instinctively knew what worked, she said, including low taxes, small government and enterprise. “We knew, too, what did not work, namely socialism in every shape or form. Nowadays socialism is more often dressed up as environmentalism, feminism, or international concern for human rights. All sound good in the abstract. But scratch the surface and you will as likely as not discover anti-capitalism, patronising and distorting quotas, and intrusions upon the sovereignty and democracy of nations.”

Lady Thatcher warned that America and Britain faced “a pervasive culture of anti-Westernism" that needed to be challenged. "There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it."

The Elf trial in Paris continues and The Telegraph (UK) reports that the defendants may be inching closer to naming Chirac as a participant in the corruption. What's personally interesting about watching executives of my former employer go on trial for this is that the charges fit perfectly into the personalities that I saw on display on a much smaller scale in our local office: expats who were charming, intelligent, and educated, but also with an unshakeable sense of entitlement -- and seemingly without many scruples.

The financial and political corruption at the heart of the French state is being unravelled by a trial whose daily revelations are gripping Paris and terrifying its political class with fear of exposure. This week the ex-president of Elf, Loik Le Floch-Prigent, confirmed an open secret: that for decades the state-owned energy giant provided cover for all manner of political shenanigans, including secret party funding.

"Elf money went to Africa and came back to France," he said, adding that some of its recipients were still in power. So far, he has refused to name names, keeping the capital on tenterhooks, but has made veiled reference to President Jacques Chirac and his former party, the RPR.

The Elf trial began in late March after eight years of investigation, with 37 defendants and 80 lawyers crowding into a Paris courtroom, and is expected to run for another 10 weeks. But already the court has heard of bribery and chicanery on a mind-boggling scale.

In the space of four years, between 1989 and 1993, the year before Elf was privatised, senior Elf executives are alleged to have skimmed more than £200 million from its "black box" of secret funds into their personal accounts, often with President François Mitterrand's approval. Earlier in the trial, Le Floch-Prigent alluded to an Elf investment in a factory in the Correze at the request of the region's then MP, M Chirac.

M Chirac's ghost also hovers over decades of oil deals in West Africa, where he has close ties to leaders such as Omar Bongo of Gabon, who is alleged to have received millions of pounds of Elf money in secret Swiss accounts.

General De Gaulle created the "black box" system so that Elf could pay bribes for oil contracts and challenge British and American rivals away from the gaze of French tax inspectors. But the system was ripe for abuse. During Le Floch-Prigent's tenure, the amount of money sloshing through the secret accounts, known as "the kitchen", multiplied tenfold, with £3.5 million a year allotted only for French political parties. Le Floch-Prigent says Mitterrand brushed off his concerns about the system, saying: "Let's carry on with what de Gaulle set up."

To the satisfaction of the magistrates investigating the case, Tarallo, Sirven and Le Floch-Prigent are finally turning on each other. Tarallo and Sirven say they did nothing without their boss's approval and he says they abused the latitude he gave them. With so much of the trial still left to run, investigators hope much more will come out.

Ann Coulter is all over The New York Times in its intellectual and moral misery. Let's just call it "scoundrel time."

The Times has now willingly abandoned its mantle as the "newspaper of record," leapfrogging its impending technological obsolescence. It was already up against the Internet and Lexis-Nexis as a research tool. All the Times had left was its reputation for accuracy.

As this episode shows, the Times is not even attempting to preserve a reliable record of events. Instead of being a record of history, the Times is merely a "record" of what liberals would like history to be – the Pentagon in crisis, the war going badly, global warming melting the North Pole, and protests roiling Augusta National Golf Club. Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger has turned the paper into a sort of bulletin board for Manhattan liberals.

Paul Wolfowitz is thinking very realistically about what lies ahead for our involvement in Iraq. I, for one, am damned glad that grownups are in charge now.

As he ponders U.S. policy toward Iraq, Wolfowitz wants to be sure that this time the enemy will be utterly destroyed. "The biggest mistake is to underestimate the resilience of the old regime and people's fear that the Baathists will outlast us," he says. "I think there are people in our government who underestimate the danger posed by the Baathists and the pervasive fear their presence induces." Iraqis must have confidence, Wolfowitz explains, that the Americans won't disappear again quickly, as they did after the 1991 Gulf War. "It's important to let the general population know this old regime is to going to be eliminated, root and branch," he says.

A model for the coming de-Baathification of Iraq is Romania, where an estimated 20 to 25 percent of the population was working for the secret police under Nicolae Ceausescu. "Most weren't doing it because they wanted to," says Wolfowitz. Similarly, the Iraqi Baath Party had about 1 million ordinary members. "You can't say that anyone who gave in is automatically anathema," he notes. Those with bloody hands in Iraq were the roughly 30,000 "special members" of the Baath Party -- the same number as the membership of the Iraqi security services. "Those people need to be dealt with pretty severely, so that people are sure they're out of action," says Wolfowitz.

The trick for the United States, he suggests, will be to return Iraq's politics to its people, even as America maintains a continuing, stabilizing military presence. "I think it's possible to withdraw relatively rapidly from Iraqi political life and day-to-day decisions -- but to remain there as the essential security force."

Knight-Ridder reports that there may be a direct link between the terrorist attack in Riyadh and al Qaeda fugitives purported to be hiding in Iran. If true, we can anticipate a dramatic escalation of pressure on the Persians.

U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether senior al-Qaida leaders hiding in Iran may have helped to plan or coordinate the terrorist bombings that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, late Monday in Saudi Arabia. Intelligence officials said several al-Qaida leaders, including Saif al Adel, who's wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and may now be the terrorist group's third-ranking official, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad have found refuge in Iran, where they remain active.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to foreign journalists in Washington on Wednesday, made no mention of a possible link between al-Qaida members in Iran and the Saudi bombings but said: "We are concerned about al-Qaida operating in Iran."

The Iranian government has expelled more than 500 lower-ranking al-Qaida members and denies harboring any of the group's senior leaders. But the U.S. officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was evidence that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard were sheltering al Adel, the younger bin Laden, other al-Qaida leaders and some other members of bin Laden's family. The officials emphasized that no hard evidence has been found that al-Qaida fugitives in Iran had a hand in the Saudi bombings.

If the CIA or other intelligence agencies find evidence confirming suspicions that the Saudi bombings were planned or supported from Iran, one senior U.S. official warned Wednesday, the conversation with Iran "could become a confrontation." Asked what the administration's options would be in that case, another senior official conceded that trying to seize al Adel and others would be extremely difficult, but added: "The military option is never off the table."

The suspicions of a link between Iran and the bombings are focused largely on al Adel, who some U.S. officials think is now the head of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf.

Quote of the Day:

"I think you might want to ask Khalid Sheik Mohammed what it feels like, ask him if he thinks the United States is making success in the war against terror. You may want to ask Abu Ali Harithi. You may want to ask Rahim al-Nashiri. These are all some of the leading al Qaeda operatives who have been arrested.... you're welcome to visit them."

- White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, responding to a reporter's inane question about the war on terror: "what evidence do [the American people] have that there is actually something going on?"

A remarkable editorial was published in today's Arab News. Maybe the recent Riyadh terrorism attack will have a sobering effect on some of the key players in Saudi Arabia. Individuals and factions in that country are major enablers and supporters of al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorism. They need to be taken down from inside the country, not just from the West.

For too long we have ignored the truth. We did not want to admit that Saudis were involved in Sept. 11. We can no longer ignore that we have a nest of vipers here, hoping that by doing so they will go away. They will not. They are our problem and we all their targets now.

It goes without saying that those responsible, those who poisoned the minds of the bombers, those who are planning to become bombers, must be tracked down and crushed — remorselessly and utterly. But crushing them will not be enough. The environment that produced such terrorism has to change. The suicide bombers have been encouraged by the venom of anti-Westernism that has seeped through the Middle East’s veins, and the Kingdom is no less affected. Those who gloat over Sept. 11, those who happily support suicide bombings in Israel and Russia, those who consider non-Muslims less human than Muslims and therefore somehow disposable, all bear part of the responsibility for the Riyadh bombs.

We cannot say that suicide bombings in Israel and Russia are acceptable but not in Saudi Arabia. The cult of suicide bombings has to stop. So too has the chattering, malicious, vindictive hate propaganda. It has provided a fertile ground for ignorance and hatred to grow.

via James Taranto's Best of the Web Today.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the U.S. is working on prevention of ship-based terrorist attacks, and that al Qaeda may own "as many as 15 cargo ships." This is yet another example of how multi-demensional the war on terror is, and why our best defense must be an aggressive offense. Despite our best efforts at self-protection (and we have to make a 110% effort), no defense can or will be perfect. Only killing the bad guys first will protect us.

So far, the terrorists have used trucks - as in the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Africa and Monday night in Saudi Arabia, and turned airliners into weapons on Sept. 11. Now, one of the biggest concerns of authorities is that the terrorists may try the same thing with another form of transportation - ships. Smuggling a biological or chemical weapon in a ship container could be just one approach. Another might be exploding an oil tanker at anchor, an action that might wreak devastation on petroleum ports. Or a large vessel could simply be used as a bludgeon, knocking out bridge abutments and blocking ship channels. The issue is serious enough that on May 6 the Department of Defense held a little-noticed "Impending Storm" exercise that simulated several kinds of shipborne attacks on US cities.

Al Qaeda has already demonstrated a capacity for operating on the water. It was a small explosives-laden boat that blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole while it lay at anchor in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. Seventeen American servicemen were killed. Al Qaeda used the same method near the same port this past October in hitting a French oil tanker.

Why are millions of Americans leaving traditional media like newspapers and network news for Fox News Channel and weblogs? The Washington Times reports on one reason - "the Peter Factor."

Additional charges of bias are being leveled against "ABC World News Tonight" anchor Peter Jennings, this time by Bob Zelnick, a 21-year veteran of ABC News. Just last week, we wrote that Peter Collins, a former ABC News correspondent, said in an interview with Marc Morano, senior staff writer of CNSNews.com, that Mr. Jennings manipulated his news scripts. Mr. Zelnick, who became chairman of the journalism department at Boston University after leaving ABC in 1998, has stepped forward now to tell Mr. Morano that Mr. Jennings made it his practice to insert a liberal bias into the news copy of reporters in the field. "It was very common for correspondents, both domestic and foreign, to run into a 'World News Tonight' [staff] that was influenced by Peter, who had a different interpretation of a story," Mr. Zelnick said. "The correspondent who knows that he is going to be doing a piece on 'World News Tonight' girds himself for battle when the phone rings and the editors or sometimes Peter gets on the phone," he explained. Mr. Zelnick called it the "Peter Factor," although he added that "World News Tonight" as a whole "has a tradition of changing the scripts of correspondents, often for stylistic reasons, often for editorial reasons."

Quote of the Day:

"The other point that needs to be made here as well, too, is to recognize the fact that the only way to deal with this threat ultimately is to destroy it. There's no treaty can solve this problem. There's no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists. And we do everything we can here at home and around the world to create hard targets so we're difficult to get at, but in the final analysis the only sure way to security and stability and protection of our people and those of our friends and allies is to go eliminate the terrorists before they can launch any more attacks. And this president is absolutely bound and determined to do that."

- Vice President Dick Cheney, on al Qaeda and terrorism

via DefenseLink

The inimitable Tony Parsons, writing in The Mirror (UK), contemplates a recent swipe at GWB by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Tony says not to worry, since "on the American radar, Livingstone registers slightly less than a speck of dirt on an amoeba's bum." Tony also thinks some deeper thoughts about empire and they are worth reading.

Only this week I received a letter from some intellectual giant telling me that Americans are arrogant, child-murdering, government-overthrowing, gum-chewing bastards. Anti-Americanism has increased in this country since the war with Iraq. Not because the peace camp were right about the number of civilian casualties. But because they were wrong. All the peacenik predictions - Iraq would be another Vietnam, the Middle East would erupt in flames, the civilian casualties would be beyond number - were totally wrong.

I know all about the CIA involvement in Pinochet's Chile. I have seen the pictures of children suffering from the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. I have even been to the museum they have in Hiroshima, Japan, where there are photographs that you will never see in any Western newspaper. I know America has blood on its hands. Which world power doesn't? Which empire doesn't? The British? The Russian? The Roman?

The more hysterical the anti-Americanism of Europeans becomes, the more I feel like John Wayne. America, for all its faults, is the world's best bet for freedom, democracy and peace. At a time in history when religious fanatics think mass murder is rewarded in paradise with a life rather like Hugh Hefner's in the Playboy mansion, the world needs America like never before. Not all superpowers are evil.

The British Empire was probably the most benevolent in history. We may have nicked a few old urns, but we left behind literacy, hospitals and the rule of law. That's not a bad deal. If you can think of one country in Africa or Asia that was better off after the British Empire left, then answers on a postcard, please.

The United States of the 21st century is history's other benign superpower. The straws that the left clutch at - Pinochet, Vietnam - are increasingly receding into ancient history. If Ken Livingstone, and all the little Yank-hating Livingstones just like him, truly believe George Bush and Saddam Hussein are indistinguishable, then they should try explaining that to the parents of the Iraqi children who were hung from lampposts because their dads shared a joke with British troops.

Stephen Pollard of the interesting Centre for the New Europe in Brussels examines the recent visibility of Euro anti-Semitism, specifically the case of British MP Tam Dalyell, in a subscribers-only article in the Wall Street Journal Europe. More echoes of the 1930s - spooky.

All "decent" people, we are constantly told, condemn anti-Semitism. It is well and truly a thing of the past throughout Europe. But the evidence -- anecdotal, yes, but now coming thick and fast -- suggests otherwise. One of the most disturbing aspects of the trend is that it is appearing everywhere. From Madrid to Berlin, one hears of Jewish conspiracies in Washington or London. British euroskeptics may have the conceit that their country is not part of Europe. But, as far as this old/new fad is concerned, we're definitely Europeans. Perhaps sadder is the fact that I'm not referring here just, or even primarily, to the racism and thuggery of fascist parties like the British National Party. The scourge has reached far higher up the food chain.

Indeed, we may even see anti-Semitism as perhaps a spin-off -- though of an older pedigree -- of the newer obsession, anti-Americanism. It's all very convenient. America is becoming an evil empire. And who are the prime movers behind American policy? Yes! The Jews. Again, the facts matter not a jot - in this case that President George W. Bush presides over the first U.S. Cabinet in decades not to include a single Jew, and that none of his key policy advisers -- Dick Cheney, Condi Rice or Donald Rumsfeld -- are Jewish.

The same type of conspiracy theory about Jews in power can be heard today throughout Europe, and even French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is said to share these views. Few admit to anti-Semitism, but their words too often give them away. All right-thinking people claim to despise it, but as the non-reaction to Dalyell's rantings shows, anti-Semitism has become the hatred that dares to speak its name anew.

The New York Times says the North Korean geek-in-chief has been watching the news... Fox or CNN?

American intelligence officials have concluded that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, went into seclusion during the final buildup to the war in Iraq because he feared that he too might be the target of attack. That judgment has led the Pentagon to consider new ways to hold him and his inner circle at risk as a way of bolstering deterrence on the peninsula, officials say.

Mr. Kim vanished from public view for 50 days starting in mid-February, a time when the Pentagon also moved bombers into the Korean area of operations. Now, the military's ability to mount precision attacks on leadership targets in Iraq is being examined to see how it might apply in a tense standoff with North Korea, perhaps influencing North Korea's behavior without ever firing a shot.

A senior Defense Department official said that lessons from the attacks against Saddam Hussein of Iraq, including short-notice air strikes on suspected hideouts in the opening and closing days of the war, are shaping discussions of how best to re-arrange the American military presence in South Korea and nearby in the Pacific. The goal would be to assemble in the Korean region the same kind of detailed intelligence on high-priority targets -- including the location of the adversary's leadership -- and the ability to strike almost instantaneously with precision weapons should the need arise.

Drudge is breaking the story on yet another reason to avoid a trip to Disney World. Walt must be having an uneasy afterlife, watching his legacy betrayed by Eisner & Co.

The WALT DISNEY CO. is set to spend millions financing a new explosive Bush-bashing documentary from Michael Moore -- a documentary which claims bin Laden was greatly enriched by the Bush family! DISNEY, via subsidiary MIRAMAX, has agreed to cover the production costs, said to be in the millions, of Moore's planned FAHRENHEIT 911.

"The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda," Moore explains. FAHRENHEIT 911 will be released during the upcoming presidential election cycle. [More Moore in '04.]

The director claims he will document on film how the "senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11." Moore will also scrutinize, in graphic detail, why America is so disliked abroad.

The British seem to have made a pact with the devil for the last twenty-five years to fight the IRA. Dirty work indeed. One can only hope it has been worth it to defeat these deadly Irish terrorists.

The British army's most deadly double agent, who operated at the very heart of the IRA, has been identified as Alfredo 'Freddy' Scappaticci, known to spy-masters by the codename 'Stakeknife'. As the British government's most powerful weapon in its 30-year 'dirty war' against the IRA and Sinn Fein, Scappaticci is suspected of being allowed by the army's Force Research Unit (FRU) to take part in up to 40 murders. He is said to have been involved in the killings of loyalists, policemen, soldiers, and civilians to protect his cover so he could keep passing top-grade intelligence to the British. He also kidnapped, interrogated, tortured and killed other IRA men suspected of being British informers.

He is also said to have provided his military handlers with the information which led to the 'Death on the Rock' killings of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar in 1988 by the SAS. At the time, the IRA were convinced that their active- service unit had been betrayed by an informer. However, their mole-hunt drew a blank.

Files based on intelligence from Scappaticci were forwarded to prime ministers Thatcher, Major and Blair. During a 25-year career infiltrating the IRA, Scappaticci rose to become head of their Internal Security Unit (the so-called Nutting Squad) and a member of the IRA's General Headquarters Staff. He also became close to some of the most powerful members of the republican movement, including Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and former IRA chief-of-staff Brian Keenan.

The IRA fear the outing of Stakeknife could deal an almost-fatal blow to the organisation. A senior Republican source said last night: 'This is the most dreadful news I've ever heard. I don't know how we can recover from this. How can we have any confidence left in ourselves when a man like Scappaticci turned out to be Stakeknife?'

The events follow a week of turmoil and chaos within British military intelligence, the UK government and the ranks of the IRA. The exposure of Scappaticci as Stakeknife comes just weeks after Scotland Yard Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, released his report on alleged collusion between British security forces and terrorists in Northern Ireland. As a result of Stevens's work nine members of the FRU, including Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the Aberdonian army officer who led the unit, could now face prosecution. An unquantifiable number of civilians may have been killed because of state collusion with para militaries, including Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

Have been pondering why the U.S. would bother to go back to the United Nations again on the subject of Iraq. STRATFOR has an encouraging analysis and concludes that it is a vigorous, challenging strategy based on the new realities of American power. The details are subscription-only, but a front-page teaser sums up their take: it's one last chance for those who rolled the dice to oppose us, and lost their bet.

The United States has presented a resolution to the U.N. Security Council that would suspend the sanctions regime and transition the oil-for-food program in Iraq into a different form. The resolution is an attempt to get a U.N. stamp of approval on coalition efforts in Iraq -- which in reality will continue regardless of the Security Council's actions. But more than that, it is a challenge to every state that opposed U.S. policy in Iraq and a threat to those who might do so again.

Tastes great -- but still less filling?

What is the plan for sidelining Arafat? No peace is possible as long as he and his cohorts control terror assets, and use them against both Israel and the Palestinians who want to compromise.

Palestinian leaders have put aside reservations to parts of the U.S.-developed plan for peace with Israel and are ready to get started on it, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday, heeding an appeal by Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We have accepted the road map," Abbas said at a joint news conference with Powell after their first meeting since Abbas was sworn in on April 30. "For the sake of opening the road, we have dropped our reservations," Abbas said.

Referring to [Yasser] Arafat, Powell said he was "in close touch and contact" with European foreign ministers and "made it clear to them we believe this is the time to invest in new leadership. I hope that with the passage of time, my European colleagues will see the wisdom of acting in that way." President Bush, who has refused to invite Arafat to the White House, subsequently declared him deeply involved in terrorist activity against Israel. As a result, the United States has suspended contact with Arafat.

Quote of the Day:

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."

- Abraham Lincoln

Here's the new meaning of "tag and release."

U.S. interrogators in Iraq are building a digital catalog of prisoners of war and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, scanning and saving their fingerprints and other body characteristics in databases. The data banks, controlled by the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, are being used to investigate suspicious foreigners entering the United States, as well as to trace suspects in future terrorist attacks. The move also reflects the U.S. government's desire to keep tabs on Iraqi fighters after releasing them when the Iraq war is declared ended.

"We do this passive collection when we go in, because these guys will scatter over time," said Thomas Barnett, a professor at the Naval War College who advises the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "When you have the opportunity to tag them, you tag them before you release them to the wild."

U.S. military and intelligence officials started building the biometric dossiers in Afghanistan, taking digital scans of the fingerprints, irises and voices of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners, including those jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

At last we can learn more about GROM -- the mysterious commando unit from Poland founded by " the man once described in Jane's Intelligence Review as 'his country's James Bond and Rambo wrapped neatly into one daunting package.' " This is pretty cool.

It came as a surprise to many when the U.S. postwar plans for Iraq were finally revealed. Like Gaul, Iraq would be divided into three parts: an American zone, a British zone, and a Polish zone. But what role did Poland play during the war? It turns out a very important one--albeit one that was kept mostly secret.

One of the primary objectives during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the port at Umm Qasr. Without it, delivering adequate humanitarian aid to the rest of Iraq would have been nearly impossible for the coalition. Not long after the start of the war, the port was secured--in large part thanks to GROM, Poland's elite commandos.

Who even knew Poland had special forces? For a while, not many. The Polish government waited three years before publicly disclosing GROM's existence. Standing for Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno Mobilnego (Operational Mobile Response Group), the name actually stems from a special-forces commander, Gromoslaw Czempinski, who, during the first Gulf War, led a Polish unit into Western Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives. One of the other men on that secret mission was Slawomir Petelicki--the father of GROM.

GROM operators are said to be martial arts experts and capable of "cold killing." "We created our own style of martial arts," says Petelicki. "I have an old friend who is a master of karate and jujitsu and is a sixth degree black belt. He created the style with other specialists--it is most similar to what the Israelis do."

And what about "cold killing"? Asked if the ominous term refers to garrotes or piano wire, Petelicki replies "Yes." Pausing to choose his words carefully, he explains, "Many things. For instance, we can create a weapon from . . . well . . . many things."

The Telegraph (UK) is all over Syria providing asylum for fugitive Iraqi leaders -- they report that "thousands" went to Syria in return for big payments. And they corroborate that France is facilitating further escapes. One can only hope that Syria's footdragging on turning them over is mainly for show. If not, things will go badly for them in due time.

The king of clubs from America's card deck of most wanted Iraqis is being sheltered at a military base in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to a Gulf diplomat. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former vice-president of Iraq and one of Saddam Hussein's closest henchmen, is said to be under the protection of Syria's Republican Guard in the decrepit military base near the airport. He is among thousands of regime figures who are believed to have slipped into Syria before Damascus sealed the border. Izzat had been put in charge of defending northern Iraq but in the absence of a northern front, he decided to flee.

Many other Iraqis are making plans to move on from Syria. Last week, American intelligence officials accused France of providing passports to fleeing regime officials who want to come to western Europe. The French government denied the charges, but a Syrian employee of the French embassy in Damascus claimed that eight Iraqi officials from the oil and finance ministries had been given passports in the middle of April. "The commercial section of the embassy received passports for eight Iraqi officials and members of their families," he said. He claimed that Paris also ordered that a passport issued for Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, a former head of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service who is on America's wanted list, should be cancelled soon after it had arrived. It remains unclear whether al-Habbush is in Syria.

Conservatives are outraged over the role of women soldiers at or near the frontlines in Iraq. Seems to me that it is foolish to pretend that men and women are identical, but equally foolish to think that women don't have the toughness to fight. The professional military can probably evolve this sensibly, if mostly left alone by various pressure groups.

With one single mother from the U.S. Army killed in Iraq and another wounded and captured, some conservatives are urging the military to halt its march toward gender equality and restrict the deployment of mothers in war zones. "Healthy, responsible nations do not send the mothers of small children to or near the front lines - that violates the most basic human instincts," said Allan Carlson, a historian affiliated with the Family Research Council.

For now, the cause has found few champions in Congress or at the Pentagon; politicians and commanders are pleased by the all-volunteer military's performance in Iraq and proud that three ambushed servicewomen became national heroes. But the critics - mostly from groups opposed to the feminist movement - vow to maintain pressure in hopes the Bush administration might one day review deployment policies.

Bush, asked about the matter Thursday, said it will be "up to the generals" to determine if any changes are warranted.

Jessica Lynch wasn't the only female casualty of the war in Iraq. Lori Piestewa of Arizona was killed; Shoshana Johnson was wounded. Now the San Antonio News-Express profiles another gritty young woman. The efforts to support the families of those killed in action is wholly admirable -- but what about those who were wounded? They and their loved ones also face a lifetime of struggle, and we should do more for them too.

The first time her 2-year-old son asked to see her legs, Army Sgt. Casaundra Grant refused. When he persisted, Grant relented and showed the boy what remained -- two stumps, one above, the other below the knee. Blane Davis III didn't cry or shriek or hide his eyes. "The first thing he did, he came over and prayed for my legs," Grant said. "He understood."

Grant, a 1996 graduate of Business Careers, part of Holmes High School, was pinned under a tank that she was helping move in Kuwait on March 12. She immediately lost her left leg, and eventually her right. But the 25-year-old, who's stationed at Fort Hood, is grateful to have survived. A single mother, Grant has an easy smile that belies her injuries. "I have God on my side," she said Thursday at Brooke Army Medical Center, where she's recovering. "I'm not blaming anyone for this accident." She's undergoing physical therapy and will eventually be fitted for prosthetic legs that will allow her to return to her hobbies, which include working out and shopping.

For now, she keeps in contact with her unit, which remains in Kuwait. "I miss them; I miss working over there," she said. "We have a family over there."

via The Corner on NRO.

Quote of the Day:

"If your uncle started talking like that at Thanksgiving dinner, you know, you'd all have a talk when he left the room about how you have to keep an eye on Uncle Bobby."

- Comedian Dennis Miller, on Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) who attacked President Bush for his visit to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln

Jonathan Rauch has a thought-provoking article in the National Journal which captures both the opportunity and the challenge now facing us in the clash of civilizations between the West and Islamic fanaticism. This is going to be hard, but at least now there is a chance, thanks to George W. Bush.

Perhaps the most awkward and obnoxious of America's Cold War alignments were in the Arab world. Washington supported tyrannies and monarchies that wrecked their economies and stunted their politics. The Arab regimes wallowed in corruption and incompetence. They entrenched poverty and blocked middle-class aspirations. They jailed liberal dissidents and political moderates. They fertilized the soil for militant Islamists who provided the only outlet for dissent. They then attempted to neutralize Islamism by diverting its energies to hating liberalism, Americans, and Jews.

In both Iran and Iraq, Washington supported or tolerated corrupt and brutal regimes, with disastrous results in both places. Saudi Arabia has been a different kind of disaster, propagating anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism all over the world. Syria and Libya are disasters. Lebanon is between disasters. Egypt is a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe Jordan is, too.

In short, the United States has been on the wrong side of Arab history for almost five decades, and it is not doing much better than the Soviets. The old policy had no future, only a past. It was a dead policy walking. September 11 was merely the death certificate.

Bush is no sophisticate, but he has the great virtue -- not shared by most sophisticates -- of knowing a dead policy when he sees one. So he gathered up the world's goodwill and his own political capital, spent the whole bundle on dynamite, and blew the old policy to bits. However things come out in Iraq, the war's larger importance is to leave little choice, going forward, but to put America on the side of Arab reform.

Reform will take years, decades even, and it will mean different things in different countries. In Iraq, it meant force. In Syria, it means hostile prodding; in Saudi Arabia, friendly prodding. It means setting a subversive example for Iran, creating the region's second democracy in Palestine, building on change in Qatar and Kuwait, leading Egypt gently toward multiparty politics. Progress will be fitful, at best. But the direction will be right, for a change.

This is a breathtakingly bold undertaking. The difficulties are staggering. Everything might go wrong. But the crucial point to remember is that everything had already gone wrong. No available policy could justify optimism in the Arab world, but the new policy at least offers hope. It offers a path ahead, a future where there had been only a past. It is not dead. It puts America on the right side of history and on the right side of America.

The Telegraph (UK) reports that opponents of Euro-utopianism are trying to stop the next phase of neutering all sovereignty among EU nations. Glad to see that not everyone in Europe has lost their minds. Maybe the Brits at least will hold out.

The European Union should be abolished and replaced with a "Europe of Democracies" based on free trade rather than shared sovereignty, say opponents of the European constitution being drawn up in Brussels. A group of members of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body writing the constitution, plans to publish a minority report opposing most of the main proposals. The rebels include around a dozen politicians from eight countries including Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland. Although the minority report stands virtually no chance of being adopted, it is a clear sign of growing concern across the EU about the planned constitution, to be published next month.

The draft constitution proposed that countries should lose their veto on foreign policy, that taxes be harmonised and that the EU should be renamed the United States of Europe. There were also plans to set up a European army and a common criminal justice system.

via RealClearPolitics

Quote of the Day:

Some believe that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely, if not impossible. They argue that the people of the Middle East have little desire for freedom or self-government.

These same arguments have been heard before in other times, about other people. After World War II, many doubted that Germany and Japan, with their histories of autocratic rule and aggressive armies, could ever function as free and peaceful societies. In the Cold War we were told that imperial communism was permanent and the Iron Curtain was there to stay.

In each of these cases -- in Germany, in Japan, in Eastern Europe and in Russia -- the skeptics doubted, then history replied. Every milestone of liberty over the last 60 years was declared impossible until the very moment it happened. The history of the modern world offers a lesson for the skeptics: do not bet against the success of freedom.

- President George W. Bush, speaking at the University of South Carolina

via The White House

Stars and Stripes has the numbers on the USS Kitty Hawk's deployment to the Persian Gulf, and a preview of what's ahead for dry dock this summer.

More than 100 days at sea. More than 864,000 pounds of ordnance expended during 5,375 aircraft sorties. Thirty-seven underway replenishments. Almost 30,000 miles traveled since departing Yokosuka, Japan, on Jan. 20. On Tuesday, the Kitty Hawk was returning home to a rousing welcome. In the interim, the numbers kept piling up.

Six million dollars in pay and other crew entitlements; 13,486 haircuts; 473,000 cans of soda (and 1,211 cavities filled by the ship’s dental department); 8,250 immunizations; 4,480 sick-call patients. One hundred and twenty-nine new personnel joined the ship while it was under way; 168 sailors re-enlisted. Two aircraft were lost; two lives were lost.

One more number etches itself into the minds of Kitty Hawk sailors: five. That's the number of days off the crew gets before being required to report back for work. On Monday, crewmembers must return and start prepping the ship for a months-long dry dock period that ship officials have called the most extensive ever for a forward-deployed carrier.

Sailors from the USS Kitty Hawk behaved themselves after returning home to Yokosuka, Japan, and apparently that rated a news report in Stars and Stripes. Glad to hear it.

The 7th Fleet's emphasis on responsibility and safety appears to have paid off: Neither base officials nor Japanese police reported any major incidents involving sailors from the USS Kitty Hawk, John S. McCain or Cowpens, all of which returned Tuesday from deployments to the Persian Gulf. For most of the cruise home, sailors repeatedly were reminded that last summer’s conduct problems were not to be repeated -- and they apparently took the words to heart.

"It would have been pretty bad if somebody did something stupid on the first night back," said Seaman Arthur Johnson of the Kitty Hawk. "After all the talk and all the warnings, can you imagine how hard they'd come down on the first guy to screw up?" Several incidents last summer led to curtailed liberties and contributed to the Kitty Hawk commander’s sudden reassignment.

Most sailors with families chose to spend Tuesday night catching up at home. Single sailors looked forward to other comforts: fast food and beer. For most of Tuesday, a very common sight was a sailor in civilian clothes, fast-food bag in one hand, bag of compact discs and DVDs from the exchange in the other.

Learned from NPR that today, May 9, is "Europe Day," a day in the European Union countries when they celebrate, with an unknown quantity of enthusiasm, their Europe-ness. Typically, the day is apparently a commemoration of a speech back in 1950, not of anything actually being accomplished.

The description on the EU site ain't exactly a stemwinder:

Probably very few people in Europe know that on 9 May 1950 the first move was made towards the creation of what is now known as the European Union.

Quote of the Day:

"One might plausibly argue, indeed, that the complete disappearance of France would produce no more perturbation in the world than the loss of an ear produces in a man. Brussels and Lucerne would quickly put in better cooks, and Copenhagen, I venture, could take care of the peep-show business without any need of an international loan."

- H.L. Mencken, 1927

via The Washington Times

Don't forget to keep an eye on Syria. Two eyes when you can spare them.

The United States would be forced to act if it discovered that Damascus allowed Iraq to hide weapons of mass destruction in Syria during the war, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published Wednesday. Rice said she was sure Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - the main reason cited by the United States for invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein - would turn up eventually.

But she said it was possible some had been removed from Iraq before the fighting concluded last month. "We have assurances from the Syrians that nothing crossed their borders. Time will tell," Rice said in the interviews given Tuesday in Washington to El Pais and three other Spanish dailies. But if that assurance turned out to be false, it would create a very serious situation and the international community would be forced to act, Rice said, according to El Pais.

Pressed about whether she meant another war, Rice simply repeated that the international community would be forced to act.

Mansoor Ijaz and his colleagues at Crescent Investment Management have a plan for winning hearts and minds in Iraq. Worth reading.

The blueprint for winning the peace will revolve around bringing to life a federalist constitution that devolves power to Iraq's ethnically and religiously diverse people, insuring a system of justice that can equitably apply the rule of law to all its citizens, structuring a free-market economic system that encourages merit and uses Iraq's oil resources for the good of the people, and redefining the role of religion in society so it becomes a force for moral healing and unity rather than sowing the seeds of hatred, violence, and division.

American ideas for solving these problems will get the best reception from Iraq's people if there is a concurrent campaign waged to win over their hearts and minds. After being ruled by hardened Baathist heads for the past three decades, transforming Iraqi hearts into a democratic force for reform throughout the Arab world will require a combination of compassion, political skill, and a willingness to spend U.S. taxpayer money on things other than the latest cruise missiles, fighter jets, or armored tanks.

We need a common-sense approach that focuses on the needs of Iraq's people and empowers them to leave the era of Saddam's tyranny behind.

The Christian Science Monitor has a lengthy article on the apparent regrouping and strengthening of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That one ain't over by a long shot. Pakistan is still the linchpin and a great concern - Pak support brought the Taliban to power in the first place. The current government is in a sense surrounded - by Pakistan's own Islamic fanatics, India, and a resilient Taliban. All while sitting on a nuclear arsenal. Glad we have Rumsfeld and Franks to keep an eye on this, but vigilance is not optional - it's required.

Across the southern portions of Afghanistan, where the Taliban found strong support among the rural conservative Pashtun populations, there are definite signs that the Taliban are making a comeback. Some Taliban leaders, such as Salam and Taliban commander Mullah Muhammad Hasan Rehmani, are giving interviews once again. Others are dropping leaflets, calling for a jihad against US forces and against the new Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Still others are increasingly willing to discuss the secret hierarchy that is directing this jihad and the sources of funding that keep it running.

It's this confidence that undercuts recent assertions by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are over, and that the focus will now be on reconstruction. "The general idea that was being put forward by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld last week, is that the Afghan military, backed by US forces, is engaged in mopping up some remnants of the past - that is not true," says Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University. "They [the Taliban] are now organizing for a new offensive, and they are still getting some support from Pakistan. Even if Pakistan is not cooperating directly, it is not cooperating in efforts to end the support that is coming from Pakistani territory."

The reorganized Taliban are mounting increasingly brazen attacks on Afghan soil. In Zabul Province last month, for instance, Taliban forces took control of two remote districts near the Pakistani border for nearly a week. Afghan military forces, backed up by US Special Forces and helicopter gunships, eventually dislodged the Taliban fighters.

Comeuppances are, well, hell. Gee, they said they wanted a piece of the action...

Germany has responded angrily to a proposal that its troops be deployed in northern Iraq under the command of Poland, one of the newest members of Nato.

The United States recommended that Poland take over the military administration of northern Iraq, in charge of peacekeeping duties. The force under its command would number about 7,000, including contingents from Nato members such as Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Germany. Peter Struck, the German Defence Minister, said he would “look into” the proposal, but was clearly opposed.

Poland, which contributed 200 men to coalition forces in Iraq, had promised 10,000 men for a peacekeeping force. This has shrunk to 1,500, with troops from other countries added. The US will be responsible for central Iraq and Britain for the south. Neither Germany nor France had expected to take a leading military role in postwar Iraq, but the idea that Poland could take charge has stirred a hornets’ nest. President Kwasniewski of Poland will try to resolve the matter when he meets German and French leaders tomorrow, but there is no mistaking the dismay in “old Europe” as Poland flexes its muscles.

This seems eminently reasonable to me. Those who sneer at such a response fail to acknowedge the depth of opposition that President Bush has faced over Iraq. It went far beyond principled opposition and mere diplomatic persuasion - it has included double-dealing, clandestine sharing of intelligence, bribery, arms transfers, military advice, and monetary support for "anti-war" demonstrations. France was the leader but there are plenty of others. So practicing diplomatic carrots-and-sticks goes far beyond pique, but it is convenient for the Left and the media to ignore the reality in favor of stereotypes.

It's payback time at the White House, and countries around the world are reaping the benefits or paying the price for their stand on the war with Iraq.

The door to the Oval Office is wide open for foreign leaders who backed President Bush, but war critics would be lucky to find a spot with Barney, the presidential dog. Foreign leaders who crossed Bush can forget about presidential visits or quick action on free-trade agreements. The retribution fits Bush's longstanding pattern of rewarding friends and punishing enemies, but critics say it is adding to the already substantial anti-American sentiment abroad.

In the latest example of tit-for-tat foreign policy, Bush signed a free-trade deal with war ally Singapore on Tuesday, while a similar agreement with war opponent Chile has stalled. This week's White House guest list is a roll call of war allies. Today, Bush will welcome Spanish Prime Minister José Mara Aznar to the Oval Office. Thursday, he meets with the foreign ministers from Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- allies all. He also will make time for Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, which hosted the U.S. military command during the war, and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who also endorsed the war.

War opponents shouldn't expect invitations anytime soon.

Quote of the Day:

"Evil labors with vast powers and perpetual success -- in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general and so it is in our own lives."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, 1944

AP reports that the USS Kitty Hawk has returned to home port after its mission to the war in Iraq.

After more than 100 days at sea, the launching of more than 5,300 sorties and the loss of just one pilot, the USS Kitty Hawk and a pair of ships from its battle group returned home to a boisterous welcome Tuesday. Based at this former Japanese Imperial Navy stronghold just south of Tokyo, the Kitty Hawk is one of the first aircraft carriers to return from the Iraq war. For most aboard, it wasn't a day too soon.

''Words cannot express how good it feels to be back,'' said Seaman David Espinosa, of Reno, Nevada. ''This was my first cruise, so it feels especially a long time to be away from my wife and son.''

About 5,000 family members and other well-wishers, many waving small American flags, turned out to welcome the ships back. Military brass bands played traditional march music for the crowd. A rock band took over as the carrier, as tall as an 11-story building, pulled up to the pier.

Stars and Stripes also covers the happy day.

Balloons, lots of 'em, in a rainbow of colors. Everywhere, American flags, both tiny and huge. Handmade signs. Booming music, clapping, arm-waving, cheering. Kisses and hugs, more of them, even, than balloons. And the good tears, the kind that spring from joy. The USS Kitty Hawk is home.

Hundreds of family and friends waited pierside as the massive aircraft carrier moored at its permanent dock for the first time since leaving Jan. 20 to support Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Persian Gulf. Also returning Tuesday were the USS Cowpens and USS John S. McCain.

Just before the Kitty Hawk was in range of tugboats, as the sun rose and tried to burn through ocean haze, sailors in freshly pressed dress whites started making their way to the flight deck, taking pictures of each other and talking excitedly about all the things they missed about being in port. And then: "Man the rails!"

When the order was given, sailors sprinted across the deck to get the coveted spots on the ship's starboard side -- the side that gets tied to the pier. As the pier came into view, music started blaring. On this morning, one that sailors had been anticipating for more than 100 days, the song was perfect: "Mama, I'm Coming Home," by Ozzy Osbourne.

"This never gets old," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Tamra Hull, a 21-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas. "I love coming into port, and this time is special."

Michael Barone is perceptive in US News & World Report as he ponders the existence of "two nations" in our country and the transition from youth to adulthood that seems to happen only after high school for most young people. There are some exceptional kids and we all know at least a few, if we're blessed - but they are exceptions.

Who has not been impressed by the American military personnel we have been seeing over these past two months? Calm, terse, determined, brave, confident--above all, competent, able to vanquish the enemy and spare the innocent with astonishingly low casualties. And yet a few years ago most of these young men and women were typical American 18-year-olds, most of whom don't seem competent at much of anything.

One of the peculiar features of our country is that we produce incompetent 18-year-olds and remarkably competent 30-year-olds. Americans at 18 typically score lower on standardized tests than 18-year-olds from other advanced countries. Watch them on their first few days working at McDonald's or behind the counter in chain drugstores, and it's obvious that they don't really know how to make change or keep the line moving. But by the time Americans are 30, they are the most competent people in the world. They produce a stronger and more vibrant private-sector economy; they produce scientific and technical advances that lead the world; they provide the world's best medical care; they create the strongest and most agile military the world has ever seen. And it's not just a few meritocrats at the top: American talent runs wide and deep.

Why? Because from the age of 6 to 18, our kids live mostly in what I call Soft America--the part of our society where there is little competition and accountability. In contrast, most Americans in the 12 years between ages 18 and 30 live mostly in Hard America--the part of American life subject to competition and accountability; the military trains under live fire. Soft America seeks to instill self-esteem. Hard America plays for keeps.

Soft America for a long time has been running most of our schools. Since early in the 20th century, as Diane Ravitch has shown in Left Back, educators have had a mistrust of testing and competition and a yearning to protect children from their rigors. Educators ban tag and dodge ball, because some kids lose. Teacher unions seek tenure, higher pay, and lower accountability. Parents' expectations are often low: Mom and Dad, busy working in Hard America, don't want to notice that their kids are not learning much. There are exceptions of course: Many schools do a good job despite all this. But for most kids who are not on the track to the relatively few select colleges, junior high and high school are something like the Soviet system: They pretend to teach, and we pretend to learn.

Then at 18, kids encounter Hard America--competitive colleges and universities and community colleges, competitive private-sector employers, training institutions from McDonald's to the military. Some fall behind and don't get much of anywhere. Others seek out enclaves of Soft America--soft corners in the civil service or corporate bureaucracies. But most figure out pretty quickly that how they do depends on what they produce. They develop skills that astonish those who knew them at 18. That is what we have been seeing in the American military forces in Iraq.

Roger Roy writes in the Orlando Sentinel about his experience being embedded with the U.S. Marines 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. This is a great piece. It's been blogged elsewhere, including The Braden Files, but I can't resist adding it here. Go read the entire article.

Someone at the Pentagon had figured out what we now recognized: No matter what you think of the military as an institution, it's hard not to admire the actual rank-and-file troops. Who would write glowingly about the Marine Corps bureaucracy for trying to push a convoy of 150 supply trucks through hundreds of miles of enemy territory with too little fuel, too few radios and not enough heavy weapons? But it's a different story when told from the seat next to a 19-year-old lance corporal at a wheel of a truckload of high explosives who hasn't slept in two days and is just trying to get the mission done.

Before the war, I'd never spent much time with the Marines, and I wasn't sure what to expect when I was assigned to them. I think I understand Marines better now, but I'm not sure I can explain them.

They tend to do things the hardest way possible.

They call each other "devil dog" and say "Hoo-rah."

They are loud and rough. They have lots of tattoos. They'll ignore you or torment you if they think you're a fake. They'll do anything for you if they like you.

They'll believe the wildest rumors. One told me, early in the war, that he'd heard the Army, rather than the Marines, would occupy Baghdad because the Marines "break too much stuff."

Marines tend to think and travel in a straight line.

They have a talent for complaining and swearing that I've seldom seen surpassed. I heard entire conversations between Marines that consisted of nothing but acronyms laced with profanity, something like: "Where's your #&% NCO?"

Marines get things done. They follow orders. They would sometimes do crazy things if they thought they'd been told to.

The Marines Woolley and I had been embedded with were in the Transportation Support Group, which included the Orlando-based reservists of the 6th Motor Transport Battalion. They were running convoys of ammunition, food, water and fuel, and fighting wasn't supposed to be their main job.

They were ordered to more or less ignore civilians unless they were hostile. If they took fire, they weren't to stop: Getting the supplies to the front was more important than getting into a fight, especially since the fuel and ammunition trucks in a convoy would have been vulnerable targets.

Their orders encouraged a sort of don't-mess-with-me-I-won't-mess-with-you policy. But if someone messed with them, they were inviting the worst.

Marines return fire with a relish.

Quote of the Day:

"America is electing a president, not a designated driver."

- James Taranto, on the topic of dull, even if sober and serious, Democratic candidates for president of the United States

If my math is correct, then the anti-American spin machine was 0.02235% correct on the story of the "looted" museum in Baghdad. Glad to see some truth come out, even if it won't get front-page treatment like the original Big Lie.

The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to U.S. investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries. A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items. The single most valuable missing piece is the Vase of Warka, a white limestone bowl dating from 3000 B.C.

The inventory, compiled by a military and civilian team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, refutes reports that Iraq's renowned treasures of civilization -- as many as 170,000 individual artifacts -- had been scattered or lost during the U.S.-led war against Iraq. It also raises questions about why any of the artifacts went missing.

Dennis Miller writes in the Opinion Journal and takes on public nuisance Norman Mailer, whose delirious Leftist ravings have floated to the surface again. Mailer has artsy, literati fantasies about being a boxer but I'd say Dennis Miller is the winner here with a TKO about 75 seconds into the first round.

Mr. Mailer was the Father of the Nonfiction Novel and now he can also claim lineage as the distant, addled Third Cousin of the Rational Op-Ed. Studying at the Sorbonne as a young man obviously made a deep impression on him because this thing reads like Jacques Chirac's Dream Journal. With six marriages under his belt, one would assume Mr. Mailer has a stranglehold on warfare. One would be wrong.

His basic contention is that we went to war with Iraq because with the dominance of white American men in the boxing ring, the office and the home front eroded, George W. Bush thought they needed to know they were still good at something. Mr. Mailer has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Harvard so he had to know that argument wouldn't fly. But then again, maybe this claptrap is just a grand put-on. The fact that I and many others can't differentiate anymore does not auger well for Norm's legend.

Ironically, Mr. Mailer seems to see everything in the world in terms of black and white, except of course, good and evil.

The bad guys continue to innovate and find ways to work around the expectations of the experts. Complacency is a sin.

Two British suicide bombers who attacked a Tel Aviv bar last week smuggled plastic explosives into Israel from Jordan inside copies of the Koran, Israel's defence minister said last night. Israeli officials investigating how Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif were able to penetrate tight border controls suggested that they could have used a new kind of explosive that is more difficult to detect.

The prospect of a new explosive in the hands of terrorists raises worrying questions for airline security around the world. Western intelligence officials will be seeking confirmation that the claim is not an attempt by Israeli security to cover up an embarrassing lapse. Israeli newspapers have dropped hints about the use of "an unfamiliar substance" in the attack on Mike's Place seafront bar, in which three Israelis were killed. Military censors have prevented publication of more details.