Date ►►► September 30, 2005

Slowly But Surely

I posted earlier that Iraqi troops are slowly but surely taking over Iraq's security, one city at the time. The latest example is in and around Karbala, at Forward Operating Base Lima, where Coalition forces and the Greater Iraqi Army (and Iraqi police) just held a transfer ceremony Wednesday.

Iraqi security forces took responsibility for Forward Operating Base Lima from U.S. forces Sept. 28.

Iraqi police, army commanders and government representatives, U.S. representatives, including Army Lt. Col. James Oliver, commander of the 1st Battalion, 198th Armored Brigade, attended the ceremony transferring local security responsibilities to the Iraqi police and the 4th Brigade, 8th Division, Greater Iraqi Army.

American troops had been in Karbala since January this year, providing security and infrastructure support.

(American) troops from the 2nd Battalion, 114th Field Artillery, have assisted the people of Karbala since mid-January, providing security and infrastructure support. Approximately 68 projects, totaling $21.5 million, have been completed to improve the city. The projects included water, sanitation, education, electrical, medical and humanitarian aid.

Some of this work is likely to continue, even after the transfer. But this is now the second Iraqi province where security responsibilities were officially handed over to the Iraqi military.

Good news keeps on coming!

Update:

In testimony before Congress on Thursday, the senior American military commander in Iraq testified about the readiness of the Greater Iraqi Army battalions:

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at "Level 1" readiness than there were a few months ago.

(Hat tip to wilsonkolb, in the comments.)

But that does not tell the whole story. According to the Department of Defense:

In May, Iraqi security forces conducted about 160 combined or independent operations at the company level and above, Casey said. By September, that number was up to 1,300.

Some 60,000 to 70,000 more Iraqi security forces will be available to provide security during the Oct. 15 referendum than during the January 2005 elections, he said. And by the time the next elections take place, Jan. 15 [2006], Casey said he expects to have about 100,000 more Iraqi security forces.

The growth is so significant, the general said, that he's had to ask for only 2,000 additional coalition troops to help protect the referendum and election progress this year, compared to 12,000 in January [2005].

But then what about that readiness, you may ask? As RBMN pointed out, according to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the level of readiness rating keeps on changing depending on a variety of factors.

For example, initial readiness standards two years ago measured numbers of Iraqi troops. Later, those standards were based on the number of trained troops. Later yet, those standards were based on troops who were trained and equipped. As the bar continued to rise, the numbers dipped a bit, giving an impression that readiness was declining, the secretary explained.

If you just look at the raw numbers, it looks like things are getting worse; but in fact, the situation is actually improving. The “bar” rises or lowers as the needs of the situation change, and as we learn more about the sort of urban terrorist war we’re fighting in Iraq.

The number of Iraqi army troops that are considered in a state of “readiness” will certainly fluctuate up and down for the next several months, until the DoD settles on a single metric to use across all troops in the field.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 30, 2005, at the time of 5:10 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

An Army of One... Million

The headline is deep. Dark. Scary:

Army Faces Worst Recruiting Slump in Years

Cue the bass, the sad snare-drum tattoo, thunder in the distance.

The Army is closing the books on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service three decades ago, missing its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979 and raising questions about its plans for growth.

Many in Congress believe the Army needs to get bigger - perhaps by 50,000 soldiers over its current 1 million - in order to meet its many overseas commitments, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army already is on a path to add 30,000 soldiers, but even that will be hard to achieve if recruiters cannot persuade more to join the service.

The mind of the mathematician suddenly registers something it likes: numbers! We have a million men; we want one million and thirty thousand; maybe as high as one million and fifty thousand. A quick calculation: so our force is just too small -- we desperately need to increase it... by 3% to 5%.

Already I'm scratching my head. Three percent? That's the total increase that we need to be a powerful fighting legion once more?

The Army has not published official figures yet, but it apparently finished the 12-month counting period that ends Friday with about 73,000 recruits. Its goal was 80,000. A gap of 7,000 enlistees would be the largest - in absolute number as well as in percentage terms - since 1979, according to Army records.

So we wanted 80,000 recruits but fell 7,000 short. That's 8.75% short of what we wanted -- or a shortfall of 0.7% of total Army members. In other words, we recruited enough to reach 99.3% of what we hoped to gain. Since we are trying to increase the number of troops, that 99.3% figure means we likely at least achieved replacement levels: in other words, the "recruiting slump" means that, while we didn't gain as many additional soldiers as we wanted, we probably at least broke even and didn't actually lose men. And this in the midst of a war that appears, at least if you get your news from the News, to be dragging on and on.

Is it just me? Or is this not a bad result at all? In fact, it seems pretty good... especially when you consider that the entire shortfall occurred in the early part of the year; for the last four months, Army recruiters actually exceeded their goals -- and that's not all:

A summertime surge of signups offered some hope the slump may be ending. An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, said that despite the difficulties, recruiters were going full speed as the end of fiscal year 2005, Sept. 30, arrived.

"We have met the active Army's monthly recruiting goals since June, and we expect to meet it for September, which sends us into fiscal year 2006 on a winning streak," Hilferty said. He also noted that the Army has managed to meet its re-enlistment goals, even among units that have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. [all emphasis throughout added by Dafydd]

So let's review the betting: among people who have never been in the service, and who therefore probably get nearly all their knowledge of the military from news and entertainment shows on TV and in the movies, recruitment is slightly down from expectations, though probably enough to maintain the level of troops we have now.

But among soldiers who have actually fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who therefore know what is really happening on the ground from personal experience, re-enlistment rates were met. In fact, since the goal is to retain more people than normal (to meet the goal of increasing troop strength by 30,000 -- right?), it's safe to bet that the re-enlistment goals were higher than in previous years... which means there are more veteran troops in the Army than before, which would partially mitigate the lower numbers of raw recruits.

Since one experienced soldier is worth several kids straight out of boot camp, I'd say we got a bargain.

The Associated Press story tips its hand early. The "story" they want to tell is put forward with all the subtlety of a Democratic National Committee talking-points paper:

The outlook is dimmed by several key factors, including:

- The daily reports of American deaths in Iraq and the uncertain nature of the struggle against the insurgency have put a damper on young people's enthusiasm for joining the military, according to opinion surveys.

Even the DoD itself falls into a funk over this:

The factors working against the Army, Hilferty said, are a strong national economy that offers young people other choices, and "continued negative news from the Middle East."

But this actually makes no sense. If the factor dragging down recruiting were the toll of the war in Iraq, why would those soldiers most affected by that war -- the ones who actually fought in it -- be re-enlisting in such huge numbers, easily exceeding retention goals?

But wait. So far, we've only talked about the Army. Before we fly with those scarelines in the Associated Press release, what about the other services? What about the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force? The Marines, at least, have seen even heavier ground-war fighting during this last year than has the Army. If the war is turning people off of the military, then surely the Marines would suffer at least as badly as the Army, or even more so.

Oddly enough, the Department of Defense actually keeps a record of these sorts of figures. In fact, they make that record publicly available. Now, they haven't released the final figures of FY2005 (which would include the month of September), but they have released the year-to-date figures for October 2004 through August 2005, eleven months out of the twelve. You can find them here.

According to the chart, we see the following pattern of recruitment (I believe "accession" means recruitment and does not include retentions, which are in fact up for the year-to-date for all branches) :

Fiscal 2005 Active Duty Enlisted Recruiting from Oct. 1, 2004-Aug. 31, 2005

 

As the table makes clear, the only service suffering any shortfall at all in active-duty recruiting throughout the year has been the Army. Not counting the Army, the other services achieved 101% of their active-duty recruiting goals. And in particular, the United States Marines, who have been in nearly continuous combat for their entire deployment, lead the way in retention rates of Marines who have actually served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a different story in the reserves, as the last table on the DoD web page makes clear. The Marine Corps Reserve and the Air Force Reserve strongly exceeded their recruitment goals, but the Army and Air National Guards and the Army and Navy Reserve recruitment was down. Retention in the reserves and National Guards, however, was strong, exceeding goals. This is the same pattern as above: those who have actually served in the reserves have evidently come to terms with the inherent uncertainty in it, and they are re-upping. But those men and women considering the reserves or National Guard for the first time are likely put off by not knowing from month to month whether they will be home, working at their regular jobs, or off in Iraq killing jihadi and Sadr-ites.

Even so, far from the doom and gloom article in AP, it appears what is happening is that we're trading away a large-ish number of raw recruits for a slightly smaller number of seasoned veterans: fewer boys and girls are joining up, but more men and women are returning.

Considering the intense requirements placed upon our armed forces by an urban terrorist war that will go on for many years in various countries, this seems like a very fair trade indeed.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 30, 2005, at the time of 3:06 AM | Comments (44) | TrackBack

Paging Captain Nemo...

"They seek him here, they seek him there...."

A few years ago, I saw a documentary about a scientific team from some European country (possibly France) and their effort to photograph a living giant squid. They picked the season carefully and searched an area where some dead squid had been found, but the search was ultimately unsuccessful.

Since then, nobody had ever gotten a good photo of a living giant squid. They're phantom creatures, almost legendary, and scientists have been searching for living specimens for decades. Dead bodies of giant squid have washed ashore many times; but no one had managed to observe a living one in its natural environment -- until now.

A team of Japanese scientists has finally videotaped a giant squid in nature:

Kubodera's team captured photos of the 26-foot-long beast attacking its bait, then struggling for more than four hours to get free. The squid pulled so hard on the line baited with shrimp that it severed one of its own tentacles

"It was quite an experience to feel the still-functioning tentacle on my hand," Kubodera, a researcher with Japan's National Science Museum, told The Associated Press. "But the photos were even better."

Not that I am biased or anything. But I am glad the Japanese team beat the French.

They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!
Is he in heaven? Is he in -- er, you know --
That damned, elusive Pimpernel!

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 30, 2005, at the time of 12:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 29, 2005

DeLay DeFense?

On Special Report with Brit Hume last night, Hume mentioned something that he had been told by (I believe) the Republican National Committee (RNC) about the Tom DeLay case. Now, I'm not a lawyer (though I do play one sometimes when I want to get a good deal on a used car); but if this is true, it sure sounds like a great defense to me.

DeLay appears to be accused of setting up a conspiracy to collect funds from corporations, launder them somehow through the RNC in Washington D.C., and then illegally distribute them to Texas candidates in defiance of Texas state law. I say "appears" because the indictment obtained by Ronnie Earle from a Travis County grand jury is so vague that Tom DeLay might actually stand accused of mopery with intent to gawk, for all I know.

As best I can gather, Travis County, TX District Attorney Ronnie Earle claims that the Texas Republican Majority Political Action Committee (TRMPAC), set up by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and others, collected money from corporations, sent the money to the RNC, which sent it to the RNC-State Elections Committee (RNC-SEC), which then (charges Ronnie Earle's grand jury) sent it back to Texas into the coffers of various Republican candidates for state and federal office. It's evidently against the law in Texas for corporate money to be used in political campaigns. DeLay, of course, denies the charges.

Assuming I have the gist of the indictment, here is what Brit Hume says the RNC told him. They have, they say, two separate accounts (simplifying here); or possibly the separate accounts are at the RNC-SEC; Brit wasn't quite clear. Since some states allow corporate money to be used in elections while others don't, the RNC says it (or else the RNC-SEC) set up two separate accounts: one for corporate contributions, the other for hard-money contributions from individuals.

He said that they said (hearsay alert!) that what actually happened was that TRMPAC collected the corporate donations; it sent them to the RNC, which trasferred them to the RNC-SEC, which put them in the corporate account. The money in that account was then distributed to states that had no laws against corporate or out-of-state money being used in elections. Then, to get money to the Republicans running in Texas, the RNC-SEC took funds from the separate, hard-money (individual-donor) account and used those to contribute to campaigns of various politicians in Texas.

Tom DeLay himself, who made an unexpected appearance on Special Report, said that after setting up TRMPAC, he had no involvement in the day-to-day financial transactions, and that he never entered into any agreement about how or where the money would be collected or spent. But leaving that aside, I have a question for any lawyers out there in Lizard Land: assuming "arguendo," as you guys like to say, that what Brit said was true -- that there were two separate accounts, and all the money going from the RNC-SEC into Texas came from the hard-money account (and ultimately from individual donors subject to the $2000 limit), and the corporate money collected in Texas went into other states that had no prohibition against corporate funds going to political campaigns -- assuming that is all correct, would there be any violation of the law underlying this supposed "conspiracy?"

And if there is no underlying criminal act, can a conspiracy charge stand? Can a person be convicted of "conspiring" to perform a legal act?

Finally, Brit said the RNC said that they informed Ronnie Earle of this accounting method, with the two separate accounts; if Earle obtained the indictment by not telling the Travis County grand jury about this accounting arrangement, or by telling them in such a way that they didn't understand what was being done, could Earle himself be in any trouble for abusing his prosecutorial authority?

I won't deny that I hope he would, since I think he's a partisan sleazeball. But I certainly admit I have no clue; this is way too much into the legal weeds for my poor brain, wasted for too many years on logic and mathematics to comprehend all this lawyer stuff.

Free legal opinions, anyone? Please mention if you're a lawyer. I'm particularly going to solicit comments from some lawyer bloggers with whom I have some vague contact... and if none shows up, won't that be embarassing!

(If anybody wants to answer more fully in his own blog, please leave me a trackback so I can go read it. The trackback URL for this post is http://biglizards.net/mt32/mt-tb.cgi/63. Thanks!)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 29, 2005, at the time of 2:12 AM | Comments (10)

Date ►►► September 28, 2005

Cindy Sheehan Got Busted

Update and Bump: see botom

On Saturday, the well known Communist organization International ANSWER and its affiliate World Peace Now organized an Anti-American rally in Washington DC. ( AP )

[A] massive demonstration Saturday on the National Mall that drew a crowd of 100,000 or more, [was] the largest such gathering in the capital since the war began in March 2003.

In other words, all the people who were against the war before the war are still against the war. Big deal. After two and half years of negative campaigning, they cannot recruit any more people than what they had when the war started.

Oh yes, don't forget our friend Cindy Sheehan. The following day, she and her supporters gathered around the White House, chanted an anti war "song," and got arrested. One of the participants even tried to climb the fence and was quickly subdued by the Secret Service. (He was lucky not to be shot.)

I wonder how many of those participants claimed to be family members of soldiers killed in Iraq. As I wrote last month at Captains Quarter’s, they are well known for puffing up such claims:

"We're also asking that you bring pictures of children," MoveOn.org requested, and it didn't matter "whether or not you have a child serving in the military."

Update: Sep. 28, 2005, 10:38pm

Protein Wisdom does not think the anti-America rally comprised anywhere near 100,000 people. They've got interesting pictures.

Update 2: Sep. 28, 2005, 10:41pm

Power Line has an interesting picture of a Marine at the anti-war rally. Pay close attention to the sign he carries.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 28, 2005, at the time of 10:47 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Paging Ronnie Earle...

Let me get my thoughts in order here. Today, Rep. Tom DeLay was indicted by District Attorney Ronnie Earle (D-DNC) on charges of conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws because a political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, on whose board DeLay serves, accepted some money from some corporations -- and then sent a different amount of money to the Republican National Committee with recommendations of various Texas politicians to whom they might, if they chose, donate money.

The indictment accused DeLay of a conspiracy to "knowingly make a political contribution" in violation of Texas law outlawing corporate contributions. It alleged that DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee accepted $155,000 from companies, including Sears Roebuck, and placed the money in an account.

The PAC then wrote a $190,000 check to an arm of the Republican National Committee and provided the committee a document with the names of Texas State House candidates and the amounts they were supposed to received in donations, the indictment said.

The indictment included a copy of the check.

Ah, but did it also include a copy of the contributions to Texans for a Republican Majority by ordinary people, not corporations? Did that amount exceed $190,000?

John Hinderaker, over on Power Line, has much, much more on the DeLay "indictment." As usual, John nails it.

Democrats are screaming that DeLay, being in charge of the PAC, just shoulder the legal blame for any irregularities committed (or even alleged to have been committed) by the PAC. In short, they want Tom DeLay sent to prison, or at least expelled from the House.

Over on the other channel, we have two aides to Charles Schumer, Katie Barge and Lauren Weiner, who allegedly fraudulently obtained a credit report on Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, a likely Republican contender to steal away the Senate seat being vacated by five-term Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes -- first elected to the Senate the year Jimmy Carter stumbled into the presidency.

Schumer Staffers Eyed in Probe of Political ID Theft
By Deborah Orin
Bureau Chief
New York Post
September 22, 2005

Two staffers on a Democratic political committee headed by Sen. Chuck Schumer are being investigated by the FBI for an alleged dirty trick — getting a Republican candidate's credit report illegally, officials confirmed yesterday....

Sources familiar with the situation said the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's] head of research, Katie Barge, and a deputy, Lauren Weiner, got the credit report by using Steele's Social Security number, which they say they obtained from public documents....

The U.S. Attorney's office confirmed that it was alerted by the committee but declined to say whether it is or could become a target of the probe.

I'm not a lawyer, but if true, this would appear to be a violation of the Schumer-Nelson ID Theft Prevention Bill, which as Captain Ed wryly notes, was introduced by one Sen. Charles Schumer.

So correct me if I've missed something, but here we appear to have the allegation that a couple of aides who work for Chuck Schumer -- Schumer is the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- have committed serious ethical and possibly criminal violations. In response, per Captain Ed (quoting the New York Post), Schumer sent the two on paid vacations:

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Schumer-headed Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said two staffers were instantly suspended — with pay — in July after admitting they obtained the credit report of Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is running for Senate. [emphasis added]

So where, may I ask, are the Democrats screaming for an indictment of Schumer under the same theory by which DeLay was indicted for something allegedly done by a committee he doesn't even head, but on whose board he merely serves?

Where is the Republican Ronnie Earle for the District of Columbia?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 28, 2005, at the time of 3:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 27, 2005

Were British Soldiers Hostages From the Start?

My online friend who posts as "Silverlining," a Japanese MSM journalist who spent some time in Iraq and still has contacts there, offered an interesting speculation regarding the two British soldiers who were arrested by the Basra Police, then handed over to al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi "Army," and were finally rescued by the British Special Forces.

Silverlining thinks that the Mahdi militiamen, who had infiltrated the Basra police, kidnapped those two soldiers to be used as hostages from the very beginning, in retaliation for the British capturing two militiamen. On September 18th, the day before the British soldiers were apprehended, the British had arrested two key figures of al-Sadr's militia.

Sheik Ahmed Majid Farttusi and Sayyid Sajjad were detained in an early morning raid and are accused of being involved in attacks that killed at least nine soldiers, according to a statement from coalition forces.

This caused quite a stir in the area. The next day, during a demonstration by Sadr's supporters demanding their comrades’ release, the British soldiers were “arrested.” Although the police claimed these soldiers were conducting some sort of special undercover operation, the way these soldiers were dressed, Silverlining thinks they were simply a part of the British force, which was trying to contain the demonstration.

As Dafydd posted earlier, three different sects of militia have heavily infiltrated the Basra police. It is not so hard to imagine that some of Sadr’s men in the police got an order for this kidnapping. The fact the police casually handed them over to the militia seems to support his speculation. Perhaps Sadr's men intended to use the soldiers as barganing chips to release the militiamen.

What they did not consider was that the British army does not take kidnapping kindly. They should have known that the lion may be old, but it is not toothless.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 27, 2005, at the time of 11:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

One Out of Three Ain't... Deja-Vu

"It's déjà-vu all over again!" (Attributed to Yogi Berra by many, including himself)

In the previous post, I wrote a few caustic words about the Spanish approach to fighting terrorism, which, under the government of Jose Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), seems to consist primarily of furiously firing off subpoenas and warrants and prosecuting terrorists after they commit atrocities that kill and maim hundreds (or thousands).

Today, John Hinkeraker on Power Line notes that several suspects have been arrested in France for plotting to bomb a number of Paris targets, including the metro, an airport, and the domestic intelligence agency headquarters. He links to an Agence France-Presse article:

Terror suspects eyeing up Paris metro, airport
Tue Sep 27, 5:09 AM ET

PARIS, (AFP) - Terror suspects detained in France had been eyeing up the Parisian metro network, an airport and the headquarters of the domestic intelligence service as possible targets, sources close to the investigation said....

Nine people were detained by police early Monday in a series of raids west of Paris in what officials said was a crackdown on suspected Islamic terrorist activities.

John puckishly suggests that "Early reports indicate that the bombers were motivated by France's support for the U.S. war effort in Iraq." Cute, John; his point, of course, is that of all countries in the world, France was probably the most adamantly opposed to our Iraq invasion and certainly did the most to prevent it -- and failing that, to nakedly sabotage our military action, probably resulting in more dead American soldiers. France was Saddam Hussein's best international buddy, of course, and has been at the center of the U.N.'s Oil for Fraud scandal, currently being "investigated" by Paul Volcker, under the control of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and also being "for-real" investigated by Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

But I want to focus on a different aspect of the story, contained in these paragraphs:

Among those being held is Safe Bourada, 35, who was released from prison in 2003 after five years for helping organise a series of bomb attacks in France in 1995 for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA)....

Officials said the men were members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an armed Algerian group that grew out of the GIA and has links to the Al-Qaeda network. Bourada was described as their ringleader. [emphasis added]

Once again, we see the stunning success of the "judicial approach" to combatting terrorism. This time through was a little better, since at least the French arrested Bourada before he carried out his bloody bombing du jour; still, what was he doing out of prison in the first place?

Safe Bourada was convicted in 1998 of recruiting GIA members to carry out "a 1995 wave of deadly bombings in Paris," which killed nine and wounded 200. According to CNN.com:

Bombing trial opens in Paris
Restive mood inside, outside the court
November 24, 1997

PARIS (CNN) -- More than three dozen suspects went on trial Monday on charges of helping Algerian Islamic rebels stage a 1995 wave of deadly bombings in Paris....

[Ali Touchent]'s deputy, Safe Bourada, 27, is to be questioned. He has admitted to police that he recruited young activists in France for the network.

BBC News has more details:

The defendants denied any involvement in the attacks. But they admitted helping the GIA in various ways, ranging from gun-running and providing forged documents to driving cars and offering accommodation.

The alleged leader of the support group for the GIA was Ali Tarek Touchent. He was sentenced in his absence to 10 years in prison....

Safe Bourada, who was considered to be one of Touchent's closest allies, also received a 10-year sentence.

Touchent was Bourada's boss; he evaded arrest in 1995, but the Algerians say they killed him in 1997.

So let's review the bidding: Safe Bourada was arrested as the "deputy" and "one of [the] closest allies" of the "leader of the support group" (recruiting, etc.), Ali Tarek Touchent, for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), in a plot that staged a "wave of deadly bombings in Paris," including one in a Paris metro. Nine died and two hundred were injured in these bombings.

In February of 1998, Bourada was convicted in open court and sentenced to ten years. But he was released from prison after serving only half his sentence.

After being released, he swiftly joined the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a child-organization of the GIA (his old pals) that is also connected to al-Qaeda.

And now he has been arrested again, this time for plotting -- wait for it -- a "wave of deadly bombings in Paris," including one in a Paris metro.

As my old D.I. used to day, "how many things are wrong with this picture?"

This is precisely the problem with the judicial approach to fighting terrorism. France is at war; to quote the movie version of the Lord of the Rings, "open war is upon you, whether you risk it or not." It makes no difference to their enemies that they opposed America in the Iraq war... these terrorists are upset at France's actions in Algeria. In Spain, the terrorists are still upset about King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella kicking the Moors out of "al-Andaluz" in 1492, for heaven's sake.

Western civilization is at war. I do not agree we're at war with "all of Islam;" but we're surely at war with a particularly violent and relentless segment of it. This war is being fought mostly in the shadows, which benefits our enemies -- though American troops have become experts at such shadow warfare recently, and the tide is definitely turning in our favor. But whenever we manage to drag the war onto a real battlefield, as we did recently at Tal Afar in Iraq, the mismatch is so overwhelming that it's like shooting drunks in a barrel.

And that is a good thing, even if it upsets delicate, sensitive plants like Ramsey Clarke.

The judicial approach is great; I'm all for it; we should keep it up... as a sideshow whose primary purpose is intelligence gathering; the main event must be a full-blown military and intelligence operation, spanning many countries on every continent of the globe except perhaps Antarctica (and only because there are no militant Islamists there that we know of). We must be as relentless as the enemy and twice as determined.

The French and Spanish approach of all judicial, all the time simply does not work. There are too many procedural safeguards for criminal defendants, too many soft-hearted, soft-headed judges who simply feel sorry for "the chained-up dog," without bothering to ask why it was chained in the first place. These tendencies are bad enough for ordinary defendants accused, say, of carjacking or income-tax evasion; at least that's understandable. But for terrorist suspects who consider themselves in a "holy war" against "Jews and Crusaders," such an approach is a suicide pact.

And guess which American political party advocates exactly such a policy for how the United States should respond to future terrorist attacks? I cannot think of a single Democrat in the Democratic leadership (now that Dick Gephardt is gone) who actually advocates the Bush Doctrine:

• Preemption when required to prevent terrorist plots from becoming "imminent threats;"
• Multilateralism when possible, but unilateralism if needs must be;
• Extending democracy, by force if necessary, to the worst parts of the globe; and
• "Military strengths beyond challenge," as President Bush put it, to remain the supreme military power in the world.

One of our political parties is broken, as is much of the Western world. If the rest cannot fix the damage, we may not win this struggle.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 27, 2005, at the time of 6:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

One Out of Three Ain't...

...Well, it ain't good, actually.

Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters was the first I read to really pay attention to the al-Qaeda prosecutions in Spain. Yesterday, he wrote:

Spanish authorities expect a verdict soon in their prosecution of three alleged 9/11 conspirators, in a case that has received scant attention in the American media -- and even less from the 9/11 Commission report. Twenty-four defendants will find out whether a panel of Spanish judges will rule that they gave material support to Mohammed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks.

Captain Ed goes on to quote from Daniel Woolls, of the Associated Press:

The lead suspect in the Spanish trial, alleged al-Qaida cell leader Imad Yarkas, 42, a Syrian-born Spaniard, is accused of having set up that meeting along with another suspect, Moroccan Driss Chebli, 33. Both denied knowing Binalshibh or Atta or having anything to do with the terror attacks....

The third suspect facing specific Sept. 11 charges is Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, another Syrian-born Spaniard, who was indicted over detailed video footage he shot of the World Trade Center and other landmarks during a trip to several American cities in 1997.

So we had Yarkas, Chebli, and Ghalyoun on trial, plus twenty-one supernumeraries, groupies, minions, lickspittles, and hangers on. But the three named were the Big Kahunas.

And today, lo and behold, we have the verdicts. From the New York Times:

Spain Issues First Prison Sentence for 9/11
By Renwick McLean
Published: September 27, 2005

MADRID, Sept. 26 - A Spanish court on Monday sentenced a Syrian man to 27 years in prison for conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and leading a cell of the terrorist network Al Qaeda in Madrid. The sentence is the only one to date in connection with the attacks.

"A Syrian man?" Uh-oh, this doesn't sound good.

In addition to the main defendant, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, 41, also known as Abu Dahdah, 17 other men were found guilty of either belonging to or aiding his terrorist cell. Those men, including Taysir Alony, a correspondent for the Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera, received sentences of 6 to 11 years.

All right... what about the other two top dogs? What happened to Chebli and Ghalyoun?

Some analysts here hailed the verdict as at least a partial affirmation of the Spanish approach to fighting Islamic terrorism, which under Judge Baltasar Garzón has emphasized legal prosecutions over military action and intelligence gathering. "This is a clear sign that the rule of law has instruments that can be used to fight terrorism," said Jesús Nuñez Villaverde, director of the Institute for the Study of Conflicts and Humanitarian Action, a research group in Madrid. "It shows that there are effective methods that are not Guantánamo." [emphasis added]

We're very impressed. So what, exactly, did those brilliant and sensitive legal prosecutions in lieu of "military action and intelligence gathering" accomplish? What about Chebli and Ghalyoun? (Oh Lord, I sound like Al Gore: "What about Dingell-Norwood? What about Dingell-Norwood?")

Finally, ten paragraphs down, we finally get what Paul Harvey would have called the rest of the story:

In addition to Mr. Yarkas, two other men, Driss Chebli, a Moroccan, and Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, a Syrian, were accused of involvement in the Sept. 11 plot, but they were acquitted of the charges on Monday, although Mr. Chebli was convicted of collaborating with a terrorist group. [emphasis added]

And there we have it. We have located the distinction between the judicial approach, as advocated by John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, and the Democrats -- and the military/intelligence approach, advocated by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and a cast of thousands of neocons... and of course, the president: the United States, Great Britain, the Iraqi Defense Force, and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing have netted thousands of members of al-Qaeda and personally introduced hundreds of top leaders to Allah... while the kinder, gentler Spanish Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), led by Jose Luis Rodriguez "I'm Not Aznar" Zapatero, managed to convict one big cheese, plus a bunch of other nonentities.

The biggest catch got a reduced sentence of twenty-seven years (prosecutors had asked for 72,000 years, which would possibly have kept him in prison for the rest of his life); and two of the big fish got away clean on the most serious charges, though one got a minor conviction that will probably have him out and about before the next Spanish elections.

Of course, Spain needn't feel lonely in the "I almost got a bad guy!" sweepstakes. They can drown their sorrows with Germany in a massive hasenpfeffer and paella pity party:

In August, Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was acquitted by a German court of complicity in the attacks, although he was found guilty of belonging to Al Qaeda. Mr. Motassadeq had previously been convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 plot, but the decision was overturned last year after a court ruled he had been denied a fair trial because of the American refusal to allow testimony from Qaeda suspects in United States custody. [emphasis added]

(See? It's all America's fault.)

Yep, the Spaniards certainly showed us how to do things. I wonder if the Democrats in Washington D.C. will point with admiration in November 2006 to this less-than-spectacular result of the antiterrorism policies they advocate...?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 27, 2005, at the time of 4:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 26, 2005

Art that Bombs

There was a time when art meant something that pleases, inspires, and moves you in a good way, not something that rubs you the wrong way. But rubbing you the wrong way is exactly the intent of this art exhibit in Manhattan.

“A Knock at the Door" features stamps depicting a gun held to President Bush's head, a straightjacket made from an American flag, and what appears to be a suitcase bomb.

[T]he point of the exhibit — not to provide answers but to ask visitors to decide what is offensive and what is art.

Are they so clueless that they have to ask that question? When did art become an intelligence test anyway?

But it's hard for many not to get the shivers after looking at the suitcase bomb, especially with the artist, Chris Hackett, facing firearms charges after the discovery of a weapons cache in his studio when police responded to an explosion caused by one of his other projects.

It is so offensive that even the fair and balanced Fox news reporter could not help but express his opinion:

Organizers assure no explosions here — but the exhibit may bomb.

Cute.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 26, 2005, at the time of 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My Adventure In Civil Disobedience

I think I'm going to have to Make A Statement. After all, somebody has to Speak Out. I will Speak Truth to Power!

Tomorrow, I'm going to pick a random government office, concentrating on places that will most inconvenience ordinary people who are unconnected in any way, shape, or form with the Global War On Terrorism. Maybe the VA facility over in Westwood, or an INS office in Orange County.

Then I'll go there with an entourage of groupies, wackos, protestors, and hangers-on. Even if I have to hire them. There will be no requirement that they actually have any knowledge about my protest; indeed, I don't even care whether they know what it is or not. So long as they're willing to disrupt daily life. The only requirement will be that they have to carry a picture of a child... anyone's child will do.

We will sit down in front of the front doors of my target government office (whatever the coin-flip indicates), link arms, chain ourselves to a door handle, and begin singing Pete Seeger songs -- each of us in his own, private key, of course. We'll block traffic, prevent people from conducting their daily lives, irritate the pedestrians, and frighten the horses. We'll refuse to move, even when the police ask extra-specially nice with sugar on top.

And then we'll be arrested, which violates all our civil rights! We Shall Overcome!

We'll sit in a police van for two hours, then go to a station. A bored clerk will take our names and a judge will remotely release us all on OR. On the court date, we'll get a lecture from the judge, be fined $120, and released.

That will prove that AmeriKKKa has become a Fascist, Nazi dictatorship that stifles all dissent!

Say, I think I managed to get through this entire post without giving a sixteenth minute of infamy to -- oops, better end now.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 26, 2005, at the time of 4:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

WHO Are YOU?

On this test, I came out here:

You are a Social Liberal (70% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (95% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

 

Hat tip to Patterico for pointing me there!

Sachi is a Capitalist:

You are a Social Moderate (50% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (88% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 26, 2005, at the time of 2:18 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Democrazy -- Israeli Style!

This is too delicious to allow to pass unblogged:

Sharon Walks Out of Stormy Likud Meeting
Associated Press
Sep 25th, 2005

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon walked out of a stormy meeting of his Likud party Sunday after what appeared to be intentional electricity cuts repeatedly prevented him from delivering his prepared speech....

Sharon, the final speaker of the night, walked to the podium to make his argument and found the microphone did not work. He sat down for several minutes and then walked back to the podium. He spoke a few words and then the microphone disconnected again. After waiting for several minutes, Sharon walked out of the hall.

I have a dream -- a dream of the Taiwanese parliament getting into a row and a ruction, with members leaping over decks and hurling chairs back and forth at each other (gives new meaning to the title "chairman"). I have a dream of the Japanese Diet with members pulling hair and scratching the faces of opposing members. Oh, wait... those aren't dreams, they're memories of what I saw on World's Wildest Parliamentary Videos.

Gee, don't you wish the United States had a parliamentary system, instead of our stodgy, old Congress? Think of the ratings that C-SPAN would garner if they could show entertainment like this every night, instead of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Margaritaville) burping and bloviating from a sheaf of prepared notes without even lifting his head to look at the witness. Or the camera. Heck, we haven't even had a duel among congresscritters in, like, more than a hundred years.

The convention came ahead of a Likud vote Monday on whether to move up the party primaries. Netanyahu wants them in November and Sharon in April. Sharon has hinted he might quit the party if defeated in Monday's vote.

I don't think Israel needs a new prime minister; I think the Knesset just needs a good electrician!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 26, 2005, at the time of 12:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Talk to the Terrorists?

We Americans do not negotiate with terrorists. No, we should kill them not to talk to them, shouldn't we?

Well, not exactly. I found this interesting article in Space War.com through Good News Central.

Lt. Col. Bradley Becker who leads 2nd battalion of the 8th Field Artillery Regiment explains. Just before he came to Quayyarah in northwestern Iraq, eleven months ago, Iraqi police and the Army were in a sorry state. He did not think his seven platoons could possibly cover the whole area.

"Anyone who comes to a counter-insurgency thinking it's about killing terrorists is missing the boat," said Becker. "It's really about winning the people. You can kill all the terrorists but then you've pissed people off and created 100 more,"

Since his platoons cannot be everywhere at the same time, he needed to effectively attack certain hot spots, and kill a small number of very key people. This required intelligence. They needed cooperation from the local residents.

I have always thought that, in order for terrorists to freely conduct their activity, they must have local Sunni help, whether through empathy or intimidation. But these people themselves are not necessarily terrorists. If the American military or Iraqi police could show them we are on their side and we can protect them, then some of these people can tell us where the terrorists are. And that is exactly what is happening in Iraq.

Connecting with local leadership is the only way a counter-insurgency campaign can work -- even if the leaders are part of the insurgency.

Time and again, U.S. officers say after a show of real force -- the kind of effectiveness that makes the shieks and imams and villagers think they might be safe if they throw their hat in with the Americans -- tips start to dribble in.

"Then they say 'the real guy you should be going after is X' and we follow another target," Gibler said. "The cycle is never ending. When you kill a bad guy he is going to be backfilled. But as you target these guys eventually they can't rebuild, and then you have real, no kidding security."

We don’t know who the terrorists are. But the people who live there do. It is essential that the security force gains the trust of the local Sunni shiekhs and imams, even if that means talking to marginal terrorist supporters. I am glad our commanders are doing just that.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 26, 2005, at the time of 12:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 25, 2005

IRA Disarming... Well, Maybe

If this Associated Press story is remotely accurate, this could be a very good first step indeed:

International weapons inspectors have supervised the full disarmament of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, a long-sought goal of Northern Ireland's peace process, an aide to the process' monitor said Sunday.

The IRA permitted two independent witnesses, including a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, to view the secret disarmament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States, the aide to retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain said on condition of anonymity.

The office of de Chastelain, who in recent weeks has been in secret locations overseeing the weapons destruction, scheduled a Monday news conference in Belfast.

The aide told The Associated Press that the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning news conference would detail the scrapping of many tons of IRA weaponry this month at a confidential location in the Republic of Ireland. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Alas, it's a bit hard to verify. Libya's dictator Muammar Qadhafi sold the IRA many tons of weapons in the 1980s, and international arms inspectors have the inventory of this sale, which they likely got from the United States, who probably (I don't know this for sure) obtained it from Qadhafi himself, after he dismantled his own nuclear programs, in response to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and began cooperating with the United States on fighting terrorism. But of course, the IRA has other sources of weaponry and munitions besides Libya; it will be very hard ever to verify whether they have fully disarmed, certainly not to the satisfaction of the Paisleyites.

But frankly, I don't think it matters: the mere fact that the IRA are now destroying weapons, instead of simply claiming with appropriate vagueness that they have "decommissioned" them (which means what, exactly?), will, I believe, go a long way towards convincing Brits that the terrorist group is serious about renouncing its bloody campaign.

And I believe we have George W. Bush to thank for this sudden turnabout. Read on!

Ian Paisley's response is predictable, of course; he is Adams' mirror-image and just as evil:

The Rev. Ian Paisley, whose uncompromising Democratic Unionist Party represents most Protestants today, has dismissed the coming IRA moves as inadequate. Paisley insists on photographs, a detailed record and a Paisley-approved Protestant clergyman to serve as an independent witness.

A senior Democratic Unionist, Jeffrey Donaldson, said the IRA's apparent refusal to provide any photos and its refusal to use a Protestant minister nominated by his party as a witness meant that many Protestants would not fully believe the IRA moves.

"I don't think we're going to get that level of transparency tomorrow, and I think that's most unfortunate," Donaldson said. "People want to see what has happened ...

"The witnesses have been appointed by the IRA," he said. "It does diminish the credibility of whatever is going to happen tomorrow."

Actually, this statement only diminishes the Unionists -- who are every bit as terroristic, and who have not themselves invited any independent witnesses (let alone witnesses appointed by the IRA or Sinn Fein) to observe international arms controllers destroying all the Orangemen's weapons; in fact, they have not even offered to disarm.

At one point, during the days of the Irish Revolution (from 1916 to 1921), the Irish Republican Army was more or less an actual army; an army of insurgency, of course, but insurgency in its proper meaning: a native uprising against an oppressive government, in this case the occupation government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The war -- fought against the backdrop of World War I and the collapse of the British Empire -- led to the founding of the Irish Republic.

The current multiple terrorist organizations that confusingly use the name Irish Republican Army are the remnants of the split in the Irish nationalists from 1969 through 1998. The nationalist movement became Socialist in politics (possibly reacting to student leftist movements in the United States) under the leadership of Cathal Goulding. The IRA then split into two warring pieces: the Official IRA, which was the Marxist branch led by Goulding, and the Provisional IRA, also called "Provos" or "Provies," the hard-core warriors.

The Official IRA quickly faded from the field of armed conflict; while it still probably exists on paper, it's moribund. The Provos, however, led by Seán Mac Stíofáin -- an Englishman of some Irish ancestory born John Stephenson -- began a campaign of horrific terrorist violence against the Unionists in Northern Ireland; the Ulster Defence Association (sort of a terrorist holding company for the loyalist militias) responded with attacks on civilians in the Republic of Ireland, and Mac Stíofáin retaliated with attacks on civilians in England.

The Provos themselves split in 1986, when the more-radical Continuity IRA peeled off; and again in 1998, following the Good Friday Agreement with the UK, when the likewise radical Real IRA (which opposed the cease fire) declared itself.

It's likely that this disarmament and weapons destruction covers only the Provisional IRA, now led by Gerry Adams (who long maintained he was only involved in the Provisional Sinn Fein, the political branch, but who was outed recently as one of the military commanders as well); I speculate that the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, which consider the Provos to be traitors to the cause, are not parties to the disarmament; they will continue operations and probably even step up their terrorist bombings, just to prove that they're still relevant. It could end up as an all-Irish version what Captain Ed calls the "Palestinian Three-Step," only with two groups instead of three.

If so, they have doomed themselves to extinction: the world has changed from the 1990s, as Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate.

What truly matters, however, is that the largest and best known branch of the IRA is at least going through the motions of disarming. And I would flatly argue that this is largely due to President Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks, paradoxical as that sounds.

The world changed in many ways on that day; one was in the way civilized nations respond to terrorism. No longer would terrorist activity be considered primarily a police problem, to be solved by subpoenas and warrants... though that will certainly always be part of the response. Now, the United States, the UK, and even countries such as France, Spain, and Germany treat terrorism as a military problem... and that has led to a number of reactions among sponsors of terrorism in countries as disparate as Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, and -- in my opinion -- Northern Ireland.

Simply put, sponsoring terror has suddenly become much more dangerous; terrorist paymasters are rethinking their involvement. Some, such as Qadhafi, appear to be dropping out entirely... though of course that has yet to be proven. Others, such as Bashar Assad of Syria, are simply losing control of areas long controlled (Lebanon), as the people rise up and begin to fight back. Others are making last-ditch efforts to utilize terrorism as a military weapon: Iran and North Korea, for example. None, however, is completely unaffected.

The Irish people are clearly sick of the terrorism... not only the Irish in Ireland but the Irish in America, as well; in addition, the Bush administration has clamped down severely on terrorist fundraising organizations, freezing their assets and seizing their bank accounts. Since Irish Americans used to be the terrorists' primary source of funding, their coffers are drying up: this was undoubtedly the reason behind the December 20th, 2004 Belfast bank robbery, in which alleged IRA Provos made off with £22 million ($42.8 million) -- money that likely cannot be spent without attracting British police and military attention.

That robbery, which convinced the Irish in Ireland that the IRA had simply become a Gaelic Mafia, plus the January 31st, 2005 pub-brawl murder of Robert McCartney by Provos -- and especially the subsequent thuggish "offer" by the IRA to McCartney's family that they would simply shoot the murderers! -- has brought public disgust at the IRA to what must be its highest level in recent history. These, plus the disclosure of Gerry Adams' personal involvement in terrorist operations has, I believe, forced the Provisionals' hand: they must make a serious and significant movement towards disarming, demilitarizing, and mainstreaming themselves into a purely political movement, with no terrorist involvement at all.

Ian Paisley is correct that they haven't gone far enough; they need also to denounce the other Republican terrorist groups and cooperate with the authorities in turning them in... which will be a bitter pill indeed to swallow after years of denouncing (and frequently killing) those they consider to be traitors to the IRA cause. I don't know if the current leadership can bring itself to do that, but the snowball is already rolling down the hill. Eventually, they will either comply or be crushed beneath it.

But what applies to Sinn Fein and the IRA applies equally to the Paisleyites. Bloody-handed Ian Paisley, who is every bit as involved in terrorism against innocent civilians, must eat the same crow: the Unionists must likewise disarm, every bit as transparently as they demand the Republicans do, and must likewise disavow terrorism and turn in their unrepentant brothers.

I have great faith it will happen; but I have great sadness that it will not happen quickly, nor without terrible dying strikes by the die-hards and bitter-enders as they collapse. Now that civilization, as one organism, is finally rising up, the cancer of terrorism is doomed. It is just a matter of time -- and lives, both innocent and guilty -- until terrorism as a political force in the world is obliterated... something which I could not have said on September 10th, 2001.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 25, 2005, at the time of 4:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraqi Troops Take Over

A round up of good Iraq news posted on other blog sites.

It is hard to believe, I know. But there is tremendous progress being made in Iraq. The American military has trained up to 200,000 Iraqi troops, much more and sooner than expected; as Captain Ed noted, a large number of these Iraqi troops now have battlefield experience. It is even possible we can significantly reduce the number of forces in Iraq by early spring next year.

After bombing two bridges near the Syrian border and severely damaging the infrastructure of terrorists in Najaf, the US military handed over the city’s security to Iraqi forces. In the Belmont Club, Wretchard quotes a September 6th story in the Washington Post about the Najaf battle:

The U.S. military pulled hundreds of troops out of the south city of Najaf on Tuesday, transferring security duties to Iraqi forces and sticking to a schedule that the United States hopes will allow the withdrawal of tens of thousands of its forces by early spring…Other cities in the heavily Shiite south, and in the Kurdish north, are likely to be next.

The Tal-Afar operation was conducted by a combined coalition of Iraqi and American forces. However, it was the 5000 Iraqi troops who conducted house-to-house searches and arrested over 200 terrorists. According to Iraqi officials, 141 rebel fighters were killed as well. In a different post, Wretchard quotes from the Telegraph:

Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, announced the start of the offensive in a statement yesterday morning.

"At 2am today, acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tel Afar," he said. "These forces are operating with support from the Multinational Force."

The readiness of Iraqi troops may have overly encouraged the Iraqi president. From the Washington Post (hat tip Captain’s Quarters):

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview yesterday that the United States could withdraw as many as 50,000 troops by the end of the year, declaring there are enough Iraqi forces trained and ready to begin assuming control in cities throughout the country.

Of course this does not mean we have any kind of timetable for withdrawal. But it is good to know we are in fact getting ready for it.

The successful operation of Tal-Afar offensive was felt in other parts of Iraq. The Iraq Defense ministry is considering sending Iraqi troops to several Iraqi cities including Samarra, according to Iraq the Model. During a negotiation with Sunni delegate from Samarra, the defense minister had stated that Iraqi troops’ success is encouraging many youths to join the Iraqi Defense Force. He encouraged Sunnis to cooperate with the government as well. In fact, with the memory of Tal-Afar being still fresh in mind, Sunni tribes are peacefully negotiating with the IDF, according to Omar of Iraq the Model.

Iraqi troops are slowly but surely taking charge of Iraqi security; Bush’s nation building concept may well be working here.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, September 25, 2005, at the time of 4:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Israel Drops the Other Shoe

Earlier today (from Saturday to Sunday Israeli time), Israel launched a large series of air raids against Hamas and several other terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees; the PFLP is connected to Syria (and Russia and China) and has its headquarters in Damascus. I don't know whether the AP story means the PFLP or the PFLP-General Command; they split in 1968.

The Popular Resistance Committees is a very new terrorist group (born in 2000), full of "young Turks" (sorry, I couldn't resist!) trying to muscle their way up the brutality ladder.

From the Associated Press story by Ibrahim Barzak:

Israel launched a "crushing" retaliation Saturday against Hamas in Gaza with deadly airstrikes, troops massed at the border and a planned ground incursion after militants fired 35 rockets at Israeli towns - their first major attack since the Gaza pullout.

Israeli aircraft pounded suspected weapons facilities and other militant targets throughout the Gaza Strip late Saturday and early Sunday, wounding at least 19 people, Palestinian officials said. Earlier, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at cars carrying militants in Gaza City, killing two Hamas militants.

In the West Bank, the military arrested 207 wanted Palestinian men overnight, most of them members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements.

More is coming: Israel plans a ground invasion of Gaza soon -- in other words, reacting just as they would if Egypt or Syria or Jordan were to attack: with a full-blown military response:

Security officials said that "Operation First Rain" would include artillery fire, air strikes and other targeted attacks. The operation will grow in intensity, leading up to a ground operation in several days unless the Palestinian security takes action to halt the rocket attacks or Hamas ends the attacks itself.

This is precisely the sort of action I anticipated and that justifies Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of unilateral withdawl. The Palestinians demanded to be treated as any other nation. Well, there is an old expression: be careful what you wish for... you may get it.

This will be fascinating to watch as it evolves; how far along the road to folly and self-destruction will Hamas and other militant groups journey before the Palestinian people decide they've had enough of fighting Israel -- and losing?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 25, 2005, at the time of 12:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 24, 2005

Israel Raises the Pot In Gaza

According to the Associated Press, Israel has responded to Hamas's rocket attack from northern Gaza by calling up thousands of troops, deploying them to the border, launching air strikes on Hamas bomb-making factories, and vowing a "crushing" response still forthcoming.

"We have to make it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not let the recent events pass without a response," Mofaz said in a statement, referring to the Hamas rocket fire. "The response needs to be crushing."

The overnight rocket barrage by Hamas was the first since Israel pulled out of Gaza nearly two weeks ago. Israel has said it will show "zero tolerance" for attacks after the withdrawal.

Mofaz decided to deploy troops on Israel's border with Gaza after meeting his security chiefs, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting. Thousands of soldiers received call-up notices, and their leaves were canceled.

This is precisely the response that would have been impossible prior to the pullout: it was politically repugnant, even within Israel, to launch air strikes on a territory that Israel occupied. But now that they have withdrawn, and the Palestinian Authority is officially alien territory -- and now that there are no Jewish settlers in Gaza to serve as potential hostages -- Israel has begun to respond to the attacks they way they would to any other "nation" attacking them. The gloves are off.

I discussed how the pullout would change the military calculation several times: here, here, and here. But now we see it playing out.

Israel has, of course, used attacks from the air before:

Mofaz also said Israel might resume targeted killings of Palestinian militants. During more than four years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, scores of militants were killed in targeted attacks, most by missiles fired from Israeli aircraft.

But they have generally shied away from actual aerial bombing of territories they were currently occupying: for example, in the wildly exaggerated "massacre" in Jenin, the Israelis deliberately eschewed aerial bombing in favor of more dangerous house-to-house searches, precisely in order to avoid the moral and political opprobrium that would come from bombing territory they were occupying and killing civilians legally under their protection.

We'll see over the next few weeks whether Israel has truly turned a corner in their response to Palestinian terrorism, or whether Ariel Sharon is all yarmulke and no goats.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 24, 2005, at the time of 5:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Mythical Three

Patterico was kind enough to link my Lizard's Tongue column "the Great Civilizer" over on Patterico's Pontifications; in the lively (and very legalistic!) discussion in the comments page, I noticed three great myths about same-sex marriage cropping up again and again. Having seen these tossed out before, always recited as if everyone already knew them to be true, I reckoned it's best to clear the air of the nonsense now, before we get around to further debate on the actual issue.

Here are the myths:

1. Allowing same-sex couples to marry will extend the same civilizing effects of marriage to gays; isn't that good for society?
2. Gays don't choose their sexual orientation any more than straights do, so a ban on same-sex marriage is just as discriminatory as a racial ban.
3. You can't point to any specific marriage that will be damaged by allowing gays to marry, so obviously it won't have any impact on society at large, either; there is a natural tendency to pair up; people will still get married, so what's the big deal?

Rather than duke it out in the comments over there, I'll respond here and link back via trackback. That way I get a chance to spread myself a bit more.

Myth 1: Same-Sex Marriage Is As Civilizing As Opposite-Sex Marriage

The most interesting observation about this claim is that it is purely defensive; it begins from the nervous premise that gays need to be civilized! This is an amazing admission from the proponents of same-sex marriage; if the gay lifestyle were fine as it is, then why would it be so urgent to offer them the possibility of solemnizing their relationships by legally marrying? Unlike the economic argument, where the negative consequences (to inheritance, community property, or alimony) can be laid at the doorstep of "anti-gay discrimination," this position assumes the fact that there is something inherently wrong with behavior in the gay community which needs fixing. I only note the defensiveness in passing.

The first point to make is that the burden of proof of this peculiar claim is on the proponents of same-sex marriage, the ones who want to change 200+ years of American tradition, not on the rest of us to justify not changing everything. Since no one who asserts that giving a marriage license to gays living together will, by itself, help to "civilize" them has ever bothered trying to prove it (certainly not that I've seen), the point fails at inception. But I'll assume the burden of proof myself, to a partial extent; I will at least show why it's highly unlikely to be true. Such a mensch I am!

It's facially dubious. What is the enforcement mechanism? Traditional marriage civilizes men by the specific mechanism of forcing them to live with women. Men are already partially civilized even by dating women, let alone living with them, let even more alone being married to them. But gay men already date each other and live with each other -- with little evidence that shacking up moderates their behavior.

Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A study of Diversity Among Men and Women, p. 308, Table 7, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978: 75% of gay, white males admitted that they had had sex with more than one hundred separate males in their lifetimes; 28% claimed more than a thousand.

Being openly gay appears to exacerbate promiscuity. Paul Van de Ven, et al., "Facts & Figures: 2000 Male Out Survey," p. 20 & Table 20, monograph published by National Centre in HIV Social Research Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales, February 2001: a survey in Australia in the year 2000 found that gay men who associated with the gay community were almost four times as likley to have had over fifty sexual partners in the preceding six months than were gay men who were not "out" and did not associate with the gay community.

But how does this stack up against men in heterosexual relationships? Robert T. Michael, et al., Sex in America: a Definitive Survey, pp. 140-141, Table 11, Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1994; Rotello, pp. 75-76: 94% of traditionally married heterosexuals had only a single sexual partner within the preceding year; in fact, 75% of cohabitating heterosexuals had only a single sexual partner. And among married heterosexuals, "a vast majority are faithful while the marriage is intact."

There simply is no dispute in the literature: gay men (and even lesbians) are more sexually promiscuous, as a group, than their heterosexual counterparts. So if gay men's sexual behavior is not moderated by dating and shacking up, then why would giving them the social approval of a marriage license do the trick?

You can't even argue that they act out because they're forced to hide their sexuality -- because (supra) it's exactly those gays who are completely "out" and connected with the gay community who are the most promiscuous.

There is not a shred of evidence in the voluminous research done on sexuality to indicate that gay men will moderate their behavior if they are allowed to legally marry -- instead of merely being religiously married or common-law married. Sorry, but that's the truth. If proponents disagree, let's see the studies. There are several European countries where "gender-neutral" marriage is the law; can any proponent point to a moderation of sexual behavior as a result?

Myth 2: Sexual Preference Is Fixed From Birth

It's a tangential issue, but it seems to carry great weight among proponents of same-sex marriage. It certainly seems to be true that the lion's share of heterosexuals never had any homosexual experiences; the opposite is less true: until quite recently, most gays had tried heterosexual sex and often even marriage. (Likely because of social pressure; recently, with homosexuality less of an issue, a much higher percent of gays have never had straight sex... but it's still lower than the number of straights who never had gay sex.)

But there is a large undistricuted middle here: bisexuals. Some bisexuals lean more one way than the other; some are equal-opportunity swingers. But all, by definition, can go either way. There is no question that the more homosexuality is socially "mainstreamed," the greater the number of natural bisexuals who will live homosexual lifestyles; contrariwise, the more it is socially discouraged, the less they will do so.

All right, so we get more people living a gay lifestyle. So what's wrong with that? Again, refer above: evidence pretty clearly indicates that the sexual standards of those living within the gay community are significantly looser than the sexual standards of those living within the straight community, even for gays and bisexuals. Again, more people openly living gay lifestyles, within the gay community, means more people on the margins engaging in high-risk or socially unacceptable sexual behavior: multiple partners, anonymous sex, unprotected sex, and ephebophilic sex; unprotected sex is especially likely, since the danger of pregnancy is nil.

So in fact, the preferences of a group of people of undetermined size who can switch back and forth from living as gay to living as straight may indeed make a significant difference in the society.

Myth 3: How Could Same-Sex Marriage Affect My Marriage?

When studying social questions, the proper approach is statistical -- not individual. This argument is structurally identical to arguing that just because we can never prove for any one particular person whether his lung cancer is related to his habit of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, therefore we cannot say that smoking causes lung cancer.

But this is errant nonsense: statistically, those who smoke are at much higher risk of lung cancer than those who do not, regardless of whether we can prove causality in any particular case. The proof is that lung cancer is much more prevalent along the first group than the second. (Of course, to be completely scientific, you must account for other differences; but that is the essence of the proof.)

It's beyond the scope of this particular response to argue the case that same-sex marriage damages the institution of marriage; that argument will come later. But all that will be necessary to prove at that time is that the institution as a whole is damaged... there is no need to prove that any specific marriage is directly damaged by some measurable quantum; and the lack of specific cases is no more an argument for same-sex marriage than is the lack of a particular causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer in any specific person an argument that smoking isn't dangerous.

Three myths exploded. Now future discussion can proceed on a logical basis, not an emotional one. (Fat chance.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 24, 2005, at the time of 3:57 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Date ►►► September 22, 2005

Arnold's Ads

UPDATE September 23rd, 2005: Most recent Field polling added; see end

(Not to be confused with Arnold's Abs, which we haven't seen since he became governor... and probably for good reason!)

Governor Schwarzenegger has finally debuted a television ad supporting his four major initiatives for the upcoming special election, to be held on Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 -- just shy of seven weeks from today. You can view the ad by following the link from Dan Weitraub's California Insider MSM-blog.

The initiatives proposed by the governor are the following; note that the titles are mine (more concise than the ones given on the ballot), but the brief, bulleted descriptions are straight off the California Secretary of State's website:

Proposition 74: Teacher Tenure

• Increases length of time required before a teacher may become a permanent employee from two complete consecutive school years to five complete consecutive school years.
• Measure applies to teachers whose probationary period commenced during or after the 2003–2004
  fiscal year.
• Modifies the process by which school boards can dismiss a permanent teaching employee who receives
  two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations.

Proposition 75: Paycheck Protection

• Prohibits the use by public employee labor organizations of public employee dues or fees for political contributions except with the prior consent of individual public employees each year on a specified written form.
• Restriction does not apply to dues or fees collected for charitable organizations, health care
  insurance, or other purposes directly benefitting the public employee.
• Requires public employee labor organizations to maintain and submit records to Fair Political
  Practices Commission concerning individual public employees’ and organizations’ political
  contributions.
• These records are not subject to public disclosure.

Proposition 76: School Spending

• Limits state spending to prior year’s level plus three previous years’ average revenue growth.
• Changes state minimum school funding requirements (Proposition 98); eliminates repayment requirement
  when minimum funding suspended.
• Excludes appropriations above the minimum from schools’ funding base.
• Directs excess General Fund revenues, currently directed to schools/tax relief, to budget reserve, specified
  construction, debt repayment.
• Permits Governor, under specified circumstances, to reduce appropriations of Governor’s choosing,
  including employee compensation/state contracts.
• Continues prior year appropriations if state budget delayed.
• Prohibits state special funds borrowing.
• Requires payment of local government mandates.

Proposition 77: Redistricting Reform

• Amends process for redistricting California’s Senate, Assembly, Congressional and Board of Equalization districts.
• Requires panel of three retired judges, selected by legislative leaders, to adopt new redistricting plan if
  measure passes and after each national census.
• Panel must consider legislative, public comments/hold public hearings.
• Redistricting plan effective when adopted by panel and filed with Secretary of State; governs next statewide
  primary/general elections even if voters reject plan.
• If voters reject redistricting plan, process repeats, but officials elected under rejected plan serve full terms.
• Allows 45 days to seek judicial review of adopted redistricting plan.

The single ad so far (which covers all four initiatives) is pretty good, well produced: it reduces the argument down to the short and pithy version that is easily conveyed and long remembered. Once this ad and the ones that follow begin running in earnest, I expect to see support increase significantly for these initiatives -- which have been battered for weeks now by relentless attack from the Democrats, financed by the bottomless pit of money created by exactly the problem that Proposition 75 is trying to end.

To me, the two most critical are Propositions 75 and 77; they are the ones that strike most directly into the anti-democratic, corrupt campaign manipulations of the Left:

Paycheck Protection, to prevent labor unions from hijacking required union dues to spend on partisan campaigns, invariably supporting the left side of the aisle -- especially on social issues that have nothing to do with workers, such as abortion and same-sex marriage; and

Redistricting Reform, to break the steel-cage gerrymander, which shields the radical, New-Left Democrats from the opinion of the California electorate and immunizes the legislature from election results. If any incumbent in the legislature actually had to worry about how the voters might vote, the legislature would never have voted for half the loony-Left nonsense they have routinely enacted in the past.

I will keep you apprised of election-related issues as they pop up, starting with a before-and-after snapshot of the polling, once some respected post-ad polls have been released. (At th