Category ►►► Terrorist Attacks

December 14, 2006

Warty Justice

Hezbollah Horrors , Israel Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

In a magnanimous gesture sure to send Israelis to their knees in thanksgiving prayers, a three-justice panel of the Israeli Supreme Court has graciously decided to allow the Israeli Defense Force to continue suppressing terrorist attacks on Israel... subject to individual, case-by-case injunctions, of course:

The Israeli Supreme Court decided Thursday not to issue a blanket ban against the targeted killing of Palestinian militants, ruling that some of the killings were legal under international law.

The ruling gave legal legitimacy to a practice Israeli forces have routinely used against militants during the past six years of violence. The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem estimates that 339 Palestinians have been killed in the targeted operations over the past six years. Of those, 210 were the targets and the rest were bystanders. [Or, presumably, byriders in the same car as the targets.]

Thus, even taking the estimate of a "human rights organization," that means that 210 suicide bombers and suicide-bomber recruiters, trainers, and equipers -- enablers, let's call them -- are no longer with us; sadly, their practice of hiding among (relatively) innocent civilians means that 129 of the latter have also died.

Let's assume that a suicide bomber or bomber-enabler would otherwise have taken out an average of, oh, just five innocents: children in preschool, teens in a Sbarro's pizzeria, worshippers at a synogogue, Jew and Moslem, Arab and European -- that lot. That is probably a lowball guess, considering that some of the targets (such as several successive leaders of Hamas) would be responsible, all by themselves, for hundreds of murders.

Even so, that would mean that, due directly to the IDF's "targeted killing of Palestinian militants," over a thousand innocents were not splattered across the sidewalk like Jackson Pollack paintings.

A thousand innocent lives were spared; 129 somewhat innocent lives were taken (many of those non-targets killed by the Hellfire missile were nevertheless terrorists themselves traveling in the same car -- but who had not specifically been targeted; I would be surprised if even as much as 20% of the "collateral damage" comprised actual innocents). In the twisted and grotesque calculus that Islamic jihadism has forced upon the rest of the world... I'd say we got a bargain.

Yet evidently, the Israeli Supreme Court believes that it has the authority, the mandate, and the jurisdiction to decide what measures Israel may take to ensure its own existence, its own survival as a nation. Now, I realize that many "supreme" courts (including our own) like to imagine that they are the absolute final last say in all matters they choose to take up. To put it as gently and politely as I can, this is a load of oysters; oysters I said, and oysters I meant.

Suppose, for supposing's sake, that a United States Supreme Court consisting of nine Dennis Kuciniches were suddenly to rule -- never mind how unlikely this is, it's a hypothetical -- that the United States armed services did not have the authority to kill anyone, even in defense of the nation; and the Court therefore ordered the American military to stand down, disband, and destroy all their weapons of mass and individual destruction.

Would any president of the United States obey this ruling? Should he? Or should he take the Andy Jackson route and say, the Supreme Court has made its decision, now let's see them enforce it? I believe that I am in a solid majority of Americans who believe that, were the Court to descend into such utter madness, it would be the duty of the Commander in Chief to ignore their insane commands (and probably take them into protective custody to stave off a lynching).

We are not in so dire a circumstance and likely never will be; but the Israelis are. They live with exactly such an existential threat every day.

It would have been more fitting and proper for the Israeli Supreme Court to rule instead that they did not have jurisdiction to tell the elected prime minister and his cabinet how to fight a war for Israel's very existence and to stop the mass slaughter of Israeli citizens... which if allowed to continue unchecked would surely lead to mutiny, revolution, and possibly the destruction of Israel by Iran, Syria, Egypt, and even Jordan... nations who have attacked Israel before (the first by proxy) and could easily do so again, were the country to fly apart at the seams.

The arrogance of the judiciary -- we alone shall decide whether the Israeli Defense Force is allowed to defend the country! -- is absolutely breathtaking. Alas, like boiling the frog degree by degree, unnoticed and little remarked, we in the West have allowed courts to assume super powers and supernatural abilities far beyond those of mortal men; and far beyond what any rational constitutionalist would imagine be left to them.

The purpose of the courts is to resolve disputes and enforce criminal justice -- not to run the whole blooming country. They do not sit in loco parentis for the legislature and the commander in chief.

Were I the prime minister of Israel, I would announce coldly that I was glad the Israeli Supreme Court ruled as it did; but had it ruled that Israel could not target terrorists for assassination -- the only offensive tactic that has actually worked to dramatically curtail suicide bombings, even before the wall was built -- I, as chief executive and commander in chief of the IDF, would have told them to go boil an owl: that the survival of the nation would not be held hostage to a sub-panel of three wrinkley, amphibious ancients who believe it's still 1975, out of a pool of fourteen exalted creatures, each of whom believes the sun rises and sets for the sake of Warty Bliggens (each justice is his own toad, of course).

a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the same
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens

to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored

ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me

-- from Warty Bliggens the Toad, by Don Marquis

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 14, 2006, at the time of 07:50 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

November 29, 2006

Intimidating Imams and Ludicrous Lawsuits

Domestic Terrorism , Global War on Terrorism , Ludicrous Lawsuits , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Sachi

The story of the six Intimidating Imams, whose suspicious behavior caused them to be chucked off an airplane at Minneapolis St.Paul International Airport, is starting to smell more and more like a conspiracy...

At first, it just seemed that six obnoxious, insensitive, and clueless Imams, who did not understand the concept of TPO (time, place, and occasion), exhibited behavior that would worry almost anyone -- and then got upset about being questioned by the police. But the more details I read, the less I believe they were simply oblivious to the surroundings:

  • They prayed loudly and as a group at the gate and made a point of criticizing the United States for everyone to hear before boarding;
  • Three normal-sized Imams asked for seatbelt extenders. Rather than put them on, they placed the extenders -- which would make excellent weapons -- under their seats, within easy reach;
  • Two of them then switched to unassigned first class seats, thus positioning the six around the cabin in a formation eerily reminiscent of the 911 hijackers.

The overtly (and deliberately) suspicious behavior of the Intimidating Imams cannot be dismissed as clueless; it was far too organized. They knew exactly what they were doing, and it was purposeful: the intention, made clear by their subsequent legal action, was to scare the crew and passengers enough to get kicked off the plane.

This gave them the perfect opportunity to raise a hue and cry about racism and racial profiling -- providing a cause of action to file a "civil-rights" lawsuit.

In fact, one of the Intimidating Imams has been involved in just such a lawsuit before:

Then there's the case of Muhammed al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, two Arizona college students removed from an America West flight after twice trying to open the cockpit. The FBI suspected it was a dry run for the 9/11 hijackings, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. One of the students had traveled to Afghanistan. Another became a material witness in the 9/11 investigation.

Even so, the pair filed racial-profiling suits against America West, now part of US Airways. Defending them was none other than the leader of the six imams kicked off the US Airways flight this week.

Turns out the students attended the Tucson, Ariz., mosque of Sheikh Omar Shahin, a Jordan native. Shahin has been the protesters' public face, even returning to the US Airways ticket counter at the Minneapolis airport to scold agents before the cameras.

The goal of the lawsuit is not simply to make money; it's much more sinister than that: the Intimidating Imams are trying to bully Americans into submitting to the "religion of peace" by manipulating our own cultural sensibilities, our legal system, and the incoming congressional majority Democrats.

Ultimately, the goal of such Islamists is to outlaw all criticism of Moslems or Islam itself, as in nearly all Islamic countries. But they intend to start by getting the incoming Congress to pass special legislation forbidding the "racial" or behavioral profiling of Moslems.

They figure they can use the appropriate code words and intimidate politically correct, weak-kneed Americans so much, they will be afraid to fight back. After all, it's worked in Europe.

In France, political correctness has gotten so ridiculous that the French media cannot even bring themselves to identify the gangs who burn a hundred cars a day (on a "relatively quiet day") as radical Moslems, not even after they seriously burned a young woman on a bus. Attacks on the police by Moslem youths during this "French intifada" have become so common that the police cannot even protect themselves, and instead are ceding swaths of territory to the intifada -- and essentially allowing those areas (some in Paris itself) to be governed under sharia law.

The same thing is starting to happen in Great Britain, though it's not so bad there yet. Dafydd will write about this in a subsequent post.

Nowadays, throughout much of Europe and nearly all the ummah, criticizing Islam, or even so much as speaking out against wearing the veil, can land you in 24-hour police protection... or the morgue. Militant Islamists are trying to bring this same war to America; let's not forget that the Intimidating Imams did not act out their little passion play in a vacuum... MSP is the same airport where Moslem taxi drivers have demanded they not be penalized for refusing to ferry passengers who are carrying alcohol; a cabbie of any other religion who refuses to carry a lawful fare is fined or even fired.

Four of six Intimidating Imams are now working hand-in-sock-puppet with the known Islamic terrorist-supporting organization CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- which now boasts its own member of Congress -- to bring their lawsuit. They are traveling around the country (who is sponsoring their travel?) and appearing on TV talk shows to promote their legal cause and disseminate anti-American propaganda. And the American media is lapping it up.

I don't have a transcript, but these are a couple of the tough, penetrating questions CNN’s Paula Zahn asked the Imams on her show:

  • "How humiliating was this experience?"
  • "Do you think, after 911, that Moslems have been unfairly targeted?"

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX, 100%) has also chimed in, according to the Washington Times story above:

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans."

"Understandably, the imams felt profiled, humiliated, and discriminated against by their treatment," she said.

So according to Jackson-Lee, not only can't we profile on racial or religious grounds -- we cannot even profile based upon suspicious behavior! (Maybe she thinks it's a case of "threatening while Moslem.")

Judging by the response of American liberals, one must say that Phase One of the Imam's strategy has worked. We're not yet in the dire situation of many European countries; but that can change almost overnight if we allow this nonsense to continue.

If we refuse even to profile suspicious behavior, then all the banning of liquids and X-Raying bags at the airport won’t do any good: nothing better indicates mal intent than threatening behavior.

We must realize we are at war -- war against radical Islamism and jihadism, as represented by these very Imams and their CAIRing sponsors. We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated or bullied into submission. This is our country, these are our lives, and we must protect and defend them. Passengers and flight crews -- all Americans everywhere -- must be vigilant against such highly suspicious or odd behavior... it's our first and best defense against attack, something the Israelis discovered long ago.

There is one thing that radical Moslems don't understand: we Americans are the people who refuse to give up our guns. We are the people who say “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” For the same reason, I’d rather be called a racist by reporting potential terrorists than keep my mouth shut from fear of offending someone's sensibilities -- and be blown up.

I sure hope all my fellow passengers feel the same.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 29, 2006, at the time of 04:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 21, 2006

A Tale of Two Madams and One Mister

Iran Matters , Israel Matters , Palestinian Perils and Pratfalls , Syrian Slitherings , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

No, not that kind of madam! I mean a pair of "Madam Secretaries of State," Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice.

The first Madam Secretary, appointed by Bill Clinton for no reason other than to be the first president to appoint a woman as secretary of state, was an unmitigated disaster. Albright embraced Yassir Arafat, was bamboozled by Kim Jong-Il, tricked by Iran, cozened by Saddam, and turned a blind eye to Osama bin Laden while he and al-Qaeda prepared the most massive terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil. A magnificent and enviable record of failure and disachievement!

But let's contrast "Madam," as she insisted upon being called, with the other Madam Secretary, Condoleezza Rice. Here is Secretary Rice today, discussing her upcoming trip to the Middle East:

In her briefing for reporters on her trip, Rice said the United States was committed to ending the bloodshed, but didn't want to do it before certain conditions were met.

The United States has said all along that Hezbollah must first turn over the two Israeli soldiers and stop firing missiles into Israel.

"We do seek an end to the current violence, we seek it urgently. We also seek to address the root causes of that violence," she said. "A cease-fire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo."

Rice said that it was important to deal with the "root cause" of the violence, echoing what has been the U.S. position since last week.

And what is that "root cause?" Everybody uses the phrase, but each means a different thing. Most people in Europe and most Democrats in D.C., when they say "root cause of Mid-East violence," mean the presence of Jews in the ummah... which could easily be corrected.

If Israel would just do the manly thing and commit national suicide, then the world would think well of the Jews... briefly. But what does Condi mean by "root cause?"

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ruled out a quick "false promise" cease-fire in the Middle East Friday and defended her decision not to meet with either Syrian or Hezbollah leaders in her upcoming visit to the region.

"Syria knows what it needs to do and Hezbollah is the source of the problem," Rice said at the State Department as she previewed her trip, which begins on Sunday with a first stop in Israel.

What a rare moment of truth and candor from the Department of State! Of course, with John Bolton at the U.N., such moments are starting to come as thick and as fast as oysters. How I'm going to miss this president when his term expires.

(Oh, and notice where her Mid-East trip begins: Israel. In the previous administration, it would have begun with a quick obeisance in Ramallah, some backhanding in Damascus, and an apology-trip to Sabra and Shatila, where Madam would have laid a wreath and danced a foxtrot with Sheikh Nasrallah.)

But here is my favorite statement, and why I still hope that someday, Dr. Condoleezza Rice changes her mind and decides to run for public office:

Resisting calls from the United Nations, Europe and the Arab world, she said an immediate ceasefire would produce a "false promise" that would allow Hizbollah to re-emerge in the future to attack Israel, the top U.S. ally in the region.

"An immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense," she said.

"If you simply look for a ceasefire... we will be back here in six months again," she added. "What I won't do is go to some place and try to get a ceasefire that I know isn't going to last."

I've been scratching my brains for days now, wondering exactly what a "ceasefire" means when one party is a terrorist group. And for more clarity on that point, listen to Ambassador Bolton (it's from an press conference outside the UN Security Council in Foggy Bottom, New York City; I have paragraphed it, so I can refer to Bolton's specific points; via Power Line):

Well look, I think we could have a cessation of hostilities immediately if Hezbollah would stop terrorizing innocent civilians and give up the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. So that to the extent this crisis continues, the cause is Hezbollah.

How you get a ceasefire between one entity, which is a government of a democratically elected state on the one hand, and another entity on the other which is a terrorist gang, no one has yet explained.

The government of Israel, everybody says, has the right to exercise the right of self-defense, which even if there are criticisms of Israeli actions by some, they recognize the fundamental right to self-defense. That’s a legitimate right.

Are there any activities that Hezbollah engages in, militarily that are legitimate? I don’t think so. All of its activities are terrorist and all of them are illegitimate, so I don’t see the balance or the parallelism between the two sides and therefore I think it’s a very fundamental question: how a terrorist group agrees to a ceasefire.

This is like demanding a "ceasefire" between the United States government on the one hand -- and the Salvadoran drug gang Mara Salvatrucha. What the heck is that supposed to mean? Do they negotiate exactly how many kilos of cocaine MS-13 is allowed to smuggle into the country?

You know in a democratically elected government, the theory is that the people ultimately can hold the government accountable when it [agrees to] something and doesn’t live up to it.

How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitment that a terrorist group will abide by a ceasefire?

Say, that is a good question, isn't it? So how come nobody else seems to be asking it besides John and Condi? And here's another good question:

What does a terrorist group think a "ceasefire" is?

Does it really understand a ceasefire as a cessation of hostilities, to be followed by honest negotiation to settle the differences that led to the war in the first place? I think it more likely Hezbollah's understanding of ceasefire is "a pause to reload;" and the ceasefire will last as long as it takes for them to obtain replacements from Iran, through Syria, for all the missiles that Israel destroyed... maybe "six months," as Secretary Rice suggested.

Finally, Bolton finishes his answer with a nice summation of the main point:

These are - you can use the words “cessation of hostilities” or “truce” or "ceasefire.” Nobody has yet explained how a terrorist group and a democratic state come to a mutual ceasefire.

Those are all good questions, and here's another: if Israel were to ink such a ceasefire with Hezbollah... wouldn't that elevate the terrorist group to the level of a sovereign nation? What would be the next demand -- that Israel negotiate a trade agreement with Hezbollah? Perhaps an agreed-upon procedure for releasing Hezbollah killers promptly upon the kidnapping of future IDF soldiers, to avoid all the brouhaha in the future?

Or would Hezbollah be admitted to the United Nations (and probably invited to join the new UN Human Rights Council)?

Israelis should get on their knees and thank the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that at this critical turning point in their existence, their greatest ally has such clear-sighted and morally decent appointees running the United States Department of State. And Americans should thank whatever God we hold dear that we have an Israel that is finally willing to stand up to Hezbollah and Hamas: maybe President Bush can start listening to Israel, Condi, and John; then he himself can begin treating those Iranian-controlled terrorists the way he treats terrorists in al-Qaeda.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 21, 2006, at the time of 01:45 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

July 20, 2006

Who Pays For That Ticket to Ride Out of Lebanon?

Israel Matters , Logical Lacunae , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Sachi

After twenty-two years absence, the U.S. Marines have landed in Beirut to help evacuate American citizens who are stuck in the war zone. Not surprisingly, many evacuees are tired, shaken and angry... but rather than being angry at Hezbollah for starting a war of aggression along a peaceful border, many Americans in Lebanon seem angry at the United States for not dropping everything to mount a massive mission to rescue them.

I sympathize with all the innocent people being hurt or threatened in Lebanon; that's why we say "war is hell." But if foreigners decide to live or visit an unstable country like Lebanon -- especially south Lebanon, which has been under total Hezbollah control since the year 2000 -- and despite their own country’s warnings, then those people must bear primary responsibilities for their own lives.

But that's not how a bunch of very demanding Americans and other foreign civilians see it:

Shebbo, now in Cyprus, said she and her husband had struggled to get information from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and had found out about the boat from people in the United States. For four days, they inhaled the fumes from a bombed power plant two miles from where they had been staying.

Others echoed her complaints about the embassy.

"The guard was so rude and said there was no evacuation plan," said Michael Russo, 23, of Tucson, Ariz., of his visit to the embassy. "On Wednesday and Thursday, I asked them if there was a plan, and they looked at me like I was crazy."

They were probably wondering why on earth somebody would travel to southern Lebanon without having his own escape plan.

For many decades, Americans have been taught by the elite media that the federal government is responsible for everything that happens in America. Remember Hurricane Katrina and all the people that blamed President Bush and former FEMA Director Michael Brown -- but who gave a complete pass to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray "the Grand Nagus" Nagin?

Responsibility is always pushed upwards: it's not the state's job, call the feds; it's not the city's job, call the governor; don't protect yourself... call the city police to come protect you! But the farther removed "help" is from that individual in that place at that moment, the less helpful it will be. Reagan always got a big laugh out of his line, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

Having dealt with the American Embassy in Japan and the Japanese Consulate in the U.S., none of this surprises me. This is a screaming, hair-on-fire emergency... which means the embassy is even more overwhelmed than the Americans demanding evacuation. If embassy personnel act worse than usual, that may be unacceptable -- but it's comletely understandable. And it's not just our embassy:

Many Canadians in Larnaca and Beirut also expressed anger at their government's evacuation effort, either because of the long wait at the port or the lack of planning. About 1,600 were waiting in the hot sun at the Beirut port.

This has all happened before. Twenty years ago, around the time 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers were killed by Hezbollah terrorists, the U.S. Government strongly urged all non-essential U.S. Citizens to get out of Lebanon and to call off any planned visit.

A number of westerners had already been kidnapped there; but despite all the dire warnings, a bunch more Americans (mostly journalists) rushed to Lebanon and immediately commenced being kidnapped themselves. Naturally, each and every one of them insisted that we lay aside all the more urgent business we had and send the entire Sixth Fleet to pluck away some guy from CBS... so he could wander straight back into Beirut again (it's Freedom of the Press!)

Obviously, if it's possible and not too damaging to our national goals, there is nothing wrong with the government helping Americans who find themselves in need of evacuation. But strangers in a strange land have no right to demand that this will always happen: when you travel to foreign countries, you assume the risk that something might happen to you.

You're not in the United States; you're in a separate sovereign nation. It's just like going to Singapore, committing a crime under Singaporese law -- and then demanding they not prosecute you because whatever you did isn't against the law in America (or maybe it is, but you don't get "caned" for it here).

Any traveler, regardless of where he is going, must have an emergency Get the Heck Out plan. The government is not always there to help, just like the cops can't always be there the moment you need them. Each individual must be resourceful, because he may be thrust upon his own resources.

A few years ago, I watched a documentary on TV about people who refused to be victims: they successfully escaped from dangerous situations, such as natural disasters and military coups in foreign countries. These people were mostly volunteer workers for non-governmental organizations -- the Peace Corps, religous missionary groups, Doctors Without Borders, and so forth.

They all came hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. None of them waited for somebody else to risk his own life to run help them, nor did they sit around in the dark, waiting for instructions. They individually found a way out for themselves and their companions.

What they had in common was that each had an escape plan going in. They had thought about the dangers and planned for them; when the worst happened, they followed their plans as best they could -- and they made it out alive when others dithered, waited for rescue -- and died.

So always bear it in mind: if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck, then unless the government sent you there in the first place, don't demand that somebody else save your bacon: you and only you are the one who assumed that risk... so pay for your own ticket, please.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, July 20, 2006, at the time of 05:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 15, 2006

Israeli Warship Hit By Chinese/Iranian Cruise Missile

Iran Matters , Israel Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

This is exactly the danger the United States has been warning about ever since 9/11: that rogue states like Iran may begin transferring modern military weaponry to terrorist groups:

In another development, an Israeli military official claimed that Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved on some level in a missile strike that badly damaged an Israeli naval boat off Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Friday, killing one Israeli sailor and leaving three missing.

The official said the exact role of the Revolutionary Guards was not clear, but the Iranian forces were working closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon, as they have for more than two decades.

Israel’s military initially said that the ship was hit by an unmanned drone aircraft packed with explosives. But the military revised its assessment on Saturday, saying the ship was hit by a radar-guided, C802 missile fired from the Lebanese shore. The missile came from Iran, the military said.

The C-802 -- a.k.a. Ying-Ji-802 or YJ-2, a.k.a. the SACCADE -- is a cruise missile developed by China from the earlier YJ-1 model; the YJ-2 has a turbojet rather than the rocket engine burning solid fuel, as used by the YJ-1.

The weight of the subsonic (0.9 Mach) Yingji-802 is reduced from 815 kilograms to 715 kilograms, but its range is increased from 42 kilometers to 120 kilometers. The 165 kg. (363 lb.) warhead is just as powerful as the earlier version. Since the missile has a small radar reflectivity and is only about five to seven meters above the sea surface when it attacks the target, and since its guidance equipment has strong anti-jamming capability, target ships have a very low success rate in intercepting the missile. The hit probability of the Yingji-802 is estimated to be as high as 98 percent. The Yingji-802 can be launched from airplanes, ships, submarines and land-based vehicles, and is considered along with the US "Harpoon" as among the best anti-ship missiles of the present-day world.

China was to have sold about 150 YJ-2s to Iran following the Gulf War; but when President Bill Clinton's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. John Shalikashivili, complained to the People's Liberation Army of China (a major Clinton campaign donor) that this was destabilizing, the PLA agreed to stop the sales after shipping only 75 of the missiles.

However, Chinese client state North Korea seems to have taken up the slack with Iran -- yet another Clintonian diplomatic success story:

In early 2000 it was reported that North Korea and Iran were jointly developing an advanced version of the C-802 cruise missile. These missiles initially acquired by Iran were not equipped with advanced systems, and the missiles acquired by Iran were rather outdated. Iran turned to North Korea for missile system technology, and the two countries are jointly developing an upgraded version with improved accuracy. ["N. Korea, Iran Jointly Develop Missile: Report" Korea Times February 17, 2000]

Yet another example of President George W. Bush's prescience in noting an "axis of evil" that included not only Iraq and Iran but also the Democratic People's Republic of Korea... a claim widely ridiculed by Democrats (and even some Republicans of the Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft "realist" school of thought) shortly after Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address.

The reported missile-technology cooperation between North Korea and Iran occurred before 9/11... in fact, before George W. Bush was even elected. The "Axis of Evil" exists and predates Bush; he was simply the first to recognize it.

If Israel is indeed correct that their ship was struck by an Iranian C-802, and there is no reason to doubt either their accuracy or their veracity, then that raises a profound question, none of whose answers bode well: who fired the missile?

There are only two possibilities:

  1. Hezbollah fired the missile, which means that Iran has transferred some of its precious ASCMs (anti-ship cruise missiles) to their pet terrorist group.

    I find it unlikely in the extreme that Iran would do that if they only have 75 -- 15 of which are attached to patrol boats; if this is the case, then that lends some credence to the story that China actually sold far more YJ-2s to Iran than it ever admitted, or they've manufactured many more themselves;

  2. Iran itself fired the missile, either from a Revolutionary Guard missile battery in Lebanon, equipped with Chinese-supplied YJ-2s, or perhaps from indigenous Iranian YJ-2 knock-offs which North Korea helped them develop. In this case, Iran has openly entered into war with Israel, and Israel must respond in kind.

The latter instance puts us on the horns of a pickle: if Israel retaliates against Iran, the mullahcracy will still blame us, since they believe Israel is our sock puppet which would not act without orders from America. This is preposterous; Israel has many times done things we wish they wouldn't (not that an attack on Iran would necessarily fall into that category); but that is what Iran believes, so they will hold the United States responsible and attempt to retaliate against us the only way they can: by a massive terrorist attack.

If in fact Israel declares war on Iran and attacks them, I think it's best for us to grab the bull by the tail and look the facts in the face: if Iran will counterattack against us anyway, we may as well join with the Israelis and make a good job of the attack.

If we hurt Iran badly enough, they may be reluctant or even unable to transfer the large amounts of money, weaponry, and logistics necessary for Hezbollah to be able to pull off an effective terrorist attack. Cripple Iran's ability to use Hezbollah (or Hamas) as a proxy, and you cripple Iran's retaliatory capability... because they certainly will not initiate a missile exchange with a country that has thousands more missiles than they -- and a working ballistic missile defense to boot.

In an upcoming post, Sachi will discuss the amazing Arab reaction to the Israeli-Lebanon-Hezbollah-Hamas war; suffice to say Arab public opinion is up for grabs, unlike in times past, where the mere hint of involvement of Israel would send every Arab Moslem in the world into a frothing frenzy of Jew hatred. Perhaps the trick doesn't work anymore.

Given that new reality, now may be the time to resolve our Iranian problems... at least for a number of years, until they can reconstitute their WMD programs -- if a future president lets them.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 15, 2006, at the time of 02:11 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 17, 2006

Moussaoui Case - Shocking Allegation

Injudicious Judiciary , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

In Salvaging Death From Life, we discussed the insane decision by Clinton-appointed Judge Leonie Brinkema to throw out the better half of the prosecution's case for the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui, on the grounds that a lawyer working for the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), Carla Martin, sent several FAA witnesses a transcript of the opening statements and the direct and/or cross examination of an FBI agent.

Now comes the rather shocking allegation that the entire transaction was a deliberate set-up whose purpose was to destroy the prosecutor's case.

As near as Big Lizards can figure out the agendas, here is what the AP story seems to say....

  1. The allegation comes from Robert Clifford and Gregory Joseph, lawyers for family members of victims of the 9/11 attack. The lawsuit filed by the family members claim that United Airlines and American Airlines could have prevented 9/11 by stopping the hijackers from getting on the planes with knives and boxcutters.
  2. The government also wants to prove that: if they can show that 9/11 could have been prevented if Moussaoui had told them about the knives and boxcutters, then Moussaoui should be put to death.
  3. Contrariwise, the lawyers for the airlines clearly want for their jury to believe that 9/11 could not possibly have been prevented; that it would have happened the way it did regardless of any attempt to prevent boxcutters from being carried onto the planes. That way, it wouldn't be the airlines' fault.
  4. And of course, Moussaoui's lawyers would also like to prove that, since then their client's lies would not have led to any deaths that wouldn't have occured otherwise. It wouldn't be Moussaoui's fault, either.

You follow?

So the plaintiff's lawyers and the prosecutors both want to show that 9/11 could have been prevented; and the defense lawyers in both cases want to prove that it could not have been prevented.

According to the allegation, the airline lawyers read the prosecutor's opening statement and became very worried. If the prosecution proved its case, it would be very hard for the airlines to evade a judgment. So allegedly, the airline lawyers contacted Carla Martin of the TSA and told her to queer the case: she had to get the FAA witnesses to change their stories and say that no FAA order would have stopped any of the hijackers:

Because that government position could have "devastating" impact on the airlines' defense in the civil suit, American Airlines' lawyer forwarded the transcript to a United Airlines lawyer who forwarded it to Martin, Clifford and Joseph wrote. As proof, they cited March 7 e-mails that they provided to [U.S. District Judge Alvin] Hellerstein but which were not immediately available here. [Hellerstein is the judge hearing the civil case. -- the Mgt.]

"The TSA lawyer then forwarded the transcripts and sent multiple e-mails to government witnesses in a clear effort to shape their testimony in a manner that would be beneficial to the aviation defendants" in the civil suit, they wrote. [As we understand it, to shape the testimony to make it seem as if 9/11 could not have been prevented, which would also help Moussaoui's defense. -- the Mgt]

They then quoted a March 8 e-mail Martin sent to one of the government's Moussaoui witnesses that said:

"My friends Jeff Ellis and Chris Christenson, NY lawyers rep. UAL and AAL respectively in the 9/11 civil litigation, all of us aviation lawyers, were stunned by the opening. The opening has created a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck through. There is no way anyone could say that the carriers could have prevented all short-bladed knives from going through. (Prosecutor) Dave (Novak) MUST elicit that from you and the airline witnesses on direct."

In other words, Martin's actions were a direct assault on the prosecution's case -- she intended to help the airlines -- hence Moussaoui -- and not the government.

Yet even so, when she was caught red-handed, Judge Brinkema's response was to finish what Carla Martin started: Brinkema's order destroys the government's case, prevents Moussaoui from receiving the death penalty, and incidentally helps the airlines defend against the lawsuit. At least, that is what the plaintiffs' attorneys claim.

Through her attorney, Martin denies the allegation; but she has not yet appeared to speak on her own behalf, nor has her attorney yet had a chance to formulate a response. The first question, of course, is whether there was any pre-existing relationship between the airlines and the TSA, or some personal or monetary arrangement between their respective attorneys, which was so deep that Martin would risk disbarment or even prison (for witness tampering), just to help the airlines out in their civil lawsuit. If such a connection emerges, then clearly, Brinkema's order should not stand.

In fact, if this is true, then there should be a mistrial: the penalty phase for Moussaoui should be moved to a different judge (preferably in a different venue) and retried... because clearly, the people of the United States were sandbagged, if this allegation is even partially accurate.

Nobody alleges that Brinkema was part of this scheme; but her obvious bias against the prosecution led her to blame the government for a set-up that seems to have been aimed squarely at destroying the prosecution's case.

If this is true, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't: if the scheme had succeeded, maybe they could have gotten the witnesses to destroy the government's case (if the witnesses were willing to commit perjury, which I doubt). But when it failed -- that, too, was used to destroy the government's case!

Again, bear in mind: these are allegations from an interested party in the case: the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the airlines. They may be wrong, and Carla Martin may have had no contact with the airline attorneys. But it's hard to believe lawyers would make false allegations (and what, fake the e-mails?), when the deception would be revealed immediately -- and would destroy their own careers, if they were found to be misleading the court (either court). Unless some major contrary evidence is produced, I'm inclined to believe this charge.

If the judge does not reverse herself, especially in light of the new allegations, then I sure hope the prosecutors appeal up the chain, all the way to the Supreme Court, if they will take it: the death penalty for Moussaoui should not be held hostage to the understandable desire of United and American not to have to pay a huge judgment to survivors of the victims of 9/11.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 17, 2006, at the time of 12:27 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 16, 2006

Salvaging Death From Life

Injudicious Judiciary , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

A day or two ago, a foolish lawyer in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Carla Martin, "coached" witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui case death-penalty phase. The witnesses worked for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and prosecutors intended to call them to testify about defensive measures they would have taken, had the FAA only known that the 9/11 attacks were imminent... which (the government argues) they would have known if Moussaoui had told the truth to federal investigators when he agreed to cooperate.

So in retaliation for the hapless TSA lawyer violating that rule, the judge first considered ruling that the government couldn't see the death penalty against Moussaoui at all (?) -- and then finally ruled that they could seek it, but they weren't allowed to use their best evidence (!)



Zacarias Moussaoui

Sympathy for the Devil

The so-called "coaching" consisted of sending the witnesses transcripts of previous testimony, which the judge -- Clinton appointee Leonie Brinkema -- had specifically enjoined the government from doing. I suppose the presumption is that the witnesses would never have thought of saying they would have banned box cutters if they knew terrorists were going to hijack planes with box cutters... which is about the most preposterous presumption I've seen in this case.

The witnesses themselves (all of them) testified that nothing in the transcripts affected how they were going to testify -- which is kind of a no brainer: if Moussaoui had said "terrorists will use box-cutters to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings," what do you think the FAA would have done?

In fact, several of the witnesses testified that they had not even read the attached transcripts. Yet they still are being banned from testifying. Can't trust those tricksie FAA folks!

I'm not a lawyer... and in this case, I think that gives me a clearer view of the absurdity of this: the death penalty is designed to protect the people of the United States, not to aid lawyers at the Transportation Security Agency. So if one of the latter screws up, why is Brinkema punishing the rest of us?

This is insane... but of course, she was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993 and confirmed while the Democrats still controlled the Senate. I suspect they would have confirmed a hamster, if Clinton had assured them it would be anti-death penalty and pro-abortion.

In desperation, the prosecutors are trying to undo the damage. They have filed a motion begging the judge to let them call someone else from the FAA to testify to what the other witnesses would have testified, or something else to indicate that Moussaoui's specific information about 9/11 would have resulted in some useful reaction from the FAA that would have saved at least one victim. But I suspect that Brinkema will rule against them -- presumably on the theory that the action by Carla Martin from the TSA taints all conceivable witnesses from the federal government, even if they have never even heard of her and couldn't pick her out of a lineup. Can't trust those tricksie witnesses for the prosecution!

I think Brinkema has had it in for the feds for some time. She had an earlier run-in that borders on the psycho-comical, in my opinion. From the first Fox News article:

Brinkema noted that last Thursday, Novak asked a question that she ruled out of order after the defense said the question should result in a mistrial. In that question, Novak suggested that Moussaoui might have had some responsibility to go back to the FBI, after he got a lawyer, and then confess his terrorist ties.

Great Scott! The prosecutor suggested that Moussaoui should have confessed to what he has been convicted of doing. It's an outrage. Stop the trial, set Moussaoui free! His right not to be made uncomfortable for being a terrorist who conspired to kill 3,000 Americans was brutally violated.

I don't see any of this as having any bearing on the case. All the prosecution need show is that Moussaoui's lies resulted in at least one death in the 9/11 attacks. Nothing about what was shown to the FAA witnesses alters what they were going to say -- unless you first presume they're liars who needed to know what lie to tell in order to perjure themselves. Is that Brinkema's base assumption?

She has consistently made rulings throughout this trial that make it clear she thinks of this as an ordinary criminal case -- like a carjacking or a residential burglary: she expressed enormous frustration that much of what the government knows about al-Qaeda was classified, and they refused to parade it through open court; she insisted that Moussaoui be allowed to have a conversation with Ramzi Binalshibh, without the slightest concern about what terrorist communications they might exchange. And now she deliberately cripples the prosecution's case for the death penalty simply because some jerk working at the TSA stupidly enclosed some transcripts in e-mails... as if that were a mitigating factor for Moussaoui's crime or retroactively made it less likely that his lies contributed to the deaths of at least one of the 2,967 human beings and 19 terrorists that bright fall morning.

This is utter nonsense... and a perfect illustration why we cannot try terrorists in civilian courts.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 16, 2006, at the time of 04:21 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 18, 2006

Tennis Jihad

Sporting Gents , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Our stringer, Friend Lee, who is literally a rabid tennis fan (we're getting him the series of injections next week), found a real jaw-dropper on YNet News. I'll let him tell it, with some nudzhing from the Big Lizards editorial ballboys.

India has had several excellent male tennis players, but Sania Mirza is its first female tennis star. She's front page news in India; in most of the rest of the world, she's only known to tennis fans.

Mirza is Muslim; and unfortunately, the Muslims in India are pressuring her very hard on several issues, interfering with her career in some respects, and certainly interfering with her peace of mind.

But now the Muslims have pressured her not to play doubles with an Israeli girl, and Mirza has given in.

According to the article that Friend Lee links, he is, if anything, understating what has happened to Mirza:

Indian female tennis player Sania Mirza, 19, who is ranked 39th in the world, announced that she would not play with Israeli up and coming tennis star Shahar Pe’er in the doubles tournament of the Bangalore Open for fear of violent protests by India’s Islamic community.

The two friends were prevented from cooperating in last month’s Australian Open for the same reason.

Mirza initially agreed to play with Pe’er in Bangalore, but later retracted, telling Pe’er “It’s best that we don’t play together this time to prevent protests against my cooperation with an Israeli. There is no reason to arouse their ire (Muslims).”

Mirza, a sports hero in her country, was recently chastised by Muslim groups in India for wearing a sleeveless top and a mini-skirt during her matches. Local Muslim groups claimed that her attire degrades Islam, and some even threatened to kill her.

What do they expect Mizra to play tennis in... a white burqa?

Let's sit back and let this one sink in. The Moslems in India are outraged that Mirza, a Moslem, would play doubles tennis with an "Israeli." But of course, India lies nowhere near Israel; they have never had a war with Israel; they have no conflict with Israel. Even during the Cold War, when India was allied with the Soviet Union, they did not have any specific conflict with Israel... and India, of course, is not even in the Middle East: it's in Southwest Asia.

So what possible reason could Indian Moslems have to demand an Indian Moslem tennis star not play doubles with an Israeli? The only one I can think of is that to Moslems, even in India, "Israeli" is just a code word for "Jew." When they say 'how dare you play doubles with an Israeli,' they are really saying 'how dare you play doubles with a Jew.'

The conflict between Israel, the Arab states, and the Palestinian non-state can be chalked up to propinquity and an evil history. But the reaction of Indian Moslems makes it brutally clear that the real, underlying problem is that Islam includes Jew-hatred as a core value... probably because the Jews were the first organized group of "People of the Book" to reject Mohammed's claim to be a prophet: seventh-century rabbis scoffed at the idea that Mohammed could be as ignorant of the Jewish Bible as he was if God were truly speaking through him.

By the way, I think we also must alert NOW and NARAL:

Last November Mirza stirred controversy when during a New Delhi conference she spoke of the importance of safe sex; Muslim groups in New Delhi and three other cities held rallies, with protesters carrying signs reading “Mirza is detached from Islam,” claiming she is “corrupting the youth in the country, especially the girls.”

Mirza, in an attempt to ease tensions, said in response “I want to make it clear that I am opposed to pre-marital sex. It is a major sin in Islam, and I believe God would not forgive for such an act.”

Got it? Not only is safe sex right out, but if a Moslem teenager slips and has premarital sex even one time, she is condemned to Hell forever with no hope of forgiveness or redemption.

How sad that so many people would believe in a religion that is more forgiving of mass murder than it is of a single, pre-marital quickie.

All else is commentary.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 18, 2006, at the time of 11:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 21, 2006

He Got One

Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

A slightly belated but nevertheless hearty Yo Ho Ho to Dr. Rusty Shackleford at the Jawa Report for helping to capture and convict a would-be terrorist -- Mohammed Radwan Obeid, a Jordanian who fraudulently entered the United States and was (he claimed) trying to set up a terror cell that would carry out an attack that would make 9/11 feel like a "headache."

Because Dr. S. discussed Obeid and published his e-mail address (which Obeid had unwisely left in a plea for conspirators on a jihadi website), a reader began corresponding with Obeid and succeeded in gathering enough evidence to interest the FBI. Obeid eventually pled guilty to lying to investigators and will receive (we all hope) the maximum five years... before being deported back to Jordan.

Have some virtual champagne on Big Lizards, Rusty! And accept this laurel and hearty handshake for a job well done.

Oh, and happy blogiversary, too.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 21, 2006, at the time of 04:29 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 30, 2005

Peace Busting Out All Over "Palestine"

Predictions , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Near as I can make it out from this AP story, the withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza has resulted in the complete collapse of all civil authority in that territory and the rise of pure tribalism as bad as any in sub-Saharan Africa... which is pretty much just what I predicted (only moreso) when I argued in favor of the Israeli withdrawal:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Palestinian policemen went on a rampage over the killing of a colleague and seized the Gaza-Egypt border crossing for several hours Friday, forcing European monitors to flee in the latest sign of growing mayhem in the coastal strip.

The story is very poorly written, but it appears to be saying that yesterday, a "family" of Palestinians (read: tribe) launched an attack on the border-crossing police station to free one of their tribe members, who was being held on drug charges there. In the course of that assault, a member of the attacking tribe was killed. Today's renewed assault by the same tribe was in retaliation for that death: they demanded that whoever had had the temerity to return fire when they assaulted the station must be "executed."

It's the start of the Hutus and Tutsis all over again.

Here is what I predicted back when I was guest-blogging on Captain's Quarters back in August:

The argument -- and it's perfectly logical, as far as it goes -- is that by withdrawing the settlers and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) which is primarily there to defend them with checkpoints, searches, and restrained shows of force, a power vacuum will be created. The Palestinian Authority will of course be too weak to maintain its power, so Hamas (and perhaps Hezbollah or Palestinian Islamic Jihad) will seize control instead. (Though Al-Qaeda has also now staked a claim to Gaza, and the strip may turn into a decidedly uncivil civil war instead of smoothly transitioning to Hamas.) [Boldface emphasis added]

Nevertheless, I argued at the time (and still maintain today) that there were sound military reasons for the pullout: removing the several thousand potential Israeli hostages -- and the IDF troops uselessly tied down doing nothing but guarding them -- would free up the Israelis to respond in a more military fashion to further provocations by the Palestinians... in particular, with air strikes, just as they would if they were attacked by, say, Egypt or Syria.

Here is what to look for to see if my prediction is coming true: once Israel pulls out, a major attempted attack by some terrorist group or groups is inevitable. Because of the security fence (the "wall"), that attack will probably be in the form of rockets, mortars, or artillery fired over the wall. If Israel responds with aerial bombing of significant targets within Gaza and the West Bank, that will tell us that the days of pussyfooting have passed. The Palestinian Arabs will wake up to a new reality, one in which Israel no longer pulls punches in response to mindless Arab terror. I absolutely believe this will create a much better situation than what we have now, with international terrorist groups having significantly less ability to launch attacks on Israel (or on us) from the Palestinian territory than they enjoy today.

But if Israel's only response is a targeted assassination of some Hamas official and a strongly worded letter of protest to Failed Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas... well, then Israel would have surprised and saddened me.

Well, Israel did not disappoint me, and my prediction turned out to be accurate: the terrorists have launched several rocket attacks on northern Israel in recent weeks -- and indeed, the Israelis have in fact responded with air strikes, not simply against a single Hamas official here and there, but missile attacks on non-named militants in the act of setting up attacks on Israel, something they had ceased doing prior to exiting Gaza.

(They also launched a "targetted assassination" of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member; I don't actually object to Israel going after named individuals, so long as they also use air strikes as part of a military strategy.) From the Chicago Tribune on December 15th:

Israeli missiles fired from the air ripped apart two cars in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing four Palestinian militants and wounding five other people, including an Islamic Jihad spokesman, the military and Palestinians said....

Late Wednesday and early Thursday, Israeli artillery and aircraft also pounded northern Gaza, where militants fired rockets at Israel. Two Palestinians were slightly wounded.

So here is the state of play in the Gaza Strip now:

  • The ruling Fatah government is collapsing;
  • Civil society there has degenerated into the war of all against all: not simply Fatah, Hamas, PIJ, and al-Qaeda duking it out for control, but down to level of tribal warfare over individual police stations;
  • And Israel, freed from the fetters of being the occupying authority, has begun to respond to terrorist attacks from Gaza as it would to military attacks from a sovereign nation.

I see this as good news and likely to play out very much to the advantage of the civilized and against the interests of the barbaric terrorists over the next few years. It's time for the Palestinians to stop blaming Jews for everything that goes wrong in their lives, to grow up and accept responsibility for their own fate. I argue that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (and the impending withdrawal from the West Bank of the Jordan River) will force them to do exactly that -- or else be swept into the dustbin of history, along with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 30, 2005, at the time of 06:11 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 05, 2005

Senator, Heal Thyself

Politics - National , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

The New York Times article on the commission report spends nearly as much time on the reaction by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who sees the report as "a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," as it does on any of the commissioners themselves. Schumer was especially scathing about the money spent by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress:

"The report is a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," Mr. Schumer said. "New York State is particularly hurt by the terribly unfair and inefficient homeland security funding formula and the lack of a federal program for communications interoperability among first responders. We can and must do better."

But a lengthy investigation by the New York Daily News found that one of the the primary examples of "the distribution of Department of Homeland Security money based on politics rather than on potential risk" is the porkbarrel spending in New York State itself, involving both Republicans (Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Rudy Guiliani) and Democrats in the New York congressional delegation (Schumer included), and both federal and state agencies. Hat tip to the raptor-like eye (and haunting beauty) of the nigh-omniscient Michelle Malkin.

Some of the details uncovered by the NY Daily News of "emergency spending" enacted in New York are troubling indeed:

  • Hundreds of millions to businesses that were not significantly affected by 9/11
  • Millions more for projects already in development before 9/11, some that were already funded, others that were still awaiting funding
  • "Huge contracts were given to companies and organizations linked to the very officials tasked with deciding how to spend the money — creating, at a minimum, the potential for multiple conflicts of interest."
  • Huge bribes forked over to induce companies to stay in lower Manhattan... including companies that had never expressed any thought of leaving
  • Eligibility rules made so porous that "virtually no one was ineligible"

In fact, the original figure for aid to New York -- $20 billion -- was pulled directly out of Charles Schumer's, er, hat:

The magic number of "$20 billion" that President Bush first said he would give New York was actually pulled from thin air, a figure born of politics and compassion rather than actuarial calculation and meaningful analysis.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) came up with the number in an effort to match the amount of emergency money being planned for anti-terrorism security across the country — legislation that made no specific mention of New York.

"To ask for more than $20 billion — more for New York than for all the military and the rest of the country — would seem excessive," Schumer told the Daily News. "But to ask for less than $20 billion would be derelict in my duties as a New York senator. So I figured, 'Let's match it, $20 billion for the rest and $20 billion for New York.'"

Schumer remembers Bush asking, "New York really needs $20 billion?"

"At least that, Mr. President," Schumer replied.

"You got it," said Bush. [Emphasis added]

So until Sen. Schumer leads an effort to crack down on porkbarrel spending in New York "based on politics rather than on potential risk," it's a bit thick for him to wag his finger about such unaccountable spending in the rest of the country.

Oh, wait -- Charles Schumer is being hypocritical? That's a story? As Emily Litella says...!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 05, 2005, at the time of 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Commission, Heal Thyself

Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

The 9/11 Commission, now under private funding, has met a final time to offer a "report card" on the actions taken by "the government" to safeguard American lives and property, infrastructure, and economic activity from further terrorist attacks. The report is being played by the mainstreamers as a scathing repudiation of Bush and the Republicans; and to some extent, it's clearly intended as such: the commissioners, including the Republican members, seem to have gone out of their way at the press conference and in interviews to imply absolute inactivity and inertia, complete incompetence, and a total lack of concern, while offering virtually no examples of such malfeasance in the actual document itself.

Alack, the 9/11 Commission, drunk on its own vision of absolute moral authority and intellectual superiority, has fallen into hectoring and preening, like a nagging starlet who has detailed suggestions for running the entire movie studio -- and flies into a rage when you don't jump to obey. Thank goodness this will be the last such report from them.

The final report is very long on general handwaving but quite short on specifics; nor does it recognize the difference between recommending that something should be done and actually offering a plan how to do it (for example, developing a bioletric entry-exit screening system for all of our airports and seaports); nor does the report discriminate between suggestions that actually might improve our security -- such as checked bag and cargo screening -- and administrative or organizational changes that merely reflect the commissioners' preferences for how the org-charts should look.

For a good example of this last, one of the D grades is for Intelligence oversight reform:

The House and Senate have taken limited positive steps, including the creation of oversight subcommittees. However, the ability of the intelligence committees to perform oversight of the intelligence agencies and account for their performance is still undermined by the power of the Defense Appropriations subcommittees and Armed Services committees.

First, this clearly has nothing to do with President Bush, who has zero influence over the structure of congressional committees. Second, it's difficult to imagine a more savage catfight than that between the chairs and ranking members of various committees over the distribution of oversight power. Third, this is another "move the boxes around" type of "reform," similar to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security: in itself, shifting "oversight" of intelligence agencies from one House or Senate committee to another does absolutely nothing to improve either the intelligence itself or the analysis of it.

The commissioners have no suggestions for resolving -- indeed, do not even seem to be aware of -- the structural political barriers blocking some of their vague suggested reforms. Under new missions for CIA Director, one of only two recommendations to receive a grade of "incomplete," we read:

Reforms are underway at the CIA, especially of human intelligence operations. But their outcome is yet to be seen. If the CIA is to remain an effective arm of national power, Congress and CIA leadership need to be committed to accelerating the pace of reforms, and must address morale and personnel issues.

Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? But taking into consideration that the president and the Republicans cannot even seem to stop top CIA officials from leaking critical classified information designed to damage President Bush and thwart any attempt to reform the CIA's mission or methods -- and given the support of congressional Democrats for just such behavior -- how exactly are these "new missions" to be carried out by Porter Goss? The Democrats on the Commission missed an excellent opportunity to chastise their own party for enabling such destructive behavior.

If the commission had gotten specific here with suggestions, based upon expert evaluations from current or former directors of intelligence agencies in other countries (Mossad, MI5), exactly how the CIA could be reformed, giving such specific reforms the same sort of momentum that forced the creation of the DHS itself, that would have been helpful. But as it stands, this directive is vague to the point of vapidity, coming across as one of those "all right, then nobody gets the toy!" generic shouts by a harried parent who cannot take the time to determine which kid is actually causing the problem.

I remain unimpressed. Some recommendations are good and fairly specific: standardize secure identifications, homeland airspace defense, international broadcasting; the recommendation under that last header is clear and specific:

Budgets for international broadcasting to the Arab and Muslim world and U.S.-sponsored broadcasting hours have increased dramatically, and audience shares are growing. But we need to move beyond audience size, expose listeners to new ideas and accurate information about the U.S. and its policies, and measure the impact and influence of these ideas.

But other recommendations, especially those under the Nonproliferation and Foreign Policy subheads, are almost aggressively silly.

Maximum effort by U.S. government to secure WMD (D) Countering the greatest threat to America’s security is still not the top national security priority of the President and the Congress....

Support reform in Saudi Arabia (D)
Saudi authorities have taken initial steps but need to do much more to regulate charities and control the flow of funds to extremist groups, and to promote tolerance and moderation. A U.S.-Saudi strategic dialogue to address topics including reform and exchange programs has just started; there are no results to report....

Coalition strategy against Islamist terrorism (C)
Components of a common strategy are evident on a bilateral basis, and multilateral policies exist in some areas. But no permanent contact group of leading governments has yet been established to coordinate a coalition counterterrorism strategy.

Coalition standards for terrorist detention (F)
The U.S. has not engaged in a common coalition approach to developing standards for detention and prosecution of captured terrorists. Indeed, U.S. treatment of detainees has elicited broad criticism, and makes it harder to build the necessary alliances to cooperate effectively with partners in a global war on terror.

First, our "treatment of detainees has elicited broad criticism" based primarily upon deliberate lies and malicious slanders spread by the terrorists and their supporters themselves, which are seized upon by our supposed allies in order to thwart our aggressive response to such terrorism -- and trumpeted by news agencies eager to see the defeat of Bush and the Republican Congress.

The reason that "no permanent contact group of leading governments has yet been established to coordinate a coalition counterterrorism strategy" is that there is no agreement among Western nations how to counter terrorism in the first place: we favor forward engagement of the terrorists; the Europeans primarily want to treat terrorism as a police issue and pretend the danger is just overblown. The American president and Congress cannot compel France to take terrorism more seriously; nor can we stop Belgium and the Netherlands from treating the "rights" of terrorists as more important than securing Western democracy itself from attack.

The idea that it's up to the United States to reform Saudi Arabia is simply laughable. Were it not for the insanity of al-Qaeda and its affilliates, who lauched a series of attacks on the kingdom and have openly called for regicide and revolution, Saudi Arabia would still be allied with them... and would be doing nothing. What leverage does the Commission imagine we have over that terrorist haven wallowing in the world's largest oil reserves? Do they think our allies (and for that matter, all of the billion Moslems in the world) would possibly sit still for an American invasion of Saudi Arabia -- including conquering Mecca itself? There are some things we simply have little effect upon, Commissioners. This is one of them.

And finally, the commissioners' demand that they be allowed to determine "the top national security priority of the President and the Congress" demonstrates less of a commitment to securing the country than the feeding of an already rather colossal ego. Nobody elected any of these commissioners to run national security; that job belongs to George Bush... along with the authority to determine whether WMD proliferation or some other challenge should be the top priority of American foreign and military policy.

Besides, since every action against terrorism can be defined as preventing the proliferation of WMD to terrorists -- dead terrorists can't shoot chemical weapons against us -- this "recommendation" is really little more than generalized petulance at not being considered the chief advisory panel to the president, supplanting the cabinet, the National Security Council, and Congress.

I believe the 9/11 Commission has some good recommendations; but they are not the last word on what America needs to do to reduce (it cannot be ended) the threat from terrorist attack upon the homeland... and they certainly should not be taken as the ultimate authority on exactly how such lofty goals should be carried out. Congress and the president need to stop kow-towing to Chairman Keane and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton and actually subject the Commission reports -- including this one -- to decide which recommendations actually make sense, and which should be rejected or placed upon the back burner.

There is some worthwhile stuff in the final report of the 9/11 Commission; but they need a good editor.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 05, 2005, at the time of 02:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 02, 2005

Shāh Māt

Iran Matters , Israel Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

It's said that the oldest chess pieces ever found were pulled out of an excavation in Persia. So perhaps Iran will understand the most recent move of their sworn deadly enemy, Israel.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel carried out a successful test of its missile-interceptor system on Friday when an Arrow II missile downed an incoming rocket designed to simulate an Iranian Shahab-3, the defense ministry said.

The test, the latest in a series, came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel could not accept the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran, though he steered clear of threatening military action against the Islamic Republic.

But wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves. What does it mean, saying that Iran's "sworn, deadly enemy" is Israel? Let's jump in the Way-Back machine all the way back to a couple of weeks ago. Arnold Beichman wrote this commentary for the Washington Times:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected last August, described openly the other day why Iran needed a nuclear weapon in announcing "Israel must be wiped off the map." Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke for the Iranian government when he called for Israel's destruction. In fact, Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki told the state-run television "the comments expressed by the president are the declared and specific policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Not even in the worst days of the Cold War did anybody propose the United States or the Soviet Union be "wiped off the map." Mr. Ahmadinejad's genocidal sloganeering has been condemned by the U.N. Security Council, the State Department, both houses of Congress, French President Jacques Chirac, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the European Union, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Australia, Russia and others.

Iran has made such hysterical and chilling threats before. In 2001, the "moderate" former president of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, when he was chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council (and possibly second in power after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei), said something similar:

If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything [in Israel] while it will merely harm the Islamic world.

So it's actually quite reasonable for Israel to assume they're Target Number One in Iran's book of nations to wipe off the map when they get nuclear weapons.

But having nukes is not the same as being able to use them; and in fact the latter is not as easy as one would think. There are only a few ways to get a warhead into an enemy country:

  1. You can drive or carry it in overland; this typically requires a coterminous border. Iran-on-the-Persian-Gulf, however, is on the other side of the Middle East from Israel-on-the-Mediterranean. They are separated by about 1,000 miles as the missile flies, but more like 2,000-3,000 miles across the winding, tortuous roadways of that region of the world. Iran would either have to push north through Turkey, then down through Syria; or through a little piece of Iraq down into Kuwait, then into Saudi Arabia for a couple thousand miles to Jordan, then across Jordan into Israel; or else right through the heart of Iraq and the 150,000 Coalition troops, to Jordan, to Israel. None of these is a happy prospect.
  2. You can put it on a boat and float it to your target. In this case, however, that would entail a journey of many thousands of miles all the way around the Arabian Peninsula, through the Suez Canal, and then to an Israeli port -- which is probably very heavily guarded.
  3. You can fly it on a plane. I suspect, however, that Mosad would already know it was coming and would have cancelled all air travel that originated in Iran -- or wherever they transported the warhead to; Israel is very thorough when their existence is at stake.
  4. But the easiest of all is to put the warhead on a missile and fire it at your enemy.

From the Reuters piece linked above:

The Shahab-3, which Iran says has a range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), is seen by Israel as the main weapon which would be used to target its territory.

Clearly, Iran has been planning on the last: the mere fact that they have been developing the Shahab 3 (and negotiating with North Korea for the advanced technology of the Taep’o-dong 2) tells us that would be preferred delivery route. But in that case, the joint US-Israeli development of the Arrow ("Khetz" in Israel) is a decisive countermove to Iran's entire nuclear program: it does to Iran what the Strategic Defense Initiative did to the Soviet Union.

The Iranian nuclear threat is dissapating even as Iran rushes to complete a nuke or two; what is the point for Iran, stuck off in a corner of the world, to develop a warhead that it cannot deliver?

In other words, checkmate, "the king is no more" -- which, as it happens, is the title of this post... in Persian.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 02, 2005, at the time of 05:24 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

November 28, 2005

Zarqawi: Planting IEDs or Pushing Up Daisies?

Iraq Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

We're still waiting for final word on whether any of the bodies found after the gunfight we discussed here more than a week ago was that of Musab Zarqawi. Last we heard, the Pentagon was testing the DNA... but we haven't heard any results.

Do any of you readers have any more recent information? A definitive answer? You'd think we would have heard one way or the other by now.

Thanks, folks!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 28, 2005, at the time of 02:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 22, 2005

Beautiful Maidens

Global War on Terrorism , Good News! , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Sachi

This past October 4th, as Ramadan began across the Middle East, Arabs were watching a the first of a thirty-episode television series titled "Al-Hour Al-Ayn," Arabic for "Beautiful Maidens" -- a reference to the 72 sloe-eyed virgins that supposedly await martyrs in Paradise. But what is significant about this series is its message:

DAMASCUS, Syria - A new television series being broadcast around the Middle East tells the story of Arabs living in residential compounds in Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who want to blow them up so they can collect their rewards in heaven - 72 beautiful virgins.

The show's message -- terrorism is giving Islam a bad name, and Muslims are suffering because of the actions of a few. [Emphasis added]

Considering the fact that the Syrian government is one of the primary terrorism-sponsoring states, this program, produced out of a studio in Damascus, is quite remarkable. But the way al-Qaeda terrorists have been operating, it was also inevitable.

The letter believed to have been writtin by Ayman Zawahiri to Musab Zaqarwi warned Zarqawi that his senseless slaughter of Moslems was alienating the militant-Islamist movement from Moslem society. This alienation appears to be spreading from country to country, a pandemic of sudden road-to-Damascus revelations in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Yemen, and many others.

Recently, Moslem societies have started openly rejecting the jihadis. The attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel (killing many members of a wedding party), the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and the Days Inn, all in Amman, Jordan, created a firestorm of rage against Zarqawi and his terrorist organization, al-Qaeda In Iraq -- and against terrorism in general. Zarqawi's own al-Khalayleh tribe in Jordan went so far as to sever all ties with him and denounce terrorism.

"If my son was a terrorist, I wouldn't hesitate to kill him," family member Mousa al-Khalayleh said during Friday's rally, claiming he spoke on behalf of the tribe. "This is the slogan raised by the tribe as of this moment."

Sunday's message was similar to one sent last year by some members of al-Zarqawi's clan to [King] Abdullah [of Jordan]. That message, which contained fewer signatories, severed links with the terrorist for claiming a failed plot in April 2004 that targeted the Amman headquarters of Jordan's intelligence agency, the prime minister's office and the U.S. Embassy.

The reactions of the terrorists and their supporters to the Syrian-produced television show being broadcast on a Saudi satellite station are likewise predictable and tiresome. A Saudi entertainment Journalist, interviewed on CNN today (sorry no link), said that actors were "receiving death threats."

The critics are demanding the Saudi-owned and Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, a popular Arabic satellite television station that bought the show and broadcasts it across the region, cancel it.

Others lambasted its Syrian Muslim director and producer, Najdat Anzour, as an infidel for tarnishing the image of Islam. But still others have praised the groundbreaking series.

But after a daily dose of such death threats for years now, how threatening can such threats still be?

During Ramadan, devout Moslems fast during the day; but that means they stay home at night, gorge themselves on food, and watch TV. Many new television series debut during Ramadan, then repeat throughout the year. Millions of Arab families have already watched the series. The anti-terrorism program is being broadcast throughout the Moslem countries of the Middle East via satellite and is also being broadcast on local television in Syria and Lebanon.

I'm sure that as months pass, the memory of the Jordanian hotel bombings will fade (as the memory of 9/11 has faded for many here in America). Then many Arabs will lose some of their hatred of terrorists, especially if the jihadis refrain from attacking Moslem targets. But every time something like this happens, a few million more Moslems cross the Rubicon, finally and permanently rejecting the whole "holy war" model for the bombings and killings.

At some point, the Islamists will be on the run and without friends and safety, even in Riyadh, Damascus, and Baghdad; the civilized world will have won the global war on terrorism.

A few months ago, I (Sachi) watched a documentary about Saudi TV news. In it, a producer talking with his staff members said "terrorism is evil." A young staffer responded, "that is your opinion." The producer snapped back: "No! that is the truth!"

Truth indeed. Militant Islamism is not only the enemy of the entire free world; it has foolishly made itself an enemy to Moslems as well. The sooner the Moslem world figures this out and loudly rejects the jihad message, the better this world will be for everyone.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 22, 2005, at the time of 10:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 17, 2005

Filibuster Against PATRIOTism?

Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

That's the implication from a bipartisan group of six senators who are so upset that we keep paying more attention to protecting the American people against terrorism than we do to protecting the sacred civil liberties of terrorists that they now threaten to "block" legislation making parts of the USA PATRIOT Act permanent and extending the rest for seven years. I don't know what else they could mean by blocking legislation, unless they plan to undertake the poor-man's filibuster: making amendment after frivolous amendment to try to delay the debate.

Either way, it makes those advocating surrender in the war on terrorism (see below) look particularly oafish: they're saying we should drop the military attacks on terrorism and focus on law enforcement at precisely the same time other Democrats (and even some moderate Republicans) are demanding that we drop many of the provisions that allow law enforcement officers to successfully prosecute terrorism in the first place!

(We discussed the reauthorization legislation here: Still PATRIOTic After All These Years and Maybe Not So PATRIOTic After All.)

The six senators are Larry Craig (R-ID), John Sununu (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Ken Salazar (D-CO). Sununu, Murkowsi, and Salazar were not yet in the Senate when the original PATRIOT Act was enacted in October 2001. Of those senators who were, Craig and Durbin voted in favor of it, while Feingold voted against it. Evidently, Craig and Durbin now believe the war is over, we've won (or perhaps lost), thus there is little reason allowing the act to continue. At least, that is what I deduce from today's threat.

I think I should lie down: my brain is starting to reel from all the political epicycles on this one. It seems pretty straightforward to me: there are still bad guys desperately trying to infiltrate America so they can set off bombs in a Galleria, or perhaps in a middle school; and the major subpoena and wiretap powers granted to terrorism investigations by the Patriot Act, the part lefties whine about, were already allowed when investigating drug gangs, the Mafia, and foreign spies.

This should be a no-brainer: nobody has shown any violation of civil liberties from use of this act; the Patriot Act should simply be made permanent, all of it. Yet evidently, simplicity is not a virtue to these complex and nuanced senators. And shame on the three Republicans for aping the Left's habit of attacking the president instead of arguing their case before the Ameican people.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 17, 2005, at the time of 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 15, 2005

The Killer Arg

Iraq Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Apologies in advance; I can only post my own speculation and opinion here, sans any supportive links. You just gotta take my word for it!

On this increasingly infantile argument by the Democrats that "Bush lied us into the war" because he said Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and we supposedly "failed to find any WMD" -- the killer argument here doesn't even need evidence.

Every explosive in Saddam Hussein's arsenal was a "weapon of mass destruction." Every artillery shell, every rocket, every missile of whatever range; each could be used -- and had been used in the past -- to butcher masses of innocent people. I don't know who first said it, but it's again so obvious it needs no specific citation: Hussein was himself a weapon of mass destruction.

So we thought it was "two minutes to midnight" when we attacked him, and it turned out to be maybe twenty minutes to midnight. He wasn't as far along as we thought in developing the really nasty stuff... chemical weapons, biological weapons, nukes. So the hell what? How does this affect the moral question?

Ramsey Clark, former LBJ attorney general and current pain-in-the-neck traitor to the United States, makes the absurd argument that when America fights a war, and the casualty ratio is lopsidedly in our favor, that constittutes a war crime; we have to suffer and bleed just as much as the enemy, or we're morally guilty. Take my word for it; this is pretty much the definitional example of being "stuck on stupid," in Lt. Gen. Russel Honore's memorable phrase. I prefer the tack taken by Gen. George S. Patton, in the words of Francis Ford Copolla's screenplay to the movie Patton: "No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Broaden it out: it means you take your advantages where you find them. We had no obligation to wait until Hussein was just about to deploy Anthrax and VX rockets, just so we didn't have too great an advantage. The morality of a war isn't determined by how many casualties you suffer: the war is either righteous or it is wrong; it is either worth the risk or it is not; and we have a moral obligation to our soldiers to reduce the risk as far as we possibly can... yes, even by attacking before politely giving the enemy time to kill more American soldiers.

So long as we labored under the delusion that nobody was targeting the United States especially, we could get away with ignoring Hussein: he shot at our planes, we took out his fire-control radar.

But 9/11 changed everything. It became as obvious as the smirk on Howard Dean's lips that we were targetted, that Osama bin Laden was deadly serious when he publicly declared war on us some years ago. And that meant the rules had changed: by the basic law of war, we had the right to defend ourselves, including taking pre-emptive action (which Iraq was not, by the way) against allies of our enemy who posed a specific and credible threat to America or her interests.

The existence of WMDs was irrelevant to the larger moral question; it was just a way to explain the situation to people at the U.N. who don't understand moral arguments, having long since abandoned the belief in right and wrong. What mattered was the intent... and even the Democrats (even today!) admit that Hussein intended to develop any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon he could. No "lie," no "manipulation," no trick: Hussein had the intent and the means, he had the al-Qaeda contacts and the hatred, he was rolling in petrodollars, and "his brain was squirming like a toad."

Maybe he hid them; maybe he was just trying to develop them. Who the hell cares?

Saddam Hussein became a dead man walking the moment the second plane plowed into the second tower. He should have picked better friends.

He could no longer be coddled; he could no longer be tolerated; like John Dillinger, he was too wild to live. We had a moral obligation to America and to the rest of the free world to take the bastard out. Since we're humane folks, we decided to invade and put our own troops at risk, rather than bomb Iraq into rubble and then bounce the rubble, killing hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent civilians. But that was just us being nice.

We suddenly realized Hussein posed an existential threat to the America we grew up in... therefore, after we took care of the Taliban, we moved his name to the top of the list. We attacked at the end of March 2003, and he was ousted a few weeks later.

All else is dicta.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 15, 2005, at the time of 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 10, 2005

Mosquitos Trapped in Amber

History , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Sachi

We already know that the Moslem immigrants in France were not allowed to assimilate into the French society. But it is not so well known that the French children of Moslem immigrants are still ensnared in government housing projects, echoing in France what happened for decades in the United States. They are mosquitos trapped in amber, struggling against the sticky sap that binds them in place.

The projects were built in the 1960's as a part of modern urban planning. At first, poor working-class Frenchmen and immigrants lived side by side. As the French economy improved, job opportunities soon opened up for the native French; but for a variety of reasons, they were not equally open to the immigrants, especially Moslems from North and Central Africa.

A home-buying program of the 1980s allowed most of the native French to move out of the projects; but without jobs, few Moslems qualified. Soon they were left behind; with no jobs, no future, and (most important) no sense of being part of society, many Moslem youths turned to crime, probably for the same reason disaffected and alienated youth do here: impulse, boredom, bad example, and a deep feeling of "apartness."

The police instituted a crackdown in the projects in 1983; that police reaction led to a riot. This is very similar to what is happening today across much of france: rootless young Moslems, alienated from a society they have seen only via interaction with police, riot in response to a crackdown on real crimes.

"There's nothing to do, and frustrations have added up until in the end it has become like a bomb that they carry inside," said Azzouz Camen, 44, at a small snack bar he owns between the neighborhood's apartment blocks and a gleaming new mosque.

Most of us have the impression that the inaction of the spineless French police has greatly contributed to the crime surge in the region. However, the residents see just the opposite, overly aggressive police tactics, as the real cause. Both could be true simultaneously, as France lurches from crackdown to appeasement. From this angle, it's hard to see who is more right.

It really doesn't matter anyway; today's rioters don't care whether their lifelong belief about the crackdown was accurate then or now... they believe it, and it drives their actions. You can't argue someone out of his basic belief system. Especially when, like the French, you don't have any basic beliefs of your own.

The riot of twenty-two years ago was put down very heavy-handedly... and I think it became a part of the mythology of the current rioters as they grew up: they would hear much about the supposed gallantry of the protesters and the (still evident) brutality of the French police, and that would alienate them even more from the society inside of which they live.

Nothing permanent came from that riot in 1983:

[Harlem] Désir emerged as a leader from that unrest and helped organize a march for equal rights that started in the immigrant neighborhoods outside Lyon and ended in Paris.

The press dubbed it the March of the Beurs, using the immigrants' slang word for Arab, and France's left-leaning intelligentsia embraced the cause, seeing in it an echo of the United States' civil rights movement. President François Mitterrand received some of the marchers at Élysée Palace and euphoria swept through the country's children of immigrants. They had stood up and been heard.

However, the government response to the problem turned out to be merely cosmetic with no substance. They repainted projects and assigned a few social workers to "help" youths. But they did nothing to assimilate the immigrants into the general population.

As things grew steadily worse, crime in and from the projects grew. An effort by the last Socialist administration helped improve things a bit by putting police officers on the beat in the neighborhoods and providing money to create jobs for young residents. But both programs ended after Jacques Chirac became president [in 1995].

His tough interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, replaced the police on the beat with officers from an anti-crime brigade who cover several towns at a time. Their aggressive tactics have won almost universal scorn in the projects and created an air of hostility that has precipitated the current violence.

Chirac's response to this problem was to keep the immigrants in the projects and lock the door. Assimilation is farthest from his mind. His tactics reminds of a Japanese saying: "put a lid on a smelly pot." All the while Moslem jihadis were recruiting potential terrorists in the projects.

France has been ignoring the probelm for too long. If you cut some segments of the population off from the rest of the society, tragedy is inevitable. They should have known this would happen. This is not to excuse the rioters, just to note that when you light a fuse, you shouldn't wonder that a bomb explodes.

Many people in the world have the wrong impression that the United States suffers from an unusually high rate of racial discrimination. I always tell people from other countries that you hear about our racial problems only because we are willing to face them. We heard nothing about the racial tension growing in Europe, but that does not mean there was none; it only meant they never had guts to face the reality.

If you ignore reality long enough, it will bite you in the face like a swarm of hungry mosquitos bursting free of their amber prisons. Well, Europe, are you ready to face the reality now?

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 10, 2005, at the time of 04:18 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

November 08, 2005

With Friends Like These...

Media Madness , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Reading about the arrests of seventeen terrorist suspects in Australia -- suspects who appeared on the verge of executing massive bombings of the train system there until Prime Minister John Howard pushed sweeping anti-terrorism detention and investigation laws through parliament and used them to break up the plot -- I was struck by the concluding sentence of the AP story.

After discussing the plot and the arrests, Mike Corder's story ends on the familiar-to-the-point-of-satire dodge of the terrorism apologists:

Opponents say Howard's strong support for the U.S.-led strikes on Iraq and decision to send troops there and to Afghanistan have made it inevitable Australia will be attacked.

I find this claim increasingly surreal... given this, the other big international story of the last two weeks!

The French must be thinking, With friends like these....

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 08, 2005, at the time of 02:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 06, 2005

French Postcards

Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

The headline is scary -- Police Find Bomb-Making Factory in Paris -- but the guts of the article tell us that both more and less than meet the eye are going on in France.

First, the bad news: clearly, the riot is getting more organized, more violent, and of course, spreading far beyong the flashpoint of Clichy-sous-Bois. The rioters are no longer just rampaging Moslem youths; they are rampaging Moslems with an organized plan and a goal: to be "let alone," which is to say, to be allowed to create a sharia-based "bantustan" in the heart of Western Europe, where they and they alone are the law.

The good news is that the "bombs" they're talking about are Molotov Cocktails, and the makers were juveniles... just relatively organized juveniles. But what they are not is as important as what they are: the fact that they're still using improvised incendiaries (it's easy to make a Molotov Cocktail), rather than an explosive ordnance like a modified mine or artillery shell, shows that the order in these riots arises out of chaos, not out of an international terrorist organiztion like al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. Clearly, some Moslem immigrants in France are members of one or both of these organizations, but the unsophisticated nature of the weapons this "factory" was manufacturing demonstrate that it's not a jihad just yet... though it might well be an "intifada" by now.

It also shows that much of the worst violence, the gasoline bombs, may very well be a "crime of opportunity": alienated young Moslems are looking for a way to express rage and satisfy their violent tendencies, and suddenly somebody hands them the perfect means of doing so: a ready-made Molotov Cocktail. There may have been no more planning about what they would bomb and why than there is in a typical gang fight.

The third shoe, which has not yet dropped, is that if French inaction continues (I mean a lack of effective action to end the rioting), the French "intifada" may well turn into the French jihad. As we take note of what is happening in France and Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, so too are the real terrorists taking note: they see these spasms of ill-directed rage nevertheless shaking a once mighty nation to its core, and they surely will try to move in and take over, inciting terrorist acts so horrible that there would be no going back.

There is still time to avert this, but France must slap itself awake from the nightmare of apathy and hostility to Western virtues. Little Nemo must awaken from Slumberland. France stands at a crossroads, and the rest of us stand alongside her; we don't know which way the coin will land because it's still spinning... but very quickly, we shall know whether it's heads -- or tails.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 06, 2005, at the time of 07:37 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

Fightin' Room With a (New) View

Iraq Matters , Media Madness , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Scott at Power Line has much more on the attempted attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad; their frequent correspondent Major E. has an eyewitness account, and he states that it was clearly a failed attempt at a much larger and more sinister operation than merely setting off some bombs:

The number of terrorists involved and the follow-on small arms attacks make it clear that the overall goal was to use suicide vehicle bombs to breach the security perimeter, then take over the hotel and hold the international guests as hostages. Instead, they failed to achieve those objectives and the attackers were killed.

(SmallTownVeteran is also on top of this story.)

Yes, this wasn't just a failed terrorist attack: it was an attempt to pull off another Beslan Massacre, except instead of children, the hostages would be a bunch of journalists (no jokes, please).

Major E. has a truly insightful pair of paragraphs about the dilemma the Commander-in-Chief faces trying to get more public support for the war (emphasis mine):

Many Americans seem to know the bad news from last year, but not the good news from last week. While I am glad that the public knows that many gave life and limb for Fallujah, I am saddened that so few know the incredibly positive result of that sacrifice. There is so much good happening in Iraq in terms of rebuilding the society and offering the people the priceless opportunity of freedom and democracy, yet so little of the good is being reported in the media. I hope those reading this will make the connection between the sacrifice of the troops and the ever-expanding freedom of the Iraqi people.

Every American deserves to know that the sacrifice made on the streets of Fallujah by US servicemembers last year is what made possible last week the jubilant dancing of Iraqis waving their ink-stained fingers after they had cast the first vote of their lives. The Iraqi people know and appreciate what we have done for them, and I hope that the American people will come to know it more and more as well.

All this by way of introduction to my next post....

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 07:37 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

NOW Will Ya Gimmie Some Fightin' Room?

Iraq Matters , Media Madness , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Uh oh, Zarqawi's in for it now. The mainstream media thirsts for his blood.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Suicide bombers including one in a cement truck packed with explosives launched a dramatic attack Monday against the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, sending up a giant cloud of smoke and debris over central Baghdad. American troops and journalists escaped without serious injury but at least a half-dozen passers-by were killed....

The cement truck was the last of three vehicles trying to break through the wall outside the hotel. The first car drove up to the wall and exploded, blasting out a section of the concrete. According to the U.S. military, the second car was headed for the fresh breach in the wall but exploded near the 14th Ramadan Mosque when it was engaged by civilian security forces.

Within minutes, the truck made it through the breach but apparently became stuck on a road between the Palestine and the neighboring Sheraton hotel. The truck rocked back and forth and then blew up after a U.S. soldier opened fire on it. Had the truck traveled 20 or 30 yards farther and blown up at the hotel entrance, it could have killed many people inside the Palestine.

So after "a U.S. soldier" saved the lives of countless precious and vital journalists in the Palestine Hotel, do you think they'll start cutting the troops some slack on the endlessly manufactured torture/murder/stealing-Iraqi-oil stories? Or will this be another case of "no good deed goes unpunished?"

For some perverse reason, I'm fascinated by the description of the journalists inside the hotel:

There was minor damage to the hotel, which was last hit in an insurgent rocket attack on Oct. 7, 2004. Moments before the second blast, journalists, photographers and technicians were walking up and down hazy corridors in a state of confusion, urging each other to remain calm, put on flak jackets, and to stay away from windows. Thicker clouds of smoke filled the far end of one hallway, with many people coughing and waving their hands.

The second explosion shook the building momentarily. Confusion and panic again set in, with those inside debating whether to exit, but all eventually deciding to stay in the corridor and sit propped against walls, most in flak jackets. Sounds resembling gunshots could be heard outside.

Strips of floorboards were strewn about and air vents were blown in.

"The impact pushed us forward in our chairs," he said.

He noted that the journalists at the Palestine often can hear the distant blast of other attacks. "But I've never felt blasts as strong or as loud as the ones Monday," [AP journalist Thomas] Wagner said.

Did I misread? Is Wagner actually shocked that blasts right next to his location are louder and stronger than distant blasts? All right; so now he knows what the soldiers and Marines must go through every day. What will he do with that information? Will it change how he and his cohorts report the war?

Our newfound allies will surely fight like demons, swinging their cameras and flinging 3/4-inch tape cassettes at future terrorists.

"These appalling attacks are fresh reminders of the myriad dangerous [sic] facing those who continue to report from Iraq," [the Committee to Protect Journalists] Executive Director Ann Cooper said....

"By attacking the Hotel Palestine, which is commonly known to be home to many foreign journalists, those behind this cowardly attack sought to deliberately target the Western media," the press freedom organization [Reporters Without Borders] stated.

We may have entered uncharted waters here: this could be the very first time the press has condemned a suicide bombing in Iraq. The world is topsy-turvy.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 25, 2005, at the time of 02:53 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 22, 2005

Zarqawi's Golden Parachute

Iraq Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

Am I the only one who thinks like this? I hope not....

AP is carrying an item titled U.S.: Zarqawi's Terror Network Growing. The first thing that pops into the reader's head, of course, is that US officials are claiming that there are now more terrorists, that we're losing the war (I'm certain that was just the idea they intended to convey). The article claims no such thing, however, only that Musab Zarqawi is expanding his influence and contacts into other terrorist groups in other countries.

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence officials say Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has expanded his terrorism campaign in Iraq to extremists in two dozen terror groups scattered across almost 40 countries, creating a network that rivals Osama bin Laden's....

In figures not made public before, counterterrorism officials say that Zarqawi's network of contacts has grown dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and now includes associates in nearly 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe.

Those Muslim extremists are members of at least 24 groups, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to much smaller organizations in Indonesia.

Since this is the Associated Press, there is the obligatory swipe at President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, albeit subtlely:

He also is helped, said one U.S. intelligence official, by the fact that there is not a large, constant American military presence in Anbar, but rather pockets of forces that are bolstered during operations. Iraq's largely Shiite security forces do not want to go to the Sunni-dominated area, either.

Translation: an anonymous "intelligence official" says We're losing! We're history, man! Bush should have sent in a million soldiers, like we have argued all along -- except for the time we were arguing he shouldn't have gone in at all!

Naturally, those interviewed in the article, when they express an opinion at all, opine that this means his strength is growing.

In interviews, U.S. government officials said the threat to U.S. interests from al-Zarqawi compared with that from bin Laden, whom al-Zarqawi pledged his loyalty to one year ago....

Al-Zarqawi is now seen as the top general who is putting in place al-Qaida's long campaign to establish an Islamic society throughout the Middle East, with Iraq at its heart....

The persistence of their attacks and subsequent media exposure have made al-Zarqawi the public face of al-Qaida and the broader insurgency. He has become so central to al-Qaida's operations that some evidence suggests he is providing money to bin Laden.

But I have own theory, probably idiosyncratic: I think Zarqawi is setting up bolt holes, international affiliations to whom he can flee when he inevitably has to bug out of Iraq... just as Osama bin Laden and his cronies fled to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan when they were booted from Sudan. I suspect that Zarwawi, a streetwise thug who has murdered his way to being capo di tutti capos of the biggest mob in the Arab Middle East, sees the noose tightening around his neck, and he is preparing to escape to some other country... probably simply abandoning all his followers in Iraq except for his closest cadre.

But then, I always was an optimist. We shall soon see.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 22, 2005, at the time of 01:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The 800 Pound Gorelick

Able Danger for the Masses , Terrorism Intelligence , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

I'm quite reluctant to run with this, considering the source -- actually, considering both the original and the reporting sources! -- but what the heck. Consider yourselves duly cautioned: objects in the mirror may be farther than they appear.

Newsmax.com alleges that Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) now alleges that the staffer who actually blocked the 9/11 Commission from hearing testimony about Able Danger was none other than Dieter Snell, one of the chief investigating lawyers on the commission and a former prosecutor of Ramzi Yousef for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- and that Snell, according to Weldon, was "the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick." It's this last part that is a new claim, a supposed direct connection between Snell and Gorelick... and that is the part I cannot independently verify.

(I am guessing this is why Captain Ed has not yet commented on this: he is waiting for some verification of the central claim.)

It has been known for some time that it was Snell who did not pass along Navy Captain Scott Philpot's testimony to the commission; for example, consider these two postings on National Review Online's blog the Corner, two posts the same day (August 20th, 2005) by Andrew McCarthy:

This is a troublesome story, we don’t know all the facts, and I happen to know and be fond of Dieter Snell--the Commission staffer who did the interview of the naval intel officer [Scott Philpot] -- so if Snell found him unpersuasive, that carries a lot of weight with me. ("WANT TO REPHRASE THAT?," at 4:52 am)

As I've noted with respect to the former, we don't know enough about what happened, and the fact that someone as able as commission staffer Dieter Snell appears to have rejected the naval officer's information gives me cause for pause. ("THE POINT IS TRAINING AND FOCUS, NOT ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY," at 10:45 am)

But Weldon now claims that Dietrich Dieter Snell was "the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick." Alas, I cannot find any definitive evidence that Snell was specifically working for Gorelick, as opposed simply to being the lead investigative staffer (or one of the leads) for the commission as a whole. Also, I'm not sure how much weight to give this even if true: I can't find any connection between Gorelick and Snell prior to the 9/11 Commission. If that is correct, then the mere fact that he was appointed her staffer -- if he actually was, that is -- wouldn't mean he would necessarily collaborate with her on some deep conspiracy to keep Able Danger out of the public eye in order to hide the damage caused by what I called "Jamie Gorelick's wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement" back on Captain's Quarters.

Until I see much stronger evidence of some prior connection between Snell and Gorelick than the mere fact that he was an investigator on the commission that she (and many others) sat on, I'm not going to believe in a conspiracy arising between the two... despite the fact that Rep. Weldon has been right more often than wrong on this issue.

Commenters with knowledge of this specific question -- the actual connection, if any, between Snell and Gorelick -- are urged to share.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 22, 2005, at the time of 11:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 25, 2005

Israel Drops the Other Shoe

Israel Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

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

September 24, 2005

Israel Raises the Pot In Gaza

Israel Matters , Terrorist Attacks
Hatched by Dafydd

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 05:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

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