Jules Crittenden, Boston Herald city editor and columnist blogs this morning:

It will be interesting after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon ... not to mention last summer's hijacking of the nation by Hezbollah ... not to mention last year's assassination of Rafik Hariri ... not to mention the last 25 years of Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon and now in Iraq ... it will be interesting to see if anyone will still counsel talks with Syria and Iran under any terms that do not include a very real threat of force.

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel was the fifth assassination of an anti-Syrian politician in Lebanon, and was meant to be the sixth--Michel Pharaon, a Greek Catholic member of the ruling coalition and minister for parliamentary affairs--was meant to be the fifth, but the hit at his office in Lebanon just hours before the Gemayel assassination failed. The goal of targeting Gemayel and Pharon is clear. If both assassinations were successful, less than two-thirds of the 24-member Lebanese cabinet would remain following the now suspicious resignations of six pro-Syrian/pro-Iranian (five Shiite, 1 Christian) ministers last week.

The combination of the Gemayel assassination and the earlier resignations means that the government is effectively frozen, unable to enact any new legislation. If the attempted assassination of Pharaon had been successful, a future assassination attempt against any other minister is successful, or another minister resigns, Article 69 of the Lebanese constitution stipulates that the government is automatically resigned. It is likely a fair assumption that the assassination attempts on Gemayel (successful) and Pharaon (unsuccessful) were conducted with the express intent of toppling the pro-western Fuad Sinora government, which is then quite likely to be replaced by a pro-Syrian, Hezbollah-controlled regime. It is, as Michael Totten noted yesterday, nothing less than a coup d'etat in progress.

President Bush condemned the Gemayel murder as an act of terrorism and accused Syria and Iran of attempting to undermine Lebanon's government, but stopped short of accusing them of Gemayel's murder, presumably because of the current lack of evidence of direct Syrian and/or Iranian involvement.

But, considering the facts that we already know about Iranian and Syrian involvement in supporting terrorism in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere, do we really need any more proof to justify taking action against both nations?

As I've been noting with increased sense of urgency over the past week or so, Syria and Iran must be made accountable in some way for their continued state sponsorship of terrorism. Currently, that support is most precipitous in Lebanon where they are supporting what appears to be a coup attempt, and with their support of terrorists operating directly against U.S. and Iraqi government forces inside Iraq.

Obviously, political pressure would be the preferred manner of dealing with both nations, but thus far, both nations have shown themselves to be adamantly unmoved by U.S. entreaties to stay out of affairs in Lebanon, and Iraq.

Syria and Iran were both warned weeks ago to avoid involving themselves in an attempt to topple the government in Lebanon; Gamayel's murder and the attempt on Pharaon's life were their answer.

Iran and Syria have played a direct role in supporting the terrorist group Hezbollah with $300 million in cash and their rearming, providing up to 30,000 rockets to levels even greater than Hezbollah had before the recent conflict they instigated against Israel by kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

In addition to attempting to topple the government of Lebanon, Iran and Syria have been behind efforts to cause instability in Iraq, permitting terrorists to use their borders to infiltrate in with pre-rigged IEDs that are used to target U.S. and British servicemen.

According to Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards was urging Hezbollah to train Iraqi insurgents on how to build and use shaped-charge IEDs to target American armored vehicles. Woodward states (via NRO):

Pages 414-415: "Some evidence indicated that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah was training insurgents to build and use the shaped IED's, at the urging of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That kind of action was arguably an act of war by Iran against the United States. If we start putting out everything we know about these things, Zelikow felt, the administration might well start a fire it couldn't put out..."

Page 449: "The components and the training for (the IEDs) had more and more clearly been traced to Iran, one of the most troubling turns in the war."

Page 474ß: "The radical Revolutionary Guards Corps had asked Hizbollah, the terrorist organization, to conduct some of the training of Iraqis to use the EFPs, according to U.S. Intelligence. If all this were put out publicly, it might start a fire that no one could put out...Second, if it were true, it meant that Iranians were killing American soldiers — an act of war..."

And from the same National Review column:

It's not the first time we have had information about Iran's murder of Americans. Louis Freeh tells us that the same thing happened following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. On page 18 of Freeh's My FBI he reports that Saudi Ambassador Bandar told Freeh "we have the goods," pointing "ineluctably towad Iran." The culprits were the same as in Iraq: Hezbollah, under direction from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. And then there was a confession from outgoing Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani to Crown Prince Abdullah (at the time, effectively the Saudi king): page 19: "the Khobar attack had been planned and carried out with the knowledge of the Iranian supreme ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei."

As Freeh puts it, "this had been an act of war against the United States of America."

Whether or not the President acknowledges it, a state of war exists between the United States and the governments of Iran and Syria. The question before us now is whether or not we chose to acknowledge this state of war that our adversaries have instigated, and if we will take the steps needed end this state of conflict with a minimal loss of life on all sides.

Any response we make—political, economic or military—may trigger a renewed rocket assault on Israel by Hezbollah, and a dramatic surge in violence against U.S. and Iraqi government forces in Iraq by Shia militias loyal to Iran. This is in addition to direct counterstrikes that the Syrian and Iranian military may have preplanned against U.S. forces and allied nations throughout the Middle East. Such actions would likely include Iranian attempts to target and destroy refineries, oil pumping stations, ports, and pipelines and oil rigs in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf Nations, in addition to an attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz to shipping, thereby paralyzing many of the world's economies dependent on the free flow of Persian Gulf oil.

Therefore, the best and only option available to the United States and allied nations threatened by Iran and Syria is an overwhelming series of air strikes that will cripple these ability of these two nations to project military power both directly and indirectly, along with the explicit message that further measures taken by Iran and Syria to effect changes through the use of terrorism or through conventional warfare will result in far more debilitating attacks that would wreck the economies of these nations and threaten the very existence of their regimes.

The "biggest sticks" in the Iranian arsenal are two-fold; their ability to influence terrorists in Iraq and in Lebanon, and their purported ability to close the Persian Gulf to shipping via military means. Syria has much more limited capabilities.

Very little can be done to directly stop Syrian and Iranian contributions to terrorism, but as Syria is something of a client state of Iran, our best opportunity may be to take on the "head of the snake;" where Iran leads, Syria will likely follow, and Iran is in a far more precipitous position than they would have us believe.

As Global Security notes, Iran's primary means of affecting Persian Gulf Shipping is their smallest and most obsolete branch of service, the Iranian Navy:

Iran's three destroyers are over 50 years old and are not operational. The readiness of the three 25-year-old frigates is almost non-existent, and the two 30-year-old corvettes do not have sophisticated weapons. Ten of 20 missile-equipped fast attack craft have limited operational readiness, and four of them are not seaworthy as of 2001. Only 10 Chinese-made Thodor-class craft are operationally reliable. The four 30-year-old minesweepers are obsolete, lack seaworthiness, and do not have a mine-sweeping capability. Iran has many amphibious and auxiliary ships, but these are superfluous to requirements and are used purely for training personnel. Iran's ten hovercraft are old and used sparingly.

Iran's greatest naval threats are Chinese-made high-speed C-14 and similar missile gunboats, three Russian-designed Kilo-class submarines, and island and platform-mounted anti-ship missile batteries.

It would take comparatively little effort or tactical risk for American Air Force and Naval aircraft to send the ships, small craft and submarines of the Iranian Navy to the bottom of the Persian Gulf, with Iranian forces on platforms and on small Iranian-controlled islands being slightly more difficult.

The destruction of Iran's nominal Persian Gulf fleet would be a crushing psychological blow to both Iran and Syria, and it would greatly reduce Iran's capability to threaten Persian Gulf shipping, a factor that to date has let Iran support terrorism as the rest of the world has turned a blind eye.

What would possibly keep Iran or their proxies from retaliating is a threat issued concurrent to U.S. air strikes on the Iranian navy:

You've seen what we have done to your navy. How long with your government last if we decide to target your refineries and blockade any ship attempting to deliver refined petroleum products to Iran? Stop supporting terrorism in Iraq and Lebanon, or these further steps will be taken.

One of Iran's dirty little secrets is this: for a nation rich in oil, they are very poor in their ability to convert this oil into usable fuel.

The threat issued would state that if Iran attempts to retaliate, either directly or indirectly to the reduction of their Navy, further air strikes could decimate their very limited refinery capability, while a blockade in the Gulf of Oman of Iran-bound tankers carrying refined fuels would cause Iran to "dry up" within weeks. IranÂ’s military and their economy would be crippled with comparatively little effort on the part of the United States Navy, which could enforce a blockade well outside the range of Iranian countermeasures.

Iran has already begun a war with the United States and seeks to wage it via proxies in Iraq and Lebanon. It is time that we reduce the threat of Hezbollah and Shiite militias to ourselves and our allies by cutting them off at the knees.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:10 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Even death does not stop people from converting:

Shahin of the Tucson Islamic Center said more than 1,200 Muslims died in the World Trade Center catastrophe, and no genuine member of Islam would do such a thing.

So, almost half of those killed in New York on 9/11 were Muslims? Neat trick, since Muslims are just 0.6% of the U.S. population.

Oh, and Omar Shahin, the idiot that uttered this? He was one of the six imams booted from a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last night.

Praise be to Allah.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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As you probably already know by now, the political story of the day is that another Lebanese politician has been assassinated.

LebanonÂ’s industry minister Pierre Gemayel was driving in Jdeideh when he was boxed in by two cars. the first slammed on its brakes causing Gemayel to crash into it, while the second car pinned Gemayla's vehicle from behind. Gunmen fired a minimum of 14 shots.

Like Rafik Hariri who was assassinated in a car bombing on February 14, 2005, Pierre Gemayel was anti-Syrian.

Reaction:

Wael Abu Faour, an anti-Syrian lawmaker, told Al-Jazeera, "We directly accuse the Syrian regime of assassinating Gemayel and hold (Syrian) President Bashar Assad responsible for this assassination ... aimed at sending Lebanon into a civil war."

In an interview with CNN, Saad Hariri, Rafik's son and leader of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, implicitly blamed Damascus, saying, "We believe the hand of Syria is all over the place." He said Gemayel was "a friend, a brother to all of us" and appeared to break down after saying: "we will bring justice to all those who killed him."

Gemayel's death came hours before a deadline for the U.N. Security Council to approve a letter endorsing an agreement with Lebanon to create a tribunal to prosecute Rafik Hariri's suspected killers.

It is suspected that top officials in the Syrian government, perhaps even Syrian dictator Bashar Assad himself, may be implicated in ordering Hariri's 2005 murder.

While any assassination of an anti-Syrian politician in Lebanon is suspicious, the timing of the Gemayel murder is incredibly explosive, and perhaps that was the intention.

In addition to the implicit warning the assassination sends to those who would endorse the U.N. tribunal, the murder comes just days before planned Hezbollah protests aimed at toppling the Lebanese government. The government could also be toppled with the death or resignation of one more minister of the Lebanese cabinet. As Michael Totten notes, "Looks like the coup d'etat is in progress." Indeed, an attempt was made on the life of Michel Pharaon, the minister of state from parliamentary affairs just hours before Gemayel's murder.

The U.S government had only recently accused Syria and Iran of plotting to overthrow the Lebanese government, and a U.S. State Department official, Nicholas Burns, stated, "We will give full support to the Saniora government in the days and weeks ahead."

This begs the question: what kind of support does the United States have to offer a Lebanese government on the brink of collapse?

Note: As always, Allahpundit provides the roundup.

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And thus is the human cost of hatred.

A joint U.S. Iraqi raid into the Sadr City slums of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army led to a firefight between coalition forces and Mahdi Army militiamen. The fighting was intense enough that an air strike was called in on a building from which the militiamen were firing, leading to the deaths of this boy's younger brother and two others, the wounding of 15, and the capture of 7 militiamen, one of which is believed to have taken part in the kidnapping of a still-missing American soldier.

The Mahdi Army is one of the most active factions in the on-going sectarian violence in Baghdad, responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of hundreds (if not thousands) of Iraqi Sunnis. The militiamen--likely his own relatives considering the fact that Iraqis tend to live in family compounds--attempted to use his home as a bunker. Of course, that doesn't matter to this child. He only knows that his baby brother is dead.

It's easy to sling blame around.

He and the rest of his family will likely grow up hating the United States and the Iraqi government troops that participated in this raid. It is highly unlikely that they will acknowledge their own far greater culpability.

Their neighborhood was raided because coalition forces were acting on intelligence that kidnappers and murderous thugs lived there, and these same thugs--perhaps his own father, brothers, uncles, or cousins--likely kidnapped, tortured and murdered fellow Iraqis, and then were daft enough to try to fight coalition forces from a home with children inside. While U.S. air support pulled the trigger on the munitions that killed his brother, the militiamen in their midst, firing at U.S. and Iraqi forces, caused that trigger to be pulled. They can add their own young relative to their body count. They will not stop for a second to think about the fact that they have likely caused the same trauma in loss in Sunni families just blocks or miles away.

Compounding the loss and magnifying the lessons unlearned are fellow Shiites like legislator Saleh Al-Ukailli.

"I am suspending my membership in parliament since it remains silent about crimes such as this against the Iraqi people," legislator Saleh Al-Ukailli told reporters outside the Imam Ali Hospital. "I will not return to parliament until the occupation troops leave the country."

Al-Ukailli is one of 30 legislators in Iraq's 275-member parliament who follow Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose main offices are in Sadr City.

Al-Ukailli could care less about "crimes... against the Iraqi people."

Like far too many Sadr loyalists in the Iraqi government, he seems to harbor no concerns about the crimes his fellow Shia perpetrate, and only professes outrage once they are forced to account for their own depravity. Left to their own devices, such men would continue to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of Sunnis and Kurds, as long as it suits his purpose. I have little doubt that men such as Al-Ukailli turn a blind eye when Sunni children have their fathers and brothers slaughtered. They are democratically elected, but still do not understand democracy, nor freedom, nor compromise.

* * *

And so here in America, over broadband networks in climate-controlled comfort, in a far more stable environment, we still carp over why we went to war, and when we should leave, and whether or not the cost we are paying as a nation is too high. We see things all too often through our own warped prisms, playing politics as children die.

"We caused this! Out of Iraq NOW!"

This is the cry I hear from many, every day, from both the political left which feels we never should have been there, and from moderates and many of those on the right who now feel our continued presence is a mistake. Our costs--1.7 lives a day--are too much for our mercilessly civilized post-modern sensibilities.

And yet we know the ugly secret, don't we?

We know that for every tragic loss of an American soldier, sailor, airman or marine in Iraq, Iraqi soldiers, policemen, and civilians pay a far higher price. We know that comparatively, our costs are few.

In a nation under severe internal strife, brave men in Iraq still show up at recruiting stations to become policemen and soldiers. They have nowhere to return to, nowhere to run, and have a simple choice; become a victor, or become a victim. In Ramadi, the capital of the al-Anbar province and long a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists, the Sahawa, or the Awakening, has come. Sunni tribesmen formerly allied with the insurgency are swelling police ranks, capturing and killing foreign terrorists and native-born anti-Iraqi forces alike. In Ramadi, it appears the Iraqis have shed enough blood to appreciate and crave both stability and freedom. It is slow going, but progress is being made day by day.

Will we eventually see that same yearning for stability, freedom, and peace in a far more complex Baghdad? History tells us that all wars eventually end as a matter of will or a matter of eradication. One side must either be utterly destroyed, or its will to fight must be. This is equally true in both conventional and asymmetrical warfare, one of which the U.S. military has won convincingly in Iraq, and the other, which must eventually be won or lost by the Iraqi people themselves.

The purpose of U.S. forces in Iraq is not to conclusively defeat the various anti-Iraqi factions, but to provide training and material support to Iraqi government forces so that they can win the war. At the same time, we seek to destabilize anti-Iraqi forces and help to provide an environment where political and social change can take root, as we are now seeing in Ramadi and elsewhere.

Our military does not need to "go big" in Iraq, but it does need to "go long," one of the things the Bush Administration has called correctly. We do not need more troops, but we need to utilize the soldiers we do have to train Iraqi forces and provide support for them as necessary in "the long war" to stamp out the insurgency by breaking the enemy's will to fight over time.

Part of that support will be engaging in raids that will on occasion lead to civilian deaths, especially when these civilians harbor anti-Iraqi forces of various stripes. If we don't mature enough to accept the fact that some innocents die in war, then the abandonment policy favored by some will certainly lead to far more civilian deaths through a far more violent civil war and a potential genocide. You can pay a blood debt of comparatively few lives now by continuing the mission, or set the stage for an even bloodier Iraqi future by withdrawing.

This is a cold, hard fact that few on the left will address or even admit. War is cruel by nature, but to abandon an ally while the conflict rages would be the cruelest atrocity of all.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:23 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Deja vu, all over again:

Six passengers were removed from a departing flight Monday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and were taken for questioning by police, an airport spokesman said.

The passengers were boarding US Airways Flight 300, bound for Phoenix, around 6:30 p.m. when crew members "saw suspicious activity" by the men and called airport police, said the spokesman, Pat Hogan. Police escorted the men off the plane and took them to be questioned, he said.

A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, said Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. Police were called after the men refused requests by the captain and airport security workers to leave the plane.

The crew described the men as Middle Eastern in appearance, Hogan said, though he didn't immediately know where they were from.

This came just days after Sisayehiticha Dinssa was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with $79,000 in cash and a computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide. He was also traveling to Phoenix.

What might all these suspicious characters be headed for Phoenix?

Old habits die hard.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:13 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Interestingly enough, unemployed Latin American studies professors are a big part of the leftist base in this country, as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The furor and continued non-apology over John Kerry's "stuck in Iraq" comment have just subsided, and now New York Democrat Charles Rangel attempts to leverage an equally insulting draft recommendation in an attempt to raise an anti-war cry, using a call for compulsory service in the U.S. military as a wedge issue:

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) has long advocated returning to the draft, but his efforts drew little attention during the 12 years that House Democrats were in the minority. Starting in January, however, he will chair the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Yesterday he said "you bet your life" he will renew his drive for a draft.

"I will be introducing that bill as soon as we start the new session," Rangel said on CBS's "Face the Nation." He portrayed the draft, suspended since 1973, as a means of spreading military obligations more equitably and prompting political leaders to think twice before starting wars.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," said Rangel, a Korean War veteran. "If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft."

Lets be very, very clear: Charles Rangel doesn't give a damn about the "equitably" of service in our nation's military, which to date, is over-represented by soldiers who are more rural, wealthy, and better educated than their peers. He instead clings to often disproven lies that the military is disproportionately made up of minorities and the poor.

Rangel willingly lies, but lies with a purpose.

What doubtlessly disappoints Mr. Rangel is that though Americans do not support the direction of the War in Iraq (as was evidenced in the recent election), they have refused to engage in the massive protests and demonstrations that were key to the anti-war campaign during the Vietnam era. Rangel's primary goal in his call to reinstate the draft is to gin up protests like those of 30 years ago.

Rangel's tactics are particularly loathsome in that he seeks to use our all-volunteer military as the whipping boy for his anti-war politics. He would attempt to pit draft-age Americans and their family members against those who honorably joined the military of their own volition.

I have nothing but contempt for Rangel's transparent demagoguery. He does not wish to strengthen America's proud all-volunteer military, but instead seeks to lessen its will, against its wishes, and against its needs.

Rangel's call to reinstate the draft is cynical, unwanted, and like Kerry's comments before, a back-handed slap at those who serve our nation of their own free will.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:25 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
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It appears Jules Crittenden agrees with the general theory I wrote about Friday in Another Direction , where I advocated making Iran and Syria "feel the pain" for being active state sponsors of terrorism. Crittenden writes:

An erroneous assumption has been made by the Iranians and by many in the west that because our ground forces are hyper-extended in Iraq, and Iranian nuke facilities are buried deep, there is nothing the United States can do about an Iranian nuclear program. This is not true. There is no need to invade or occupy Iran. We do not want to do that. We would prefer to see the Iranian people's desire for free elections honored, but that doesn't appear likely any time soon.

What we have to do to influence Iran is explain that if Iran does not begin to cooperate with the international community, we will substantially isolate Iran and destroy its means of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. This can be done incrementally, to give the Iranians an opportunity to reconsider their policy. Our Navy, not hyper-extended in Iraq, can blockade their ports. Our Air Force, also not hyper-extended in Iraq, can begin reducing their terrorist-support infrastructure. Things like oil fields, refineries and roads leading toward Syria and suspected nuclear sites. This can continue ... pretty much as long as the Iranians want it too.

While I didn't specify it, it was primarily U.S. Air Force and Naval air power I had in mind when I advocated the reduction of Iran's naval and marine forces. Single strikes with precision munitions could destroy their few corvettes and frigates (their three destroyers are so useless they aren't worth wasting bombs on), and their remaining fleet, which is composed of patrol boats and number small craft, would be easily destroyed with cluster munitions. Only their small marine outposts near the Straits of Hormuz may require SpecOps insertions, and that is purely speculative. Air power alone may suffice.

The other targets, the oil fields, refineries, roads, and nuclear sites, are clearly air power targets that Iran is nearly defenseless against, even with the purchase of the low-to-medium altitude TOR-1 SAMs from Russia.

I've said it before and I will say it again and again because it bears repeating: terrorism will only be supported by states for as long as they see it as a cost-effective way to achieve their foreign policy goals. When the cost of supporting terrorism becomes too high, the state support of terrorism will cease or be greatly curtailed, making it far more difficult for terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza to survive.

Update: I missed this earlier, but even the L.A. Times is getting on the bomb Iran bandwagon:

If Tehran establishes dominance in the region, then the battlefield might move to Southeast Asia or Africa or even parts of Europe, as the mullahs would try to extend their sway over other Muslim peoples. In the end, we would no doubt win, but how long this contest might last and what toll it might take are anyone's guess.

The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force. Not by invading Iran as we did Iraq, but by an air campaign against Tehran's nuclear facilities. We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets. If we hit a large fraction of them in a bombing campaign that might last from a few days to a couple of weeks, we would inflict severe damage. This would not end Iran's weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.

What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy yet would come before Iran will have a bomb in hand (and also before our own presidential campaign). In time, if Tehran persisted, we might have to do it again.

Can President Bush take such action after being humiliated in the congressional elections and with the Iraq war having grown so unpopular? Bush has said that history's judgment on his conduct of the war against terror is more important than the polls. If Ahmadinejad gets his finger on a nuclear trigger, everything Bush has done will be rendered hollow. We will be a lot less safe than we were when Bush took office.

Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.

After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs — the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin — and rejected the idea.

The costs were avoided, and instead the world was subjected to the greatest man-made calamities ever. Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II. Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.

Are we beginning to detect a theme, folks? Iran will not comply with economic or political pressure, and so the remaining option is military in nature, and that military option is best expresses in an air power war again key Iranian targets.

One thing that these men are leaving out, however, is what may happen as a result of air strikes targeting Iran's nuclear facilities and other infrastructure sites.

Critics of such an attack would point out that as a result, Hezbollah and Hamas would like begin another intense rocket campaign on Israel.

I think this is entirely correct, and entirely beside the point.

Despite all the bluster over Hezbollah's last war with Israel earlier this year, Israel suffered very few casualties. I think the figure was just 157 deaths, most of them soldiers, in Lebanon. In opposition, Hezbollah lost as many as half of their armed fighters in southern Lebanon, and their infrastructure was wrecked. Hamas and Hezbollah can indeed launch attacks, but the retaliatory strikes from Israel will certainly cause more damage.

More troubling is the thought that an attack on Iran may trigger and Iranian ground invasion of Iraq. Iran has a military of more than 300,000, most of then conscripts, and they have long-range rockets that may cause significant Iraqi civilian casualties.

That said, any Iranian ground invasion of Iraq would be suicidal for the Iranian troops involved. They have no air cover to speak of, and the invasion would result in a larger scale repeat of 1991's Highway of Death as they are decimated by U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy bombers. Such a crushing loss could hurt the mullahcracy, and so even as fanatical as they are, they would most likely not go this route. Iran wages asymmetrical terrorist campaign precisely to avoid the crushing losses their over-hyped military would take on a modern battlefield.

It increasingly appears that our best option for lasting peace in Iraq and the wider Middle East is a conventional air campaign to reduce Iran's asymmetrical warfare capabilities.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:12 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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John Donovan at Argghhh! reposts an email from a Captain in Iraq that understands what it takes to win the war in Iraq (I highly suggest reading the post in its entirety):

Massive firepower brought down on any transgressor is the answer. Sometimes you need to use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut if you want people to pay attention and learn the correct lessons in life. If an IED blows up outside someones house and the homeowners tell you that they don't know anything about, bulldoze the house and salt the ground. After you do that two or three times, Iraqis will shoot the terrorists themselves to protect their homes. I realize that this may not be totally in keeping with some people's concept of "the American way of war", but if we are in it to win it, we need to take all the steps required to totally destroy the terrorists ability to make war on us and turn the population against them. Right now, because of our kid glove approach, there is no threat to the average Iraqi that helps the terrorists or turns a blind eye. We have to make it painful to the point that the Iraqi people say, "These Americans are serious about winning and they won't stop until they have won."

This comment indirectly highlights a current failure of the Bush Administration that I've heard elsewhere; the President has been trying to win in Iraq without committing to really fighting a war.

Let our soldiers use their massive advantages in firepower, training, and communications to take the fight to the enemy. Quit trying to fight a "nice" war. Such weakness does not result in a victory; to win a war the other side must realize that they cannot hope to win. It should go without saying, but if the other side doesn't feel defeated, then it isn't be defeated. Enable our soldiers to rely on their training and instincts and remove the overly cumbersome rules of engagement that restrict our soldiers to the point they are fighting a defensive war.

Towards that same end, and picking up where I left off in the previous post, Syria and Iran need to be made to feel the pain for their continued state support of terrorism.

Countries like Iran and Syria support terrorism because the see it as a cost-effective way of projecting foreign policy. We have the capability—economic, political, and military—to make this support extremely counter-productive.

In Syria's case, Assad's regime is particularly vulnerable to economic and political, particularly is Iran is dealt with first.

Iran, with much more strategic importance and a larger and more modern military, is a tough nut to crack, but indeed, one that can be cracked. Orson Scott Card makes a good suggestion when he mentions taking our Iran's capability to threaten Persian Gulf shipping.

The five ships operating in Iran's Navy—two corvettes and three frigates—are obsolete and barely functional, and are almost only symbolic in value. The 69 patrol craft making up the rest of their fleet stationed at six naval bases are highly vulnerable to air attack. Considering that the Persian Gulf is extremely shallow (averaging a depth of just 50 meters), their few submarines, which only have mine-laying (no torpedo or cruise missile) capability are also little more than targets.

Other Iranian facilities, including naval and marine forces stations at small Iranian-held islands and abandoned oil platforms along international sea lanes, could also be quickly overwhelmed or destroyed.

Break Iran's ability to influence or control the flow of shipping in the Persian Gulf, and you've essentially removed Iran's greatest political bargaining chip outside of their fledgling nuclear program.

Declare to Iran and the world that the destruction of their ersatz fleet was consistent with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter and in direct response to Iran's supplying the Medhi Army with Iranian-made munitions used to attack U.S forces in Iraq.

Remind Iran that continued support of Shia insurgencies in Iraq would be grounds for further attacks on more vulnerable targets, including Iran's nuclear program.

Iran is far more vulnerable and fragile than it's blustery rhetoric supposes, and it seems time to remind them that the continued support of terrorism does not come without an intolerably high price, and one that we are willing to make them pay.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:36 PM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
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Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester has a warning posted at TCS Daily:

Iraq is dangerous. Progress is measured in weeks and inches, not minutes and miles. It is weakly governed when governed at all. But to leave too early will be to compound these seemingly intractable attributes with the most deadly of sins: a failure of willpower. The world will know that when Iraq becomes the next Taliban-like state, or the next Rwanda, that it was only because the United States, the most able, powerful, and wealthy nation in the history of the world, gave up. If that disturbs you, imagine how much it delights our adversaries.

One can only hope that the moderate Democrats that panned Nancy Pelosi's choice of John Murtha yesterday in favor of Steny Hoyer are listening.

The Pelosi/Rangel/Levin/Kucinich wing of the Democratic Party has proven to be incredibly short-sighted, still thinking of the Iraq War as a tool to bludgeon President Bush and the Republican Party. They patently ignore the expected increased civilian deaths and possible genocide their short-sighted policy of withdrawal promise for the near-term, and the political damage that a retreat from Iraq would cause to the United States for decades to come.

Quite frankly, I'd opine that they care more about beating Bush than what is best for this nation, or for Iraq.

I challenge liberals, in all good faith, to explain how a near-term withdrawal from Iraq before the nation is stabilized will accomplish:

• Making Iraq safe for Iraqis;
• Anything other than convincing Islamists that terrorism is the best way to effect their will;
• Anything other than making all nations around the world consider the United States to be a fickle, unreliable ally

Please, step up and tell us how abandoning Iraq will be seen as anything other than "open season" to Sunni terrorist and insurgents, and Shiite militias and criminal gangs. Iraq is bad now, so what effect do you think that removing the 140,000 best trained and equipped soldiers in the country will have, other than an marked increase in chaos and bloodshed? For a liberal left that claims to care so much about the plight of people in third world regions, they seem all to willing to sell the Iraqi people down the river to genocide.

Please, tell us why the terrorists that overwhelming cheered for Democratic victories in the mid-terms should view a withdrawal from Iraq as anything other than a validation of their tactics and assumptions of how to best to conquer the world.

Iran is watching. Syria is watching. Hezbollah and Hamas are watching, as are dozens of other terrorists groups, as well as every nation in the world. What other message could they possibly receive from a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, other than that a fierce depravity is the best way to ensure they get what they desire?

No, now is not a time to withdraw. It is a time to explain the stakes of this war to the American people, and rededicate this nation to winning the War in Iraq as one part of the overall War on Terror.

There can be no lasting peace through withdrawal.

Update: Via Instapundit, Investor's Business Daily has similar thoughts.

Update: via Hot Air, Democrat Orson Scott Card lays it out on the line:

The only issue that matters is still the War on Terror. Everybody talks about changing direction in Iraq. I agree. But I doubt they mean the same thing I do.

The only ways to change direction in Iraq are to give up and go home – a militarily stupid and morally indefensible move – or to go to the source of the insurgents' supply and cut it off.

Throughout this election season I have been hoping that President Bush had a bold military move against Iran up his sleeve, and that the only reason he was holding off was that he didn't want it to be perceived as an attempt to influence the election – or because he feared it would influence the election negatively.

Well, the election is over. Will he take the necessary military action to wipe out Iran's capability to disrupt the flow of oil in the Gulf? This would remove any credible threat from Iran (for the moment, at least), making it clear to both Iran and Syria that the way is now open for the US to take whatever action is necessary to stop their support of both terrorism and the subset of terrorism called "the Iraq insurgency."

The way to save the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq is to get regime change in Iran and Syria.

Let's hope his fellow Democrats follow his advice.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:00 AM | Comments (48) | Add Comment
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SS/DD.

So much for Darwin's "survivial of the fittest."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Despite my general dislike of CNN, I've got to hand it to them; they really got this perfect, both photo and headline.

Nancy's steaming, Murtha's pouting, and Hoyer's preening. Oh what a fun Congress this promises to be.

I somehow doubt that any of us outside the Beltway fully understand what kind of damage Nancy Pelosi has done to her credibility within the Democrat ranks over the past few days. She may find a way to earn that trust back, but I suspect it won't come easy.

As others have noted (h/t Hot Air), Pelosi's lobbying for Murtha against Hoyer seemed from the outset to be a very petty and personal vendetta that might alienate many of the moderate Democrats that just won power two weeks ago.

With the final vote for Majority Leader coming out 149-86 in Hoyer's favor, we seem to be witnessing a potential fragmentation of the Democratic Party. The liberal leadership which now firmly holds the Speaker's post and seems primed to take over the majority of the key committee assignments is ideologically at odds with an incoming group of Congressional freshman that on average, are far more moderate in their views.

Update: Denial:

And don't shed any tears for Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi. Even though her guy lost, this was still a big win for her. A victory for taking a stand -- and for her leadership. Because that's what real leaders do, they take stands. They listen to their hearts and follow their gut. If you only jump into the fights you're sure you can win -- notches in the W column that will look good on your political resume -- you're a hack, not someone who can move the party and the country forward. It's not about trying to have a spotless record; it's about knowing which battles are worth fighting, whatever the outcome.

It bodes well for Pelosi that was willing to spend her political capital right off the bat -- especially on the issue that will define her time at the helm. Far too many modern politicians save their political capital until it's lost all its value.

Arianna? Pelosi's already running a deficit.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:44 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
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Rumors have long swirled that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was involved the 444-day Iran hostage crisis, with no less than five hostages coming forward to accuse him publicly of being one of the ringleaders. Other former hostages have said they were uncertain if Ahmadinejad was involved, while others deny his presence.

From time to time the story reemerges with a new twist, and this time that twist was provided by Russian online daily Kommersant, which ran an English-language article with accompanying pictures that seem to show a young Ahmadinejad leaning against the wall of the American embassy in Tehran the day it was stormed.

Texas Rainmaker is convinced that the man in the photo is Ahmadinejad, while Daniel Pipes isn't sure, and Allah flatly says it isn't the Iranian president.

Who's right?

I decided to see if I could get a professional to weigh in on the controversy, and so I sent a short email to several forensic photographers and biometrics experts asking their opinions, based upon the version of side-by-side comparison photo provided at Hot Air.

Certified Forensic Photographer Alexander Jason responded. His verdict?

With the one 1979 photo alone for comparison, it is not possible to make a strong conclusion about that man being the same man in the later photo. However, based upon an analysis of the 1979 photo and other, recent photos of Ahmadinejad, it is my preliminary conclusion that these are NOT the same person.

Some time ago, I was asked by a governmental group to perform an analysis of similar old and new photos. I still had a collection of the recent photos and I used some of them for my analysis.

While there are substantial similarities in the faces and hairlines, it is possible to have such similarities among different people, particularly when they are from a relatively homogenous racial population. The only significant difference I could detect was in the beard grown pattern: Specifically in the area beneath the lower lip. In the older photo, the man appears to have a dense, full beard in that area. In more recent photos of Ahmadinejad, he appears to have relatively sparse beard growth in that area. For that reason, based on the one old photo when compared against more recent photos, it is my opinion that they are two different people.

See the attached image.

Mr. Jason's well-trained eye caught what most of us would have missed. The armed man leaning against the embassy wall in November of 1979 has much more facial hair in the chin area than does Ahmadinejad in the present day photograph. And just in case anyone wants to speculate that Ahmadinejad could have suffered from male pattern chin baldness over time, Mr. Jason has that covered as well.

We may never know who the man with the battle rifle leaning against the U.S. embassy wall in 1979 was, but based upon the photo provided by Kommersant and Mr. Jason's analysis, that man is not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

* * *

On an unrelated note, Mr. Jason also has an interesting perspective on the JFK assassination.

Who says those working in forensics can't have a sense of humor?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:02 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Ralph Peters penned a powerful editorial in this morning's New York Post advocating that the strongest measures be taken to impose order in Iraq, even if that order goes against the wishes of Iraq's elected government and comes at the barrel of a gun:

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating daily, sending more troops would simply offer our enemies more targets - unless we decided to use our soldiers and Marines for the primary purpose for which they exist: To fight.

Of course, we've made a decisive shift in our behavior difficult. After empowering a sectarian regime before imposing order in the streets, we would have to defy an elected government. Leading voices in the Baghdad regime - starting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki - would demand that we halt any serious effort to defeat Shia militias and eliminate their death squads.

[snip]

From the Iraqi perspective, we're of less and less relevance. They're sure we'll leave. And every faction is determined to do as much damage as possible to the other before we go. Our troops have become human shields for our enemies.

To master Iraq now - if it could be done - we'd have to fight every faction except the Kurds. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to kill mass murderers and cold-blooded executioners on the spot?

[snip]

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.

We're not really the enemy of the terrorists, militiamen and insurgents. We're their enablers. In the end, the future of Iraq will be determined by its people. The question is, which people?

While Peters discusses Iraq specifically, much of what he says—particularly of our fantasy of a "universal code of behavior" and our enablement of terrorists—can be more or less directly applied to the budding nuclear terrorist state of Iran.

Iran has already developed long-range missiles that can reach Israel and most of Western Europe, and they are in the process of developing ICBMs capable of hitting the United States. Iran is also in the possession of MIRV warheads to sit atop these missiles designed to deliver a nuclear payload.

At the same time as they refine the technology to deliver nuclear warheads, the Iranian leadership has clearly and repeatedly threatened the existence of Israel, and has indeed stated that they are more than willing to accept a retaliatory nuclear strike if it means eliminating the Jewish state, as Ron Rosenbaum recounts this morning at Pajamas Media:

Back in 2002 I initiated a major controversy among Jewish writers by daring to mention the possibility of a “second Holocaust”—-the destruction of the State of Israel, most likely through a nuclear exchange. I quoted Iranian mullah Hashemi Rasfanjani declaring that Iran would not be particularly upset to lose 10 or 15 million people in a nuclear exchange with Israel if it resulted in the extermination of 5 million Jews there and left a billion or more Muslims alive. Basically he was saying that there was no deterrence. Many didn’t want to face this, think the unthinkable and whined that one shouldn’t say such things aloud, one shouldn’t think so pessimistically, foolishly boasting of the Israeli nuclear deterrent Rasfanjani’s stance made irrelevant. (You can read about this controversy in the anthology of essays on anti-semitism I edited, Those Who Forget the Past).

Alas a Second Holocaust is now virtually Iranian state policy.(although their leader denies the firs tone). Today Drudge links to a report that Iran’s nuclear program is nearly complete. And to a speech by Bibi Netanyahu in Los Angeles in which he says “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany”. He then adds the despairing “No one cared then. No one cares now.”

The problem is that even if the world did care, it might not make a difference.

Despite repeated threats against Israel's very survival in specific and that of the rest of the world in general, Iran has been allowed to push through with their nation's nuclear program without any serious attempts by the world community to stop them.

Have we, as a world community, decided that the state of Israel and the more than 6 million Jews, Christians, and Arabs who live there and the almost 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are superfluous? Judging by the anemic actions of the world community, I think Rosenbuam's suggestion that the world—including the government of the United States—does not care that Iran seems to have every intention of attempting to "wipe Israel off the map" is entirely correct.

Certainly, we will all feel really bad when Iran carries through with it's threat, but that sentiment will do very little for the 15-20 million people that will have died in the coming nuclear exchange while we stood by watching, unbelieving that the Iranians would do precisely what they told us they would.

Have we chosen to abandon them to this fate? Have we already forgotten in such a few generations that we stood solemly amid the blood and ashes and swore "Never again?"

Let's rewrite one of the Peter's paragraphs above:

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis Israelis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq Iran (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.

We're not really the enemy of the terrorists, militiamen and insurgents. We're their enablers. In the end, the future of Iraq the world will be determined by its people. The question is, which people?

Which people, indeed.

Does a mullahcracy intent on exterminating more than six million people (along with 10-15 million of their own citizens as a result of Israel's dying retaliatory strike) get to choose the future of this world through nuclear genocide? Or do we make the difficult and deadly decision to end the mullacracyÂ’s reign, crushing their nuclear aspirations and their leadership before they can carry out their intentions?

Our choice of genocides is amazingly simple: we either wipe out Iran's apocalyptic Hojjatieh mullacracy (perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of lives) and their budding nuclear weapons capability and delivery systems, or we will watch on as horror as our inaction leads to the fiery deaths of tens of millions, including 6 million Jews, 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and 10-15 million Iranians.

Rosenbaum is wrong when he says that we might not make a difference. We clearly can make a difference, but much to our shame, I fear that we will choose not to.

Note: More here.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:37 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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1 Let me get this straight. One of the leading arguments for not reducing troop levels in Iraq is that it would increase violence. Another is that it would look like an admission of failure on Bush's part. And now Peters is suggesting that the only "sane" (for some value of sanity) option is to basically re-invade a country we already occupy, overthrow the government WE PUT INTO PLACE IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY, and start executing people like Pol friggin' Pot. Remember the purple fingers? Those fingers are now flipping us the bird. And Ralph Peters wants to kill them for it.

Posted by: legion at November 15, 2006 12:54 PM (3eWKF)

2 "...tens of thousands of lives... or tens of millions..." While I agree with the premise (we must crush Iran now, or else) I think the above is the equivalent of any moral equivalence I've seen anywhere. In a proper morality, the lives of the enemy are not compared in cost-benefit analysis of the lives of our own citizens or military personnel. If we had to kill 10,000,000 enemies to save one US soldier, morally we ought to do it. Anything else is a decision to kill US soldiers for the sake of the enemy, which is treason. I do not know if it's possible to crush Iran's mullocracy, nuclear program, and means to re-estabish either, without a massive (or nuclear) strike at this point. If not, then we had better strike them before they strike us.

Posted by: Bearster at November 15, 2006 03:09 PM (YyTqJ)

3 If we had to kill 10,000,000 enemies to save one US soldier, morally we ought to do it. You, sir, are a filthy, amoral bastard. And you have no idea what the word 'moral' means.

Posted by: legion at November 15, 2006 04:42 PM (3eWKF)

4 Legion: You've slung personal attacks, but failed to make any argument at all.

Posted by: Bearster at November 15, 2006 05:11 PM (YyTqJ)

5 Aside from the moral argument, there is also a practical one. By use of "surgical strikes" to remove a dictator and his top staff, we allow the population to preserve the culture that created the dictatorship, and which would re-create it if we didn't occupy it (as in Iraq). One reason why Germany and Japan did not revert to their previous behavior is that we crushed their will. Broken, utterly defeated, humiliated, with no way to convince themselves that their old behavior "worked", they were ready to make a change.

Posted by: Bearster at November 15, 2006 05:21 PM (YyTqJ)

6 OK Bearster, here goes. Being our enemy, or being another religion, does not remove someone from the realm of humanity. Dehumanizing and demonizing the enemy can make it easier for troops about to go into direct conflict to fight, but when those tactics are used on civilians back home, it cheapens the value of all life. You say: In a proper morality, the lives of the enemy are not compared in cost-benefit analysis of the lives of our own citizens or military personnel. If we had to kill 10,000,000 enemies to save one US soldier, morally we ought to do it. That's not a 'proper morality', Bearster. It's evil. Especially when you have other options besides killng those 10M. I don't think it's a good solution to the situation in Iraq, but if we brought every one of our soldiers home tomorrow, no more would die there. Iraq isn't realistically capable of threatening the US or anyone else, and won't be for decades. Why isn't that a viable option? Yet you seriously propose a nuclear strike on Iran, something that would kill millions of people, as the most viable option. And rather than even making the limp effort of something like 'you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet' to defend the deaths of the countless innocent civilians such an act would cause, you go fully into genocide mode - as though any conflict between our culture and another is entirely the fault of the 'others' and their inherently inferior culture. One reason why Germany and Japan did not revert to their previous behavior is that we crushed their will. Broken, utterly defeated, humiliated, with no way to convince themselves that their old behavior "worked", they were ready to make a change. And if you actually believe that, you are not merely arrogantly amoral, you're also a complete raving idiot. I pity you, and I fear for the future of both America and the entire human race.

Posted by: legion at November 15, 2006 06:11 PM (3eWKF)

7 Bearster-- I'm not sure about Germany, but another big reason Japan was unable to revert is because it was written into their constitution that it's illegal for their SDF (self defense force) to deploy. They had to re-write a part of their constitution recently to allow a unit to deploy to Iraq for humanitarian missions. Being crushed and humiliated is a perfect breeding ground for someone to step up, give a forlorn country an identity, and have another go at it. Post WWI Germany is a perfect example of this, and the apathy of her neighbors enabled it. I think the main reason that each country didn't revert (or in the case of Japan, be made into a slave colony by the rest of Asia) is because the US took a proactive role in not allowing it to happen. (Japan also didn't have any resources, and again, the rest of Asia would have happily taken their revenge on Japan, maybe making it a worker's paradise, if the US didn't establish a strong presence there.) To assume that people will come to the conclusion (as a nation) that their old behavior simply didn't work and it was time to make a change may be giving them a little too much credit. Plus behavior is inextricably linked with culture, and people aren't real big on forsaking it, particularly in Asia where tradition is so important. My 2 cents.....A little off topic, and probably totally off base, so take it for what it's worth.

Posted by: paully at November 15, 2006 06:18 PM (yJuX3)

8 That's not a 'proper morality', Bearster. That's precisely the morality calculus Truman employed in deciding to nuke Japan. An est 500,000 US military casualties against a couple of Japanese cities and thousands of civilians.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at November 15, 2006 06:54 PM (l8HpH)

9 Y'all missed my point. If there is a way to eliminate Iran's capability to wage terror war against the US through its proxies, and to eliminate its capability to develop a nuclear bomb, I am all ears. Let someone propose something feasible. I say "eliminate" because appeasement is irrational, and there is no kind of persuasion that works on people who are immune to logic. My point was that if you must wage war, then you owe a moral duty to the poor schmucks you send to fight it. You must promise them: "we will not waste your lives!" This is in addition to the moral duty to protect the lives of innocent American citizens (that's us, by the way). This means if you can save their lives--or ours--by killing more of the enemy, then you must do that. There is no number that changes this principle. It is not an equation that is "balanced". The purpose of a response is not to serve a self-defeating notion of "proportion" but to prevent them from doing it again. If one must wage war, then one must fight utterly to win, to win as swiftly as possible, and with the minimum possible cost to one's own. If one must wage war, then one must do so without hesitation, without half-actions, without partial committment, without mercy. By the very moral code Legion is espousing here, we're "successful" in Iraq. Our troops are there being sacrificed to protect the lives of Iraqis. Bush feels this is the moral way to wage war. What's wrong with it? Why not send thousands of innocent American military personnel to save tens or hundreds of thousands from death, slavery, or even from poverty?? The perverted moral code of altruism doesn't offer an argument. Meanwhile, the enemy is laughing at our moral weakness, even as they raise the ante. Iran, let's not forget, is run by an apocalytpic mass-murdering madman who has convinced me that he wouldn't mind going to paradise if he could kill us in the process. Do you disagree with this premise, or only with the implication? We could simply hope he doesn't mean it. But hope is not a plan. We could try appeasement. Maybe it will work better this time, somehow? We have one choice. We can either destroy Iran's capacity to wage war, or we can let them raise the ante with nuclear bombs. P.S. What is monstrously immoral is to have mercy for the enemy, but none for innocents. The gut-wrenching sight of people burning--or jumping--to death from the WTC will be nothing compared to nuclear bomb, or even a dirty bomb, dropped on NY. What if they do it to several cities at the same time?

Posted by: Bearster at November 15, 2006 08:47 PM (YyTqJ)

10 This is what I am hoping for. The US will continue with the moral bull as expressed in the threads so far. This will enable and encourage the terrorist or Muslims (same thing) to indeed do somehting terrible such as a nuclear device in New York or one of the other northern cities. That will trigger the economic catastrophy that has been as sure thing with the extraordinary personal and national debt we have. As some point the South will get the idea once again that we can truly be free. We can then make our bid possibly with the assistance of the Muslim world. So we really do win!!

Posted by: David Caskey at November 15, 2006 09:22 PM (6aPuF)

11 David, seriously -- up your meds.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at November 15, 2006 10:22 PM (l8HpH)

12 Iraq is a diversion. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov't erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier) and the US will invade Iran, (on behalf of Israel). Final link (before Google Books bends to gov't demands and censors the title): http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0

Posted by: 5th of November at November 16, 2006 06:32 AM (F7awS)

13 Purple, Unfortunately, I feel I have to be serious on this. It sounds like sarcasm or trying to be funny, but look at the reality of the situation. The US is like a stack of dominos. One thing that pushes us in the wrong direction and it will fall apart. So, if terrorist preformed a nuclear explosion in NY then the financal situation will begin to unravel. With the debt that all owe, this will not take much to elicit a severe depression. Now, many of us do not feel exactly "free". Several sections such as the Pacific region already desire to bust up the Union. You will argue that we are the most free nation on earth and that may be true, but if you compare our situation to that before 1860, we are basically slaves. I am one of the 10% that actually pay taxes in the US and am beginning to be very mad at local, state and federal governments wanting more. This is one small example, I could provide an endless list of ways the government infringes on us (try getting on a plane). As such, the South represents a section that has interest and goals that do not go parallel with the NE of the US that seems to constantly tell us what to do. So ultimately the South will go its own way. Moralize about the use of weapons of mass distruction all you want. If you want this country to survive as is, you better start killing and getting control of alot more Muslims. As for me, I am looking to a brighter future.

Posted by: David Caskey at November 16, 2006 09:48 AM (xxoPt)

14 My point was that if you must wage war, then you owe a moral duty to the poor schmucks you send to fight it. You must promise them: "we will not waste your lives!" This is in addition to the moral duty to protect the lives of innocent American citizens (that's us, by the way). This means if you can save their lives--or ours--by killing more of the enemy, then you must do that. There is no number that changes this principle. It is not an equation that is "balanced". OK, that's something I can agree completely with - the context of actual conflict. I can't agree with something like that as a pre-emptive or preventative move, however, and I didn't gather that focus from your earlier comments. By that standard, FWIW, I believe the atom bombs on Japan were actually justified - we were already at war & committed to victory; I don't see the same level of threat (yet) from Iran. Why is that important? Why let Iran get even closer to the brink? Because of exactly what they (and NK also) are doing now - saber rattling. Right now, we're in the process of trying things below the level of open warfare to get Iran off their current course. Yes, appeasement is pointless, but there are other tools we can use. They may not work against Iran, but I believe we are morally obligated to try them before the 'nuclear option'. The problem, with Bush's preventative war policy (and what it sounds to me lilke you're proposing) is that the _next_ country that nears nuclear capability _won't_ make any noise about it. They'll just drop it on whichever enemy they feel poses the greatest threat to them at the time. It actually makes us _more_ likely to be struck by nuclear terrorism, not less. P.S. What is monstrously immoral is to have mercy for the enemy, but none for innocents. The gut-wrenching sight of people burning--or jumping--to death from the WTC will be nothing compared to nuclear bomb, or even a dirty bomb, dropped on NY. What if they do it to several cities at the same time? You do remember, don't you, that Iraq (and IIRC Iran also) had _nothing_ to do with that attack? And that the US is doing just about nothing to locate the guy who did? And that the leading support structure for that asshat was (and possibly still is) Saudi Arabia? Just sayin'...

Posted by: legion at November 16, 2006 10:21 AM (3eWKF)

15 I strongly disagree with the estimation here for the loss of lives if Iran has a nuclear bomb. It is maybe 5% of the estimation in my circles. Imagine you were the Iranian president, and you have just been handed with the nuclear weapon. If you fire at Israel now, Israel fires back, and the whole thing is over. You are no longer the Middle East super power you have been for the past years, you loose your chance in bringing to the coming of doomsday, which the Iranian regime is with no doubt committed to, and you are just left to leak your wounds while Israel is leaking its wounds, and maybe the second half of the Jewish people of the Diaspora rejoin to educate their kids to reestablish Israel once the soil and the water are recovered, which according to the Iranian view is a very likely script, seeing that they feel it is the world's guilt over the first holocaust, that had enabled the establishment of the first Israel. It would be much more reasonable of them, in view of their agenda, to: 1. Cooperate with global spread terror groups that can take their nuclear bombs to places they either can't reach by missiles or they would prefer to use terror cells rather than missiles, because missiles would have a sender address to retaliate, while bombs activated by terror cells would not. Note that for that purpose it would be much better for them to use Sunni terror groups than Hizb-Allah for example, because the harder it is to prove the source to retaliate, the more time they are going to gain to go on with their agenda of bringing back the Imam. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume they would use whatever terror group that has the "best" proven ability to strike successfully, and maximize the ability of the nuclear bombs, by hitting major targets. 2. Strike as many incapable of retaliating targets, before they strike Israel. Once they strike Israel it would be over for them. Our stated policy is that a strike by Iran would not mean 10-15 millions deaths in Iran, but the destruction of the whole of Iran for 300 years. You can count on it being true, and Iran knows that as well. So why not start with making sure that "betrayers" in the Muslim world end their way, and that only "pure" Muslim practicing societies for the satisfaction of Allah are left to great the Imam? You would be surprised of how crucial that is on their agenda. It is not the charismatic call that can unite Muslims behind them, not like "Death to Israel", but it is not less important to them, and they have been practicing the promotion of that agenda with no less efforts than the agenda of sabotaging any chance of peace with Israel and its neighbors. Take into consideration that the very existence of Israel makes them the leaders of so many Muslims and justifies what ever they do in the eyes of their public. So they won't loose this "joker" until they are ready and have made all the arrangements for the coming of the second Imam to feet their view of how the world should look greeting it. And this brings me to another major cause of deaths the estimation you have shown does not take under consideration. Because Muslim states that are considered to be traitors in the eyes of Iran, such as Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and all of the states that have cooperated with the west, or fought Shiites in their own regimes, know exactly how serious Iran's threat to them. That's why a nuclear bomb to Iran by no means can only mean that. It with no doubt means a hysterical race towards that bomb among those countries, and then among the whole Middle East, by any regime that has oil to fund those aspirations. That means that a whole out nuclear war is no longer a question of "if" but rather a question of "when". It also means that to include only Israel's and Iran's casualties in the estimations for the loss of lives due to a nuclear Iran is in my (and others in Israel) humble opinion completely mistaken.

Posted by: an Israeli at November 16, 2006 07:19 PM (7A241)

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It's been barely a week since the 2006 midterms, and WaPo Ruth Marcus is wasting no time on judging Nancy Pelosi's leadership thus far.

Her grade for Pelosi for stating she would "lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," and then backing John "Abscam" Murtha for House majority leader?

Not Good.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:20 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Harold Meyerson has a particularly odd editorial posted this morning in the Washington Post, insisting conservatives are in denial:

On their journey through the stages of grief, conservatives don't yet seem to have gotten past denial.

Republicans may have lost, conservatives argue, but only because they misplaced their ideology. "[T]hey were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism," George F. Will, conservatism's most trenchant champion, wrote on this page last week.

Their mortal sin, in this gospel, was their abandonment of fiscal prudence.

They doffed their green eyeshades and gushed red ink. "The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending," said Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the true-blue conservative who is challenging Ohio's John Boehner for the post of House Republican leader.

Holding conservatism blameless for last week's Republican debacle may stiffen conservative spines, but the very idea is the product of mushy conservative brains unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency; that the Republican Party over the past six years moved well to the right of the American people on social, economic and foreign policy; and that on Nov. 7 the American people chose a more pragmatic course.

I bed to differ with Mr. Meyerson, on several points. First, while there are doubtlessly some conservatives in denial about why Republicans lost, it seems most of those reside inside the Beltway. From the Rove-influenced push for an ineffectual Mel Martinez to be RNC Chair, to an all-but-rigged push to install the same failed leadership into power on Capital Hill, it is the Beltway drones that seem to be in denial over why Republicans lost, not the rank and file conservatives in the rest of the country.

Denial is a stage of grief that most conservatives that I have come in contact with (either online or in person) skipped right past. In fact, most conservatives seem to have been rather pragmatic and have avoided the grief process altogether.

If you want to see an acute application of political grief for comparison, I suggest you instead look to prominent liberal personalities after the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Michael Moore was so depressed by Bush's 2004 win that he couldn't get out of bed for three days. Actor Vincent "Private Pyle" D'Onofrio "Lost his ****" and had to be treated by paramedics because of Bush's 2004 win.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, actor Alec Baldwin, former Kennedy Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and film director Robert Altman were just some of the liberal voices who were confirmed to have said they would leave the United States because of electoral results, though Salinger was the only one to follow through on his "threat."

Some liberal in past elections were so distraught over past elections that new psychological conditions were the result, with the serious Post Election Selection Trauma and satirical Bush Derangement Syndrome as a result.

No, Mr. Meyerson, most conservatives outside the Beltway were disappointed with the results of the election, but we understood why we lost.

The nation is unhappy with the way the War in Iraq is being fought. The nation is disgusted with greed in the form of pork-barrel politics symbolized by the Bridge to Nowhere, and runaway federal spending a Republican Congress and President supported. The nation was dismayed with how slowly and ineffectively the federal government reacted in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and by corruption both financial and sexual as personified by Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley. Immigration and stem cell controversies also alienated voters.

As for Meyerson's asinine statement, "that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency" I have but a simple two-word reply: Ronald Reagan.

But for all that Mr. Meyerson got wrong in his fundamental misunderstanding of the conservative mind, he did get something right when he concluded that Republicans ran a 2006 campaign "devoid of new ideas."

Hopefully, the conservative base will be able to reverse that course in elections to come.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:52 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Heads should roll.

Early on in the Lebanon war, there was a photograph published by both U.S. News and World Report and Time Magazine, which according to captions published with the picture was of a burning Israeli jet, shot down by Hezbullah missiles. The blogosphere was quick to call B.S. on the photo, and the widely-circulated story was that the photograph was actually that of a tire dump.

Well, it seems that the photographer responsible for taking the photograph, Bruno Stevens, has finally sounded off on Lightstalkers, explaining the photograph and telling the true story of how things ended up the way they did. He also notes that the site was not a tire dump, but was rather an old Lebanese Army base that had either been hit by an Israeli jet, or by a misfired Hezbullah rocket (both possibilites he appears to have recounted in his original captions). The key point that Bruno makes is that, while he sent in a fairly balanced caption to accompany the photograph, the wire services rewrote the caption completely, changing the pertinent facts surrounding the story. Where have we heard that before?

As Ace notes in his post on the subject:

That makes three representations thusfar by Time:

1) Hezbollah did not score a huge victory by shooting down an IAF jet.

2) The target was clearly legitimate.

3) Not only was this a legitimate Hezbollah target, it was parked on a Lebanese Army base, demonstrating cooperation between the Lebanese Government -- depicted as an innocent and abused third-party to this conflict by the media.

To compound the magazine's duplicity, Time refused to run a different picture that showed a Hezbollah rocket launcher disguised as a civilian truck on a Lebanese Army base.

To put it mildly, Time editors mislead their readers, and while I'm not a lawyer, this journalistic malpractice would certainly seem to meet at least a layman's understanding of fraud, if not something worse.

Why would Time do something so risky, so dishonest, so stupid?

As I wrote back in August, follow the money:

Story after story, photo after photo, dead and distraught Lebanese civilians clog the mediastream, building a false, grim montage of a war in which primarily Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians die.

This is not the whole truth of this war, but a partial truth developed through complacency and an apparent willful disregard to report the facts on the ground. Instead of seeking and publishing the entire truth, newsrooms have decided that they will publish the stories and images framed by foreign, mostly Arab Muslim reporters, even though their own cultural interests in these events are a clear and undeniable conflict of interest precluding even a pretense of unbiased reporting.

This is beyond bias, it is a reckless and willful disregard for reporting the whole truth in favor of reporting "news" that is easier to sell in a larger world media market. The casualty statistics are there, but the media sticks to the narrative they have helped create because while honest reporting is a goal, the business of the media business is business.

If it "bleeds it leads," but only if what leads sells advertising. News consumers around the world consume the news that more closely matches their perceptions of how reality should be, and stories critical of Hezbollah, stories that show their failures and deaths, don't sell in world population featuring 1.3 billion Muslims that hope for Israel's demise, or at the very best are indifferent to their fate. It is anti-Semitism by cashflow, a pocketbook jihad that buys the media's silence.

And yet, the photographer cannot be blamed here; it was the Time photo editors that made the willful decision to run a dishonest caption at odds with the description provided by the photographer, while suppressing another photo that shows apparent collusion between the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah.

This goes well beyond a mistake. Time has made the willful decision to slant, cover, and conceal news on behalf of a terrorist organization.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:12 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Yeah, not an exact quote, but pretty much on the mark:

The race to be the No. 2 House Democratic leader turned nasty Tuesday, with challenger Rep. John Murtha accusing opponents of "swift-boat style attacks" that hark back to his days being investigated in the FBI's 1980 Abscam sting.

Murtha won endorsement Monday from Nancy Pelosi, who is widely expected to be the House speaker. But Murtha is opposed by some liberals who say they are not happy with the Pennsylvania lawmaker's pro-gun and anti-abortion record. Others say Pelosi took a wrong turn in backing Murtha over her current deputy Rep. Steny Hoyer because Murtha's record is marred by ethics questions of the type Pelosi pledged to clean up in Congress.

"I am disconcerted that some are making headlines by resorting to unfounded allegations that occurred 26 years ago. I thought we were above this type of swift-boating attack. This is not how we restore integrity and civility to the United States Congress," Murtha said of the ample press coverage of his link to Abscam and more recent negotiations he made as ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee.

To date, Murtha hasn't yet accused his fellow Democrats of torpedoing his nomination "in cold blood."

Yet.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Iran can quit lying about their intent to use their nuclear program for peaceful means:

International Atomic Energy experts have found unexplained plutonium and enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran and have asked Tehran for an explanation, an IAEA report said Tuesday.

The report prepared for next week's meeting of the 35-nation IAEA also faulted Tehran for not cooperating with the agency's attempts to investigate suspicious aspects of Iran's nuclear program that have lead to fears it might be interested in developing nuclear arms. As well, the four-page paper made available to The Associated Press confirmed that Iran continues uranium enrichment experiments in defiance of the U.N. Security Council.

Plutonium is an important by-product of the fuel cycle in operating nuclear reactors, producing almost a third of a nuclear power plant's energy.

The problem? Plutonium (Pu) should not logically exist outside of nuclear power production, and Iran does not yet have that capability. Bushehr is to have Iran's first production reactor, but it is still under construction.

That would seem to indicate that either Iran is importing plutonium, or that it has an undeclared reactor, which is admittedly far less likely, but technically possible. In any event, both the plutonium and enriched uranium found at the waste site may serve to push Israel closer to mounting a pre-emptive strike against Iran, which would in turn likely re-ignite Hezbollah's rocket attacks against Israel from Lebanon, putting UNFIL's "peacekeeping" forces in the middle, precisely where Hezbollah would prefer them.

It looks like a wider war in the Middle East may be coming sooner rather than later, and I'm increasingly convinced there is very little that anyone can do to stop it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:48 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Hey, we've got our own show:

The first and only tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media. If you are currently blogging, vlogging, podcasting, producing some other form of new media content, thinking about joining the exciting industry of new media or just want to know what this whole blogging phenomena is all about then you need to be at BlogWorld.

The inaugural event will take place in Las Vegas November 8th and 9th at the Las Vegas Convention Center with an exclusive corporate only conference November 7th.

The show floor will feature an abundance of products and services designed to help bloggers and new media entrepreneurs improve the look and functionality of their blogs, increase their readership, and monetize their blog. Bloggers will find suppliers like Broadband ISP's, Web hosting companies, blog publishing software, podcasting services, RSS syndication services, new media advertising networks, news readers, aggregators, computer hardware and software, widgets, badges and plug-ins, Wi-Fi services, affiliate program partners, and much much more!

Thousands of bloggers and other geeks let loose on Sin City... what could go wrong?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Aside from this? http://patterico.com/2006/11/11/5377/lap-dancing-illegal-in-vegas/

Posted by: Ric James at November 14, 2006 11:24 AM (X4IDg)

2 The place survived Comdex for many years, it's doubtful you can do more harm.

Posted by: Jeff at November 14, 2006 11:46 AM (yiMNP)

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