The recommendations of the Iraqi Study Group have finally gone public... through a leak, of course:

Following an intense assessment of U.S. policies in the war in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group will recommend that a "gradual but meaningful" reduction of U.S. troops begin "relatively early in the New Year," a source familiar with the group's deliberations told CNN.

The language in the report -- which was compiled at the urging of Congress -- is being fine-tuned before it is presented to President Bush next week, but according to the source the work on the findings is basically done.

In the bipartisan panel's view, Bush needs to insist on implementing strict timetables for Iraqi improvements and communicate to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that there will be substantial troop reductions beginning in January.

While not providing a specific timetable for withdrawal -- which Bush opposes -- the group suggests major combat units be deployed "over time" to what the source described as "out of the bull's eye."

Cut and crawl.

Nuance, kids. Impose impotence as foreign policy.

It's worked so well so far.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:12 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Please tell me that this means he gets it:

President Bush said Tuesday he is not ready to abandon the battlefield in Iraq to sectarian insurgents whose violent attacks on innocent Iraqis are part of a broad goal to overthrow governments and send coalition forces running.

"Extremists are using terror to stop the spread of freedom. Some are Shiite extremists, others are Sunni extremists, but they represent different faces of the same threat. And if they succeed in undermining fragile democracies and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their goals," Bush said in a speech at the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia.

Insurgents "seek to convince America and our allies that we cannot defeat them and that our only hope is to withdraw and abandon an entire region to their domination," he said. "If we allow the extremists to do this, then 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act."

I can hope that President Bush means what he says here. It would mean that he does, in fact, still understand the stakes of the larger conflict beyond the borders of Iraq, but what troubles me is his reluctance to publicly admit what he already knows, which is that those most responsible for the continued support and spread of violence in Iraq is not al Qaeda, but Iran and Syria.

As I've mentioned previously, a state of war exists between the United States and the governments of Iran and Syria, and that 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.

Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial, states that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have been 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..."

This same theme was picked up by today's New York Times, which reports:

A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr.

The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria.

While they would never dare to characterize it as such, the Times article verifies what Woodward and former FBI Director Louis Freeh has already told us: we are at War with Iran.

Iran builds shaped-charge IEDS, delivers those shaped-charge IEDS to terrorists that they have created and/or trained, for use against American soldiers. Iran is quite seriously at war with the United States. Why do we refuse to acknowledge that?

Michael Ledeen notes (my bold):

Thanks to Cliff, and to Dexter Filkins for getting someone to admit, once again, that Iran and Syria are all over Iraq.

Victor says we should first stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, but that's skipping a step. It is impossible so long as the mullahs rule in Tehran and Assad commands in Damascus. It is a regional war. If we continue to misunderstand it, if we remain locked in this fundamental error of strategic vision, we will endlessly respond to our enemies' initiatives, playing defense in one place after another. Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, tomorrow in Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopea and Eritrea (that is the mullahs' game plan), then in Israel and Europe, and finally here at home. We do not need intelligence agencies to know this, all we need to do is listen to our enemies, who announce it at the top of their lungs.

There is no escape from this war, and we haven't even begun to wage it. Once we do, we will find that we've got many political and economic weapons, most of them inside our enemies' lands. I entirely agree with Victor that Iran and Syria are fragile, brittle, and anxious. They know their people hate them, and they know that revolution could erupt if we supported it.

Of course, as Victor says, our leaders may be so demoralized that we could just surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the realists and the antisemites desire. But that would only delay the reckoning, and ensure that the war will be far bloodier.

I stated in Kneecapping Snakes and other posts that the one sure way to end the state sponsorship of terrorism is to make that sponsorship extremely counterproductive for the nation/states involved. Assad in Syria and the Mullah's in Iran support terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere, because this support is a cost-effective way for them to project their foreign policy goals.

Their goals--the humiliating defeat of the United States in Iraq, the destruction of Israel, their push of nuclear weapons and increasing regional control and influence--are quite clear, but then, so is the remedy to this problem; if President Bush and allied nations admit to and treat this as a regional war.

If we limit out goals in Iran and Syria to knocking them out of the terror game and don't try to rebuild their societies from the ground up, we can do so relatively easily by crushing the ability of Iran to threaten Persian Gulf shipping and by taking out its refineries. Ironically, Iran is oil-rich, but gas-poor.

Coalition air strikes targeting the Iranian Navy, refineries, and other key targets could bring the mullacracy to it's knees within weeks, without the significant use of U.S. ground forces, and only a (relatively minor) projection of air power. A U.S. Navy blockade of Oman would keep Iran from importing the gasoline it needs to survive.

Syria, minus Iranian support, would be even easier to destabilize.

Take Syria and Iran out of the terror game, and Hezbollah begins to falter in Lebanon, giving Lebanese democracy a chance. Take Syria and Iran out of the terror game, and Israeli citizens wouldn't have to worry about Hezbollah's ability to so quickly rearm and instigate another war.

Take Syria and Iran out of the terror game, and manpower, weaponry, and funding for al Qaeda in Iraq begins to abate, as the growing number of Sunni tribes embracing the Sahawa movement hunt down and kill foreign fighters. Take Syria and Iran our out of the terror game, and Muqtada al-Sadr, the thug-leader of Shiites in the Baghdad slums, suddenly finds his Medhi Army militia without new munitions, or training, or financial support, and as his capability as a military threat fades, so does his political power.

The greatest "secret" in the War on Terror is that we have the capability of turning the strategic war around on a dime, if only our leaders will lead.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:05 PM | Comments (91) | Add Comment
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I can't say that this morning's Dafna Linzer/Thomas Ricks article Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker in the Washington Post comes as a surprise considering the overall tone of their reporting on the War in Iraq, but this article, based on an update of selectively-released elements of a previous classified report that many feel was taken out of context, seems to run counter to what many others are seeing in the same area of Iraq.

What appears to be the most easily refutable charge brought forth in the WaPo article occurs in the lede:

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

This contention, of course, seems directly challenged by the emergence of the Sahawa, or the Awakening, a movement among the major Sunni tribes of al Anbar against al Qaeda. Sunni tribes are increasingly leading the fight against al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents.

Fumento, who is on the ground in Ramadi and is reporting first-hand accounts, is buttressed by others who have or who are about to have first-hand experience in that province in Iraq.

Linzer and Ricks based their article on selectively-leaked excerpts for a classified Marine report and the words of anonymous "experts" in Washington, D.C.

Michael Fumento is there, on the ground in al-Anbar's capital of Ramadi, reporting the words of real people, by name, who are actively engaged in operations on the ground.

Given his proximity and many supporting accounts, I tend to think the Linzer/Ricks article is a fine example of reporters cherry-picking evidence to support a pre-determined outcome.

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The Chicago Tribune carries an article today by Joel Greenberg on the increasing frequency with which Palestinian militants are being shielded from Israeli strikes by the interference of Palestinian non-combatants:

On a rooftop in a crowded neighborhood here, about 30 Palestinian women sat on chairs and mattresses on a recent afternoon, serving as human shields against a possible Israeli air strike on the family home of a prominent Hamas militant.

As an Israeli drone buzzed overhead, the women were defiant.

Our technology is faith in God," said Itaf al-Masri, 47.

The scene was an example of the kind of struggle waged here in recent months between the Israeli military and the Palestinians, a battle between a high-tech army and the simpler arms and tactics of militants and their civilian supporters. The confrontation, halted by a tenuous cease-fire Sunday, was reminiscent of the challenges faced by the U.S. military in Iraq and in the past during the Vietnam War.

Gaza militants fired crude but deadly homemade rockets at Israel and dug tunnels under the border with Egypt to smuggle in arms. In one standoff with Israeli troops, Palestinian women marched to a mosque where militants were holed up and enabled them to escape. The Israelis used sophisticated surveillance technology and aircraft to hunt down rocket squads and kill militant leaders, often also hitting civilians.

Greenberg refuses to ask the question that his article begs, namely, at what point do ideologically-aligned non-combants shielding militants cease occupying the protected status of "civilian?"

In asymmetrical warfare, does the status of civilian always exist for non-militants, or should there be a new classification to account for those somewhere between active militancy and those that are truly non-participatory?

I'd opine that the Palestinian women in the Greenberg story above, by voluntarily interjecting themselves into a projected conflict area as human shields as partisans acting on behalf of Hamas militants, have surrendered their rights to be defined as "civilians." They are ideologically-aligned with terrorist organizations, but that alone does not make them loose their protected status as civilians. Nor does the fact that they are human shields remove their protected status, as human shields can be involuntary.

No, what should remove their status as "civilians" is that they have willfully interjected themselves into a conflict with the express intent of providing immediate tactical support for a terrorist group. Their purposeful decision to run interference for terrorists should not in any way prevent an Israeli military response.

Historically, Muslims have rarely recognized the existence of any civilians (thereby justifying everything from 9/11 to Israeli market bombings to the murder of Indonesian schoolgirls), and the the creation of a "targetable non-militant participant" status would help level the playing field against those dehumanists that preach on-going jihad.

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How thoughtful:

Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran.

"Deliveries of the Tor-M1 have begun. The first systems have already been delivered to Tehran," ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source as saying Friday.

The United States has pressed Russia to halt military sales to Iran, which Washington accuses of harbouring secret plans to build a nuclear weapon.

Moscow has consistently defended its weapons trade with Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the contract for 29 rocket systems, signed in December last year, was legitimate because the Tor-M1 has a purely defensive role.

ITAR-TASS reported that the rockets were to be deployed around Iran's nuclear sites, including the still incomplete, Russian-built atomic power station at Bushehr.

Isn't that nice of the Russians to deliver a short-range missile system designed to take on low to mid-level targets, knowing that we have long-range anti-radar missiles to counter them?

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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If you happen to be al Qaeda and Iran, the answer may be yes:

Iran is trying to form an unholy alliance with al-Qa'eda by grooming a new generation of leaders to take over from Osama bin Laden, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Western intelligence officials say the Iranians are determined to take advantage of bin Laden's declining health to promote senior officials who are known to be friendly to Teheran.

[snip]

The Iranians want Saif al-Adel, a 46-year-old former colonel in Egypt's special forces, to be the organisation's number three.

Al-Adel was formerly bin Laden's head of security, and was named on the FBI's 22 most wanted list after September 11 for his alleged involvement in terror attacks against US targets in Somalia and Africa in the 1990s. He has been living in a Revolutionary Guard guest house in Teheran since fleeing from Afghanistan in late 2001.

Alarm over al-Qa'eda deepened yesterday with a Foreign Office warning that the group was determined to acquire the technology to carry out a nuclear attack on the West.

A senior Foreign Office official said that the terrorists were trawling the world for the materials and know-how to mount an attack using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The Baker/SecDef nominee Gates Commission seems primed to tell us that they want to negotiate with Iran and Syria, currently the two leading state sponsors of Islamic terrorism, who in addition to supporting the insurgency in Iraq, are apparently also plotting a coup in Lebanon while rearming Hezbollah and Hamas. This new and as-yet unconfirmed report by the Telegraph now sees Iran trying to further engage al Qaeda to the point of hoping to influence its leadership.

Iran, a nation ruled by the apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect, is pursuing nuclear weapons, having already developed and/or purchased long-ranged missiles and MIRV warheads only used for delivering nuclear warheads.

al Qaeda, a major terrorist group that has already successfully struck inside the U.S once and failed on numerous other attempts, has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons since the 1990s. Is anyone on this smug commission watching where this is headed?

al Qaeda: "Hey, your nuclear weapons development got on my terrorism!"

Iran: "Your terrorism got on my nuclear weapons development!"

Both: "DEATH TO AMERICA!"

It's like a Reese's Peanutbutter Cup from Hell, and the Baker Commission is trying to tell the world that it is safe to swallow.

Sorry boys, but I'm not buying it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Matt Drudge has a typically bombastic headline running, CHINA SUB STALKS USS KITTY HAWK, which links to a Bill Gertz article in today's Washington Times that is only slightly less dramatic:

A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.

The surprise encounter highlights China's continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing's communist-ruled military.

The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations' militaries.

Disclosure of the incident comes as Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, is making his first visit to China. The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, which began over the weekend.

According to the defense officials, the Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine shadowed the Kitty Hawk undetected and surfaced within five miles of the carrier Oct. 26.

The surfaced submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight by one of the carrier group's planes.

The Kitty Hawk battle group includes an attack submarine and anti-submarine helicopters that are charged with protecting the warships from submarine attack.

According to the officials, the submarine is equipped with Russian-made wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles.

The Kitty Hawk and several other warships were deployed in ocean waters near Okinawa at the time, as part of a routine fall deployment program. The officials said Chinese submarines rarely have operated in deep water far from Chinese shores or shadowed U.S. vessels.

A Pacific Command spokesman declined to comment on the incident, saying details were classified. Pentagon spokesmen also declined to comment.

If you're looking for me to debunk this story I'm sorry to disappoint you. I simply can't, other than to quibble over the details.

A submarine that tops out at 22 knots cannot overtake or as Gertz states, "stalk" a carrier battle group that cruises somewhere between 27-32 knots. What the Chinese can do is plot a course for the battle group, and place a submarine in position in advance of it, and wait for the battle group to steam to that location, as did the German U-boat wolfpacks of World War II.

The Song was likely vectored into position by PLAN (the People's Liberation Army Navy... I know, don't ask), and waited under minimal electric power until the American battle group closed in on their position. It was an ambush, not a stalking, and considering the stealth of this breed of diesel/electrics, it is possible that if the battle group was unprepared, it could run into such an ambush, despite my earlier thoughts to the contrary left on Hot Air's post on the subject.

No, the story here is not necessarily the apparent Chinese success in a cat and mouse game that has been playing out between submarines and surface ships for decades, but the fact that this story was leaked to Gertz, and that it was leaked now. Gertz himself provides the reason for the leak:

The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations' militaries.

Disclosure of the incident comes as Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, is making his first visit to China. The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, which began over the weekend.

Move over New York Times. The Old Gray Lady may lead in publishing information that hurts U.S. interests, but the Department of Defense has been known to selectively leak on occasion, and this leak seems to have the military exchange program with the Chinese clearly in the crosshairs.

The exchange program, which dates to 2002 is said to be extremely one-sided. Chinese military officers and technicians have been invited to see U.S. military exercises and "sensitive" facilities, and China has refused to reciprocate. In addition, Admiral Fallon has restricted U.S efforts to conduct intelligence-gathering operations against China, leading us to be even more in the dark than we should be.

The Song-class submarine may have targeted Admiral Fallon's carrier group, but by leaking the story to Bill Gertz when they did, it is clearly the intention of the Department of Defense to sink Fallon and a program that they consider to be a risk to national security.

Damn the torpedoes. There's a dangerous admiral to be sunk.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The following letter was emailed to President George W. Bush at the White House this morning, asking him to rededicate America to winning the War on Terror.

Send your own comments to the President via email comments@whitehouse.gov, over the telephone at 202-456-1111, or via fax at 202-456-2461.

Dear President Bush,

"These are the times that try menÂ’s souls."

So Thomas Paine began a series of pamphlets in late 1776 called The American Crisis, and in which he continued, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot may, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

All around you lies a nation demoralized, yet not yet defeated, waiting upon your steadying hand to find a solution to the problems of modern-day Mesopotamia.

Shia, Sunni, and Kurd slaughter each other along with our soldiers in what seems to be an unending campaign of bloodshed. This war is meant to sap the spirit and soul of not just one country, but legions of the faithful of many languages and creeds, across national and international borders.

Indeed, many in this land have lost hope in the noble ideas that founded this nation, and now clamor for a retreat to our own shores from those who would strike at us here as they have in the past. These well-meaning but misguided souls seek for no more blood to be spilled, for no more lives to be lost in a brutal, grinding war that sees our national will and our thirst for peace and justice challenged.

But we are made of sterner stuff, and what they do not understand is what you must know in your heart to be true, and that is simply this; there can be no peace in this war or this world without victory.

We live in a time where cynicism lords over self-sacrifice, where absent a call to rise above the mundane, the backbenchers and the critics are given voice by the simple absence of dedicated call to duty.

Early on in this great campaign you spoke to and for all of us when you said, "Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are."

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have heard your call, and answered to it magnificently.

Yet it seems in this dark hour that many Americans have forgotten who we are and what God set us upon this Earth to do. I firmly believe that you, a man of great Christian faith and conviction, were elected not to serve just the United States, but GodÂ’s will in spreading to the dark corners of the world both hope and freedom. It is for these two things that American and Iraqi soldiers rise every morning in a struggle that sometimes seems insurmountable, against a foe both wicked and depraved.

We must succeed, Mr. President.

It is my heartfelt conviction that God put us upon this Earth to strike out against those who would subjugate, oppress and terrorize those who should be free into an uneasy silence. This silence that will only be broken by further explosions and cries from the wounded and dying if we chose this time and this date to retreat. A retreat from Iraq, however it is phrased, is a victory for the forces of Islamic terrorism.

We must draw that "line in the sand, " here, and now, from which will not retreat.

I ask you to do what only you can, and that is to commit American totally to victory in Iraq. History has shown us that wars are not won with half measures, but with an overwhelming commitment of both manpower and conviction.

I beseech you to commit our reserves to the fight in Iraq, as many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of soldiers that the mission requires, in order to break the will and the bodies of those who fight for chaos and tyranny.

There have been many who have called Iraq "another Vietnam," but what they do not realize is that Iraq can be a Vietnam for the forces of terrorism for which they cannot withdraw without a resounding defeat. They have committed their all—their ideology, their material, and their manpower—to driving our alliance with the common man and woman in Iraq asunder. We must not fail them, or else, we will fail ourselves.

Should those who fight for freedom yield to those who fight for chaos, oppression, and tyranny? I say, emphatically, that the answer to all terrorists of every stripe must be "No."

Mr. President, I ask that you rededicate yourself and our nation to winning the war against terrorism currently being waged in Iraq. We fight not just for their freedoms, but our own.

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Bob Owens

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:20 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Says the American Thinker (via Instapundit):

The Baker commission seems to be doing a lot more than just re-thinking Iraq. It appears to be copiously leaking a Vietnam-type cut-and-run plan that will leave the Gulf far more dangerous than it is now. The Vietnam model looks like a “face-saving” retreat by the United States—just like that one that left Vietnam a Stalinist prison state with tens of thousands of boat people fleeing and dying, and next door in Cambodia, two or three million dead at the hands of Pol Pot.

BakerÂ’s press leaks seem designed to test public reaction to the cut-and-run plan.

President Bush's nominee to replace Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense is Robert Gates, a survivor of the Iran-Contra scandal who helped draft the Baker cut-and-run strategy.

Let's be very clear on who Robert Gates is; he is part of the problem, a leftover of the failed policies of realpolitik that helped create modern terrorism. His return to public service is a recipe for losing no just in Iraq, but in the larger War on Terror. He has as much business being Secretary of Defense as Harriet Miers had being on the Supreme Court.

Norman Podhoretz captured the failures of the Baker/Gates generation quite clearly as they led the run from terrorism in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations:

In April 1983, Hizbullah—an Islamic terrorist organization nourished by Iran and Syria—sent a suicide bomber to explode his truck in front of the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Sixty-three employees, among them the Middle East CIA director, were killed and another 120 wounded. But Reagan sat still.

Six months later, in October 1983, another Hizbullah suicide bomber blew up an American barracks in the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines in their sleep and wounding another 81. This time Reagan signed off on plans for a retaliatory blow, but he then allowed his Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, to cancel it (because it might damage our relations with the Arab world, of which Weinberger was always tenderly solicitous). Shortly thereafter, the President pulled the Marines out of Lebanon.

Having cut and run in Lebanon in October, Reagan again remained passive in December, when the American embassy in Kuwait was bombed. Nor did he hit back when, hard upon the withdrawal of the American Marines from Beirut, the CIA station chief there, William Buckley, was kidnapped by Hizbullah and then murdered. Buckley was the fourth American to be kidnapped in Beirut, and many more suffered the same fate between 1982 and 1992 (though not all died or were killed in captivity).

These kidnappings were apparently what led Reagan, who had sworn that he would never negotiate with terrorists, to make an unacknowledged deal with Iran, involving the trading of arms for hostages. But whereas the Iranians were paid off handsomely in the coin of nearly 1,500 antitank missiles (some of them sent at our request through Israel), all we got in exchange were three American hostages—not to mention the disruptive and damaging Iran-contra scandal.

In September 1984, six months after the murder of Buckley, the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was hit by yet another truck bomb (also traced to Hizbullah). Again Reagan sat still.

What realpolitik accomplished under Reagan was to build the confidence of terrorists. This same "do nothing" approach was continued under the first Bush Administration, thanks once again to political strategies favored both then and now by men like James Baker and Secretary-designate Robert Gates.

Robert Gates had a hand--never firmly proven, but never really in doubt--in the disasterous plan to attempt to negotiate with terrorism in Iran-Contra.

He also was part of the brainrust, err, braintrust, that urged Iraqi Shia to rebel again Saddam Hussein, only to stand by and watch when as many as 100,000 Shia were killed when they failed to support the rebellion they instigated in 1991.

Robert Gates has no business being the Secretary of Defense during a war on terrorism. He did far too much to help create the current problem to be relied upon to fix it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:44 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment
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The Jawa Report is breaking news:

The Jawa Report has obtained evidence that Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, was once connected to radical clerics Omar Bakri Mohammed & Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. According to at least one credible source, he was also involved in terrorist financing.

If the Jawas are correct, the hippie that sang "Peace Train" was doing fundraisers for organizations linked to al Qaeda.

Yusuf Islam is supposed to release another albm this month called "An Other Cup," including a cover of a tune called "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

There's a joke in there somewhere.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I just saw a short clip on Fox News where the Iranian government showed grainy, near-overhead footage of a U.S. aircraft carrier, and claimed this was evidence that an Iranian drone was able penetrate U.S. fleet radar and air cover, a story also covered by Breitbart.com.

Um... no.

Iran actually made this claim once before back in August (in the video clip above), going as far as say that their drone repeatedly circled the USS Ronald Reagan before it was even noticed, and that the U.S. attempted to shoot down the drone, but failed. Iran, or course, had zero evidence to support that claim.

But the apparent proof that Iran's latest "drone" video is fake may be contained in the footage itself.

The grainy footage shows what is undoubtably the angled deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, but on that carrier deck are aircraft, including what appears to be a different fighter on the port waist of the deck than the F/A-18s, EA-6s, and E-2Cs one would currently expect on modern U.S. carriers. Could those planes be F-14 Tomcats?

The Iranian's imply their video was taken during military exercises in the past week. The F-14 Tomcat was retired in February. If Iran means to imply that this video was taken during their war games of the past week and the video released does indeed show retired aircraft, it would suggest that Iran was lying.

But Iran wouldn't lie, would they?

Update: Russian news sites are disputing the authenticy of the video.

They should. Expecting that a drone could penetrate the nine ship-mounted radars of a Nimitz-class supercarrier, plus the AWACS radar on the E-2C Hawkeyes it has aloft at all times, plus AEGIS-equipped ships in the carrier group, plus the radar of aircraft flying close air support, and be able to then circle directly above the carrier at an altitude of at least several thousand feet and return in one piece is something that, quite frankly, only an idiot would believe.

Mmmmm... Crow: Not F-14s on the port waist, but almost as large F/A-18Cs, ans clearly shown in this much better video. The angled rudders are a dead giveaway. In other words, the video is not necessarily old footage, though whether or not the U.S. knew of the drone is still up in the air.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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