A British Muslim extremist named Anjem Choudary is stating that Pope Benedict XVI should face execution for quoting from a conversation between 14th Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel II Paleologos and an educated Persian.

The Pope's speech—a lecture on faith and reason—was a call for a reasoned synergy between faith and science to complete the human soul, and a reasoned dialogue between faiths. Islam has responded with riots around the world, the burning of no less than seven churches thus far, and the murder of a Catholic nun. A reasoned call for a lifestyle balancing secular science and theology has been responded to with unreasoning hatred, including calls for Jihad by al Qaeda and "moderate" Muslims alike.

Pope Benedict XVI called for reason and dialogue between faiths, and worldwide, Islam has responded with violence and the threats of violence, a point not lost on the Archbishop of Sydney:

Cardinal George Pell says "the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world" to a speech by Pope Benedict justified one of the main fears expressed by the world's Catholic leader.

"They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence," Cardinal Pell said in a statement yesterday.

Once upon a time, I was under the belief that Islam was a rational faith, and that those that carried out violent attacks in the name of Islam misunderstood their own faith. It was both presumptuous and ignorant for me to make that assumption, as I see it now reflected in response to a call for reason from a man of God.

The violent acts carried out by Islamists—and the near-total silence from what we like to think is a majority of moderate Muslims—has ended the last illusions about Islam for many around the world. Our eyes are opening to see that Muslims seek not dialogue, but domination. Pope Benedict seeks reciprocity and respect between faiths, and Muslims are responding with attempts at intimidation. We see now that these calls for violence are not a minority viewpoint, but a sincere and troubling part of their core beliefs.

Islam means "submission," and one billion people who practice the faith seem intent on making the other five billion people on this plant submit to their views. Their desire for domination of the world by their increasingly irrational faith shows that it is they, not the West, that seeks to engage in a Holy War. They would be wise to reconsider their views.

The original Crusades saw Christian and Muslim armies that were technologically equals. That equality no longer exists today, and the military superiority of the West over the Islamic world is pronounced. To date, Western reason shaped by Judeo-Christian compassion has prevented us from using our military supremacy to forcefully thwart Islamist plans for world domination with our full might, but our decision to hold that power in check is not without limits.

If practitioners of the Muslim faith think that they can exert their will unchecked through the most violent of means without facing an earthly reckoning beyond their comprehension, they are sadly mistaken. Our rational beliefs have had us regarding Islam as a possible threat to be dealt with surgically, but not one yet worth acting against generally with our full military might.

One act of sufficient scope and horror would change the calculus of the equation. Islamists seem to sincerely believe that nations shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs are soft, and that we will fall quickly if they act with sufficient aggression and callousness against those they see as infidels.

Islamic leaders should reconsider the ramifications of the widespread Jihad they call for against the West. If they provoke us sufficiently, the same reason that has had us hold ourselves in check to date will dictate that that restraint we have practiced is counterproductive to our continued existence, and Islam will not see another century.

We are not weak, but reasoned, and the Muslims of the world crying for violent Jihad against would be wise to note the difference.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:10 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Poor Faiz.

He seems to have problems with the simplest of concepts:

Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes appeared on Fox this morning to discuss his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. The key takeaway for Barnes was that "bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism." Barnes said that Bush told him capturing bin Laden is "not a top priority use of American resources." Watch it.

[snip]

Bush's priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him." Turning his attention away from bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had "nothing" to do with 9/11.
Capturing bin Laden, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi recently pointed out, will not necessarily make America safer because it would come five years too late. Yet, capturing or killing the man responsible for 9/11 should remain a high priority.

Bush said he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive" less than a week after 9/11, and in March of 2002 said that he was "not that concerned about him" in the following context after the Taliban and al Qaeda has been driven from power in Afghanistan.

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --
THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

Faiz, of course, took a single-line comment out of a much larger comment, completely out of context. Sadly, Faiz shows he just didn't understand what Bush was saying here. If he did, he couldn't logically disagree with the President's point.

How did Bush begin his response, back in 2002? With a concept Faiz and most other Democrats can't apparently grasp four years later:

Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

Let's slow it down and break it into tiny little chunks for our liberal friends to comprehend.

Osama bin Laden, in September 2001, was the undisputed leader of al Qaeda in all capacities. By March 2002 when the President made this comment, we were not sure if Osama was even still alive, or if he had been killed on chaotic Afghan battlefields.

Bush is showing her that he understands terrorist organizations do not have a rigid top-down hierarchy. Taking out Osama, while a great public relations victory for the United States and a temporary psychological blow to his followers, would have very little effect on the overall distributed network of cells. The invasion of Afghanistan drove Osama completely out of tactical and operational control of al Qaeda, and thoroughly isolated him. He is still a nice trophy if we happen to catch him, but as a current planner and plotter of terrorism, he is of very little importance, and our top resources should go towards fighting those that still have an active role.

That is what Bush meant over four years ago when he said that:

Â…focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Bush was precisely right in March of 2002. Even with four years to think about it, Democrats such as Faiz can't seem to grasp a concept so simple it can be explained in less than 30 seconds.

Perhaps he needs another example, one that is a little simpler. Let's use baseball.

A major league batter facing Nolan Ryan at the top of his game was going against one of the greatest pitchers of all time. A hypothetical major league batter facing Nolan Ryan four years after he retired would be facing much less of a threat.

As a nation fighting a global war against Islamic terrorists and the nation-states that support them, we have a lot of high priorities.

Finding a way to decrease sectarian violence and dismantle the insurgency in Iraq. Defeating the Taliban and finding a way to destroy the opium crop that supports it Afghanistan that financially supports it would be another. Finding a way to stop nuclear weapons development and terrorist support in Iran, a nation led by a sect that believes in their ability to force the return of their savior through a burning of the world is another. Dismantling active terrorist cells and the attacks they are attempting is yet another high priority.

Dedicating a large amount of men and resources to track down and kill a single figurehead that lives in remote isolation and who is not thought to play a direct role in planning or executing attacks for over four years is not a high priority, nor should it be. Osama bin Laden, other than sporadically appearing in cheerleading videos, has been taken out of the picture.

Bush knew that in 2002. Four years later, Think Progress and other liberals have yet to understand that basic concept.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:36 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I know very little about the credibility of the writer or the veracity of his claims, but if he is correct, it appears than one liberal "peace movement" organization may be very close to crossing the line into becoming open terrorist sympathizers (h/t Michelle Malkin):

As a front group for Palestinian terrorists, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) sends young people from all over the world to the training fields of the West Bank and Gaza to learn from terrorists and to aid them logistically. Stop the ISM has now obtained photographs of ISM leaders and organizers holding AK-47 assault rifles. The images show some of the ISM women disguised as Jews living in the West Bank and in the company of an Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist.

One of our volunteers in the United Kingdom for Stop the ISM managed to infiltrate the ISM late last June in the Holy Land where the ISM operates in direct support of terrorists. Our volunteer (who prefers to remain anonymous to avoid retaliatory attacks) has had prior experience going undercover for the police in the UK. The photos and intelligence he brought back are proving invaluable to intelligence agencies watching the ISM and have been in official hands for over a month prior to this publication.

Unfortunately, neither U.S. Homeland Security nor the Israeli security agencies have to date regarded the ISM as a serious threat. Some of these ISM people in these photos managed to escape; nevertheless, arrests have been made, and more are forthcoming.

If the ISM sounds vaguely familiar, perhaps a picture will help you remember.

That's ISM activist Rachel Corrie burning a hand-drawn American flag in front of Palestinian school children. Corrie was a far left activist that joined the ISM her senior year at Evergreen State College in Washington. She was killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer as she attempted to protect a network of tunnels being used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It doesn't look like things have changed much, unless you want to consider the possibility that ISM activists are making their long-suspected support for terrorists a little more "hands on" than it once was.

The caption for this photo reads in part:

Gabi laughs it up while Alan, the other ISM volunteer who works at the Faisal Youth Hostel, smiles with his machine gun. To the far right is the al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist overseeing the festivities. Real “peace activists” don't pose with machine guns in the company of terrorists, but the ISM does.

What else is there to say?

From getting run over defending terrorist's weapons tunnels to proudly displaying them in Palestinian prisons, we've got only one thing to say to the leftists of the ISM: You've come a long way, baby.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:27 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Captain's Quarters (h/t Insty) notes this morning that there appears to be some revisionism occurring in the wake of the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah. Arab states and much of the world media originally trumpeted that the war was a undisputed victory for Hezbollah.

Now, those most directly affected seem to think otherwise:

The war stripped more than a few masks from the players in the region. Nasrallah now has to contend with the fallout from his impatient attack on Israel, from the Lebanese and also from the Iranians who had wanted Hezbollah and their rockets as a threat to be feared, not an attack to be weathered and then discounted. His image as the protector of Lebanon has been shattered, and the Lebanese now see him as a threat instead of a savior. After years of Syrian control, they now have to recognize that a large portion of their country is under de facto Iranian occupation, and they're not happy about it.

This has eroded the veneer of victory that Nasrallah placed on the cease-fire. Western commentators and no shortage of Israeli pundits pointed to Nasrallah's claims to have prevailed as a devastating propaganda offensive that would make Israel and the West look weaker than ever. Arabs have taken a more realistic view of the war's results, including the fact that Nasrallah has to make those claims from undisclosed locations to this day. They scoff at his bravado, noting that Nasrallah's vaunted rocket attacks killed more Israeli Arabs than anyone else and proved singularly ineffective as a deterrent to the Israeli incursion.

I've noted on several occasions almost a month ago that the war went far worse for Hezbollah than the world media was willing to admit.

Hezbollah suffered 500-600+ confirmed fatalities at the hands of the IDF, and another 800-1200 are estimated to have been killed in Israeli air strikes. As Hezbollah's active fighters were estimated to number 1,000 or less with 3,000-5,000 more available before this most recent conflict began, it seems that many more such "victories" will see Hezbollah's military wing wiped from the face of the earth.

In addition to Hezbollah's combat loses, the damage to the infrastructure that they brought upon southern Lebanon is quite severe, and will take years of reconstruction and billions of dollars to repair.

But Hezbollah is not by any stretch the only loser in this war, as the world media, and Arab journalists and photojournalists in particular, have suffered tremendous blows to their credibility.

Early on, Hezbollah attempted to recycle the white phosphorus/WMD claims made in the invasion of Fallujah, and the media willing lapped it up without properly investigating the claims. When those claims were conclusively debunked by chemical analysis of tissue samples take from the victims, the media brushed it aside, and took a hit to their credibility as a result.

Shortly thereafter, an Israeli air strike a mile outside the village of Qana was blamed for the death of nearly 60 family members, most of them children. Mostly Arab photojournalists flocked to the scene and flooded the world press with photo after gruesome photo of dead children, and bloggers began questioning whether or not the photos were staged by Hezbollah for the benefit of the press. The media vehemently denied the claims of staging, even after video evidence of a rescue worker dubbed "Green Helmet" was caught on video directing stretcher bearers to remove the body from an ambulance so that it could be re-shot by an assembled throng of photographers.

Time and again, photojournalists took questionable photograph after questionable photograph after questionable photograph, causing increasing scrutiny of photos coming out of Lebanon, where bloggers wondered if scenes were being posed and manipulated.

The came concrete proof that one prolific photographer has been manipulating images in photo-editing software on his computer before releasing them to publication. He was fired. When a second accusation of fraud was leveled at his work, his entire body of work--over 900 photos--was deleted.

The Israeli-Hezbollah war showed the weaknesses of a news-gathering system where story framing and composition is based as much on marketability as it is factuality, and blatant control by Hezbollah was tacitly agreed to and under-reported by those who had their scenes and stories often chosen and manipulated for them by Hezbollah minders.

Time may indeed show that there were actually three losers in the Israeli-Hezbollah War. Israel lost the political battle, Hezbollah lost the military war, and the media lost its most cherished asset, credibility.

Of all of these losses, the media may have the toughest time recovering.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:40 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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This is simply unbelievable:

Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral - and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone - dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report.

U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.
The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground.

"We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture," one U.S. Army officer told NBC.
But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report.

Pentagon officials declined comment and referred The Post to Central Command officers in Afghanistan, who did not respond to a request for comment or explanation.

We had a high concentration of enemy officers exposed with little or no cover, and did not fire upon them because they were in a cemetary?

Was it like this one in a battle in Najaf, Iraq, that was so well known they made a video game out of it?

This is the single most mind-numbingly stupid "shoot/no shoot" determinations I have heard of in this entire war. This was not a situation where that was significant risk of there being collateral damage to nearby civilians. The only people present were Taliban leaders that we want dead, and those in the cemetery that were already dead.

If this story is accurate and there are no mitigating circumstances we are unaware of, then we're looking at two levels of incompetence.

The higher level incompetence of placing cemeteries off limits in the rules of engagement was most likely the decision of senior military officers, perhaps with State Department input. Whoever made such a determination should be stripped of these duties. War is not to be fought politely, and the enemy should not be give a "timeout" from the war unless civilian lives are at risk.

On the direct tactical level, the officer directly in charge of this flight should have taken the initiative and made the determination that attacking such a concentration of Taliban leaders was more important to the success of the mission that was "going by the book."

A constant advantage for U.S. military forces throughout our nation's history has been the ability of individual small unit leaders to deviate from the battle plan when necessary to accomplish the mission on a fast-changing battlefield. Battle to battle, war to war, the decision was made to train our soldiers, from boot camp onward to seize the initiative to complete the mission.

That initiative was lost here.

The officer in charge of this flight certainly followed the rules, but he failed in his larger duty. The military's primary job is to protect the nation by killing its enemies. He unwilling to take the initiative needed to ignore an arbitrary decision, and enemy leaders walked away unscathed to plot death once more.

Update Footage of an estimated 190 massed Taliban from the Hellfire-armed Predator drone (via Fox News):

Based upon how tightly they are grouped, the single drone's Hellfire missiles would have likely have terminated the terrorism careers of every single Talib in this photo.

This military is investigating the leaking of the photo to the Post (h/t Michelle Malkin).

The U.S. military said Wednesday it is looking into the unauthorized release of a photo purportedly taken by an American drone aircraft showing scores of Taliban militants at a funeral in Afghanistan.

NBC News claimed U.S. Army officers wanted to attack the ceremony with missiles carried by the Predator drone, but were prevented under rules of battlefield engagement that bar attacks on cemeteries.

I have no problem with the investigation. A leak, even one that points out such obvious incompetence, is still a leak, no matter what the motive, and needs to be dealt with.

I do hope, however, that the Army spends as much time finding out why an absurd order not to fire upon massed terrorists simply becuase of their location in a cemetery was written. I'd also like them to investigate why that order was not quickly superceded by operational imperatives once the target was clearly identified for the large concentration of enemy forces that it was.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:19 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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The ABC News blog The Blotter has a reputation for having good sources within the U.S. intelligence community, so when they take the time to write about known al Qaeda terrorist Adnan El' Shukrijumah not once, but twice in a two-week time span, it is something worth keeping on your radar.

The radar signal got stronger when journalist Hamid Mir said that his contacts in al Qaeda indicate that Shukrijumah might be plotting to detonate a nuclear device in the United States during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan later this month.

Allahpundit notes that this is a probably a false alarm, and I think he is more than likely correct. That said, the first Blotter link above notes that "virtually every" FBI field office is hunting Shukrijumah, so he is deemed a credible threat, if not necessarily a present one.

I first read all the links above when I got home from work late last night, but wanted to sleep on it before commenting.

It seems unlikely to me that Shukrijumah or other al Qaeda operatives would be able to easily obtain a nuclear warhead, and even if they were able to obtain such a device, the chance of successfully smuggling it across an ocean to the United States seems exceedingly remote.

It is far more likely that toxic radioactive substances, however, could be smuggled in or stolen, and combined with homemade explosives (such as TATP, a terrorist favorite) to create a radiological "dirty bomb."

Such a weapon uses the blast effect of high explosives to spread radiation over a local area that would likely affect both the local blast area and locations downwind, perhaps encompassing several square miles in some degree of radiation. The probably destructive capability of a dirty bomb is not that much more significant than that of a conventional high explosive blast, but those in the area contaminated area would face radiation dangers in addition to normal blast effects. There would probably be a higher fatality and injury rate as a result, but nothing approaching the level of even the smallest tactical nuclear warhead.

The primary benefit of such a detonation to terrorists is the fear that will spread. If detonated in a densely populated urban area, the panic such a weapon could instill in the population could possibly cause casualties and disrupt life for a significant length of time, but the area can be decontaminated and returned to use.

The long-term political effects of deploying such a weapon are as yet known, but we can speculate. What will almost immediately occur is that the people of the United States will once again realize that the War on Terrorism does not occur just "over there." Terrorism should be thought of not only as an international issue but a local one as well, and images and stories of American civilians being killed and injured at home is likely to create a cry for the Legislative and Executive branches to take a far more aggressive role in combating terrorism both domestically and overseas.

If it was determined that such a weapon was smuggled into the country, or that those who detonated the weapon came across a border (particularly the Mexican border) to do so, then the politics of border security would radically change in a very short amount of time. I think that an immediate and total crackdown on illegal immigration would occur very quickly, and that Congress would be forced to implement a full border wall, with increased staffing and detection equipment, more lenient chase and capture guidelines for Border Patrol agents, and far harsher penalties for attempted illegal immigration. I do not think it likely that illegal immigrants already in America will be rounded up in massive sweeps, but the public could possibly force lawmakers to consider that possibility. There are simply too many variables in this equation to comment beyond that.

If such a strike were to occur, I think that the White House is almost certain to receive massive complaints from Congressional Conservatives (particularly in the House) because of current lax border security policies, and Democrats would seize upon the opportunity to indicate that the Administration is failing to be effective in the War on Terror. I think this is a double-edged sword, however, as Democrats have been far more lax in regards to border security and illegal immigration than even the White House, so it is unlikely to be a winning issue for them.

The overseas intelligence intercept program that the media and Democrats have tired to spin as "domestic spying" will finally be understood for what it really is, and will no longer be thought of as an encroachment on freedoms, but as the rational extension of intelligence gathering capabilities that it always has been.

Overseas, I think you would see an increased political and diplomatic effort to convince Pakistan to allow Coalition military forces to penetrate deep into the tribal areas of its western border region with Afghanistan so that al Qaeda and Taliban staging and training areas can be forcefully struck. Also in Afghanistan, I think you will see a much more concerted effort to eradicate the poppy crop, the Taliban's single most important funding source. Neither bodes well for al Qaeda's ally.

Next door in Iran, I think that a much more muscular diplomatic response to Iran's nuclear ambitions would be forced by the United States in the wake of a dirty bomb attack on America. Recent radiological destruction would make it impossible for us to allow Iran to continue down the road toward weapons development. Harsh sanctions and a blockade enforced by U.S. military assets would force Iranian leaders to either back down from their nuclear aims, or force them to engage us in a regional conflict in which their mostly conscripted military, primarily armed with obsolete weapons, could not hope to prevail.

If a blockade or conflict in the region with Iran is imminent, you might also expect forces to be built up in Iraq to guard against a cross-border attack by Iran that some intelligence sources say might occur. Once the Iranian threat de-escalates, it seems plausible that the additional Army and Marine units brought in to deal with the Iranian threat might be sent to Iraq to dismantle Shia militias that would suddenly be without their primary supporters, and to al Anbar to take on Sunni insurgents that we do not seem to presently have the manpower to pacify.

These sudden shifts in the region, if they occur, could put Syria in a very unstable position. I will not speculate as the whether or not his Baathist regime would fall without the support of Iran, but it would make Syrian support of terrorism a front-burner topic, perhaps forcing it to finally withdraw support of Islamic terror groups such as Hezbollah.

This is all extremely speculative, of course.

There is presently no way of knowing when a terror attack involving a radiological weapon could occur, nor if it will ever occur, and trying to predict what may happen is admittedly roaming far into speculative territory on a very high, very thin wire.

But there are some things we know for certain.

We do know al Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations have tried to direct attacks on the U.S. mainland before and after 9/11, and to date, all of those other attacks have failed. We know they or other Islamic terrorists will try to attack again. We also know that at some point they are likely to be successful.

What will be our response when that day arrives?

That may largely depend on which political party happens to be in power when and if such an attack occurs.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:45 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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They just won't talk to them. Or make eye contact. Or listen.

But they support the troops.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:05 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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According to Richard Cohen, the War on Terror is over, and Osama won:

I hear bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and, especially, here where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting, anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror.'' Osama bin Laden knows better. He has already won.

It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts, it is rather that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw America into Afghanistan where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the U.S. responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.

To Cohen I pose the question, "What price, victory?"

Al Qaeda has been driven from its training bases in Afghanistan, and can find no more states to openly provide it sanctuary. The Taliban that once supported bin Laden in Afghanistan have been driven from power, and when they emerge, reformed, to attempt to take back their country, they are killed by NATO forces by the hundreds.

Al Qaeda's leaders and specialists, their tacticians and their weapons experts, continue to fall prey to Coalition forces. Some are captured. Many are killed (more than 1,500 to date). More of al Qaeda's leadership circa 9/11 resides in Cuba or in the earth than lives in Afghanistan's frontier or Pakistan's tribal areas. Those that remain skitter from cave to cave knowing that this day may be the day a Hellfire-armed U.S. Air Force drone sends them to Allah, or more likely, some place much more warm and less inviting.

StrategyPage notes that there were eight state sponsors of terrorism on 9/12/01; now the regimes sponsoring terror in Afghanistan and Iraq have been deposed, and Libya, seeing the writing on the wall, has given up without a shot being fired.

I wish more such "victories" for al Qaeda.

If they continue, Islamic terrorism will cease through attrition.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:31 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Via Fox News:

Democrats are blasting President Bush for giving what they call a political prime-time speech on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In his address Monday from the Oval Office, Bush tied the anniversary to the War on Terror and the need to continue the war in Iraq.

"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," Bush said. "They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.

Democrats were quick to fire off statements declaring Bush's words partisan.

"The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had nothing to do with 9/11," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. "There will be time to debate this president's policies in Iraq. September 11th is not that time."

While Bush's speech itself was poorly delivered according to those who watched it, the quoted section of his speech above is absolutely accurate.

There have been many mistakes made in Iraq, just as there have been major mistakes made in nearly every war the United States has ever fought, from the Revolutionary War until today. But to give up in Iraq, where the United States has never lost a major engagement, would be seen by the Arab world as a victory for Islamic terrorism.

Abruptly pulling out of Iraq would:

• increase the power and prestige of terrorist groups within the Arab world
• inspire despots to expand funding and military support for terrorist groups as an extension of their foreign policy
• lead to greater sectarian violence
• increase the likelihood of a Balkanized state where a full-scale civil war and mass genocide is more possible
• increase the possibility of a regional war, with Turkey and Iran both striking to crush the Kurdish north of the country

The current sectarian violence in Iraq is bloody enough without us relinquishing the country to be feasted upon by its neighbors and internal factions. If you think the "neo-con" war is expensive in terms of lives and treasure, explore the possibilities of the Democratic "peace."

Thousands are currently dying in Iraq each month in sectarian violence. The al Anbar province is in dire straits. Many voices, particularly those on the left, are calling for the United States to retreat. The one thing these voices utterly refuse to acknowledge is the cost of the unconditional surrender they'd effect.

If we withdraw precipitously before Iraq is stabilized, we run the risk of twin genocides in concurrent civil and regional wars.

Sunni vs Shia
Led for decades by bloody Sunni Baathist regimes, the minority Sunnis have been the core of the insurgency, and still retain strong support among some Sunni civilians, particularly in the al Anbar province where they share some ideological roots and goals with al Qaeda in Iraq. The new Iraqi Army, like the old, is primarily composed of Shia soldiers, and if the United States pulls out before the country can be stabilized, there is much concern that the Shia may overrun their former tormentors, setting the scene for potential genocide.

Kurdistan Regional War
Even within the existing Iraqi government the Kurdish north of Iraq have been pushing strongly for a nearly autonomous region under their specific control. They have long dreamed of an independent Kurdistan, encompassing northern Iraq, as well as significant territory in Turkey, Iran, and Syria (see map). Kurds were promised an independent nation-state in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, but later wars and treaties kept that from ever coming to pass. Turkey and Iran, who are already engaged in sporadic cross-border conflicts with Kurdish forces today, would likely not hesitate to invade Kurdish Iraq if they feel their own sovereignty may be threatened. The Kurds, known for thousands of years to be ferocious fighters (the word "Kurd" means "warrior" in Kurdish), would likely be able to turn the mountainous areas of Kurdistan to their advantage, with the distinct possibility of making Kurdish and Iranian invasions resemble the bloody Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The blood the Kurds would draw from the Iranians in the mountains would almost certainly be translated to massive civilian casualties in Kurdish cities dwarfing anything we've seen in the Iraq War so far.

Based upon these scenarios, the precipitous withdrawal called for in the liberal "peace plan" in Iraq has the potential for casualties ranging from the hundreds of thousands to well over a million. If the Leftist "victory" in Southeast Asia (1.7 million), and the abortive Russian efforts in Afghanistan (900,000) provides us with any sort of a useful yardstick to measure the potential cost of failure, the casualties to Iraq could range into the millions, with millions of more civilians being displaced.

And so we seem to have a choice:

We can commit to finding out precisely what we need to do to make Iraq a self-sustaining country with functioning economic, political, and security systems;

-OR-

We can cut and run—"redeploying" to other parts of the world as leading Democrats are calling for—and wash our hands of the country we created as it falls into internal and region wars that will kill or displace millions.

If we do the latter, history will not look upon our nation kindly... nor should it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:44 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Via CNN:

Syrian security forces on Tuesday killed four gunmen after they tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, the Syrian Information Ministry said.

No American diplomats were harmed.

A fifth attacker was wounded and in custody, officials said. It was not immediately clear how many total attackers may have been involved.

"The State Department confirms an attack by unknown assailants," said Kurtis Cooper, a State Department spokesman in Washington. "The event appears to be under control and handled by local authorities."

There was no word of casualties among the Syrian security forces who battled the gunmen.

The embassy was not damaged in the attack.

Sticky Notes was on this quickly, and has some photos of the scene of what appears to be unexploded bombs made of bulk propane cylinders and pipe bombs.

No Americans were hurt, and there are no reports that U.S. Marines stationed at the embassy opened fire.

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While many are focused (rightly) on remembering what we lost five years ago today, Ralph Peters chose instead to remember what we have since achieved. One of his salient points was to describe the fact that Iraq has become al Qaeda's Vietnam:

No end of lies have been broadcast about our liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan "creating more terrorists." The terrorists were already there, recruited during the decades we looked away. Our arrival on their turf just brought them out of the woodwork.

As for Iraq, Osama & Co. realized full well how high we'd raised the stakes. They had to fight to prevent the emergence of a Middle Eastern democracy. As a result, they've thrown in their reserves - who've been slaughtered by our soldiers and Marines.

The media obsesses on the price of this fight for us, but the terrorists have been forced to pay a terrible cost in trained fighters - while alienating fellow Muslims with their tactics. Pundits will argue forever over whether deposing Saddam was a diversion from the War on Terror, but the proof of its relevance - even if unexpected - is the unaffordable cost we've forced on al Qaeda.

I'm not certain just how much al Qaeda has alienated other Muslims, as many still quite openly pine for the demise of the West in general and Israel and the United States in particular, but we certainly have made that obsession costly.

When al Qaeda ‘s Number Two Ayman al-Zawahri releases a statement promising to bring Jihad to Israel and Arab Gulf States and advises not sending reinforcements to Afghanistan and Iraq, it reveals a pleading weakness in his cause.

"Whatever you do, please don't send reinforcements to Afghanistan and Iraq," he might as well be saying. With the reconstituted Taliban being martyred courtesy of NATO troops by the hundreds, Zawahiri's threats of attacking elsewhere with any significant sustained force ring hollow. He is the Dark Knight of Monty Python's Holy Grail, threatening to "bite your kneecaps off" of King Arthur after his arms and legs have been forcefully removed.

And indeed, many "limbs" of al Qaeda have been unceremoniously lopped off. Beyond bin Laden and al-Zawahiri himself, you'd be hard-pressed to find a "household name" in al Qaeda's leadership. The terrorist organization's most experienced planners, bomb-builders and experienced foot soldiers have been methodically hunted to near extinction, leaving dangerous but error-prone minor-leaguers terrorists to step up against increasingly savvy military and intelligence services around the world that continue to bleed al Qaeda on an almost daily basis.

Continuing Phyrric "victories" by al Qaeda have reduced it to more of a terrorist public relations firm than a viable terrorist entity. Zawahiri can trumpet jihad all he wants to a dwindling supply of fellow believers, but when his message has to pack-muled out from a remote and hidden cave, it becomes increasingly difficult to see his often-promised victory as anything other than a delusional fantasy.

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A Senate report on prewar intelligence in Iraq says that there is no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda. Predictably, Democrats are saying that this undercuts the President's justification for going to war.

They are deadly wrong.

Some intelligence experts might dispute the Senate's conclusions on Iraq, unless, of course, the Senate merely means that they didn't have evidence of Saddam and al-Zarqawi having tea.

Regardless, President Bush sent us to war because Saddam had well-documented ties to many terrorist groups, making Baghdad host to a "Who's Who" of Islamic terrorists.

Abu Abbas, mastermind of Achille Lauro hijacking that saw an elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer murdered and thrown over the side, was a long-time guest of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and was captured near Baghdad as a direct result of our 2003 invasion.

Abu Nidal, Palestinian terrorist mastermind led the Abu Nidal Organization, was another long-time terrorist-in-residence that died in Baghdad in 2002. The ANO was based in Iraq since 1998, and recieved training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from Iraq. They were shutdown by the invasion of Iraq after killing more than 900 people since 1974, and have not been heard from since.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, the bomb builder in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, was given money and housing by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

I have a simple question for Senate Democrats:

How many more terrorist groups targeting and killing Americans would Saddam have had to support before you found an invasion worthwhile?

And please, pardon me, if I don't expect an answer. Democrats haven't had an answer for terrorism in five years, and I do'nt expect they'll suddenly come up with one now.

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Via Hot Air, Snapped Shot alerts us to new body armor being used by using by Palestinian militants. Lets see if I can provide you with a close-up view of that armor.

Note that it is now available in two-ply.

And yes, they are being used as body armor as the original photo shows.

At least three visibly armed militants are hiding among more than a dozen civilians in this photo, including the man on the far right who is targeting Israeli soldiers.

Like their brethren in Gaza and in Lebanon, terrorists in the West Bank are willing to use civilians as shields, and though it is hard for our western mind to understand, the civilians themselves seem content with that arrangement.

This battle left two so-called civilians dead and 11 wounded.

Somehow, that doesn't upset me as much now as it once might have.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:22 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Okay, I'm ready for impeachment now:

The Bush administration on Wednesday said all detainees of the U.S. military would be ensured humane treatment, but some such as al Qaeda members would have fewer protections than other war prisoners.

The Pentagon detailed its policies on prisoner treatment shortly before President Bush was to speak on the issue of detainees on Wednesday afternoon. ABC television reported Bush would announce the transfer of a dozen top terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons to Defense Department control.

The Pentagon directive, which gives all prisoners protections as defined by the Geneva Conventions, follows heavy international criticism of the United States over military abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison and over its treatment and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Let's get a few facts straight about what terrorists are afforded under the Geneva Conventions, starting with the Third Geneva Convention (via Wikipedia):

Article 2 specifies when the parties are bound by GCIII
That any armed conflict between two or more "High Contracting Parties" is covered by GCIII;
That it applies to occupations of a "High Contracting Party";
That the relationship between the "High Contracting Parties" and a non-signatory, the party will remain bound until the non-signatory no longer acts under the strictures of the convention."

As al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not act "under the strictures of the Convention" by torturing and beheading captives time and again, the rights of the Geneva Convention does not apply to them.

Terrorists are not afforded the protected Prisoners of War status, as they fail to meet the standards in Article 4.1.2:

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:

• that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
• 
  that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
• that of carrying arms openly;
• that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

To be eligible for Geneva Protections, "militias and members of other volunteer corps" must fulfill all of these qualifications; terrorists satisfy none.

Somewhere in North Waziristan, Osama bin Laden just laughed himself to death.

Update: Tammy Bruce seems to be of a like mind, while AllahPundit searches for a silver lining that I hope is actually there.

Update: Okay, I'm an idiot for beleiving this ABC News Report might reflect what the President actually said.

ABC News has learned that President Bush will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will be the first time the Administration publicly acknowledges the existence of the prisons.

From there, I went on to the Reuters report I cited above with the thought that Bush gave Geneva rights to terrorists. It was the thrust of my entire post.
And I was dead wrong:

The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court's ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.
And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling's potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.

Taken as a whole, the President's maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.

It looks like a lot of us might have gotten blindsided by Bush's sudden and uncharacteristic agility. I could get used to being this kind of wrong.

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When Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora praised Hezbollah's war against Israel as "legendary" it was disconcerting. When his government refused to disarm Hezbollah, and instead opted for a "if we don't see it, we won't confiscate it (so please hide them)" approach to Hezbollah's weaponry, it was cause for concern.

So what should we make of the Lebanese Army moving anti-aircraft guns into southern Lebanon?

My guess is "nothing good."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Judd from Think Progress offers up a blistering response the upcoming ABC docudrama, Path to 9/11, from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke:

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

That is what Judd and Richard Clarke have to say.

Decision '08 recalls a quite different and far more true reality by citing the 9/11 Commission Report which states unequivocally that on four separate occasions--Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000--U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Burger was "an obstacle to action," preventing strikes that would have perhaps killed Osama bin Laden, decapitating al Qaeda well in advance of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand innocent people.

Judd at Think Progress and many other liberals would apparently like to pretend that Islamic terrorism was not a threat before George W. Bush was inaugurated. This collective selective amnesia is neither helpful nor realistic. Osama bin Laden was an identified threat well before George W. Bush took office, and his plan to attack on 9/11 is a direct result of watching President Clinton's headlong retreat "redeployment" from Somalia at the behest of the American Left's favorite defeatist, Congressman John Murtha.

William Jefferson Clinton's Presidency spanned 1993-2001. During that time, al Qaeda was suspected to be the inspiration or the cause of a minimum of four separate terrorist attacks against Western targets.

From NPR:

Feb. 26, 1993: A massive bomb explodes in a garage below the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured in the blast. Analysts cite some links to al Qaeda in the attack, though Osama bin Laden disavowed any connection.

June 25, 1996: A powerful truck bomb explodes outside a U.S. military housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and wounding several hundred people.

Aug. 7, 1998: Two bombs explode within minutes of each other near the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts kill 264 people.

Oct. 12, 2000: Seventeen American sailors are killed and 39 wounded by a bomb aboard a small boat that targets the USS Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer refueling in Aden, Yemen.

If the Clinton Administration had acted to attack bin Laden during any of the four chances it had between 1998 and 2000, there is the possibility that bin Laden's death could have averted the attacks that killed 264 and wounded thousands in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama bin Laden's death in any of the four possible attacks that Berger stopped may have kept 17 sailors from being killed in Yemen, and 389 other sailors from being wounded. But Clinton's administration did not act, and missed its chances, not just one time, but four.

This is not to place all the blame for 9/11 on Clinton's administration, as every single administration from Nixon and Ford onward to today, both Democrat and Republican, "fed the beast" by not responding decisively and with overwhelming force to terrorist attacks. Clinton was the first president to face al Qaeda, but he was not the first President to fail against terrorism.

George W. Bush's administration inherited 35+ years of bad decision-making which led up to the 9/11/01 attacks, and the ramifications of those 35 years of fundamentally "misunderestimating" the thread continue to ripple forward as terrorist organizations around the world act on the now long-held belief that their zealotry and willingness to die is stronger than our determination to live in freedom.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and of that matter, in Lebanon) have both confused and infuriated the jihadis that are so certain that they can beat the West with outdated weaponry and tenacity, but the simple fact of the matter is that when Western politicians get out of the way and let their militaries fight, western forces have never lost in actions above platoon level in the entire War on Terror. Man-to-man, soldier-to-terrorist, we are quite simply better at killing them than they are killing us.

The reality is that we can and do defeat jihadists when weak-willed politicians let our soldiers fight. It only remains to be seen if the politicians and apologists in free nations will allow us a chance to win.

Update: From time to time, the most recent occupant of the White House shows us that he gets it.

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Captain Ed notes this morning an open letter from Democrats calling for a "change of course" in Iraq.

Their "plan" can be summed up in two words:

• disengagement
• retreat

Specifically, they cite four points in their "new direction" for Iraq. They are:

1. transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection;
2. beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year;
3. working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the Constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources; and
4. convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq, to preserve Iraq's sovereignty, and to revitalize the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding effort.

Lets look at what these steps actually propose.

(1) transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection;

Democrats are stating that they would like for the U.S. military forces in Iraq to take a passive role in combating terrorism in Iraq. In this press release, They throw in the suggestion that U.S. forces would engage in "counter-terrorism," but that has precisely been their role from 2003 to the present. what Democrats are really advocating is their pre-9/11 mindset of counter-terrorism being a police function which is precisely the mindset practiced by U.S. presidents from both parties from the mid 1970s onward that has only emboldened terrorist groups. It was this mindset that inspired Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to think that slamming airliners into buildings on U.S soil would lead to his ultimate victory. Democrats are willing to concede this point to bin Laden, essentially stating they are willing to re-engage the same reactive approach that has consistently failed to stop the spread of terrorism for three decades. Trying something once and noting it does not work is one thing. Trying the same approach repeatedly even after that approach has been shown to be a categorical failure is the very definition of insanity.

As if their return to the failed policy of reactive counter-terrorism policing isn't passive enough, they expand on just how passive a role they advocate, reducing the American role in Iraq to training, logistics, and force protection. They would have U.S forces train Iraqi forces, but not take them into combat. They would have U.S forces provide logistics and materials to move Iraqi units around, but not use these units to engage terrorists. They would reduce American forces--the best-trained and most experienced active duty military in the world today--to training Iraqis and baby-sitting convoys and hiding in bunkers in fixed installations. Force protection is a defensive measure, designed to minimize losses to specific locations, but does nothing to hunt down and kill terrorists. Quite simply, the Democratic plan is to concede Iraq to any terrorist group that wants to take it, as long as they don't directly attack our forces.

(2) beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year;

Having conceded Iraq to any Tom, Dick, or Achmed with an Ak-47 and an attitude, the Democrats continue with their self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. As they would have our troops emasculated and reduced to a training and force protection role only, it makes no sense to have them there. Why have soldiers in-theater, if they aren't allowed to fight? And having stripping our soldiers of combat roles, they would do what no enemy force in Iraq above platoon level has ever done; force us into retreat. Of course, they call it "redeployment" to try to cover-up what it really is, but when you concede the country to the terrorists and pull all your soldiers of the battlefield and ship them elsewhere, it is a retreat. A retreat is the "withdrawal of troops to a more favorable position to escape the enemy's superior forces." Democrats apparently feel that terrorists are superior to the American military.

(3) working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the Constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources; and (4) convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq, to preserve Iraq's sovereignty, and to revitalize the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding effort.

After stripping our soldiers of all offensive capability and then calling for their retreat, Democrats get to the real "meat" of their plan, one that hasn't changed in decades: appeasement politics. They steadfastly refuse to learn from the past, which shows that negotiating with terrorists only emboldens them. If you were a terrorist, and you saw Democrats neuter the American military and force them into retreat (something you yourself cannot do), any paper settlement is merely a formality on your way to complete victory. The Democrats, having shown that they are quite willing to take a defeat of American forces in trade for short term political gains at home, are merely looking for paper solutions so that they can have their "victory" over a weak American president. So by all means go ahead and sign anything they float your way. History shows you won't honor any agreement you sign (and in fact, not being a real government, how are they going to hold you to your agreement? "Sanctions?" Yeah, right). So by all means, go ahead and sign whatever "settlement" Democrats send you, recognizing it for what they truly are; an unconditional surrender of the mightiest military on the planet by the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party has often been criticized for not having a plan to win the war in Iraq, and this letter indicates that winning is not now and perhaps never has been part of their plan. All they offer here is a sugar-coated defeat, an abandonment of principles, and an abandonment of 25 million Iraqi men, women and children. Democrats are trying to tell you that running away from terrorists is how you beat them.

As the fifth anniversary of the greatest testament to that failed strategy nears, I'm inclined to strongly disagree.

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It looks like several more British "moderate Muslims" were close to deciding to "prove themselves," as Miss England says, as 14 men were arrested in a series of overnight raids.

Armed police have arrested 14 men following anti-terror raids in London, including 12 arrests at a restaurant in the Borough area.

Two people were held elsewhere in the city in what police said was an intelligence-led operation.

Police said the arrests were not connected to the alleged transatlantic jet bomb plot or the 7 July attacks.

An Islamic school near Tunbridge Wells has also been searched as part of the same operation.

The Jameah Islameah property, on Catt's Hill near Crowborough, East Sussex, is an Islamic teaching facility for boys aged between 11 and 16.

I'm shocked, shocked that an Islamic school may have been used to help plot terror attacks. And appalled. And verklempt, and I'm not even 100% sure what that word means. Most of those arrested, however, were taken into custody at a local halal Chinese restaurant called The Bridge to China Town. Halal food is, of course, food permissible according to Islamic diet restrictions.

Sadly, you'll note that the BBC is so cowed by the "moderates" among them that they can't even directly mention the fact that these men were British-born Pakistani Muslims, preferring to let you infer the facts for the locational data provided.

Great Britain may yet be saved, but the BBC has already been lost to enemy action.

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This is kind of like John Mark Karr reassuring you that Wayne Williams would be a great babysitter:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria would step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah.

Syria will increase its own patrols along the Lebanon-Syria border, and establish joint patrols with the Lebanese army "when possible," Annan said after meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.

Assad made no public comments after their meeting, but Annan spoke with reporters at the Damascus airport before he departed midday for Qatar.

The U.N. resolution that halted fighting between Israel and Hezbollah calls for an arms embargo on the guerrilla group, and for Lebanon to "secure its borders and other entry points."

Annan said Assad informed him that Syria would "take all necessary measures" to implement paragraph 15 of U.N. resolution 1701, which calls on countries to prevent the sale or supply of weapons to entities in Lebanon without the consent of the Lebanese government or U.N. peacekeepers.

This is the same Syria that armed Hezbollah with medium-range rockets used in the recent conflict against Israeli civilian targets, the same Syria who's leader praised Hezbollah's Pyrrhic "victory." Now more than ever, the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel merely appears to be a chance for both sides to rearm and reevaluate their tactics before the next conflagration.

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From the first Muslim Miss England:

The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England has warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism.

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant.

But one year on, the 19-year-old student from Hounslow feels that winning the coveted beauty title last September was a "sugar coating" for Muslims who have become more alienated in the past 12 months.

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more."

"...moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway."

According to Ms. Kohistani's logic, alcoholics should forego trying to get their lives back together, say, "the Hell, with it," and go ahead and drink because people expect them to be drunks.

It is a troubling mindset, and one I hope is not widespread in western Muslim communities. If Muslim moderates star to embrace terrorism as a way of "proving themselves" to radicals within the nations they inhabit, current feelings of disassociation that they seem to presently feel will only worsen, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If an embrace of terrorism becomes widespread, or more likely, an appearance of the embrace of terrorism becomes widespread, crackdowns against Muslims will only worsen. It could perhaps lead to even worse tensions and violence if the rest of the British population feels significantly threatened.

If Hammasa Kohistani wants to change public opinion and stereotypes against Muslims as she says elsewhere in the article, she needs to encourage Muslims to prove, time and again if necessary, that the violent fundamentalist way is not their own. British Muslims should respond to suspicions not by embracing terrorism, but by becoming the most vigilant fighters against it.

A widespread "we might as well do it anyway" mindset that validates these stereotypes is precisely the wrong message to be sending.

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