Captain's Quarters -

Sorry for the slow start this morning. Our dog has been sick all night and we just dropped her off at the vet. I'll be back up and running shortly.

UPDATE: Just to explain, we lost one of our dogs, Angel, while I was in the hospital. She was almost 15 years old and had been "losing it" for a few months, so her passing wasn't unexpected. That left us with Cory, the First Mate's retired guide dog, who has never exactly been a canine dynamo of energy, if you know what I mean. She's 12 now and even a bit slower these days, but over the last week she started getting lethargic even for her, and a couple of days ago stopped eating after vomiting a couple of times. We took her to the vet yesterday, where she gobbled up some treats, and everything else looked normal. We bought some medicine and the vet told us to bring her back right away if we had any more trouble.

Unfortunately, last night she got sick again and started wandering aimlessly around the house. I spent most of the night trying to get her to lay down and relax until we could take her to the vet. They're going to keep her today and probably tonight to take some X-rays to see if she has a blockage, which is what we suspect. So now I'm pretty tired out, and thinking that this has been the summer from hell. We've certainly had the heat and humidity to indicate it, along with the series of family crises.

UPDATE II: The blood panel came back with no indications of kidney or liver failure, but with a substantially elevated white-cell count. The vet suspects pancreatitis, which is apparently treatable, and they're starting antibiotics just in case. She's also pretty dehydrated, so they're giving her IV fluids. They can't keep her overnight, so we'll probably bring her home later and take her back tomorrow for more IV fluids if necessary.

I feel silly about this, but she's such a great dog, and I'm hoping she can recover.

[Good questions from commenters -- see update below!]

A group of conservative bloggers have worked on a developing a list of candidates in critical races this fall, not just for a show of support but also to allow our readers a single point where they could contribute to their campaigns. John Hawkins at Right Wing News began to organize this a couple of weeks ago, and we have selected a slate of Congressional and Senatorial races we think will get the most benefit from organized grassroots support on the Internet.

We call this effort Rightroots, and our site, powered by ABCPac, launched this evening.

The selection committee comprised the following bloggers:

John Hawkins from Right Wing News
Robert Bluey from Human Events Online
Mary Katherine Ham from Townhall
Erick Erickson from Redstate
Patrick Hynes from Ankle Biting Pundits
Lorie Byrd from Wizbang!

We have selected fourteen Congressional races and four Senate races we see as critical and close enough to warrant organized support from our readers. On our donations page, we give a description of the races and the politics involved. We deliberately avoided races where Republicans either have a large edge or face weak opposition. Each of these races may well come down to the last $100 for campaigning efforts, and winning all eighteen would provide a tremendous boost for conservatives across the nation.

All of these candidates have our unanimous endorsement for their races. We hope that you will join us in supporting these fine candidates, and follow along as we raise money for them. Bookmark the Rightroots page to see how well our candidate fare in the weeks ahead, and help us spread the word through the blogosphere.

We talk about the need to build conservative power in government -- and now we have the tool to do it.

UPDATE: I'm replacing the links with those for the posts of the other Rightroots members, so keep checking back.

UPDATE II AND BUMP: I've received some good questions from CQ readers, and I want to explain our decisions in answer to them.

Why isn't Candidate X on the list? Why not list all GOP candidates? - We hope that all Republican candidates win their races. However, we wanted to focus on competitive races or on seats that have a broader impact on national politics. Obviously, we still encourage people to contribute to other Republicans; it's just that we feel contributions in these races will have the most impact.

You don't list incumbents -- Given the natural advantages of incumbency in most cases, we felt that our efforts should focus elsewhere.

Michael Steele is almost 20 points back in some polls, so why include him? - I think that's an outlier, but even so, we felt that Steele's candidacy has a national impact. The same goes for Diana Irey, who wants to unseat John Murtha in Pennsylvania.

What about governors? - It turns out that having this sort of effort for governors gets too complicated in regard to contribution regulations, and we were asked to eliminate those from our list. We tried!

I noticed you passed over [insert RINO candidate here] -- Glad you noticed. However, we did not include incumbents as a rule, so don't take an exclusion to mean we oppose someone's re-election.

Your logo trips me out, dude -- Actually, John has several on his site, and I chose this one for the post. Feel free to put one of the others on your site and link back to the Rightroots page at ABCPac! (And if you come up with something better, let us know!

I return to the editorial page of the Examiner today with a piece on the double standard for Israel's prosecution of the war, as opposed to the lack of outrage over terrorist tactics and strategy. Borrowing a phrase from George Bush, I argue that this soft nihilism of low expectations -- which also snares the United States in its grip -- actually encourages terrorism:

While the world holds Israel to this standard, things become curiously silent when it’s time to hold Hezbollah responsible for its conduct of war. Hardly a word has escaped from the U.N. or Europe on the 2,500 missiles that have rained down upon Israeli civilians, deliberately targeted by Hezbollah. Those attacks have displaced more than 300,000 civilians, a fact the global community and the mainstream media ignore.

Those who argue that Israel has occasionally violated the Geneva Conventions in its attacks casually ignore the blatant violations of Hezbollah, whose combatants wear no uniform, deliberately hide in civilian populations and fire weapons from residential areas. Hezbollah conducts none of its operations within the rules of war — and yet world leaders and the media never mention it.

Why? Because no one expects terrorists to follow the rules. This is the soft nihilism of low expectations.

Quite frankly, this double standard will eventually destroy Western civilization by rendering us incapable of defeating our enemies. Those nations wishing to destroy us have watched carefully over the last several years while our own people obsess -- and I do not think that too strong a term -- over anomalies like Abu Ghraib and Qana, and they note the lack of outrage over the fact that their proxies have deliberately launched 2,500 missiles at Israeli civilians. No leaders or media make a peep about the butchery of our enemies as displayed in the torture and beheading of our troops, except to somehow make it our fault for fighting terrorism in the first place.

What lessons do you think Iran, Syria, and the rest of the terrorists draw from these observations?

Bruce Kesler has more on this topic.

Congress is about to send a pension-reform bill to the White House that forces employers to meet their funding obligations for employee pension plans. Unfortunately, HR 2830 exempts at least one key industry from meeting that requirement, and tosses some serious pork into the stew to boot. I explain this at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog:

Airlines employ hundreds of thousands of Americans and the risk to those pensions will require immediate action. This free pass allows the industry to continue its under-the-radar flight on pensions, which hides the instability of the industry’s economic position. Postponing action does not mean that the PBGC would not have to bail out these pension funds; if history is any judge, exemptions and postponements result in less compliance, not more.

Not only does the bill contain these exemptions, putting the retirement of many Americans at risk, the Senate has played their usual pork-barrel games in putting together this legislation. What do scenic prairie roads and the cleanup of abandoned mines have to do with pension reform? To the untrained eye, nothing at all – and yet two Senators have earmarked $50 million and $5 billion for these tasks in HR 2830, respectively.

Rep. Mike Pence has voiced serious reservations about the Abandoned Mine Land Fund under any circumstances. Since 1977, AML has existed on fees charged for coal production, and these fees will expire in 2007. The fees go to cleanup of old mining sites, and also to supplement health-care premiums of miners whose companies have left the industry or gone under altogether. The new proposal starts lowering fees on coal production, increases payments to states and retirees, and forces the federal government to replace the funds – and changes AML from discretionary to mandatory spending. This adds the $5 billion to an already-bloated set of entitlement spending by the federal government, making it ever more difficult to reduce the federal budget.

Be sure to read David John's entire analysis of HR 2830, and why we should push for a presidential veto if it remains in its current state.

Mel Gibson has extended his apology in a statement released earlier today, and this time he explicity acknowledges the anti-Semitic rant that has plunged one of Hollywood's most bankable stars into so much hot water. Not only has he apologized to the Jewish community, he has asked them for help in determining the source of his bigoted words:

There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge. ...

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God's child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.

The sentiment seems sincere, and he doesn't appear to be dodging any responsibility for his words and actions over the weekend. Some may see this as a publicity stunt, and it certainly could be just that. The question for his fans and foes is whether to accept Mel at his word and challenge him to atone for his hateful and asinine actions, or whether to write him off as a human being.

I'm not suggesting that Gibson get a pass for his outburst; far from it. In fact, the responses as noted in the New York Times sound perfectly reasonable under the circumstances:

On Monday, Hope Hartman, a spokeswoman for Disney’s ABC television network, said the company was dropping its plans to produce a Holocaust-themed miniseries in collaboration with Mr. Gibson. ...

She did not connect the project’s termination to Mr. Gibson’s remarks. But his statements had already attracted sharp criticism from some who argued that he should be disqualified from moving ahead with the series, despite having apologized for several anti-Jewish statements.

“I don’t think he should be doing a film on the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had previously criticized what he saw as anti-Semitic overtones in Mr. Gibson’s hit, “The Passion of the Christ.” “It would be like asking someone associated with the K.K.K. to do a movie on the African-American experience.”

I think Hier has that about right. If Gibson wants to produce some work on Jewish history, particularly on its history of suffering and displacement, then it should not be a for-profit endeavor. He needs to atone for his sin, and one does not profit from atonement. Besides, Gibson's words have opened up a huge credibility gap on any project involving Judaism in the near or moderate term, perhaps forever. He would do better by working with the Jewish community to really learn about Judaism and the journey of this ancient and wise people.

If he does, though, it seems that some people will still hold no possibility for forgiveness in their hearts. That's a choice each of us has to make, but we should ask ourselves whether we believe in redemption at all. The point of Christianity is that each of us, no matter our transgressions, have the ability to redeem ourselves and change for the better. If we believe that sinners can be forgiven, then Gibson -- if he sincerely repents and atones for his sins and accepts the consequences of them -- has that same possibility.

I have a particular interest in anti-Semitic rants, as my maternal grandfather was Jewish, although non-practicing. He was one of the sweetest men I ever knew, and loved his family more than anything else. His own family ostracized him, more or less, when he married my Roman Catholic grandmother. He died when I was eighteen, the first person to whom I was really close to pass away. I still miss him and his sense of humor, which my mother swears I inherited. (That doesn't make me Jewish or give me any moral superiority over anyone else opining on this topic, but in the interest of disclosure, CQ readers should understand my perspective.)

When people issue these disgusting insults and paranoid conspiracy theories, I think of my grandfather and the humble life he led, and it makes me angry. I expect it from the likes of Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and David Duke, but not from Mel Gibson, who has worked with enough Jews to know better. Still, my own faith tells me to judge a man's actions and not the state of his soul, and I think that is where we should leave it with Gibson, at least for now. We should challenge him to repent and atone, and this statement is a good step towards the former. We should pray that he enlightens himself rather than wallow in the kind of hatred and ignorance that produced those terrible comments. If he meets the challenge, we should welcome him back into our good graces and allow him to be an example that bigotry can be healed.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

National Review's Michael Ledeen takes us on a trip in the Wayback Machine, but unlike the journeys of Peabody and his boy Sherman, Ledeen notices that we arrive back in the present:

Certainly there is lots of bad news, most of which confirms what we already knew: The Western world hates Israel; the taboo on anti-Semitism is off; the Western world has been P.C.’ed to the edge of death; there is no stomach for fighting the war against Islamic fascism.

Sounds like the Thirties to me. ...

Then, too, the mounting power of what became the Axis was ignored. As my father often reminded me, a few months before Pearl Harbor, at a time when Nazi armies were long since on the march, the draft passed by a single vote. Apologists for Hitler and Mussolini were legion, and some of our leading intellectuals were saying that American democratic capitalism was a failure, and we would do well to emulate the European totalitarians.

So I don’t see this moment as something unique, the result of some inner rot, or a moment on a greased skid leading to the abyss. It’s one of the many things we are. But we are many things, and we are not like the Europeans, many of whom are reviving their anti-Semitic fantasies in an effort to cope with their weakness and irrelevance.

We seem to have the same problem that afflicted Europe in the Thirties, as Ledeen notes. We don't have the will to conduct war when it can be won relatively cheaply, and so we will dither until it becomes obscenely expensive. One reason for re-opening the Gulf War in 2003 was to ensure that people understood that we would not sit idly by while a nation flaunted its violation of both a cease-fire agreement and sixteen UNSC resolutions. We dithered on Iraq for twelve years while ignoring an almost-continuous series of acts of war.

Unfortunately, that effort took what little tenacity the West had to offer. Now, when a universally acknowledged terrorist organization commits an obvious act of war, the West demands that the victim stop fighting back. Instead of uniting to face down the terrorist enablers in Teheran and Damascus, we have the spectacle of the French government calling Iran a "stabilizing force" for the region. They may be right -- but what kind of stabilization does France and the rest of Europe want? Apparently the same kind that Hitler provided and Vichy administered.

When we entered the war on terror, we knew where the loci of state support existed: Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, and Kabul. We have managed to do something about the latter two, but we seem curiously unwilling to finish the job. We do not need to declare war on Syria and Iran to beat them, and in Iran's case at least, war would definitely be detrimental to the cause. However, we need to work fast and hard to topple the terrorist-sponsoring regimes, not coddle and reward them by having them dictate the peace in the Middle East. We know what their idea of peace means -- so why do we endorse it?

Let's try winning this war. As Ledeen always says .... faster, please.

Our first day of the Rightroots initiative has started off very well -- and has received quite a bit of notice. In less than a day, we have already raised almost $7,000 for the eighteen key candidates we have endorsed in our effort to hold both houses of Congress. Now we have been challenged by Rep. Jack Kingston, one of the most blogosphere-savvy Congressmen in office, to raise a goodly amount of money by the end of the week -- and he's ready to open up his own checkbook if we make it:

FROM THE DESK OF CONGRESSMAN JACK KINGSTON

Dear Friends,

I commend the efforts of the Rightroots movement for providing a forum which seeks to help the Republican Party secure our majorities in the House and Senate, and might even push some competitive races over the finish line in November.

I strongly believe that small donations from a large number of people will help influence public policy and change the face of politics in Washington.

This is our opportunity to send a clear message to folks that Republicans don't just beat Democrats on the streets and on Election Day, but on every battlefield, including the Internet.

I'm going to make a pledge: If Rightroots raises a total of $26,000 by 11:59 PM (EST) on Friday, August 4, I will contribute a total of $14,000 directly to some of the candidates from my Leadership PAC in the name of our movement.

It's time for action, and these candidates need our help. Together, we can do it.

Sincerely,

Jack Kingston
Member of Congress

Well, let's not let Rep. Kingston down!

UPDATE: I put up a draft, not the final -- my mistake. We will have details to follow, but Rep. Kingston is very enthused about our project.

UPDATE II: We now have the final version from Rep. Kingston, and I've updated the post to reflect the correct numbers. We've raised over $7,000 the first day -- so far! We can make $26,000 if we keep at it.

The Israeli offensive has taken an interesting turn as the IDF unleashes its ground forces in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah may have felt sanguine about their chances of outlasting Israel thanks to the efforts of world leaders in handcuffing Ehud Olmert, but now the re-energized IDF has taken aim at Hezbollah's patron:

Lebanese army and security officials said a major Israel Defense Forces operation was underway against suspected Hezbollah positions near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley late Tuesday. IDF troops thrust deep into the area, landing troops by helicopter in the Hezbollah heartland.

Lebanese security sources said IDF soldiers had landed by helicopter near Baalbek as aircraft launched several strikes in the region.

One Lebanese officer saying the Israel Air Force presence in the air above the ancient city was "unprecedented." ... "The extreme, unprecedented number of aircraft indicates the possibility that the Israelis are planning to land troops, but we cannot yet confirm that," said one security official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Israel had seemed ready to shut down its offensive a few days ago, but the Israeli people rose up in indignation at the criticism leveled at them for defending themselves. This shows that the new push may have all of the critics confounded. Israel is not just looking to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon with this new action -- they want to strike at Syria.

Syria has maintained their connections to Hezbollah in large measure in this area. The Bekaa Valley borders on Syria, on the eastern slope of the Lebanon Mountains in northeast Lebanon. It puts Israeli troops much closer to Damascus than they otherwise would be, and removes most of the natural obstacles between the IDF and the Syrian capital. Most importantly, the destruction of Hezbollah assets in the area would not just degrade Syrian control over their terrorist proxies, it would severely damage their status as kingmaker in Lebanon as well.

Israel must win this battle. The US has to keep running interference until Syria and Iran stop funding Hezbollah and the Lebanese government disarms the terrorists. We have to show the resolve necessary to stop accepting hudna and start winning this war. Thus far, the White House has done a masterful job of allowing Israel the space to engage the terrorists and confound their sponsors. Until the terrorists agree to lay down their weapons and stop provoking regional wars, the White House should stick to its guns.

UPDATE: I completely forgot to credit Rick at Right Wing Nuthouse for the tip; sorry, Rick.

Daniel Freedman, who runs the excellent New York Sun blog It Shines For All, takes an interesting look at the disincentives for dictators to defeat Islamofascism in the American Spectator. Freedman reports that the real threat to Pakistan's military dictatorship comes not from Islamists but from Democrats, led by former PM Benazir Bhutto. However, Pervez Musharraf has plenty of motivation for painting the Islamist threat as the biggest threat -- and for making sure that he never quite beats them:

THIS RESPONSE TO A PERCEIVED Islamist "threat" by the West is based on the premise that if the dictator falls, Islamists, rather than democrats, will take power. An apparent "threat" therefore ensures that the dictator won't be pressured to introduce reform and will be showered with aid. Take Egypt's Hosni Mubarak: He's backtracked on democracy reforms and imprisoned democracy activists. Yet he receives $1.7 billion a year in American aid. Why? Because of the supposed threat of radical Islamists (the Muslim Brotherhood). Other experts at this trickery are the Saudi princes: They fund extremist mosques around the world and yet American taxpayers pay for American troops to protect them.

It's also true, however, that the astute dictator has few other options if he wants to maintain his rule while maintaining good relations with the West. He's stuck in a Catch-22 situation. Not only does an Islamist "threat" solidify the dictatorship, defeating an Islamist threat, meantime, spells trouble for the dictatorship.

Under the Bush Doctrine, if a dictator has an Islamist threat and appears to be fighting that Islamist threat, he's an ally in the war on terror. But if the dictator ever defeats the Islamists, he's simply a dictator and an enemy in the war on terror -- as dictatorships breed terrorism. Therefore, if a dictator successfully defeats the terrorists and fulfills his tasks in the war on terror he's really scored the ultimate Pyrrhic victory: He's turned himself into the target. That the Bush Doctrine ends up punishing a dictator who succeeds in destroying domestic terrorists can't have escaped dictators.

With the fighting continuing in Afghanistan, we still need a cooperative Musharraf rather than the alternative. However, this does set up a dichotomy that the US will eventually have to face. If the cure for terrorism and fanaticism is democracy -- and I believe it is -- then we have to quit enabling the dictators at some point.

The Israeli operation in Bekaa has met with success. In a commando raid far behind enemy lines, the IDF captured an unspecified number of Hezbollah operatives in a Baalbek hospital:

Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and separately sent commandos deep into the eastern Bekaa Valley where they raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and captured guerrillas during pitched battles, a major escalation of the three-week-old war.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack on the ancient city of Baalbek, about 80 miles north of Israel. It said troops, ferried in by helicopter, captured an unspecified number guerrillas and all soldiers returned unharmed. The statement gave no other details.

The Baalbek raid was the deepest ground attack on Lebanon since fighting began 21 days ago.

Hezbollah denied that Israel captured anyone in Baalbek, telling the press that they had the commandos pinned down at the hospital. Perhaps that is why only 10 rockets and missiles flew over the Israeli border today -- all of their personnel may have turned around to realize that the IDF has the capability of operating anywhere within Lebanon.

It appears that the Israelis have just taught the Islamist terrorists a lesson in tenacity -- and if the rocket trend continues, perhaps Hezbollah may have learned something about futility.

UPDATE and BUMP: The Jerusalem Post confirms that IDF commandos captured "several" Hezbollah officials in the daring raid, even though they got spotted early in the operation:

After several hours of intense fighting in and around the hospital in the eastern Lebanon town of Baalbek, which was built by Iran for the express purpose of treating Hizbullah operatives, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah operatives captive.

An IAF helicopter dropped commando forces a short distance from the hospital late Tuesday night. The force was discovered as it moved towards the structure, where Hizbullah operatives were suspected of hiding. Several hours of gunfights ensued, and at least 10 Hizbullah guerrillas were reported killed. Another force was helicoptered in to extricate the commandos and provide backup for the mission.

After inspecting the identification of everyone in the hospital, the IDF soldiers proceeded to arrest several Hizbullah officials, who were later transported back into Israel. The officials' names and positions in the organization were not revealed. The main target of the operation was Muhammad Yazbek, a senior figure in the organization. Yazbek was not in the hospital at the time of the raid.

No IDF soldiers were wounded in the operation, an army spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post.

If that last part is true, then Hezbollah couldn't even wound the IDF far to its own rear after having spotted them in action. Israeli troops had the time to enter the hospital, check everyone's identification, round up Hezbollah officials, and then extricate both themselves and their prisoners without taking a single casualty. Even the raid on Entebbe didn't go that smoothly, and that raid is legendary for its effectiveness.

This makes Hezbollah look like a bunch of amateurs playing out of their league -- and it demonstrates that Israel can hit them pretty much at will. Hezbollah leadership has to understand that if they can't be protected in their own strongholds, they live pretty much at the whim of Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz. More importantly, their sponsors in Damascus and Teheran now understand that their liaison teams have a substantial risk of capture, which would be more than embarrassing in the current conflict.

Israel just won a huge victory in the psy-ops wars.

Today's Washington Post reports that the 9/11 Commission got so frustrated with inaccurate testimony from military and aviation officials regarding the immediate response on 9/11 that they considered referrals to the Department of Justice for perjury:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

The commission complained early about the spin coming from the Department of Defense and from aviation officials in reconstructing the events of the day. DoD officials blamed sketchy records of the day's events for the confusion on timing. For instance, testimony indicated that the Air Force had tracked United 93 and would have shot the plane down had it approached Washington, but tapes subpoenaed by the Commission later revealed that the military had no idea about United 93 until it had crashed.

The tapes told a much different story than the witnesses, and the Commission was understandably upset that these witnesses gave them demonstrably false information two years or more after the events in question. The DoD could have reviewed the tapes themselves and figured out the facts. Commissioners felt that it approached perjury and wanted to have them prosecuted after they finallly got the tapes through the hostile manuever of subpoenas.

In the end, they allowed the DoD and DoT inspectors general to review the matter. Reports from both are expected shortly as to whether the testimony given was knowingly false. If so, the DoJ should consider prosecution.

However, we should also keep in mind the balls-up that the Commission became. While their recreation of the day's events was excellent work, the rest of their effort produced nothing but the bureaucratic spin of which they accuse the DoD. The inclusion on Jamie Gorelick even after her role promoting the extralegal separation of law enforcement and intelligence units became clear skewed the panel's point of view. She should have been a witness, not a panel member, as she was too much of a participant in the activities that led to the intelligence failures of 9/11.

The Commission also failed to follow up on important information in their haste to blame 9/11 on intelligence operations. They completely missed the ABLE DANGER program that had identified Mohammed Atta and his core of operatives as potential terrorists, and that was not because of DoD intransigence. Multiple members of that team tried to get their interest, and the panel refused to follow up on the leads. Even after these people went public with the information, panel members like Thomas Kean -- quoted heavily in this story -- mocked them and discounted their honor.

The panel of bureaucrats had too much at stake to allow bureaucracy to get the blame for 9/11, and so they concluded that the operations end of intelligence had to get it instead. They proposed a massive increase in intelligence bureaucracy, supposedly to make intelligence gathering and analysis more efficient. Instead, they created a behemoth of a bureaucracy in the Directorate of National Intelligence, so much so that Congress threatened to cut off its funding to keep its empire-building to a dull roar. It now employs almost a thousand people, almost none of whom develop or gather intel in the field, but instead look at it and push the paper up another level.

If anyone knowingly provided false information to a Congressional panel, then that person should face trial for perjury. However, the Omission Commission is the last group of people whose complaints about fair play and honesty interest me.

Eliana Johnson, once the proprietress of a clever blog called Yale Diva, has moved to the New York Sun as a reporter. She covered the appearance of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at Columbia University yesterday, where Paulson tried to establish a new momentum for spending cuts and entitlement reform in his maiden speech. I'll cover this at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog later today.

Eliana has another blog connection: she is the daughter of my good friend Scott Johnson at Power Line, who proudly notes the tight style and straightforward reporting of the story. I had the pleasure to meet Eliana and all of Scott's family on a few occasions and am delighted at her new success. I'm particularly pleased that she works at one of the best newspapers in this new media age.

After their rocket attacks on Israel dwindled down to 10 yesterday, the commando raid on Baalbek has apparently infuriated Hezbollah into risking everything on a last-gasp series of volleys. A record number of missiles have flown over the border, and in one case hit near the West Bank town of Jenin:

Hezbollah launched its deepest strikes yet into Israel on Wednesday, firing a record number of more than 160 rockets. An Israeli-American was killed as he fled for home by bicycle, and a stray rocket hit the West Bank for the first time.

The intense rocket fire defied claims by Israeli leaders and generals that they have considerably weakened Hezbollah's military capabilities. It followed a two-day lull in Hezbollah rocket attacks, and came hours after Israeli commandos in Lebanon captured what Israel said were five Hezbollah guerrillas.

Police said at least 21 people were wounded in Wednesday's attacks, which brought the Israeli death toll in three weeks of fighting to 55, including 19 civilians. Israel's onslaught on Lebanon has killed at least 540, mostly civilians.

Hezbollah fighters have run gauntlets through IDF forces in southern Lebanon to get to the Blue Line with their launchers. They have fired and retreated at high speed, hoping to avoid return fire. They want to prove that they still have offensive capability against Israel, even thouugh their rockets do almost no damage to Israeli military assets.

It's impressive, but rather foolish. In the first place, Israel has already shown that they will not be deterred by rocket attacks, so the effort here is mostly wasted. Just as in Britain in 1940, the attacks on civilian populations has strengthened Israeli resolve, not diminished it. Tactically, Hezbollah's new operation is not much better than Japanese banzai attacks in the Pacific in WWII. They are sending their assets out into the open in a frontal charge that even when initially successful carries no strategic or political gain. All they do is expose their fighters to IDF fire -- and their rocket launchers.

The inventory of Hezbollah's rockets and missiles has been the topic of much discussion, but that isn't the critical materiel problem for the terrorists. The launchers are the weak spot, and they're relatively easy to hit. Mobile launchers are basically big trucks -- big, slow-moving, heat-generating vehicles that have to stay on established roads to manuever. Without air cover, these launchers can easily be spotted at targeted by israeli aircraft, and it doesn't take much to put one out of commission.

The decline of attacks in the last couple of days probably indicates a lack of launchers, and Hezbollah's desire to conserve enough of them for a single big offensive. This is what we're seeing now. If Israel destroys the rest of the launchers, it won't matter how many missiles and rockets Hezbollah has left -- they will just become useless stock. That's what Israel wants to keep Syria from resupplying to the terrorists, and that's why they blew up the roads as well as the airports.

Hezbollah will get its licks in today, but I doubt it will retain much capacity for rocket launches after this.

The Howard Dean experiment at the DNC appears to have created division, distrust, and chaos, as many of us predicted last year when Dean took the job. The Washington Post reports that party leaders have begun to craft back-channels to undermine Dean's authority, bringing their efforts for a national program for the midterms to a shambles:

At a meeting last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for not spending enough party resources on get-out-the-vote efforts in the most competitive House and Senate races, according to congressional aides who were briefed on the exchange. Pelosi -- echoing a complaint common among Democratic lawmakers and operatives -- has warned privately that Democrats are at risk of going into the November midterm elections with a voter-mobilization plan that is underfunded and inferior to the proven turnout machine run by national Republicans.

The Senate and House campaign committees are creating their own get-out-the-vote operations instead, using money that otherwise would fund television advertising and other election-year efforts. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) -- who no longer speaks to Dean because of their strategic differences -- is planning to ask lawmakers and donors to help fund a new turnout program run by House Democrats. He recruited Michael Whouley, a specialist in Democratic turnout, to help oversee it. ...

Many Democrats said that despite a favorable political climate and record-setting fundraising, the campaign to recapture the House and Senate could fall short if the organizational problems persist. "What the party really needs is to get serious about local, volunteer-based" operations, said Jack Corrigan, a longtime Democratic operative. "The last-minute, throw-money-at-it approach . . . does not really solve the fundamental failure to organize that is there. The DNC is moving in the right direction, but needs to do more, fast," he said.

Dean gave the internal version of "Yeaarrgh!!" in response, telling Democrats that "we have a big secret ... and it's going to help us win." That sounds great, but successful political campaigns keep secrets from their opponents, not from their allies. With the election coming in three months, one has to wonder when Dean plans to let his pals in on his big secret, and what exactly about grassroots organization would be so secret in any case.

The big secret appears to be that Dean has been a complete incompetent at the job of party chairman. He has only raised a little over half of the funds that the RNC has gathered and only has one-quarter of the cash on hand of his rivals, a rather critical problem in the final 90 days of an election cycle. He has angered his big-checkbook donors, even George Soros, who probably lost some interest anyway when his efforts to buy the presidency fell short in 2004. The Democrats have been left with the slender reed of conservative disaffection with the GOP, and hope that the Republicans have turnout problems to mask their own problems with organization.

Now we have the different committees and activists within the party working independently, lacking coordination, and shuffling their money around to cross purposes. One of the key figures for the midterm cycle, DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel, won't even speak to the head of his own party. The party has fallen apart, thanks to Dean's incompetence and their lack of action in correcting it.

If the Democrats lose the midterms, expect to hear a lot of conspiracy theories about Karl Rove's supposedly Machiavellian power. The truth will be that the Democrats sealed their fate when they put a nutcase like Howard Dean at the head of their organization.

UPDATE: I made an error in the difference between cash on hand and overall fundraising, which I have corrected, thanks to Thlime in the comments on this thread.

Diana Irey has her work cut out for her if she wants to unseat longtime incumbent John Murtha in PA-12. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that she trails far behind Murtha in fundraising, although she still qualifies as the best-financed challenger in the state:

While Republican challenger Diana Irey accelerated her fund-raising pace in the second quarter of the year, she still trailed far behind U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Johnstown, the veteran incumbent in the 12th Congressional District.

Entering the final four months of the campaign, Mr. Murtha's campaign committee had a cash advantage of more than 10-to-1 over the Washington County commissioner. The Democrat entered July with $1,804,695, while Ms. Irey had $159,138, according to a digest of Federal Election Commission filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Murtha funds include money leftover from his last campaign.

Mr. Murtha had raised a total of $2,452,426 during that election cycle and spent $1,481,352 by June 30. Ms. Irey, who has tried to build a national fund-raising effort based on opposition to the Democrat's anti-war rhetoric, had raised a total of $305,541 and spent $146,403.

Irey's race is one of the eighteen focus campaigns supported by the Rightroots initiative. In fact, so far she's proven one of the most popular of the candidates, with over $1200 in donations in the first 24 hours. As is obvious from this P-G report, she will need much more support to erode Murtha's fundraising edge. She has a tough fight, but with enough support she could win this seat and help the GOP retain control of Congress.

One of our other candidates has noticed the Rightroots support already. Ray Meier, running in NY-24, has a press release on his site:

State Senator Ray Meier is breaking new ground in his campaign for New York’s 24th Congressional seat as he receives a boost today from Rightroots, a new fundraising effort organized by bloggers from across the country.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist endorses the Rightroots on his own Volpac blog today as well. Volpac becomes the eighth official endorser of Rightroots, and has been added to our site at ABCPac.

UPDATE: I think we can take Michelle Malkin's challenge and agree that we won't be photoshopping people into racist blackface images, like the netroots of the Left.

Two more of my posts have appeared at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog today. The first takes a quick look at three amendments to the defense appropriation being debated in the Senate this week. Did you know that a memorial commission, a traveling exhibit on World War II, and a market research program will help us win the war on terror? Neither did I, but Senators Daniel Inouye and John Warner apparently think so.

The second post takes a longer look at Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's maiden speech, delivered at Columbia University yesterday. Paulson gave some reason for optimism that the Bush administration might finally get serious about cutting the federal budget after five years of growth in both discretionary and entitlement spending. I say some optimism, because we have heard much of this rhetoric before, and neither Congress nor the White House has had much political will or desire to put it into practice.

Still, Bush did want to reform Social Security last year before being thwarted by the Democrats, who preferred to do nothing about it except pretend that the problem doesn't exist. Paulson reminded everyone that under current system, entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security will go from 8% of GDP to 17% of GDP by 2060, just slightly under the cut of our GDP that the entire federal budget takes now. I have more on this at Heritage, so be sure to read it all.

I missed most of this today, but this kind of politicking embarrasses everyone associated with it:

Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton visited Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport to announced their endorsement of challenger Ned Lamont in his campaign against Sen. Joseph Lieberman. A picture of Lieberman in 'blackface' on a Lamont supporter's blog drew criticism from both sides. ...

This campaign has apparently hit a new low today with something offensive, and that is putting it mildly. The popular Huffington Post blog, which has strongly supported Lamont's candidacy, posted a picture today depicting President Clinton and Joe Lieberman in an Amos n Andy-type doctored picture obviously taken from the Waterbury rally last Monday. In the picture, Lieberman is drawn in blackface and Clinton is wearing dark sunglasses.

Lamont's campaign manager Tom Swan condemned this, calling it very offensive and said he requested that it be removed. He also said that while blogger Jane Hamsher is a supporter, she is not on the campaign pay-roll.

"It's extremely offensive," Lieberman said. "I have been the target of the 'blogs' on a lot of really offensive stuff, stuff I consider lies and smears, but this picture of me with Bill Clinton and me having my face blackened is offensive to people of all races and colors and just doesn't belong."

The photoshop artist didn't just blacken Lieberman's face -- they put a minstrel-show suit and tie on the picture as well. Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have commented extensively on this, as has Tom Maguire and many others, bit no one can come up with a rational idea as to why Jane Hamsher would have posted this. Did she think that this was a pithy little statement regarding Lieberman's views on race? Or did she really think it would read -- as she claimed -- that Lieberman was a phony?

Hatred makes people do embarrassing things, and Hamsher isn't the first to demonstrate that. However, one has to wonder why Arianna Huffington allowed it on her site. Is she a Lieberman hater too? Or was she foolish enough to buy Hamsher's explanation of the picture's meaning?

It really is difficult to understand what a mainstream Democratic politician has done to inspire such hatred and vitriol. In fact, it's becoming more and more obvious that Lieberman hasn't done anything to inspire it, but just that the haters on the Left have set their sights on Lieberman this cycle. They will do and say anything to destroy him, and this is about as low as it could get. Lieberman doesn't deserve this kind of treatment after his years of honorable public service. He's not my favorite by any means, but that doesn't mean he should have to suffer this kind of despicable treatment at the hands of his own party.

This is what the activist, radical Left have planned for America if they win control in November -- character assassinations and smear campaigns. If they enjoy doing this to Lieberman, imagine what they'll do to the rest of us.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has a great post, noting Arianna's huffery on the Mel Gibson story and contrasting it with her expurgation of the photo and silence afterward. Stand up and be counted, indeed!

Mark Coffey also has some thoughts about that.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made clear that the war in Lebanon could be over in days, but only under conditions that ensure security for Israel on its northern border. With the UN debating various types of peacekeeping forces to replace Israel in Lebanon, Olmert insists that Israel would not accept another UNIFIL disaster:

In an interview with The Times in Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the conflict could be over as soon as the United Nations Security Council authorised an international force and the troops were in place.

As he set out his vision for peace, the fighting intensified with 10,000 Israeli soldiers battling against Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. The Shia Muslim militant group fired a record number of 213 rockets into Israel, with some penetrating the West Bank, the farthest that they have reached.

Nevertheless, Mr Olmert seemed confident that the fighting could be stopped within days. “I do not think that it will take weeks,” he said. “I think that a resolution will be made some time next week by the UN Security Council and then it depends on the rapidity of deployment of the international forces into the south of Lebanon.” ...

He also said that Israel would not welcome a unit similar to the existing UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), which he said had proved ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s seizure of southern Lebanon.

“It has to be made up of armies, not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon but, rather, an army with combat units that is prepared to implement the UN resolution.”

He added: “We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area.”

Well put. UNIFIL proved not just completely ineffective in keeping peace but actually turned out to inadvertently promote war on the Blue Line. Undermanned and poorly led, the UN force stood by while terrorists built offensive positions adjacent to their own and did nothing when they launched attacks on northern Israel. The UN has demonstrated complete disregard for Israeli security, and no one believes that the UN has their safety in mind with their demands for a cease-fire.

Olmert gets the formulation humorously correct. UNIFIL turned out to be bystanders and tourists, not a fighting force, and only a fighting force can keep Hezbollah away from Israel. Israel doesn't need more of the same to supposedly defend a DMZ above their border. Anything less than a real fighting force with a mandate to commit violence against Hezbollah incursions will be worse than nothing, because Israel would have to fight past them in order to defend themselves once again when Hezbollah attacks Israel in the future.

Will the UN agree? Probably not, but the Israeli position will allow them more time to do the job themselves.

The Northern Alliance Radio Network has broadcast for almost two and a half years here in the Twin Cities and around the world on our Internet stream, the first broadcast radio show by bloggers ever. We started as a three-hour show on Saturday afternoons with a rotating cast for every hour. When we got an extra hour earlier this year, we split the show into a more fixed format, with three bloggers in each two-hour segment, and ran from 11 am to 3 pm Central time each Saturday.

Now we have an exciting change that we believe will attract even more listeners. The Patriot has allowed us to shift the show to a 9 am CT start, beginning this Saturday morning. Mitch Berg and I will take the first two hours, giving us a chance to start the day off for our listeners with our two-hour segment. Brian, Chad, and John will continue to broadcast between 11 am to 1 pm.

To celebrate our debut as a morning show, we have invited Michele Bachmann to join us at 10 am. Michele is one of our Rightroots candidates, running for Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District to replace Mark Kennedy, who's running for Mark Dayton's seat in the Senate. We'll talk about Rightroots and Michele's campaign as well as the issues she champions.

We hope you have breakfast with us, this Saturday and every Saturday!

At least one world leader has given an honest assessment of why an immediate cease fire should occur in the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, now entering its fourth week. Oddly enough -- or not -- that world leader runs Iran:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state-media reported.

In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed group Hizbullah.

"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site Thursday.

Ahmadinejad made these comments at a hastily-arranged summit of Muslim nations in an attempt to get more support for Iran's proxy in Lebanon. He implored the other leaders to cut any ties they may have with Israel and to unite together to destroy it, as well as isolate the United States and UK. Unlike others insisting on an immediate cessation of hostilities, Ahmadinejad rejected the notion of an international peacekeeping force, claiming that the Lebanese should retain sole responsibility for the area.

While this may be a rather extreme example, it does show the general purpose of the cease-fire demands. After all, who exactly would take responsibility for that agreement? Israel would, and Lebanon would be their partner. However, Lebanon has yet to bring Hezbollah under control, which is the entire problem. The Lebanese government can't disarm the terrorists, and it's still a large question as to whether they would if they had the ability.

Cease-fire agreements have to have two responsible partners, both willing to enforce the pact. That doesn't exist in southern Lebanon any more than it does in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel has plenty of experience with this concept. A cease fire at this stage does nothing but handcuff Israel and allow Hezbollah back into southern Lebanon to re-arm and restart the war.

Of course, Iran favors this because, as Ahmadinejad said, it would be a first step to the destruction of Israel. Oe wonders why other nations, supposedly Israel's Western allies, favor this strategy as well.

The world's most celebrated younger brother has apparently come down with a case of shyness. Four days after Fidel Castro handed the reins of power to his brother Raul, the relief dictator has yet to make an appearance to his subjects. Raul's absence has triggered a sense of unease on the island, and people have begun asking questions about the nature of power on the island for the first time in decades:

In this island capital's long bus-stop lines and open markets, its offices and restaurants, the question keeps popping up: Where's Raúl?

Raúl Castro has yet to appear in public since being named temporary president of Cuba late Monday. His absence is adding a layer of intrigue to the speculation-heavy ambience that has settled over this city. It was two days ago that the Cuban government announced that Fidel Castro -- who is recovering from intestinal surgery -- would relinquish his 47-year hold on power to his younger brother.

"I think Raúl should have appeared by now, more than anything to calm the public and to show the world that everything is under control," said Joel, a taxi driver, who did not want to divulge his last name for fear of government reprisals.

Cuba's government has not made an official proclamation about Fidel Castro's health since late Tuesday evening, even as Cuban exiles and some U.S. officials have questioned whether the Cuban leader, whose 80th birthday is this month, has already died. The closest to an official statement was delivered in an unlikely forum on Wednesday when Ricardo Alarcón, the Cuban National Assembly president, told NPR's "All Thing Considered" that Fidel Castro would not return to power for "some weeks."

In a national crisis, the first action of any rational government -- especially personality-cult dictatorships -- is to assure people that the government is still in control. We have had our own experiences with that here in the US, after presidential assassinations, deaths, and illnesses. On one occasion, the impulse was strong enough to cause a great deal of embarrassment to Alexander Haig, who seemed to have forgotten that the Vice President outranked the Secretary of State.

If anything, governments err on the side of too much reassurance, not too little. Leaving the appearance of a power vacuum creates the same amount of danger as a real power vacuum, because under these circumstances appearances probably do not lie. And power vacuums invite all sorts of responses to the need to fill them.

After almost five decades in power, the Castro regime surely knows this. So why are Cubans being forced to ask where Dear Placeholder has hidden himself? One has to wonder whether the transfer of power to Raul went as smoothly as first indicated, and whether Fidel is in any shape to enforce it.

UPDATE: US News & World Report has an excellent Q&A on this topic with Brian Latell:

Q. Do you think Castro is signaling that he is nearly ready to step down?

A. I think it even goes beyond that. I think that Raúl Castro is now the senior partner in the Cuban leadership. The transfer of power actually began in early June, and now it's official. I have my doubts that Fidel is ever going to get back in the saddle and run things again the way he did. Even if he survives, I think his condition is going to be so weakened that Raúl is going to be running the show.

Q. Who is Raúl Castro, and how likely is it that he will retain the reins of power if Fidel abdicates or dies?

A. As I show in After Fidel, the first biography ever written about Raúl Castro, he lacks many of Fidel's leadership qualities. He doesn't do speeches very well, doesn't like to give speeches, doesn't have the same kind of direct contact with the Cuban people that Fidel has always had. He is not an intellectual like Fidel. He likes to stay in the background. But he has many other qualities that compensate. He is very, very smart, and he is powerful. He is the regime's best organizer, an experienced manager and organization man. He will run Cuba very differently, with a more collective leadership, sharing responsibilities--and titles--with other civilian and military officials. He won't be the constant center of attention, the single source of authority that Fidel has been all these years.

But I think it is likely that Raúl will retain power. He has the support of the three most powerful institutions in Cuba. He runs the military, the security and intelligence services, and is now the dominant force in the Communist Party.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Val at Babalublog also wants to play Where's Raul-do. He's hearing all sorts of conflicting reports, but he's staying on top of everything there. Be sure to keep checking back at Babalublog.

Rep. John Murtha has demanded an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq for months. Now he's demanding another stand-down, but this time he's telling Israel to declare defeat and go home:

Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha said yesterday that he favored an immediate cease-fire in the fighting in Lebanon. ...

Mr. Murtha, speaking yesterday at a Post-Gazette editorial board meeting, was asked if he favored a cease-fire in the campaign north of Israel's border.

"I think so," he said. "I think it would be very difficult to justify continuing on."

Referring to the Bush administration's position, he said: "You know, they say, 'Well, we want a long-term cease-fire.' It seems to me you start with a cease-fire, and then you try to work out the details long term. If you don't, and you continue to have heavy-handed military action -- and I support heavy-handed military action because it saves your own troops -- but it creates enemies, and that's the problem we have."

Mr. Murtha said the fighting risked hardening against Israel the "hearts and minds" of Lebanese civilians within the general population, beyond Israel's entrenched enemies in the Shiite militia.

John Murtha has made himself into the paragon of Democratic tenacity in wartime, only now he wants Israel to follow his example -- after Hezbollah attacked them. He trots out the same old "hearts and minds" line that we have heard since Viet Nam, only he fails to realize that for Israel, surrender will not endear it to their neighbors. Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago, and Hezbollah has lobbed missiles and conducted border raids ever since. Surrender has not worked for the Israelis; Islamists hate them just the same, and only get emboldened by their efforts to act peacefully.

For this reason, as well as for his impulse to declare fellow Marines guilty of murder without benefit of trial, Murtha will have a tougher time convincing his constituents to return him to Congress. Many of them supported the veteran Marine because of his service record, and understandably so. However, Murtha has dissipated that asset with this kind of incessant defeatism and knee-jerk capitulationism. Considering that Bush probably won this district in 2004 (gerrymanderings makes it difficult to say definitively), the Republicans certainly have a shot at a win here in PA-12.

Some have challenged the wisdom of including Diana Irey in our Rightroots campaign, which has raised over $25,000 to date for the eighteen races we selected. Irey leads all fundraisers at Rightroots, with over $5,000 in contributions. Given Murtha's wide lead in fundraising and his electoral record, that skepticism is understandable. (The Florida Masochist elected us his Knuckleheads of the Day for being, well, masochists.) I don't share his defeatism. Murtha ran unopposed in 2004, but a lot has happened since then, and none of it reflects well on Murtha. Despite his financial advantage, which we hope to dent just a bit, he's going to be vulnerable to a serious challenge in the fall.

We don't win by ducking a fight. We learned that despite John Murtha and his defeatism, and we want to work as hard as we can to replace him with someone who supports a forward strategy for the war on terror -- someone who understands that terrorists do not abide by cease fires and the rules of war. Diana Irey deserves our support in showing the courage to challenge John Murtha for his Congressional seat, and I'm pleased to have her as part of our Rightroots initiative.

One of the earliest on-line experiences for home computer users came from America On Line, known better now by its initials AOL. It started service in 1989 as an exclusively Apple service, but gained popularity by providing squeaky-clean content in a single user-friendly interface for computer neophtytes. It took several years before AOL allowed its users to access the wilds of the Internet, but eventually dominated that market as well. At its peak, AOL had over 26 million paid subscribers to its service.

Unfortunately, those days have long since passed. With the broadband revolution, AOL's dial-up services are increasingly anachronistic, and their subscriber base has begun a steep decline. After losing close to 40%, AOL has decided on a new strategy -- giving itself away:

Time Warner, the symbol of the early dotcom rise and fall, geared up for a last desperate throw of the dice yesterday. In an attempt to save its ailing AOL internet business, which has been rapidly losing lucrative American users, Time Warner is turning its back on its well established subscription model. AOL will offer its distinctive services such as email and web security free to anyone with broadband, relying on the revenues generated by online advertising. ...

AOL has lost nine million customers in almost four years, slumping from a high of 26.7 million in September 2002 to 17.7 million at the end of June this year. The rate has been increasing as dial-up users migrate to broadband. Attempts to get into the broadband market have been hampered by the make-up of the US cable and telephone market. It has tried to sign wholesale deals with network companies to use their pipes for a broadband product but with little success.

As a result AOL's dial-up users have to pick a rival broadband service if they want super-fast internet access. To make up for the lack of broadband access, AOL has made its services available to broadband users for a monthly fee - generally about $15. About 6.2 million Americans who have broadband provided by someone else pay for this service. But as consumers become more web savvy they have been realising that they can get free email from the likes of Google and they are dumping AOL.

"Our members don't want to leave," said Mr Bewkes. "They want to keep using AOL and they tell us that the number one reason that they leave AOL when they switch to broadband is price, so now we are fixing that problem. We are going to stop sending our members to our competitors."

I'm surprised that AOL took this long to figure out their problem, and I'm still not sure they understand it fully. Broadband only represents one reason for their decline. The other comes from the natural expertise developed by Internet users and the wide availablity of content.

AOL built its business on its one-stop interface and exclusive content. At one time, Internet users without AOL had little choice in general-interest content, or at least a limited way to access it. With AOL, one could find reference materials, news services, magazines, chat rooms, e-mail, gaming, and a wide variety of other content in one spot. The Internet, without that powerful interface, was uncharted territory for most casual users. That changed with the advent of Yahoo!, Google, and other navigational sites. Instead of relying on AOL's slow-loading interface, netsurfers could find their content quickly and reliably, using just a web browser.

AOL had one other key asset -- its reliable and national dial-up service. Straight Internet providers rarely could provide that kind of ease, at least not at first. For those users who traveled frequently, AOL gave them a fully portable account where e-mail and stored information could easily get accessed. Web mail sites, offering their services for free, eroded that advantage over the last few years.

Broadband has not been quite the bogeyman painted by the Guardian in this article. AOL recognized the issue of charging a dial-up subscription rate for users who wanted faster access. They developed the Bring Your Own Access plan, which cost users only $4.95 per month to access the service outside of their dial-up servers. It still required the AOL software to be installed on the computer, however, with all of its overhead and slow responses magnified by the speed of regular Internet surfing.

Will the new model work for AOL? Hopefully; those of us with Internet sites hope that Internet advertising becomes a successful model for content providers. AOL may in the end suffer from its almost-inherently anachronistic approach. In a world of expert Internet users and ever-easier methods of netsurfing, who really needs the handholding that AOL offers?