Captain's Quarters -

Last night on the way to a meeting, I listened to a caller on the Hugh Hewitt show absolutely wrong-foot the normally unflappable Hugh when the caller suggested that he could prove that Republicans support Satanic control of world events, as long as we had an "open mind". Hugh asked how he could prove that, and the caller said that a website could prove that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan conspired to murder John Lennon ... and that Stephen King had carried out the hit.

Yes, I mean that Stephen King.

Intrigued, I looked up the website and started knocking around it. If one ever wanted to peek inside the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic, this website -- which is completely earnest -- gives one the best possible potential. In its way, it illustrates all the faulty logic, leaps of conjecture, and paranoid thinking that creates conspiracy theories from Right to Left and in certain parts of the world where such thinking is mainstream. This is Mena airfields and one-world-government on steroids.

The most pathetic part of this website comes from a handwritten letter from Stephen King himself, who apparently tried to take pity on the nutcase (also named Steve) who obsesses about this theory:

Dear Steve,

I didn't kill John Lennon and I think you know that as well as I do, inside the wall of denial that you've put up. Your interest in me is a way of allowing you to avoid dealing with your own mental and spiritual problems. Let it go, why don't you, and find more constructive outlets for your considerable talents? Meantime, here is a fascinating book about the man who really did kill John.

Best, Stephen King

I'm impressed that King actually tried to talk the man down from his mental ledge, and King even sent him a copy of Let Me Take You Down, a book about Mark David Chapman. Unfortunately, the conspiracy nut believed that the book was a coded message that King used to threaten his life. I'd say that King might want to review his security situation.

It's a sad and extreme example of what happens when people stop looking for rational answers and instead adopt the lazy but satisfying belief that massive conspiracies exist just out of sight which explain everything wrong in the world. It's an impulse we see all too often, and the end result brings us to imagine that politically liberal novelists conspire with conservative politicians to murder entertainers, among other impossibilities.

Thomas Kean Jr has overtaken Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez in the New Jersey Senate race, according to Rasmussen's latest poll. Kean created a 12-point shift in the past month, going from six points down in July to six points up at the end of August.

This puts a serious crimp in the Democrat's plans to take over the Senate in these midterms. They need to hold all of their current seats before they can possibly hope to gain enough to take control of the upper chamber. Losing New Jersey makes that all but impossible. Expect the Democrats to start spending a lot of money to rescue Menendez in the coming days.

The IAEA report states that inspectors found traces of highly-enriched uranium a year ago in an Iranian nuclear facility. This time, the IAEA analysis states that it did not come from contaminated Pakistani equipment:

The global nuclear monitoring agency deepened suspicions on Thursday about Iran’s nuclear program, reporting that inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility. Inspectors have found such uranium, which at extreme enrichment levels can fuel bombs, twice in the past. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that at least some of those samples came from contaminated equipment that Iran had obtained from Pakistan.

But in this case, the nuclear fingerprint of the particles did not match the other samples, an official familiar with the inspections said, raising questions about their origin.

In a six-page report to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the agency withheld judgment about where the material came from and whether it could be linked to a secret nuclear program.

The excuse from the previous find was that the Pakistanis had not thoroughly cleaned the machinery Iran bought through the AQ Khan network. Analysts told the IAEA after months of study that the new sample came from a completely different source, which indicates that the Iranians produced it themselves. Not only that, but the level of enrichment significantly exceeds anything required for civilian energy production.

Of course, this could only surprise people who have either slept for the past ten years or are pathological optimists. Ahmadinejad has rejected an incentive package that would have all but given Iran peaceful nuclear energy, instead opting to pursue enrichment themselves, apparently with a lot of success.

That success led them to start barring IAEA inspectors from key sites. The agency states in its report that it has declining confidence in its ability to provide a complete picture on Iranian nuclear efforts as a result. That means that the information on Iran's program will become increasingly less reliable, a big danger considering the stakes of the decisions that have to be made on increasingly incomplete information, but it begs the question: if Iran only wants peaceful, civilian nuclear energy, then why all the secrecy?

None of this has apparently moved the Russians and the Chinese. According to Robert Einhorn, former State Department head on nonproliferation under the Clinton administration, only a "smoking gun" will convince them to support sanctions. Unfortnately, the only smoking object that would qualify for Russian and Chinese firmness would be the radioactive remains of Tel Aviv.

Charlotte Knobloch survived Nazi Germany's genocide on Jews to rise to the head of the German Jewish Council. In a disturbing interview with Der Spiegel, Knobloch -- whose personal history gives her the requisite perspective -- states that anti-Semitic attitudes have hit levels not seen in years:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: When you took office you said one of the main focuses of your work would be the struggle against right-wing extremism. Has the conflict in the Middle East worsened anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany?

Knobloch: It has, unfortunately. I see an absolutely hostile attitude towards Jews and Israel. Signs that read "Israel -- Child Murderers" are being carried through the streets at demonstrations here, for example. The police don't confiscate these placards. Persons that deal with the issue only marginally, or not at all, are influenced negatively. That's the basis of this hostile attitude. You can find it everywhere. We're currently organizing a fundraising concert, for example, and even there we get negative, anti-Semitic mail. No distinctions are made. We're sucked into the current Middle East conflict one hundred percent, as Jewish citizens in Germany. And those politicians who latch onto this hostile mood with carefully prepared statements are of course doing better than ever.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who do you mean?

Knobloch: Oskar Lafontaine, the leader of the Left Party, for example. Left Party parliamentarians aren't particularly objective in their evaluation of the catastrophe in the Middle East. I'm also thinking of Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the Minister of Economic Aid and Development and member of the Social Democrat Party (SPD). These people encourage the hostile mood against Jews. I've never experienced anything quite like this. It's on a new level. This hostile mood is now more noticeable in the German public than it used to be. It's infiltrated every group and every level of society. I hope this development can be reversed by a joint effort on the part of all democratic forces. Otherwise all the positive images I have about Germany would be put into question. I unpacked my suitcase in this country. And I don't want to have to repack it.

Knobloch's observations underscore one of the truths of the last century or more: the Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Europeans dealing with burgeoning Muslim populations find themselves stuck between the Jews and those who hate them -- and Knobloch sees the Jews losing that battle. The Israeli-Hezbollah conflict provides a sort of cover for anti-Semites to express their hatred to the Jews even though Hezbollah started the conflict. Logic has never entered into the calculations of anti-Semitism, of course, but in this case it at least seems calculated. Europeans see Muslims as an existential threat, and therefore have attempted to appease it by unleashing bigotry against the Jews.

Not all Germans indulge this, of course, and Angela Merkel surprised Knobloch by agreeing to a deployment of German troops to protect the Israelis from Hezbollah by joining UNIFIL. She notes that the agreement represents a watershed for Germans and Jews, a new way of thinking about the relationship between the two after six decades of the legacy of the Holocaust. Only six years ago, Knesset members walked out on a speech by Germany's then-president Johannes Rau when he visited the assembly.Now fully armed German soldiers will be at Israel's borders, but to protect them from Hezbollah nihilists.

Knobloch also warns Der Spiegel readers about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his rhetoric about Jews and Israel. She understands better than most how appeasement policies backfire, and she warns against dismissing his fiery calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. History, she says, repeats itself over and over, and people still do not learn. The rising levels of anti-Semitism demonstrates that Germans and perhaps Europeans in general still have not learned that it always starts with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews. The last time this lesson got taught, six million Jews died among over 50 million worldwide over a six-year period. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, that total could be achieved in weeks instead of years.

Last week, I suggested that Jon Henke would make an excellent ambassador to the blogosphere for the George Allen re-election campaign. Perhaps someone in Senator Allen's office noticed the post, but they certainly made the right decision whatever the reason. The Allen campaign has hired Jon to be its Netroots Coordinator:

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve accepted a job as Netroots Coordinator with the George Allen Senate Campaign.

Obviously, this will change my focus quite a bit, but I will continue to blog at QandO whenever possible, generally on the issues and stories in this very important Virginia Senate race.

Naturally, as a Netroots Coordinator, I’ll be working directly with bloggers and readers who support George Allen. If I can help any of you, don’t hesitate to contact me.

I want to make a couple of observations about this decision, which delights me for personal reasons; Jon and I started blogging about the same time and have occupied each other's blogrolls since the start. He's also a terrific guy and a great blogger, and I'm excited about his success.

First, Jon isn't a doctrinaire conservative by any means. Jon calls himself a neo-libertarian, which I interpret as a Libertarian with common sense. His blog, QandO, has espoused positions that do not match easily with mainstream Republican thought, but show Jon's individualistic and non-dogmatic approach to politics. The fact that Allen and his campaign see Jon as a fit tells me that Allen does not dictate ideological purity but instead aims for competency and intelligence in his staff decisions -- a quality I had not expected, and one I appreciate.

Second, while I think the realization came a little late, Allen now knows how important the blogosphere will be in elections from now on. This epiphany seems slow to arrive with some politicians. Hillary Clinton hired the well-respected Peter Daou for her campaign. Not too many others have done anything similar. Both Clinton and Allen face re-election in the midterms, but one suspects that Jon and Peter will continue to stay on staff if their new bosses win their elections to prepare for the presidential campaign.

Lastly, one should note Jon's commitment to full disclosure. He will not give up blogging at QandO, but plans on putting a disclaimer on every post he writes, reminding readers of his status with the Allen campaign. It's no surprise for those of us who know Jon, but it should serve as a standard for all other bloggers to follow.

Congratulations to Jon on his new job, and congratulations to the Allen campaign for their smart and open-minded selection of the best candidate for the position.

UPDATE: Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll claims some credit for this development, too. Ah, what the heck ... we can share!

Jon got off to a good start on his new job with this post about George Allen's efforts to assist black colleges to upgrade their telecommunications infrastructure. In fact, his legislative efforts were so successful that the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund planned to give him their Thurgood Marshall Award for his efforts. Those plans got hijacked by Allen's political opponents:

This wasn’t just any bill for Senator Allen. He introduced the bill and spent multiple years getting it through Congress. This was a project for which Senator Allen worked hard. The Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund obviously recognized that contribution and so they decided to give Senator Allen the Thurgood Marshall Award.

That is how things are supposed to work: cooperation, results. Unfortunately, it’s campaign season, and the Democrats don't see it that way. (see Shaun Kenney for details on that)

When confronted with the prospect of Senator Allen getting an award for the actual work he's done in "support of public Historically Black Colleges and Universities", Democrats took political hostages. A quick pressure campaign was mounted culminating in threats to withhold donations. Not to withhold donations to Senator Allen...to withhold donations to the schools.

Rather than allow the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund to recognize Senator Allen’s support for historically black colleges, critics used school funding to play blackmail. And rather than let the students be held hostage in order to score Democratic political points, Senator Allen has decided to decline the award.

Allen spent several years championing this legislation and rather than acknowledge the bipartisan efforts Allen made on behalf of African-American students, the Democrats attacked the schools to perpetuate a myth of Allen as some sort of racist. Read all of Jon's post.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad assured him that Syria would enforce the arms embargo on Hezbollah, and that the Syrian army would patrol the border to ensure that arms traffic ceased:

UN 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 Hizbullah.

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. ...

Annan said Assad informed him that Syria would "take all necessary measures" to implement paragraph 15 of UN 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 UN peacekeepers.

It would be a lovely development if it were true. However, one has to be incredibly naive to think that Syria would give up its proxy in Lebanon just because Annan asked them to do so. For one thing, Assad needs Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon not just to keep Israelis on the defensive but to keep the government of Beirut hostage to Syrian demands. Hezbollah's status as the only civil-war militia still bearing arms is no accident.

Annan's first clue should have come when Assad declined to make a public statement after their meeting. Annan rushed to the microphones like Neville Chamberlain without the umbrella to announce Syria's commitment to peace, but Syria couldn't be bothered. That clear signal that states "You're on your own" apparently didn't dissuade the UN chief from casting Syria as a peacemaker despite their long involvement with terrorism in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Annan's job is to talk to world leaders and try to find common ground for peace, and no one begrudges efforts made in that capacity. However, Annan fails to understand the difference between talk and action, like most die-hard utopians. His credulousness in the face of one of the worst terrorist-support regimes in the world demonstrates his fecklessness and that of the organization he fronts.

The very next nine-day wonder of protest is about to break open, as King Banaian notes at SCSU Scholars. The Los Angeles Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education both report on a defunct FBI program that investigated suspected terrorists and accomplices by reviewing data on federal grants for higher education. Not surprisingly, the LA Times gets a significant fact incorrect almost immediately:

The Education Department acknowledged Thursday that at the request of the FBI, it had scoured millions of federal student loan records for information about suspected terrorists in the five years since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The data mining — known as "Project Strike Back" — was intended to determine whether terrorism suspects had illegally obtained college aid to finance their operations through identity theft or other means.

Project Strike Back did not involve data mining, no more than a check of a driver's license during a traffic stop can be called data mining. Data mining refers to the practice of taking large databases and sifting through it for self-identifying patterns in an attempt to pinpoint data that otherwise might remain hidden. Put more simply, data mining finds order in chaos.

PSB instead relied on old-fashioned police work. The FBI took information about people suspected of involvement with or support of terrorists -- no more than a thousand in a four-year period -- and searched government databases for any additional information that might reveal more evidence. Student aid would at least identify the location of individuals on watch lists, as well as give investigators some idea of concentrations of the suspects. If two dozen terror suspects show up as receiving aid to attend chemistry courses at the University of Minnesota, that might provide a few dots for the FBI to connect.

In the end, though, PSB turned out to be a bust. Most of its operations took place in the first two years after 9/11, and it shut down for good this June. What rankles some people is that federal education grants and loans are only available to American citizens and legal residents, which leads some to question its efficacy as a counter-terrorist program:

Mr. Hartle called the Education Department's project a "perfect illustration of the dangers of the unit-record system." He pointed out that, to receive federal aid, students must either be U.S. citizens or have a green card. "This is about finding Timothy McVeigh," he said. "This is not about finding Mohammed Atta. ... It's hard to be surprised when the government is mining every single database. In the war on terror, there are no safe harbors."

"This case is another example of Big Brother gone wild," said Michael D. Ostrolenk, national director of the Liberty Coalition, which consists of privacy-rights organizations across the political spectrum. "In the age of everything is a national-security issue, we are destroying the very liberties and privacy rights which make our country unique and great in the history of the world."

As King notes, finding the next Timothy McVeigh might be a good idea, at least before an attack. And since when do we provide safe harbor for terrorists under any conditions? Hartle appears to believe that universities exist in some sort of temporal vacuum where terrorism does not exist. And Ostralenk is simply hysterical. The database for federal education assistance are explicitly not private, nor should they be. It consists of data used to apply for federal money voluntarily -- more voluntarily than DMV information, for instance, and the DMV doesn't disburse thousands of dollars for the completion of the form.

King worries about the effect on terror investigations by the revelation of this program, especially if negative publicity convinces colleges and universities to stop cooperating with law-enforcement agencies. It does not appear that PSB found much of interest and the program already had concluded before its existence became public knowledge, although the FBI noted that the program's efforts were referenced in publicly-available briefings to Congress and the GAO. More likely PSB will become yet another urban myth of "trolling through massive databases", as the Times puts it, and undermine support for the efforts to secure the nation against terrorism.

In this case, this program proved ineffective and eventually ended. However, nothing in either the Times or the Chronicle reports indicate that any laws were even bent, let alone broken, nor that the FBI did anything more unusual than it would for any other kind of criminal investigation. If we continually carp about innovative but perfectly legal methods of finding terrorists, we will once again find ourselves with a smoking hole or two in the middle of our cities and screeching about failures to connect dots. And the next time, we will have no one but ourselves to blame for it.

The Washington Post's editorial board takes a shot at Joe Wilson, one of their anonymous sources three years ago, as the full impact of the discovery of Richard Armitage as the Valerie Plame leaker takes effect. The editors place the blame for Plame's unmasking where it always belonged -- on Wilson himself:

[I]t now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

It's more than unfortunate -- it was deliberate. Wilson and Plame set up this trip for the purpose of discrediting the elected officials of the American government in an attempt to keep them from exercising their policies on intelligence and foreign affairs. Wilson lied and deceived people, first by leaking his disinformation anonymously to the Post and the New York Times, and then in an editorial that relied on his diplomatic reputation to bolster the credibility of his false accusations.

This set off a political witch hunt the likes of which should embarrass the media and Democrats for years, but probably won't. They demanded an investigation into the leak, especially the editorial board of the New York Times, then wailed as the prosecutor started jailing reporters for non-cooperation. The whole time the media and the mainstream Democratic leadership -- including their presidential nominee John Kerry, who made Wilson a part of his campaign -- insisted that Wilson spoke truth to power, even while Kerry's own Senate intelligence panel reached a very different conclusion.

Now the Left and the media want to continue talking about Scooter Libby rather than the three-year travesty they have foisted on this nation during a time of war. At least the Washington Post knows when to stop.

With the Democrats demanding a raise in the federal minimum wage and campaigning on the issue to highlight their sympathy for American workers. That sympathy, as Power Line noted earlier this evening, doesn't even extend beyond their own payroll. Democratic canvassers in Wisconsin have walked off the job as the Democratic Party refuses to pay them the existing minimum wage:

Alex Scherer-Jones began working for Grassroots Campaigns to fight the Bush administration and elevate the fortunes of the Democratic Party. The 21-year-old MATC student left feeling exploited and sour: "I went in there being very idealistic and it kind of ruined my idealism."

The job involves going door to door asking people to give money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, using talking points that include a call to raise the minimum wage. For this, Scherer-Jones says he was paid far less than the state minimum wage of $6.50 an hour.

"I worked 37 hours one week and got paid around $130 [after taxes]," recalls Scherer-Jones, who quit after two weeks.

John Dedering worked for Grassroots Campaigns for about a month last year and again this year. He says the company paid a satisfactory base wage in 2005, when he canvassed for Environmental Action, but this year switched to a new system, dropping his wages to less than minimum.

Juan Ruiz says he put in about 45 hours working at Grassroots Campaigns for five days this year, and was paid just $56. And Miles Kristan produces pay stubs for two two-week periods, during which he says he typically worked 50 hours per week. One is for $339.81, the other for $281.50. Before taxes.

We have heard plenty of outrage from Congressional Democrats this year over the length of time since the last minimum-wage hike. Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer have railed about how minimum-wage workers have not had a raise in seven years, somehow neglecting to mention that the minimum wage is a transitional wage only and that raises come as part of a performance reward system when one stays at a job.

Their rationalization for breaking the law is laughable. Their contractor, Grassroots Campaigns, argues that special rules apply to canvassers that allow them to pay commission-based compensation. GC also acknowledges that they do not pay for employee time spent during orientation, claiming another exemption. Neither exemption exists, and even if they did, Democrats still would need to explain why they would support any system that paid $56 in wages for 45 hours of work.

For instance, Democrats around the nation have made a stink this year about the wages paid by Wal-Mart, which has an average starting pay of approximately $9 per hour. Suppose Wal-Mart created a set of incentives for compensation that allowed them to pay a wage as low as $1.25 per hour. How many broken legs would national Democratic candidates suffer in their stampede to press conferences to denounce the evil, heartless corporation of Wal-Mart?

Democrats demand a minimum-wage hike that will hit small businesses hardest. They regularly hold rallies outside of Wal-Marts to protest the low pay and benefits that the company offers its employees. The Democrats hope to use these arguments to get more people to register with their party -- and then they stiff the employees who have to find these voters.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat.

Experienced bloggers and readers know that the two mainstream media critics worth bookmarking are Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post and Jack Shafer at Slate. Shafer demonstrates his brilliance in tonight's critique of this week's bad science coverage regarding a Massachussetts study that reported a 10% rise in nicotine levels in cigarettes. All of the major newspapers covered the story, and the New York Times even dedicated an editorial to berating the tobacco industry for its heartlessness, but Shafer reports that lazy reporting and bad sourcing created a hysteria over nothing at all:

Journalists give tobacco companies the same benefit of the doubt they do alleged baby-rapists, which is to say none. And who can blame them? For a century, the tobacco industry has lied and obfuscated about their products at every turn.

Yet serial liars aren't automatically guilty of every charge leveled against them. Even the tobacco company baddies, who took a wicked beating this week in the press, deserve a fair hearing before we hang them.

The news hook this week was a Commonwealth of Massachusetts report about nicotine yields in cigarettes increasing by 10 percent since 1998. The Boston Globe's headline reports "Cigarettes pack more nicotine," and the story's lede alleges that the boost makes "it tougher for smokers to quit." The story quotes Massachusetts officials, anti-smoking advocates from public health and law, but no critics of the report. The tobacco companies declined, across the board, to talk to the press.

The media jumped all over the Massachussetts report, in all instances framing the reported increase in nicotine as an attempt to make cigarettes more addictive. Would a 10% increase in nicotine actually result in a higher addiction potential? The newspapers never bothered to find out, nor did they ask themselves the obvious question as a reality check: would anyone argue that a 10% reduction in nicotine levels would make cigarettes less addictive?

Shafer performs the research that the newspapers skipped. He took the paper to a highly-regarded medical researcher at Lancet and investigated the research methodology used by Massachussetts. He found that shoddy research and reporting had made the allegations unprovable and a poor selection for reporting. It's a complicated story and almost impossible to excerpt, so be sure to read the whole article -- and to watch for Shafer's work at Slate whenever possible.

British security forces arrested 14 people in a terror sweep they say is unrelated to the foiled sky-terror plot, the BBC reports. The arrests appear to focus on a madrassa in East Sussex:

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.

The school only had nine students at its last inspection, which seems very noteworthy considering the size of the facility. The school advertises to Islamic centers as a central instruction point for leaders of Muslim communities. Given the size of the facility, either Jameah Islameah has fallen on hard times -- which seems unlikely given the current state of affairs -- or it served as something more than an instructional facility.

In fact, the BBC's sources say that the arrests involved the operation of training camps for terrorists. It's the same kind of training that British investigators suspected the July 7 bombers of undergoing but were never able to establish when or where it happened. While investigators so far have found no connection between the school and the July 7 plotters, they apparently have taken that theory seriously enough to look for similar training centers for would-be terrorists.

The suspects were arrested as they ate at a halal Chinese restaurant, after having dozens of police officers come into the place looking specifically for them. One has to wonder why 12 of the 14 suspects had gathered in one place, and a public place at that, when the school would have provided more security -- if their meeting had a specific purpose. Likewise, if the police assumed that it did, was it a good idea to confront them in a public place, or should they have waited until they had them in more secure surroundings? It doesn't seem like an accident that so many security officers just happened to be available as backup at that Chinese restaurant.

The British have scored a number of recent successes in fighting the Islamists, if this proves to be correct. They appear to have made significant intelligence inroads into the radical Muslim community. It would be enlightening to know their methods.

UPDATE: Allahpundit at Hot Air questions the timing, too.

The US successfully tested its missile-defense system again this week, and this time it specifically used North Korean missile technology in its test. The North Koreans did not miss the significance of the results:

The U.S. missile defense system yesterday shot down an incoming dummy warhead simulating the last-stage trajectory of a North Korean Taepodong-2 missile, a milestone that U.S. officials expect to counter critics of earlier tests.

It was the first time a dummy North Korean missile was intercepted, and the sixth successful intercept since 1999, said officials from the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

"What we did today is a huge step in terms of our systematic approach to continuing to field, continuing to deploy and continuing to develop a missile defense system for the United States, for our allies, our friends, our deployed forces around the world," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency.

He said there is "good chance" the system would be successful against a Taepodong-2 launched from North Korea.

Pyongyang test-fired a Taepodong-2 missile on July 4th, heightening tensions in the Pacific and raising fears that North Korea could now strike the US mainland. The TD-2 was intended to land outside of Hawaiian waters as a message to the US of Kim Jong-Il's reach in the Pacific, but it failed within the first minute of its flight. North Korea says it intends to keep testing the TD-2, regardless of the outcry in the region.

That led to the increased efforts to demonstrate the futility of the TD-2 project. After a successful intercept at or approaching the apogee of a multi-stage missile in June, critics complained that such an intercept would not adequately stop the warhead of an ICBM from wreaking havoc. This test appears to counter that criticism. The defensive system destroyed the warhead itself, a feat better than its design intended, and it shows that the US can stop at least a random missile shot, if necessary.

North Korea reacted as one would expect: unhappily. The demonstration of our missile defense "clearly shows that it is the U.S. which is increasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threatening war against our country." Kim pledged to continue work on his TD-2 to increase DPRK's "self-defensive deterrent", which in Orwellian Newspeak means offensive nuclear weapons capabilities.

Japan, meanwhile, is also discussing an end to official pacifism in the face of North Korean threats:

Shinzo Abe, the nationalist politician who is expected to become Japan’s next prime minister, said Friday that Japan should revise the pacifist Constitution imposed on it by the United States.

He made the statement as he formally declared his candidacy for the presidency of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, a post that would give him the prime ministership. Mr. Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, also said Japan should seek a larger role in the world and further strengthen its alliance with the United States.

“As the next L.D.P. president, I’d like to take the lead to put revision of the Constitution on the political agenda,” Mr. Abe said at a regional party convention in Hiroshima.

“I’d like to draft a new Constitution with my own hands,” he added.

The current war-renouncing Constitution, which was drafted by Americans during their occupation of the country after World War II, does not allow Japan to possess a real military.

This represents the real threat to Kim in the region: a re-armed Japan. It's one of two ace cards held by the West in dealing with Kim Jong-Il, the other being Taiwan, which is more of a pressure point for China. Neither wants to see Japan off its American leash, and China will be forced to exert its influence over its intransigent ally.

It would appear that George Bush has taken a page from the playbook of Ronald Reagan in dealing with North Korea. He has insisted on multilateral talks and offered some incentives for engagement. However, he refuses to trust Kim as a direct negotiating partner, and instead has worked to negate the threat through defensive measures. Once we establish that Kim's missiles will gain him nothing, Kim will have to build something to overcome the defenses. However, Pyongyang has almost run out of resources and almost assuredly will collapse, even if they avoid an arms escalation. If they try to surpass our missile defenses, Kim's regime will crumble from internal rot and a catastrophic economic situation.

In the meantime, the missile defense test sends a message to the other end of the Axis of Evil. The Iranians may be spending a lot of time and resources on a missile system that will be obsolete before they can tip them with the nukes they're pursuing. A sanctions regime would force them into the same bankruptcy as North Korea, but their restless populace will never let it get that far.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that further tests will come in December, and will include countermeasures to determine whether the interceptor can differentiate between them. Critics warn that this does not mean that the missile-defense system is 100% capable, and of course they're right. However, we would have been much closer to that state had we not taken a 10-year break from developing this program in the 1990s.

David Schraub points to a strange column by David Warren that sounds like a demand for Christian or even Wsetern martyrdom regardless of one's own personal beliefs. Warren excoriates Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig for going through a mock conversion to Islam as a means of escaping their kidnappers:

Lately I have been looking at the large -- at how the West is proving unable to cope with a threat from a fanatical Islamic movement, that it ought to be able to snuff out with fair ease. (See my column last Sunday.) But the large is often most visible in the small.

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.) But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they'd be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

I'm not going to do a point-by-point fisking here, because I doubt it would do much good, but Warren makes unsupported assumptions and then builds on them to a conclusion that seems almost as bad as anything radical Islamists say about suicide bombings.

Warren wants kidnapped hostages to die for Christianity and the West rather than jolly along their kidnappers to gain their own freedom. That may be a splendid sentiment, but it results in dead Westerners rather than dead Islamists, and I fail to see how that represents any kind of victory. One of the reasons why Western culture is superior to that of radical Islam -- and I say superior deliberately -- is that we value individual human life. Dying needlessly and purposelessly for the West doesn't gain us any converts in this conflict.

In his argument for martyrdom, Warren retells the story of the Italian hostage in Iraq that fought back rather than be beheaded. He leaves out the essential element of Fabrizio Quattrochi's story, however, which is that Quattrochi knew he was going to die. (He also makes an unsupported allegation that Quattrochi wasn't Christian.) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's goons had gathered Quattrochi and his fellow victims for their execution. Rather than await the butcher's knife, the Italian charged his captors, who were forced to shoot him instead.

Brave, yes. Martyr ... not exactly. Quattrochi didn't die to defend the West; he died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Warren complains about the image that Centanni, Wiig, and others who beg for their lives leave on the Muslim world. He says it makes Westerners look like wimps. That, however, is an indictment on their culture, not ours, that they place individual people in situations where they have to beg for their lives. Warren wants to play by Muslim rules, and he wants to do it with other people's lives. It's pretty damned easy to criticize hostages who have no idea how to stay alive except to cooperate and hope things work out well -- if the critic is heartless enough to do it.

Christianity did not survive because of martyrdom; it survived despite it, and the martyrs prepared themselves for the task. The church survived the oppression of the Romans in its first centuries, not by mindlessly dying for Christianity but for living for it. Romans did not seize people randomly off the street and tell them to deny their faith, but instead arrested and tortured the leaders of the Church. Had Warren spent any time researching the age of martyrdom, he would know that the early church cautioned the unprepared not to attempt it because of the risk of apostasy. It's hardly analogous to the terror of fanatical Muslims today, and Centanni and Wiig never volunteered to be the banner-carriers of Christianity or the West.

As I wrote this, I got an e-mail from Jules Crittendon regarding the same subject. He writes in the Boston Herald:

Centanni and Wiig -- abducted, bound and blindfolded by armed Islamic terrorists in Gaza -- were told they had to convert to Islam.They did so.They later said nice things about the Palestinian cause while still in the custody of Palestinian terrorist leaders. There was some premature debate among armchair heroes on the Internet about whether they should have done this. ...

Now, a sanctimonious Canadian, columnist David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen, has accused Centanni and Wiig of aiding the enemy through "conventional cowardice."This disgusting slur was amplified at www.realclearpolitics.com, a prominent and respected opinion website that saw fit to run these remarks under its own imprint.

Warren reportedly is a convert to Catholicism. Presumeably that conversion happened after his reported divorce, or he would be a sinner and a hypocrite rather than, as he presumeably is now, forgiven. He called Centanni and Wiig’s gunpoint conversion something we can "understand: not forgive." He assumes they are not Christians, but proceeds to argue for martyrdom, if not Christian martyrdom, then martydom for the West.

Warren’s condemnation of these men raises some very unusual questions. Clearly he’s eager for their deaths. But in his own case, does he long to be nailed to a cross of his own, or would he rather have some heretics to burn? Or is he just jacked up on self-righteousness and spouting off idly from the sidelines? Whichever it may be, he starts to sound a lot like some other religious fanatics I could name.

The though process behind Warren's diatribe eludes me. It's presumptuous and in the end, it's ludicrous. He wants to make the abductors' point for them and turn every Westerner into a combatant. That's his argument at its base -- that Centanni and Wiig should have understood themselves to be combatants and their cooperation with their captors amounted to treason, if not apostasy. It's an argument, though, that we don't even make with combatants any more. During the Viet Nam War, thousands of POWs got tortured for their brave resistance to demands for taped statements against the United States. When that information came to light after the war, the DoD revised its policies on treason to exclude the kind of facile rhetorical cooperation that the Vietnamese had demanded, the resistance to which cost American lives and health needlessly.

Everyone understands that statements made under duress have no meaning except to demonstrate the inhumanity of the captors rather than the politics or religion of the captured. Everyone understands this except for David Warren, I guess, who argues that religious fanaticism must be fought with more religious fanaticism. I, for one, am happy that Centanni and Wiig had the wits and the luck to get out of Gaza alive. That to me is a victory. That Warren sees it as a form of surrender makes me wonder exactly what kind of war he wants to fight.

Just a day after Jon Henke announced his new position with the George Allen re-election campaign, his QandO blog has been hacked. Individual posts still display, but an attempt to access the main page only displays a misspelled text message, supposedly from a Turkish hacker, saying "NO WAR!"

Uh-huh. Suddenly QandO has landed on the radar screen of Turkish hackers -- who manage to misspell 'Turkish'? And their anti-war fervor led them to hack a neo-Libertarian site? Riiiiiiiight.

If you don't have QandO's RSS feed, here it is. It appears to work just fine, and you can read anything new that the trio posts while it fixes the damage done by, er, Turkish hackers.

As I wrote last week, it's that time of year again here in Minnesota, when it seems that half of the state congregates within a square mile to sample food on a stick and make carny barkers rich. It's the Great Minnesota Get-Together, our State Fair, and as always, the Northern Alliance Radio Network will broadcast live from the AM 1280 The Patriot booth. We'll be broadcasting again today and tomorrow from the fairgrounds. Today, we will stick to our new expanded schedule of 11 am - 5 pm CT; tomorrow we will broadcast from 12 - 4 pm CT. If you can't get down to the fair on either weekend, tune us in at 1280 AM or on our Internet stream.

I'll be on with Mitch from 1-3 CT today and 2-4 CT tomorrow, so be sure to tune in!

I decided to take the First Mate out for an evening after finishing the State Fair broadcast this afternoon. We had wanted to see The Devil Wears Prada for a few weeks but hadn't had a chance to catch it yet. The FM read the book (on CD), and with Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, it looked like a good choice. I'll pass on writing a review -- it's been out for too long -- but it's definitely enjoyable. Streep is deliciously nasty, Tucci is excellent, and Anne Hathaway almost manages to steal the movie from both.

Some have asked for an update on the FM's health. She's improved over the summer, but the BK viral infection has made something of a comeback. She now has to have a weekly IV infusion of a powerful antiviral, and we're hoping that will solve the problem. Until then, we have to wait on any transplant. Her anemia has all but disappeared, though, and her energy level is much improved. My back is healing nicely as well.

We took our son and daughter-in-law out with us to the movie, and afterwards we debated energy policy while standing in a soft rainshower. David studies physics at the U of M and has always had an interest in American energy policy, ever since he and I looked into the use of hydrogen fuel cells for a high-school project years ago. He expressed frustration over our continuing reliance on fossil fuels rather than nuclear power. I asked him to write a paper on the issue, and he agreed to review the scientific implications of our energy policies for CQ readers. Hopefully I'll have something soon to share with you all; he's got some interesting ideas.

The Times of London joins a growing number of media outlets that report on Hillary Clinton's supposed reluctance to run for President, in 2008 or anytime else. The Democrats share this reluctance based on consistently high negatives in polling and want her to stay in the Senate -- but another Clinton wants to live in the White House again:

FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate.

The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Bill as consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be led by a woman one day. “Stay tuned,” she said.

First, however, she has to win the election. Some Democratic party elders — the American equivalent of the Tories’ “men in grey suits” — say Clinton may back out of the race of her own volition. ...

Her final decision is likely to be made next spring. One close friend of the Clintons said: “There is no way she won’t run for president.” According to a member of “Hillaryland”, her close-knit inner-circle, she would be letting herself and her supporters down if she declined to take a shot at the White House.

Others are not so sure. If she balks at the presidency, “she can win a huge amount of goodwill by donating her money to colleagues in the Senate,” another associate said.

Like the other articles, the Times relies on anonymously-sourced gossip for its story. That doesn't make the gossip false -- most political stories about politicians' future plans get anonymously sourced -- but it doesn't make it reliable, either. One might say that the number and increasing frequency of these stories gives the rumors more credibility, but it also could mean that certain people in Democratic circles have started a whispering campaign to get her to withdraw from the race.

Who might do that? Oh, maybe staffers for Al Gore, John Kerry, Mark Warner, and so on.

The most laughable part of the article is the suggestion that Hillary would pass on the presidential run because she wants to dedicate herself to bipartisanship in the Senate. Someone seems to forget that Hillary coined the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" and spent years telling people that her husband's woes sprang from Republicans out to get him. They have mistaken her studied centrism for bipartisanship; her whole Senate voting record has been calculated to draw down the high negatives that still plague her, and any alliances with Republican Senators have aimed for that purpose. That's not necessarily bad, but it doesn't come from a love of bipartisanship. Even Bill was more bipartisan that Hillary.

No one raises $33 million for a Senate race in which she runs effectively unopposed. (Quick: name her Republican challenger without checking Google.) She's building a war chest for a presidential run, and she will continue to build it, because she has planned this campaign for six years. The only reason she ran for the Senate at all was to capture the White House; she could have made a fortune on the lecture circuit otherwise.

She's running. She may well fulfill the predictions of the prognosticators by winning the primary and losing the general election; if she wins the nomination, she almost certainly will lose, if just for the reason that people will want a President without the last name of Clinton or Bush for the first time in twenty years. Make no mistake, though, that she will somehow turn herself into a lifer in the Senate.

I will offer one more possibility for her withdrawal. If another Democrat looked too good to lose in the general election, she might be tempted to sit down -- for the promise of a Supreme Court appointment.

Notre Dame started its 2006 campaign with a near-stumble against Georgia Tech, a team regarded as a test for the pre-season #2 team in college football. The Fighting Irish escaped with a 14-10 win and likely a lower ranking:

The best thing you can say about Notre Dame's game against Georgia Tech is that it's over. And if the Fighting Irish don't figure how to play more like the No. 2-ranked team in the country rather than something from the Also Receiving Votes agate, then they can pucker up and kiss the Holy Trinity of college football goodbye.

We're speaking, of course, of the national championship, the Heisman Trophy, and Lee Corso wearing your mascot's headgear near Cardinals Stadium come Jan. 8. Notre Dame remains in the team picture for all three, but only because ND's 14-10 victory came in the first week of the season, not the last. ...

There's no nice way to say it: for the first 30 minutes of this game, Tech turned ND into a bumblin' wreck. The Yellow Jackets left bee stings all over the Fighting Irish's ranking, quarterback Brady Quinn's Heisman hype, and coach Charlie Weis' reputation as an offensive mastermind.

Tech led, 10-7, and had a first-half shutout until Quinn scored on a quarterback draw with 11 seconds remaining and no timeouts left. It was the lowest first-half point total during Weis' 13-game tenure and it produced the usual panic from visiting Golden Domers.

I didn't get a chance to see the opener, as I spent the evening at the movies with the family, but after reading this I'm glad I missed it. I would have definitely joined the panic, and I was 1500 miles away from Georgia Tech.

The Irish have this maddening habit of playing up or down to the level of their opponents, and they also have spent the last few seasons coming out of the gate very slowly -- both in games and in seasons. They tend to finish stronger than they start in both perspectives, but it isn't easy to overcome the handicap they give away.

The upside is, of course, that the Irish won the game and that their second half appeared somewhat better than the first. The defense tossed a shutout in the second half on the road, an impressive feat against a skilled opponent. Brady Quinn managed to put up some decent numbers and show some leadership in rallying the team. Darius Walker ran for 99 yards -- not great, but not bad at all. The Irish have plenty on which to build.

They'd better build fast. The legendary Joe Paterno and his Penn State Nittany Lions pay a visit to Touchdown Jesus next week, followed by Michigan and then a road game at their bete noir, Michigan State. It's a grinder of a schedule, and what's worse is that CQ commenter Monkei will be on my backside this entire week about the Penn State game.

Let's go, Irish. Don't make a Monkei out of us.

Iraqi forces working independently captured al-Qaeda in Iraq's second in command this week, the Iraqi national-security minister announced this morning. Hamed Jumaa Faris Juri al-Saaydi and twenty of his closest friends found themselves in custody after a raid in Baqubah:

"We now think al-Qaeda in Iraq is suffering a great deal and disintegrating," [Mowaffak al-] Rubaie said in a news conference at the U.S.-controlled Green Zone that was broadcast live across the Middle East. "The al-Qaeda organization is suffering from a leadership crisis."

Saaydi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, ordered the February attack on the golden-domed Shiite shrine in Samara that ignited the ongoing ferocious wave of sectarian killings, Rubaie said. He accused Saaydi of trying to spark a civil war between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiite Muslims.

Rubaie said Iraqi forces had been tracking Saaydi's movements since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the No. 1 leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, three months ago. Saaydi was hiding inside a home surrounded by women and children whom he was using as a "human shield," Rubaie said.

American forces provided support for the operation, but the raid apparently was conducted and led by the Iraqis. The city of Baqubah has been known for its terrorist infiltration, and this raid suggests that the Iraqis have begun to break the AQ grip on the region. It also demonstrates the increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces.

The AQ organization will continue its efforts, of course, but the capture of the man who targeted the Golden Mosque in Samara may take a lot of the sting out of the sectarian bitterness that erupted afterwards. It's another step towards peace and security -- not the final step nor even close to it, but another step in the right direction.

The war in Lebanon has fractured what little unity existed in the post-Syrian government in Beirut. While political differences got submerged in the fighting, they have returned with even more vigor after the catastrophe in the sub-Litani region. Various factions now threaten to contest for power in or out of the political system:

But now, two weeks into a shaky cease-fire between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel, some of the big names of Lebanese politics are moving back onto the political stage. The result has been an open round of bitter political infighting and backbiting. Figures from various factions have attacked one another in newspapers and on talk shows.

The most vociferous has been General Aoun, who called this week for the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his cabinet. ...

Mr. Siniora refused to resign, saying: “Let these politicians rest. The government is staying, staying, staying.” In almost the same breath, he claimed Arab nationalist credentials by vowing, “Lebanon will be the last Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel.”

General Aoun struck back, telling the daily As Safir that “Siniora will pay the price of his stubbornness” and accusing the prime minister of working with “foreign countries” against Lebanon’s interests.

“This will happen very soon; he will not have time to pack his things because he will be forced to leave quickly,” General Aoun said, adding that he had warned of “dangerous repercussions” if the government did not resign.

“Now we will choose the appropriate time to achieve the desired change in our own way,” he asserted, setting off another round of recriminations between the March 14 group and his supporters.

This has been coming for a long time, ever since the March 14 group declined to confront Hezbollah. One cannot abide a state within a state and maintain stability in government. The UN Security Council recognized this and issued Resolution 1559, an order to disarm Hezbollah and transform it into a political party, which it then refused to do anything to implement. The Siniora government declined to ask for assistance in complying with the resolution, and we wound up with the war Hezbollah provoked.

Aoun clearly stated that he will take extra-legal action to remove Siniora from office. That would likely precipitate another civil war, a not-uncommon result from the collapse of a foreign occupation as recriminations fly between cooperators and resisters. A civil war would strengthen Hezbollah and Syria, allowing them to increase their influence in Lebanon to an even greater degree than what they enjoy now.

The only development that could stop another civil war would be a new popular movement for nationalism such as the one led by the son of the assassinated Rafik Hariri. Saad Hariri, however, has kept a low profile since the outbreak of the war. He escaped into Saudi Arabia for the duration and only recently returned to Lebanon. No one knows what that trip has done to his political standing, but neither Hariri nor his well-known associate, Walid Jumblatt, have made public appearances for weeks -- and that sounds as if they have little influence left to exert.

We warned at the outset of the Lebanon conflict that the war should have been directed at Syria rather than Lebanon if one wanted to eliminate the Hezbollah threat, and that Israel risked destabilizing a potential partner for security with its invasion. The Israelis took a calculated risk and reaped some benefits from their fight, but not enough to free Lebanon from its divisiveness and its endemic disunity. Now it appears the "good guys" may have ridden into the Lebanese sunset, and all of the other choices for power look like varying degrees of the same problem.

With the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks fast approaching, the government has busied itself with answering questions raised by conspiracy theorists who fervently believe that the World Trade Center towers had help in their destruction. The State Department and the National Institue of Stantards and Technology both released reports this week proving once again that when big airplanes loaded with jet fuel plow into skyscrapers, it tends to destroy the buildings:

The official narrative of the attacks has been attacked as little more than a cover story by an assortment of radio hosts, academics, amateur filmmakers and others who have spread their arguments on the Internet and cable television in America and abroad. As a motive, they suggest that the Bush administration wanted to use the attacks to justify military action in the Middle East.

Most elaborately, they propose that the collapse of the World Trade Center was actually caused by explosive charges secretly planted in the buildings, rather than by the destructive force of the airliners that thundered into the towers and set them ablaze.

The government reports and officials say the demolition argument is utterly implausible on a number of grounds. Indeed, few proponents of the explosives theory are willing to venture explanations of how daunting logistical problems would be overcome, such as planting thousands of pounds of explosives in busy office towers.

Nevertheless, federal officials say they moved to affirm the conventional history of the day because of the persistence of what they call “alternative theories.” On Wednesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a seven-page study based on its earlier 10,000-page report on how and why the trade center collapsed. The full report, released a year ago, and the new study, in a question and answer format, are available online at http://wtc.nist.gov.

Perhaps the most disturbing fact in this report comes from recent polling, which shows the American public to be almost as susceptible to conspiracy theories as the Arabs. Scripps Survey Research Center reported that over a third of us believe that the US government either participated in the 9/11 attacks or deliberately allowed them to happen. Sixteen percent said that the towers came down because government agents had secretly planted explosives in them prior to 9/11. That means one in every six adults believe that the government conspired to kill 3,000 Americans -- and potentially as many as 25,000, given the normal occupancy of the towers.

Of course, this falls hard on reality even with a cursory glance. As the NYT points out, it would take many thousands of explosives to bring the towers down by design, especially if one rejects the science behind the heat of jet-fuel fires and its effect on steel girders. When exactly were these explosives planted, and how did they get planted with no one's notice? And if the building was primed for demolition in this manner, how did the explosives keep from detonating at impact, or at least in the heat of the jet-fuel fire? For that matter, why design a demolition from the top down when building demolitions always take place from the ground up?

The State Department report can be found at this link. It debunks a wider range of conspiracy theories, such as the allegation that the Pentagon did not get hit by a plane, 4,000 Jews did not show up for work on 9/11 in New York City, and that al-Qaeda didn't conduct the 9/11 attacks. They have plenty of ammunition from which to work, some of which is so determinative that it reveals countertheories as the products of fevered imaginations. It's hard to explain, for instance, why the black box of American 77 was found in the rubble of the Pentagon, as well as the DNA of passengers and crew, if it didn't crash there. Eyewitnesses saw passengers in the windows of the jet just before its crash, and as the site wryly notes, "Missiles don’t have windows or carry passengers."

And yet over a third of us believe the government took part in the attacks, and half of those believe that the buildings were wired for demolition.

As I wrote a couple of days ago in relation to the nut who thinks Stephen King killed John Lennon, one cannot counter insanity and paranoia with sweet reason. King himself tried to do so with Steve Lightfoot, the paranoid who has pursued him for over twenty years, and his effort got paid off by Lightfoot's insistence that King's kind message constituted a death threat in code. Reason doesn't enter into it. Mental illness does not respond to reason, and this impulse reflects a sickness that all of the scientific studies and review of facts will never cure. It's a belief that all evil begins in America and that everything wrong in the world has its source in Washington DC -- combined with an unhealthy dose of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Don't expect a cure for this insanity any time soon. If anything, these reports act as a vaccine for the unafflicted -- and a warning for those who may be tempted to stare into the abyss.

UPDATE: Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse applauds the government's efforts to respond to the conspiracy nuts, but deplores the need for it:

Not content with letting the moonbats, the freaks, the paranoids, and the ignoramuses who spout 9/11 conspiracy theories get away with their nonsensical idiocies any longer, the government released two separate reports debunking several major claims of the 9/11 fantasists in an effort to keep the record of that horrible day from being hijacked by crazies.

And as a bonus, in the process of answering the reports, two major 9/11 conspiracists have revealed themselves to be laughable, hopelessly moronic nutcases. ...

The fact that it took a dozen people two months to condense the evidence for the tower’s collapse down to 7 pages should make you angry. This waste of time and resources is the direct result of people who should (or actually do) know better but whose ignorance and inability to grasp reality (or who choose to believe otherwise for political purposes) have infected the gullible, the shallow thinkers, and out and out loons who have spread their laughable theories on the internet and elsewhere.

Rick also does what I should have done -- praise New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer for his excellent riposte to the conspiracy theorists.

The release of a new video from Ayman al-Zawahiri has caused a minor sensation with its inclusion of Adam Gadahn, an American convert to al-Qaeda jihadism, demanding the conversion of America to Islam. The video shows Gadahn, now called Azzam the American, speaking in American patois and counseling surrender to the terrorist group:

It was the second time Gadahn appeared in the same video with al-Zawahri. In a July 7 video marking the one-year anniversary of the terror attack on London commuters, Gadahn appeared briefly, saying no Muslim should "shed tears" for Westerners killed by al-Qaida attacks.

But Saturday's video — and the length of Gadahn's speech — suggested al-Qaida has found in him someone who can directly address the American people in idiom they are familiar with. ...

Gadahn delivered a lecture on Islam and the "errors" in Christianity and Judaism. He also said the United States is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and told U.S. soldiers they are fighting President Bush's "crusades."

"Instead of killing yourself for Bush ... why not surrender to the truth (of Islam), escape from the unbelieving army and join the winning side. Time is running out so make the right choice before it's too late," he said. ...

"You know that if you die as an unbeliever in battle against the Muslims you're going straight to Hell without passing 'Go,'" Gadahn said on the video, addressing American soldiers. "You know you're considered by Bush and his bunch of warmongers as nothing more than expendable cannon fodder ... You know they couldn't care less about your safety and well-being."

"We send a special invitation (to convert to Islam) to all of you fighting Bush's crusader pipedream in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever else 'W' has sent you to die. You know the war can't be won," he said, using Bush's nickname.

Gadahn also urged other Americans to convert to Islam.

"It is time for the unbelievers to discard these incoherent and illogical beliefs," he said. "Isn't it the time for the Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists to cast off the cloak of the spiritual darkness which enshrouds them and emerge into the light of Islam?"

None of this should surprise anyone. Gadahn has followed a long and sad tradition of betrayal that has accompanied each foreign war we have ever fought, starting with our own Revolution. Gadahn has cast himself in the role of Lord Haw Haw, the Irish-American William Joyce, who spent World War II trying to convince the British of the inevitability of Nazi global domination.

As I recall, that war didn't work out well for the Nazis, their ideology, or for Lord Haw Haw, either -- who got hanged for his treason. He remained defiant to the end, blaming the Jews for his predicament and scratching swastikas on his cell wall. Joyce is buried in an unmarked grave and is remembered for his ridiculous and pathetic diatribes as well as his mental instablity.

Gadahn will meet the same fate. His broadcasts clearly amount to a classical definition of treason. If we get our hands on him, he will wind up scratching crescents on walls and blaming Jews for his misery, too. That's all that fanatical haters can do -- find people to kill, or find people to blame.

I advise Americans to approach Gadahn as the British did Joyce in the 1940s: with contempt and ridicule. His videos may make him feel powerful and influential, but in reality he is nothing more than an American-born pet of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He's nothing special at all; even JRR Tolkien had a Mouth of Sauron in Lord of the Rings, and Gadahn fits the role to a T.