Northern Alliance Radio Today

We're on the air already -- and we're talking about the necessity of getting the White House to push its successes on a more consistent basis, as well as other topics. If you're in the Twin Cities, tune us in at AM 1280 The Patriot, and if you're outside of the area, you can tune in on our Internet stream at the link. Join the conversation at 651-289-4488!

Tomorrow, I'll be appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources at 9 am ET, talking about the coverage of Bush's Iraq speech and the kerfuffle over the information campaign in Iraq.

The Flypaper Strategy Sticks Around

Kevin Brock, the Deputy Director of the new National Counterterrorism Center, told the AP that al-Qaeda has not established a "significant operational capability" in America since 9/11 -- and the only attempted AQ operation since then fell apart due to the incompetence of its cell leader. Brock also said that while the American effort to secure itself must remain vigilant due to the changing nature of the Islamist threat, the actual effort of terrorist operations have been directed elsewhere:

Brock said he doesn't believe the invasion and war in Iraq can be blamed for the threat reports that come into his center each day. "That would be too simplistic," he said. "There is too much of a diverse nature to these threats."

Had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, Brock said, terrorists would still carry out attacks. "But now they are mostly carried out in Iraq. That is where most of the people willing to commit suicide are going."

That flypaper strategy that has almost disappeared from debate over the past two years apparently worked as planned. We drew AQ into the open in Iraq, because they understand (better than some American politicians) that establishing a democracy in the crossroads of Southwest Asia represented an existential threat to Islamofascism. The AQ 'philosophy', such as it is, argues that the only legitimate way of life for Muslims is to live under brutal and intractable tyrannies appointed by Allah himself, and so are unchallengeable and unaccountable for their brutality. Once democracy shows that Arabs can choose their own leaders and hold them accountable for their actions and simultaneously practice their religion without interference, they will overwhelmingly choose democracy. AQ could not allow that example to establish itself.

So why fight in Iraq, rather than Afghanistan? They tried a stand-up fight in Afghanistan and lost -- badly. They got surprised by the quickness of the American response and the speed in which the Taliban mismanaged the war. They've tried some of the same tactics in Afghanistan that they use in Iraq, but the Afghanis already know what living under the Taliban's rule was like and have no illusions about wanting it to return.

The Iraqis, however, knew what Saddam's secular Ba'athist dictatorship was like, not an Islamic theocracy, which might have had more attraction for Iraqis, at least at first. When AQ attacked Americans, some Iraqis might have supported them. However, as more AQ assets died in that effort, the terrorists turned their attention to Iraqi recruits for security forces and lost any sympathy they may have had.

Now they mostly kill Iraqis while having almost no support even among the Sunni (who favor the native "insurgents" but spurn "foreigners" of any stripe) and don't even pretend to be liberating Iraq any more. They want to stop democracy and explicitly say so, calling it a heretical doctrine. AQ flocks to Iraq to fight us there, because that front matters most now. And if we don't fight them there, AQ would be freed up to attack us anywhere else around the globe -- including here at home.

I'd rather fight them in Iraq and put the democracy in their backyard that even they acknowledge would present a tremendous defeat for Islamofascism. Too bad that some here can't acknowledge what even AQ admits.

Another 72-Virgins Moment In Pakistan

The Pakistani army reports that one of Osama's lieutenants has hit his jackpot of 72 virgins Thursday after getting blown up with four of his colleagues in North Waziristan. Abu Hamza Rabia, a co-equal of Abu Faraj al-Libi in the AQ executive and rumored to be the fifth-highest ranking member of AQ, ran international operations for Osama bin Laden:

Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian credited with heading al Qaeda's international operations, was among five militants killed in an explosion at a house where they were hiding in North Waziristan on Thursday.

Musharraf, arriving in Kuwait on an official visit, confirmed Rabia had been killed.

"Yes indeed, 200 percent. I think he was killed the day before yesterday if I'm not wrong," Musharraf told reporters.

While officials said the blast was caused by explosives stored in the house for bomb-making, residents said a helicopter fired rockets into the house at a village near Mir Ali in the tribal agency. ...

Intelligence officials earlier on Saturday told Reuters that Rabia was using the alias 'Nawab', and they subsequently intercepted a message passed between militants saying Nawab was dead.

They said Rabia had escaped an attack by Pakistani security forces on November 5 in the same region but eight people, including his wife and children, were killed in that operation.

It doesn't make much difference to me whether Rabia blew himself up or got assistance from the Pakistani Army in dying; his death puts us closer to cutting Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri completely. The more of these senior commanders that die, the more Osama and Ayman need to stick their necks out to get things done -- and that presents more opportunity to capture and/or kill them.

However, if Rabia did die accidentally from a bomb backfire, it calls into question how much AQ has left in its tank in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why would a senior commander build his own bombs, dangerous work under the best of circumstances, or even be in the same area where that work took place? With its assets dwindling, AQ in that region may not have any more explosives experts to spare, and so the senior commanders might have to do double duty. If the Pakistani reports are accurate, it looks like AQ has lost its best assets in the region and are barely clinging to life in the border region of Waziristan.

UPDATE: Even better news -- MS-NBC says the CIA took out Rabia:

While Pakistani officials publicly said Rabia died in a blast caused by explosives stored in a house for bomb-making, officials speaking on condition of anonymity told NBC News he was killed by a CIA missile strike carried out by an unmanned Predator airplane.

Pakistan's government has always been reticent to admit that Predators are used in Pakistani airspace to hunt down al-Qaida operatives.

Here's a picture of a calling card from Uncle Sam to al-Qaeda during this holiday season:

If they flip that over, I'd love to think that an inscription says, "You can run, but you can't hide forever." The CIA must have gotten some good intel from a series of captures that followed that of al-Libi earlier. That should shake up the rest of the AQ commanders who think they're tucked safely away in Waziristan, and perhaps get them on the move again -- an opportunity for us to take out a few more.

Just Doing Business The Iraqi Way (Updated And Bump)

The military has come forward to explain its actions in the so-called propaganda scandal that erupted earlier this week, the AP reports in a late-breaking news item on ABC. Army spokesman LTC Barry Johnson told Congressional leaders and later the media that the program described in separate articles in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had not intended for the articles in question to be offered clandestinely under anyone else's by-line. Instead, the contractor, Lincoln Group, had been tasked to pay for advertising and editorial space -- apparently the practice in the nascent Iraqi press -- and offer the articles openly as written by American military personnel to get their stories out to ordinary Iraqis:

Military officials for the first time Friday detailed and broadly defended a Pentagon program that pays to plant stories in the Iraqi media, an effort the top U.S. military commander said was part of an effort to "get the truth out" there.

But facing critics in the United States including lawmakers from both parties the military raised the possibility for the first time of making changes in the program.

"If any part of our process does not have our full confidence, we will examine that activity and take appropriate action," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq. "If any contractor is failing to perform as we have intended, we will take appropriate action."

Col. Johnson still isn't sure that Lincoln did anything else other than that. That should get investigated immediately to determine what exactly Lincoln did, but the program itself certainly sounds reasonable. After all, the enemy has used propaganda for its own purposes, and the American media has done a piss-poor job of representing the military's point of view to the world, let alone the Iraqi people. As long as the source of the writing gets proper and true attribution and the payment gets disclosed properly in the custom of the Iraqi market, then it shows some good, creative thinking on the part of the military. If Lincoln did anything else, then they should get fired.

So why use Lincoln at all? Why not just have the Pentagon market the stories to the Iraqi newspapers, paying them directly for the advertising space? Apparently, the planners worried that direct payments would cause retaliatory attacks on the publishers if word got out how the articles got space in the paper. However, that explanation lacks some credibility, as properly attributed articles would expose the relationship between the paper and American military personnel as soon as the articles were read. It sounds more like Lincoln, which has an unrelated $100 million contract with Special Operations Command -- the same outfit that ran Able Danger -- got a sweetheart deal for some extra third-party work.

The explanation seems to take some steam out of the scandal, though. Ted Kennedy still wants a DoD investigation, which appears to agree with the stance taken by the White House and Congress as well. Kennedy says that the program appears to hide the involvement of the American government, and that much does seem to be true. The notion that the Pentagon ran a massive propaganda effort appears to have fallen flat, though.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has more, with a headline that seems a bit misleading ("Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News"). The military says it primarily paid for placement of advertising and opinion pieces in accordance with common Iraqi practice for their press. The Post explains the existence of Lincoln as a go-between a bit better, but also reports that Lincoln did have some articles ran under false bylines, apparently against the guidelines of the program:

Officials familiar with the Lincoln Group's contract said it allows the firm to pay to have articles placed in the Iraqi press. The contract reportedly says nothing about disguising the origin of the articles, but some military officers defended the practice as a necessary security measure, to protect the Iraqi journalists used to deliver the accounts and the Iraqi news organizations that print them.

If it were known that the journalists and the news organizations were carrying information provided by the U.S. military, these officers said, insurgents would surely target them. Indeed, at least two of the Iraqi newspapers cited in initial news reports as having printed the articles in question have since received threats from insurgents, according to military officials.

Proponents of such tactics argue that different standards should be applied to what is permissible in a combat zone such as Iraq than, say, in the United States or other stable democracies. Although the idea of the military using covert methods to get favorable information into print appears unethical at home, the argument goes, there are mitigating circumstances justifying such tactics in Iraq.

This still comes back to building credibility with the Iraqi people. The free press in Iraq is a vitally important part of building the democratic structures necessary to make Iraq into a strong and free ally in the Middle East -- an example of how Arabs can lead themselves, without the traditional strong-man rule of dictator or emir. While exploiting newspapers to surreptitiously get out our point of view might seem like a smart tactical move to counter al-Qaeda propaganda, it's probably a huge mistake strategically in the long run. We're already teaching the Iraqis that their press is nothing more than paid mouthpieces for hidden Powers That Be, feeding into the common Arab predilection for grand conspiracies.

We have the resources and the werewithal to get our message out openly to the Iraqi people. We could buy air time on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, or simply open our own Arabic news service and buy transponder time on their satellite system. The US could operate Radio Free Iraq from inside the country and add broadcast television service. We could use that money to publish our own newspapers, or use it the way the program intended and just make sure that our essays are clearly identified. Private groups like Spirit Of America have been doing this since the fall of Saddam in April 2003; it shouldn't be a mystery to the Pentagon.

This incident hardly qualifies as the scandal of the month, but it does need correcting. America stands for ideals, and one of those ideals is honesty in government -- and right now, we're a vital component of the Iraqi governing structure while the Iraqi security forces rebuild. We want to win this war by transferring the ideals of democracy into the hearts of the Iraqi people and make them believe that they can put them into practice and defend them against their enemies. Undermining them as a short-term tactic might be understandable, but it's unadvisable in the long run. I'd rather focus on the 99% of the Iraqis who aren't insurgents and tell them the truth, than lie to them all and hope that the 1% of the Iraqis comprising the insurgency reads the newspaper.

The Referendum On Harper

My new Daily Standard column comes out today, titled "Morning In Canada?", in which I argue that the new elections will stand or fall as a referendum on Stephen Harper. The task for the Tory leader is to go over the heads of the media, a la Ronald Reagan, and deliver a campaign reminiscent of the "Morning In America" effort that won Reagan a landslide:

How likely is a return of Liberal rule after the Gomery disaster? After twelve years of Liberal control, first as a majority and then as the plurality in the Commons, the Tories bear the burden of convincing Canadians to cross the aisle--and Gomery alone may not be enough to break the Liberal hold on power. Stephen Harper, the Conservative leader, has to convince voters that Tories offer more than just a gainsay of Liberal policies. Harper needs to deliver a "Morning in Canada" agenda, one that promises a transformation for the nation.

Two G&M reports from their latest polling offer contradicting prospects on Harper's ability to do that. The first reports that Harper's negatives still remain high; however, it also shows that the positive message has gotten through to Canadian voters. The second development is a trend among minorities to support Conservatives over the Liberals, in some cases because of the latter's support for same-sex marriage. The G&M polling still shows a five-point advantage for Liberals, even with Ipsos and others showing the election at a dead heat, something to consider when reviewing the G&M take on the numbers.

Harper just released his plan for a GST cut, which should boost his numbers in the next round of polling. We'll see if the media reports on those numbers any better than they did with Ipsos.

Celebrity Death Row Spotlights

It doesn't come up often at CQ, but most long-term readers know that I do not support the death penalty. I respect the enactment of it by the legislatures and feel that the penalties should not be subject to excessive legal and extralegal machinations, however, until such time as the people finally decide to get rid of executions altogether. Up to now, I've left the Tookie Williams controversy to those with more passion about carrying out his sentence, but Eugene Robinson wrote an excellent column for today's Washington Post that sums up my feelings on the subject. Titled "No Special Break For Tookie", death-penalty opponent Robinson lashes out at the celebritization of a thug and murderer by entertainment elite:

Big-time Hollywood stars, including Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg and Danny Glover, are leading a high-profile campaign to persuade another big-time Hollywood star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to save the life of a convicted murderer on California's death row named Stanley Tookie Williams. Sorry, but I can't join the glitterati in showing the love.

Williams's case is about the power of redemption, his supporters say, but I think it's more about the power of celebrity. The state shouldn't execute Williams, but only because the state shouldn't execute anybody -- the death penalty is a barbaric anachronism that should have been eliminated long ago, as far as I'm concerned. But it can't be right to save Williams just because he's a famous desperado (or former desperado) with famous friends, and then blithely go back to snuffing out the lives of other criminals who lack his talent for public relations. ...

He was convicted of the 1979 murders of four people in two separate robberies -- convenience store worker Albert Owens, 26; and motel owners Yen-I Yang, 76; Tsai-Shai Yang, 63; and their daughter Yee-Chen Lin, 43. Williams has been on death row since 1981; that he has consistently maintained his innocence of all four killings hardly makes him unique. There's no dramatic new DNA evidence or anything like that to cast doubt on his guilt.

What does make him special, according to his supporters, is that he has been so lavishly repentant about the culture of violence he helped create. ... Of course, there are hundreds of other men on death row who repent of their crimes and would appreciate a little executive clemency, but they don't have movie stars pleading their cases. Oh, and also lacking a publicity machine are the four people Williams was convicted of killing.

Robinson has more faith in real redemption on Death Row than I do, but that's not the basis of my objection to the death penalty anyway. (I don't believe that the state should deliberately kill anyone who presents no imminent danger to the internal peace of society, and an LWOP sentence in a properly run institution should guarantee that.) Whether or not Tookie sincerely repents of his crime to me is immaterial. He committed the crime, and four people are dead because of it -- four murders in two separate crimes, mind you. He did that knowing that the penalty for that action was death and he did it anyway. The people have the right to set that penalty, and it was properly implemented.

I would hope that at some time, the people of California will reject the death penalty. In the meantime, this selection of the Murderer Du Jour to lionize insults those of us who object to its application. I don't oppose the death sentence because I think Mumia got framed or that Tookie is the next Mohandas Gandhi, a truly repellent notion. Tookie Williams is exactly where he should be -- in a maximum-security facility -- and he should die there as well, of old age. He killed four people, four non-celebrities who never did anything to Tookie except stand between him and some cash that didn't belong to him.

(One other point: does anyone else notice that three of four of Tookie's victims were Asian shopowners? Angelenos know what that entails for the gang culture of LA. These weren't just gang-banging murders but hate-crime executions, just the same as the dragging death of James Byrd. I notice Danny Glover and Jamie Foxx aren't clamoring for those murderers to get clemency from the governor of Texas, so why are they arguing for Tookie?)

I don't support the death penalty. Unlike the clueless Hollywood celebrities who manage to hijack this issue, I don't view the condemned as victims and moral guideposts, either. The elevation of Tookie to philosopher disgusts and sickens me, and it undermines the efforts to convince people of the uselessness and overreach of the death penalty.

Democrat 'Unity' Unravels On Iraq

The supposed unity of the Democrats on Iraq continued to unravel further yesterday, with more Democrats speaking out in favor of the cut-and-run strategy favored by Jack Murtha, while others insisted that none of them supported running away from the fight. The Post gives a pretty good scorecard for the confusion which once more bolsters the national perception of a party unworthy to hold responsibility for national security. Nancy Pelosi's wholehearted defection from the lawyerly constructions emanating from the Democratic caucus in the Senate has exposed the Democrats' disarray on an issue which seemed to resonate so well for them until the GOP forced their hand in the House two weeks ago:

For months now, Democratic leaders have grown increasingly aggressive in their critiques of President Bush's policies in Iraq but have been largely content to keep their own war strategies vague or under wraps. That ended Wednesday when Pelosi (D-Calif.) aggressively endorsed a proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, leaving only a much smaller rapid-reaction force in the region.

The move caught some in the party by surprise. It threw a wrench into a carefully calibrated Democratic theme emerging in the Senate that called for 2006 to be a "significant year of progress" in Iraq, with Iraqi security forces making measurable progress toward relieving U.S. troops of combat duties. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last month that "it's time to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government."

What's more, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) issued a statement Wednesday that was in marked contrast to Pelosi's. "I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility," he said.

The resulting confusion has led to some pretty amusing moments. The Post quotes Democratic strategist Davd Sirota as calling opponents of immediate withdrawal as "insulated elitists ... most of whom have never served in uniform" and in the same breath hailing the "courage" of Pelosi and Jack Murtha in calling for a retreat. Did Pelosi serve in combat? I had no idea. Perhaps Sirota can explain how it is that he insists that only those who served in uniform have the necessary skills to assess the situation, but then hold Pelosi as an expert and a courageous military analyst.

Also, Jonathan Weisman quotes an anonymous Democratic pollster who tells him that Murtha and Pelosi have convinced themselves that they have their fingers on a grassroots pulse that will elevate the Democrats to victory through retreat. How do they know this? Murtha got a standing ovation at a Starbuck's in Dallas last week. Aren't at least half of the people in a Starbuck's at any one time standing anyway?

John Kerry, predictably, has blown all over the place since the Murtha demand for immediate withdrawal came up again last month. During his presidential campaign, Kerry flirted with all kinds of strategies for the war before coming up with one in the final days that most closely resembled the plan already in place by George Bush -- except that Kerry demanded an increase in American troops. Now, he wants a phased withdrawal, but insists that he isn't asking for a timeline:

Some Democrats continued yesterday to finesse their position. At a White House appearance after an event honoring civil rights leader Rosa Parks, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "If you just continue along the road we're going now without a more concrete transfer of responsibility -- a target schedule by which you begin to turn over provinces, by which you specifically begin to shift the responsibility -- I think a lot of people fear that it's going to be more of the same."

He added: "I'm not asking even for the specific timetable of withdrawal. I'm asking for a specific timetable of transfer of authority."

So he's demanding a specific timetable for transfers of authority, which means that we hand over entire provinces to the Iraqis whether they're ready or not -- but that's not the same thing as a specific timetable for withdrawal. No, but it's a great recipe for disaster, especially since the terrorists will simply lay back and gather their strength for the transfer dates rather than continue to get outclassed by the American military. Kerry, as he did so often during the presidential election, talks out of both sides of his mouth and manages to get the worst of both worlds in doing so. Thanks to Pelosi, he will get no credit from the Leftists, and thanks to Joe Lieberman, he still looks like a cut-and-run politician who just knows how to dress it up better than his colleagues.

When did Karl Rove return from his leave of absense, anyway?

Senator Shameless

A former solicitor general lashed out at Chuck Schumer yesterday for his attack on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito based on a memo that should never have been released in the first place. Charles Fried, who represented the Reagan administration during Reagan's second term in office and who now teaches at Harvard Law School, said that the memo written by Alito not only provided nothing more than casual advice but also qualified as a privileged document that should have remained sealed:

The former U.S. solicitor general who authored a Reagan-era brief against the abortion ruling Roe v. Wade lashed out yesterday at one of the Democratic senators who will be voting on Judge Samuel Alito for saying the Supreme Court nominee should have told senators about work he did on the brief.

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School and President Reagan's lead attorney in front of the Supreme Court from 1985 to 1989, told The New York Sun that a 1985 memo in which a 35-year-old Samuel Alito offered him advice in arguing the administration's case against Roe v. Wade does not qualify as the kind of work a nominee should send to the Judiciary Committee for review. ...

"This is a real red herring because the solicitor general's office is a small one," Mr. Fried said. "We all helped each other and looked over each other's work. He had no formal role in writing that brief, and I can't imagine anything sillier than someone taking credit for a brief where that's the role they had." ...

Mr. Fried, who supports abortion rights, said that while he does not think memos from the solicitor general's office should be released, he also thinks Judge Alito was not being furtive in not mentioning his work on the 1985 abortion brief.

"I have never head of anyone who worked in the solicitor general's office who would list all the cases where they wrote memos," Mr. Fried said. "There are hundreds of these. It's just absurd. It's one of these typical cases, and I'm afraid Senator Schumer is guilty of this, that if you can't get someone on the merits, you bring up some phony lack of candor argument. He should be ashamed of himself, but he is shameless. And you can quote me on that."

It looks like the Democrats may try to Estradafy Alito, a silly proposition -- rather, a sillier proposition this time around than when they succeeded with it on Miguel Estrada and failed with John Roberts. In both of those cases, Democrats argued that they needed access to privileged records because neither candidate had an extensive track record as a jurist. Now those arguments have been exposed as unconconsionable intrusions on attorney-client prvilege in their demands of the same kind of release for Alito. This nominee has many years of experience on federal appellate courts and thousands of written opinions establishing his legitimacy and temperament. This attempt by Schumer and the other Democrats reveal a threadbare attempt to find any hook at all on which to drum up phony issues with which to unify the opposition to anyone named by the Bush administration to the bench.

And what of this memo, which relates to work that Alito never even performed himself? The Bush administration didn't authorize its release, and yet it found its way into the National Archives. The New York Sun's Brian Maguire suggests that the release came years ago during the Clinton years as a pre-emptive strike against anyone that a subsequent GOP administration might want to pick for just this position. Alito had been elevated to the federal appellate bench by Bush 41 and was seen as a rising star. Since they had the power to waive privilege at the time, they could easily have done so with a number of documents selectively culled to provide little caches of ammunition for hearings on Alito and others who worked in the White House Counsel or Solicitor General offices.

Schumer has decided once more to go fishing, probably using a map provided by his fellow Senator from New York and her husband to torpedo a well-qualified nominee on the basis of political partisanship. The faux outrage should generate real disgust at Schumer's tactics, not any serious debate on Alito's qualifications for the Supreme Court.

Speaking of shameless ... has Chuck explained how his staff got Michael Steele's credit history yet, and whether any other Republican candidate has to worry about other truly illegal acts against them by the Schumer-led DCCC?

The Folly Of Propaganda

Sincerity, filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn once said, was the most important quality for an actor; once one learned to fake it, everything else came easy. Unfortunately, in real life credibility is a commodity that cannot withstand fakery once exposed. The question for the Pentagon in the past day is whether Army and/or Marine Corps brass have paid off Iraqi newspapers to carry articles written by American servicemen under false pretenses as news stories for the Iraqi public, trying to spin the war to American advantage:

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

On one hand, it's easy to dismiss this as a tempest in a teapot. What we're talking about with this kind of effort is propaganda, and in a war on terrorism, this could be one of the least lethal battlegrounds we'll face -- but one of the most important. The terrorists certainly understand the way to play this game. They've faked news during the war to gain advantage, usually by spreading rumors about the treatment of people under our protection but also in posing as victors in battles that never took place. Once such incident apparently occurred today, when al-Qaeda used staged video to transform a single hit-and-run operation with a single RPG into some type of capture of Ramadi from several thousand American troops.

The problem with propaganda is that it only works for a short time, until it gets discovered. When that happens, the propagandist soon discovers that their ability to tell the truth has been hopelessly compromised. No one will believe them. Any number of examples will suffice, but the one with whom Americans will have the most familiarity is Baghdad Bob, the mouthpiece of Saddam who claimed that Americans were nowhere near Baghdad, that the Iraq Republican Guard was in the process of slaughtering them on the outskirts of the city, and that they would never be able to hold the city once it fell.

In order for our long-term relations with the Iraqi people to remain strong, we must not just be seen as another bull-tosser in a long line of bull-tossers; we need to maintain our credibility. That goes doubly true for the relationship between the administration and the American public, which has the American media as a big enough handicap without adding fake journalism as an additional reason for mistrust. If these charges are true -- and it certainly seems that at least it's partially true -- the use of covertly-sourced journalism could do tremendous damage to the trust we need to keep the Iraqis on our side and to build domestic confidence in our prosecution of the war.

The White House has taken the right steps in this issue. They have started an investigation into the allegations, and they should. The Commander in Chief has to answer for the conduct of the troops and the brass, and Bush has to make sure that everyone has learned from the Armstrong Williams debacle. Anyone who participated in an effort such as the Times described in yesterday's edition should have their career ended. It may not be as egregious as torture, murder, and videotaped beheading, but it destroys our moral authoritiy to lead and govern, and to report the facts. If anyone doubts this, just ask Leni Riefenstahl. Seven decades after shooting films at the behest of her beloved Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, she could never find work again as a documentarian. Credibility rarely survives when truth gets sold as a commodity, Goldwyn's advice to the contrary.

UPDATE: A couple of notes based on reactions from readers. One comment on the post notes that the Allies often used propaganda to fool Germans on military manuevers, especially D-Day. Actually, the military used elaborate ruses for that purpose, spoofing German spies. I don't recall American soldiers writing stories under the by-lines of British journalists and the Americans paying off editors of the dailies to run them as legitimate news articles. If someone has that kind of information on WWII, I'd love to see a link. If we did so with the Germans -- well, of course they were our enemy, where in Iraq we're trying to make the Iraqis our allies, a difficult enough proposition without allegedly corrupting their supposedly independent press. (It's important to remember that these allegations haven't been corroborated yet outside of the LA Times.)

One other reader takes me to task for my objection, saying that almost all news comes from PR releases that get rewritten by staff writers, and that there is no difference. Actually, there is a huge difference. CENTCOM puts out plenty of press releases, all of which would be available to Iraqi journalists to quote at their will for free. What the accusation here is that American soldiers write articles, and the PR firm then pays off the editors to run the stories under someone else's by-line without acknowledging the source or the real writer. Imagine if the LA Times had run articles written by Bill Clinton's staff under the by-line of Ronald Brownstein, or at the Washington Post under Dana Milbank or Walter Pincus. It would have become a huge political meltdown, and rightly so.

The Merry Christmas Project

My good friend Kevin McCullough has a great idea going at his blog. Since the ACLU seems intent on taking Christmas out of the holiday season, he wants to get as many bloggers to promote his idea to teach them what the season really means. His idea? Have as many readers as possible send Christmas cards to the New York office of the ACLU:

We are excited to be launching the opportunity today...between now and Christmas we are asking you to send the ACLU direct "MerryChristmas" cards.

And we aren't talking about these generic "happy holiday" (meaning nothing) type of cards...

Go get as "Christmas" a Christmas card as you can find... something that says.. "Joy To The World", "For Unto Us A Child Is Born", but at least "Merry Christmas", put some of your own thoughts into it, sign it respectfully and zip it off in the mail to:

ACLU
"Wishing You Merry Christmas"
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Be nice -- we want to show the Grinches why Christmas is a positive event, not leave rude impressions. Just make sure that the card specifically mentions "Christmas".

New Ipsos Poll Puts Canada In Dead Heat

A new poll by AP-Ipsos, based on a survey done during the debate over the no-confidence motion, shows that the Liberals have dropped into a dead heat with the Conservatives on a national basis. This data has not received wide release -- in fact, I had to buy a membership at Ipsos in order to see the data. Based on a sample of 1,000 adults -- a sampling type that normally would overreport Liberal support -- the results surprisingly mirror those of the private Robbins Research poll taken earlier this month. Both parties get 31% of the national vote, and NDP picks up 18%. BQ gets 14%, all of it from Quebec.

However, the details have to disturb Liberals who hope to return to power in the next Commons. Their support base in Ontario appears to have seriously eroded. Earlier polls show that the Liberals once enjoyed a double-digit lead in their power base. Now that lead has collapsed into a statistical tie with the Conservatives, 37%-35%. The NDP appears to have taken advantage of Liberal slippage, moving up to 21% support in the province. The Tories now outstrip the Liberals in British Columbia, where the Liberals had made inroads in provincial voting last March; the Tories have a 34%-28% advantage on the West Coast province. Liberals only have an outright plurality in the Maritimes; they lead the Tories 24-7 in Quebec but get trounced by Conservative partner Bloc Quebecois, 58-24, showing that the Liberals can expect to lose seats in the region most touched by Adscam.

If these trends continue, it would appear that the Tories will have a chance to form a minority government in January. I'll keep a close eye on the polling and the subsidiary results. If anyone wants to toss in some loose change to help support the Ipsos membership, my Paypal link is on the sidebar.

UPDATE: I received an update and correction from Ipsos, which has been terrific in terms of customer service already:

First, AP doesn't do any political polling in Canada, with the exception of their quarterly Globus poll. Rather Ipsos Reid is the pollster of record for the CanWest News Service and its flagship news broadcast Global National News and flagship daily the National Post. All of these polls, including the one you quoted, are reported in these outlets which have national audiences here in Canada. In addition, we release the results over a national wire service and post the results to our website. FYI Ipsos Public Affairs is the polling partner of the AP and conducts regular political tracker polls in the U.S. So Ipsos Reid does Canadian political polling for CanWest and Ipsos Public Affairs does U.S. political polling for the AP. Hope this helps ...

Happy to add the correction, and thanks for the assistance!

And By The Way, Nixon Resigned

The House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its 'culture of entitlement,' corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House.

The above words finally brought down the Liberal government in Canada on Monday evening, a stunning indictment by all three opposing political parties of Liberal involvement in the Sponsorship Programme scandal and its various attempts to dodge responsibility for corruption and abuse of power. While the no-confidence motion itself sounds surprisingly harsh – originally, the parties agreed on simpler language that just expressed a loss of confidence – the fall of the Liberal government comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the developments in Canadian politics over the past month.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t include the American media, which has consistently ignored the scandal and the events north of its border. The morning papers all reported on the fall of the Canadian government, of course. They did manage to notice when the entire forest fell, but they missed each single tree as it occurred. And if the American media doesn’t hear a tree fall in the forest, it’s as if the forest itself doesn’t exist.

The New York Times, for instance, reported on the fall of the government but wound up giving as much coverage to Prime Minister Paul Martin’s hysterical slander charges against Conservative leader Stephen Harper (two paragraphs) as they did the entire Adscam scandal at the heart of the no-confidence motion. Speaking of forests and trees, the Times did manage to mention the softwood tariff dispute in its report, gave a paragraph to the Liberal platform without mentioning anything about the Conservative position, and assumed that the Liberals would win a minority government again. The Washington Post didn’t even bother to write its own copy on the collapse, posting a wire service story in its on-line version instead. Instead of in-depth reporting and analysis, we have received the most superficial of coverage possible without missing the story entirely.

And two days later ... the story has completely disappeared from the American media. It's as if the Toronto Star reported in August 1974, "Today the President of the United States resigned. He has been dogged by reports of complicity in a politically-motivated burglary two years ago at a Washington business park," giving no coverage before or after to the worst political scandal of its largest trading partner.

Bloggers have long since outreported the American major media on the developments in Canadian politics. Captain’s Quarters may have helped get the ball rolling for American interest in Canadian politics, but in the months since the Gomery testimony blew the story open in April, bloggers both north and south of the 49th parallel have kept readers engaged in the story. And the significance of the collapse has not been lost on those who have faithfully watched the workings of the complicated four-party political machinations since the spring. When the estimable blogger-journalist Austin Bay comments that Martin has become the “Nixon of the North”, American media consumers may realize that they have missed a major story thanks to the apathetic nature of the response from domestic news agencies to the scandal.

The no-confidence motion should not have taken anyone by surprise. The Conservatives originally tabled the motion on Thanksgiving, giving the media some catch-up time to bring Americans up to date on the political situation. Did they bother to apprise their constituencies of the alignment of the different opposition parties? Have any of them analyzed the Gomery Inquiry report itself, or even bought an analysis from one of the Canadian newspapers? Or have they shown their usual disdain for anything north of the border, as if our neighbors above the parallel have become completely irrelevant?

Canada’s relevance, despite the American media’s judgment, will only grow more significant as Islamofascist terror remains focused on the US and China grows into a more traditional opponent on the international stage. Before this week, the last time the Canadian government got much mention at all was when they started negotiating with Beijing on a sweetheart oil deal that eventually fell through. Most Americans probably don’t realize that the US imports more crude from Canada than Saudi Arabia, running neck and neck with Mexico for top honors. Their proven oil reserves come second only to Saudi Arabia in the global market. Shouldn’t the stability and direction of the Canadian government concern Americans on this key issue alone?

How about border policy? Much attention got paid to the latest speech by George Bush on protecting the southern border and on illegal immigration. However, Canada and the US share the largest undefended national border system in the world – and we need an active partnership with Ottawa to keep Islamists from exploiting that system. That means we need to influence Canadian immigration policy, or at least stay aware of the direction in which their governments take it to ensure that terrorists cannot easily enter either country, and transit in either direction to hit North American targets. The issue gets some mention from Republican hard-liners for whom immigration remains the most important domestic issue, but it doesn’t equate into any interest or reporting on how Canadians feel about border protection.

What positions do the four major political parties take on immigration? Border security? Cooperation with America on continental defense issues? The media has had all weekend to start informing American readers and viewers about the answers to these questions. In fact, they have had months to bring their customers up to date on the politics and the policies of our closest ally, since Adscam first threatened to take the Liberal executive down in May.

Managing those issues with a stable and reasonably clean government in Ottawa would have its challenges. Watching the Martin government fall due to its corruption of the Sponsorship Programme should concern us. Will a new election push the Canadians farther to the European position on Iraq? Does the emergence of Bloc Quebecois as a partner to the Conservatives signify greater autonomy for Quebec if the Tories win the upcoming election, a move which might anger Alberta enough to start its own separatist movement?

Americans should have at least some idea of the issues that this election and the fallout of Adscam will have on Canadian politics. The failure of the American media to cover our closest ally could have disastrous consequences for American security and economic growth. If the media takes itself as seriously as it claims when dismissing citizen journalists as unresourced, narrowly-focused political zealots, then perhaps they should look outside their own telescoped version of global politics as a continuum between Washington DC, Turtle Bay, Brussels, and Baghdad. The upcoming election cycle in Ottawa gives them the perfect opportunity to remedy their Canadian political illiteracy and move us closer in understanding to our most strategic trading and security partner.

If not, then the blogosphere may well serve them with yet another no-confidence motion of our own.

American Intervention Creates Balkan Islamists?

The Left has long held up the Balkans intervention as a model for American intervention -- low footprint, low investment, and practically ignored, although like the Iraq War, also unsanctioned by the UN and actively opposed by Russia and China. They claim that the use of overwhelming force in Iraq has created a "training ground for terrorists" and that American troops only add to the recruitment of more terrorists. I expect, then, an explanation of how this differs from the recruitment and training of mujaheddin in Bosnia, where Islamists have built cells specifically to infiltrate heavily Caucasian nations for terrorist activities:

In particular, Islamic radicals are looking to create cells of so-called white al Qaeda, non-Arab members who can evade racial profiling used by police forces to watch for potential terrorists. "They want to look European to carry out operations in Europe," said a Western intelligence agent in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Montenegro, adjacent to Bosnia. "It's yet another evolution in the tools used by terrorists."

Parts of the Balkans, stuck in lawless limbo after years of war in the 1990s, are ripe recruitment territory for Middle East radicals, intelligence officials say. Bosnia is still divided among Muslim, Croat and Serb population areas, even if nominally united under the 10-year-old Dayton peace agreement that ended ethnic warfare.

Muslim enclaves in Serbia are restive, and Muslim-majority Kosovo remains an estranged province campaigning for independence six years after NATO bombing forced out Serb-dominated Yugoslav troops. The Balkans have long been a freeway for smugglers of cigarettes, drugs, weapons and prostitutes. "All the conditions are present. Embittered Muslims, arms, corruption -- everything underground operators need to get established," said the Western intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The real quagmires have come from inaction, from an inability or an unwillingness to face unpleasant tasks in resolving international disputes. The Balkans have been left to sit for over a decade now with no permanent resolution of the political disputes which led to their civil wars -- over 600 years of them -- and only by the intervention of a bombing campaign did the combatants get pushed into their corners. The lack of direction over the remaining period of time has allowed the depleted Islamists in the area to rebuild and redirect their efforts not so much against their local enemies, but against the West in general.

The same held true in Iraq for a dozen years. We allowed Saddam to remain and for the status quo to exist in a fugue state, through sixteen ultimately meaningless UN Security Council resolutions demanding Saddam's compliance on disarmament and recognition of human rights. During that time, Saddam simply allowed the infrastructure of Iraq to rot, keeping as much money as possible for himself in order to finance his own security and well-being at the expense of the people, especially the Shi'a. (He couldn't reach the Kurds after the end of the Gulf War, thanks to Anglo-American protection.) He hosted Islamist conferences openly attended by al-Qaeda leadership and welcomed terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Baghdad to live openly, for a time without fear of capture or deportation. Saddam openly paid the families of suicide bombers for their craven acts of murder, and we failed to respond until March 2003, after twelve years of dithering over what to do with Iraq.

Waiting around for difficult choices to magically get swept away clearly doesn't work. The creation of Iraq as a terrorist recruitment ground happened because we lacked the political will to finish Saddam and his sociopathic sons in 1991. Bosnia and Kosovo have turned into Islamist training grounds for Caucasian terrorists because we intervened in a fight without a clue as to the terms of the civil war, which side fought for which principles, and what to do with them after the shooting stopped. In Iraq, we had a plan, which we have followed relentelessly: create democratic structures, get the people to start voting for their own native government, and create a native security force that will eventually become strong enough to defend it -- and only then do we leave. In Kosovo, no one can even say whether the province should be independent, let alone what kind of government and security force should develop there. No wonder the natives are restless! After six or ten years of limbo, who wouldn't be?

The Iraq model shows what happens when the Americans manage the post-war process. We may experience some hiccups, but we push for progress and execute a plan for long-term success. When we leave it to the UN to manage, as happened in the Balkans, the committee approach only defends the status quo and never makes a decision to move forward towards a resolution. That approach leads to disaster, as the terrorist infiltration of the Balkans clearly shows.

Read My Lips: No New Timetables

George Bush made his case clear today in a largely uneventful speech at Annapolis today simply by repeated the same plan he has enumerated for the American public for over two years. Bush told the midshipmen at the Naval Academy that the war in Iraq can and would be won before we consider pulling out any of our troops, and that the only timetable for redeployment will be the success of the mission ... period:

President Bush gave an unflinching defense of his war strategy on Wednesday, refusing to set a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals and asserting that once-shaky Iraqi troops are proving increasingly capable. Democrats dismissed his words as a stay-the-course speech with no real strategy for success.

Bush recalled that some Iraqi security forces once ran from battle, and he said their performance "is still uneven in some parts." But he also said improvements have been made in training and Iraqi units are growing more independent and controlling more territory.

"This will take time and patience," said Bush, who is under intense political pressure as U.S. military deaths in the war rise beyond 2,100 and his popularity sits at the lowest point of his presidency.

Bush's speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, the first of at least three he'll give between now and the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections, did not outline a new strategy for the nearly three-year-old war. Rather, it was intended as a comprehensive answer to mounting criticism and questions. Billed as a major address, it brought together in a single package the administration's arguments for the war and assertions of progress on military, economic and political tracks.

He also released a book on the Iraq war strategy for those who just haven't paid any attention over the past two years. Bush and the White House should have just subtitled it "FOR THOSE WHO STILL THINK THAT THE US MILITARY DEPLOYS HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT A PLAN FOR SUCCESS".

Quick Link-Love For The Evening

I'm busy trying to fix some issues with the Trackbacks -- I understand they're still not working properly, although comments seem to be okay -- and get some other work done. Instead of trying to force a couple of posts, I'm going to recommend some better ones from the cream of the blogosphere tonight, and hope for a bit of time for late-night blogging later.

First up is the still-mysterious case of the Oklahoma University suicide bomber. Mark Tapscott, who's covering the FBI investigation, has some interesting developments about whether or not they will be able to put their heads together to get to the bottom of this case.

Michelle Malkin has a trove of documents on the case for amateur sleuths to peruse as part of her own coverage on the case. Don't miss her take on Janeane Garofalo, who used to actually be funny ... before a house fell on her sister.

Kate at Small Dead Animals takes a look at more evidence that the mainstream media still has no real understanding of blogs. Dozens of commenters appear to agree.

Jon Henke, one of the best in the blogosphere, shreds John Kerry and the White Flag Democrats in the aftermath of the Bush speech. No sooner does Kerry claim that no one in their caucus is talking about artificial dates for withdrawal from Iraq than his own party leader, Nancy Pelosi, demands all troops be withdrawn within six months. I guess the White Flag Democrats were opposed to dates before and after they were for them, huh? (Dafydd notices the same thing.)

The lovely Charmaine Yoest goes to Washington, takes some pictures, and gets to be on TV. I gotta take that tour the next time.

NZ Bear hears Democratic presidential hopeful Russ Feingold on NPR, who apparently isn't terribly impressed by elections and democracy. And he wants to win the top job in which country?

Hopefully, I'll have more later on!

The Value That Keeps Shifting

Anne Applebaum writes an op-ed in today's Washington Post defending the use and protection of anonymous resources in reporting and punditry, with the somewhat-ironic title "The Value of Anonymity." In her essay, she rightly notes the role that these sources provide in getting to the real data behind the PR smokescreens erected by bureaucrats of all stripes:

Some of us will get the balance wrong -- there are bad and corrupt journalists, just as there are bad and corrupt members of any other profession -- and some of us will make mistakes. But the alternative to a relatively open, relatively comfortable relationship between the press and the government isn't exactly attractive. Earlier this week the owner of a Jordanian newspaper visited The Post. He described his efforts to open up the press in his country, to ease laws that restrict what topics the press is allowed to address, and to create a newspaper independent of government financing and influence. But ultimately, he said, the legal system wasn't his worst problem. Far more troubling was the fact that Jordanian government officials "feel no obligation" to say anything to the press, on or off the record, at all. In Jordan, there are no anonymous sources with whom members of the press are entangled, no lower-level officials who can help shed light on events -- and as a result, it's hard for the press to be relevant to politics. Is that really the system we'd like to adopt in this country, too?

No, but problems erupt when the press decides to assign that value based on the politics of the source itself. For instance, when anonymous sources decided to tell the Washington Post that the CIA ran detention centers in Eastern Europe for interrogating terrorists, that source apparently needs the utmost in journalistic protection -- even though it revealed an ongoing and extremely sensitive wartime operation that could cost American lives by the thousands, if compromised. On the other hand, when a columnist revealed that the wife of a prominent public critic of the Administration worked for the CIA and had arranged for her husband to travel on the agency's dime to discredit the administration with what the Senate later determined was misinformation, that source somehow deserves no protection whatsoever, and any journalist who protects him/her achieves instant pariah status. Just ask Judith Miller.

We'd love to agree with Anne about the value of anonymous sources, if the value didn't keep changing based on whether the source's truths hurts or helps politicians with which the media elite support or oppose. Until then, Anne, color us somewhat cynical on such pronouncements of reportorial courage.

Air Marshal Reserves Too Expensive: Congress

After approving a program to cross-train customs and immigration agents as reserve air marshals for deployment during heightened alerts, Congress quietly abandoned the program over a year ago as a "waste of resources," the GAO revealed yesterday:

The plan was first disclosed in September 2003 by Tom Ridge, then Homeland Security secretary.

Ridge announced that the air marshals would be combined with immigration and customs agents in the same agency so agents in both could be cross-trained and used for aviation security. The move would allow more than 5,000 armed federal law enforcement agents to be deployed on commercial aircraft, he said.

"This realignment offers a sweeping gain of additional armed law enforcement officials who will be able to provide a 'surge capacity' during increased threat periods or in the event of a terrorist attack," Ridge said at the time.

By October 2004, Homeland Security had cross-trained some immigration and customs agents, but stopped because of congressional concerns that it was "an ineffective use of resources," the report said.

Eight months ago, air marshals warned the US that they did not have the numbers to provide the comprehensive protection that we had anticipated would be demanded in the aftermath of 9/11. While this article rightly states that the exact number of air marshals remains confidential, the air marshals themselves have repeatedly claimed that they do not have the numbers to meet their current, normal-condition mandate. During an emergency or a heightened alert, we have no reserve on which to call to ensure passenger safety on high-risk flights.

We need Congress to rethink its priorities on air security. Americans took back to air travel on the premise, after 9/11, that we had better levels of security both before boarding and while in flight. The four-year history of the federal Air Marshal service has instead brought mismanagement, politically-correct silliness, dress-code irrelevancies, and now the revelation that no reserves exist if specific threats arise against the American air transportation system. We found out how valuable this system is to the American economy in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in history. Surely Congress can burn a few more Bridges to Nowhere to fund the air marshal service and the system of reserves necessary to prevent another such incident.

Sharon's Gamble May Steal The Center

Ariel Sharon's breathtaking gamble on leaving the political party that he himself founded decades earlier may have paid off. It appears that Shimon Peres, recently booted from his leadership post in the Labor party, may join Sharon in Kadima and take a large swath of his followers along with him. The two moves threaten to completely rewrite Israeli politics and shove what had been the two largest political parties into the extremist wings of the Israeli electoral culture:

Speculation mounted Tuesday that Shimon Peres, the longtime pillar of Israel's Labor Party, plans to break ranks and join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new centrist movement.

The departure of Peres, 82, from Labor, which Sharon allies speculated could come Wednesday, would continue a broad realignment of Israel's political parties prompted by Sharon's decision to withdraw Jewish settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip earlier this year. ...

Peres's ally, Dalia Itzik, a member of Labor's 21-person parliamentary bloc, announced that she would join Sharon. She is the second Labor member of parliament to do so after Haim Ramon, who announced his decision last week.

"It looks like a package deal," Eitan Cabel, the Labor Party's secretary general, told Israel's Army Radio. "We spoke about their remaining and not defecting to another party. But apparently things were already sealed, and the talks with us were nothing but a smoke screen."

Perhaps Sharon had this already in the works when he announced the launch of Kadima, but either way, it shows the demand for a more centrist representation in Israel while the question of the Palestinians remain open. In his manner, Sharon has taken a page from Bill Clinton and especially Tony Blair in building a so-called Third Way, this time in Israeli politics. Most Israelis want to see peace and would trade land for it, but only if that can assure an end to the constant state of war that the occupation has created. Now with Peres and his followers backing Sharon and joining with him to push his policies and strategems, the centrists have a home for themselves.

Peres had little choice and so a move to Kadima makes a lot of sense. He had just lost control of Labor to a far-left, hard-line union supporter who backs the two-state solution but also wide-ranging social spending. Sharon, on the other hand, had largely beaten back a challenge for Likud supremacy from Benjamin Netanyahu. In one or two move, Sharon has now created a political structure in Israel where both Netanyahu and Amir Peretz get left alone at the extremes while Kadima can define the center of Israeli politics. The union of the two old titans of Israeli government will provide an instant legitimacy that could well sway a majority to support Kadima in the upcoming elections.

If Kadima cannot form a majority government, however, look for Labor to fill the gap -- and they will want to exact some revenge on the Peres group when they do.

Catholic Church To Shun The Limbo

No, the Mass has not gotten so liberal that celebrants or the congregation do the popular party dance on the way to the Eucharist, although some might believe that the Church wouldn't necessarily think that a bad idea if it got people to fulfill their holy obligations more frequently. The Vatican has studied the religious concept of limbo for decades now in an attempt to either minimize it or eliminate it altogether, and the Globe & Mail reports that a blue-ribbon commission of theologians first formed by John Paul the Great on the question will recommend that Pope Benedict banish limbo from Catholic teachings:

In Latin, it means "the lip," and for centuries devout Roman Catholics have tried to avoid thinking about its full meaning: the edge of hell, where those who have died without baptism -- notably babies -- are sent for eternity.

Now it seems that limbo, a place invented in the Middle Ages that soon became a well-known part of the architecture of the cosmos, is about to be struck from the theological blueprints as part of the Vatican's lengthy renovation of its heavenly layout.

Its place, alongside such well-known medieval additions as the gates of heaven, the nine circles of hell, purgatory and the heavenly vestibule, has become increasingly shaky, and yesterday, the Italian media reported that an international commission of high-ranking theologians intends to advise Pope Benedict to banish the notion of limbo from all teachings of the Catholic catechism.

One of the reasons that limbo has been in, well, limbo is because the concept presents a stumbling block to Christian unity, especially for those who practice from a literal form of sola scriptura. After the Church could catch its breath when it emerged from four centuries of martydom and oppression, theologians presented many questions about the nature of the faith which challenged the thinking of Church elders. Among them: what happened to unbaptized babies at death? Instead of just leaving such questions up to God, distraught parents and theoretical thinkers wanted answers, and limbo came into being.

Limbo, it should be pointed out, differs from purgatory, another difficult but more scriptural-based concept of Roman Catholocism. Purgatory refers to the process of purification that has to take place between the death of a sinner and their entry into heaven. Misunderstood as a particular place in space and time, purgatory would at first appear to be an unmentioned third possible destination for the dead, but the Church teaches that all souls who enter heaven must necessarily experience purgatory to be cleansed of sinful impulses before final acceptance into the presence of the Lord. When I taught confirmation classes, I used to explain it to the teenagers as an extra rinse cycle in the washing machine ... which may explain why I don't teach confirmation classes any longer.

Purgatory as a concept would have also explained what happens to the unbaptized, and done so with much more elegance than the notion of limbo. I suspect that if limbo gets the heave-ho it deserves, the Church will probably emphasize purgatory as the merciful process that it is and the path of the unbaptized to reach heaven when judged deserving by the Lord -- who, after all, makes the rules and the choices without consulting any of us on our opinion anyway.

The Return From Upgrade Hell

I'm reworking my weekly column for the Daily Standard on Canada tonight, which will appear a little later this week, and the renewed trackback function drove me to a new level of insanity ... and to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2, which supposedly controls the spam attacks much better than previous versions with the MT-Blacklist plugin. What I thought would be a 30-minute quick update turned into a three-hour ordeal, the last of which took the site down intermittently, especially if you tried to post comments. It should be back up and running now, but blogging will probably be over for the evening.

If you get a chance, take a look at my friend Scott Johnson's latest column at DS, "Second Time's A Charm", about Mary Mapes and her attempt to rehabilitate herself after the Memogate debacle. So far, it's a complete flop, and few things are more fun than watching the delightful way Scott shoots the fish in the barrel:

WHAT IS CERTAINLY ILLUMINATING is the degree to which Truth and Duty makes plain the level of malice Mapes has for the president. Although she offers herself as an impartial journalist searching for truth, her tract seethes with Bush hatred. Mapes suggests that Bush's "success in skewing the public perception of his military service was a prelude to his success in shaping public opinion around the reasons for the war in Iraq, the treatment of detainees, the need for a tax cut, and every political battle he has fought and won in his White House years." She refers to "the Bush campaign's aggressive pattern of sliming anyone and everyone who raised questions about the president." She describes Karl Rove as Bush's "über-adviser" and bizarrely credits him with masterminding "the Republican attack against the [60 Minutes II] story." Given her claims of the documents' authenticity, she absolves Rove of fabricating and planting the documents--"not that I believe Rove isn't capable of that kind of dirty trick."

It is a shame that those reviewers favorable to Mapes's book appear not to have read the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, which is full of information that discredits the segment in its entirety, belies Mapes's book, and establishes far beyond reasonable doubt that the documents on which Mapes staked her career are fraudulent.

Who better to deconstruct Mapes than the man who disassembled her work and put the blogosphere on par with the national media?

Abramoff Client Heading Investigation

Democrats have tried painting Jack Abramoff's sleazy and allegedly criminal lobbying efforts as a strictly Republican scandal for the last several months, tying Abramoff chiefly to Tom DeLay. However, as the investigation into Abramoff continues, more and more ties to Democrats have emerged, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Now it appears that the ranking Senate Democrat on the committee that has taken the lead in investigating Abramoff has more than a oversight connection to Abramoff himself:

New evidence is emerging that the top Democrat on the Senate committee currently investigating Jack Abramoff got political money arranged by the lobbyist back in 2002 shortly after the lawmaker took action favorable to Abramoff's tribal clients.

A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians told The Associated Press that Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record)'s political group just three weeks after the North Dakota Democrat urged fellow senators to fund a tribal school program Abramoff's clients wanted to use.

The check was one of about five dozen the Coushattas listed in a tribal ledger as being issued on March 6, 2002, to various lawmakers' campaigns and political causes at the instruction of Abramoff, tribal attorney Jimmy Fairchild said Monday.

So now Byron Dorgan is the fox in the henhouse, passing judgment on Abramoff after passing his checks along to the bank. Believe me, I'm delighted to see anyone crooked get his just desserts; as far as I'm concerned, men like Randy Cunningham should do a couple of tours at Club Fed if they use their positions of trust to sell out for bribes and kickbacks. Anyone who did so with Abramoff should bunk up with Cunningham at the first oppportunity. However, let's quit pretending that Abramoff represents some sort of Republican "culture of corruption" and instead acknowledge that the sleaze has a much more ecumenical stench than the Democrats want to acknowledge. Otherwise, they'd be better served by keeping their mouths shut.

Liberals Lose Ground In Power Base

The Globe and Mail report on new polling that they have conducted at the cusp of the no-confidence motion. While the polling sample is much smaller than the previous Robbins survey and not media independent -- an important point in Canada -- the polling reports on geographical breakdowns. This shows a major shift in one of the strongholds of Liberal politics and reveals a surprising weakness in the coming election:

Paul Martin's Liberals enter an election campaign six percentage points ahead of the Conservatives, but losing ground in Ontario and facing an increased desire for a change of government, a new poll shows.

Canadians, especially Ontarians, are less likely than they were six months ago to see Conservative Leader Stephen Harper as a scary figure with a "hidden agenda," according to a Strategic Counsel survey conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV. But the Ontarians have not embraced Mr. Harper's party, rating the Liberals as better at managing most issues.

"For whatever vulnerabilities the Liberals have had, the Conservatives have not been able to establish themselves as a government-in-waiting," said pollster Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel.

The poll, conducted between Thursday and Sunday, found that 35 per cent of Canadians would vote Liberal if an election were held today, compared with 29 per cent for the Conservatives and 17 per cent for the NDP. The survey of 1,500 Canadians has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. ...

But in seat-rich Ontario, the Conservatives, who trailed the Liberals by 13 percentage points three weeks ago, are now only five points behind. The Liberals have 40-per-cent support in the province, the Tories 35 per cent and the NDP 20 per cent. The view that Mr. Harper has a "hidden agenda" � an oft-repeated Liberal allegation � has declined in Ontario by 10 percentage points since May.

The Robbins poll used a sample size twelve times greater than the SC poll, and it showed that nationally the Liberals had dropped into a dead heat with the Tories; in fact, the Tories "led" by a tenth of a point in the Robbins survey. Head to head, Harper beat Martin by more than a two-to-one margin in the more extensive poll.

The media will not likely highlight those results any time soon. However, the loss of strength in Ontario demonstrates that the Robbins survey may be far more accurate in showing the political momentum in Canada at the moment. If the Liberals only have a five-point advantage in the new SC poll in Ontario, they aren't terribly likely to have a six-point national advantage at all.

In other words, take close looks at the polling data offered by the Canadian media over the next few weeks, especially in Ontario. As those numbers narrow, the national election should shift even further to the Conservatives. If the Tories run a dead heat in their power base, it would equate to Democrats only narrowly beating Republicans in California and New England. It's a leading indicator that they will have lost most everywhere else.

Alito Hates Foreigners!

Wow, talk about divine providence -- on the day after George Bush moved immigration reform and border control to the top of his agenda, the Washington Post managed to write about a memo from Reagan-era deliberations that Jo Becker and Amy Goldstein claim shows some sort of animus against foreigners. Headlined by a statement that Alito opposed rights for foreigners, the Becker/Goldstein report reviews Alito's recommendation to accept fingerprint cards from refugees living in Canada:

As a senior lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued that immigrants who enter the United States illegally and foreigners living outside their countries are not entitled to the constitutional rights afforded to Americans.

In an opinion that offers insight into the Supreme Court nominee's view of an area of law that has gained new significance with the Bush administration's policies to combat terrorism, Alito gave his approval to an FBI effort in the 1980s to collect from Canadian authorities fingerprint cards of Iranian and Afghan refugees living in that country.

The program to collect background information was constitutional, Alito wrote in a January 1986 memo to the FBI director. And because the refugees were nonresident immigrants of a third country, he reasoned, the FBI could disregard court decisions that prohibited it from spreading "stigmatizing" information about citizens.

So this memo has little to do with "foreigner's rights" as the headline states, and more to do with the kind of information sharing that we so badly lacked leading up to 9/11. In this case, as clumsily presented by the ever-biased Becker/Goldstein team that turned in one hack job after another on John Roberts, Canada apparently offered to share its fingerprint cards that it had taken from Iranians and Afghanis that fled to our northern neighbor in the 1980s. Given the nature of the conflicts occurring at that time, and the kind of people who might feel motivated to flee to North America, this data might have proven invaluable had we taken Islamofascist terrorism seriously during the 1990s.

Canadian authorities had no problems with getting the fingerprints in the first place. Why should sharing the data with our ally risen to a Constitutional issue at all? This kind of hypersensitivity shown by success administrations led to the Gorelick wall and the foolish and arbitrary limits on cooperation between intelligence and law-enforcement assets that kneecapped our counterterrorism efforts until after 9/11. Yet the Becker/Goldstein article says nothing about this context, instead focusing on Alito's supposedly "broad and aggressive" view of the law.

Well, if that's so, we need more jurists like Alito on the Supreme Court to put an end to this politically-correct nonsense that left us blind and deaf to external threats such as the al-Qaeda plots that killed 3,000 Americans. The idea that we should sniff at fingerprint cards collected legally by an ally (with no indications of torture) because they possibly might have been challenged had they been collected in the United States is, we now know, feel-good dippiness at its worst and most self-destructive. The people who argue this point against Alito should be made to answer for the Gorelick wall and the shackling of our counterterrorism efforts over the past two decades.

UPDATE: Fixed bad link; thanks to Eric.

Lieberman Says Iraq Going Well As Army Continues Growth

Despite the recent shrieks of hysteria coming from the Democratic caucus in Congress, one of their most respected members says that the American-led Coalition has Iraq in "pretty good shape" and expects that troop drawdowns can begin late next year or early 2007 as long as progress continues. Senator Joe Lieberman took the opportunity to actually travel through Iraq, and his recommendation follows the administration's plan to key troop withdrawals based on the buildup of the Iraqi army, and not on calendar due dates as suggested by Joe Biden last week:

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut, fresh from a two-day visit to Iraq over the Thanksgiving holiday, said yesterday he was hopeful American forces could begin a "significant" withdrawal by the end of next year or in 2007.

"The country is now in reach of going from Saddam Hussein to self-government and, I'd add, self-protection," the Democrat said in a conference call with reporters. "That would be a remarkable transformation." ...

Mr. Lieberman has visited Iraq four times in 17 months. He said there are signs life is returning to normal, including a profusion of cell phones and satellite TV dishes on rooftops.

"About two-thirds of the country is in really pretty good shape," he said, noting most attacks are in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" region. "Overall, I came back encouraged."

That will come as quite a shock to the Chicken Little Democrats who spent most of November 18th predicting falling skies if Americans stayed in Iraq any longer. It also comes as a surprise to most of the American media, who failed to report the conference call to their readers. The New York Times and the Washington Post all skip over this story for their print editions today, although both the Times and the Post does have the AP wire story based on the NY Sun article in its web edition.

It also appears that they skipped over more good news about the status of the Iraqi army, coming from the CENTCOM spokesman in Washington. Since a Congressional briefing in September which analyzed almost three dozen Iraqi battalions as Level 2 -- able to lead operations with only logistical support from Americans -- that number has now increased by ten battalions, five more than just four weeks ago:

Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command that is responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency, of which about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support.

The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given on Nov. 7 at a briefing by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. It is about 10 higher than the figure Gen. Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing on Oct. 5.

As another measure of progress, Col. Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own "battle space," including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Col. Wellman said it stood at three in March.

Also, American forces have pulled out of 30 "forward operating bases" inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

This progress shows that the notion of only 1,000 Iraqi troops able to operate independently is malarkey, a deliberate misrepresentation by Joe Biden. No matter how much we may draw down forces in Iraq, we intend to stick around the area to offer logistical support, just the same as we do with our NATO allies. The measure of the training in Iraq -- in which we have built the army from the ground up -- is to have them capable of taking command of territory, holding it, and enforcing the constitutional law set by civilian authority. The "clear-hold-build" strategy for places like Ramadi and Falluja has shown increasing success in denying territory for insurgents, turning them into rootless bands of terrorists rather than any real security threat.

This process dictates the troop reductions we want to see from Iraq, reductions that will allow us the flexibility to redeploy to other hot spots of terrorist activity as we find them. Calendar-based commitments for withdrawal as demanded by the Democrats last week and the week before focus on politics rather than ensuring successful missions; this approach puts the mission first, and the data shows that the mission has become increasingly successful.

Trackback Problems At CQ

Just an FYI -- the trackbacks apparently have been blocked by the hosting service for CQ. This happens occasionally as the circumstances arise. I've asked them to look into the problem. In the meantime, feel free to post a link in the comments to your post on the related topic. I'll update this post as the situation develops.

UPDATE: Trackbacks are re-enabled, but Hosting Matters says I need to upgrade to MT 3.2 to avoid the spam attacks. That's why they disabled my TB system in the first place, and they may have to again if it continues. I'll work on the upgrade ASAP.

Prayers Needed For Hostage

One of the Brits kidnapped in Iraq this weekend is a family friend of a local blogger, Ben at Hammerswing75:

Mr. Kember is a good friend of my parents and a longtime member of my Granny's church, Harrow Baptist. I remember seeing him a few years ago when I was stopped by in England to visit my Gran. We were at the church and he came over for some conversation. "I remember when you were this tall", putting his hand down by his knees. He is an extremely nice man who went out of his way to be friendly. His wife Pat, who possesses an equally wonderful character, must be in absolute shock.

My parents have asked for my prayers. There will be many. I, in turn, am asking for yours. I hope that there will be many.

Let's take a moment and pray for the hostages, and pray for those who serve the people of Iraq that they remain safe tonight as well.

'This Government Has Lost The Moral Authority To Govern'

The Canadian Parliament approved a historic no-confidence motion against the Liberal executive in Ottawa this afternoon, dissolving the government and forcing elections weeks after the Gomery Inquiry issued its first comprehensive report on the Liberal corruption in the Sponsorship Program:

The short-lived 38th Parliament met its demise on Monday night, setting the stage for one of the longest election campaigns in two decades, as the Liberal government was defeated in a no-confidence vote at the hands of all three opposition parties and the country was launched into official election mode.

The Liberals lost the vote in the House of Commons 133 to 171, beginning a series of events that will propel voters toward the ballot boxes, likely on Jan. 23.

I'm listening to the aftermath on CPAC, where the Liberal apologist wants to tell Canada that Adscam involved "a few Liberals", but that "no one believes that it involved the party as a whole". That apparently will be the line that the Liberals take in this election, along with a scolding tone about all of the great work that the Commons could be doing instead of holding another election seventeen months after the last one.

Well, that's why elections get held -- so that the Liberals can make that argument now that the country knows about the extent of the corruption. If they want to offer up the notion that just a few Liberals involved themselves in the money-laundering and featherbedding that went on in Adscam, I expect that the Tories and BQ will quote extensively from the Gomery report to remind voters of the extent of the corruption, including all of the money that flowed back into the Liberal Party through the government contracts given to cronies of Jean Chretien.

More to come ...

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and thanks to Glenn for the link. I noticed earlier today that the CBC website didn't even have a headline on their front page about the upcoming no-confidence motion, but now they have the ubiquitous Really Cool Graphic:

I wonder if that's the title for their coverage, or the name of a boring waterfall in Ottawa. The CBC doesn't offer a lot more about the vote, but they do have Paul Martin calling the Tories "Neo-Conservatives". What does that mean -- that Stephen Harper wants to invade Iraq to establish seeds of democracy in the Middle East? Or perhaps Martin thinks it just sounds scary. If that's an example of how Martin will campaign over the next six to eight weeks, the Liberals may want to rethink the leadership while they still have a chance.

We'd Like To Welcome The BBC To The Party

The BBC has just caught up with the political events north of the border. The British news service just noticed that a no-confidence motion will get a vote late this afternoon or early this evening -- after having been tabled on Thursday:

Canada's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, faces a no-confidence motion in parliament which his minority Liberal government is widely tipped to lose.

It is expected that an election would then be called in early 2006.

Monday's no-confidence motion was introduced by three opposition parties last week, after Mr Martin rejected an ultimatum demanding a poll in February.

The motion claims the Liberal party - which Mr Martin has led since 2003 - no longer has the moral authority to lead.

The government has been dogged by allegations of irregularities over contracts awarded by a previous Liberal administration.

Mr Martin is not implicated in the scandal, but the opposition says his government is tainted and should be forced out of office.

A couple of points to consider, on my lunch break at Culver's where they offer free wi-fi access (and pretty darned good chili and cole slaw): first, it's stretching the point to say that Martin hasn't been implicated in Adscam. He didn't get directly tied to the money laundering, but the Sponsorship Programme scandal occurred while he served as Finance Minister. Since millions of dollars disappeared while he had responsibility for the Canadian federal budget, he certainly has ties to the scandal; he might just not have to face criminal charges. Maybe.

Also, to call the Adscam money-laundering and political kickback scheme "irregularities" equates somewhat to calling Watergate a dispute over fair use of recordings. The Gomery inquiry established real crimes, crimes that will require prosecution. The BBC penchant for understatement misrepresents the entire push for the no-confidence motion.

Lastly, I'm trying not to be too hard on the BBC. At least they finally noticed that a major world government will collapse today. The American media still hasn't noticed it. I'll be posting on this later today, when I get home and watch the vote. Somehow, I keep expecting Martin to pull another rabbit out of his hat and dodge the bullet. Perhaps he might prorogue Parliament before allowing the vote to take place ...

The Missing Element Of Blame For Ignorance On Iraq

The Washington Post carries an interesting argument from Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institute on the divergence of military and civilian opinion on the war in Iraq, a separation that he calls dangerous in the long run for American political discourse. O'Hanlon acknowledges that the support for the war in Iraq among military personnel goes far beyond the normal top-level cheeriness down to at least the mid-level officer corps, and wonders why that doesn't translate to better civilian support:

In recent months a civil-military divide has emerged in the United States over the war in Iraq. Unlike much of the Iraq debate between Democrats and Republicans, it is over the present and the future rather than the past. Increasingly, civilians worry that the war is being lost, or at least not won. But the military appears as confident as ever of ultimate victory. This difference of opinion does not amount to a crisis in national resolve, and it will not radically affect our Iraq policy in the short term. But it is insidious and dangerous nonetheless. To the extent possible, the gap should be closed. ...

The military's enthusiasm about the course of the war may be natural among those four-star officers in leadership positions, for it has largely become their war. Their careers have become so intertwined with the campaign in Iraq that truly independent analysis may be difficult. But it is striking that most lower-ranking officers seem to share the irrepressible optimism of their superiors. In talking with at least 50 officers this year, I have met no more than a handful expressing any real doubt about the basic course of the war.

Contrast that with the rest of the country. The polls are clear; the American public is deeply worried and increasingly pessimistic. The numbers are not (yet) abysmal; 30 to 40 percent still seem bullish on trends in Iraq. But even among those who strongly support the Bush administration, doubts are emerging. Among defense and Middle East analysts, my own informal survey suggests at least as negative an overall outlook, with decidedly more pessimism than optimism. Even among centrists who supported the war or saw the case for it, optimism is now hard to find. Many expect things to get worse, even much worse, in the coming months and years.

O'Hanlon only barely mentions the root cause of this problem -- a national media addicted to a narrative that embues every story with fatalism. The media has become addicted to body counts even though, historically speaking, they have remained low for a conflict of this scope and size. The national media continues to avoid reporting any positive developments from Iraq except those which cannot be ignored, like the national elections. In fact, the reason the successful elections seemed like such a big story was because they were seen as such an anomaly, not because they represented a conscious effort resulting from American plans to establish democracy in stages throughout the country.

When journalists embedded themselves in American units during the initial invasion in March - May 2003, the reports gave a much more balanced look at the military efforts in Iraq. However, the national media derided the efforts of "embeds" as out of context and government-controlled propaganda. Now the reporters choose to write their reports from the Green Zone in Baghdad, far away from the actual fighting going on and reporting instead on nothing more than the number of IEDs and body counts. Only a handful of embeds still exist, and they do not get the kind of national exposure that the 2003 invasion embeds received.

Until the media starts reporting honestly from Iraq, the divergence will continue to grow as civilians continue to operate from ignorance, while the military operates from a position not only of intelligence but from experience. The real danger presented will be the self-fulfillment of the Starship Troopers (movie, not book) paradigm, where the only people qualified to control the military are the military themselves -- and the press will have created that atmosphere based on their short-sighted adherence to their anti-military and anti-Bush biases.

Short answer for O'Hanlon: Press, heal thyself.

Insider Trading In Liberal Management?

The Canadian opposition wants an independent investigation into the Finance Ministry after a spike in trading for trusts occurred just as the government was expected to announce new policies governing trusts and their tax liabilities. The call for investigations came from both the Conservatives and the NDP:

As federal politicians prepare to hit the campaign trail, the Conservatives and NDP are calling for investigations of alleged insider trading arising from tax policy announcements by Finance Minister Ralph Goodale.

The Tories said Sunday they are writing to the Ontario Securities Commission to demand an inquiry, while the New Democrats want the matter turned over to the RCMP.

At issue are events last Wednesday, when there was a spike in trading in income trust units amid speculation that Mr. Goodale was going to change the tax rules that applied to them.

In fact, he left the trust rules unchanged. But he did announce new guidelines that will reduce personal income taxes on corporate dividends, a move intended to level the financial playing field between corporations and trusts.

Some commentators, including noted forensic accountant Al Rosen, have suggested the intensive trading in trust units that preceded Mr. Goodale's announcement may be an indication that advance word on the new policy leaked to some investors.

Anyone who has read the Gomery report would not expect to find such an intricate way of paying off potential Liberal supporters. After all, Adscam consisted of taking government contracts and awarding them to political and financial cronies in return for kickbacks, featherbedding on behalf of the party, and all sorts of illegal behavior. Insider trading would not only continue the payouts, but it would be harder to trace and harder to prove.

The longer the Liberals remain in power, the more opportunity they have to warp more of the public institutions for their private profit. Tonight's no-confidence motion gives Canadians the chance for at least a temporary respite.

Ahmadinejad Creating Rifts In Iranian Hard Line

The AP reports that the Guardian Council's fair-haired boy, newly-"elected" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has created dissension among the ruling elite of Iran. His purges and radical foreign policy has disturbed even the conservatives of the Iranian parliament, who have now denied him his choices for the important position of oil minister three times as a signal to stop operating as a loose cannon. It does not appear that Ahmadinejad will get the message:

Iranian moderates say the president has harmed his country by isolating it internationally, and now Ahmadinejad's friends are lining up against him. He suffered a humiliating defeat last week when his choice for oil minister was rejected for a third time, an unprecedented failure for an Iranian president.

While parliament is dominated by Ahmadinejad's conservative allies, the president's isolationist stance and his failure to consult on Cabinet appointments have annoyed lawmakers. They warn they will not approve any future nominee unless Ahmadinejad first consults parliament.

Pragmatists within the ruling establishment worry that Ahmadinejad's radical agenda has sidelined a cadre of experienced men at home and isolated the country abroad.

Earlier this month, the government announced that 40 ambassadors and senior diplomats, including supporters of better ties with the West, would be fired. Also let go were pragmatists who handled Iran's nuclear negotiations with Europe under Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor, Mohammad Khatami....

In the works, but still not made public, is a deeper shake-up of the establishment in which Ahmadinejad is replacing hundreds of governors and senior officials at various ministries with young, inexperienced Islamic hard-liners who oppose good relations with the West. The changes include putting fundamentalists in key posts at security agencies.

The trend towards fundamentalism will prove worrisome to outside observers, but what should worry Iranian fundamentalists is a trend towards incompetence that Ahmadinejad appears to be establishing. In a country with as much unrest as Iran already has, replacing people who have basic competence in their positions with political hacks mouthing the correct slogans back to Ahmadinejad will only stoke impatience with the current political scheme. Moderates who once believed in an Islamic republic will shortly fall away from even tepid support of the Iranian regime. In response, the security apparatus, under the control of inexperienced hardliners, will overreact and start indiscriminate retaliations for all sorts of real and imagined slights, making the problem of alienation exponentially worse.

Ahmadinejad may prove to provide little more than a recipe for a civil war, or perhaps a lower-intensity civil meltdown. His selection by the Guardian Council may well be their greatest mistake, but it's one that they have thus far refused to recognize. Ruling cleric Ayatollah Ali Khameini continues to back him, and his senior advisors refuse to acknowledge that Ahmadinejad needs to change his style. Advisor Madhi Kalhor urged Iranians and the international community to accept Ahmadinejad's "revolutionary management style" that produces policy changes in 24 hours instead of the years of diplomatic and political work other governments put into policymaking.

Now that should make everyone feel better ...

The Tyrant's Tirade

The trial of Saddam Hussein continued this morning, as most of his trials have gone thus far -- with an opening tirade from the deposed genocidal tyrant to get the trial off to a start. Saddam complained about not having a pen, being guarded by foreigners, and a broken elevator as his latest contribution to his trial for mass murder, continuing to demonstrate that he still doesn't quite grasp the stakes involved:

He was similarly argumentative on Monday, complaining about the fact that he had to climb four floors to the courtroom because the elevator was broken.

He also objected to being escorted up the stairs by "foreign guards".

In a series of heated exchanges with the chief judge he also complained about the fact that his guards had taken his pen away, rendering him unable to sign the necessary court papers:

"I will alert them to the problem," Judge Amin said in response.

"Don't alert them! Order them. You are an Iraqi, you are sovereign and they are invaders, foreigners and occupiers," Saddam Hussein fired back.

The professionalism of the Iraqi court stands in stark contrast to the circus atmosphere provided by the defense. For instance, Ramsay Clark made yet another bungee appearance today for Saddam, flying in at the last minute to assure himself of some news coverage. Four other defense lawyers for other defendants simply didn't show up, as if their invitations got lost in the mail.

What has gotten lost in all the coverage are the real victims of Dujail, who died by the score in revenge for an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982. It may not qualify as the greatest of Saddam's crimes, but these murders took place at his demand for the audacity of a few who wanted an end to his tyranny. The people he ordered killed had nothing to do with the assassination plot; they simply lived in the town where the attack took place. It's a tactic taken by tyrants throughout the ages -- making an example of towns like Dujail to frighten people into meek submission to brutal tyranny. In fact, it's just another form of terrorism.

Even if the media has forgotten this, the Iraqi court has not. The media continues to cover this with a wink, telling its readers and listeners that the Iraqis and the Americans want to start with "minor" cases against Saddam Hussein. Dujail goes straight to the heart of how Saddam kept himself in power, and now shows the idiotic nature of those who would defend him. I believe that this case makes a perfect opening round for the trials of Saddam Hussein and his sick coterie of sycophants.

Bush To Finally Address Immigration

In need of some momentum in Congress for legislative traction, George Bush has finally decided to start addressing illegal immigration and the porous southern border of the United States. After seeing almost his entire legislative agenda stalled out between the Iraq war debates and two Supreme Court nominations, Bush needs to apply a push to get some successes from Congress early in the next session:

President Bush will make stops in Arizona and Texas this week to address an issue that has divided some members of his own Republican Party -- illegal immigration. ...

A senior administration official said that the president, in a speech on immigration, will focus on three areas: border security, enforcement and a temporary worker program.

The official said the president will talk about "additional resources and the use of technology to secure the border," and will discuss it in terms of national security and the economy.

Not all of this will thrill the Republican base, which has gotten restless waiting for some solutions to the ongoing security issues presented at the border. The GOP doesn't like the notion of Bush's guest-worker program, but the open question of what to do with 10 million illegal aliens already inside the US requires some sort of reasonable answer. Roundup and massive deportation would probably require the armed forces to conduct the operations -- in defiance of posse comitatus -- and concentration camps to sort out the illegal from the legal. Neither will prove palatable for moderates in either party, no matter how much the taint of amnesty carries with a guest-worker program.

At least the issue will find its way back to the national debate, with some momentum to finally get legislative treatment next year.

Another Item For Which To Give Thanks

The Cindy Sheehan Traveling Road Show appears to have lost its steam, according to multiple sources this weekend. The protest camp shut itself down outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, TX this afternoon after drawing less than 200 protestors over the holidays -- probably fewer people than Bush invited to the ranch for Thanksgiving dinner. The protestors won't return for Christmas but promise to come back at Easter:

Dozens of war protesters packed up their tents and left their campsite in a field near President Bush's ranch Sunday, vowing to return during Easter for a third vigil if U.S. troops are still in Iraq.

The weeklong protest, which coincided with Bush's Thanksgiving holiday visit to his ranch, drew about 200 people. It was a continuation of the August demonstration led by California mother Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq last year during combat.

Power Line has a picture of Sheehan waiting for people to come sign her book on Saturday. After the thousands that thronged to "Camp Casey" -- which Sheehan has now leased from the Crawford farmer for all of 2006 for more of such spectacles -- the turnout for the fall version of the protest shows that Sheehan has come to 14:59 of her allotment of fame. It looks like the media have outshown the protestors this time around.

Perhaps they're hoping for a resurrection of Sheehan's popularity at Easter, but hopefully by that time they may rethink the foolishness of her attempting to revive her martyr pose at that holiday. In the meantime, we can all be thankful that she can once again return to the fringe-left shadows whence she sprang this summer.

Have The Tories Surpassed The Liberals?

Election polling by the Canadian media has shown a consistent lag of six to ten points between the Liberals and the Conservatives over the past several months. Many CQ readers and I have noted the small sample sizes used in these polls and some other independent efforts that have cast some doubt on those results. Now CQ reader Mark C. in Canada has found a substantial polling effort by Robbins Research, on behalf of a "US Corporation", that shows the Tories pulling into a dead heat with the Grits on one of the largest sample sizes used in political polling:

A representative sample of 18,443 Canadians between November 11th and 16th, 2005. This survey features a margin of error of 2.15%, 19 times out of 20 @ 98% competency. This poll was paid for by a U.S. company doing business in Canada.

Question #1

At this moment which of the following federal political leaders and their parties are you supporting?

Jack Layton and NDP..................22.30 %
Paul Martin and Liberals.............32.10 %
Stephen Harper and Conservatives.....32.21 %
Gilles Duceppe and Bloc..............13.33 %

Among other findings, Robbins discovered that two-thirds of Canadians think that the timing of the election was unimportant, belying the Liberal argument on avoiding holiday elections. It also shows that 68% of Canadians want to see the Conservatives form the next government, if the choice comes down to the Tories or the Grits. It finds Conservative/BQ party support to be solid, while determining much more fluidity between Liberals and NDP. Amusingly, it also says that the Maritimes "may be the only part of the country where the Liberals are still held in reasonably high esteem."

Robbins predicts that the Conservatives will take as many as 113 seats and BQ 64, easily giving them the ability to form a new government. They expect the Liberals to win no more than 108 seats in the new Parliament. The Bloc could ally with the Liberals, of course, but Robbins' research shows that the BQ's gains come on an anti-Martin emphasis -- meaning that the Liberals would need to dump their current leadership to even hope for an alliance with BQ. Given the Liberal rhetoric from last Thursday about the unpatriotic nature of BQ, that hardly seems likely now.

Given the large sample size and the independence of the polling, it looks like the Canadian media has hidden yet another political story from its readership -- this time not because of an artifical gag order imposed on them, but perhaps out of an unwillingness to recognize the damage done to the Liberal cause by its own leadership.

The Secrets Of Hollywood

Four years after 9/11 and almost three years after America deposed one of the most vicious and genocidal tyrants of the 20th century, Hollywood finally has decided to make a movie about the Iraq War that actually depicts the US forces as the protagonists. Does this news come from the American media? No, we get to find out about it from the UK, and Michelle Malkin:

ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.

It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul. ...

He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.

Yon was at the soldiers� ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. �What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn�t doing,� the actor said, �and that�s telling the truth about what�s happening in the war in Iraq.�

Willis is likely to take on the role of the unit�s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Erik Kurilla, 39, a Bruce Willis lookalike with a chest full of medals, more hair than Willis and a glamorous blonde wife.

I can't wait to see this one at least a couple of times, at least as an antidote to the idiotic Constant Gardener. I expect that the Hollywood press will treat this as a dirty little secret, sniffing at the jingoism of Bruce Willis and declining to give this effort much coverage. Hollywood prefers its war movies as psychodramas where American soldiers get portrayed as murderous thugs and nutcases, led by incompetents in pointless missions that do nothing but kill everything that moves.

Irish Survive Inspired Stanford To Qualify For BCS

Rally, sons of Notre Dame ...

The Fighting Irish finished their first season under Charlie Weis with a spirited comeback in the final minutes against Stanford to run their record to 9-2 and qualify for a BCS berth for the first time in years. The Irish put an exclamation point on an unexpectedly successful maiden season under Weis as the Golden Domers announced their return to national prominence:

Darius Walker ran 6 yards for the winning touchdown with 55 seconds remaining and took a direct snap to run in for the 2-point conversion, and the sixth-ranked Fighting Irish became all but assured of playing in one the four marquee bowl games with a 38-31 victory over Stanford on Saturday night.

Brady Quinn passed for 432 yards and three touchdowns but also threw two interceptions, and Notre Dame survived a wild final few minutes for its fifth straight victory since a 34-31 loss to No. 1 USC on Oct. 15. Walker ran for 191 yards on 37 carries.

The Irish (9-2) won seven of their final eight games under first-year coach Charlie Weis ...

I missed most of this game because I took the family out to see the latest Harry Potter film, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and then out for a late dinner. In fact, I only saw the final two minutes of the game, running inside the house when I heard that Stanford had scored late to go up by a point as we pulled into the driveway. Stanford's tough play did not surprise me at all. I saw them play the Irish at South Bend last year, when the Irish struggled to get past them at home, and I expected a tough game this year on the road.

This year, though, has seemed charmed for the Irish. They might have competed for a shot at the #3 slot if it hadn't been for an inability to win at Michigan State, a problem that has plagued Notre Dame for a decade and through three head coaches. As it is, they likely will play on New Year's Day, perhaps against the equally-admirable program at Penn State with the legendary Joe Paterno on the other sideline.

Now that will be one heck of a game!

Kadima: Bold Move Or Hubristic Folly?

Ariel Sharon's surprise move to bolt from the political party he founded thirty years ago to start another just before a new round of elections has many puzzled. How did the Likud's most powerful politician get so disillusioned with his own creation that he could not reform it from within? More importantly, will his new creation, Kadima (Hebrew for Forward) capture enough of the Israeli center to keep Sharon in power to implement his version of the two-state peace plan in the West Bank?

Newsweek has a background piece that explains some of the motivation behind the move, but sheds little light on the political implications of Sharon's rejection of hard-liners in what used to be his own party:

When Sharon pondered last week whether to leave Likud, the party he helped establish 30 years ago, the former arch-hawk canvassed the opinions of his closest advisers but shared his own views with no one. "We talked about it that afternoon in his office and he was completely poker-faced," says Reuven Adler, Sharon's political strategist and campaign manager. "I walked away thinking nothing was go-ing to happen." That evening, Sharon called Adler and told him to start thinking of a name for his new, more centrist political party.

"Risk" might be a good choice. Though long plagued by a rebellion of Likud hardliners, Sharon had lately reasserted himself as the party's undisputed strongman. His withdrawal from Gaza in August had gone quickly and without the anticipated turmoil. And he defeated critics in a key party vote in September. Adler says polls showed that Sharon would rout his strongest Likud challenger, Benjamin Netanyahu, by at least 25 percentage points ahead of national elections now scheduled for March. "Staying in Likud would certainly have been the surest way of getting re-elected [prime minister]," says Ehud Olmert, a fellow Likud defector and a running mate on Sharon's new list. But analysts believe it was a combination of politics and personality�his determination to recast Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and his irrepressible urge to always charge ahead�that pushed Sharon to leave. "He's prepared for a major accommodation in the [occupied] territories that Likud could not accept," Olmert told NEWSWEEK.

After the relative success of the Gaza withdrawal, including diplomatic successes in the Arab world that had eluded other peace brokers like Ehud Barak, Sharon must have felt that the constant battle with Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition of no-land-for-peace hardliners no longer served any purpose at all. The center of Israeli politics appears to have shifted, and the Netanyahu branch of Likud must have gotten too heavy a burden to carry into elections. Like any good general or politician, Sharon felt that he had reached the height of his power and struck strategically to consolidate it. Kadima hopes to gather the realists from Labor as well as those from Likud to create a new "silent majority" center party that will give Israel stability for enough time to enact the rest of Sharon's plan.

Has Sharon correctly divined the nature of Israel politics? Some seem to think so, including Adler, and a number of Likud politicians already pledging themselves for Kadima months ahead of the elections. If he has guessed right, Sharon may have single-handedly saved the two-state solution (for the moment) and perhaps created a revolution in Israeli politics that could last generations. If not, he will find himself in retirement very quickly, and the status of the territories will just as quickly become very precarious. The Bush administration will work overtime keeping tabs on this situation and generating options for us to have at the ready in case of collapse.

As Julius says to Marc Antony in the miniseries Rome, "It's only hubris if you fail." If Sharon played Caesar, we shall find out by the Ides of March.

Intelligence Agencies Multiplying Out Of Control

In yet another example of how the 9/11 Commission got its facts and its recommendations completely wrong, the Washington Post reports this morning that the Pentagon has expanded its domestic intelligence surveillance -- mainly by creating even more agencies and bureaucracies in competition with other resources already in place. Now, Walter Pincus doesn't write the article with that point in mind; he wants to frighten people with the thought that Bush has become Big Brother, or wants to allow Don Rumsfeld to do so:

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public.

"We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.

The efforts even include an Able Danger-like program, serviced by AD contractor White Oak Technologies, to perform data harvesting on commercially-available information databases. Each branch of the military service now has its own domestic surveillance program, even the Marine Corps, which as part of the Department of the Navy should have had access to naval intelligence. While civil libertarians will scream bloody murder at these efforts, in wartime our military bases as well as our cities, power plants, water supply, food infrastructure, and many other key domestic points require protection from sabotage.

The problem doesn't spring from domestic surveillance itself but the ridiculous number of agencies now set up to perform it. That alphabet soup creates two main problems, both of which could easily be foreseen in the Omission Commission's glib solution of slapping two layers of bureacracy on top of the intelligence structure at the time, rather than really reorganize American intelligence to fit the current threat posture we see in today's world.

The first problem comes from gap and overlap; with this many agencies all looking at the same mission, each with its own bureaucracy and turf to protect, expect a lot of inefficient duplication of effort and lack of sharing of data. Since these little agencies will in all likelihood follow the same kinds of dynamics that all little agencies exhibit and communicate poorly with each other, we can expect gaps to develop without any detection or accountablity.

The second problem comes closer to Pincus' concern -- how to manage all of these agencies to ensure that they follow the rules properly while generating good data for enforcement. The more of these independent agencies that get spawned, the more difficult oversight becomes. In fact, it becomes more difficult to understand even basic borders like jurisdiction, let alone overreach.

All of this mischief started with the Commission's celebration of bureaucracy as the salvation of intelligence. Rather than demand a complete restructuring of the myriad intelligence entities in the US into two or three agencies -- one each for foreign, domestic, and military intel -- the Commission claimed that data-sharing was hampered not by artificial divisions of labor between bureaucracies but not enough layers of bureaucracy above the agencies themselves. It demanded (and received) two additional layers of management between the actual intel gatherers and the decision makers of the government.

Now we continue to pay the price, with a new explosion of intel agencies. History has shown us that these discrete groups will work professionally but insularly, and that the pieces that each discover will only generate the threat assessment necessary after a catastrophic attack -- when everyone demands to see the records leading up to the disaster to determine what went wrong. It will apparently take another 9/11 to wake Americans up to the danger of this wrongheaded approach, unfortunately.

The Next Alito Smear: Racist, Sexist By Association

In the next phase of the effort to derail any nominee promulgated by the Bush administration to the Supreme Court, various leftist groups have seized on one entry on a 1985 r�sum� submitted for an opening in the Reagan administration by Samuel Alito. The New York Times reports on the twisted logic of PFAW in using this entry to paint Alito as a racist and a sexist for the actions of a Princeton alumni group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton:

The group's members at the time included Samuel A. Alito Jr., now President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, although there is no evidence that he played an active or prominent role.

The group had been founded in 1972, the year that Judge Alito graduated, by alumni upset that Princeton had recently begun admitting women. It published a magazine, Prospect, which persistently accused the administration of taking a permissive approach to student life, of promoting birth control and paying for abortions, and of diluting the explicitly Christian character of the school.

As Princeton admitted a growing number of minority students, Concerned Alumni charged repeatedly that the administration was lowering admission standards, undermining the university's distinctive traditions and admitting too few children of alumni. "Currently alumni children comprise 14 percent of each entering class, compared with an 11 percent quota for blacks and Hispanics," the group wrote in a 1985 fund-raising letter sent to all Princeton graduates.

By the mid-1980's, however, Princeton students and recent alumni were increasingly finding such statements anachronistic or worse.

The Times found that Alito played no leadership role, provided no funding, and in general only allowed his name to continue to exist on their rolls until the group went defunct two years after that rather stupid letter went out to its membership. He listed the membership on a r�sum� as an example of a conservative group that reflected his politics at the time, but the NYT doesn't explain whether that was before or after the letter went out that year, or whether Alito had even bothered reading missives from CAP.

It's clear that Alito doesn't like quotas, the reason CAP formed in 1972, nor did he like the liberalization impulse on his college campus. It's also clear that his level of outrage over these issues must have remained pretty darned small if all he did was engage in a membership. Even his friends within CAP can hardly recall his membership or any effort on his part to support the organization.

Nor does the opening paragraphs of this article tell readers about the breadth of the conservative issues that CAP addressed. Agree with them or not, CAP took on many issues with the Princeton administration, including abortion counseling, the right of free assembly, and defending private "eating clubs", to which Alito had never belonged anyway. As Dinesh D'Souza, who edited CAP's newsletter at one time, tells the NYT, Alito's membership might mean something, but it would be difficult to say what.

The last time I checked, Ruth Bader Ginsburg made her career as a general counsel for the ACLU, a group which has defended neo-Nazis in court in First Amendment cases. Did that make her a neo-Nazi? Of course not, and she may not have even supported their efforts to defend supremacists. (Some members have resigned in protest over the years when the issue arises.)

Perhaps the people at PFAW should concentrate more on Alito's extensive track record on the bench than the alumni group he joined but hardly supported in his youth. It would appear that they have not had any luck finding issues on which to deny him confirmation from his excellent work as a jurist, and instead have settled on hysteria to derail his nomination.

What's Iranian For 'Cпасибо'?

The Russians may soon rethink their defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the West if this report from the Sunday Telegraph gets confirmed, although it should surprise no one paying any attention to the global war on terror. According to Con Coughlin, the Iranian government has secretly trained Chechen rebels to conduct more effective terror strikes against Russian targets while Moscow continues to argue on Teheran's behalf for their nuclear ambitions:

Teams of Chechen fighters are being trained at the Revolutionary Guards' Imam Ali training camp, located close to Tajrish Square in Teheran, according to Western intelligence reports.

In addition to receiving training in the latest terror techniques, the Chechen volunteers undergo ideological and political instruction by hardline Iranian mullahs at Qom. ...

Moscow has offered a face-saving formula to prevent Iran from being reported to the United Nations Security Council for its failure to co-operate fully with UN nuclear inspection teams.

It wouldn't be the first time in history that a Russian strongman completely misunderstood the threat of fascism on its borders. The last time it cost Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, and others of the old Soviet Union millions of civilian lives because Joseph Stalin short-sightedly focused on carving up Poland. This time, it appears that Vladimir Putin has been made a fool for playing a spiteful game with encroaching but chiefly benign Western interests.

The hardliners hardly just came to power with the "election" of Ahmaninejad as president of Iran; the Guardian Council of radical Islamist imams have run Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini died. They have long given support and direction to Islamofascist terror groups, and the so-called Chechen rebellion has slowly transformed itself from a genuinely nationalist movement to an Islamist expansion effort in the Caucasus in the past few years. Only an idiot would find himself surprised to find Iran behind that effort, considering the map of the region and the strategic nature of the Caucasus to Southwest Asia as a buffer to Russian military power.

And yet, inexplicably, Putin has continued to succor Teheran and the Islamist government there while cluelessly fighting Iranian provocateurs in the Caucasian republics. Why? He wants to restore Russia as a world power that can counterbalance the United States and, to a lesser extent, the UK.

Putin may just have learned the Iranian version of 'spasibo', my poor phonetic for the Russian word for 'thank you'. Perhaps we can learn Farsi for 'pathetic fools' as well.