In a sad coincidence, the great Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni also passed away on Monday, mere hours after Ingmar Bergman, in Rome.

Though best known for the playful photographic detective story Blowup (1966), a perfect fashion-piece mirroring the sensibilities of the then emerging long-hair, drugs, and Rock n’ Roll era, Antonioni’s reputation may rest more firmly on his grim trilogy of alienation and ennui L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962).

Antonioni films were typically less immediately pleasurable than they were intellectually stimulating. The typical Antonioni film featured spare dialogue and minimal and problematic plotting, brilliantly photographed in scenes triumphantly composed with the same assurance and monumentality as the frescos of Giotto or Mantegna.

The Rediff news service aptly observed: Cinema has been orphaned twice—in just 24 hours.

DW-World-DE obituary.

David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey argue, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, that the real wiretapping scandal ought to be considered the significant degradation of American Counter-Terrorism surveillance capabilities as the result of partisanship and ideological assault.

Last Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing—at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was insulted by senators and ridiculed by spectators—was Washington political theater at its lowest. But some significant information did manage to get through the senatorial venom directed at Mr. Gonzales. It now appears certain that the terrorist surveillance program (TSP) authorized by President Bush after 9/11 was even broader than the TSP that the New York Times first revealed in December 2005.

It is also clear that Mr. Gonzales, along with former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, tried to preserve that original program with the knowledge and approval of both Republican and Democratic members of key congressional committees. Unfortunately, they failed and the program was narrowed. Today, the continuing viability of even the slimmed-down TSP —an indispensable weapon in the war on terror—remains in serious doubt. ...

In December 2005, ... a firestorm of controversy erupted when The New York Times published a story describing the TSP. Although it was clear from the beginning that the program targeted al Qaeda—a particular communication was intercepted based on the presence of a suspected al Qaeda operative on at least one end—and not directed at ordinary Americans going about their daily routines, the administration’s critics quickly wove the TSP into their favorite overarching anti-Bush narrative. They cited it as just one more example of a supposedly power-hungry president, the new “king George,” chewing up our civil liberties.

Administration officials, including Attorney General Gonzales, repeatedly explained the TSP to Congress and the public, presumably to an extent consistent with continuing national security imperatives. In particular, they said that only communications where at least one party to the conversation was outside of the U.S. were intercepted; purely domestic calls were not in play. But after months of congressional pressure, and having failed to secure new legislation that would have fundamentally revised FISA, the administration announced in January this year that it had reached an agreement with the special FISA court to bring the TSP under judicial auspices. ...

What has gotten lost in all of this increasingly sordid game of political gotcha is the viability of a critical program in the war on terror. The TSP was brought under the FISA court’s jurisdiction this January, allegedly without impairing its effectiveness. But FISA orders are not permanent. They must be periodically reissued, and FISA judges rotate. As an editorial on the facing page of the Journal first reported Friday, well-placed sources say that today’s FISA-compliant TSP is only about “one-third” as effective as the 2005 version—which, in turn, was less comprehensive than the original program. This is shocking during a summer of heightened threat warnings, and should be unacceptable to Congress and the American people.

The problem is particularly acute because FISA’s 1978 framework has been rendered dysfunctional by the evolution of technology. FISA was enacted in a world where intercepts of purely foreign communications were conducted overseas, and were entirely exempt from the statutory strictures. Only true U.S. domestic communications were intercepted on U.S. soil and these intercepts were subjected to FISA’s prescriptive procedures. Yet, with today’s fiber optic networks functioning as the sinews of the global communications system, entirely foreign calls—say between al Qaeda operatives overseas—often flow through U.S. facilities and can be most reliably intercepted on American soil. Subjecting these intercepts to FISA strictures is absurd.

Moreover, the very fact that the intelligence community operates in a state of continued uncertainty about what precise surveillance parameters would be allowed in the future—instead of having the collection efforts driven entirely by the unfolding operational imperatives—is both unprecedented in wartime and highly detrimental. In past wars, as fighting continued, valuable battlefield experience was gathered, causing weapons systems, military organization and combat techniques to improve consistently. In this difficult war with al Qaeda, by contrast, the key battlefield intelligence-gathering program has been repeatedly emasculated.

Congress’ obsession with the TSP’s legal pedigree has become the major threat to its continued viability, rivaling in its deleterious impact the infamous “wall,” much criticized by the 9/11 Commission, which prevented information sharing between the Justice Department’s intelligence and law-enforcement divisions. It is hypocritical for those in Congress who preach fidelity to the 9/11 Commission recommendations to behave so dramatically at odds with their spirit. The question Judiciary Committee members should have been asking Mr. Gonzales was not whether he had misled them—he clearly did not—but whether the TSP is still functioning well. The question the public should be asking those senators—and with not much more civility than the senators showed Mr. Gonzales—is what are they going to do about it if the answer is no.

Rich Lowry quips in a New York Post editorial gleefully observing Congressional democrats doing a fine job of discrediting themselves in the eyes of the public by a futile series of shamelessly partisan “investigations.” The leftwing nutroots are enjoying every minute of it, though.

(But) That’s not stopping congressional Democrats.

When not trying to force a pullout from Iraq, their main effort has been chasing Bush-administration scandals that loom large only in their fevered imaginations. Democrats consider this “change,” but it is really a toxic repeat of the Republican investigative onslaught against Bill Clinton in the 1990s and of the Democratic one against Ronald Reagan in the 1980s – in other words, business as usual when Congress confronts a hated presidential adversary.

The Democrats’ latest tactic is to give an implicit choice to Bush officials: They can either come to Capitol Hill to testify so Democrats can try to build a perjury case against them, or they can refuse – in which case Democrats will cite them for criminal contempt of Congress. Either path leads inexorably to Democratic calls for a special counsel. Democrats love the prospect of another couple of Patrick Fitzgeralds, drumming Bush officials out of public life with onerous legal bills for their trouble.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been a particular target, and why not? He’s so incapable of defending himself that, for grandstanding Democrats, cuffing him around is risk-free fun, like cruel kids pulling the wings off insects. ...

The new perjury accusation against him is based on testimony this past week in which he often was kept from saying two sentences in a row without being interrupted and called a liar. ...

Between the interruptions, the difficulty of discussing classified activities in public and Gonzales’ expository shortcomings, it all got garbled, but a well-intentioned person could understand his point. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democrats preferred to pretend that they had witnessed a flagrantly perjurious performance.

Gonzales is being tormented on another front, too – the firings of U.S. attorneys. Democrats can’t explain how the administration’s firing of U.S. attorneys who serve at its pleasure could be criminal, but apparently want to spend the rest of the Bush presidency hunting for evidence of this elusive wrongdoing. ...

This is a grave political miscalculation. Absent a Watergate-style smoking gun, or at least some plausible whiff of gunpowder, voters aren’t interested in scandal monomania. The only political effect of the investigative onslaught is to please the bloodthirsty Democratic “netroots” who are desperate for excuses to try to impeach Bush, while convincing voters that Washington is a disgusting cockpit of partisan rancor oblivious to their true concerns. There is a reason President Bush can be at 28 percent approval and still double Congress’ rating in some polls.

But Democrats can’t help themselves. They’ve held more than 600 oversight hearings so far, and these hearings are close to their only accomplishment. The Democratic majority brings to mind a paraphrase of the old saw about teaching: Those who can, legislate. Those who can’t, investigate.

Read the whole thing.

While Congressional democrats are playing “He said; she said” games on the subject of Counter-Terrorism data-mining in order to bring down Alberto Gonzalez, Newsweek is reporting that US Intelligence Agencies are having difficult keeping up with changes in technology and that all the political games the left and the MSM have played with the Echelon program have also had a real impact, significantly diminishing the program’s effectiveness.

Six years after 9/11 , U.S. intel officials are complaining about the emergence of a major “gap” in their ability to secretly eavesdrop on suspected terrorist plotters. In a series of increasingly anxious pleas to Congress, intel “czar” Mike McConnell has argued that the nation’s spook community is “missing a significant portion of what we should be getting” from electronic eavesdropping on possible terror plots. Rep. Heather Wilson, a GOP member of the House intelligence community, told Newsweek she has learned of “specific cases where U.S. lives have been put at risk” as a result. Intel agency spokespeople declined to elaborate.

The intel gap results partly from rapid changes in the technology carrying much of the world’s message traffic (principally telephone calls and e-mails). The National Security Agency is falling so far behind in upgrading its infrastructure to cope with the digital age that the agency has had problems with its electricity supply, forcing some offices to temporarily shut down. The gap is also partly a result of administration fumbling over legal authorization for eavesdropping by U.S. agencies. ...

According to both administration and congressional officials (anonymous when discussing such issues), the White House and intelligence czar’s office are now urgently trying to negotiate a legal fix with Congress that would make it easier for NSA to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls where all parties are located outside the U.S., even if at some point the message signal crosses into U.S. territory.

Ernst Ingmar Bergman, undoubtedly the greatest living film director, died earlier today at the age of 89, reportedly “peacefully at home,” presumably at his famous residence on the Island of Faroe in the Baltic.

Bergman directed 44 films in the course of a career lasting 57 years.

London Times

Wikipedia entry

Contemporary American society is afflicted with an epidemic of metastatic growth in the self importance of petty officials at a time in which ordinary common sense has taken a vacation from American life.

One noteworthy result, especially common on America’s liberal coasts, has been the expansion of zero tolerance policies to include ordinary childhood behavior.

The Canadian Mark Steyn is deservedly appalled at a case in Oregon.

Do you know Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison?

If you do, don’t approach them. Call 911 and order up a SWAT team. They’re believed to be in the vicinity of McMinnville, Ore., where they’re a clear and present danger to the community. Mashburn and Cornelison were recently charged with five counts of felony sexual abuse, and District Attorney Bradley Berry has pledged to have them registered for life as sex offenders.

Oh, by the way, the defendants are in the seventh grade.

Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school – like “a handshake we do,” as one female student put it. On “Slap Butt Fridays,” boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting.

Don’t ask me why. ...

So, upon being caught butt-swatting, Mashburn and Cornelison were called to the principal’s office, where they were questioned for several hours by vice principal Steve Tillery and McMinnville Police officer Marshall Roache. At the end of the afternoon, two boys who’d never been in any kind of trouble before were read their Miranda rights and led off in handcuffs to spend five days in juvenile jail.

Tough, but I guess they learned their lesson, right?

Ha! The state of Oregon was only warming up. After a court appearance in shackles and prison garb, the defendants were charged with multiple counts of felony sexual abuse, banned from school and forbidden any contact with their friends. ...

Having had no previous prolonged exposure to the American justice system, I was interested to see whether the techniques used by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald were particular to that case or more widely applied. The Oregon butt psychos make an instructive study. ... once the authorities had decided on their view of the case, other parties were leaned on to fall into line and play the role of “victims.” Of 14 other students interviewed by officer Roache, seven (boys and girls) told him they had engaged in bottom-swatting themselves. Two of the “victims” said they had done it to others. At the initial hearing, a couple of female students spontaneously testified that they’d felt very much pressured to conform during their interviews with the vice principal and the police officer. “Well, when the principal asked me stuff, I kind of felt pressured to answer stuff that I was uncomfortable, and that it hurt, but it really didn’t,” said one girl.

What does hurt? Attracting the attention of the district attorney. The prosecutor’s office reduced the counts from felony sexual assault (with which he’d successfully charged a couple of other middle-school students a year ago) to five misdemeanor counts of sexual abuse and five counts of sexual harassment.

With the boys’ respective parents already in the hole for $10,000 apiece in legal fees, the D.A. used the most powerful weapon in the prosecutor’s armory: Cop a plea, and we’ll make all the pain go away. In this instance, that would mean pleading guilty in return for probation. The terms of probation would prevent Mashburn and Cornelison from contact with younger children, which would mean they couldn’t be left with their younger siblings.

Mashburn and Cornelison do not believe they’ve committed a crime, so they would like to exercise their right to the presumption of innocence – a bedrock principle of the English legal tradition now in great peril from American prosecutorial excess. Instead of letting the state bully them into a grubby, shaming deal, the boys would like it to do what justice systems in civilized societies are required to do: prove the crime. It’s a gamble: Those 10 charges each command a one-year sentence, plus lifelong sex-offender registration.

District Attorney Berry told reporter Susan Goldsmith of the Oregonian that his department “aggressively” pursues sex crimes. “These cases are devastating to children,” he said. “They are life-altering cases.”

No, sir. The only one devastating children’s lives is you. If you “win,” and these “criminals” are convicted, 20, 30 years from now – applying for a job, volunteering for a community program, heading north for a weekend in Vancouver and watching the Customs guard swipe the driver’s license through the computer – there’ll be a blip, something will come up on the screen, and for the umpteenth time two middle-age men will realize they bear a mark that can never be expunged. Because decades ago they patted their pals on the rear in a middle-school corridor.

A world that requires handcuffs and judges and district attorneys for what took place that Friday in February is not just a failed education system but an entire society that’s losing any sense of proportion. Without which, civilized life becomes impossible. So we legalize more and more aspects of life and demand that district attorneys prosecute ever more aggressively what were once routine areas of social interaction.

A society that looses the state to criminalize schoolroom horseplay is guilty not only of punishing children as grown-ups but of the infantilization of the entire citizenry.

The London Times reports that Pakistan has sent in 80,000 troops into the area it previously surrendered to Al Qaeda with orders to root out the Islamist extremists.

map

Pakistan is still refusing to permit US military actions within its borders, and threatening to withdraw from its American alliance if the US were to act unilaterally, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reports.

AP:

A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said.

Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said. It was unclear if he was a student at the school. A message left at the Shmulevich home was not immediately returned.

The Islamic holy book was found in a toilet at Pace’s lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.

Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.

Can anyone imagine a similar arrest for doing the same thing to the bible or a crucifix? As Tom Maguire recalls, when Andres Serrano submerged a crucifix in a bottle of urine, the result was an art competition award and a succès de scandale.

1:06 video

Sample topics:

The effectiveness of using all UPPERCASE characters.”

“Are 10 million emails a day too many?”

link

Hat tip to Jim Conroy.

Charles Schumer promises the democrat base that Bush will get no more Supreme Court nominees through the Senate confirmation process, and apologizes for democrats supposedly being somehow deceived by Judges Roberts and Alito. And here I thought they just didn’t have the votes to block those nominees’ confirmations.

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Schumer’s assertion comes as Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court with Bush’s nominees – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito – has moved quicker than expected to overturn legal precedents.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Schumer’s comments show “a tremendous disrespect for the Constitution” by suggesting that the Senate not confirm nominees.

“This is the kind of blind obstruction that people have come to expect from Sen. Schumer,” Perino said. “He has an alarming habit of attacking people whose character and position make them unwilling or unable to respond. That is the sign of a bully. If the past is any indication, I would bet that we would see a Democratic senatorial fundraising appeal in the next few days.”

Schumer voted against confirming Roberts and Alito. In Friday’s speech, he said his “greatest regret” in the last Congress was not doing more to scuttle Alito.

“Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed,” Schumer said. “I should have done a better job. My colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.”

Remember the press coverage of John Edwards’ $1250 haircut? The democrat candidate tells an audience of rubes and bumpkins in Iowa that it’s all part of a conspiracy by the people who make $100 million a year to silence him.

This class warfare stuff is pretty rich coming from a champion of poor who owns a 28,000 sq. foot house, and whose own personal fortune is estimated in a range from $29.5 and $62 million..

1:22 video

Via The Politico.

AP:

Three men who dug up a young woman’s corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.

The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.

The men used shovels to reach her grave. They abandoned their plan and were eventually arrested after a vehicle drove into the cemetery and reported suspicious behavior, authorities said.

They said the men had seen an obituary of Tennessen with her photo and wanted to dig up her body to have sexual intercourse. ...

The men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and misdemeanor attempted theft charges. But Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges in September, saying no Wisconsin law addressed necrophilia. Prosecutors appealed his ruling.

But there remain some limits to tolerance in Massachusetts.

The West African Cherry Orange (Citropsis articulata) is common throughout West Africa, but has become endangered only in Uganda where it is known as Omuburo. In Uganda, Omuboro roots are believed to be a powerful male aphrodisiac.

Independent:

It [the tree] is like a natural Viagra,” said Hannington Oryem-Orida, a professor of botany at Makerere University. “Because of its enormous medicinal properties, the tree is being harvested faster than it can reproduce, thus threatening its long-term survival.”

Seeds can be ordered from a California company.

The city fathers of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania would obviously would never have allowed Thomas Jefferson to reside within the jurisdiction of their dismal Anthracite region rust bucket community. Jefferson also owned too many books.

EarthTimes:

A bookstore owner’s obsession with the written word has cost him his Pennsylvania home after local officials deemed his book collection a fire hazard.

Authorities in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., condemned John Puchniak’s apartment this year when a routine inspection raised concern the bookstore owner’s collection of nearly 3,000 texts could cause a fire, The (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader reported Wednesday.

Puchniak now resides in a local hotel, while attempting to limit the stacks upon stacks of books that decorate his condemned apartment.

But even if he can restore the apartment to acceptable living standards, Puchniak has said he cannot afford to appeal the city to reopen his home.

Attorney Jim Hayward has become a champion for the troubled literary fan, attempting to convince local officials to let the 59-year-old store his growing collection as he sees fit.

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader story.

A feud between East Bay and West Bay gangs is believed to have been behind some shootings in San Francisco on Monday.

And the city Solons promptly responded.

San Francisco’s already tough laws on firearms will get even stronger—becoming some of the most restrictive in the country—after a vote at City Hall Tuesday. But even new restrictions won’t do much to stop the gun violence escalating on city streets, one sponsor of the new laws said after the vote. ...

The laws—which gained final approval from the Board of Supervisors—would restrict both the sale and possession of firearms.

Specifically, they would prohibit the possession or sale of firearms on city property, require firearms in residences to be in a locked container or have trigger locks and require firearm dealers to submit an inventory to the chief of police every six months.

The last provision is intended to allow city officials to know how many guns are sold, though there is only one gun shop in the city.

“We’re pleased that, as soon as the mayor signs this, San Francisco has the strongest anti-gun laws in the nation,” said Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. The mayor sponsored the legislation, along with Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi.

Despite the laws, however, Mirkarimi said he doubts they will quell the kind of violence that erupted on Monday afternoon, which police suspect may be tied to a feud between a San Francisco gang and an East Bay gang.

Gun Control regulations will have zero impact on actual gun crimes even the politicians who propose and pass them admit, but isn’t it wonderful that San Francisco has the strongest anti-gun laws in the country?
—————————————————————-

The comedian Jackie Mason has some very sensible things to say about Gun Control (in his characteristic ethnic accent, of course).

6:43 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog.
—————————————————————-

And this horrifying news item from Connecticut demonstrates exactly why you need to have a loaded gun somewhere conveniently within reach in your home.

Taylor Dinerman, in the Wall Street Journal, commemorates Heinlein’s centenary.

When one looks at the great technological revolutions that have shaped our lives over the past 50 years, more often than not one finds that the men and women behind them were avid consumers of what used to be considered no more than adolescent trash. As Arthur C. Clarke put it: “Almost every good scientist I know has read science fiction.” And the greatest writer who produced them was Robert Anson Heinlein, born in Butler, Mo., 100 years ago this month. ...

Robert A. Heinlein, who died in 1988, lived a life inspired by two great loves. One was America and its promise of freedom. As one of his characters put it: “Your country has a system free enough to let heroes work at their trade. It should last a long time—unless its looseness is destroyed from the inside.” And he loved and admired women—not just his wife, Virginia, who provided the model for the many strong-minded and highly competent females who populate his stories, but all of womankind. “Some people disparage the female form divine, sex is too good for them; they should have been oysters.”

In another hundred years, it will be interesting to see if the nuclear-powered spaceships and other technological marvels he predicted are with us. But nothing in his legacy will be more important than the spirit of liberty he championed and his belief that “this hairless embryo with the aching oversized brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes will endure. Will endure and spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his noble essential decency.”

Thomas Joscelyn, in the Weekly Standard, refutes the recent democratic justification for defeatism: the claim that “Iraq is the wrong battlefield.”

Those cowards and defeatists would be just as unhappy, and just as eager to press for withdrawal, if the US invaded Waziristan. They just feel safe pointing to it as an alternative, because they feel certain that no US administration would invade Pakistan.

The leading Democratic presidential contenders have voiced a new conventional wisdom in recent weeks: The war in Iraq has little or nothing to do with defeating al Qaeda. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have embraced this view, as has the New York Times. It is dangerously wrong. ...

Just last week, the summary of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) representing the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community was released. It states that the organization “Al Qaeda in Iraq” is the terror network’s “most visible and capable affiliate.” Al Qaeda’s leadership still desires to strike the U.S. homeland and “will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)” to do so. “In addition,” the intelligence estimate notes, al Qaeda relies on Al Qaeda in Iraq to “energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.”

These judgments are obviously inconsistent with Obama’s belief that America is fighting on the “wrong battlefield.” But the judgments of the intelligence community have been wrong before—witness the October 2002 NIE on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. So we should be wary of taking this latest pronouncement at face value.

The NIE’s conclusions are, however, supported by a source that cannot be ignored: al Qaeda’s two principal leaders. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have repeatedly called Iraq the “front line” in their war against Western civilization. Indeed, a review of their statements—readily accessible in translation in the anthologies edited by Bruce Lawrence (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden) and Laura Mans field (His Own Words: Translations and Analysis of the Writings of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri) and from other public sources—confirms that they have made Iraq their fight. ...

Bin Laden and Zawahiri’s own words tell us that the American project in Iraq jeopardizes everything their group stands for: These two top leaders of al Qaeda have promised the people of the Middle East that al Qaeda will protect Muslim soil from the “Crusader-Zionist” invaders, even if the region’s rulers will not, and even if doing so meant cooperating with the “apostate” Saddam.

Zawahiri believes that Iraq is al Qaeda’s best opportunity for establishing a true Islamist state in the heart of the Middle East. Democracy does not belong in the region, the two men say, and only an Islamic government based on sharia law is acceptable in Iraq. The mujahedeen will drive the Americans out of Iraq using the same tactics they used to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. America’s leaders and soldiers are weak, al Qaeda says. They are looking for a way to run from the fight in Iraq, and they will do so, bin Laden exults, while the “whole world is watching.”

The whole world, that is, except the leading Democratic candidates for president.

Read the whole thing.

Reintroduced via batches of chicks imported from Russia, the largest Eurasian game bird the Great Bustard, Otis tarda, is being reported to have nested in Britain for the first time, as the London Times puts it, “since Queen Victoria was a child (1832).”

A female bustard has laid two eggs somewhere on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The precise location is not being publicly released in order to foil the hordes of mad-keen British ornithologists (bird watchers) and the now nearly as endangered as the bustards themselves oologists (collectors of birds’ eggs).

Press release with photo

London Times

Telegraph

UK Great Bustard Reintroduction Project

The primary wing feathers of the great Bustard play an important role in the dressing of traditional featherwing Salmon Flies, being featured as ingredients in the wing of many of the most famous patterns.

Jock Scott

The large patterned black-and-orange mottled strip of feather, third from the top in the wing, beneath the Golden Pheasant crest feather and brown mallard, is from the great Bustard.

Michael Totten reports directly from the unbearable fiasco of US military operations in unwinnable Iraq.

82nd Airborne’s Lieutenant William H. Lord from Foxborough, Massachusetts, prepared his company for a dismounted foot patrol in the Graya’at neighborhood of Northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiyah. ...

The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead. ...

Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad.

It was an edgy “Kurdistan,” though. Every now and then someone drove down the street in a vehicle. If any military-aged males (MAMs as the Army guys call them) were in the car, the soldiers stopped it and made everybody get out. The vehicle and the men were then searched.

Read the whole thing.

The Transportation Security Administration (7/20) warned:

A surge in recent suspicious incidents at U.S. airports may indicate terrorists are conducting pre-attack security probes and “dry runs” similar to dress rehearsals. Past terrorist attacks and plots show that such testing generally indicates attacks will soon follow, according to a joint FBI and Homeland Security assessment. ...

5 July 2007, San Diego, CA – A U.S. Person’s (USPER) checked baggage contained two icepacks covered in duct tape. The icepacks had clay inside them rather than the normal blue gel.

4 June 2007, Milwaukee, WI – The carry-on baggage of a USPER contained several items resembling IED components, such as a wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes, and two blocks of cheese.

8 November 2006, Houston, TX – A USPER’s checked baggage contained a plastic bag with a 9-volt battery, wires, a block of brown clay-like minerals, and pipes.

16 September 2006, Baltimore, MD–The checked baggage of a couple contained a plastic bag with a block of processed cheese taped to another plastic bag holding a cellular phone charger.

Even George Monbiot (whose name is the source of the derisive term for an irrational leftist: moonbat) recognizes what chic and expensive environmental gestures by the haute bourgeoisie are all about.

Last week, for instance, the Guardian published an extract from A Slice of Organic Life, the book by Sheherazade Goldsmith – married to the very rich environmentalist Zac – in which she teaches us “to live within nature’s limits”. It’s easy. Just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?

Her book contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word. You can save the planet from your own kitchen – if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment, and then summed up the problem in seven words: “This is for people who don’t work.” ...

Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts, partly because they love gadgets but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious and how rich they are. ...

J.R Dunn describes the situation at American Thinker:

It’s now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.

They’re going to be ignored. ...

Virtually no media source or Democratic politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard “I can always backtrack” Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.

Anbar is close to being secured, thanks to the long-ridiculed strategy of recruiting local sheiks. A capsule history of war coverage could be put together from stories on this topic alone – beginning with sneers, moving on to “evidence” that it would never work, to the puzzled pieces of the past few months admitting that something was happening, and finally the recent stories expressing concern that the central government might be “offended” by the attention being paid former Sunni rebels. (Try to find another story in the legacy media worrying about the feelings of the Iraqi government.) What you will not find is any mention of the easily-grasped fact that Anbar acts as a blueprint for the rest of the country. If the process works there, it will work elsewhere. If it works in other areas, that means the destruction of the Jihadis in detail.

Nor is that all. Diyala province, promoted in media as the “new Al-Queda stronghold” appears to have become a death-trap. The Jihadis can neither defend it nor abandon it. The Coalition understood that Diyala was where the Jihadis would flee when the heat came down in Baghdad, and they were ready for them. A major element of surge strategy – and one reason why the extra infantry brigades were needed – is to pressure Jihadis constantly in all their sanctuaries, allowing them no time to rest or regroup.

A blizzard of operations is occurring throughout central Iraq under the overall code-name Phantom Thunder, the largest operation since the original invasion. It is open-ended, and will continue as long as necessary. Current ancillary operations include Arrowhead Ripper, which is securing the city of Baqubah in Diyala province. Operation Alljah is methodically clearing out every last neighborhood in Fallujah. In Babil province, southeast of Baghdad, operations Marne Torch and Commando Eagle are underway. (As this was being written, yet another spinoff operation, Marne Avalanche, began in Northern Babil.)

The Coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to discover the proper strategy in any war. A cursory glance at 1943 would have given the impression of disaster. Kasserine, in which the German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent American GIs running. Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence. Salerno, where the Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea. But all these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 1945.

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq’s 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match (“Getting inside their decision cycle”, as the 4th generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.

Read the whole thing.

Abdullah Mehsud aka Noor Alam

AFP details the unhappy end of one of the innocent lambs unjustly detained by the Bush Administration. Poor Abdulah Mehsud was captured at Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan in December of 2001 and detained for 25 months before being released in March of 2004.

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with (Pakistani) security forces on Tuesday, officials said.

One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. ...

“Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hideout. Three of his accomplices were arrested,” Cheema said.

Mehsud, 32, became the leader of Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in South Waziristan in 2004, after Pakistani forces launched military operations in the troubled tribal region.

In October 2004, Islamic militants led by Mehsud pressed their demand for an end to the army moves by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working on a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam project in South Waziristan.

One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid in a major embarrassment for Pakistan, which counts China as its closest ally and biggest military supplier.

Mehsud, who spent 25 months in the US-run “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until his release in March 2004, escaped after the incident.

He had been hunted by Pakistani forces ever since. Officials said he had recently been involved in lauching cross-border attacks on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.

“Intelligence reports pointed out his presence at a house and security forces mounted the raid. He sneaked into Zhob from Waziristan,” Cheema said.

Zhob, in southwestern Baluchistan province, borders South Waziristan.

The militant leader and his companions exchanged heavy gunfire with security forces for hours after the house was surrounded late Monday, police said.

“When our forces finally entered before dawn this morning a man blew himself up to avoid being captured. He was identified later as Mehsud,” Zhob police chief Atta Mohammad said.

Mike Kaminski has updated the famous George C. Scott speech from the 1970 film.

8:21 video

Hat tip to Scott Drum.

Second edition of Iowahawk’s incarceree beauty contest.

Via Maggie’s Farm.

The Telegraph:

A black dustman (what we would call a garbage man in the USA) has been banned from wearing a St George’s Cross bandana because council officials say it could be regarded as racist.

Matthew Carter, 35, who was born in Barbados, used the headgear to keep his dreadlocks out of the way while he was on his rounds in Burnley, Lancs. He had done so for seven months before his photograph appeared in a local newspaper. A number of local people complained, and his superiors called him.

“I received a verbal warning,” Mr Carter said yesterday. “They told me the St George’s Cross was not allowed to be seen on any clothing we wear because it could be considered offensive and racist.” ...

Mr Carter still wears a bandana but one that bears the image of a skull and crossbones.

Now that’s much better.

Fort Morgan, Colorado US Historical Climate Network Station

The picture really speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
—————————-

Hat tip to YARGB.

Stephanie Peatling, in the Sydney Morning Herald, seems to have had a bit of fun at Environmentalists’ expense modifying the figure in the leftwing Australia Institute’s projection that Australia would consume 60 per cent of its supposedly appropriate carbon dioxide production “budget” by 2020 to 95%.

The greenhouse gas cuts Australia must achieve to prevent dangerous climate change may be substantially higher than thought, with modelling to be released today suggesting it should be as much as 95 per cent by 2020.

Scientists have urged countries to restrict the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the end of the century to 450 parts per million, a figure that would see global temperatures rise by around 3 degrees by 2100.

But modelling done by the Australia Institute has discovered the country is on track to produce significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than this.

“The failure to take early action to reduce emissions has committed Australia to a development path that will make it almost impossible for Australia to stay within any carbon budget that is consistent with minimising the risks associated with global warming,” the deputy director, Andrew Macintosh, said.

One such budgetary figure would undoubtedly be just as incompatible with ordinary modern life as the other.

Via Tim Blair.

BBC:

A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.

The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.

The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.

Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: “Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps.”

The bird first swooped in Aberdeen’s Castlegate earlier this month and made off with the 55p crisps, and is now a regular.

Once outside, the crisps are ripped open and the seagull is joined by other birds.

Mr Nagarajan said: “He’s got it down to a fine art. He waits until there are no customers around and I’m standing behind the till, then he raids the place.

“At first I didn’t believe a seagull was capable of stealing crisps. But I saw it with my own eyes and I was surprised. He’s very good at it.

Daily Mail:

The rest of the flock flap around, begging for titbits and diving for scraps.

Not this fellow. He simply pops to the shops.

And his tastes, it seems, are rather particular. It has to be tortilla chips. But not just any kind. Only Chilli Heatwave flavour Doritos will do.

Luckily for him, they are always in the same place in his favourite corner shop.

He makes a daily stop there, hopping from foot to foot until staff happen to open the door. Then he strolls in and helps himself.

His daily shopping trips have become something of a tourist attraction at the shop.

He is now so popular that customers have started paying for his chips.

Once outside, the seagull enlists the help of other gulls and pigeons to rip open the packet, which he shares with the group. They all feast and then disappear, before returning the next day.

The culprit is a Herring Gull (Larus argentatus).

1:00 video

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

In the above comic book cover, Combat Casey appears to be planning to injure the worthy Oriental gentleman on the ground with a knife.

Clearly, the Oriental gentleman is unarmed, helpless, and in pain, and Combat Casey really ought to be assisting him to rise to his feet, and dusting off his suit for him.

Worst of all, there is every reason to believe that the Truman Administration, in backroom secret proceedings, authorized this kind of application of cruelty and violence amounting to torture by US personnel against citizens of China vacationing on the Korean peninsula. No public debate was held, no international legal tribunals were consulted before this obviously violent individual assaulted the Chinese fellow.

It just shows how truly barbarous the United States used to be that representatives of the government of the United States were routinely permitted to torture, and even to murder, foreign nationals in remote locations without any charges being brought, without habeas corpus protections being accorded their victims, and without civil trials with competent legal counsel being provided.

McClatchy:

President Bush signed an executive order Friday barring the CIA from using torture, acts of violence and degrading treatment in the interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects, but human rights experts questioned its scope. ...

Some experts in human-rights law said Bush’s order contains “loopholes” that would allow the CIA to continue using aggressive interrogation techniques that others would consider torture.

“Let’s not forget that the administration’s theory of executive authority is very broad. They reserve the right to interpret laws in ways no one agrees with in emergency situations,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit activist group. ...

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement, saying, “We now need to determine what the executive order really means and how it will translate into actual conduct by the CIA.”

If you’re writing a sceenplay, you need to be aware that personal computers work differently on the big screen. Here’s a FAQ explaining some of the key differences you need to understand.

Examples: In Hollywood movies,

All text must be at least 72 point.

Incoming messages are displayed letter by letter. Email over the Internet works like telegraphs.
——————————-

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Innerspace says that it is finishing up production of its second dolphin-shaped submersible, the Seabreacher.

Nifty design, alright, and a lot of people would certainly like to own one of these (assuming it worked reliably, and users were not destined to experience the fate of the crew of the Hunley).

But, alas! this is one of those classic West Coast hippie companies. They’ve been playing with all this since 1998, and are happy taking their one prototype out to shows once in a while. They don’t actually want to sell any.

Can I buy or lease an Innespace Dolphin?

Innespace is focused on building vessels for racing and demonstration purposes only. We will be touring the country with our submersible watercraft, performing stunt shows at various events. Innespace is actively seeking corporate sponsors to partner with us in this endeavor. Our vessels will also be available to lease for film and commercial work.

You’ll have to build your own, I’m afraid, Bob.
———Hat tip to Robert M. Breedlove

The Onion produced this 3:00 video report.

“Nigeria was the first nation to report a full economic collapse from the Internet Crash. 94% of its Gross National Product came from Internet ventures.”

From Lifehacker via Karen l. Myers.

saddle of oak and mulberry covered with deerskin

The Shōsōin treasure house is part of the Great Eastern Temple (Tōdai-ji) complex at Nara, the Imperial capital of Japan from 710-794 A.D. The treasure house came into as the result of the donation of some 600 precious objects to the Tōdai-ji Temple by the Empress Kōmyō in 756 A.D. in memory of her recently deceased husband the retired Emperor Shōmu.

Over the centuries, further donations were made, and today the Shōsōin contains 9000 objects.

The public is not admitted to the treasure house, but an annual exhibition takes place at the Nara National Museum. This year’s exhibition will be held October 24—November 12, and some of the items to be displayed have already been announced.

Telegraph:

Two amateur treasure hunters are in line for a pay-out of up to £500,000 after a small pot they found buried in a field turned out to contain the most important hoard of Viking silver and gold found in this country for 150 years.

Packed inside the ornately carved 8th century silver gilt pot, experts at the British Museum found 617 coins, jewellery and ingots from as far afield as Samarkand, Afghanistan, Russia, France, and Ireland. The pot had been buried in a field near Harrogate in Yorkshire, probably in the year 927.

“This really is the world in a vessel,” said Jonathan Williams, the keeper of European pre-history at the British Museum, where the treasure was put on display yesterday. “It is a quite incredible find and a very special moment for us at the museum.”

The discovery was made in January – but kept secret until yesterday – by father and son David and Andrew Whelan, from Leeds. They had spent hundreds of hours over the past three years scouring local fields with metal detectors without finding anything of value.

After the North Yorkshire coroner yesterday declared the find to be treasure – entitling the Whelans to half its value and the farmer on whose land it was discovered to the other half – David Whelan, 51, described his moment of triumph as “a thing of dreams”.

Once cleaned, the pot was found to be silver gilt, possibly an ecclesiastical vessel plundered from northern France. It is carved with vines, leaves and six hunting scenes showing lions, stags and a horse.

The value of the hoard is to be determined by an independent tribunal, but yesterday it was conservatively put at £750,000, although some suggested that it might be worth more than £1 million.

Daily Mail:

Mr Whelan, of Leeds, who spends his weekends metal detecting with his son Andrew, 35, a surveyor, added: “It’s a thing of dreams to find something like this. If we had found one coin we would have been over the moon.”

Unveiled at the British Museum, the ‘Harrogate hoard’ includes a decorated gilt and silver cup, 617 silver coins, a solid gold arm ring, brooch pins and various lumps of unworked silver.

Experts said the five-inch cup – which is decorated with animal motifs – was made in northern France in the 9th Century and was probably used in church services.

The coins date from the 10th Century and come from all over Anglo-Saxon England as well as from parts of Asia.

The necklaces, one of which is made of solid gold, are evidence that the hoard belonged to a Viking noble.

Barry Ager, curator of European objects at the British Museum, said: “It is an extremely exciting find, not just because it is the biggest and best for 150 years. The fact that the items come from all over the world shows the huge extent of the Vikings’ commercial links.”

Mr Ager said the haul would have either been amassed through trade or may have been looted.

He said it is likely that its owner would have buried it for safekeeping in 927 when the Anglo-Saxons under King Athelstan drove the Vikings out of northern England.

My guess is that the “150 year” reference is to the Lewis chessmen found circa 1831.

The silver pot that contained the Viking hoard
————————————
Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Humor: photo of men at work at Gatwick Airport.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

You know you’re living in one of our national centers of higher ethical culture and enlightenment when the neighbors take baseball bats to your new car.

Washington Post:

On a narrow, leafy street in Northwest Washington, where Prius hybrid cars and Volvos are the norm, one man bought a flashy gray Hummer that was too massive to fit in his garage.

So he parked the seven-foot-tall behemoth on the street in front of his house and smiled politely when his eco-friendly neighbors looked on in disapproval at his “dream car.”

It lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and scratched into the body: “FOR THE ENVIRON.”

“The thought of somebody vandalizing it never crossed my mind,” said Gareth Groves, 32, who lives with his mother in a three-story home in the 4300 block of Brandywine Street NW in American University Park. “I’ve kind of been in shock.”

Now, as Groves ponders what to do with the remains of his $38,000 SUV, he has been the target of a number of people who have driven by the crime scene in his upscale neighborhood and glared at him in smug satisfaction.

“I’d say one in five people who come by have that ‘you-got-what-you-deserve’ look,” said his friend Andy Sexton, 27, who is visiting from Arkansas and has been helping Groves deal with fallout from the crime.

Neighbor Lucille Liem, 37, who owns a Prius hybrid, said that a common sentiment in the neighborhood is that large vehicles are impractical and a strain on the Earth—and Hummers in particular are a symbol of consumer excess.

“The neighborhood in general is very concerned with the environment,” said Liem, whose Prius gets about 48 miles a gallon compared with the Hummer’s 14 miles a gallon. “It’s more liberal leaning. It’s ridiculous to be driving a Hummer.”

1:15 video

George W. Bush has a low approval rating, the latest Zogby Poll reports:

66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But Congressional approval ratings have cratered, setting an all-time record low:

83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good.

Scuttlebutt is the Marine Corps term for “not-necessarily-reliable rumors and gossip.”

Several days ago, an anonymous commenter (speaking purportedly as a current or former Marine) posted the interesting, and potentially inflammatory charge, that IEDs in Iraq are being planted, not by Islamic insurgents, but by Westerner professional mercenaries with special forces and Intel backgrounds, including American, Israeli, and British (!), and that US military authorities are covering all this up.

..the truth is different.

The Corps is getting ****ed by hired ex-SF shitheads and Mossad bastards. THEY are the ones planting IEDs under and next to roads. You really think these effin towelheads have the enough of their sh*t together to plant and remotely detonate high-grade munitions that can flip over a 60 ton main battle tank!?

I tell you brothers, it’s our own spooks, the Israeli spooks, and some SAS **********s doing 90% of the bombing. And our own higher ups know it…

I am skeptical, to say the least, (ex-Mossad!? and no mention of former Spetznaz), but I thought about this for a while, and it seems to me that I ought to post that Comment, and inquire if anybody else (particularly anyone who has actually spent time in Iraq) has heard any such rumors of Western mercs working for the enemy?

Gateway Pundit has excellent coverage of the democrats’ Senatorial surrender slumber party.

Don’t miss the 2:41 video of Joe Lieberman speaking truth to defeatism.

oil on relined canvas, 90cms x 66cms, (36” x 26”)

The Telegraph reports that a portrait recently auctioned on July 10th by Gildings, described as an “18th Century Continental School, Half-length portrait of Aesthete” and estimated to sell for £300-500 wound up selling for £205,000 (plus 12 1/2 % buyer’s premium, for a total (before VAT) of £230,625).

At least two bidders were of the opinion that the portrait was by Titian.

catalogue listing

John Hinderaker, at Power-Line, quotes an eloquent remonstrance from John McCain to his despicable colleagues in the Senate. He titled it: A Man Addresses the Boys.

Let us keep in the front of our minds the likely consequences of premature withdrawal from Iraq. Many of my colleagues would like to believe that, should the withdrawal amendment we are currently debating become law, it would mark the end of this long effort. They are wrong. Should the Congress force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, it would mark a new beginning, the start of a new, more dangerous, and more arduous effort to contain the forces unleashed by our disengagement.
No matter where my colleagues came down in 2003 about the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror, there can simply be no debate that our efforts in Iraq today are critical to the wider struggle against violent Islamic extremism. Already, the terrorists are emboldened, excited that America is talking not about winning in Iraq, but is rather debating when we should lose.

***

Mr. President, the terrorists are in this war to win it. The question is: Are we?

***

The supporters of this amendment respond that they do not by any means intend to cede the battlefield to al Qaeda; on the contrary, their legislation would allow U.S. forces, presumably holed up in forward operating bases, to carry out targeted counterterrorism operations. But our own military commanders say that this approach will not succeed, and that moving in with search and destroy missions to kill and capture terrorists, only to immediately cede the territory to the enemy, is the failed strategy of the past three and a half years.

***

Mr. President, this fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than that and more important still, about whether America still has the political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot walk away gracefully from defeat in this war.

What a fine leader and desirable Republican presidential candidate a reliably conservative John McCain could have made!
————————————————

I don’t agree with Harold Meyerson’s politics or his defeatist view of the situation in Iraq, but I wholeheartedly endorse his characterization of a number of Republican senators:

Anyone searching for the highest forms of invertebrate life need look no further than the floor of the U.S. Senate last week and this. These spineless specimens go by various names—Republican moderates; respected senior Republicans; Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich.

But if weak-kneed Republican bedwetters running for political cover are rightly described as invertebrate, leftist democrats who make a profession and career out of opposing their country’s cause and stabbing American troops in the back are obviously still lower on the evolutionary scale.

The just-released National Intelligence Estimate is leading both the administration and the punditocracy to conclude that going along with the Pakistani policy of permitting Al Qaeda to enjoy safe havens in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribal areas wasn’t really such a great idea.

AP:

Al-Qaida is using its growing strength in Pakistan and Iraq to plot attacks on U.S. soil, heightening the terror threat facing the United States over the next few years, intelligence agencies concluded in a report unveiled Tuesday.

At the same time, the intelligence analysts worry that international cooperation against terrorism will be hard to sustain as memories of Sept. 11 fade and nations’ views diverge on what the real threat is.

In the National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush and other top policymakers, analysts laid out a range of dangers – from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups – that pose a “persistent and evolving threat” to the country over the next three years.

The findings focused most heavily on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, which was judged to remain the most serious threat to the United States. The group’s affiliate in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could do just that, the report concluded. Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to attack the United States in a Web statement last September.

National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar warned that the group’s operatives in Iraq are getting portable, firsthand experience in covert communications, smuggling, improvised explosive devices, understanding U.S. military tactics and more.

The Iraqi affiliate also helps al-Qaida more broadly as it tries to energize Sunni Muslim extremists around the globe, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives – “including for homeland attacks,” according to a declassified summary of the report’s main findings.

In addition, analysts stressed the importance of al-Qaida’s increasingly comfortable hideout in Pakistan that has resulted from a hands-off accord between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders along the Afghan border. That 10-month-old deal, which has unraveled in recent days, gave al-Qaida new opportunities to set up compounds for terror training, improve its international communications with associates and bolster its operations.

New York Times:

President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged today that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda has reestablished its central organization, training infrastructure and lines of global communication over the past two years, putting the United States in a “heightened threat environment” despite expanded worldwide counterterrorism efforts, according to a new intelligence estimate.

Intelligence officials attributed the al-Qaeda gains primarily to its establishment of a safe haven in ungoverned areas of northwestern Pakistan. Its affiliation with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, the report said, has helped it to “energize” extremists elsewhere and has aided Osama bin Laden’s recruitment and funding.

The estimate concluded that “the U.S. Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.” Al-Qaeda, it said, “is and will remain” the most serious element of that threat.

The late G.E.P. How enjoyed great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping, cricket, cars, and mastiffs.

On July 25, Bonham’s at its Knightsbridge branch will be auctioning Arms & Armour from the collections of the late G.E.P. How and others.

The London Times said in its obituary of Mrs. How:

Mrs G. E. P. How, silver expert, was born on January 2, 1915. She died on June 26, 2004, aged 89.

A legend in the art world almost as much for the startling trenchancy of her utterance as for her impeccable scholarship and taste, Mrs. G. E. P. How was perhaps the last surviving link to the heroic age of antique dealing before the war, when great discoveries were made and dealers were becoming more than mere merchants of curios. Mrs. How stood out from the first by her scholarly energy and integrity, and she became one of the most influential dealers of her time. ...

Jane Penrice Benson was born in 1915, the posthumous daughter of an officer killed in the war. The family had been based in South Wales, though she herself grew up in the Home Counties. Her early ambition was to be an archaeologist; it was accidentally transmuted into silver when a neighbour suggested that she would enjoy helping to catalogue his collection of early spoons. (The fascination of spoons is that they are the only form of silver to survive in any quantity from the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance; without them it would be impossible to map the early history of the craft.) The expert she was to assist was Commander G. E. P. How, RN (retd), who turned out to be a jovial gentleman dealer with some considerable knowledge and a not entirely unpiratical bent. It was not long before the young Miss Benson was enthralled by man and subject alike.

The Ellis catalogue on which they worked is still a useful reference book, and Miss Benson moved to work with George How, and eventually, after his divorce, to marry him. The Commander and the Commando, as they were soon known, threw themselves into new research, living, breathing and in some cases sleeping with their spoons. ...

As dealers, the Hows were a new breed, coming from a background very different from that of the traditional silver merchant, and they owed a lot to their contacts, to their social ease and an unquestionable sense of gentlemanly integrity. Their shops were fitted out to look like a collector’s drawing room, and indeed they held open house in the evenings for collectors to come to talk about silver. The Hows also offered more intellectually than much of the competition. They were among the first to persuade collectors to insist on the highest quality and untouched condition, however modest the piece. The greater importance this placed on the historical value of silver appealed to discerning customers, even of small means, and to museums here and in America. ...

(Her) pugnacity could make her seem a fearsome, if diminutive, figure, especially when encountered on the serious ground of silver. But though few were spared the rougher edge of her tongue, no one could be in doubt as to her enormous underlying generosity. No serious scholar was ever refused help, and her personal kindness was great, if discreetly performed.

And she could be compelling company, with a great sense of the pleasures of life. Her offices, particularly the Queen Anne houses in Pickering Place behind Berry’s in St James’s, were glamorous in a peculiarly Dickensian way, with a creaking cage staircase and an Ali Babaesque twinkle of precious metal. To see silver gilt cups gleaming against cherry-red velvet in the sombre drawing room was an irresistible invitation to any sensual collector, and the lucky were further treated to a view of her own collection of spoons and early rarities. Parties at Pickering Place were equally fulfilling, with Mrs. How uncorking bottles of champagne apparently larger than herself. Little else except smoked salmon or caviar would be on offer. Great wines, opera, fishing, shooting, edged weapons, beekeeping and cricket were all enjoyed to the full.

Cars were a passion “I wear a car,” she said — and well into her eighth decade she sold a beloved silverplated Jaguar SS100 to Alan Clark in order to buy the latest Bentley Turbo, with which she liked to burn off all-comers at the lights. Anyone overtaken by her was liable to a fright, since she was so small as to be almost invisible at the wheel. By way of balance the back of the car was usually occupied by terrifyingly outsize dogs. She helped to save the Old English mastiff from oblivion, and one of her proudest achievements was to have won best of breed at Crufts twice with her dog Don Juan. Characteristically, she refused to show him again, as she did not want to prevent others having a decent crack at the title.

A sample item:

Lot No: 123

A Viking Sword Of Petersen Type M And Wheeler Type I
9th/10th Century
In excavated condition, with broad pattern-welded double-edged blade, tapering flat pattern-welded tang, cruciform hilt comprising short flat ovoidal cross, and shorter pommel en suite surmounted by a flat rectangular button
76.3 cm. blade

Estimate: £10,000 – 15,000
Footnote:
See J. Petersen, De Norske Vikingesverd, Kristiania, 1919; R.E. Mortimer Wheeler, London and The Vikings, London Museum Catalogue: No.1, 1927, pp. 31-32, fig. 13, 1; and J.G. Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age, 2002, pp. 84-86

New York Sun:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate’s senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America’s intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public.

The classified document includes four main sections, examining how Al Qaeda in recent years has increased its capacity to stage another attack on American soil; how the organization has replenished the ranks of its top leaders; nations where Al Qaeda operates, and the status of its training camps and physical infrastructure. ...

In the estimate’s chapter on Al Qaeda’s replenished senior leadership, three American intelligence sources said, there is a discussion of the eastern Iran-based Shura Majlis, a kind of consensus-building organization of top Al Qaeda figures that meets regularly to make policy and plan attacks. The New York Sun first reported in October that one of the Shura Majlis for Al Qaeda meets in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan, one of the areas the Pakistani army this week re-engaged after a yearlong cease-fire. Both Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, participate in those meetings.

he other Shura Majlis is believed to meet in eastern Iran in the network established after Al Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan in 2001.
Following that battle, a military planner trained in the Egyptian special forces, Saif al-Adel, fled to Iran. Mr. Zawahri then arranged with the then commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, for safe harbor for senior leaders.

The three main Al Qaeda leaders in Iran include Mr. Adel; the organization’s minister of propaganda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and the man who some analysts believe is the heir apparent to Mr. bin Laden — one of his sons, Saad bin Laden. The locations of the senior leaders include a military base near Tehran called Lavizan; a northern suburb of Tehran, Chalous; an important holy city, Mashod, and a border town near Afghanistan, Zabul, the draft intelligence estimate says.

In 2003, Iran offered a swap of the senior leaders in exchange for members of an Iranian opposition group on America’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, the People’s Mujahadin.

That deal was scuttled after signal intercepts proved, according to American intelligence officials, that Mr. Adel was in contact with an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia.

In the aftermath of the failed deal, Al Qaeda’s Iran branch has worked closely in helping to establish the group in Iraq. The late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had multiple meetings with Mr. Adel after 2001. In the past year, the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of Al Qaeda captured in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran.

“We know that there were two Al Qaeda centers of gravity. After the Taliban fell, one went to Pakistan, the other fled to Iran,” Roger Cressey, a former deputy to a counterterrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, said in an interview yesterday. “The question for several years has been: What type of operational capability did each of these centers have?”

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the unfortunate mishap which occurred at the Golden League games in Rome last Friday.

French long jumper Salim Sdiri was speared by a javelin in a freak accident at the Rome Golden League meeting today (7/13).

Sdiri was hit by the javelin which had been launched by Finland’s Tero Pitkamaki at the other side of the arena at the Olympic Stadium.

The 28-year-old Sdiri, a bronze medallist at the 2007 European indoor championships, collapsed to the ground before being taken to hospital.

The men’s javelin and long jump competitions were taking place at the same time when the accident happened.

1:24 video

Hat tip to Roger Poirier.

Confederate Yankee has photographs of the Iranian B-12 rockets we reported yesterday were captured by American forces on July 12.

previous posting

The San Francisco Chronicle records the latest fashion accessory in PC Califormia.

Virtue may be its own reward—but as any self-respecting Prius Progressive can attest, the payoffs of hybrid ownership don’t stop there. Beyond the gas pump savings, the tax breaks, the entree to carpool lanes, the freedom to park without feeding meters and the aura of cool kinship with Hollywood hybriders such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, comes something more visceral.

“Absolutely, they’re buying the car for the statement it makes more than anything,” Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing, told reporters last week.

The firm’s research concluded that more customers pick the Prius over alternatives like the hybrid version of the Honda Civic precisely because the Prius is exclusively—and identifiably—a hybrid. While just 36 percent cited fuel economy as a prime motivator for buying a Prius, 57 percent said their main reason was that “it makes a statement about me.”

What’s more, in focus groups, many Prius buyers admit expecting acclaim from friends and co-workers for making such a socially responsible, planet-saving purchase.

But the satisfaction of some eco-drivers risks swelling to self-righteousness—like the Prius driver coasting down Highway 101 in Marin County last week with the bumper sticker: “How many lives to the gallon do you get?”

Read the whole thing.

WorldNetDaily reports:

Medical clinics across the country have been flooded with requests from foreign nationals from Pakistan and other Muslim countries to help them gain visa entry into the U.S. as patients.

The post-9/11 trend concerns authorities who fear al-Qaida could be using the medical industry to infiltrate terrorist cells into the country.

Some clinics have sponsored foreign patients only to have them fail to show up at their facilities.

The Caster Eye Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., for example, stopped granting such foreign requests after a couple of no-shows.