As a much-predicted democrat electoral victory looms, Glenn Reynolds discovers a response by businesses and the media to new priorities is already underway.

Reuters reports:

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

“The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It’s very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices … and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don’t dodge in and out of those marijuana forests,” he said in a speech in Ottawa.

“We tried burning them with white phosphorus — it didn’t work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn’t work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them,” he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

“A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action,” Hillier said dryly.

One soldier told him later: “Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana.'”

No one not professionally involved ever reads any studies, as the left understands only too well. But leftists control a great many prestigious academic positions, institutes, and publications, and have all the allies they could possibly desire in the mainstream media. Consequently, we are continually, at decreasing intervals, subjected to the shabby and contemptible tactic of the appeal to the purported facticity of yet another carefully contrived research study.

Figures lie and liars figure. And today’s sophisters, calculators, and economists habitually design the methodologies, choose the selection basis of the data, project the extrapolations, massage the numbers, and juggle the math. Then, hey, presto! out pops the great Herr Professor authority figure, waving his formulae in our face in precisely the manner of the witch doctor menacing a tribe of gaping savages with his rattle, and we too are supposed to fall to the ground and bury our faces in the dust, grovel, and obey.

The moonbats are barking with joy over what is becoming an election year tradition: the Lancet-published, Johns Hopkins-produced, October-released study of Iraqi war casualties, currently headlining in all the MSM, including the New York Times.

It is particularly sad to see so famous a medical journal as Britain’s Lancet, reduced to serving as leftist propaganda organ, but no wonder. Just look at that journal’s editor, Richard Horton raving at a leftwing rally. Horton is manifestly an extremist opponent of the Iraq war, who has previously damaged that journal’s reputation by publishing sensationalist junk science.

The Iraqi casualty study pre-election press release was invented by Les Roberts in 2004. Roberts ran unsuccessfully in the democrat primary this year in the 24th Congressional District in New York (Utica and neighboring environs). Gilbert Burnham, the 2004 second chair, took the lead this year.

Some of the better responses to this nonsense come from:

Mark Coffey

Texas Rainmaker

and Gateway Pundit

But the definitive answer came from an Iraqi, Omar Fadil:

Among the things I cannot accept is exploiting the suffering of people to make gains that are not the least related to easing the suffering of those people. I’m talking here about those researchers who used the transparency and open doors of the new Iraq to come and count the drops of blood we shed.

Human flesh is abundant and all they have to do is call this hospital or that office to get the count of casualties, even more they can knock on doors and ask us one by one and we would answer because we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

We believe in what we’re struggling for and we are proud of our sacrifices.

I wonder if that research team was willing to go to North Korea or Libya and I think they wouldn’t have the guts to dare ask Saddam to let them in and investigate deaths under his regime.

No, they would’ve shit their pants the moment they set foot in Iraq and they would find themselves surrounded by the Mukhabarat men counting their breaths. However, maybe they would have the chance to receive a gift from the tyrant in exchange for painting a rosy picture about his rule.

They shamelessly made an auction of our blood, and it didn’t make a difference if the blood was shed by a bomb or a bullet or a heart attack because the bigger the count the more useful it becomes to attack this or that policy in a political race and the more useful it becomes in cheerleading for murderous tyrannical regimes.

When the statistics announced by hospitals and military here, or even by the UN, did not satisfy their lust for more deaths, they resorted to mathematics to get a fake number that satisfies their sadistic urges.

When I read the report I can only feel apathy and inhumanity from those who did the count towards the victims and towards our suffering as a whole. I can tell they were so pleased when the equations their twisted minds designed led to those numbers and nothing can convince me that they did their so called research out of compassion or care.

To me their motives are clear, all they want is to prove that our struggle for freedom was the wrong thing to do. And they shamelessly use lies to do this…when they did not find the death they wanted to see on the ground, they faked it on paper! They disgust me…

This fake research is an insult to every man, woman and child who lost their lives.

Behind every drop of blood is a noble story of sacrifice for a just cause that is struggling for living safe in freedom and prosperity.

Let those fools know that nothing will stop us from walking this road and nothing will stop our friends and allies from helping us reach safe shores. There’s simply no going back even if it cost us more and their fake statistics will not frighten us…our sacrifices, like I said, make us proud because our bloods are not digits in those ugly papers. Our sacrifices are paving the way for future generations to live the better life we couldn’t live.

The US Air Force reports a family story from Iraq.

Traditions run deep in the military, and for this father and daughter, traditions are what brought them together in Iraq.

Col. Steven Dreyer, 4th Expeditionary Air Support Operations Group commander, at Camp Victory, Iraq, reunited with his youngest daughter, 1st Lt. Kathrine Dreyer, 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, Balad AB, Iraq.

The visit marked not only the end of Colonel Dreyer’s final deployment, but also the beginning of Lieutenant Dreyer’s first deployment. During the visit, the colonel presented his daughter with the family’s American flag.

“This flag symbolizes our family’s dedication to serving in the military,” said the colonel, who enlisted in the Marines in 1970. “I have carried this flag during my deployments over the years; my oldest daughter, SSgt. Kristine Dreyer, carried it to Iraq in 2003, and now my youngest daughter is stepping up to continue the tradition.”

The flag, originally flown in front of the home of Colonel Dreyer’s father, a retired Army WWII and Vietnam veteran, has accompanied the colonel on every deployment.

The Telegraph reports that a Muslim visitor has been invading wards containing British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan, threatening and haranguing injured men who are in no position to defend themselves.

A paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan was threatened by a Muslim visitor to the British hospital where he is recovering.

Seriously wounded soldiers have complained that they are worried about their safety after being left on wards that are open to the public at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

On one occasion a member of the Parachute Regiment, still dressed in his combat uniform after being evacuated from Afghanistan, was accosted by a Muslim over the British involvement in the country.

“You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan,” the man said during a tirade.

Because the soldier was badly injured and could not defend himself, he was very worried for his safety, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

A relative of the Para said the man had twice walked on to the ward where two other soldiers and four civilians were being treated without once being challenged by staff.

“It’s not the best way to treat our returning men,” he said. “They are nervous that these guys might attack them and, despite being paratroopers, they cannot defend themselves because of their injuries.”

They are all linked at the earlier post here.

The Telegraph reports:

Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.

Nato’s report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban’s military capability and states clearly that Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it….

It is time for an ‘either you are with us or against us’ delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level,” said one Nato commander.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001 America gave Mr Musharraf a similar ultimatum to co-operate against the Taliban, who were then harbouring Osama bin Laden.

“Our boys in southern Afghanistan are hurting because of what is coming out of Quetta,” he added.

The Taliban use the southern province of Balochistan to co-ordinate their insurgency and to recuperate after military action.

The cushion Pakistan is providing the Taliban is undermining the operation in Afghanistan, where 31,000 Nato troops are now based. The Canadians were most involved in Operation Medusa, two weeks of heavy fighting in a lush vineyard region, defeating 1,500 well entrenched Taliban, who had planned to attack Kandahar city, the capital of the south.

Nato officials now say they killed 1,100 Taliban fighters, not the 500 originally claimed. Hundreds of Taliban reinforcements in pick-up trucks who crossed over from Quetta — waved on by Pakistani border guards — were destroyed by Nato air and artillery strikes.

Nato captured 160 Taliban, many of them Pakistanis who described in detail the ISI’s support to the Taliban.

Nato is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Balochistan, from ISI- run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban’s new weapons and meeting places of the shura, or leadership council, in Quetta, which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group’s leader since its creation a dozen years ago.

Nato and Afghan officers say two training camps for the Taliban are located just outside Quetta, while the group is using hundreds of madrassas where the fighters are housed and fired up ideologically before being sent to the front.

Many madrassas now being listed are run by the Jamiat-e-Ullema Islam, a political party that governs Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. The party helped spawn the Taliban in 1994.

“Taliban decision-making and its logistics are all inside Pakistan,” said the Afghan defense minister, General Rahim Wardak.

A post-battle intelligence report compiled by Nato and Afghan forces involved in Operation Medusa demonstrates the logistical capability of the Taliban.

During the battle the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells, which slowly arrived in Panjwai from Quetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taliban had stocked over one million rounds in Panjwai.

In Panjwai the Taliban had also established a training camp to teach guerrillas how to penetrate Kandahar, a separate camp to train suicide bombers and a full surgical field hospital. Nato estimated the cost of Taliban ammunition stocks at around £2.6 million. “The Taliban could not have done this on their own without the ISI,” said a senior Nato officer.

Maggie’s Farm has a recent letter from a Marine Intel Officer stationed in Iraq featuring good anecdotes.

Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province – Any Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD Tech). How’d you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who’s just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day. Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment…

Best Piece of U.S. Gear – new, bullet-proof flak jackets. O.K., they weigh 40 lbs and aren’t exactly comfortable in 120 degree heat, but they’ve saved countless lives out here.
Best Piece of Bad Guy Gear – Armor Piercing ammunition that goes right through the new flak jackets and the Marines inside them…

Biggest Mystery – How some people can gain weight out here. I’m down to 165 lbs. Who has time to eat?…

Coolest Insurgent Act – Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool…

Highest Unit Re-enlistment Rate – Any outfit that has been in Iraq recently. All the danger, all the hardship, all the time away from home, all the horror, all the frustrations with the fight here – all are outweighed by the desire for young men to be part of a ‘Band of Brothers ‘ who will die for one another. They found what they were looking for when they enlisted out of high school. Man for man, they now have more combat experience than any Marines in the history of our Corps.
Most Surprising Thing I Don’t Miss – Beer. Perhaps being half-stunned by lack of sleep makes up for it.
Worst Smell – Porta-johns in 120 degree heat – and that’s 120 degrees outside of the porta-john.

Highest Temperature – I don’t know exactly, but it was in the porta-johns. Needed to re-hydrate after each trip to the loo.

Biggest Hassle – High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and “battlefield” tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no affect on their preconceived notions of what’s going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they’ve been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.

Biggest Outrage – Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest offender – Bill O’Reilly – what a buffoon.

Read the whole thing.

Last year’s Letter from a Marine in Iraq. (Different guy.)

Hat tip to Rick Ballard.

Andrew McCarthy refutes some of the allegations made by critics from the left:

1) That the bill deprives prisoners of habeas corpus.

First, Congress cannot “suspend” habeas corpus by denying it to people who have no right to it in the first place. The right against suspension of habeas corpus is found in the Constitution (art. I, 9). Constitutional rights belong only to Americans — that is, according to the Supreme Court, U.S. citizens and those aliens who, by lawfully weaving themselves into the fabric of our society, have become part of our national community (which is to say, lawful permanent resident aliens). To the contrary, aliens with no immigration status who are captured and held outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and whose only connection to our country is to wage a barbaric war against it, do not have any rights, much less “basic rights,” under our Constitution.

2) Habeas corpus is required to permit prisoners to defend Geneva Convention rights.

it remains a settled principle that treaties are compacts between sovereign nations, not fonts of individual rights. Alleged violations are thus grist for diplomacy, not litigation. Treaties are not judicially enforceable by individuals absent an express statement to the contrary in the treaty’s text. By contrast, Geneva’s express statements indicate that no judicial intervention was contemplated.

This, no doubt, is why the Geneva Conventions, qua treaties, have never been judicially enforced. Consequently, if Congress had actually denied al Qaeda detainees a right to use Common Article 3 to challenge their detention in federal court (and, as we’ll soon see, Congress has not done that), that would merely have reaffirmed what has been the law for over a half century.

If the political representatives of a nation believe one of its citizens is being unlawfully held at Gitmo, the proper procedure is for that nation to protest to our State Department, not for the detainee to sue our country in our courts. In fact, several nations have made such claims, and Bush administration has often responded by repatriating detainees to their home countries … only to have many of them rejoin the jihad. In any event, though, there would be nothing wrong with declining to allow habeas to be used for the creation of individual rights that detainees do not in fact have under international law.

Patterico has published the first two parts of a series of five interviews with “Stashiu,” a 23-year veteran US Army nurse who was stationed at the Guantánamo detention facility, working in its Behavioral Health Services department with inmates with psychological and/or behavioral problems.

We will be linking the later parts of the series as they appear.

Part One: Introduction.

I know Zarqawi,” the terrorist said to the American. “I am going to have Zarqawi cut off your family’s head while you watch. Then he will cut off your head.”

The terrorist said it all in a matter-of-fact way, looking the American straight in the eye.

The American was not frightened. There was little danger that the terrorist was going to carry out his threat . . . at least any time soon.

The terrorist was a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the American was an Army nurse who worked with Guantánamo detainees with psychological and/or behavioral problems. For six months, he spoke with detainees on a daily basis, and built a rapport of sorts with some of the most troublesome terrorists at Guantánamo.

He spoke with me recently, and I will be telling his story in several posts over the coming days.

Part Two: Stashiu arrives at GTMO, and tells us what the terrorists are like.

Stashiu is not able to share specific details of conversations he had with specific individuals, for reasons having to do principally with patient confidentiality, and in part with operational security. But he can give you, the reader, a good overview of what types of human beings are being detained at Guantánamo Bay.

I asked him that very question: what are the detainees like? Stashiu said:

For many of them, think Ted Bundy. Educated, charming, and without conscience for those they consider infidels. Some are truly ill and were taken advantage of because of it. For example, one routinely asked us for an explosive suicide vest so he could assassinate Osama Bin Laden or George Bush for us, whoever he could find first (he was completely serious).

Part Three: Hunger strikes, suicides and suicide attempts, and mental illness.

Detainees Take Advantage of Concessions and Spread False Propaganda

I asked about the recent New York Times Magazine article about Guantánamo, which provided an in-depth look at the hunger strikes and suicide attempts. (I linked to and excerpted heavily from that article in this post.) The article, which was based on interviews with numerous people at Guantánamo, made several points, including these:

The Colonel in charge made numerous concessions to the terrorists in terms of living conditions.
Intelligence officials resisted the Colonel’s changes because they made interrogation more difficult, as the interrogators could not use promises of better living conditions as a carrot.

The suicide attempts and three successful suicides were an organized event designed to create worldwide sympathy for the detainees’ plight — and the detainees who committed suicide did so in part by taking advantage of the Colonel’s measures to improve living conditions.
Of the article, Stashiu said:

The article is amazingly accurate and even-handed. The things that COL Bumgarner tried were good-faith efforts to make the best of the situation. Many of the detainees also made good-faith efforts to improve things, but I believe that any concessions were hijacked by the extremists and used against everyone else’s efforts. For example, the lights being dimmed, extra bedding, etc… were all used to facilitate the successful suicides. But, before those changes had not been at least tried, the extremists escalated the rhetoric against us saying, “See? They will not do anything to make things better!”

As the article explains, there were competing objectives among the detainees. Simply, we were in a Catch-22. If concessions were made, one group would say that they could get even more by continuing to cause problems. If concessions weren’t made, the reasoning was that they just weren’t applying enough pressure. There is a hardcore group of AQ there that will try to turn everything they can to their advantage. They circulate untrue stories of torture, poisoned food, desecrated Korans, and many other things. This keeps the tensions high and then they find a way to light the match.

Part Four: Treatment of the detainees

The attacks on military personnel could be brutal, he explained:

We were told about one female medic who had to have major reconstructive surgery on her face following a detainee assault. She was too close to the beanhole (door opening) and the detainee was able to reach out, grab her head, and pull her face-first into the steel frame of the door, shattering most of the facial bone structure.

As medical personnel we would occasionally forget that these were detainees and treat them as we would regular patients. The guard force was usually very alert and prevented us from inadvertently risking ourselves, but this happened too quickly for anyone to prevent. Of course, we were all very careful about proximity for a long time after that…

I asked Stashiu: what was the most surprising thing about your life at GTMO? He replied that, while you might think it would be something about the detainees, to him the most surprising thing was actually the behavior of the Navy Master-at-Arms — the guard force for Guantánamo. Stashiu said that these guards are generally 18 to 20 years old, and are consistently showered with human waste products thrown at them by detainees — yet as a general rule, they stay remarkably professional and do not allow themselves to be antagonized. Stashiu found their behavior the most impressive part of his stay at Guantánamo.

Part Five: Stashiu reacts to Big Media pieces about GTMO.

Stashiu confirmed something not everyone realizes: detainees are still being interrogated at GTMO — and are apparently still giving up good information.

What harsh techniques are being used to extract this information? The answer to that question will shock you.

A couple of recent pieces in the media have suggested that some of the detainees actually enjoy their interrogations. For example, in a passage that reminded me of Monty Python’s “Comfy Chair” sketch (from the show about the Spanish Inquisition), Rich Lowry said this:

Interrogators rely on the soft sell. Detainees sit in a La-Z-Boy chair during interrogations, and beverages and movies are available to put them at ease. The most effective interrogator is said to be an older woman who adopts a nurturing attitude…

So I asked Stashiu: are the detainees really pampered in interrogations? He said:

For some, they eagerly await days until “reservation” (interrogation) and there are frequently requests to see their interrogator. This is why I said that some fear to return home or they would be killed as traitors. They get to smoke (sometimes 4 or 5 packs at once, uggh!), watch new-release DVDs that have been screened by Intel so they don’t get current events, eat pizza or fast-food, listen to music, smoke a hooka, etc…. The better stuff they give up, the more the interrogators get for them. All of this has been previously released to the public, but you never hear about it in the MSM.

Investors Business Daily gives 97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can’t Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime.

Let’s just quote the first 10:

Jimmy Carter, elected during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and (1) believing Americans had an inordinate fear of communism, (2) lifted U.S. citizens’ travel bans to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia and (3) pardoned draft evaders.

President Carter (4) also stopped B-1 bomber production, (5) gave away our strategically located Panama Canal and (6) made human rights the central focus of his foreign policy.

That led Carter, a Democrat, (7) to make a monumental miscalculation and withdraw U.S. support for our long-standing Mideast military ally, the Shah of Iran. (8) Carter simply didn’t like the Shah’s alleged mistreatment of imprisoned Soviet spies.

The Soviets, (9) with close military ties to Iraq, a 1,500-mile border with Iran and eyes on Afghanistan, aggressively tried to encircle, infiltrate, subvert and overthrow Iran’s government for its oil deposits and warm-water ports several times after Russian troops attempted to stay there at the end of WWII. These were all communist threats to Iran that Carter never understood.

Carter (10) thought Ayatollah Khomeini, a Muslim exile in Paris, would make a fairer Iranian leader than the Shah because he was a religious man…

David Aaronovitch, leftwing British commentator for the Guardian and the Times, has become fed up with the British left’s sympathy for Islamic extremism.

He has made a polemical documentary, titled No Excuses for Terror (placed on YouTube in four ten minute parts by Harry), which aired on Tuesday on Britain’s Channel 5.

Good stuff. Nobody can bash the lefties like a fellow leftie.

Hat tip to L’Ombre de l’Olivier.