The House of Representatives, in a moronic 394-22 vote, inserted into the annual Defense Spending Bill a ridiculous feel-good clause forbidding the construction of permanent US bases in Iraq, and stipulating that all facilities under construction will be handed over to the Iraq Government.

What with Iran functioning as a principal sponsor of terrorism, and well on the way to acquiring nuclear weapons, who could possibly have any legitimate use for a permanent US base on Iraqi soil? All our effort and sacrifices and expenditures in Iraq really should be looked upon as a completely disinterested, no-strings-attached gift to a bunch of bigoted primitives who hate our guts, and desire our Civilization’s conquest. We defeated them in battle twice. The least we could do is spend a few trillion dollars, rebuild their infrastructure, replace their home-grown dictator with a democratic government, hand them a bunch of flowers, and walk away. It’s only right. Why should we get anything useful out of any of this?

If today’s morons were running the country during WWII, I’d be writing this in Japanese ideograms.

LA Times story.

In order to counter the Pouting Spooks’ weekend leak of highly selective excerpts of last Spring’s National Intelligence Estimate, obviously intended to provide a nice pre-election front page Sunday lead, President Bush will be declassifying key portions of the report.

The Wall Street Journal this morning argued that he ought to release the whole thing (with some reactions).

In the meantime, (the non-Pouting) Spook86 offers some details from the report contradicting the Sunday paper’s spin.

The quotes printed below–taken directly from the document and provided to this blogger–provide “the other side” of the estimate, and its more balanced assessment of where we stand in the War on Terror (comments in italics are mine).

In one of its early paragraphs, the estimate notes progress in the struggle against terrorism, stating the U.S.-led efforts have “seriously damaged Al Qaida leadership and disrupted its operations.” Didn’t see that in the NYT article.

Or how about this statement, which–in part–reflects the impact of increased pressure on the terrorists: “A large body of reporting indicates that people identifying themselves as jihadists is increasing…however, they are largely decentralized, lack a coherent strategy and are becoming more diffuse.” Hmm…doesn’t sound much like Al Qaida’s pre-9-11 game plan.

The report also notes the importance of the War in Iraq as a make or break point for the terrorists: “Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves to have failed, we judge that fewer will carry on the fight.” It’s called a ripple effect.

More support for the defeating the enemy on his home turf: “Threats to the U.S. are intrinsically linked to U.S. success or failure in Iraq.” President Bush and senior administration officials have made this argument many times–and it’s been consistently dismissed by the “experts” at the WaPo and Times.

And, some indication that the “growing” jihad may be pursuing the wrong course: “There is evidence that violent tactics are backfiring…their greatest vulnerability is that their ultimate political solution (shar’a law) is unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims.” Seems to contradict MSM accounts of a jihadist tsunami with ever-increasing support in the global Islamic community..

The estimate also affirms the wisdom of sowing democracy in the Middle East: “Progress toward pluralism and more responsive political systems in the Muslim world will eliminate many of the grievances jihadists exploit.” As I recall, this the core of our strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Quite a contrast to the “doom and gloom” scenario painted by the Times and the Post.

Depkafile, the not-always-reliable Mossad mouthpiece, claims that Turkey and Iran are preparing a joint invasion of Northern Iraq directed at some 5000 members of the militias of the PPK (Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, Kurdistan Workers Party) and its Iranian-affiliate PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê “Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan”), based in the Quandil Mountains.

Depkafile states that Iranian and Turkish assault troops are already deployed 7-8 km deep inside Iraqi territory.

All this would be of particular interest to Israel because:

2004 Israeli military instructors and intelligence officer have been helping the Kurds build up their peshmerga army and anti-terrorist forces.

Iran and Turkey are convinced that Israel also maintains in north Iraqi Kurdistan observation and early warning posts to forewarn the Jewish state of a coming Iranian attack. If this is so, the two invaders will make a point of destroying such posts. Israel would then forfeit a key intelligence facility against the Islamic Republic.

One must always take Depkafile reports with a large grain of salt.

The BBC reports that British forces killed Omar Farouq, a senior Al Qaeda leader, in Basra.

British forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda fugitive in a raid on a house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, security sources say.

Officials named the dead man as Omar Farouq, a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in south-east Asia.

Farouq was captured in Indonesia in 2002 but escaped from a US military prison in Afghanistan last year.

Security sources say although he was hiding in Basra, al-Qaeda was not known to be actively operating in the area.

British military spokesman Maj Charlie Burbridge said Farouq, whom he called a “very, very significant man” had been tracked across Iraq to Basra.

He said about 200 troops surrounded the house, from where they came under fire.

A gun battle erupted and Farouq was killed in the exchange.

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Nato reports that dozens of Taliban were killed in a battle with Afghan government and Nato forces in the Southern province of Helmand on Saturday.

RaceBannon, on Free Republic, posts, with the permission of the family, a letter from a staff member at the office of Senator Ted Kennedy refusing assistance to a constituent, Mrs. Kathleen T. Hutchins, the mother of Sergeant Lawrence G. Hutchins III of Plymouth, Massachusetts, one of the Pendleton 8 being prosecuted for allegedly killing Iraqis in Haditha.

Kennedy letter

The Iranians are supplying insurgents in Iraq with much more deadly ordinance, some of Chinese origin, General John Abizaid told reporters today.

The Turkish Press reports:

A new armor-busting rocket-propelled grenade believed to be of Iranian origin has shown up in Iraq in what may be “a hint about things to come,” the commander of US forces in the Middle East said Tuesday.

General John Abizaid said the weapon, an RPG-29, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

“The first time we saw it was not in Iraq. We saw it in Lebanon. So to me it indicates, number one, an Iranian connection,” he told defense reporters here.

“It`s hard to say in our part of the world that we operate in as to whether or not people have given us a hint about things to come,” he said.

He said only a single RPG-29 has turned up in Iraq so far, and it was unclear how it was smuggled into the country.

But he said it was the latest in a number of new and more sophisticated weapons that appear to be moving onto the region`s battlefields from Iran.

He said longer-range Chinese rockets that looked new also have been found in Iraq.

Abizaid said he believed the Chinese rockets ca
me from Iran although they may have been taken from the arms inventories of the former Iraqi regime and cleaned up.

“It looked brand new to us,” he said.

The new weapons are in addition to more sophisticated roadside bombs with explosively shaped charges that the US military has long charged are being manufactured in Iran and brought into the country by Iran`s Revolutionary Guards-Quds Force.

Andre Pachter does not believe these are old inventory weapons:

Military experts tell China Confidential that Iran supplied the rockets and that they are in fact brand new, Chinese-made weapons.
Energy-starved China and oil-rich, Islamist Iran have deepening economic, political, and military ties. Beijing, as we have reported for months, is firmly committed to blocking meaningful sanctions against America’s arch-enemy. And Chinese arms have been instrumental in Iran’s military modernization.

Abizaid also said that a new, armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade has turned up in Iraq. The weapon, which was first used in Lebanon by Iran’s Shiite proxy, Hezbollah, in its month-long war with Israel, has a dual warhead and has proved effective against most types of armored vehicles.

Citing links between Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq, the US commander said the RPG could be “a hint of things to come.”

AP confirmed what bloggers learned via tips from military sources last April, AP photographer Bilal Hussein was detained, after being captured by American forces in a building in Ramadi, Iraq, with a cache of weapons.

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for “imperative reasons of security” under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative’s review of Hussein’s work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

“We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable,” said Tom Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure.”…
In Hussein’s case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.
The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. “He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,” according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

“The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities,” Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Hussein proclaims his innocence, according to his Iraqi lawyer, Badie Arief Izzat, and believes he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by the coalition forces.

That Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn’t make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s executive editor.

No?

Well, how about looking at these photos? or these? AP’s Tom Curley finds nothing inappropriate? Ridiculous. US forces should detain him.

LGF provides a bit more detail on Hussein’s capture.

The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. “He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,” according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

Christopher Hitchens dissects the facile dismissal of Iraq seeking Niger uranium in the Pouting Spooks’ Senate Intelligence Committee report.

And, on page 54 we read, under the heading “Conclusions”:

Iraq had two contacts with Niger after 1998, but neither involved the purchase of uranium. The purpose of a visit to Niger by the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Wissam al-Zahawie, was to invite the president of Niger to visit Iraq. The other visit involved discussions of a Nigerien oil purchase from Iraq.

Since the report does not trouble to supply any reasoning from the evidence to its conclusions, we are left to infer that there is nothing odd about Saddam Hussein’s envoy (to the Vatican) paying a visit to Niger, and nothing unusual about Niger’s desire to buy (“for cash”) crude oil from a country under international sanctions that is much less close and convenient a source of oil than, say, its neighbors Nigeria and Algeria.

That ambassador to the Vatican, it turns out, was none other than Wissam al-Zahawi. Ambassador Rolf Ekéus, head of the UNSCOM inspection team after the end of the first Gulf War, tells Hitchens:

When I first heard that it was Zahawie who had been to Niger, I thought well, then, that’s it. Conclusive.

One of my colleagues remembers Zahawie as Iraq’s delegate to the IAEA General Conference during the years 1982-84. One item on the agenda was the diplomatic and political fall-out of Israel’s destruction of the Osirak reactor (a centerpiece of Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambitions). . . . He was the under-secretary of the foreign ministry selected by Baghdad to represent Iraq on the most sensitive issue, the question of Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambitions. His participation as leader of the Iraqi delegation to the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference merely confirms his standing as Iraq’s top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues.

Hitchens sums it up.

The Senate report gives two versions of Zahawie’s name without ever once mentioning his significant background. It takes at face value his absurd claim about the supposedly innocent motive for his out-of-the-way trip. It accepts similarly bland assurances made by the government of Niger… It does not canvass the views of our allies, or of tried-and-tested experts like Ambassador Ekéus. It offers little evidence and no argument in support of its conclusions. It is a minor disgrace, but a disgrace nevertheless.

The merry gang of former John Kerry supporters in control of the US Intelligence Community under the Bush Administration have produced two extremely partisan reports, establishing that they were right all along: Saddam Hussein was perfectly harmless, had no WMDs, and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terrorism generally, and Bush lied.

These conclusions are reached by the artful selection of data, and by systematically dismissing the sources of all evidence to the contrary of a preferred reality as unreliable on a variety of questionable bases. This source spoke to the Press, that proves he’s lying. And that source took a job with the Iraqi opposition, obviously he was always peddling propaganda on their behalf. If you throw out every piece of evidence you don’t like, using any convenient rationalization, it isn’t difficult to arrive at the conclusions you desired all along.

The reports were adopted, and amended, in a series of partisan votes, in which so-called Republican Senators Olympias Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) voted with the democrats.

New York Times story

————————————
The Reports:

Postwar Findings on WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism

Report on Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress

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AJStrata notes that media establishment journalists can’t read.

Now I know why journalists get their stories so wrong so often – they lack basic reading comprehension skills. With all the hoopla about the Senate Intelligence report supposedly saying there were no ties between Saddam and Terrorists (despite Iraq documents which log the training of thousands of terrorists, and notes regarding meetings with Al Qaeda) it might behoove people to read them for themselves.

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Flopping Aces quotes some sources the reports overlooked:

Like the 2002 Congressional Resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

“Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq…

————————————

Macranger

I’m still weeding through this “report”. First impressions I got is that it seems to read as if it were trying to convince me that Saddam had no ties to Al Qaeda as if by repeating over and over again I would descend in to a state of BDS and start a new liberal blog…

Our Senate Intelligence Committee could care less about getting to the truth, for the Democrats on the committee it was just another way to get Bush, nothing more, and nothing less.

How much force does it take to intimidate the American left into screaming for withdrawal and surrender?

General John Abizaid tells Hugh Hewitt the strength of the forces in Iraq confronting 133,000 American, 17,000 Coalition (source: Global Security, and (as General Abazid notes) an additional 275,000 lraqi troops amounts to “less than 20,000 active, and the Shiia militias that are actively confronting the coalition forces are less than about 5,000.”

That’s right, folks. Our side’s 425,000 cannot possibly hope to defeat under 25,000 insurgents, the liberals conclude fearfully. It’s hopeless. Better withdraw.

Hell, that’s 17 to 1. Even General Bernard Law Montgomery would have been willing to fight with 17 to 1 odds in his favor.

Robert Kagan explains why Joe Lieberman is the last honest democrat, and how he is paying for it.

Twenty-nine Democratic senators voted in the fall of 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq. There isn’t enough room on this page to list the Democratic foreign policy experts and former officials, including those from the top ranks of the Clinton administration, who supported the war publicly and privately — some of whom even signed letters calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Nor is there any need to list the many liberal, and conservative, columnists on this and other editorial pages around the country who supported the war, or the many prominent journalists who provided the reporting that helped convince so many that the war was necessary.

The question of the day is, what makes Joe Lieberman different? What makes him now anathema to a Democratic Party and to liberal columnists who once supported both him and the war? Why is there now a chance he will lose the Democratic primary in Connecticut after so many years of faithfully serving that state and his own party?..

If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war. Almost every leading Democratic politician and foreign policymaker, and many a liberal columnist, supported the war. Nor will he lose because he opposes withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. Most top Democratic policymakers agree that early withdrawal would be a mistake. Nor, finally, is it because he has been too chummy with President Bush. Lieberman has offered his share of criticism of the administration’s handling of the Iraq war and of many other administration policies.

No, Lieberman’s sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn’t recant. He didn’t say he was wrong. He didn’t turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn’t claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn’t try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn’t claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn’t go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted “public intellectuals.”

These have been the chosen tactics of self-preservation ever since events in Iraq started to go badly and the war became unpopular. Prominent intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, have turned on their friends and allies in an effort to avoid opprobrium for a war they publicly supported. Journalists have turned on their fellow journalists in an effort to make them scapegoats for the whole profession. Politicians have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain away their support for the war or, better still, to blame someone else for persuading them to support it.

Al Gore, the one-time Clinton administration hawk, airbrushed that history from his record. He turned on all those with whom he once agreed about Iraq and about many other foreign policy questions. And for this astonishing reversal he has been applauded by his fellow Democrats and may even get the party’s nomination.

Apparently, amazingly, dispiritingly, it all works. At least in the short run, dishonesty pays. Dissembling pays. Forgetting your past writings and statements pays. Condemning those with whom you once agreed pays. Phony self-flagellation followed by self-righteous self-congratulation pays. The only thing that doesn’t pay is honesty. If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

He is the last honest man, and he may pay the price for it. At least he will be able to sleep at night. And he can take some solace in knowing that history, at least an honest history, will be kinder to him than was his own party.

But the intellectually and morally dishonest left will also pay a price for driving the last honest, responsible, and patriotic individuals out of the democrat party. They will continue to lose election after election, and their party’s support, and national influence, will continue to dwindle.

John Podhoretz wonders if Israel and the United States have become too sentimental and humanitarian to fight wars and win.

July 25, 2006 — WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy – the idea that all people are created equal – has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?

What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left’s insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right’s claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country’s leaders?

Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?

Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Didn’t the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn’t that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

If you can’t imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?

And if America can’t do it, can Israel? Could Israel – even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel – possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?

If Lebanon’s 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon – not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?