Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Firearms Fight?

When does customization of a firearm become manufacturing? That seemingly simple question is occupying the near undivided attention of the firearms industry. Observers say it is a question with the potential to become a firestorm that could put custom gunsmiths out of business; if not behind bars.  , , ,

Note from Crafty Dog:

As usual, another fine post from Buzwardo.  I've taken the liberty of moving it to the "Well-armed People" thread.

Yip!
Crafty Dog

The Islamic threat is greater than German and Soviet threats were

By Dennis Prager

Mar 28, 2006

Only four types of individuals can deny the threat to civilization posed by the violence-supporting segment of Islam: the willfully naive, America-haters, Jew-haters and those afraid to confront evil.

Anyone else sees the contemporary reality -- the genocidal Islamic regime in Sudan; the widespread Muslim theological and emotional support for the killing of a Muslim who converts to another religion; the absence of freedom in Muslim-majority countries; the widespread support for Palestinians who randomly murder Israelis; the primitive state in which women are kept in many Muslim countries; the celebration of death; the "honor killings" of daughters; and so much else that is terrible in significant parts of the Muslim world -- knows that civilized humanity has a new evil to fight.

Just as previous generations had to fight Nazism, communism and fascism, our generation has to confront militant Islam.

And whereas there were unique aspects to those evils, there are two unique aspects to the evil emanating from the Islamic world that render this latest threat to humanity particularly difficult to overcome.

One is the number of people who believe in it. This is a new phenomenon among organized evils. Far fewer people believed in Nazism or in communism than believe in Islam generally or in authoritarian Islam specifically. There are one billion Muslims in the world. If just 10 percent believe in the Islam of Hamas, the Taliban, the Sudanese regime, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, bin Ladin, Islamic Jihad, the Finley Park Mosque in London or Hizbollah -- and it is inconceivable that only one of 10 Muslims supports any of these groups' ideologies -- that means a true believing enemy of at least 100 million people. Outside of Germany, how many people believed in Nazism? Outside of Japan, who believed in Japanese imperialism and militarism? And outside of universities, the arts world or Hollywood, how many people believed in Soviet-style totalitarianism?

A far larger number of people believe in Islamic authoritarianism than ever believed in Marxism. Virtually no one living in Marxist countries believed in Marxism or communism. Likewise, far fewer people believed in Nazism, an ideology confined largely to one country for less than one generation. This is one enormous difference between the radical Islamic threat to our civilization and the two previous ones.

But there is yet a second difference that is at least as significant and at least as frightening: Nazis and Communists wanted to live and feared death; Islamic authoritarians love death and loathe life.

That is why MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) worked with the Soviet Union. Communist leaders love life -- they loved their money, their power, their dachas, their mistresses, their fine wines -- and were hardly prepared to give all that up for Marx. But Iran's current leaders celebrate dying, and MAD may not work, because from our perspective, they are indeed mad. MAD only works with the sane.

There is much less you can do against people who value dying more than living.

The existence of an unprecedentedly large number of people wishing to destroy decent civilization as we know it -- and who celebrate their own deaths -- poses a threat the likes of which no civilization in history has had to confront.

The evils committed by Nazism and Communism were, of course, greater than those committed by radical Islam. There has been no Muslim Gulag and no Muslim Auschwitz.

But the threat is far more serious.

Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com.


Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2006/03/28/191502.html

Wow. Thanks for posting, Crafty.

The Great (and Continuing) Economic Debate of the 20th Century
Imprimis/Hillsdale College  
March 2006
Steve Forbes


The great economic debate of the twentieth century was between collectivists and free-marketers. In one sense, the free-marketers won: When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it was widely acknowledged that Soviet socialism had been a catastrophic, not to say murderous, failure. But in another sense, the debate continues. Democratic capitalism still has not vanquished the idea of collectivism. Far from it.

At the beginning of the last century, free markets seemed to be on the ascendancy everywhere. But two events gave collectivism its lease on life. The first was World War I. In addition to the slaughter?and to breeding the ideologies of communism, state fascism, Nazism, and even the Islamic fascism we are battling today?World War I served as an intoxicating drug to those in the West who believed that a handful of people in government could manage affairs better than the messy way in which free peoples tend to do so. Massive increases in government powers, coupled with massive increases in taxation, gave many the idea that you can achieve massive increases in production by commandeering the financial resources of society.

The second event that served as a boon to collectivism was the Great Depression, which was widely seen as a free-market failure. This view was false. Misguided government policies were at fault?the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, for instance, which dried up the flow of capital in and out of the country. If you track the stock market crash of 1929, it parallels the course of this tariff bill through Congress. When Smoot-Hawley arose in the fall of 1929, the markets fell; when it looked like the tariff bill was sidetracked in late 1929, the markets revived (the Dow Jones went up 50 percent from its lows in November); in the spring of 1930 it was signed into law, and the rest is history. There were other factors at work in the Great Depression, of course, such as President Hoover?s gigantic tax increases of 1931. But despite the fact that these also involved bad policies, the lesson taken away by many was that economies will implode unless the government manages them. John Maynard Keynes, the intellectual guiding light behind New Deal economics, believed that an economy was like a machine: If you put doses of money into it or pull money out at the right times, he thought, you can achieve an equilibrium. This idea that government can drive an economy as if it were an automobile has had baleful consequences.

Other leading economists at the time, such as Joseph Schumpeter, recognized that an economy is an aggregate of disparate activities?thus that the idea of achieving equilibrium, while it makes for a neat theory, is nonsense in the real world. A vibrant economy is full of constant disequilibria: New enterprises rise up, old ones decline, etc. Snapshots of such economies mean very little. In the real world, therefore, free markets operate rationally and efficiently in a way that government regulators simply can?t. Here in America we came to this realization at the end of the 1970s. Following World War II, we largely bought into the idea that government must play an active role to prevent the economy from going off the cliff. But in the late 1970s, the devastation of inflation and high taxes brought about a reassessment. With the election of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. took a step back from Keynesian economics. Since then, as Western Europe has stagnated?creating, for instance, only a fraction of the private sector jobs that the U.S. has created?our country has undergone an economic revival.

Nonetheless, democratic capitalism often still seems on the defensive. Why?

Is Democratic Capitalism Good?

One of the great vulnerabilities of capitalism is the perception that it is somehow less than moral, if not positively amoral. A common view of business was depicted in the movie Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas?s character made famous the phrase, ?Greed is good.? Capitalism is widely seen as promoting selfishness. We tolerate it because it gives us jobs and prosperity, but many look on this as a Faustian bargain. Charity and capitalism are seen as polar opposites. Thus there?s a phrase that?s often used today?I myself use it from time to time without thinking?which is ?giving back.? If you?ve succeeded in business, it?s counted a good thing if you ?give back? to the community. And charity is, of course, a good thing. The problem with this phrase is its implication that by succeeding, we have taken something that wasn?t ours. The same idea is summed up in the cynical saying, ?Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.? This way of thinking about democratic capitalism is wrong.

In fact, philanthropy and capitalism are two sides of the same coin. To succeed in business in a free-market economy, one must meet the needs and wants of others. Even someone who makes babies cry is not going to succeed unless he or she provides a product or a service that people want. This system weaves intricate webs of cooperation that we don?t even think about. Take a restaurant: Someone who opens a restaurant assumes that farmers will provide the food and that someone else will process and package it and that someone else will deliver it, having been supplied the fuel to do so by yet someone else, etc. These marvelous webs of cooperation happen every day throughout a free economy. No one is commanding it. It occurs spontaneously in a way that economists like Schumpeter understood.

Free markets also force people to look to the future and take risks. Misers do not found companies like Microsoft. Nor should we look on it as immoral for people to work for the betterment of themselves and their families. We are all born with God-given talents, and it is right to develop them to the fullest. The great virtue of democratic capitalism is that it guarantees that as we develop our talents, we?re contributing to the public good. Statistics show that the U.S. is both the most commercial nation and the most philanthropic nation in human history. And this is no paradox. The two go hand-in-hand.

Another vulnerability of democratic capitalism is that although it leads to progress and to an increase in our societal standard of living, progress is usually disruptive. This allows collectivists to play on people?s natural fear of change. We saw this with the rise of industrialism in the 19th century. We had paintings and writings depicting a pastoral agricultural past. Then railroads came along to disrupt the canals, and cars came along to disrupt the railroads. Buggy-whip makers and blacksmiths were done for. One can imagine what 60 Minutes would have been investigating 100 years ago: the poor blacksmiths being put out of work by Henry Ford. Likewise, when TV came along in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most movie theaters in the country went broke. Now the Internet is disrupting newspapers and Craig?s List is disrupting classified advertising. Disruptions are inevitable in a free-market system. The political challenge is to allow these disruptions to take place?they are ultimately constructive, after all?rather than reacting in a way that stymies progress.

In recent decades, collectivists have also hijacked the cause of environmentalism to promote their agenda. I?m not talking about the desire to have clean water; we?re all in favor of that. Or clean air; one of the great things we?ve done in the last century is getting lead out of the air. Saving tigers and elephants is also a good thing. I?m talking about those who use the mantra of environmentalism to try to control the economy the way the old-time socialists wanted to, breathing hellfire and damnation on those who don?t subscribe to their new, post-Christian religion. The fact is, if our goal is to improve the environment, increasing government regulation and destroying manufacturing is counterproductive. Affluence is the friend, not the enemy, of the environment. As people become better off, they want a higher quality of life, including environmental improvements. And new technology drives such improvements. Consider the east coast of the U.S. Even though its population has more than doubled?in some areas, it?s tripled?and even though there are more developments, malls, and urban sprawl, there are more trees today than there were 80 years ago. Why? Because of technology that allows us to grow more food on less land. Technology is a friend of the environment.

Additional Collectivist Myths

Let me mention three additional myths that are used to promote collectivism. One is the idea that demand is the key to economic growth. Collectivist economists often talk about means to increase ?aggregate demand,? as if that would ensure that the economy will grow. Following Keynes, they assume that the economy is like a machine. But again, the economy is an aggregate of tens of millions of people, millions of businesses, millions of technologies. We don?t know how it interacts on a day-to-day basis. We don?t know what?s going to work or not work. Who could have conceived of eBay ten to twelve years ago? But today, 400,000 people make their livings on eBay. When Google was launched, there were ten other search engines. Who would have thought another one was needed? Isn?t that how you get so-called ?bubbles?? But Google found a way to do it better and ended up on top. Innovation is the key. Whether it?s railroads, cars, computers, the Internet, or iPods, risk-taking is messy. It is often irrational, and seemingly wasteful. But it?s the only way to determine what works best and what doesn?t.

Another collectivist myth concerns trade. If I were dictator of the world?even though I believe in the First Amendment?I would ban trade numbers, especially merchandise trade numbers. They just lead to mischief. We are given the impression that a trade surplus is like a profit and a trade deficit is like a loss. But trade is not a transaction between countries. It takes place between parties. For example, Forbes magazine buys paper. For all of the 88 years that we?ve been in existence, we?ve run a trade deficit with our paper suppliers. If you look just at that trade deficit, you might think we are doing poorly. But if you look at the two parties involved, that turns out to be an illusion. The paper supplier thinks he?s going to make money selling his paper. We think we?re going to make money by taking the paper and putting print on it, with value added. So it?s a mutually profitable transaction, even if it looks like a trade deficit. Or consider a book printed in Taiwan. Looking at the trade number alone, it appears there is a two dollar trade deficit with Taiwan. Yet the book comes back here and retails for $24.95. The value added is in the U.S. The author gets a cut, the publisher gets a cut, booksellers get a cut, distributors get a cut, and remainder stores get a cut. Something similar happened with iPods: A lot of its parts are made overseas, but where is most of the value added? Here in the United States. North America has had a merchandise trade deficit for 350 out of the last 400 years, and we have done very well, thank you.

The final myth I?ll mention concerns budget deficits. Milton Friedman said several years ago that if he had a choice between a federal budget of $1 trillion that was in the red and a federal budget of $2 trillion that was balanced, he would take the former. Deficits, in and of themselves, are not evil. Deficits must be put in context, because Washington?s inability to curb spending is often used as an excuse to raise taxes.

Principles of Prosperity

Now let me turn to five basic principles of economic growth. First and foremost is the rule of law: Without individual equality before the law, entrepreneurs cannot challenge already existing businesses. Alliances between the latter and government regulators who place barriers before entrepreneurs must be guarded against.

The second essential principle is property rights. We take it for granted in this country that if you buy a piece of property, everyone acknowledges that you own it. Most countries don?t have that kind of uniform property system. A few years ago, Hernando DeSoto, a great economist from Peru, saw that in countries like his, although there is entrepreneurial activity, there isn?t the corresponding prosperity found in the U.S. And he wondered why. In his recent book?The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else?one of the key factors he cites is the absence in so many other countries of a legal foundation for property rights. In Brazil?s shanty towns, an individual may know that he owns the house in which he lives, and his neighbors may know it, but the fact is not recognized elsewhere.

Mr. DeSoto was asked by the Egyptian government a few years ago to determine who owns the businesses and residences in Egypt. His finding was that 88 percent of the businesses in Egypt are illegal. Why is that? Here in the U.S., it is possible to set up a business legally in a matter of days. In Egypt, it takes a couple of years. It requires going through numerous bureaucracies, doling out numerous bribes, etc. So it makes sense to proceed ?informally.? On the other hand, running a business outside the law limits its growth. Most ?informal? enterprises never grow beyond the level of family enterprises, because if they get too big, they might attract the attention of the tax collector. DeSoto?s group also reported that 92 percent of Egyptian housing is illegal. People living in residences may have deeds; but only a few miles away, those deeds are not recognized. In Egypt, as in so many other places, there is no uniform system of establishing and protecting property rights. As a result, four billion people around the world own $9 trillion of assets that amount to dead capital.

What do I mean by ?dead capital?? Remember that here in the U.S., the most important source of capital for new ventures is not Wall Street, the local banker or the venture capitalist. It is the mortgage market. People either increase their mortgage or take out a second mortgage in order to start businesses. This is not possible in countries like Egypt. Understanding this was the key to Japan?s post-World War II economic boom. General MacArthur reformed a feudalistic property system, in which the peasants had only an informal system of property exchange, into a system with formalized property rights. Immediately, the Japanese economy took off. The importance of property rights is not sufficiently recognized by those of us who take them for granted.

The third principle of economic prosperity is low taxes. Taxes are not just a means of raising revenue for the government. They are also a price. Income taxes are a price paid for working; taxes on profits are the price paid for being successful in business; taxes on capital gains are the price paid for taking risks. In light of this, the importance of low taxes is easy to see: When you lower the price of good things?things like work, success and risk-taking?you tend to get more of them. Raise the price of these good things and you get less. In 2003, we lowered tax rates in the U.S. and the economy started to grow again. As we?ve seen time and again, tax cuts do not mean a loss of tax revenue. By increasing incentives, the government comes out ahead. Washington?s revenues in the last fiscal year were up 15 percent?$100 billion above expectations. Washington?s problem is not revenue, but spending.

The fourth principle I would mention is making it simpler to launch legal businesses. Getting bureaucracy out of the way will inject a new vibrancy into the economy. The fifth and final principle is free trade. Expanding markets and creating greater opportunity for trade benefits us all.

In closing, I will remind you of a point I made earlier: The reason that the great economic debate continues into the 21st century, despite the proven superiority of free markets in terms of delivering prosperity, is because of the misperceptions that keep democratic capitalism from capturing the moral high ground. Dispelling these misperceptions should be our priority as we carry on that debate in the years ahead.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/default.asp

March 21, 2006, 7:44 a.m.
Defenseless Decision
Why were guns taken from law-abiding citizens in New Orleans?

By John R. Lott Jr.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans? residents got an idea of what life is like without the rule of law. They had no telephones, no way to call 911. Even if they had, the police who reported for duty were busy with rescue missions, not fighting crime. Citizens had to protect themselves. This was made rather difficult by the city?s confiscation of guns, even from law-abiding citizens.

After five months of denial in federal district court, the city last week made an embarrassing admission: in the aftermath of the hurricane, the severely overworked police apparently had the time to confiscate thousands of guns from law-abiding citizens.

Numerous media stories have shown how useful guns were to the ordinary citizens of New Orleans who weren?t forcibly disarmed. Fox News reported several defensive gun uses. One city resident, John Carolan, was taking care of many family members, including his three-year-old granddaughter, when three men came to his house asking about his generator, threatening him with a machete. Carolan showed them his gun and they left. Another resident, Finis Shelnutt, recounts a similar story that the gangs left him alone after seeing ?I have a very large gun.?

Signs painted on boarded up windows in various parts of town warned criminals in advance not to try: the owner had shotguns inside.

Last September 8, a little more than a week after the hurricane, New Orleans? police superintendent, Eddie Compass announced: ?No one will be able to be armed. Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns.? Even legally registered firearms were seized, though exceptions were made for select businesses and for some wealthy individuals to hire guards.

Undoubtedly, selected businesses and well-connected wealthy individuals had good reason to want protection, but so did others without the same political pull. One mother saw the need for a gun after she and her two children (ages 9 and 12) saw someone killed in New Orleans after the hurricane. The mother said: ?I was a card-carrying, anti-gun liberal ? not anymore.?

John C. Guidos was successfully guarding his tavern on St. Claude Ave on September 7, when police took his shotgun and pistol; indeed, it was the only time that he saw any cops. Soon afterwards robbers looted the tavern.

Wishing for a gun during disasters isn?t anything new. Just a little over a decade ago, police stood by, largely helpless, during the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict. Yet, not all the victims were defenseless. Korean merchants stood out as one group that banded together and used their guns to protect their stores from looting.

A similar lesson hasn?t been lost on New Orleans? citizens. As one resident, Art DePodesta, told the New York Daily News shortly after the storm hit, ?The cops are busy as it is. If more citizens took security and matters into their own hands, we won?t be in this situation.?

Not only do law-abiding citizens with guns deter many criminals from committing a crime to begin with: Possessing a gun is the safest way to confront a criminal if you are forced to.

Deterrence works. The United States has one of the world's lowest ?hot? burglary rates (burglaries committed while people are in the building) at 13 percent, compared to the ?gun-free? British rate of 59 percent. Surveys of convicted burglars indicate American burglars spend at least twice as long as their British counterparts casing a house before breaking in. That explains why American burglars rarely break into homes when the residents are there. The reason most American burglars give for taking so much time is that they?re afraid of getting shot.

Even without a catastrophe like Katrina, it would have been a poor strategy for would-be victims in New Orleans merely to call 911 and wait for help. The average response time of police in New Orleans before the hurricane was eleven minutes. The Justice Department?s National Crime Victimization Survey has shown for decades that having a gun is the safest course of action when a criminal confronts you, far safer than behaving passively.

It would be nice if the police were always there to protect us, but we don?t live in a utopia and the police understand that they almost always arrive on the scene after the crime has been committed. What does New Orleans? Mayor Nagin recommend that people such as John Carolan and his granddaughter do the next time that have to fend for themselves? The city must know that there isn?t much of a defense for taking citizens? guns; after all, it took them five months to admit to it.

? John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of More Guns, Less Crime.
    
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200603210744.asp

Saddam's Philippines
Terror Connection
And other revelations from the Iraqi regime files.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/27/2006, Volume 011, Issue 26


SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Several months ago, The Weekly Standard received a set of English-language documents from a senior U.S. government official. The official represented this material as U.S. government translations of three captured Iraqi documents. According to this source, the documents had been examined by the U.S. intelligence community and judged "consistent with authentic documents"--the professionals' way of saying that these items cannot definitively be certified but seem to be the real thing.

The Weekly Standard checked its English-language documents with officials serving elsewhere in the federal government to make sure they were consistent with the versions these officials had seen. With what one person characterized as "minor discrepancies," they are. One of the three documents has been posted in the original Arabic on the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A subsequent translation of that document is nearly identical to the English-language text that we were given.

These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.

ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including three Americans--had been taken from Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines. There had been fighting between the kidnappers and the Filipino military, Samarmad reported. Several hostages had escaped, and others were released.

"After the release of nine of the hostages, an announcement from the FBI appeared in newspapers announcing their desire to interview the escaped Filipinos in order to make a decision on the status of the three American hostages," the Iraqi ambassador wrote to his superiors in Baghdad. "The embassy stated what was mentioned above. The three American hostages were a missionary husband and wife who had lived in the Philippines for a while, Martin and Gracia Burnham, from Kansas City, and Guillermo Sobrero, from California. They are still in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers from a total of 20 people who were kidnapped from (Dos Palmas) resort on Palawan Island." (Except where noted, parentheses, brackets, and ellipses appear in the documents quoted.)

The report notes that the Iraqis were now trying to be seen as helpful and keep a safe distance from Abu Sayyaf. "We have all cooperated in the field of intelligence information with some of our friends to encourage the tourists and the investors in the Philippines." But Samarmad's report seems to confirm that this is a change. "The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons. From now on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not on speaking terms with them."

Samarmad's dispatch appears to be the final installment in a series of internal Iraqi regime memos from March through June 2001. (The U.S. government translated some of these documents in full and summarized others.) The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group. (The Libyan regime had intervened in an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping in 2000, securing the release of several hostages by paying several million dollars in ransom. Some observers saw this as an effort by Muammar Qaddafi to improve his image; others saw it as an effort to provide support to Abu Sayyaf by paying the ransom demanded by the group. Both were probably right.)

One Iraqi memo, from the "Republican Presidency, Intelligence Apparatus" to someone identified only as D4/4, makes the case for supporting the work of the Qaddafi Charity Establishment to help Abu Sayyaf. The memo is dated March 18, 2001.


1. There are connections between the Qaddafi Charity Establishment and the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines; meanwhile, this establishment is providing material support to them.
2. This establishment is one of the Libyan Intelligence fronts.
3. The Tripoli post has indicated that there is a possibility to form what connections are available with this establishment as it can offer the premise of providing food supplies to [Ed: word missing] in the scope of the agreement statement.
Please review . . . it appears of intelligence value to proceed into connections with this establishment and its intelligence investments in the Abu Sayyaf group.
The short response, two days later:

Mr. Dept. 3:
Study this idea, the pros and the cons, the relative reactions, and any other remarks regarding this.
That exchange above was fully translated by U.S. government translators. The two pages of correspondence that follow it in the Iraqi files were not, but a summary of those pages informs readers that the Iraqi response "discourages the supporting of connections with the Abu Sayyaf group, as the group works against the Philippine government and relies on several methods for material gain, such as kidnapping foreigners, demanding ransoms, as well as being accused by the Philippine government of terrorist acts and drug smuggling."

These accusations were, of course, well founded. On June 12, 2001, six days after Samarmad's dispatch, authorities found the beheaded body of Guillermo Sobrero near the Abu Sayyaf camp. Martin Burnham was killed a year later during the rescue attempt that freed his wife.

A thorough understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Abu Sayyaf (the name, honoring Afghan jihadi Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, means "Father of the Sword") will not come from an analysis of three months' correspondence between Manila and Baghdad in 2001. While it is certainly significant to read in internal Iraqi documents that the regime was at one time funding Abu Sayyaf, we do not now have a complete picture of that relationship. Why did the Iraqis begin funding Abu Sayyaf, which had long been considered a regional terrorist group concerned mainly with making money? Why did they suspend their support in 2001? And why did the Iraqis resume this relationship and, according to the congressional testimony of one State Department regional specialist, intensify it?

ON MARCH 26, 2003, as war raged in Iraq, the State Department's Matthew Daley testified before Congress. Daley, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee that he was worried about Abu Sayyaf.

"We're concerned that they have what I would call operational links to Iraqi intelligence services. And they're a danger, they're an enemy of the Philippines, they're an enemy of the United States, and we want very much to help the government in Manila deal with this challenge," Daley told the panel. Responding to a question, Daley elaborated. "There is good reason to believe that a member of the Abu Sayyaf Group who has been involved in terrorist activities was in direct contact with an IIS officer in the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. This individual was subsequently expelled from the Philippines for engaging in activities that were incompatible with his diplomatic status."

This individual was Hisham Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. And Daley was right to be concerned.

Eighteen months before his testimony, a young Filipino man rode his Honda motorcycle up a dusty road to a shanty strip mall just outside Camp Enrile Malagutay in Zamboanga City, Philippines. The camp was host to American troops stationed in the south of the country to train with Filipino soldiers fighting terrorists. The man parked his bike and began to examine its gas tank. Seconds later, the tank exploded, sending nails in all directions and killing the rider almost instantly.

The blast damaged six nearby stores and ripped the front off of a caf? that doubled as a karaoke bar. The caf? was popular with American soldiers. And on this day, October 2, 2002, SFC Mark Wayne Jackson was killed there and a fellow soldier was severely wounded. Eyewitnesses almost immediately identified the bomber as an Abu Sayyaf terrorist.

One week before the attack, Abu Sayyaf leaders had promised a campaign of terror directed at the "enemies of Islam"--Westerners and the non-Muslim Filipino majority. And one week after the attack, Abu Sayyaf attempted to strike again, this time with a bomb placed on the playground of the San Roque Elementary School. It did not detonate. Authorities recovered the cell phone that was to have set it off and analyzed incoming and outgoing calls.

As they might have expected, they discovered several calls to and from Abu Sayyaf leaders. But another call got their attention. Seventeen hours after the attack that took the life of SFC Jackson, the cell phone was used to place a call to the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Hisham Hussein. It was not Hussein's only contact with Abu Sayyaf.

"He was surveilled, and we found out he was in contact with Abu Sayyaf and also pro-Iraqi demonstrators," says a Philippine government source, who continued, "[Philippine intelligence] was able to monitor their cell phone calls. [Abu Sayyaf leaders] called him right after the bombing. They were always talking."

An analysis of Iraqi embassy phone records by Philippine authorities showed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the attack that killed SFC Jackson. Andrea Domingo, immigration commissioner for the Philippines, said Hussein ran an "established network" of terrorists in the country. Hussein had also met with members of the New People's Army, a Communist opposition group on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, in his office at the embassy. According to a Philippine government official, the Philippine National Police uncovered documents in a New People's Army compound that indicate the Iraqi embassy had provided funding for the group. Hisham Hussein and two other Iraqi embassy employees were ordered out of the Philippines on February 14, 2003.

Interestingly, an Abu Sayyaf leader named Hamsiraji Sali at least twice publicly boasted that his group received funding from Iraq. For instance, on March 2, 2003, he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Iraqi regime had provided the terrorist group with 1million pesos--about $20,000--each year since 2000.


ANOTHER ITEM from the Iraq-Philippines files is a "security report" prepared by the Iraqi embassy's third secretary, Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib, and sent to Baghdad by Ambassador Samarmad. The report provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Iraqi Intelligence operation in the Philippines. A cover memo from the ambassador, dated April 12, 2001, gives an overview: "The report contain a variety of issues including intelligence issues and how the Philippines, American and Zionist intelligence operate in the Philippines, especially the movements of the American intelligence in their efforts to fight terrorism and recruiting a variety of nationalities, particularly Arabs."

Ghalib's report is a rambling account of a phone conversation he had with an Iraqi intelligence informer named Muhammad al-Zanki, an Iraqi citizen living in the Philippines, who is referred to throughout the document as Abu Ahmad. The embassy official is looking for information on a third person, an informer named Omar Ghazal, and believes that Abu Ahmad might have some. (To review: Salah Samarmad is the Iraqi ambassador; Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib is the embassy's third secretary, most likely an Iraqi intelligence officer and author of the "security report"; Abu Ahmad is an Iraqi intelligence informer; and Omar Ghazal is another Iraqi intelligence informer.)

As the conversation begins, Abu Ahmad tells his embassy contact that he doesn't know where Omar Ghazal is and would have told the embassy if he did. He then tells the embassy contact that when he called Omar Ghazal's aunt to check on his whereabouts, she used a word in Tagalog--walana--which means "not here." But Abu Ahmad says its connotations are not good. "That word is used when you target one of the personnel who are assigned to complete everything (full mission). Then they announce that he is traveling and so on, and that's what I'm afraid of." The Iraqi embassy contact asks him to elaborate. "I have been exposed to that same phrase before, when I asked about an individual, and later on I found out that he was physically eliminated and no one knows anything about him."

The embassy official assures Abu Ahmad that Iraqi intelligence has also lost track of Ghazal, and became alarmed when he abruptly stopped attending soccer practice at a local college. Abu Ahmad fears the worst. "I'm afraid they might have killed him and I'm very worried about him," he says, according to the report. "The method that those people use is terrible and that's why I refuse to work with them."

The Iraqi embassy official interrupts Abu Ahmad. "Who are they? I would like to know who they are."

"Didn't I tell you before who they are?"

"No."

"The office group," says Abu Ahmad.

"Which office?" asks his Iraqi embassy handler.

"A long time ago the American FBI opened up an office in the Philippines, under American supervision and that there are Philippine Intelligence groups that work there. The goal of the office is to fight international terrorism (in the Philippines of course) and they have employees from various nationalities that speak of peace and international terrorism and how important it is to put an end to terrorism. The office also has other espionage affairs involving Arab citizens to work with them in order to provide them with information on the Arabs who are living in the Philippines and also for other spying purposes."

Abu Ahmad continues: "They also monitor diplomacy, and after I tried to lessen my amount of office work, I became aware that the office group was trying to get in contact with the person who is in charge of temporary work, Malik al-Athir, when he was alone."

Abu Ahmad tells his Iraqi embassy contact, Ghalib, that "the office" was trying to recruit an Arab to monitor Arab citizens in the Philippines. The Iraqi embassy contact suggests that Abu Ahmad volunteer for the job. Abu Ahmad says he had other plans. "I am leaving after I finish selling my house and properties and will move to Peshawar [Pakistan]. There I will be supplied with materials, weapons, explosives, and get married and then move to America. Do you know that there are more than one thousand Iraqi extremists who perform heroism jobs?" The speaker presumably means martyrdom operations.

The Iraqi embassy contact asks Abu Ahmad how he knows that those people are not "Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iranians."

Abu Ahmad replies: "They are bin Laden's people and all of them are extremists and they are heroes. Do you want me to give you their names?"

"Why not? Yes, I want them," says the Iraqi embassy contact.

"I will supply you with the names very soon. I will write some for you because I am in touch with them," says Abu Ahmad.

This report raises more questions than it answers. Who is Omar Ghazal and why did he disappear? What is the "office group" and how is it connected to Americans? What happened to Abu Ahmad? Were his stated plans--moving to Peshawar to obtain weapons and explosives and then moving to the United States--just bluster to impress his Iraqi embassy handler? A way to discontinue his work for the Iraqi regime? Or was he serious? Is he here now?

A SECOND internal Iraqi file obtained by The Weekly Standard concerns relations between Iraqi Intelligence and Saudi opposition groups. The document was apparently compiled at some point after January 1997, judging by the most recent date in the text, and discusses four Saudi opposition groups: the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights, the Reform and Advice Committee (Osama bin Laden), People of al Jazeera Union Organization, and the Saudi Hezbollah.

The New York Times first reported on the existence of this file on June 25, 2004. "American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization." According to the Times, a Pentagon task force "concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis."

The most provocative aspect of the document is the discussion of efforts to seek cooperation between Iraqi Intelligence and the Saudi opposition group run by bin Laden, known to the Iraqis as the "Reform and Advice Committee." The translation of that section appears below.

We moved towards the committee by doing the following:
A. During the visit of the Sudanese Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi to Iraq and his meeting with Mr. Uday Saddam Hussein, on December 13, 1994, in the presence of the respectable, Mr. Director of the Intelligence Service, he [Dr. al-Sanusi] pointed out that the opposing Osama bin Laden, residing in Sudan, is reserved and afraid to be depicted by his enemies as an agent of Iraq. We prepared to meet him in Sudan (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the results of the meeting in our letter 782 on December 17, 1994).
B. An approval to meet with opposer Osama bin Laden by the Intelligence Services was given by the Honorable Presidency in its letter 138, dated January 11, 1995 (attachment 6). He [bin Laden] was met by the previous general director of M4 in Sudan and in the presence of the Sudanese, Ibrahim al-Sanusi, on February 19, 1995. We discussed with him his organization. He requested the broadcast of the speeches of Sheikh Sulayman al-Uda (who has influence within Saudi Arabia and outside due to being a well known religious and influential personality) and to designate a program for them through the broadcast directed inside Iraq, and to perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz. (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the details of the meeting in our letter 370 on March 4, 1995, attachment 7.)
C. The approval was received from the Leader, Mr. President, may God keep him, to designate a program for them through the directed broadcast. We were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up. The Sudanese side was informed of the Honorable Presidency's agreement above, through the representative of the Respectable Director of Intelligence Services, our Ambassador in Khartoum.
D. Due to the recent situation of Sudan and being accused of supporting and embracing of terrorism, an agreement with the opposing Saudi Osama bin Laden was reached. The agreement required him to leave Sudan to another area. He left Khartoum in July 1996. The information we have indicates that he is currently in Afghanistan. The relationship with him is ongoing through the Sudanese side. Currently we are working to invigorate this relationship through a new channel in light of his present location.
(It should be noted that the documents given to The Weekly Standard did not include the attachments, letters to and from Saddam Hussein about the status of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. And the last sentence differs slightly from the version provided to the New York Times. In the Weekly Standard document, Iraq is seeking to "invigorate" its relationship with al Qaeda; in the Times translation, Iraq is seeking to "continue" that relationship.)

Another passage of the Iraq-Saudi opposition memo details the relationship between the Iraqi regime and the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), founded by Dr. Muhammad Abdallah al-Massari. Once again, Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi, the senior Sudanese government official, was a key liaison between the two sides. Al-Massari is widely regarded as an ideological mouthpiece for al Qaeda, a designation he does little to dispute. His radio station broadcasts al Qaeda propaganda, and his website features the rantings of prominent jihadists. He has lived in London for more than a decade. The Iraqi Intelligence memo recounts two meetings involving Dr. al-Sanusi and CDLR representatives in 1994 and reports that al-Massari requested assistance from the Iraqi regime for a trip to Iraq.

In 1995, the Iraqis turned to another Saudi to facilitate their relationship with al-Massari. According to the Iraqi memo, Ahmid Khudir al-Zahrani was a diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington who applied for political asylum in the United States. His application was denied, and al-Zahrani contacted the Iraqi embassy in London, seeking asylum in Iraq. His timing was good. Al-Zahrani's request came just as Iraqis were stepping up efforts to establish better relations with the Saudi opposition. According to the Iraqi Intelligence memo:

A complete plan was put in place to bring the aforementioned [al-Zahrani] to Iraq in coordination with the Foreign Ministry and our [intelligence] station in Khartoum [Sudan]. He and his family were issued Iraqi passports with pseudonyms by our embassy in Khartoum. He arrived to Iraq on April 21, 1995, and multiple meetings were held with him to obtain information about the Saudi opposition.
These contacts were not, contrary to the speculation of some Middle East experts, simply an effort to keep tabs on an enemy. The memo continues, summarizing Iraqi Intelligence activities:

We are in the process of following up on the subject, to try and establish a nucleus of Saudi opposition in Iraq, and use our relationship with [al-Massari] to serve our intelligence goals.
The final document provided to The Weekly Standard is a translation of a memo from the "Republican Command, Intelligence Division," dated September 15, 2001. It is addressed to "Mr. M.A.M.5."

Our Afghani source number 11002 (his biographic information in attachment #1) has provided us information that the Afghani consul Ahmed Dahestani (his biographic information attachment #2) has talked in front of him about the following:
1. That Osama bin Laden and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in communication with Iraq and that previously a group of Taliban and Osama bin Laden have visited Iraq.
2. That America has evidence that the Iraqi government and the group of Osama bin Laden have cooperated to attack targets inside America.
3. In the event that it has been proven that the group of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban planning such operations, it is possible that America will attack Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. That the Afghani consul heard of the relation between Iraq and the group of Osama bin Laden while he was in Iran.
5. In the light of what has been presented, we suggest to write to the committee of information.
This document is speculative in parts, and the information it contains is third-hand at best. Its value depends on the credibility of "source number 11002" and of Ahmed Dahestani and of the sources Dahestani relied on, all of which are unknown.

We are left, then, with three small pieces to add to a large and elaborate puzzle. We will never have a complete picture of the Iraqi regime's support for global terrorism, but the coming release of a flood of captured documents should get us closer.

A new and highly illuminating article in Foreign Affairs draws on hundreds of Iraqi documents to provide a look at the Iraq war from the Iraqi perspective. The picture that emerges is that of an Iraqi regime built on a foundation of paranoia and lies and eager to attack its perceived enemies, internal and external. This paragraph is notable:

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.
Think about that last sentence.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/990ieqmb.asp

About freaking time. . . .

New Orleans Now Admits It Seized Firearms From Citizens
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
March 16, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - A Second Amendment group calls it a "stunning reversal." After denying it for months, the City of New Orleans on Wednesday admitted that it does have a stockpile of firearms seized from private citizens in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

The city even took lawyers to the place where some 1,000 firearms are being stored.

"This is a very significant event," said attorney Dan Holliday, who represents National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation in an on-going lawsuit seeking to stop the city from seizing privately-owned firearms.

The city's disclosure came as attorneys for both sides prepared for a court hearing on a motion to hold the city in contempt. (On March 1, The Second Amendment Foundation and the National Rifle Association filed a motion to have New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with an injunction to stop illegal gun confiscations and return all seized firearms to their rightful owners.)

"We're almost in disbelief," said Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb on Wednesday. "For months, the city has maintained it did not have any guns in its possession that had been taken from people following the hurricane. Now our attorneys have seen the proof that New Orleans was less than honest with the court."

Under an agreement with the court, the hearing on the contempt motion has been delayed for two weeks, and during that time, the city reportedly will set up a process to return the guns to their lawful owners.

"While we are stunned at this complete reversal on the city's part, the important immediate issue is making sure gun owners get their property back," Gottlieb said.

"What happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was an outrage," he added. "Equally disturbing is the fact that it apparently took a motion for contempt to force the city to admit what it had been denying for the past five months."

As Cybercast News Service reported in February, the National Rifle Association used images of law enforcement officers confiscating legally possessed firearms from New Orleans residents to rally conservatives at a recent conference in Washington.

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre urged people attending the Conservative Political Action Conference to "Remember New Orleans!"


See Earlier Stories:
Contempt Motion Filed Against New Orleans Mayor, Police Chief (2 Mar. 2006)
Second Amendment Groups Move to Stop Gun Seizures (22 Sept. 2005)
New Orleans Gun Seizures Allegedly 'Creating More Victims' (14 Sept. 2005)

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200603\CUL20060316b.html

March 08, 2006, 7:54 a.m.
Witness to the Death of Feminism
Phyllis Chesler on her sisterhood at war.

Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez

Don't try to label Phyllis Chesler, because you're not going to confine this woman to a category. She's an American Jew who has worn a burka, while living, ultimately against her will, in Afghanistan. She's a liberal feminist second-waver who's the author of a book called The Death of Feminism ? who will tell you that for feminists today "reality has no defining role in determining their thoughts or their actions."

NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez recently talked to Chesler about where feminists fall short and what they have to offer.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Are feminists feminism's worst enemies?

Phyllis Chesler: Yes and no. Feminists, as well as women, have some terrifying external enemies. For example, Islamists oppose the ideals of dignity and equality for women by their practice of gender apartheid. This is a system which includes some, if not all, of the following human-rights violations: female genital mutilation, veiling and hijab, purdah, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, arranged (child) marriage, often to first cousins, polygamy, honor murder, the imprisonment, torture, beheading, stoning to death, and hanging of rape victims, suspected prostitutes, and feminist dissidents ? especially in Iran today.

Such Islamist misogynists have many Western allies and apologists...

Among them are many academic and establishment feminists who are also apologists for Islamic religious and gender apartheid and for the international trafficking in women and girls. In this, they are feminism's worst enemies. For example, many academic feminists fear that any serious critique of veiling, purdah, or polygamy might be slandered as "racist." They are right. These days, telling the truth about indigenous Islamic barbarism towards women and men is quickly branded as "politically incorrect" and dismissed as "racist" and "imperialist" arrogance. It requires real courage and clarity to stay this particular course of truth-telling. While some feminists did sound the alarm about the Taliban, they did not rescue Afghan women physically, personally, militarily, or economically. In addition, feminists have not focused on the right to motherhood, but primarily on the right to abortion; they have not focused on creating a strong feminist foreign policy, but primarily on the rights of gays and lesbians. Personal sexual freedom and identity politics have trumped universal human rights.

I happen to support civil rights for gay people and women's reproductive freedom, but we are at war, and such rights will matter little if we are all bombed back to the tenth century. Iranian feminists have always marched for women's rights on International Women's Day. In the past, they have been roughed up, arrested, sometimes tortured. The fact that they are willing to march at all is heart-stoppingly brave. This year, they have been informed that if they march the police will shoot them down on the spot. Western feminists have been as shockingly quiet about this as they have been about the repeated gang-rapes in the Sudan perpetrated by genocidal ethnic Arab Muslims against black African Muslim and Christian women.


Lopez: What do you hate most about feminism today?

Chesler: I don't "hate" anything about feminism. Those feminists who work in the areas of violence against women (incest, rape, sexual harassment, domestic battering, prostitution, and pornography); those feminists who work within religion to further the cause of both God and humanity; and those feminists who fight discrimination against women in the workplace have my profound respect and gratitude: such feminists are both Republicans and Democrats, religious and secular, they are in all professions, and they exist everywhere in the world.

However, I mourn the Stalinization and Palestinianization of the feminist postcolonial and postmodern academy and media. Because such feminists refuse to "judge" Islamic gender apartheid, they and their institutions and organizations have become anti-activist, anti-American, anti-Israeli, isolationist, and, at best, tools of the Democratic party. At worst, they are apologists for Islamist jihad. To avoid the McCarthyite charge of "racism," such feminists have been willing to sacrifice the victims of Islamism on their "multicultural" altars.

Lopez: What's most infuriating about the "death" of feminism?

Chesler: The fact that a cowardly, conformist, and pale imitation of what feminism was meant to be is now touted as the "real thing." The fact that an aggressively secular and primarily narrow and intolerant feminism has driven away millions of women (and men) and that this fact does not give what is left of organized feminism the slightest pause. Also, the refusal of feminists to really grapple with woman's inhumanity to woman (the title of my tenth book) is saddening. Like men, women ? including feminists ? also internalize sexist beliefs. In addition, women are both hard-wired and socialized to compete mainly with other women, not with men ? and to do so through slander and ostracism. Thus, the mainstream feminist refusal to acknowledge that, like men, women are human beings, as close to the apes as to the angels, is sad and infuriating.


Lopez: What would you like every American to know about your Afghan captivity?

Chesler: When I was very young and twice as foolish, I married my college sweetheart who was, I thought, a very Westernized Muslim man from Afghanistan. When we traveled to Kabul on what I thought was merely a visit, my American passport was confiscated and I was put into[isolation]. This was not unique; it's what happens to all foreign brides. And much worse: Custody of children whose fathers are Muslim or Arab and whose mothers are American ? even if they are born in America ? belong to the father and his family; only mercenaries can get such children back to America. And yes, individual Afghans are charming, soulful, poetic, hospitable, and beautiful. But they are not Westerners. Thus, to my amazement, I discovered that my father-in-law had three wives and twenty-one children. I quickly discovered that my Westernized husband also had a strong Eastern side: He saw nothing wrong with how women were treated (sheeted, segregated on public buses, subjected to arranged marriages, denied minimal educations and medical care) and expected me to accept Islamic gender apartheid. Well, as a matter of fact, he did see something wrong, but was perfectly willing to accept a very slow pace of change, even if that meant that I was instantly consigned to the tenth century while he continued on in the 20th century without me. Such behavior is hardly unusual today, nor was it unique to me almost forty-five years ago. I nearly died there. I managed to get out. I write about this in my chapter about my "Afghan Captivity" in my latest book The Death of Feminism. [The chapter is excerpted here.

My experience taught me some important lessons that are currently of vital importance to Americans.

First, I learned that both evil and barbarism are indigenous to every culture and not caused by imperialism, colonialism, or Zionism ? as the Western intelligentsia would have it. Afghanistan had never ever been occupied by the British, who literally died in droves trying to invade. The refusal to enter the 20th century was an entirely Afghan and Muslim decision. I was there in 1961, long before the Taliban made things much harsher for girls and women.

Second, I learned that Muslims who can pass for Westerners often have multiple cultural personalities. In the West, they are like us; in the East, they are not. In a jihadic era, when jihadists are moving among us and have access to our most advanced ideas about tolerance and to our technology, it is important to keep this in mind.

Third, I also learned that America may not be perfect, but it is not the worst country in the world; rather, it is the best country. It is a perspective that I would like other Americans, especially our academics, to ponder. What we have here would constitute a revolution in any Arab and Muslim country.

Fourth, I am not a cultural relativist. I have seen the lives of poor people and of women in a third-world country and believe that they are entitled to the same rights and freedoms that Western people enjoy. We have a moral imperative to assist in the modernization of all human cultures; how to do so, and at what cost, remain unanswered, burning questions.

Finally, every day I lived in Kabul my mother-in-law tried to convert me to Islam. She eventually scorned me as the "Yahud" (the "Jew"). Thus, I became finely attuned to religious apartheid as well. I understood that, with some exceptions, Muslims do not have a history or a psychology of tolerating other religions very well; on the contrary. Islamic history is one in which Muslims have taxed, impoverished, jailed, murdered, or exiled all those who do not convert to Islam. Today, the level of anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda in the Islamic world is lethal, toxic, and has unleashed a global jihad against both Israel and the West. We cannot afford to tolerate the intolerant nor can we afford to minimize the dangers to our civilization posed by Islamist fanatics who have successfully hijacked their religion and peoples. There were also "good" and moderate Germans during Hitler's reign. What matters is that they did not stand up to Hitler. What matters is that otherwise "good" people appeased him as well....

Lopez: Is it shocking to you that "feminism" can't give President Bush any credit, at least, say, for removing the Taliban from power?

Chesler: Yes. I published a letter in the New York Times congratulating him for doing so. I have also written about the powerful women's-rights language contained in many of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speeches throughout the Muslim Middle East. It is also shocking that the same feminists who protected President Bill Clinton's sexual abuse of women have not congratulated President Bush for his appointment of Condoleezza Rice and for his Administration's attempts to craft and enforce legislation against trafficking, both domestically and internationally.

Lopez: Did you actually get grief from feminist for writing about the "gender cleaning" of women in Sudan?

Chesler: Yes, I did. When I sent one such piece around, certain left feminists told me that they did not even want to read what I had written because they did not "approve" of my writing for conservative publications. Not even if my pro-woman pieces were solicited and welcomed in conservative quarters and totally censored in left-liberal mainstream quarters. I had a similar problem when I wrote about the refusal of Lukas Moodyson, the brilliant Swedish filmmaker, to allow his film against trafficking (Lilya-4-ever), to be shown at a feminist anti-trafficking conference in Israel. While he allowed the film to be shown in every country on earth where brothels, pimps, and traffickers flourished, he refused to allow anti-trafficking Israelis to show the film once because he disapproved of Israel's military policies. I wrote a piece about censorship and prejudice and about the demonization of Israel which was immediately rejected by the New York and L.A. Times. I published it in Frontpage Magazine and within 48 hours Moodyson reversed his decision and allowed the Israeli feminists to show his film. The fact that my piece got some immediate positive results did not matter. All that mattered was that I had published it in a so-called "right-wing rag."

In addition, as I write in The Death of Feminism, the level of anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda and intolerance towards all those who do not kow-tow to it is fairly monumental on many feminist list-serv groups. If one does not believe that America "deserved" 9/11; if one does not view America as the true "terrorist"; if one does not believe that Arabs and Muslims are being persecuted in America for "racist" reasons; and if one does not simultaneously believe that the Jews are "imagining" or "exaggerating" anti-Semitism ? then one is not welcome on such list-serv groups. In fact, I was literally "purged," Stalinist-style from one such group for my various pro-America and pro-Israel "Thought Crimes." It was a most instructive experience.

Lopez: What do you mean by "women's studies has been taken over by totalitarian thinkers?"

Chesler: The kind of closed-minded "political correctness" which I have just described above is typical of groupthink and totalitarian thinking. If someone thinks for herself in an independent and creative way and dares to come up with non-party-line conclusions, she or he is then, in classic Orwellian style, deemed the enemy, a traitor, a non-person. Their work will not be read or discussed. They will not be invited to debate or to debate in a civilized and honorable way. They will be called a "racist" and a "neoconservative." If a feminist dares raise the specter of Jew-hatred and the demonization of the Jewish state among leftists and feminists, she will quickly discover that she has become unwelcome in the mainstream media and among leftists (who actually think of themselves as liberals), and among feminists. Palestinianized Western feminists are more concerned with the so-called occupation of a country that does not exist (Palestine), than with the occupation of women's bodies worldwide under Islam. The fact that feminists and leftists still continue to call for boycotts of Israel and to actively demonstrate against a war-time president even after 9/11, 3/11, and 7/7 tells me that they have literally been brainwashed and that reality has no defining role in determining their thoughts or their actions.


Lopez: What's the "new feminism" you envision?

Chesler: I have no intention of leading a new feminist movement. Hopefully other, younger people might do that. For all the reasons mentioned above, I doubt I could work with feminists who are so anti-America, so anti-military, so anti-Israel, so depressingly left ? and so intolerant of intellectual diversity. I could work with feminists, especially religious, Republican, conservative, and Muslim feminists, who understand that totalitarian and terrorist Islam and jihad must be militarily defeated. If not, all our gains will be for naught.

I would very much like to see every American trade and peace treaties tied to women's rights. In addition, every micro-lending program should stipulate that girls in that particular village will not be genitally mutilated, forced to marry as children, and that they will be educated. I believe that there are feminists in the administration who are thinking similar thoughts. I could work with them, but I could also best work on such policies as part of a conservative think tank. The Western academy, as I know it, is no longer hospitable to non-politically correct thinking. See what happened to Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, when he crushed the divestment in Israel initiatives and dared to say aloud something that might be true about gender differences in math and science He was forced to resign. Also see how many distinguished and Saudi-funded universities feel that the concept of academic freedom exists solely to protect the hate speech of the Palestine Solidarity Movement and of other such hate groups.

Lopez: To what extent is there easy common ground on the Right and the Left as far as a new feminism goes?

Chesler: Perhaps such categories as "left" and "right" are no longer useful. I write about this at length in The Death of Feminism. On the other hand, the "Left" is aggressively secular and anti-religious; considers pornography to be "protected" hate speech; considers prostitution and trafficking to be forms of "sex work" which should be de-criminalized or legalized; views paternal sole-custody of children as the feminist solution to the problems that mothers have when they juggle child care and career responsibilities; believes that men and women are actually the "same"; has absolutely no foreign policy except that of opposing whatever President Bush and America do or ever have done ? they really might as well be French; and has no universal feminist policy vis-?-vis jihadic Islam and its Muslim victims. The "right" has opposite views on these subjects. Although some "right-wingers" have diverse views on abortion, civil rights for gay people, the role of multi-national corporations in a time of war, the importance of intellectual and ideological diversity; the dangers of appeasing the Islam, etc. there are few "left wingers" who are at all diverse on their issues. If I am wrong ? I hope they start saying so quickly, loudly, and proudly.


http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/chesler200603080754.asp

March 06, 2006, 8:33 a.m.
The Strip Club
Al Qaeda and Hamas in Gaza.
James Robbins


An interesting war of words has broken out in the Palestinian Authority. In an interview published March 2, Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas stated that he has intelligence information that al Qaeda has set up shop on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He calls the information very serious and troubling, and the implication is that al Qaeda was allowed to enter the PA by the local security forces, particularly in Gaza, which the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) controls. Hamas quickly denied that al Qaeda is present in Gaza, but added that if in fact they are there, it is Israel?s fault. Also, they stated that if their group is not treated favorably by the U.S., al Qaeda may just as well be there, to teach us a lesson. Not exactly an unequivocal rejection.

To complicate matters further, as this exchange was taking place al Jazeera ran excerpts from a new videotape from al Qaeda number-two Ayman al Zawahiri, urging Hamas to stick to the radical program. The group should hold firm against U.S. threats of withholding aid until they recognize Israel?s right to exist. Zawahiri counseled instead taking a hard line, rejecting calls for a coalition government and renouncing the ?Madrid and Oslo accords, the road map, and other agreements of surrender that violate, and even clash with the Shar'iah [Muslim law].? Zawahiri chastised those in Hamas who might seek compromise for political gain, even if the compromise is only temporary. His alternative? ?Well,? he said, ?it is the path of the prophets and messengers, the path of da'wah [Islamic call] and jihad; da'wah for the pure faith and jihad in its name until the land is liberated and the Muslim caliphate emerges, God willing.? Meanwhile leaflets were scattered across southern Gaza by ?The Army of Jihad and Preventing Corruption? that praised Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Reports of an al Qaeda presence in Gaza began circulating shortly after the Israeli pullout last August. A group styling itself the Al Qaeda Organization Jihad in Palestine announced its formation on a radical Islamist website in October 2005. The official Hamas Palestinian Forum website also carried the announcement. During Ramadan, the new group published and distributed religious booklets in various Strip mosques. Other reports have al Qaeda recruiting rigorously from disheartened members of the Gaza branch of the Fatah-affiliated al Aqsa Martyr?s Brigade, as well as among Hamas members stewing in Israeli prisons.

Making for Gaza is a natural move for al Qaeda, which has been seeking an Afghanistan-style base of operations since the fall of the Taliban. A sub-sovereign zone like the Strip, run by aggressive radicals, tolerant of criminality, and protected by international agreements, is the perfect outpost to pursue the violent task of erecting God?s Kingdom on Earth. In addition, it will place al Qaeda on the frontlines of the struggle with Israel, the last cause that can generate any significant unity among the Muslim (and especially Arab) world.

In the past, al Qaeda was decidedly unwelcome on that particular front. There were ideological differences; the mainstream Palestinian terror outfits were more nationalist than sectarian. Al Qaeda?s Palestinian co-founder Abdulla Azzam split from the PLO in the early 1970s for that very reason, and his influential work ?Defense of Muslim Lands? lays out a no-negotiation, no-compromise program with Israel, the U.S., or anyone else. (Azzam also helped found Hamas before his death from complications of a car bombing in 1989.) But beyond the ideological divide there was also an ego conflict, the clash of the terror divas. Yasser Arafat was synonymous with terrorism for decades. Palestine was his show; no room for a kid from Saudi on that stage.

Bin Laden?s scorn for Arafat was evident in his January 1999 interview with Time magazine, in which he denounced ?those who sympathize with the infidels ? such as the PLO in Palestine, or the so-called Palestinian Authority ? have been trying for tens of years to get back some of their rights. They laid down arms and abandoned what is called ?violence? and tried peaceful bargaining.? To no avail, in bin Laden?s opinion. After that, al Qaeda sent annual messages of support to the Palestinians, for example in 2003 stating, ?We will continue in the path of jihad; we are still with you; your blood is our blood, your honor is our honor, and your sons are our sons. Your blood will not be wasted; I swear that we will support you until Palestine is Islamic again.? With Arafat gone, Israel withdrawn from Gaza and Hamas in control, means, motive, and opportunity are in perfect alignment.

Some analysts observe that it is in Fatah?s interest, as well as Israel?s, to associate Hamas with al Qaeda, in order to discredit them; they thus seek to discount the potential links, or even al Qaeda presence, as propaganda. But the evidence is slowly mounting that al Qaeda is active in the Palestinian Authority, doing what they have been promising to do for years. It is odd indeed to be arguing which of three terrorist organizations is the most extreme, and how that reflects on the others. Would we somehow think less of Hamas if they were consorting with al Qaeda? The two groups have virtually identical worldviews, programs, and propensities to kill the innocent. We should not think much of Hamas in any case. However, the possibility that the Islamic Resistance Movement is aligning with our principle enemy in the global war on terrorism should give pause to those who, in this country and elsewhere, seek to secure millions of dollars in aid money for the PA. The U.S. and its Coalition partners have spent years developing the tools necessary to disrupt terrorist financing; we should not indirectly become the terrorists? new state sponsors.

? James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of the forthcoming Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.
   
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200603060833.asp

Took me a while to confirm that this site is straight up and not a put on:

Ask an Imam:

http://islam.tc/ask-imam/index.php

An example:

What is the islamic understanding about democracy, Is there any place for it in islam.   

The common form of democracy prevalent at the moment is representative democracy, in which the citizens do not exercise their right of legislating and issuing political decrees in person, but rather through representatives chosen by them. The constitution of a democratic country will be largely influenced by the needs and wants of its people. Thus, if its people want casinos, bars, gay marriages, prostitution, etc. then with sufficient public pressure, all these vices can be accommodated for. From this, it becomes simple to understand that there can never be scope for a democratic rule from the Islamic point of view.

and Allah Ta'ala Knows Best

Mufti Ebrahim Desai

Answer 15522

ANJRPC SUES NY/NJ PORT AUTHORITY FOR JAILING HONEST GUN OWNER

February 27, 2006 - The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. (ANJRPC) announced that it has commenced a lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and one of its police officers for wrongfully arresting and imprisoning for nearly five days a 57-year old Utah man delayed at Newark Airport by a baggage error while traveling from Utah to Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit seeks more than $3 million in damages for civil rights violations and a permanent injunction forcing the Port Authority to follow Federal law on interstate transport of locked, unloaded firearms that have been secured in luggage and declared by law-abiding citizens.

The Utah man, Gregg Revell, a real estate broker and family man with no criminal record and a Utah firearms permit, was flying alone from Salt Lake City, UT to Allentown, PA to retrieve a car he bought and drive it home. He was travelling with a firearm for personal protection. As required by Federal law, the firearm was unloaded, cased, locked and inside his luggage when he declared it at check-in in Salt Lake City on March 31, 2005.

Due to an airline-caused baggage error, Mr. Revell missed his connection from Newark to Allentown and had to stay overnight in New Jersey. When he checked in at Newark Airport the next morning to complete his travels, he again declared his firearm, as required by FAA regulations. He was then arrested for possession of a firearm without a New Jersey state license, and imprisoned in Essex County jail for five days until his family arranged bail, which had been initially set unusually high at $15,000 cash (no bond).

But Mr. Revell?s travels were protected by the Firearms Owner Protection Act, a Federal law passed in 1986 to protect law-abiding citizens who travel with firearms. (See 18 U.S.C. ? 926A.) That law trumps state and local gun laws and protects interstate travel with firearms under certain circumstances, all of which were present in Mr. Revell?s case. Several months after the arrest, all charges were withdrawn and the prosecutor?s case administratively dismissed.

"The Port Authority blatantly violated Federal law when it arrested Gregg Revell," said Scott Bach, President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and a member of the NRA Board of Directors. "Those charged with enforcing the law have a special responsibility to follow it themselves," Bach continued. "Mr. Revell?s arrest is part of a pattern of similar misconduct by the Port Authority throughout the New York-New Jersey metropolitan areas."

"This lawsuit is intended to send a signal not only to the Port Authority but to every agency and officer responsible for policing our airports and highways: if you violate the rights of law-abiding gun owners, you will be held fully accountable." The lawsuit also names the arresting Port Authority police officer, Scott Erickson, as a defendant.

Once inside Essex County prison, Mr. Revell was subjected to numerous atrocities. He was thrown into a holding cell with 28 inmates, many of whom were admitted murderers and rapists. He endured a repulsive vomit-covered bed and toilet, was denied his blood pressure and migraine medication, innoculated against his will, given inedible food, strip-searched, and left only with his wits to survive.

"I did nothing wrong yet was arrested and subjected to the worst treatment imaginable for almost a week," said Mr. Revell, who has 8 children, 8 grandchildren and has been married for 36 years. "I brought this lawsuit together with the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs because I want to stop this kind of abuse from ever happening again," said Revell. "No one should ever have to experience what I experienced," he said. "I paid the price, but I?m committed to making sure no one else does."

http://www.anjrpc.org/fopalawsuit.htm

Musings About the Drug War
Do you favor decriminalizing marijuana, cocaine and the like?

BY GEORGE MELLOAN
Sunday, February 26, 2006 12:01 a.m.

Economist Milton Friedman predicted in Newsweek nearly 34 years ago that Richard Nixon's ambitious "global war against drugs" would be a failure. Much evidence today suggests that he was right. But the war rages on with little mainstream challenge of its basic weapon, prohibition.
To be sure, Mr. Friedman wasn't the only critic. William Buckley's National Review declared a decade ago that the U.S. had "lost" the drug war, bolstering its case with testimony from the likes of Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief in Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif. But today discussion of the war's depressing cost-benefit ratio is being mainly conducted in the blogosphere, where the tone is predominantly libertarian. In the broader polity, support for the great Nixon crusade remains sufficiently strong to discourage effective counterattacks.

In broaching this subject, I offer the usual disclaimer. One beer before dinner is sufficient to my mind-bending needs. I've never sampled any of the no-no stuff and have no desire to do so. So let's proceed to discuss this emotion-laden issue as objectively as possible.

The drug war has become costly, with some $50 billion in direct outlays by all levels of government, and much higher indirect costs, such as the expanded prison system to house half a million drug-law offenders and the burdens on the court system. Civil rights sometimes are infringed. One sharply rising expense is for efforts to interdict illegal drug shipments into the U.S., which is budgeted at $1.4 billion this fiscal year, up 41% from two years ago.

That reflects government's tendency to throw more money at a program that isn't working. Not only have the various efforts not stopped the flow but they have begun to create friction with countries the U.S. would prefer to have as friends.

As the Journal's Mary O'Grady has written, a good case can be made that U.S.-sponsored efforts to eradicate coca crops in Latin America are winning converts among Latin peasants to the anti-American causes of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Their friend Evo Morales was just elected president of Bolivia mainly by the peasant following he won by opposing a U.S.-backed coca-eradication program. Colombia's huge cocaine business still thrives despite U.S. combative efforts, supporting, among others, leftist guerrillas.

More seriously, Mexico is being destabilized by drug gangs warring over access to the lucrative U.S. market. A wave of killings of officials and journalists in places like Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco is reminiscent of the 1930s Prohibition-era crime waves in Al Capone's Chicago and the Purple Gang's Detroit. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban are proselytizing opium-poppy growers by saying that the U.S. is their enemy. The claim, unlike many they use, has the merit of being true.

Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, making the trade immensely profitable--tax-free, of course. The more the U.S. spends on interdiction, the more incentive it creates for taking the risk of running drugs.

In 1933, the U.S. finally gave up on the 13-year prohibition of alcohol--a drug that is by some measures more intoxicating and dangerous to health than marijuana. That effort to alter human behavior left a legacy of corruption, criminality, and deaths and blindness from the drinking of bad booze. America's use of alcohol went up after repeal but no serious person today suggests a repeat of the alcohol experiment. Yet prohibition is still being attempted, at great expense, for the small portion of the population--perhaps little more than 5%--who habitually use proscribed drugs.

Mind-altering drugs do of course cause problems. Their use contributes to crime, automobile accidents, work-force dropouts and family breakups. But the most common contributor to these social problems is not the illegal substances. It is alcohol. Society copes by punishing drunken misbehavior, offering rehabilitation programs and warning youths of the dangers. Most Americans drink moderately, however, creating no problems either for themselves or society.

Education can be an antidote for self-abuse. When it was finally proved that cigarettes were a health risk, smoking by young people dropped off and many started lecturing their parents about that bad habit. LSD came and then went after its dangers became evident. Heroin's addictive and debilitative powers are well-known enough to limit its use to a small population. Private educational programs about the risks of drug abuse have spread throughout the country with good effect.

Some doctors argue that the use of some drugs is too limited. Marijuana can help control nausea after chemotherapy, relieve multiple-sclerosis pain and help patients whose appetites have been lowered to a danger level by AIDS. Morphine, some say, is used too sparingly for easing the terrible pain of terminally ill cancer patients. It is argued that pot and cocaine use by inner-city youths is a self-prescribed medicine for the depression and despair that haunts their existence. Doctors prescribe Prozac for the same problems of the middle class.

So what's the alternative? An army of government employees now makes a living from the drug laws and has a rather conflictive interest in claiming both that the drug laws are working and that more money is needed. The challenge is issued: Do you favor legalization? In fact, most drugs are legal, including alcohol, tobacco and coffee and the great array of modern, life-saving drugs administered by doctors. To be precise, the question should be do you favor legalization or decriminalization of the sale and use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines?

A large percentage of Americans will probably say no, mainly because they are law-abiding people who maintain high moral and ethical standards and don't want to surrender to a small minority that flouts the laws, whether in the ghettos of Washington D.C. or Beverly Hills salons. The concern about damaging society's fabric is legitimate. But another question needs to be asked: Is that fabric being damaged now?


Mr. Melloan is deputy editor, international of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008017

Sex and Guns
Posted on Thursday, February 23 @ 00:10:00 EST   

By Gerard Valentino


When abstinence is floated as a way to keep teenagers from having unwanted pregnancies, the left is openly scornful of the idea. Liberals claim that sex-education and familiarity with contraception are the only viable way to teach teenagers to practice safe sex. They argue that kids are going to have sex so it is important to teach them how to avoid the pitfalls involved with irresponsible behavior.

Liberals preach education as the answer for a host of other social ills as well, including discrimination, sexism and environmental issues.

Funny, however, that the only problem liberals refuse to attack with so-called education are accidental gun deaths among children. When it comes to guns, liberals and anti-gun groups, are unwilling to discuss how educating children can lead to a decrease in the very type of accident they use to justify their existence.

Currently, Ohio is considering a bill that would offer gun safety training as part of the high school curriculum. While pro-gun groups are quick to praise such a move as a way to decrease gun accidents through education, anti-gun leftists are already using their tired propaganda in opposition of the bill.

They claim that teaching gun-safety in schools will push a pro-gun culture on unsuspecting students. Yet, at the same time liberals claim that teaching sex-education with mentioning abstinence won?t teach a culture of promiscuity among high-school students.

The question at hand isn?t whether people agree with how sex-education is being taught in schools. It is simply a useful example of how the liberal anti-gun movement continues to fight their losing battle against guns with blinders on, completely unaware that they are becoming a political laughing-stock.

Pro-gun advocates have for years claimed that groups like the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence are not interested in pushing gun-safety and decreasing gun accidents, but instead have only one goal ? total gun confiscation.

Their decision to oppose a current proposal to teach gun-safety in high schools proves that pro-gun advocates are correct.

Liberal anti-gun groups, and their cohorts in the establishment media, are blinded by an emotional hatred of guns to such an extent that they would oppose a program designed to achieve their claimed goal of making kids safer. They won?t admit that if gun accidents are reduced it takes away their biggest public relations bonanza.

The liberal anti-gun reaction to such programs is actually a public relations win for the pro-gun movement because the American public is smart enough to see that anyone who truly wants a decrease in accidental gun deaths should support teaching gun-safety in schools.

Only the help of the establishment media keeps the anti-gun movement afloat by giving credence to the otherwise discredited studies and statistics bandied about by groups determined to confiscate guns. The establishment media also fails to point out the hypocrisy of how liberals recommend sex-education as a way to stop teen pregnancy, but refuse to accept gun-safety education as a way to stop teens from accidentally shooting each other.

The anti-gun movement has seen its power and credibility wane as gun-control laws have failed to bring about a violence free nirvana as promised. Legal concealed-carry put more guns on the street without a corresponding increase in crime which further damaged the argument that guns are at the root of crime. Now, in desperation they steadfastly refuse to accept that properly educating children on the dangers of guns is just another example of how far they will go further tragedy - and then exploit it.

They are terrified because they know that as people become educated about guns, and the gun issue, it will further expose their duplicity. A great example is how the anti-gunners use the absurd assertion that the definition of children includes anyone to the age of 25 when it comes to statistics on gun deaths, including suicides. But they are unwilling to care for children when it would really matter due to the fact that it would hurt their message.

Gun-safety programs in schools will save lives, and to steal a line from the anti-gun movement, if only one life is saved by such a program they are worth implementing.

Gerard Valentino is the Buckeye Firearms Association Central Ohio Chair, BuckeyeFirearms.org, and writes for the ValentinoChronicle.com

http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/article2989.html

A Failure of the Press
By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.

Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.

The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.

In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.

But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."

But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.

What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.

So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.

While we may disagree among ourselves about whether and when the public interest justifies the disclosure of classified wartime information, our general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact -- not opinion but fact -- that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent. There should be no group or mob veto of a story that is in the public interest.

When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.

William J. Bennett is the Washington fellow of the Claremont Institute and a former secretary of education. Alan M. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard.

Bystander Fired Deadly Shot, Not Officer


There were two big developments Monday in the case of a motorist who was shot and killed along Greenwell Springs Road Friday after a fight with a police officer.  Investigators say an autopsy shows the deadly bullet was fired by a bystander, not the officer.  Police also announced that no charges would be filed in the case, either against the police officer involved or the bystander who fired the fatal shot into the head of George Temple.

East Baton Rouge Sheriff's spokesman Greg Phares says Officer Brian Harrision was escorting a funeral procession Friday when he pulled Temple over and wrote him a ticket for breaking into the procession.  According to Phares, that's when Temple attacked Harrison.  Police say Perry Stevens was walking outside of the Auto Zone on Greenwell Springs Road when he heard Harrison yelling for help.  Harrison was reportedly on his back with Temple on top of him.  That's when Stevens went to his car and grabbed his .45 caliber pistol.

According to Col. Greg Phares, "[Mr. Stevens] orders Mr. Temple to stop and get off the officer.  The verbal commands are ignored and Mr. Stevens fires four shots, all of which struck Mr. Temple."

Perry Stevens fired four shots into Temple's torso.  Officer Harrison had already fired one shot into Temple's abdomen.  With Temple still struggling with the officer, Perry continued to advance toward the scuffle.

"He again orders Mr. Temple to stop what he was doing and get off the officer.  Those commands are ignored and he fires a fifth shot and that hits his head.  The incident is over with, and as you know, Mr. Temple is dead."

Police are calling the shooting death justified.  Perry Stevens has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.  Col. Phares would not give out any more details relating to the shooting.  Both Phares and Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff stopped short of crediting Stevens with saving the officer's life.  LeDuff says the entire incident is unfortunate.

"I spoke with his father at the scene briefly," said LeDuff.  "I think this is a tragic situation all around."

9 News is told George Temple has a criminal record, and Officer Harrison was involved in a shooting while employed as a prison guard in East Baton Rouge Parish, where he was suspended for three days back in 1995.

Reporter:  Jim Shannon

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4527526

The criminal constituency

By JOHN R. LOTT JR.

February 16, 2006

WASHINGTON -- If you can't win elections, change the rules.
Despite warnings from people such as the chairman of Maryland's State Board of Elections that the new rules are inviting voter fraud, the General Assembly has pushed through regulations weakening safeguards on provisional ballots, absentee ballots and a long early voting period.

Not satisfied, the legislature now wants to make it easier for convicted murderers, rapists, armed robbers and other violent criminals to vote. Overall, 150,000 felons would be eligible.

When asked if the felon voting bill was motivated to defeat Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s re-election bid this year, Del. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, replied, "Of course that's the reason."

The power to deny voting rights to ex-convicts now rests with the states, so standards vary across the country. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution explicitly allows for states to deny felons the right to vote.

Maryland Democrats are not alone in wanting to let felons vote. Last year, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. John Kerry introduced the Count Every Vote Act, which would restore voting rights to felons who had completed their prison terms, parole or probation.

Maryland Democrats are proposing even more liberal rules and would allow any convict who is not imprisoned or waiting to serve a prison sentence to cast a ballot. Similar legislation is being pushed in other states.

Democrats have a good reason to want ex-convicts to vote: Felons overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

In recent academic work, Jeff Manza and Marcus Britton of Northwestern University and Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota estimated that Bill Clinton pulled 86 percent of the felon vote in 1992 and a whopping 93 percent in 1996.

The researchers found that about one-third of felons vote when given the chance. So if all 150,000 eligible Maryland felons are re-enfranchised, about 50,000 will cast ballots, and Democrats will pick up a net gain of 40,000 votes. Mr. Ehrlich still would have won in 2002, but his margin would have been cut by almost two-thirds.

At the national level, the study's results indicate that the felon vote would have given Democrats the White House in 2000 and control of the Senate from 1986 to 2004.

Felons voting for liberals is not just something we see in the United States. The Canadian Liberal Party recently passed legislation letting criminals vote while they are still in prison. Before the most recent election, a Canadian TV reporter said he went "from cell to cell, [where] prisoner after prisoner told [the reporter] they were voting Liberal, with no exceptions."

But why shouldn't felons be able to vote if they have paid their debt to society?

It is hardly a radical notion to penalize felons long after they have left prison or completed parole. Laws deny ex-cons the right to hold office, to retain professional licenses (lawyers, for example, lose their ability to practice) or business licenses, to work for the government, or to serve as an officer in a publicly traded company. In some cases, felons can lose their right to inherit property, to collect pension benefits or even to get a truck-driving license. In fact, in most states, the loss of voting rights does not last as long as other prohibitions.

Post-sentence penalties are placed not only on criminals who have committed felonies, but also on those who have committed misdemeanors. This includes, under federal law, the right to own a gun. It's doubtful that Maryland or national Democrats will be crusading to restore that right any time soon.

My guess is that most felons care more about getting good jobs than they do about the right to vote.

There are important reasons for banning felons, particularly violent ones, from voting. When people harm others, we learn something about them. Do we want someone who has committed multiple rapes helping determine how much money will be spent on social programs that help rape victims? Do we want convicted child molesters or murderers voting to determine what police budgets will be?

Democrats appear to be angling not for the votes of centrists but for the votes of the most dedicated left-wing constituency in America: criminals.

Do most Americans really believe that felons constitute a minority group that deserves such special favors?

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His e-mail is jlott@aei.org.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.felons16feb16,0,5189088.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

Iran Renames Danish Pastries
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associat
ed Press Writer Thu Feb 16, 2:23 PM ET

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranians love Danish pastries, but when they look for the flaky dessert at the bakery they now have to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."
 
Bakeries across the capital were covering up their ads for Danish pastries Thursday after the confectioners' union ordered the name change in retaliation for caricatures of the Muslim prophet published in a Danish newspaper.

"Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of now the name of Danish pastries will give way to 'Rose of Muhammad' pastries," the union said in its order.

"This is a punishment for those who started misusing freedom of expression to insult the sanctities of Islam," said Ahmad Mahmoudi, a cake shop owner in northern Tehran.

One of Tehran's most popular bakeries, "Danish Pastries," covered up the word "Danish" on its sign with a black banner emblazoned "Oh Hussein," a reference to a martyred saint of Shiite Islam. The banner is a traditional sign of mourning.

The shop owner declined to comment Thursday.

In Zartosht Street in central Tehran, cake shop owner Mahdi Pedari didn't cover up the word "Danish pastries" on his menu, but put the new name next to it.

"I did so just to inform my customers that Rose of Muhammad is the new name for Danish pastries," he said.

Some customers took immediately to the new name. But others were less enthusiastic about the protest.

"I just want the sweet pastries. I have nothing to do with the name," homemaker Zohreh Masoumi told the sales clerk taking her order.

The drawings, which have offended many Muslims, were published in a Danish newspaper in September and then reprinted in European and American newspapers. One depicted the prophet with a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse.

Islam widely holds that representations of Muhammad are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry. At least 19 people have been killed in protests over the past several weeks, most of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Consumer boycotts of Danish goods, from Havarti cheese to Lego, are costing Denmark's companies millions in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Muslim countries.

Iranians love sweets, often bringing candies and pastries to parties. So-called "Danish pastries" are extremely popular.

The Danish's distinctive dough was first created in the 17th century by a French apprentice baker who forgot to add butter to the flour and tried to hide his mistake by folding lumps of it into the dough. It became known as "a thousand leaves" in France.

It was copied in Italy ? where it is known as "folded pastry" ? and Italian bakers took it to Austria. It journeyed from there to Denmark when Danish bakers went on strike and replacements imported from Austria brought along what became known in Denmark as "Viennese Bread."

The pastry became the Danish to the rest of the world, probably, according to the Danish bakers' union, because Danish bakers emigrated to so many countries.

In Iran, the pastries are domestically baked, not imported. Iran has cut all commercial ties with Denmark in retaliation for the prophet cartoons.

Iran's Danish renaming wasn't the first time a food name has become a symbol of protest. A Republican congressman from North Carolina helped lead an effort to make sure Capitol Hill cafeterias changed their menus to advertise "freedom fries" instead of french fries after France opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

February 14, 2006, 8:10 a.m.
Red China on the March
The People?s Republic moves onto Grenada.

By Steven W. Mosher

In January 2005, Grenada established diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, breaking off its longstanding relationship with Taiwan in the process. The sudden move followed a hotly contested election in which the ruling party won by the smallest of margins. The PRC has opened a substantial embassy in the tiny island nation ? Ambassador Shen Hongshun and entourage arrived in April ? and is rebuilding, at considerable expense, the national soccer stadium that was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. Other aid has been promised, including funds for scholarships in China and the renovation of the main hospital.

China's move into Grenada clones a pattern it has followed elsewhere in the eastern Caribbean. Exactly the same scenario was played out last year in the neighboring island of Dominique, and some years ago in St. Lucia. Each of these island republics now has a full-scale Chinese embassy, a completed or promised national soccer stadium, and is receiving continuing aid. Dominica, for example, is slated to receive a staggering U.S.$112 million in aid, which works out to $1,600 for each of the island's 70,000 inhabitants. Some of this aid was cash, ostensibly to ease the government's cash flow problems. Coincidently, Chinese construction battalions have landed a number of government-funded infrastructural projects in the region, such as a contract to build a storm drainage system in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia.

Chinese immigration to the region is picking up, and a cultural offensive is underway. The relationships between China and the islands' ruling parties are increasingly cozy, with leading politicians regularly being invited to China for all-expenses-paid "familiarization" tours. Those not important enough for the "foreign guest" treatment receive their dose of propaganda in their own homes. Shows touting China's history, culture, and peaceful intentions are broadcast for hours on the islands' state-owned television channels ? all paid for by Beijing, of course. Let a hundred flowers boom, one might say.

But Chinese moneybags-diplomacy is not cheap, and Beijing's rulers are not known for their largess ? unless, that is, it serves their strategic interests. So what does Beijing hope to gain from its investments?

The immediate target is Taiwan, of course. By causing those few nations which still recognize the island-democracy to break off ties, Beijing hopes to undermine Taiwan's de facto independence and hasten the day of reunification ? on its terms. The PRC is fighting the Chinese civil war even in the Caribbean. Look for St. Vincent and the Grenadines to break ties with Taiwan in the next year or two.

But this alone does not explain China's continuing aggressive and expensive efforts to bring these small nations ? Grenada has less than 100,000 people ? under its sway. With staffs ranging from five to ten people, these embassies are able to hold regular meetings and informal dinners with leading political figures, and to monitor the eastern Caribbean's political and economic environment on a daily basis. By way of contrast, the U.S. doesn't even maintain a single diplomat in any of these countries. Instead, the U.S. ambassador to Barbados is jointly accredited to the other island nations in the Eastern Caribbean and is a complete stranger to most eastern Caribbean figures in the public and private sector.

These islands are right in our backyard (the Caribbean has been called the soft and vulnerable underbelly of the United States), and China's actions in the West Indies are of a piece with their well known activities in Cuba and Panama. While none of these islands have any great military potential for electronic eavesdropping, and none sits aside a maritime choke point, it would be foolish to forget the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s. Dealing with an expansive China in the Far East will be complicated enough without having a dozen aggressively pro-Chinese nations sitting in and around the Caribbean basin.

For now, however, it seems that China has a different purpose in mind. Recall that each of these independent nations is a member of countless international bodies, chief among them the general assembly of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. In some of these organizations, their representatives hold considerable rank. The ambassador from St. Lucia to the U.N. actually presided over the general assembly during its 2004 session. If the nations of the Caribbean could be induced to vote consistently with China in either of these bodies, this PRC-led bloc could become a force to be reckoned with. It would prove especially useful to Beijing in the event of a future confrontation with the U.S. over Taiwan, for instance, or over trade.

China is widely believed to be flaunting WTO rules, in part by keeping its currency significantly undervalued. (The recent 2.1 percent revaluation of the yuan was insignificant.) Suppose that an unfair trade case were brought against China by the U.S. government in the WTO. Such cases are resolved, ultimately, by a vote, with WTO rules requiring a supermajority of 62 percent of the member states. Who knows if the governments of Grenada, Dominica, and St. Lucia, having been the beneficiaries of significant amounts of PRC largess, would vote with the U.S. or with China?

What should we do to counter China's moves in the Caribbean? First, we must stop taking the region for granted, reacting only after the fact, as we did after a communist coup in Grenada in 1983. That crisis, it is well to recall, would have been much worse if other Caribbean nations had not taken a firm stand against the Russian and Cuban-supported coup, and voted in favor of U.S. intervention. Would the new crop of politicians, so assiduously courted by China, come down on our side in the event of a similar problem?

To put it another way, can we allow China, an up-and-coming superpower, to replace the U.S. as the predominant political influence in the region? Opening embassies in each of these states, so that we are in a position to make America's case directly to local government officials, is essential. Thwarting China's efforts to buy friends and influence governments requires not just foreign aid ? although this should be increased ? but private investment as well. Increasingly, foreign investment is coming from everywhere but the United States. A Free Trade Zone for the West Indies would be a good first step toward fixing this.

China has a long history of establishing tributary relationships between it and lesser states, supporting local tyrants in return for their allegiance. While we work to bring transparency and openness to China, we don't want China to bring corruption and deception to existing democracies and international organizations. The Caribbean can't wait.

? Steven W. Mosher is the president of the Population Research Institute and the author of Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World.


   
   
 


    
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mosher200602140810.asp

Curse of the Moderates
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 10

As much of the Islamic world erupts in a studied frenzy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, there are voices of reason being heard on both sides. Some Islamic leaders and organizations, while endorsing the demonstrators' sense of grievance and sharing their outrage, speak out against using violence as a vehicle of expression. Their Western counterparts -- intellectuals, including most of the major newspapers in the United States -- are similarly balanced: While, of course, endorsing the principle of free expression, they criticize the Danish newspaper for abusing that right by publishing offensive cartoons, and they declare themselves opposed, in the name of religious sensitivity, to doing the same.

God save us from the voices of reason.

What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.

Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters, merely using different means to advance the same goal: to impose upon the West, with its traditions of freedom of speech, a set of taboos that is exclusive to the Islamic faith. These are not defenders of religion but Muslim supremacists trying to force their dictates upon the liberal West.

And these "moderates" are aided and abetted by Western "moderates" who publish pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung and celebrate the "Piss Christ" (a crucifix sitting in a jar of urine) as art deserving public subsidy, but who are seized with a sudden religious sensitivity when the subject is Muhammad.

Had they not been so hypocritical, one might defend their refusal to republish these cartoons on the grounds that news value can sometimes be trumped by good taste and sensitivity. After all, on grounds of basic decency, American newspapers generally -- and correctly -- do not publish pictures of dead bodies, whatever their news value.

There is a "sensitivity" argument for not having published the cartoons in the first place, back in September when they first appeared in that Danish newspaper. But it is not September. It is February. The cartoons have been published, and the newspaper, the publishers and Denmark itself have come under savage attack. After multiple arsons, devastating boycotts, and threats to cut off hands and heads, the issue is no longer news value, i.e., whether a newspaper needs to publish them to inform the audience about what is going on. The issue now is solidarity.

The mob is trying to dictate to Western newspapers, indeed Western governments, what is a legitimate subject for discussion and caricature. The cartoons do not begin to approach the artistic level of Salman Rushdie's prose, but that's not the point. The point is who decides what can be said and what can be drawn within the precincts of what we quaintly think of as the free world.

The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy -- to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.

What is at issue is fear. The unspoken reason many newspapers do not want to republish is not sensitivity but simple fear. They know what happened to Theo van Gogh, who made a film about the Islamic treatment of women and got a knife through the chest with an Islamist manifesto attached.

The worldwide riots and burnings are instruments of intimidation, reminders of van Gogh's fate. The Islamic "moderates" are the mob's agents and interpreters, warning us not to do this again. And the Western "moderates" are their terrified collaborators who say: Don't worry, we won't. It's those Danes. We're clean. Spare us. Please.

File this one under "know your enemy."

2/3/2005   Clip No. 1024

Hamas Leader Khaled Mash'al at a Damascus Mosque: The Nation of Islam Will Sit at the Throne of the World and the West Will Be Full of Remorse When It Is Too Late

Following are excerpts from an address given by Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al at the Al-Murabit Mosque in Damascus. The address was delivered following the Friday sermon at the mosque and was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 3, 2006.

Khaled Mash'al: We apologize to our Prophet Muhammad, but we say to him: Oh Prophet of Allah, do not be saddened, your nation will be victorious.

We say to this West, which does not act reasonably, and does not learn its lessons: By Allah, you will be defeated. You will be defeated in Palestine, and your defeat there has already begun. True, it is Israel that is being defeated there, but when Israel is defeated, its path is defeated, those who call to support it are defeated, and the cowards who hide behind it and support it are defeated. Israel will be defeated, and so will whoever supported or supports it.

America will be defeated in Iraq. Wherever the [Islamic] nation is targeted, its enemies will be defeated, Allah willing. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Iraq, and it will be victorious in all Arab and Muslim lands. "Their multitudes will be defeated and turn their backs [and flee]." These fools will be defeated, the wheel of time will turn, and times of victory and glory will be upon our nation, and the West will be full of remorse, when it is too late.

They think that history has ended with them. They do not know that the law of Allah cannot be changed or replaced. "You shall not find a substitute for the law of Allah. You shall not find any change to the law of Allah." Today, the Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening, and it will reach its peak, Allah willing. It will be victorious. It will link the present to the past. It will open up the horizons of the future. It will regain the leadership of the world. Allah willing, the day is not far off.

Don't you see that every act of deceit they contrive is being turned against them by Allah? Don't you see that they make every effort to defeat us militarily, but fail to do so? Israel and the occupation forces in Iraq are supplied with the entire Western military arsenal, yet they fail and are defeated.

Don't you see that they believe they are capable of using democracy to deceive the people, but then democracy is turned against them? Don't you see that they are spending their money in efforts to block the way of Allah, to thwart Hamas, to defeat it, and to help those whom they want, but [this plot] is turned against them? They are not acting reasonably.

They do not understand the Arab or Muslim mentality, which rejects the foreigner. Our Arab forefathers, before the advent of Islam, rejected the aggressors and the foreigners.

[...]

I bring good tidings to our beloved Prophet Muhammad: Allah's promise and the Prophet's prophecy of our victory in Palestine over the Jews and over the oppressive Zionists has begun to come true.

[...]

I say to the [European countries]: Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it. This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. Do not leave a black mark in the collective memory of the nation, because our nation will not forgive you.

Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good. Our nation is moving forwards, and it is in your interest to respect a victorious nation.

[...]

Our nation will be victorious. When it reaches the leadership of the world, and controls its own will decisions, then it will prevent this overt interference [in our affairs], and its pillaging of natural resources, and will prevent these recurring offenses against our land, against our nation, and against our holy places ? then you will regret it.

The Western countries must stop the fools. Are these reasonable people? They allow offenses against Allah and the prophets. They are not offending only Muhammad, but all the prophets. But when an historian among them talks about the Holocaust, it is the sin of all sins. If anybody criticizes the Jews, this constitutes anti-Semitism. By law, they hold their own people accountable [for that]. The West, which waved the slogans of liberty after the French Revolution, three centuries ago, does not respect its own principles or slogans today. It violates them.

This victory, which was clearly evident in the elections, conveys a message to Israel, to America, and to all the oppressors around the world: You have no way of overcoming us. If you want war, we are ready. If you want democracy, we are ready. Whatever you want ? we are ready. You will not defeat us. The time of defeat is over. Defeat within six days, defeat within hours, the defeat of armies ? all this is over.

Today, you are fighting the army of Allah. You are fighting against peoples, for whom death for the sake of Allah, and for the sake of honor and glory, is preferable to life. You are fighting a nation that doest not tire, even after a 1,000 years of fighting. Today, you are facing peoples filled with faith, with the love of Allah, the love of Allah's Prophet, with bravery, glory, and pride ? a nation that knows its way, a nation that knows what it is, a nation that respects itself. How can you possibly defeat us?

There is a chasm between you and our defeat. You will be the ones to be defeated, Allah willing. The time of defeat is gone, and the day of victory has come, Allah willing. Wherever you turn, you will fail.

Crowd: Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America.

Khaled Mash'al: Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day. America will be of no avail to them. Their generals will be of no avail to them. The last of their generals has been forgotten. Allah has made him disappear. He's over. Gone is that Sharon, behind whose back they would hide and find shelter, and with whom they would feel relatively secure. Today they have frail leaders, who don't even know where our Lord placed them.

Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.

[...]

Their weapons will be of no avail to them. Their nuclear weapons will be of no use to them. They thought that they had hegemony over the region with their nuclear weapons, but suddenly Pakistan popped up with Islamic nuclear weapons, and they are afraid of Iran and several Arab countries have some chemical weapons.

Israel has begun to sense that its superiority has come to an end. Its army, which has superior conventional weapons ? the air force, the armored corps, and the missiles ? there are no longer wars in which these are used.

The Arabs have said: We don't want [conventional] wars, thank you very much. Leave the war to the peoples. Today, the Israeli weapons are of no use against the peoples. We have imposed a new equation in the war. In this equation, our tools are stronger. That is why we will defeat them, Allah willing.

[...]

"If you fight them, they will turn their backs on you, and will not be victorious." But the problem is that we need to fight them first. If we sleep at home, how are we to beat them?! "If you fight them..." ? that is a divine promise... "If" ? It is conditional: "If you fight them, they will turn their backs on you and will not be victorious." And indeed, when we began to fight, and we armed ourselves with a will to fight, we defeated them.

[...]

That is why Allah Akbar [Allah is greater]. We say that every day ? Allah Akbar. Yes, Allah is greater than America. Allah is greater than the oppressors. Allah is greater than the superpowers. Allah is greater than the tyranny of the oppressing world, and Allah is greater than Israel. Since Allah is greater, and He supports us, we will be victorious.

[...]

By Allah, I know that all Arab leaders ? and I have met many of them ? deep inside want the resistance in Palestine to be victorious, and want Palestine to be liberated. Perhaps the need for flattery and for diplomacy, and the American hegemony force other things on them, but in their hearts they are happy when we are victorious.

[...]

If before the Hamas victory, there were several military wings, each with a few hundred or a few thousand fighters, under the rule of Hamas, if you continue to besiege us, to starve our people, to ignore our rights, and if you continue your occupation, your aggression, and your assassinations, we, the Hamas, will declare a general call to arms. We will place the entire Palestinian people at the disposal of the resistance and its weapons.

Crowd: Allah akbar, Allah be praised. Allah akbar, Allah be praised. Allah akbar, Allah be praised. Allah akbar, Allah be praised. Allah akbar, Allah be praised. Allah akbar, Allah be praised.

Khaled Mash'al: Be careful not to drive our people into a corner - Occupation, aggression, assassinations, 9,000 male and female prisoners, preventing aid, imposing a siege, causing starvation ? and on top of all this, you don't want to recognize democracy and its results.

The German [Chancellor Angela] Merkel pops up and says: Democracy and success in the elections are not sufficient for Hamas to gain legitimacy. To hell with you all. How are we supposed to gain legitimacy? When you said we had the legitimacy of resistance, you called it terrorism. Now, we say we have the legitimacy of democracy, but you deny it. In that case, you yourself are not legitimate, because you emerged through democracy. This is the logic of a frail and defeatist person.

Brothers and sister, there is confusion in the Western world, and in the American administration. Allah has come to them from where they did not expect him. That is the grace of Allah. That is why we do not fear them. We do not fear their threats.

Today they give us an ultimatum: Recognize Israel. Wonderful! The murderer is not required by anyone to recognize the rights of his victim, but the victim is required to recognize the rights of his murderer, and to sing his praises.

[...]

Hamas has a vision. Hamas has a plan. Hamas can manage the political battle, just like it managed the military battle, but in a different language, with different tools, and recognizing Israel is not one of them. Nor is giving up the rights, giving up the right to resistance, and nor is giving up the weapons of the resistance.

Nevertheless, we want to deal with politics, but there is a difference between the politics of the weak and defeatists, which we will constantly repeat ? the kind of politics that does not impress the enemy and so it does nothing, because, like in the market, products that are praised too much become cheap. If we continue to praise our products, constantly saying: "We love peace," "We have given up the option of war," "Peace is our strategic option," "For God's sake, Israel, give us a few scraps of land" ? By Allah, we will be degraded in the eyes of our enemies.

We will conduct our politics in the language of victory. We will conduct our policy in a confident language. We will conduct our politics in the language of those who are steadfast and sure of themselves. Besides, by Allah, after the people has elected us, and has bestowed upon us all this power, we will disrespect its rights?

[...]

The people has given us a deposit, and has empowered us to liberate its land, to restore Jerusalem and its holy places. It has empowered us to release 9,000 male and female prisoners. It has empowered us to stop the aggression, to liberate the land, and to restore its rights. The people has empowered us to bring back 5.5 million Palestinian refugees and displaced people to their homeland. After all this, Hamas ? in order to please America and the European Union, and in order for the pressure on us to stop, and in order for their highnesses to allow us to establish a government... We are not trying to please them.

[...]

I say to America, Europe, and the West: It is in your interests to change your relations and policies regarding the Arab and Islamic nation and the Palestinian cause. Because we are winning, it is in your interests to deal with the victors, not the losers.

Israel will be defeated and will be of no use to you. The Arabs will be victorious. The Muslims will be victorious. Palestine will be victorious. Change your policy soon, if you want to protect your interests, and maintain healthy relations with the East.

http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1024.

Herbert E. Meyer: Take Out the Mullahs ? Tonight
The American Thinker | February 7th, 2006 | Herbert E. Meyer


To think clearly about the looming crisis with Iran, close your eyes and imagine that you?re standing outside your children?s school. It?s 2:55pm, and you?re chatting amiably with other parents while waiting for the 3pm bell to ring.  Suddenly you see a man running toward the school, holding a hand grenade and shouting: ?I hate kids.  I welcome death.?


Now, what do you propose to do?


One option is to engage your fellow parents in a dialogue about the serious and complex questions raised by the running man with the grenade.


For instance, you might try to calculate precisely how long it will take him to reach the school.  When he does reach the school, will he stop or go inside?  If he does go inside, will he run toward the basement, or toward the auditorium where the third and fourth grades have been brought to watch a video?  (It?s probably about ?safe sex? ? but what the schools teach our kids is another subject for another day.)  Is the hand grenade real, or might it be a fake?  If the grenade is real, does the man really know how to pull the pin?  And if he does, how big will be blast radius be and what?s the potential number of casualties?


And why is the man doing this?  Is he really a vicious killer?  Or is he a harmless but mentally disturbed individual who didn?t take his medication today and slipped out of the house without being noticed by his wife?  Or is this just a case of a well-meaning but very misguided protester who?s mad at the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto accords, or who?s upset because dolphins are still getting caught in tuna nets?  Oh, and is it possible that in addition to the hand grenade he?s got a gun inside his coat pocket?


Should you try to talk with the man?  Or would it be better to notify the school?s principal, and perhaps suggest he call the police?


And remember?while you and your fellow parents debate all this, the distance between the man holding the grenade and your kids is narrowing.


The Option to Act


Your other option is to take the man down ? now, this minute, however you can ? and to sort out the mess later.


If you go for this option, it?s because you believe that anyone who runs toward a school with what appears to be a live grenade while shouting ?I hate kids.  I welcome death? forfeits all rights to a cautious, comprehensive inquiry about his motives and real capabilities.  If it turns out that the grenade was a fake, or that the man is a harmless nut who really wouldn?t hurt a fly ? too bad.  And if the man or his family sues you or the school district for injury or wrongful death ? so what.


If you choose this option, it?s because you understand that when someone puts your children?s lives at risk, the instinct for survival trumps the analytic process.  Take too long to think, and you may lose the opportunity to act ? and it?s impossible to accurately project when this line will be crossed until you?re already over it.


Okay, now let?s turn our attention to Iran.


The country is led by individuals who are proven, ruthless killers.  Several of them ? most especially the country?s president, Mahmoud Amadinejad ? are visibly insane.  They have launched huge programs to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, and Iran has both the money and talent to pull it off.  They have pledged to wipe at least one country off the map ? Israel?and they don?t like us, either.


In response, our diplomats are fanning out to engage our allies in ?frank and comprehensive? consultations about the looming, potential crisis.  They are even struggling mightily to bring non-allies including France, Russia and China into the dialogue.  Our State Department is ?cautiously optimistic? that the issue will eventually be brought to the U.N. Security Council.


Meanwhile, members of Congress are demanding to know how much time we have before it will be too late to act.  Just last week the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that in the judgment of our country?s intelligence experts, Iran ?probably? hasn?t yet built a bomb or gotten its hands on enough fissile material to build one.  Over in Vienna the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that it will be several years, at least, before Iran?s mullahs have a nuke.


What Can We Do?


Based on public comments by officials of the Bush Administration and of various European and Asian governments, there are four options on the table for dealing with Iran:  First, do nothing since Iran won?t actually have nukes for several years ? and hope that the mullahs really aren?t serious about using them.  Second, engage the mullahs diplomatically in hopes of dissuading them from pursuing their present course.  Third, help trigger a revolution by providing as much covert support as possible to those within Iran ? students and a growing range of worker organizations, for example ? who are already demonstrating against their hated regime.  And fourth, launch a military strike on Iran?s nuclear facilities to destroy, or at least delay, that country?s weapons programs.


Alas, none of these options is any good.  The first is feckless, and the second is hopeless.  The third ? helping support a revolution ? is terrific, but even under the best possible circumstances would take a long time to bear fruit.  And the fourth option ? taking out the nuclear facilities with military force ? is extraordinarily difficult to execute, runs the real risk of igniting a political explosion throughout the Moslem world, and in any case it isn?t imminent.


Meanwhile, with each day that passes the distance between Iran?s mullahs and nuclear weapons is narrowing.  And remember:  Take too long to think, and you may lose the opportunity to act ? and it?s impossible to accurately project when this line will be crossed until you?re already over it.


Indeed, we may already be over the line.  While it may be correct, as Director Negroponte has testified, that Iran ?probably? hasn?t yet built a bomb or gotten its hands on enough fissile material to build one?it also may not be correct.  Given our intelligence community?s recent track record, it would be foolhardy to place much confidence in this judgment.  Generally, countries trying to build nuclear weapons succeed sooner rather than later ? usually to the great surprise of Western intelligence services.  And isn?t it possible that Iran already has a bomb or two that it bought rather than built itself?  When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 there were the so-called ?loose nukes? that the Soviet military wasn?t able to account for.  Make a list of those countries with the money and desire to get its hands on one of these weapons ? and Iran tops the list.


It Isn?t Only Nukes


Most worrisome, while everyone in Washington is focusing on nuclear weapons, no one has uttered so much as a peep about the possibility that Iran may be developing chemical or biological weapons.  These weapons are far less costly than nuclear weapons, and the technology required to develop them is more widely available.  And since a cupful of anthrax or botulism is enough to kill 100,000 people, our ability to detect these weapons is ? zilch.  So why wouldn?t the mullahs in Teheran order the development of chemical and biological weapons?  If they really do plan to wipe Israel ? or us ? off the map, these will do the job just as well as nukes.  And if reports are true that Saddam Hussein had such weapons before the war and shipped them out to Syria and Iran before we attacked in 2003 ? then the mullahs already have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.


Simply put, Iran?s nuclear weapons program, combined with the murderous comments of that country?s president, is the political equivalent of a man running toward your children?s school holding a hand grenade and shouting ?I hate kids.  I welcome death.?  The risk of taking time?to think, to talk, to analyze, to co-ordinate with other countries ? is just too high.  We know where Amadinejad and the mullahs work, and we ought to know where they live.  (And if we don?t know, the Israelis do and would be more than happy to lend a hand.)  We have cruise missiles, Stealth fighters, and B-1 bombers that can fly from the US to Teheran, drop their lethal loads, then return to the US without ever landing en route.  We have skilled, courageous Special Forces teams that can get themselves on the ground in Teheran quietly and fast.


The question is whether we still have within us the instinct for survival.  If we do, then our only course is to act ? now, this minute, however we can ? and to take out the mullahs.  Tonight.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA?s National Intelligence Council.  His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization  has become an international best-seller.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5227

Facts vs. Fiction: A Report from the Front
By Karl Zinsmeister

Your editor has just returned from another month in Iraq?my fourth extended tour in the last two and a half years. During November and December I joined numerous American combat operations, including the largest air assault since the beginning of the war, walked miles of streets and roads, entered scores of homes, listened to hundreds of Iraqis, observed voting at a dozen different polling sites, and endured my third roadside ambush. With this latest firsthand experience, here are answers to some common queries about how the war is faring.
 
Has the Iraq war been too costly?
 
Well, nearly every war is riddled with disappointment and pain, Iraq certainly included. But judged fairly, Iraq has been much less costly and debacle-ridden than the Civil War, World War II, Korea, and the Cold War?each considered in retrospect to have been noble successes.
 
President Lincoln had to try five different commanders before settling on Ulysses Grant, and even Grant stumbled many times on the way to victory. The Union Army suffered 390,000 dead in four years, with fully 29 percent of the men who served being killed or wounded in what some critics claimed was ?an unnecessary war.?
 
World War II was a serial bloodbath. Battles like Iwo Jima, Anzio, Ardennes, and Okinawa each killed, in a matter of days and weeks, several times the number of soldiers we have lost in Iraq. Intelligence was wrong. Planning failed. Brutal collateral damage was done to civilian non-combatants. Soldiers were killed by friendly fire. POWs were sometimes executed. Military and civilian leaders miscalculated repeatedly. During WWII, 7 percent of our G.I.s were killed or wounded.
 
Korea was first lost before it could be re-taken, at great cost, and thanks to political interference the war ended in a fruitless stalemate. Fully 8 percent of the American soldiers who fought on the Korean peninsula were killed or wounded.
 
The Cold War spawned by President Roosevelt?s expedient alliance with Stalin and other communists brought totalitarian bleakness and death to millions, endless proxy wars that consumed hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of American and allied lives, and a near-nuclear exchange during President Kennedy?s watch.
 
Yet ugly as they were, each of the wars above eventually made the world a less bloody place by removing tyrants and transforming cultures. Those same goals drive our war against Middle Eastern extremism that is now centered in Iraq.
 
In Iraq, 4 percent of our soldiers have been killed or wounded. Those losses are lower than we suffered in nine previous wars. The Civil War, Mexican War, War of Independence, Korean War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and Philippine War were all half-again or more as costly as Iraq has been.
 
But aren?t our losses mounting?
 
In the last ten months of 2003, Iraq hostilities claimed 324 U.S. service members. In 2004, 710 were lost. In 2005, total fatalities were 712. Troops wounded in action are down from 7,920 in 2004 to 5,961 in 2005.
 
Deaths of foreign civilians in Iraq have also tumbled: In 2004, 196 were killed. In 2005 the toll was 104.
 
Economic losses are also moderating. Attacks carried out on oil and gas facilities in Iraq can serve as an indicator of this. There were 146 such attacks in 2004, versus 101 in 2005.
 
Meanwhile, the estimated number of terrorists killed or detained in Iraq was 24,470 in 2004, and 26,500 in 2005.
 
How is the morale of our soldiers holding up?
 
Accepting the possibility of being hurt is a part of security work. It?s easy to overlook the reality that 800 public safety officers have been killed in the line of duty right here on our own home shores since the beginning of the Iraq war. This summer, the U.S. general in charge of our National Guard put his Iraq casualties in some perspective: ?I lose, unfortunately, more people through private automobile accidents and motorcycle accidents over the same period of time.?
 
While always wrenching, the risks in Iraq have been overblown. And the morale of soldiers, in my experience, is much higher than one might expect. Other journalists who have spent weeks and weeks with soldiers, like Robert Kaplan, have similarly observed that our G.I.s are generally not disenchanted, but remain very spirited.
 
The proof of the pudding: Individuals who have actually served in Iraq and Afghanistan are signing up again at record rates. Re-enlistment totals in the active Army over the last three years are more than 6 percent above targets. Over a third of Army re-enlistments now take place in combat zones.
 
Today?s supposed hemorrhaging in military manpower is mostly a fiction manufactured by the media. Moderate shortfalls in recruiting new bodies have hit reserve and National Guard units. The latest Army Reserve recruiting class, for instance, totaled only 96 percent of the goal.
 
All active duty branches, however, are exceeding their recruiting requirements in the latest monthly figures from the Department of Defense (released in December). The Army and Marine Corps (who are doing most of the hard service in Iraq) were each at 105 percent of their quotas. After a dip early in 2005, the Army has met or exceeded its goals for new recruits in every month since June. One source of pressure on the active-duty Army is the process of expanding from 482,000 soldiers to 512,000, as a dozen new combat brigades are added to the force.
 
We are at war, and our Army and Marines are being used hard. But there is no crisis of alienated servicemen.
 
But don?t American combat losses fall disproportionately on minorities and the poor?
 
That?s another myth. Though blacks and Hispanics make up 15 percent and 18 percent of America?s young-adult population respectively, they have each represented less than 11 percent of the fatalities in Iraq. Fully 75 percent of the soldiers killed in Iraq have been whites (who make up 61 percent of our military-age population).
 
Demographic data show, furthermore, that U.S. service-members come from a cross-section of American society, and basically match the wider population in family educational and socioeconomic status.
 
If there is an imbalance in who is carrying the military load in Iraq it is between Red and Blue America. In two years of fighting in Iraq, 33 percent of U.S. military fatalities came from rural areas, though only 20 percent of the U.S. population is rural. Both city dwellers (29 percent of the U.S. population, 26 percent of Iraq fatalities) and suburbanites (51 percent of the population, 41 percent of the dead) are underrepresented among today?s war casualties.
 
John Kerry recently claimed U.S. soldiers are ?terrorizing? Iraqis. The #2 Democrat in the Senate, Richard Durbin, compared American fighters to ?Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime?Pol Pot or others?that had no concern for human beings.? Ted Kennedy suggested G.I.s torture like Saddam Hussein. What have you observed?
 
None of the above. I mostly see soldiers fighting with startling care and commitment. Take, for instance, Staff Sergeant Jamie McIntyre of Queens, New York, who recently had this to say:
 
?I look at faces and see fellow human beings, and I say, ?O.K. This is the sacrifice I have to make to bring them freedom.? That?s why I joined the military. Not for the college money, for doing what?s right. Fighting under our flag. That?s what our flag stands for. I believe in that stuff. Yeah, we might lose American soldiers, but they are going to lose a society, lose a people. You?ve got to look at the bigger picture. I?ve lost friends, and it hurts. It definitely hurts. But that?s even more reason why I say stay. It?s something that has to be done. If we don?t do it, who will??
 
An e-mail I received on December 26 from a friend serving in Baghdad provides two good examples of the sort of disciplined dedication one sees regularly in Iraq:
 
?We lost a young soldier?. This soldier didn?t have to be here and he didn?t have to die on Christmas Day. He was wounded in action in April and evacuated to the States for recovery. After three months on the mend, he requested to come back to rejoin his team. His name was Specialist Sergio Gudino.
 
?Also on Christmas Day, a newly hired Iraqi interpreter pulled a gun on one of our soldiers who works with sensitive intelligence. The Iraqi spy made Specialist Steven Clark bring him to his work space so he could look at his computer work station. The interpreter briefly turned his back to Clark and our guy immediately pulled his 9mm pistol and emptied his magazine into the Iraqi. The interpreter also got six shots off, one of which hit the soldier in his left breast pocket, but a notebook and ID card stopped the bullet. When I talked to Clark he said, ?I thought I was going to die and couldn?t believe it when the guy turned his back to me.? Interesting detail: this soldier has been awarded the Purple Heart FOUR times. He?s another one who doesn?t have to be here. Message to all the naysayers back home: If you think these kids aren?t committed to this mission, and don?t believe in what they are doing, guess again.?
 
?The idea that we?re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,? opined Democratic chairman Howard Dean in December. Who agrees with him?
 
Well, most academics and journalists seem to. Military leaders, however, do not.
 
In September and October 2005, Princeton Survey Research asked various American leadership groups whether they believe the U.S. will succeed or fail in establishing a stable democratic government in Iraq. Most academics agree with Howard Dean: only a quarter say we will ?succeed.? Most journalists agree with Dean: Only one third answer ?succeed.? Among military officers, however, two thirds say the U.S. will succeed in Iraq.
 
Progress does seem dreadfully slow.
 
It is. Defanging the Middle East is a vast undertaking. But again, wars have never been easy or antiseptic. Even after the hostilities of World War II were over, the U.S. occupied Japan for seven years of stabilization and reconstruction, and West Germany for four years (the first year, the Germans nearly starved).
 
And a guerilla war like we face in Iraq generally requires even more stamina. Eliminating a terror insurgency has historically taken a decade or two. It?s like eradicating smallpox; you must squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, and show great patience. Our occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War is a closer example of what we face in Iraq; we fought an extensive insurgency there for years, then remained in the country for nearly a century, with very positive eventual results.
 
Interestingly, our soldiers appear to better understand the incremental nature of this war than many reporters, pundits, and politicians. ?Americans seem to kind of want this McDonald?s war, where you drive up, you order it, you pay for it, you go to the next window and get a democracy. That?s not the way it works,? cautioned Army reservist Scott Southworth recently. ?It takes a lot of effort; it takes a lot of time.?
 
Morass or not, this war seems to be especially unpopular on the homefront.
 
Actually, a substantial minority has opposed almost every war prosecuted by our nation. This was true right from the American Revolution?which a large proportion of Tory elites (including most New York City residents) insisted was an ill-considered and quixotic mistake.
 
Only in 20/20 hindsight have our wars been reinterpreted as righteous and widely supported by a unified nation. Even World War II, the ultimate ?good? war fought by the ?greatest? generation, was deeply controversial at the time. Fully 6,000 Americans went to prison as war resisters during the years our troops were conquering fascism in Europe and Japan.
 
There?s no reason to think of the Iraq war as more unpopular than any other U.S. war. If it is prosecuted to success, there?s little doubt that the war against terror in Iraq will in retrospect look just as wise and worthy as previous sacrifices. But there is a wild card: Would the nation have retained the nerve to finish previous successful wars if there had been contemporary-style news coverage of battles like Camden, the Wilderness, or Tarawa?
 
Where is some evidence that we?re making headway?
 
In December, Iraqis filed a record number of tips informing on insurgents. That shows growing political and social cooperation. Iraq is also beginning to recover economically. Over the last generation, this was one of the globe?s worst-governed nations, and recovering from the long neglect of plants, factories, utility lines, canals, roads, schools, houses, and commercial districts will take decades. Every time I walk Iraq?s streets and farmyards I am stunned by the raggedness of its physical and social fabric.
 
But despite the best efforts of terrorists to further damage economic infrastructure, a rebound has begun. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund estimate that Iraqi national income per capita exceeded $1,050 in 2005?up more than 30 percent from the year before the war began ($802 in 2002). One consumer survey by British researchers found that average household income rose 60 percent from February 2004 to November 2005. The IMF projects that Iraq?s gross domestic product will grow 17 percent in 2006 after inflation.
 
Evidence of growth can be seen in the jump in car usage. The number of registered autos has more than doubled, and traffic is estimated to be five times as heavy as before the war. Purchases of nearly all consumer goods?air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, farm machinery, computers?are soaring. Cell phone ownership has jumped from 6 percent in early 2004 to over 65 percent today.
 
TV satellite dishes are as ubiquitous as mobile phones, and now sprout from even the rudest abodes in Iraq?s most out-of-the-way corners. Fully 86 percent of Iraqi households reported having satellite TV at the end of 2005. The number of Iraqi commercial TV stations is now 44, and there are 72 commercial radio stations (there were none of either prior to 2003). The number of newspapers exceeds 100.
 
After two decades of classroom deterioration, Iraqi children are now flooding back to school. Making this possible is a jump in teacher salaries from just a few dollars per month under Saddam to an average of $100 per month today. Parents are delighted: the proportion saying their locals schools are good has risen to 74 percent. By 3:1 they say local education is better than before the war.
 
Then why do Iraqis seem so dissatisfied?
 
Make no mistake: Iraq is broken. Most residents have never known proper sewage service, 24 hour electricity, or decent health care.
 
And improvement could be faster. Both terror attacks and the Arab tradition of endemic corruption are making today?s economic recovery less booming than it would otherwise be. Another damper has been the failure of our Western allies to make good on their promises of Iraq aid: Of the $13.6 billion European and other nations pledged to help rebuild Iraq, only a couple billion has so far been delivered.
 
All the same, progress is visible in Iraq, not just to observers like me but to Iraqis themselves. There is ample proof of this in the latest scientific poll of the Iraqi public, released December 12 by Oxford Research International. Asked how things are going for them personally, 71 percent of Iraqis now say life is ?good,? compared to 29 percent who say ?bad.? A majority insist that despite the war, life is already better for them than it was under Saddam Hussein. By 5:1 they expect their lives will be even better one year from now. Seven out of ten Iraqis think their country as a whole will be a better place in one year.
 
Iraqis are particularly pleased about trends in security. By 61 to 38 percent, they say security where they live is now ?good? rather than ?bad.? Back at the beginning of 2004 those numbers were reversed (49 percent good, 50 percent bad). On a vast range of specific subjects?from the availability of clean water and medical care to their ability to buy household basics?Iraqis say things are good and getting better. Fully 70 percent say ?my family?s economic situation is good,? and 78 percent rate their new freedom of speech as ?good.?
 
The Iraqis don?t seem to be doing much for themselves.
 
Actually, the ranks of Iraqi security forces passed the number of U.S. soldiers in the country back in March 2005. At present, their total exceeds 200,000 men. Iraqi soldiers, police, and guards were much more in evidence, and more competent, when I accompanied them on raids and searches in late 2005 than they were during my earlier reporting visits in 2003-2005. As of December 2005, one quarter of all military operations conducted in Iraq were carried out exclusively by Iraqi units. Another half were carried out by joint Iraqi-U.S. forces.
 
Despite many cruel suicide attacks, Iraqis continue to sign up in droves to become soldiers and police, and they are fighting. In 2003 and 2004, Iraqi soldiers and police frequently turned tail when engaged. Since the January 2005 election, however, not a single Iraqi army unit has been defeated in battle, and not one police station has been abandoned.
 
?Every police station here has a dozen or more memorials for officers that were murdered,? notes Sergeant Walter Rausch of the 101st Airborne. ?These are husbands, fathers, and sons killed every day. The media never reports the heroism I witness every day in Iraqis.?
 
The Iraqi public, however, is noticing. In November 2005, 67 percent expressed confidence in the new Iraqi army (up from 39 percent two years earlier); 68 percent say they have confidence in the police (up from 45 percent).
 
Iraqi units still depend upon American counterparts for transport, planning, training, heavy weaponry, and leadership, but in most combat operations I accompanied this winter, and nearly all traffic control points and perimeter guard posts, Iraqis were the lead elements. After bearing the brunt of daily casualties over the last year, the number of Iraqi security forces killed is now declining. Monthly deaths of Iraqi soldiers and police climbed steadily to a peak of 304 in July 2005, then fell just as steadily to 193 by December 2005.
 
Are there signs of the Iraqis weaning themselves from dependence on the U.S.?
 
In the first two years after the U.S. arrived, nearly every conversation between Iraqis and Americans that I witnessed ended with a wish list. Can you do this? We need that. What will you give me?
 
That has largely changed. Vast swathes of the country are now policed and administered solely by Iraqis. And residents are beginning to look to their own government, ministries, security forces, and internal leaders for solutions they used to beg Americans to provide.
 
Late in 2005, American journalist Hart Seely described a meeting he monitored between reporters from Iraq?s brand new independent press and leaders of Iraq?s brand new army. No open dialogue like that had ever taken place before in Iraq, and it was tentative and halting. But ?it was the Iraqi media pulling information from Iraqi generals?not looking to the Americans for answers.? That?s progress.
 
Do average Iraqis support the insurgents?
 
Those carrying out terror in Iraq, never more than a small fraction of the population, are now deeply resented by most residents. Though Americans are the outsiders who come from furthest away, physically and culturally, in most of Iraq it?s now the insurgents who are viewed as the most threatening alien invaders.
 
It is a fact almost never reported in the U.S. that a significant number of the suicide bombers who carry out the most horrendous attacks in Iraq are coerced or manipulated into doing so. Naked deception plus religious, economic, strong-arm, and pharmacological pressures are commonly used to enlist foreign and Iraqi triggermen.
 
At one base where I was embedded for a time, a car loaded with explosives pulled up to the front gate and detonated. Construction of the bomb was botched, however, and the badly burned driver survived long enough to talk to guards at the entrance. It turned out the wife and children of the driver (who was handcuffed to the steering wheel) had been kidnapped, and he was informed they would be killed if he didn?t drive the car as instructed. A triggerman in a following vehicle actually initiated the blast, wirelessly, then fled.
 
Sometimes the drivers of car bombs do not even know what they are carrying. In addition, many fighters have been found, when wounded or killed, to be full of drugs. (TAE first reported this after the battle of Fallujah, in our J/F 2005 issue.)
 
Western reporters have emphasized the many ethnic and religious schisms that divide Iraqis. They rarely note that there are also some countervailing common interests, social forces, and leaders who pull Iraqis together. An observation passed to me by a U.S. commander after the December 15 election illustrates some of these positive forces:
 
?The highlight of my day was in Mahmoudiyah (south Baghdad) where there were no polling stations in the January election, and where many Sunnis refused to vote in October. I watched as two affluent local sheiks walked into the polling station together holding hands (a big sign of respect here). One sheik was Shia, the other Sunni. I stopped them and offered my congratulations on a great day for the people and country of Iraq. They both told me how much they appreciated what the United States had done for them, and that they could never repay us. I told them we neither needed nor expected repayment, but if they wanted to show their appreciation they needed to ensure that the move toward democracy continued and that Sunni and Shia come together to live in peace. The Sunni sheik said, ?We are tired of violence and fighting that destroys our people and our country.? These two guys got it.?
 
But in the wider Muslim world, hasn?t the Iraq war done irreparable damage to America?s image?
 
As terrorists? attacks have shed light on their goals and principles, and as the U.S. has shown it is serious about promoting democracy in Iraq and then going home, new views of America are evolving in Islamic countries. According to surveys in 17 nations carried out in 2005 by an organization chaired by Madeleine Albright, support for terrorism in defense of Islam has ?declined dramatically? in the last couple years?from 73 percent to 26 percent in Lebanon, from 40 percent down to 13 percent in Morocco, from 41 percent to 25 percent in Pakistan.
 
Support for Osama bin Laden has plummeted in nearly every Islamic nation. Rationalizing suicide bombing and violence against civilian targets is way down. A majority of Muslims in many nations now ?see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries.? And majorities of Muslims in many countries now believe that ?the U.S. favors democracy in their country??and rather like the idea. The upshot: positive views of the U.S. are rising?up 23 percentage points in Indonesia, up 15 points in Lebanon, up 16 in Jordan.
 
Isn?t it a pipe dream to think we can introduce democracy to the Middle East?so long dominated by strongmen?
 
That?s the $64,000 question, and no one knows the answer for sure. But there are signs in Iraq that a surprisingly patient representative politics may be breaking out for the first time ever. To begin, 8 million Iraqis voted for an interim government in January 2005, and almost 10 million voted on the constitution. Then (in a nation with just 14 million adults) 11 million voted in December 2005 for the first permanent parliament.
 
At this point, all of Iraq?s major factions, including the disaffected Sunnis, are participating in the political process, and many barriers have been breached for the first time. For instance, 31 percent of the legislators elected to the interim parliament were female?which is not only unprecedented for the Middle East but higher than the fraction of women in the U.S. Congress. Power in Iraq?s new National Assembly is reasonably balanced, with no one faction holding a whip hand against the others, and compromise is the requirement of the day.
 
The new Iraqi constitution guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, and provides forms of due process unknown in any other Middle Eastern country. How scrupulously these will be defended remains to be seen. But there is a framework for basic decencies and liberties that no other Arab nations even pretend to honor. As Christopher Hitchens has put it, ?in a country that was dying on its feet and poisoning the region a couple of years ago, there is now a real political process that has serious implications for adjacent countries.?
 
Noting what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more Muslims are now saying they are ready to live under selfrule. In the 2005 survey in 17 countries I mentioned above, the proportion saying democracy is not just for the West but could work well in their own country exceeded 80 percent in places like Morocco, Lebanon, and Jordan. Even in problematic countries like Pakistan, the portion of the public favoring multiparty democracy has become larger than any other faction.
 
Why do I never hear any of this in most reporting?
 
A good question. More than perhaps any news event in a generation, coverage of the Iraq war has been unbalanced and incomplete. The dangers that keep most Western reporters completely cloistered in the artificial bubble of a few heavily guarded hotels create many distortions. But the disdain of the press corps for this war is also crystal clear in the overall reporting.
 
One media critic (Arthur Chrenkoff) did a content analysis of a typical day (January 21, 2005), and counted this breakout of freshly published stories on Iraq:
 
? 1,992 covering terrorist attacks
? 887 essays alleging prisoner abuse by the British
? 289 about American casualties or civilian deaths in Iraq
? 27 mentions of oil pipeline sabotage
? 761 reports on public statements of terrorists
? 357 on U.S. anti-war protestors
? 121 speculations on a possible American pullout
? 118 articles about strains with European nations
? 217 stories worrying over the validity of the upcoming January 30 Iraqi election
? 216 tales of hostages in Iraq
? 123 quoting Vice President Cheney saying he had underestimated reconstruction needs
? 2,642 items on a Senate grilling of Condoleezza Rice over Iraq policy
 
Balanced against these negative stories, Chrenkoff ?s computer search found a grand total of 96 comparatively positive reports related to Iraq:
 
? 16 reports on successful operations against insurgents
? 7 hopeful stories about Iraqi elections
? 73 describing the return of missing Iraqi antiquities
 
Tendentious reporting is clouding understanding and spawning inaccuracies. In January 2005, for instance, the New York Times editorial board had become convinced that civil war was just around the corner in Iraq and suggested ?it?s time to talk about postponing [Iraq?s first] elections.? Less than two weeks later came the popular outpouring that inspired observers around the globe. Snookered yet again by over-gloomy reporting, the Times insisted on October 7 that Iraqis were ?going through the motions of democracy only as long as their side wins.? Just days after, the minority Sunnis announced they were joining the political process, and turned out in force to vote on the constitution, and then in Iraq?s historic parliamentary election.
 
Many other establishment media organs have been equally out of line. When Iraq?s unprecedented new constitution was ratified by 79 percent of voters (in a turnout heavier than any American election), the Washington Post buried that story on page 13, and put this downbeat headline on it: ?Sunnis Failed to Defeat Iraq Constitution: Arab Minority Came Close.? The four top headlines on the front page of the Post that same day: ?Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq,? ?The Toll: 2,000,? ?Bigger, Stronger, Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of U.S. Deaths,? and ?Bush Aides Brace for Charges.?
 
Well, even if Iraq is a democracy, it?s a very partial and imperfect one.
 
There is no reason to be Pollyannish about Iraq. Like nearly every Arab nation, it is not a competent society at present. Trade, manufacturing, and farming have been suffocated by bad governance. Public servants routinely skim funds. Trash is not picked up, property rights are not respected, rules are not enforced, altruism is non-existent.
 
Having been one of the most brutalized societies on earth over the last generation, it would be absurd to expect prone Iraq to jump to its feet at this critical transition and dance a jig. Newborn representative governments are always imperfect, inept, even dirty at times?witness El Salvador, Russia, Taiwan, South Africa.
 
Yet, a quiet tide is rippling up the Tigris and Euphrates. The November 2005 study by Oxford Research found that when Iraqis are asked what form of political system will work best in their nation for the future, 64 percent now say ?a democratic government with a chance for the leader to be replaced from time to time.? Only 18 percent choose ?a government headed by one strong leader for life,? and just 12 percent pick ?an Islamic state where politicians rule according to religious principles.? This surge toward representative toleration?which did not enjoy majority support in Iraq as recently as early 2004?ought not to be taken for granted. It is an historic groundswell.
 
Iraq is now creeping away from murderous authoritarianism to face the more normal messes of a creaky Third World nation: corruption, poverty, health problems, miserable public services. And that is vastly preferable to what came before.
 
 
Karl Zinsmeister is editor in chief of TAE.

 

Published in  Leaving Iraq: The Right End Game  March 2006
This information was found online at:
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18977/article_detail.asp

Link where you enter the serial numbers off of dollar bills to see where they've been.

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

And a piece about how the data is used:

Banknote tracking helps model spread of disease
18:15 25 January 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

 
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organisation
Amaral Research Group, Northwestern University
Where's George

Tracking the movements of hundreds of thousands of banknotes across the US could provide scientists with a vital new tool to help combat the spread of deadly infectious diseases like bird flu.

Modern transport has transformed the speed at which epidemics can spread, enabling disease to rip through populations and leap across continents at frightening speed.

However, scientists possess few mathematical models to help them understand these movements and how this might govern the global spread of disease. To a large degree, this is because tracking the movements of so many people over such a large area is next to impossible.

But now physicists from the Max Planck Institute in G?ttingen, Germany, and the University of Santa Barbara, California, US, have developed a model to explain these movements, based on the tracked movements of US banknotes.

Dirk Brockmann and colleagues used an online project called www.wheresgeorge.com (George Washington's image is on the $1 bill) to track the movements of dollar bills by serial number. Visitors to the site enter the serial number of banknotes in their possession and can see where else the note may have been.

The team tracked 464,670 dollar bills across the US using 1,033,095 individual reports. The fact the notes are carried by people suggests it is a good way of modelling other things that people may carry, including disease.

Piggy bank

The researchers noticed that the bills' move according to two mathematical rules, each known as a power law. One describes the distance travelled in each step of the journey, the other the length of time spent between journeys.

While most notes travel a short distance each time, there is a slim probability that it will leap a very long distance ? perhaps carried from one side of the US to the other in the wallet of a passenger taking a flight. Secondly, while some notes move on quickly, there is a fair chance that it will remain in one place for a long period ? for instance stuffed into a child's piggy bank.

Although the movements of individual bills remain unpredictable, the mathematical rules make it possible to calculate the probability that a bill will have travelled a certain distance over a certain amount of time. "What's triggering this is our behaviour," Brockmann told New Scientist. "That is what you need if you want to build quantitative models for the spread of disease."

Very, very important

Brockmann admits that the movement of money may not perfectly mirror that of people. For one thing, he says, it may be that only certain types of people are interested in seeing where their bills have been and entering that on www.wheresgeorge.com. However, he says comparing the model to publicly available information on passenger flights and road travel suggests that it is accurate.

Luis Amaral at Northwestern University, US, believes the study could indeed prove very useful to epidemiologists. ?Understanding the way people move can be very, very important for developing strategies for fighting disease," he told New Scientist. "It seems like a very cool study."

But Amaral also says that the comparison between banknotes and disease is far from perfect. "Banknotes do not reproduce like a disease," he notes.

January 23, 2006, 12:46 p.m.
The Road to Tehran...
Assad?s fall will have a domino effect
Michael Ledeen


The Syrian-Iranian terror alliance goes back a long time, at least to the mid-1980s, when Hezbollah was created to wage terror war against American and French forces in Lebanon. There was a neat division of labor: Syria controlled the territory, and Iran ran the organization. Hezbollah's murderous successes are legendary, from the suicide bombings against the French and American Marine barracks to a similar operation against the American embassy, all in Beirut, to massive bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina. That alliance remains intact, and provides the base of the terror war in Iraq today.

So it should not have surprised anyone that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew to Damascus last Thursday to meet with Bashar Assad, nor was it surprising that among his entourage were key Iranian officials in charge of Hezbollah, probably including the operational leader, Imad Mughniyah. And in case our Middle East analysts were in doubt about the mission of the Iran-Syria partnership, a suicide bomber struck in Tel Aviv at about the same time Ahmadinejad and Assad were meeting.

A Weakening Grip
Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian blogger presently in the United States, summed up the intent of the two leaders as follows:
And so it happened just like we knew it would. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has just announced the formation of new alliance including Syria, Iran, rejectionist Palestinian groups, and Shia factions in Lebanon (in other words: Hezbollah).
The die seems to have finally been cast. The Shia Crescent has just been formalized and reconfigured into a living and breathing entity, with its own network of supports from among the secular nationalist movements and extremist Sunni groups, which simply have no other means of support at this stage.

The Iranians are concerned at signs of cracks in the edifice of the Assad regime, and are at pains to remind the Syrians that the destinies of the two tyrannical regimes are closely linked, and they must continue to make a common front against the destabilizing revolutionary forces unleashed on the region by the United States. Assad is now famously under pressure from unexpectedly honest U.N. investigations into the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Lebanon, and that pressure has intensified after the defection of former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, now openly calling for regime change in Damascus. Things are also a bit dicey for Assad in Lebanon, where there have been many calls for disarming Hezbollah.

Assad had been hinting that he would be willing to cooperate with investigators, provided he and his family were given immunity, but the Bush administration has rejected any such deals, as Vice President Dick Cheney emphasized on his recent sortie to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both of whom had given signs of willingness to compromise. But following the Cheney trip, both governments took a tough line, and even Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League and a man who has given new meaning to the concept of appeasement of tyrants, said there would be no leniency with the murderers of Hariri. To add an exclamation point to this welcome show of American seriousness, the Treasury froze the bank accounts of the head of Syrian military intelligence, Bashar's brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat.

In short, the Assad family's grip on Syria is weakening, and this is welcome news indeed, both for the long-suffering Syrian people and for us. The Iranians are obviously desperate to keep Assad in power, and Hezbollah armed to the teeth. Should things go the other way, Iran would lose its principal ally in the war against us in Iraq. As is their wont, the Iranians have been paying others to do much of their dirtiest work, and they have awarded Assad tens of millions of dollars' worth of oil, as well as cash subsidies, to cover the costs of recruiting, training and transporting young jihadis, who move from Syria into the Iraqi battle space (and, according to Jane's, a serious publication, the Iranians have also sent some of their WMDs to Assad for safekeeping). That deadly flow has been considerably reduced in recent months, thanks to an extended campaign waged by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Anbar Province, and further along the Iraq/Syria border. The Syrians have accordingly sent radical Islamists into Lebanon, perhaps to link up with Hezbollah in a new jihad against Israel.

Should the jihadist traffic into Iraq and Lebanon cease, we and the Iraqis would be free to concentrate our attention on the Iranian border, especially in the oil-rich south, where Revolutionary Guards forces are very active, both to contain the anti-regime rage of the Ahwaz Arabs on the Iranian side of the border, and to infiltrate the Iraqi side, both in support of Zarqawi's terror network, and to agitate for an Islamic republic in the Shiite region around Basra. The Iranians have been hyperactive in that area ever since the fall of Saddam, and it would be a very good thing to start to turn the tables on them. For, just as many Iraqi oil fields, and millions of Iraqi Shiites, are vulnerable to Iranian maneuver, the reverse is also true: the bulk of the Iranian oil fields, and millions of Iranians, are vulnerable. And the strategic balance is definitely in our favor.

The population of the Iranian oil region is largely Arab, and they have been brutally oppressed and ethnically cleansed by the mullahs. Tehran has gobbled up thousands of square kilometers of land on the pretext of building industrial parks or expanding military facilities, and the locals have been protesting on and off for many months. As I wrote last week, the regime is so nervous about disorder in the spinal cord of the Iranian economy that they sent Lebanese Hezbollahis and members of the Badr Corps (Shiites of Iraqi origin trained in Iran for the past two decades and then sent into Iraq to fight the Coalition).

In short, the Iranians have a lot to worry about, regardless of whether or not they have atomic bombs. Indeed, as I have long argued, the mullahs have made an enormous strategic miscalculation by going all-out for nukes, because it has made regime change in Iran an absolute imperative for the West. The closer they get to their first nuclear test, the closer the mullahs approach judgement day, and not in the way the fanatics around Khamenei and Ahmadinejad believe. They will not face the 12th Imam, but the harsh condemnation of their own people.

The mullahs have long seen this threat, and indeed the elevation of Ahmadinejad was a desperate throw of the dice to quash any and all revolutionary forces in the country. In recent weeks, Tehran forced the government of Dubai to cancel all live satellite TV broadcasts in the Persian language. Just a year ago, the mullahs had similarly intimidated the Dutch government, even though parliament in the Hague had appropriated funds for the project. In a little noted sequence of events, the Dutch won some big contracts in Iran shortly thereafter, and the Bush administration fined Dutch banks to the tune of eighty million euros for embargo-busting (do you ever wonder, as I do, that this tasty information has to be gleaned from Rooz Online?).

This is the usual practice of insecure tyrants (whose sense of doom is demonstrated by the ongoing exodus of money and talent from the country). They cannot risk the consequences of honest news reaching their people, and they run around like little mad hatters, sticking their thumbs in every crack in their ideological dykes. They are now shutting down NGOs, which, according to the hard-line publication Qods, the interior ministry accuses of planning to overthrow the regime. The mullahs want Islamic organizations, not independent ones, which might support civil liberties or elementary human rights. They want a total monopoly on the flow of information inside the Islamic republic.

Power to the People
This situation is tailor-made for the Bush administration, if only it will support the Iranian people against the mullahs, and the Syrian people against the Assads. The Iranian people see the desperation of their rulers, and honest broadcasts into Iran will be welcome indeed. Support for the Ahwaz Arabs ? provided we take care to stress that we have no interest in any separatist impulses, but seek to support all Iranians who wish to exercise their human rights ? would also have considerable impact, as would support for the bus drivers' organization, recently savaged by the regime, which has thus far received moral support only from Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. Perhaps the Labor Department might say a few words about the suppression of workers' organizations in Iran? And, for those millions of Iranians who do not fear the consequences of seeking the truth, we should be providing the tools of modern communications: phones, servers, laptops, phone cards, and so forth,

Meanwhile, we must increase our support for freedom in Syria. There are several new political organizations calling for Syrian freedom. Predictably, most of the organizers live outside the shadow of Assad's thumb, but they have held recent meetings in Europe with a surprising number of Syrian citizens, they are beginning to broadcast into the country, and many entrails and tea leaves suggest far more support for democratic revolution than the cynical old guys at State and CIA had believed possible. The administration should embrace all such organizations ? it is not for us to pick Bashar's successor, that is the kind of old-Europe tactics best left to the futile Cartesian scheming of the Quai D'Orsay ? and press hard for pulling the military fangs of Hezbollah, the sooner the better.

You can be sure that, as Assad collapses, the reverberations will reach Baghdad and Tehran. The Iraqis will gain the security they desperately need in order to advance their brave democratic project. And the Iranians, turbaned and bare-headed alike, will see the hour of their own freedom draw ever closer.

It sure beats drawing up a list of bombing targets, doesn't it?

? Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute

    
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200601231246.asp

More on looming Chinese social problems and cash crunch.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - January 18, 2006, 11:40 AM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,395833,00.html
Putting on the Brakes
 
Fearing Social Unrest, China Tries to Rein in Unbridled Capitalism

With a fast-graying population, increasing pollution and environmental damage and the absence of a real social system, Beijing is now seeking to check unbridled capitalism and quell flaring social tensions.

Not so long ago, nouveau-riche Chinese could be seen standing in lines several hundred yards long. They were registering to purchase luxury condos in Shanghai -- such was the demand. Hoping that prices would continue to rise -- as they have over the past four years, by a full 74 percent -- many were even buying third or fourth apartments in China's bastion of business. Speculation fever had broken out.

Meanwhile, however, the heat is off. Under massive pressure from Beijing, Shanghai's city fathers have levied a new tax on properties that are resold within a year of purchase.

Central government planners are worried. They want to steady the economy in the bellwether city at all costs -- for fear of an impending crash. Such a meltdown could spark unforeseen consequences, and deal a crushing blow to state banks that have amassed billions in distressed debt.

To ward off the apocalypse, Beijing has been curbing loans for steel, cement and, of course, real estate during the past twelve months. According to Cao Yushu, a spokesperson for China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the escalating investments are a "tumor in China's economic body." The economy has nonetheless continued at a rolling boil, growing by more than 9 percent. Provincial officials and managers customarily ignore edicts issued by the planners in Beijing.

So China continues to boom, using a quarter of the world's cement and steel, and almost a third of its coal. The country has long succeeded Japan as the world's second-largest consumer of oil.

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And maintaining growth remains its only option. Compared with industrialized countries, private consumer spending comprises a relatively low share of its GDP -- arguably too low to cushion a major slump. Although Beijing's new investment rules have led to a decline in imports, exports have increased all the more. China's export surplus could break $100 billion in 2005, triple the previous year's figure.

China's boom is stoking the world economy. It has become a focus for investment goods, and offers multinationals a cost-effective production base. But how long can China sustain the rampant growth?

The state banks' distressed debts present as incalculable a risk as the country's flimsy infrastructure. Many companies are now powered by private generators, giving them increased independence from national utility providers. Projecting dramatic shortages through the winter, twenty Chinese provinces opted to ration electricity in early 2005.

Immeasurable environmental damage through air and water pollution are fanning the problems, the economic costs of which remain unclear for China and, indeed, the world. Yue Pan, Deputy Minister for the Environment, is already predicting the end of the economic miracle: "To produce goods worth $10,000, we need seven times the resources used by Japan, almost six times the resources used by the U.S. and -- a particular source of embarrassment -- almost three times the resources used by India."

The challenges are threatening to spiral out of control, as Beijing seeks to check unbridled capitalism and quell flaring social tensions.


China urgently needs a social security system. Some 134 million people over the age of 60 already live in the world's most populous country. By 2050, this age group will account for 25 percent of its inhabitants. But there's nobody to pay into their pension funds. As a result of the one-child family policy -- the Communist Party program, launched in the 1980s, to defuse the population explosion -- social welfare contributions have plummeted.

In the old days, China's state-owned companies provided for the sick and aged. Because these have been converted into joint-stock companies, Beijing is now seeking to establish a hybrid system combining basic state pensions with private retirement plans. But only a small portion of the population in urban coastal regions receives social security. The roughly 800 million Chinese in the rural regions are still dependent on more traditional forms of support: their families. Western economists are already warning: "China will grow old before it grows rich."