Is It Vietnam Yet?

Iraq certainly is not Vietnam. Indeed, even Vietnam isn't Vietnam. These days Vietnam is Indochina:

French ambassador Antoine Pouillieute said Vietnam is a priority partner of France in Asia, not only because of its traditional relationship but also because of the potential for cooperation between the two countries.

France is a sincere and trustworthy partner of Vietnam. This finds expression on our loyalty, effectiveness and fraternity. . . . I note that the two countries have similar views and ideas, which will help to make ASEM a success. The dialogues are often made on three aspects � political, economic and socio-cultural. On security and anti-terrorism, Vietnam and France have shared views and on economics, the two countries support economic development linked with social development. In social and cultural fields, Vietnam and France see the need to preserve national identity, as well as political, economic, linguistic and cultural diversity.

On Bastille Day, too. I suppose it's good to know that France is a sincere and trustworthy partner to somebody.

Defending Iceland:

The heroic ethic in Ancient Greece is often stated by historians as, "Help your friends, harm your enemies." In fact it was rather more complicated, and was only one branch of Indo-European heroic ethics. Still, helping your friends and harming your enemies is a good start.

So when we decided to pull our air defenders out of Iceland without giving them time to get defenses of their own up to speed, it was a bad sign. It's true that we need those fighters elsewhere. It's also true that we've had a relationship with Iceland for fifty years, providing their military defense in return for what was, during the second World War and the Cold War era, access to a strategic island of great importance.

The sudden end of the relationship has given Iceland's sons a feeling of betrayal, which earlier this week led to a stabbing involving a US serviceman. The soldier is being tried by Icelandic law, though the US is demanding that he be turned over to face military justice. The report below is from the AFP (I don't have a link):

Washington has based its extradition claim on a 1951 Defense
Agreement between the two countries and a long tradition of handing
over servicemen involved in offences in Iceland to the United States
for military trials.
However, the agreement, which calls for consultations between
the two countries, is already up in the air after Washington
unilaterally decided in June to pull out its F-15 fighters and rescue
helicopters from the Keflavik base.
That decision angered Iceland, which has no military of its
own and would be left without air defenses.

No big deal, you say, because who would want to attack Iceland? Our common enemies have noticed. This ran on pro-al Qaeda website Jihad Unspun:

And what of Bush saying the United States will help its friends and punish its foes? Well, it seems that Mr. Bush cannot be trusted to take care of his friends. Iceland was one of the countries that signed up to Bush's so-called "coalition." How has Bush repaid the North Atlantic nation? By writing a letter to Iceland's prime minister stating that the United States will, after 46 years of providing for the NATO nation's defense, pull its military forces from the soon-to-be defenseless island state.

We are leaving old friends at the mercy of our common enemies. Iceland's sole defense against mujahedeen is going to be its nature spirits. Let us hope that this is enough, if our leaders do not reconsider this unwise decision and make allowances for the sons of Iceland to develop their own defenses. If not, we can only hope that our enemies will meet the same resistance as the warlock sent by King of the Danes, Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm the Old:

King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered
shape, and to try what he could learn there to tell him: and he
set out in the shape of a whale. And when he came near to the
land he went to the west side of Iceland, north around the land,
where he saw all the mountains and hills full of guardian-
spirits, some great, some small. When he came to Vapnafjord he
went in towards the land, intending to go on shore; but a huge
dragon rushed down the dale against him with a train of serpents,
paddocks, and toads, that blew poison towards him. Then he
turned to go westward around the land as far as Eyjafjord, and he
went into the fjord. Then a bird flew against him, which was so
great that its wings stretched over the mountains on either side
of the fjord, and many birds, great and small, with it. Then he
swam farther west, and then south into Breidafjord. When he came
into the fjord a large grey bull ran against him, wading into the
sea, and bellowing fearfully, and he was followed by a crowd of
land-spirits. From thence he went round by Reykjanes, and wanted
to land at Vikarsskeid, but there came down a hill-giant against
him with an iron staff in his hands.

Hail the land spirits. May they do what we ought to be doing, at least until our friends and old allies are equip't and trained to do it themselves. No good comes of the betrayal of friends.

Honored Guns

Good revolutions are not a thing understood by the UN. No surprise. We who honor the old American way can not agree. For myself, I choose a weapon not entirely "light": the Smith & Wesson M629-4, chambered in .44 Remington Magnum.

Bush, Saddam and al Qaeda:

From InstaPundit, sage of Knoxville, comes an article from a judge for whom he used to clerk. The fellow, a lifelong Democrat, was in Iraq with ORHA, and has uncovered documented evidence that Saddam assigned a Mukhabarat agent to work with Osama bin Laden:

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.''

No word on the date of this yet. We know that Saddam had approached al Qaeda in the early 1990s, but many reports suggest that they fell out quickly. Everything changes if this is a more recent, and ongoing, relationship. Or rather, everything changes for us who live in the open sources: it looks as if Bush, who has been saying this all along, is borne out again. See Thursday's post on that subject.

War with DPRK Watch:

Open sources, including the Straits Times of Singapore, are reporting that North Korea is doing pre-nuke bomb tests and has probably nearly finished reprocessing its plutonium. This confirms that we are not even a year away from a fully nuclear North Korea. At this point, there is probably nothing but war that can stop them from going fully nuclear. This is from the Sydney Morning Herald:

North Korea has conducted 70 high-explosive tests linked to nuclear weapons development, South Korea's spy chief was quoted as saying last night.

The claim was made just hours after the Prime Minister, John Howard, began reining in Australia's tough talk on North Korea, amid warnings that military threats could provoke a nuclear confrontation.

A senior source in Seoul said that Ko Young-Koo, a National Intelligence Service director, had told parliament: 'We have also noticed high-explosive tests being conducted in Yongdok district in Gusong City in [the north-western province of] North Pyongyang and we have been keeping track of the movement."

He also said that North Korea had apparently begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, a program that could yield enough plutonium for half-a-dozen atomic bombs within months.

John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, spoke to the matter yesterday. He uses hopeful language, though this may be because his nation is wary (and weary) of supporting US-led wars:

Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard says he is still hopeful the stand-off over North Korea's nuclear weapons program can be solved diplomatically.

But Mr Howard says North Korea's statement that it is willing to go to war is worrying.

Mr Howard says Australia will join America in military training exercises in september to fine tune skills needed for the interception of vessels suspected of carrying nuclear weapons.

"Clearly the training that will take place over the next few weeks will mean that different countries, including Australia, are ready if we do decided to do that," he said.

Australia agreed on Thursday to contribute forces to interdiction training exercises at a meeting of the 11-nation Proliferation Security Initiative, in the Australian state of Queensland.

North Korea has said it's ready for war if America resorts to force.

Lied? Apparently not.

I've been giving my friends on the left a lot of leeway with the "Bush lied about..." claims that they have been making. After all, Bush is a politician, and in my experience, politicians lie a lot. Even the ones who don't lie do change their minds on matters that they had previously appeared to consider points of principle. So, I've been willing to consider that it was not impossible that Bush had stretched the truth a bit on this or that matter.

Even so, I've found him to be a relatively honest politician: in fact, I would say stunningly honest given that he occupies the Presidency. Normally Presidents have to be very dodgy because they know things that they can't say; and they can't say it because it's based on collected intelligence, which has to be treated gingerly because the lives and welfare of agents are on the line. In spite of that, Bush has been pretty straightforward about what he thinks.

Take the Axis of Evil, for example. When Bush linked Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the response from the left was "What? Those are totally unrelated evils. You obviously are an idiot." (Actually, many of the folks on the left went a bit further, and argued that there was no such thing as evil. This space will treat that particular brand of foolishness another day.) Even from the right, the response was, "Obviously this is the scoring of a rhetorical point rather than a literal axis, since Iran and Iraq hate each other, and North Korea is on the other side of the world."

But ever since then it's proven out that Bush was just telling us, as straight as he could, what the intelligence showed. North Korean missiles have been sold to Iran, aiding the development of Iran's own weapons program, including the missile that can hit Israel. The DPRK and Iran have openly coordinated their nuclear programs. The Iran/Iraq frontier appears to have been far more porous that most of us believed, with groups like Ansar al-Islam operating on both sides and giving aid to al Qaeda. The smuggling of Iraqi oil out through Iran appears to have opened secret, but real, ties between those governments. We've recently uncovered a huge cache of documents belonging to the Mukhabarat, Iraqi intelligence, and I expect them to demonstrate far more serious and numerous ties than have heretofore emerged.

So, this claim that Bush lied about Iraq has to be put into a fence. Based on what is now open source, we can say that Bush's claims about Iraq have all borne out except the WMD claims. Those claims were beliefs shared by the United Nations, which had 18 Security Council resolutions on the subject and which wasted years and fortunes begging Hussein to let them inspect. The nations on the Security Council have some of the best intelligence services in the world, so we have to assume that the evidence on WMD was pretty emphatic. All intelligence is speculative, but the degree of unity of opinion here is remarkable.

So if it wasn't WMD as a whole that Bush lied about, then we have to limit ourselves to nuclear weapons. But here again, Bush's claims were only that he believed Hussein was preparing to reconstitute his nuclear program, not that there was a reconstituted nuclear program. That is the kind of thing intelligence can simply be wrong about. So we must draw the fence tighter and tighter to find an area in which we can clearly say that Bush lied.

And at last, I can't find one. The area that the left has focused upon is the Niger uranium. But Bush's claim in the State of the Union address was that the British had warned him of the purchase. While the CIA's document has been demonstrated to be a forgery, the British sources--we still don't know exactly what they were--are still supported by their government. Tony Blair, while playing down WMD generally, spoke to the Niger issue yesterday:

Mr Blair stood by the claim in the September dossier that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons. He insisted the claim was based on different intelligence to the forged documents which have been dismissed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr Blair said: "This is terribly important, because this has again been elevated into something that really is not warranted by the actual facts. There was an historic link between Niger and Iraq. In the 1980s Iraq purchased somewhere in the region of 200 tons of uranium from Niger. The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called forged documents. They came from separate intelligence. In so far as our intelligence services are concerned, they stand by that."

Now that leaves us here: Bush claimed the British had told him about Iraq seeking to buy uranium from Niger, and the British did just that. If you're going to pick a foreign intelligence service to trust, MI6 is one of the better ones. Even if Bush didn't believe them, he was still telling the truth when he said that the British had passed us that piece of information.

I think there is nothing much more to be said. InstaPundit, sage of Knoxville, has the story of the CIA officer who allegedly told Bush that the Niger documents were forgeries. What turns out to be a forgery is the CIA officer himself, who never worked for the Agency. There were other sources, apparently including the real CIA, who agreed that these documents were forgeries--but there is still the unseen British intelligence. Evaluating that as good or bad is not possible except as an act of faith.

That really is where we finish the inquiry: with faith. At the last you can only believe Bush is a liar if you choose to believe it. There is no evidence to support the claim. At the same time, you can't see the British intelligence he seems to have chosen to trust. So, there's no evidence to exonerate him either. I am going to choose to believe the man, simply because his record in the past has been one of openness with the American people on matters of national security, far more openness than I would have required or expected of a President. I don't see that we can move farther on this question unless new evidence emerges.

More on Iran:

Iranian agents may be behind the jamming of all US satellite transmissions to Iran. Neither private nor government signal is getting through. This report suggests the agents may be based in Latin America.

Iran:

Although I'm not sure why I would follow the advice of Andrew Sullivan, I will include a link to Iranian issues today, via Arts & Letters Daily. Here it is: The Backwardness of Islam. I must say that I am myself a friend to Islam, much as I am to Christianity. Nevertheless, there are some ideas here that Muslims will have to consider, especially as concerns market economies.

Arguing Against Heroism:

I am always surprised at how many people want to take up a stick to beat the notion of heroism. It seems to me that nothing could be more necessary to a peaceful human future than the heroic model. This has been argued extensively in the past on this page, but here's another chance to take it up again.

From J. Cohen's "Medieval Masculinities":

"As a political mythology, heroism is surprisingly quite poor" (Peter van Heusden): it offers a mode of behavior, but by making its best representative more than human (hypermasculine, sanctified, even perhaps divine), it disallows that mode's successful repetition. The necessary end for heroism is death, even if that death is construed as a valorization through "glory" of the preceding life; and so heroism as a gender code has built within its deep structure the inevitability of its own passing, and to a degree, its own failure.

"The necessary end for heroism is death[.]" Glad we've got that straight. Now, tell me--what kind of life has a different ending?

Grandma:

Not my own dear grandmother, but a heroic woman nonetheless:

Grandma set broken bones, dug lead out of men that had been shot, and when a smallpox epidemic raged in and around the sleepy village of La Luz, Grandma quarantined some houses to use as "pest houses" and then vaccinated dozens of La Luz residents. She used a vaccine she personally extracted from calves she had inoculated with virus of the disease.
Not everyone in La Luz was willing to be vaccinated. Grandma's technique was to scrape then slash criss-cross an area of skin on her patient's left arm with a sharp knife opening a wound of at least an inch and a quarter in diameter. She then would rub her vaccine into the bleeding wound. During 1898 and 1899 people who were vaccinated in this way did not come down with smallpox, while many who refused vaccination did.
In 1900, there were no corner drugstores in La Luz--the nearest was in the new town of Alamogordo, miles away by horseback. So Grandma kept a medicine chest of old frontier standbys--quinine, turpentine, coal oil and whiskey.

Magna Carta:

Here is what almost passes as a conservative case for radical socialism, if such a thing can be imagined. It references the Magna Carta as a document that lays the foundation for the common right of access to the forests. It's an argument worth considering for those of us who tend to be private-property advocates. It's worth remembering that private property has its limitations in the American tradition too, especially where corporations come into play: James Jackson's wrath against the Yazoo land conspiracy, for example, was entirely American. Jackson, hero of the American revolution and "Prince of Duellist," was enraged by the Yazoo land law precisely because it stripped from the citizens of Georgia the chance to be small land holders, yeoman-farmers of the sort he and Thomas Jefferson prized. It may be that this point ought to apply in the Amazon, too. It's worth considering.

Anti-American:

Did you know that the current stream of anti-American thought has its roots in Nazism? Did you know that there were four previous streams of anti-American thought, the first of which was put down by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson? For my more philosophical readers, here is a link to an article on the history of anti-Americanism.

Ah, yes, California:

The Golden State screws us again:

Shorn of LaLaLand [that is, California], in May America would actually have seen a net gain in employment - an extra 4,500 jobs - but then the monthly figures from California came in - another 21,500 layoffs - and drove the national figure down again. Meanwhile, if you drive in California, your vehicle registration just tripled: if it was 200 bucks last year, it's 600 now.

Thanks to Mr. Steyn for that.

Ah, the Turks:

On April 24th, US forces captured a dozen Turkish commandos who had come to Iraq to cause mayhem:

The Turkish Special Forces team put up no resistance though a mean arsenal was discovered in their cars, including a variety of AK-47s, M4s, grenades, body armor and night vision goggles. "They did not come here with a pure heart," says U.S. brigade commander Col. Bill Mayville.

Now another team has been caught. This time they are rumored to have been planning to carry out an assassination:

Turkish government officials said about 100 American troops raided a Turkish special forces office in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, detained 11 soldiers, and took them to Kirkuk.

The Hurriyet newspaper said the detentions followed reports that Turks were planning to kill a senior Iraqi official in Kirkuk. While there was no word on the identity, the city recently elected a Kurdish lawyer, Abdulrahman Mustafa, as its mayor amid concerns that the new administration may favor one ethnic group over another. The city is divided between Arabs, Kurds, ethnic Turks and Christians and has been the scene of ethnic tensions.

Turkey rejected any suggestion of a plot.

I've Seen This Movie:

Send in the Marines? I can't think why, when we will surely need them elsewhere soon enough. The threat of the Marine Corps is lessened tremendously when they are already bogged down somewhere else. With only two US Army divisions available to deploy for combat operations, it seems that even a few thousand Marines might be better kept for other purposes.

Additionally, I'm against going just because the UN said we should. I think the lesson of the last year ought to be that the UN be roundly ignored on all matters. Unless we have a pressing national interest, we ought not to go. Besides, the press reports from there are turning purple. Leftists who long for the US to be the army of the UN, and never act otherwise, have begun to really hype Liberia since the UN vote last week. Doesn't this lurid AP report sound like the movie Casablanca crossed with Aliens?

Liberia, fraught with danger and drunk killers, awaits U.S. forces
By Jonathan Paye-Layleh, Associated Press, 7/4/2003 19:57

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) Trapped in Liberia's besieged seaside capital, more than 1 million desperate, hungry residents and refugees dream of American troops coming to the rescue disarming rebel and government fighters locked in a vicious civil war.

Yet ending Liberia's nightmare is being weighed against the cost of U.S. intervention that would put American soldiers between AK-47-toting gunmen for whom mutilation and summary execution is commonplace.

Another reason to avoid Liberia: president Charles Taylor is being described as "indicted war crimes suspect" Charles Taylor. Ya'll remember that Bush, Blair, and Gen. Franks are also "indicted war crimes suspects." The ICC and similar organs are trying to use things like this to build legitimacy behind the idea that international bodies can violate national soverignity in order to seize people that the UN/ICC/whoever has voted to indict.

Pretty rich, you say, a defense of national soverignity coming from a guy who favors using the USMC to knock of tyrants anywhere we please? Touche. But you must understand that I support the old order, whereby national--presumably, democratically accountable--governments hold the power to choose war or peace. The international order is antidemocratic, as you must have noticed by now. Far better for matters of such importance to be in the hands of the people, not career bureaucrats drawn from the ranks least likely to understand or feel inclined to use force in a firm, just fashion. There are plenty of folks in those bureaucracies with ranks and titles, but damn few who understand what nobility is about.

One thing I do like to see though: Charles Taylor hopped pretty quickly in response to that US warning that he had 48 hours to step down, didn't he? The decapitation strike may not have gotten Saddam, but it put the world's tyrants on notice. Come the 49th hour, the bombs can already be on their way.

Our Predecessors:

Many of our Islamist enemies have come to consider "Crusaders" to be just another word for "American" or, at best, "Coalition." So it's interesting that on the 4th of July the Israelis broke into a cistern that was built by the real Crusaders.

A Bolt from Heaven:

An evangelist calls upon God for a sign, and God delivers:

A member of the First Baptist Church said a guest evangelist was preaching repentance and seeking a sign from God when lightning struck the steeple.

Ronnie Cheney called the incident "awesome, just awesome!"

Cheney said the lightning traveled through the microphone, blew out the sound system and enveloped the preacher, who wasn't hurt.


Afterward, services resumed for about 20 minutes until the congregation realized the church was on fire. The building was evacuated.

This reminds me of the movie about the life of Sergeant York, wherein a bolt of lightning knocks a drunk Alvin York off of his mule just by the church. However, that was Hollywood. One has to leave the metaphysics aside for a moment and just take it in--it is an awesome story.

All hat, no...

Cowboy hats on the runway in Milan. It's supposed to be a 'virile' symbole of an 'American tough-guy image.' Well and good. My hat is a Stetson, one that belonged to my grandfather before his days ran out, and now belongs to me. Don't reckon he ever expected to be setting the style for the Milanese fashionable, but he was certainly a tough American guy.

Dirty Bombs:

Dirty bombs are the terror weapon that provides the greatest danger to the U.S. economy:

On 13 June, a Thai national was arrested in Bangkok with a large quantity - reportedly 30kg - of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope that could be used in a radiological weapon (a so-called 'dirty bomb'). Narong Penanam confessed he had smuggled the radioactive material into Thailand from neighbouring Laos. He was detained in a sting operation by officers posing as potential buyers.

It is believed that the suspect's intended customers - possibly the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah - were planning to target US interests in Thailand, perhaps the embassy or other diplomatic premises. US customs officials had asked the Thai police to investigate uranium trading in Thailand, which they suspected was bound for terrorist groups in Iraq or North Korea.

It is not clear if the 30kg seized in Thailand included the weight of the case as well as the caesium-137, which could turn out to weigh as little as 100g. Regardless of the amount seized, the arrest highlights the continuing problem of nuclear smuggling.

The use of even a small amount of caesium in a radiological weapon would necessitate an expensive decontamination operation and, apart from injuries caused by the actual explosion, could cause a rise in cancer cases in the long term. Uranium, however, would have to be highly enriched for use in even a crude nuclear device.

On 18 May it was reported that during a routine raid, Georgian police seized strontium and caesium in boxes from the boot of a taxi in the capital, Tblisi. The police suspect the substances were being smuggled into Turkey. A device made from that radioactive material could contaminate a 500-600m radius.

The damage to the US economy from 9/11 was as great as it was because of the disruption of the airlines. Although a massive amount of communications equiptment went down with the two towers, America's communication system is remarkably capable of regeneration. The shutting down of the airlines for a full day, though, created transportation problems for every industry in the country. The main trouble was not the transportation of people, but of goods: factories ran short, orders were not delivered, every industry was disrupted in shockwaves.

A similar, but worse, effect is possible with dirty bombs. Major airports could be shut down, not for hours, but for weeks. Sadly, some of this disruption could be handled: the falloff of air traffic since 9/11 means that there is excess capacity in the airports of the country. There would still be a stern depressive effect upon the economy at a point--the airlines--where we are still limping.

DPRK Nuke Test:

This page has been arguing for months that a nuclear weapon test by the DPRK was coming. Once they've tested a nuclear weapon in an underground location, they'll have thereby irradiated enough material to make many more bombs, thus making the point moot as to their uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants. Now, Kenneth Quinones, one of the Clinton Administration's negotiators who worked with the DPRK, says that he agrees. Such a test may well come, he says, by the end of the year.

A brilliant letter:

From Mark Steyn's mailbag. Steyn himself is all too frequently praised on this page for me to pretend to evenhandedness, but this letter written to him by one of his readers deserves to be widely reprinted:

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO HIS OWN TYRANT
WMDs were the main reason to remove Saddam Hussein, but none were found yet. As his removal was unwarranted and in blatant breach of many UN charters, wouldn't it be fair, at least as an interim measure, to install a tyrant in Iraq, until the weapons are found?

I'm sure North Korea or Cuba could lend one, and some of Pol Pot's cronies are still around.

This way, we can, at least partially, redress the gross injustice forced upon the Iraqi people.

Kalman Dee
Canberra, Australia

Readers might want to see Steyn's obit for Strom Thurmond, while there.

Pravda is of two minds:

Today's analysis of the Iraq situation (emphasis added):

The war against the occupation force is turning into some kind of a religious struggle; under these conditions the situation in Iraq may become less stable and predictable.

Elsewhere in Pravda, this report on regimental priests, under the subhead (emphasis added) "Are faithful soldiers more predictable?":

A seminar of the subject "Vicarial service in present-day army" was held in the Russian city of Ryazan on June 24. The seminar was organized by the RF Defense Ministry and the Moscow Patriarchate Department for cooperation with the armed forces and law enforcement structures. Main goals of the seminar are to determine objectives that the Orthodox Church pursues while working in the army, to find out the instruments it uses at that or plans to employ in the future.

Outstanding!

This story from Utah shows what happens when legislators get sensible about gun control:

The Jordan School Board gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a policy outlining the conditions under which district employees may carry a concealed weapon on school property with a valid permit.
Employees must keep the weapon concealed and employees who legally use a concealed weapon on school grounds do so in their individual capacities, not their scope of employment.

That sounds right to me. The law respects the free citizen's right to bear arms, but it doesn't provide them any special protections or restrictions based on the fact that they happen to be employed by the school. That is to say, it treats the right to bear arms as a right: a perogative of a citizen, the exercise of which ought not to be subject to any burdens by any entity except those the state legislature duly enacts, so long as those enacted burdens are in line with the principles of the 2nd, 9th, 10th, and 14th amendments.

Texas Terrorism:

There is a report on the wires today that terrorists are targeting Texas. The FBI is being cagey, as usual, as to what their sources are. They say there is not a credible threat, but that they've heard some things that make it possible, etc, etc.

Well, of course there was the recent lad from Texas who proved to be an al Qaeda member. But also, about three weeks ago Jihadunspun.net had a post claiming a successful Qaeda attack on a Texas oil refinery. JUS has pulled it, but the original text is below:

[S]ome American sources mentioned that a huge explosion took place in the main oil refinery in Texas. According to Lieutenant Paul Limoin from Niches police station, the explosion fires spread from 300 to 400 feet vertically in the air that could be seen and heard from miles. The explosion was so strong that it resulted in very strong pressure in the area.

The local American TV station KFDM was the only one to transmit the incident live on Tuesday the 20th of May at about 11 PM. KFDM attributed the incident to a tough explosion in a natural gas tube line at Jefferson district.

Lieutenant Limoin was among a number of officers who closed high ways 347 and 336 for several hours because people from neighboring areas and hundreds of cars moved to watch the incident which jammed the traffic and hindered all kinds of communication by phone and the radio was the only thing that worked.

An eye witness said that that she heard the explosion of the tube line that was very tough to the extent that she saw the orange flames in the sky, yet the inhabitants of the area stayed as they were because they trusted the efficiency of the firemen.

Ronda Vize a KFMD employee said that policemen confirmed that after 15 minutes, the flames disappeared from the sky. Nevertheless, she doubts what the policemen said because even hours after the explosion she still could see the fire in the area. However, Paul Limoin said that the blows lasted for 10 minutes or more but there were no injuries among the residents of the area which raised doubts about the police attempts to hide the incident. Police sources added that the explosion is attributed to an electric sparkle that hit one of the oil tankers, but this story contradicts what some eyewitnesses said.

It turned out to be nothing of the sort--an explosion at a SUNOCO gas pipeline near a loading station. But I thought you'd like to know, Texas readers--al Qaeda is thinking of you.

Things to remember:

When reading news stories from certain foreign countries that purport to tell you how "the man in the street" feels, keep in mind this enlightening news story from the Pakistan Observer:

A staggering majority of the Americans want US President George W Bush be impeached for launching Iraq war on false pretexts and flimsy grounds. �Official Poll� reported on June 11 that more than 94.7 per cent of the US citizens were in favour of Bush�s impeachment, the report claimed.

It published its poll with the question: �Should George W Bush be impeached?� A staggering number 94.7 per cent of those polled said: �Yes, the President of the United States of America should be impeached for what appear to be untrue statements to the US Congress and the American people.�

Under US law, lying about the reason for a war is an impeachable offence.

We probably remember from 1998 that US law doesn't really go into any detail about what is or isn't impeachable. But really--94.7%? Why didn't they just report that we HAD impeached him? I mean, if you're going to just make stuff up, why not go hog wild? (Oops--accidental cultural insensitivity there. Sorry, Muslim readers.)

Update to Special Operations piece:

Strategypage is reporting that there will soon be a new commando unit in the US Military, drawn exclusively from the United States Marine Corps. It's certainly right and proper that this should be the case. The Marines, whatever else you may wish to say about them (e.g., that they're obviously superior to the Army in every way, and better looking as well), have a signal advantage over the other services: they are paid out of the President's funds rather than Congress'. The Corps is the President's to use as he sees fit, regardless of what jackass was currently on the Senate floor filibustering against the rescinding of aloe vera subsidies.

Not that I'm opposed to legislative oversight. I think the Congress ought to be the leading branch of the government. It's just that, first, we'll have to elect some leaders to it.

Mercenaries for Peace:

This is an excellent idea. Mercenary peacekeepers: I like it.

Pay in Iraq:

Students of history will recall that one of the early troubles for the American republic was occasioned by the nonpayment of veterans' pensions. George Washington almost failed to put an end to the mutiny, as the veterans were rightly outraged at the government's failure to provide promised funds that were necessary, in many cases, to care for their families. Washington's speech failed, but his vision carried the day: that is, his literal vision. He had to produce eyeglasses to read the notes he had from the government, which surprised many of the soldiers who had served with him. His remark, which I quote from memory, was to ask them to excuse him, "for I have grown grey in the service, and now grow blind." The veterans, remembering common struggles and sacrifices, chose then to heed him.

There is no George Washington in Iraq. Therefore, it is wise of the American government to put the payment of Iraqis in the hands of his heirs, who are very capable men: I MEF.

Mark Steyn:

"Damn, Mark," I keep saying as I read his stuff. If there is a more insightful man than Mark Steyn writing today, I haven't run across him. Cross-cultures are no problem for him: he gets it.

Sartorially, Jordanian politics seems to be the opposite of American: in the New Hampshire primary, smooth, bespoke, Beltway types who�ve been wearing suits and wingtips since they were in second grade suddenly clamber into the old plaid and blue jeans and work boots, and start passing themselves off as stump-toothed inbred mountain men who like nothing better than a jigger of moonshine and a bunk-up with their sister. Evidently, in rural Jordan the voters are savvy enough not to fall for such pathetically obvious pandering.

Or so I thought. But when the campaign aides pressed an 8x10 glossy of their man on me and I asked them where he stood on the issues, they hadn�t a clue. In rural Jordan, a candidate runs on his Rolodex. He�s the guy with high-level contacts in Amman who can use �em to bring home the bacon, or the pork, or whatever the Muslim equivalent is. That�s the message of the suit. If the plaid in a New Hampshire primary is supposed to signal that the guy�s one of us, the Savile Row get-up in Azraq is supposed to send the opposite message: this guy�s one of them � in a suit like that, there�s no reason why you couldn�t find him sitting across the banqueting table from Queen Rania. That�s the man your tribe or village needs in Amman.

Straight talk on WMD and Iraq:

Here it is, courtesy of the good lads at the Star Tribune:

Does the failure to find WMD mean we were handed a sack of lies?

Nope. The administration was clear from the get-go: Iraq was part of the Axis, and the Axis had to go down. Each part would be sundered as circumstances permitted. The destruction of the fascist regime in Baghdad would be the object lesson for the region, the proof that America had a new mission: Extirpating the flaming nutballs and the societies that nurture them.

Of course, that was not how the war was sold. Because the administration sought U.N. approval, the issue became enforcement of U.N. resolutions -- and those had to do with disarmament. Because the Bush team sought a greater moral legitimacy, it also phrased the war in terms of liberation, and removing a government with ties to terrorism. . . .

In the long run, it's not what we don't find in Iraq. It's what doesn't happen.

No more mass executions. No new prisons for children. No bonus checks for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. No Terrorism 101 classes at Salman Pak. No electrodes applied to the daughter of a man who talked to CNN. No daily potshots at allied aircraft. No sudden sluice of fear in the hearts of the Kurds when the government trucks appear on the horizon. No miserable thuggish satrapy in the middle of the Middle East, thumbing its nose at the United Nations and the United States.

Come election time 2004, the Iraqi oil proceeds will not be going to secret Swiss accounts named Chick Daney and Ronald Dumsfeld. They'll be going to the people of Iraq. We won't be arguing about losing the peace in Iraq.

We'll be arguing about losing the peace in Iran. But that's another story. For another presidential term.

Revolutionary Ideal:

Democracy according to the classical liberal tradition is the last true revolutionary ideology in the world. It is also the only one that has worked: predating and surviving Marxism, Fascism, and managing to erect free societies while the ideologies of unfreedom drew darkness over their lands.

PBR Watch:

My grandfather's beer, at $4 a bottle.

Grim Loses A Bet:

Eric Robert Rudolph, neither dead nor in Boliva. Win some, lose some.

The Corner:

Wow--Rich Lowry over at National Review Online published an email from me in The Corner. He'd asked for letters about the soon-to-expire Assault Weapons Ban, and I wrote this:

RE: ASSAULT-WEAPONS BAN [Rich Lowry]
E-mail:
"Dear Sir:

I'll leave aside the usual (and truthful) complaints about the AWB, as you'll get them from others. I want to address instead a current argument in favor of extending the ban. The Violence Policy center has put out a press release on the AWB that states that 41 of the 211 police officers slain between 1998 and 2001 were killed by assault weapons.

The argument is that these weapons therefore present a clear danger, and need tighter rather than looser regulation. There are several things to be said about this. I'll say three of them:

1) The VPC's definition of an assault weapon seems to be any semiautomatic longarm. This is actually a more coherent definition than the AWB uses, as it seems to look at cosmetics instead of function. As you will hear at length from others, there are many functionally identical weapons for sale on the market that, because of a plastic stock instead of a wood one, are banned by the AWB. The VPC is at least consistent in wanting to ban all weapons capable of similar function. The VPC report should be read, "41 of 211 dead policemen were killed by semiautomatic longarms."

2) But isn't that astonishing, given that longarms are used in such a tiny percentage of crimes? Well, not really. It's true that longarms are uncommonly used in criminal activity--I seem to recall it is something like two percent of gun crimes that involve longarms, but you'll want to check that number.

However, the statistic here is cops killed, not cops wounded or shot at. Longarms are (a) more accurate than sidearms, and (b) generally capable of defeating body armor. If the statistics were compiled in such a way as to show all occasions in which policemen were shot at, the percentages would be much smaller.

3) But so what? We're obviously ceeding the point that longarms are much more dangerous than handguns to serving police officers, right? Well, yes, obviously they are. They aren't particularly useful for crime, however, because they can't be easily concealed or carried (thus the tiny percentage of crimes which involve them). They certainly are a danger, but so are baseball bats. You don't ban everything that's dangerous.
Longarms are the weapons most useful for hunting, for home defense, and for militia service if--as it is no longer impossible to contemplate--a terrorist organization manages to create an emergency on a scale such that the militia would need to be raised. They are not useful for crime as a rule, though when they are used for crime their deadly nature does take a toll on serving policemen. As a rational matter, though, the VPC's position desires the banning or tight regulation of the least criminally-useful class of firearm: that is to say, it is a very far reaching proposal indeed."

"Task Force Viking":

Apparently led by US Special Forces, Task Force Viking uncovered that mobile bio-lab in Iraq. More to the point, though, they were the first forces on the ground in the north. A story about them, and the search for WMD, in the London Spectator.

Chechnya:

Some thoughts and rumors about the recent bombings, from the Moscow Times.

Cool if True File:

An alleged plot between the United States and Iran to limit Hezbollah terrorism.

Looting and Violence in Iraq:

Shoot to kill looters? That was last Wednesday's story, one which sadly proved not to be true. It is necessary to get a handle on the chaos in Baghdad if anything positive is to come out of the business. However, there is no clear evidence that the US Army forces are going to take the steps necessary to command the city. Time is running out, as forces from Afghani mujahedeen to Iranian militants are occupying the city. The New Republic reports that Hezbollah has entered the city as well. The Army seems remarkably calm about all this. An official speaking anonymously said "`We have about a month to get that under control; after that, it will be too late.''
But a month seems to me a remarkable estimate.

It need not be this way: the emerging recovery of Mosul demonstrates that the looting can be stopped, although admittedly Mosul's commander had the advantage of using Force Recon Marines backed by a MEU (SOC). (An aside--you'll recall that a MEU (SOC) is a Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable. See the archives of this blog if the concept isn't familiar to you: I did a piece on special operations forces on 24 April. MEU (SOC) is pronounced "Meew-sock," as if it were a cat toy instead of a horde of deadly warriors.) Something on that order needs to be dispatched to Baghdad, the rules of engagement need to be changed to permit the use of emphatic force, and it would be a good idea to see that Bremer has the authority he needs to command the military forces as well as the diplomatic efforts.

Recent Bombings:

The bombings in Saudi Arabia demonstrate the degree of freedom of movement al Qaeda enjoys in that, their home, country. After a firefight on 6 May, and a week-long manhunt for nineteen specific fugitives by Saudi authorities, al Qaeda seems to have employed that same cell to carry out these suicide attacks. The Saudi government reports, through the AP, that at least some of the nineteen men they have been seeking were involved, and may have been killed, in the attacks.

The Saudi soldiers who fought off the suicide bombers at length deserve praise: the short firefight seems to have been the reason for the low death toll, as it alerted sleeping families to the danger and allowed them time to fly. The intelligence and investigative wings of the Saudi government, though, are largely nonfunctional.

Far more important in the war on al Qaeda are the two recent bombings in Chechnya. The first bombing in particular was a crippling strike to Russian efforts in the region. Directed against the intelligence service tasked with leading the war against terrorists in the region, the strike destroyed their headquarters and killed at least fifty-nine people. A similar attack in Lebanon in the 1980s killed only a handful of CIA officers, but because they were the men with decades of experience in the region, the men who knew everyone and everything, operations never recovered from the loss. We don't know who was killed in this strike, as to whether they were the top men or not. At the least, massive amounts of documentation, computers and files have been lost. If they got some of the leading officers as well, it may ruin the Russian offensive.

The Russian government has linked that bombing to the one in Arabia, without direct evidence but for good cause. They were not perfectly coordinated, but al Qaeda's ability to coordinate internationally appears to be degraded. Meanwhile, we know that al Qaeda is heavily involved in the Chechen cause, which has for many years been both a recruiting tool and a training ground for them. With the destruction of Afghanistan, it is reported that Qaeda camps have been erected in Chechnya. The Center for Defense Information puts the number of terrorists trained there at about 350.

The Chechens are more likely than al Qaeda to use woman mujahedeen, as in this morning's attack. You will remember that the Russian theater seized by Chechens saw the use of women militants as well: in fact, it was originally reported to be a team solely composed of suicidal women guerrillas, come to die to avenge their fallen husbands. The fight in Chechnya has been especially ugly, and has generated large numbers of women (and men) who have suffered rape and other forms of "shaming" at the hands of Russian soldiers. Dying in battle cleans such shame as nothing else: as Alexandre Dumas wrote in The Count of Monte Cristo, "Blood washes away dishonor."

The opportunity for the United States is to offer help to the Russian government, conditionally. With their intelligence capacity blunted, and the situation destabilizing, they may be willing to accept. In return for a strong policy against rapes and other shaming attacks, and a commitment to a form of Chechen autonomy and the protection of their rights, we could offer to share intelligence resources and even commit special operations troops operating from Afghanistan to the elimination of al Qaeda and other militant camps in Chechnya. Right now al Qaeda has a free hand in the area, which is protected by its ownership by a weak former superpower: strong enough that we can't invade without permission, but too weak to deal with the threat alone. In return for seeing the Chechens treated decently, we ought to help the Russians eliminate our common foes.

A shocking admission:

From the C.I.A.'s Center for Intelligence Studies. This comes as part of a long article called "The Intelligence Community: 2001-2015."

Now we are facing the same reality that confronted the Soviets: technology is, and has always been, ideologically neutral. It benefits anyone with access and means. This simple fact now represents an enormous challenge to US intelligence.

The technology used by the Intelligence Community has become antiquated. New solutions remain undiscovered and new funding will take time to have an effect. This is a strange and unprecedented condition for the United States, long accustomed to having technology as an ally.

How has it happened that the CIA has lost its technological edge? Since so much of the intelligence budget is hidden, we can't really know if it is underfunding.

It is likely, though, that the real problem has been bureaucratic overload. Intelligence is best run on a venture-capital model, which rewards risk and encourages innovation at all costs. The CIA's culture was originally heaviliy influenced by its founder, "Wild Bill" Donovan. But Wild Bill is long gone, and the American intelligence community is now flush with bureaucrats who have never been field operatives (cf. See No Evil by R. Baer). Bureaucracies make change difficult and ponderous. That's fine if you're trying to work a field that benefits from a reliable approach. Intelligence, though, demands high risk in order to reap its rewards, and there is nothing more risk-averse than a bureaucracy.

Therefore your end is on you, is on you and your kings:

Ere the sad gods that made your gods
Saw their sad sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,
That you have left to darken and fail,
Was cut out of the grass.

-G. K. Chesterton, "The Ballad of the White Horse"

Denuclearization on the Subcontinent:

This is an astonishing story. Pakistan has offered to surrender its nuclear arms if India will do the same. In fact this makes perfect sense: if you and your neighbor each had a gun pressed to the other's head, you'd be only too happy for someone you felt you could trust to come along and take away both guns. This is especially true if you know yourself to be quick-tempered, and you know your neighbor is, too.

The Bush doctrine is probably inspiring as well. Pakistan is a key ally in the terror war, yes. On the other hand, it is an open secret that elements of their intelligence service, the ISI, have ties to al Qaeda and other Islamist groups. In addition to which, there are wide swaths of the populace that are uneducated except by the Islamist scholars funded by Saudi Arabia. Their world view is deeply anti-American as a result. For President Musharraf, the future has to look rather uncertain. Even if he can maintain control, an American invasion remains possible if he can't reign in terror-supporting elements in his own government. If he can't, an American invasion--at least to seize the nuclear materials--is nearly certain. Removing the nukes would lower the temperature in Pakistan and offer a buffer against American intervention.

Still, it's amazing given that Pakistan has put such national pride in its nuclear program:

In each of the major cities of Pakistan, you can find a strange monument depicting a saw-toothed mountain and a poised missile.

The mountain is a peak in the Chagai Hills, in whose granite depths Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests five years ago. In the Islamabad version of this tableau, which sits on a traffic island amid a congestion of garishly ornamented trucks, three-wheeled taxis and donkey carts, the mountain is bathed at night in a creepy orange light, as if radioactive. The camouflage-dappled missile is called the Ghauri, and it has a range of about 900 miles. If the chronic tensions along the border between Pakistan and India should ever escalate to a nuclear war, the Ghauri would try to deliver at least one of Pakistan's warheads onto New Delhi. Lest anyone miss the point, the missile was named for a 12th-century Afghan warrior whose most memorable accomplishment was conquering part of India.

Mugabe watch:

Meeting with opposition leaders scheduled in Zimbabwe, apparently to work out plans for the power transfer.

Mugabe to step down?

An expanded investigation into the rumors, from the Economist.

Poetry / The Lost Castle of Glyndwr:

From the Medieval Welsh Poem Goddodin:

Gododin gomynnaf oth blegyt.
yg gwyd cant en aryal en emwyt.
a guarchan mab dwywei da wrhyt
poet gno en vn tyno treissyt.
er pan want maws mvr trin.
er pan aeth daear ar aneirin.
nu neut ysgaras nat a gododin.

Gododdin, I make this claim on your behalf
In the presence of the throng boldly in the court:
And the song of the son of Dwywai, of high courage,
May it be manifest in the one place that it vanquishes.
Since the gentle one, the wall-of-battle, was slain,
Since earth covered Aneirin,
Poetry is now departed from the Gododdin.

I'm now worried about those tourists:

InstaPundit, sage of Knoxville, has been concerned for some time about the disappearances of (now more than thirty) foreign tourists in the south of Algeria. It's been one of those Bermuda triangle stories, which became fascinating recently when a band of Bedouin nomads rode into one of the cities in Algeria and reported finding a secret complex of tunnels in the desert. Since then it has come to appear that the tourists are being held hostage by Islamists who have sought them as hostages against Western involvement in Algeria.

The Algerian government is now responding, and so it is just now that I'm becoming worried. The Algerian government, you see, is rather French. El Moudjahid, an Algerian newspaper, presents the account of the government's reply:

. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Pr�sident de la R�publique, a re�u, mercredi au si�ge de la Pr�sidence, M. Juergen Chrobog, secr�taire d�Etat aux Affaires �trang�res de la R�publique f�d�rale d�Allemagne et envoy� sp�cial du chancelier f�d�ral, M. Gerhard Schro�der.
L�audience s�est d�roul�e en pr�sence du ministre d�Etat, ministre des Affaires �trang�res, M. Abdelaziz Belkhadem et du ministre d�Etat, ministre de l�Int�rieur et des Collectivit�s locales, M. Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, ainsi que de l�ambassadeur de la R�publique f�d�rale d�Allemagne � Alger, M. Hans-Peter Schiff.
M. Chrobog est porteur d�un message du chancelier f�d�ral au Pr�sident Bouteflika.

Got that? The whole first paragraph is nothing but: The President met, at the President's seat, with the German Secretary of state for foreign affairs and a bunch of other ministers whose ranks and titles are recited at great length. Did they do anything? Yes! The German brought a letter and gave it to the President and ministers. That's what the whole paragraph says.

And what did the letter say? Only this: "L�Allemagne satisfaite des efforts d�ploy�s par l�Alg�rie pour retrouver les touristes disparus." That is, "Germany is satisfied with the efforts to recover the lost tourists." Doesn't Germany have a Marine Corps? Maybe they'd like to borrow ours for a few hours?

Corruption in Forsyth County:

Alleged corruption, anyway. I've recently been introduced to this site on the subject of "Local Organized Judicial Crime" in Forsyth County, Georgia--I'm guessing that's a euphamism for corrupt public officials. Makes for interesting reading.

Poetry:

Poetry is dead, writes Bruce Wexler in Newsweek. Why?

Anyone can write a bad poem. To appreciate a good one, though, takes knowledge and commitment. As a society, we lack this knowledge and commitment. People don�t possess the patience to read a poem 20 times before the sound and sense of it takes hold. They aren�t willing to let the words wash over them like a wave, demanding instead for the meaning to flow clearly and quickly. They want narrative-driven forms, stand-alone art that doesn�t require an understanding of the larger context. I, too, want these things. I am part of a world that apotheosizes the trendy, and poetry is just about as untrendy as it gets.

Well, we have come again to "rolling back the 20th century." The kind of poetry Wexler means is the kind he mentions by name in the article--�I Knew a Woman� by Theodore Roethke, Eliot�s �Prufrock." This 20th century poetry is surpassingly arrogant. It demands that your read it twenty times to begin to appreciate it with all the self-surety of an archbishop presenting his ring.

Not so the older forms, especially the epic forms. Highly developed poetic forms rest upon strength of imagery, the ability to grab you and move you viscerally. The arcane twists and turns of such forms--skaldic kennings, for example--arise only because the forms themselves are so enticing. People read Homer twenty times, a hundred times, not because they want to appreciate Homer. They read and reread him because they do appreciate Homer. From the first time you hear it read, the old oral epics grab you by the throat. The Iliad describes the hunger of the Myrmidon's, Achilles' heroes, as they enter the war at last:

Hungry as wolves that rend and bolt raw flesh, hearts filled with battle-frenzy that never dies--off on the cliffs, ripping apart some big-antlered stag they gorge on the kill till all their jaws drip red with blood, then down in a pack they lope to a pooling, dark spring, their lean sharp tongues lapping the water's surface. . . .

So the Myrmidons, arranged as they were about Patroclus, Achilles' friend and doomed to die.

High Roller:

Bill Bennet, author of multiple books with titles like The Book of Virtues, turns out to be a high stakes gambler. Good for him! I never could take him seriously before, but now I may go out and read some of what he has to say. Never trust any man who wants to talk about virtue, but has cultivated no vice. A cultivated vice is the frank recognition of the imperfectability of mankind. Without that recognition, no serious discussion of morality is possible.

Patriotism Watch:

The link off WashingtonPost.com today reads: "Ellen Goodman: America's Gift to the World." Now, that could suggest that Ms. Goodman is America's gift to the world, if you didn't already know that Ms. Goodman is a regular columnist for the Post.

But even if you did know that, the link proves to be misleading. I lept onto her column, eager to read her expressions of patriotism, which for her would have been remarkable and rare. Surely she was finally giving in to her patriotism because of the war in Iraq, or our rebuilding and education efforts in Afghanistan, one of the places where American soldiers were endangering themselves to bring food, freedom, or peace.

Nope. When you get to the article, the real headline proves to be: Smoking: America's Gift to the World. True to form, alas.

More Bad Thinking:

Opening up a CIA domestic intel service. The FBI and the CIA are separate entities not by accident, but for cause. The two methodologies are necessary to make sure that American liberties are protected.

Urrah!

Hutchison Whampoa is out of the bid to buy Global Crossing telecommunications. GC ran a number of sensitive US Federal programs. Hutchinson Whampoa is owned by a subject of the People's Republic of China, and reputed to enjoy close ties to the People's Liberation Army. Our national security is a bit safer without our communications passing through a PRC-owned company.

A little life left in it:

I've recently held that racism was effectively dead in Georgia. Apparently there are still a few holdouts. Link via Drudge.

The Lost Castle of Glyndwr:

Readers of the previous article know that this was described in heroic verse by the poet Iolo Goch. I have looked in vain for a translation of the poem on the internet--it was most recently translated in a 1993 work by D. Johnston, and as such is still in copyright. In its place I give you this poem by Medieval Welsh poet Dafydd ab Gwylim, his ode to May, into whose bounty we enter:

MAY.
Many a poet in his lay
Told me May would come again.
Truly sang the bard - for May
Yesterday began to reign!
She is like a bounteous lord,
Gold enough she gives to me -
Gold such as the poets hoard -
'Florins' of the mead and tree,
Hazel-flowers, and 'fleurs-de-lis.'
Underneath her leafy wings
I am safe from treason's stings;
I am full of wrath with May
That she will not always stay!
Maidens never hear of love
But when she has plumed the grove.
Giver of the gift of song,
To the poet's heart and tongue.
May! majestic child of heaven,
To the earth is glory given,
Verdant hills, days long and clear,
Come when she is hovering near.
Stars, ye cannot journey on
Joyously when she is gone!
Ye are not so glossy bright,
Blackbirds, when she takes her flight;
Sweetest art thou nightingale
Poet, thou cans't tell thy tale
With a lighter heart, when May
Rules with all liner bright array!

Archaeology:

Two more big discoveries announced this week. In Wales, archaeologists have discovered the lost castle of Glyndwr. And in Egypt, a high priest's chamber.

Thanks to Wren's Nest for these links.

Arts & Sciences:

In response to my contention that psychology is not a science (see Monday's log), I've been asked to read Our Inner Conflicts by Karen Horney, M.D. Dr. Horney was one of the founders of psychoanalysis, both a friend and competitor to Freud, and compiled the basis of psychology's theories of neuroses. One of psychology's defenders asked me to consider her work at length before I made up my mind that psychology was not a science. I have now completed my study of the work, and am ready to report.

Dr. Horney's work has several things to be said in its favor. In particular the vision of sanity she presents is appealing, and in fact almost perfectly echoes G. K. Chesterton's vision of sanity from Orthodoxy. Chesterton, of course, was not a psychologist, but a Catholic: his thoughts on why men departed from sanity did not hinge upon theories of psychological conflict, but sin. Yet the two visions of sanity are almost perfect copies: each is a vision of wholeheartedness, coupled with responsibility and an ability to respond to things genuinely and without pretense. Both visions are powerful, appealing, and deeply human. Either, or indeed both, could be correct.

Both are empirical. Neither is scientific. Understanding why psychology is not science requires a short examination of what science is. The religious view is not in any danger of being taken for science, as it has no pretenses in that direction. The religious view takes its authority from faith, which is ultimately not testable beyond the confines of one man's heart. But psychology partakes of studies, not prayer; it holds conferences, publishes journals, engages in peer review and debate: how can I hold that it is a thing more like religion than like physics?

Science requires that all principles be not only testable, but falsifiable. Newtonian physics felt, at the turn of the 20th century, that it had basically solved all but a few straggling problems, and was remarkably close to a complete explanation of how the universe worked. It still viewed atoms as unsplittable, and had no knowledge of quarks or quantums. When the "new physics" came along, it undermined the entirety of the discipline as it existed. Everything had to be cast out or reexamined: a resolution is still out of reach.

Psychology's bedrock claims are not similarly falsifiable. Behavioral psychology claims that the mind is an illusion of the brain: its evidence is that it can explain behavior by reference only to chemical properties of the brain, and therefore a mind is unnecessary. That kind of argument is a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam, that is, the argument from ignorance. The fact is that behavioral psychology cannot show that there is no mind, any more than it can show that there is. At the last, it is engaged in an act of faith, upon which principle no scientific inquiry is possible.

Behavioral psychology is not alone: all psychology ultimately is based upon unscientific principles which must be accepted, or not, on faith. Freud's Oedipal complex, for example, was meant to exist in all men; if analysis showed something consistent with it, the psychologist said, "Aha! The Oedipal complex at work!" If analysis failed to show anything consistent with it, the psychologist replied, "Aha! You are repressing your Oedipal complex." The fact that the complex might not exist was not possible, therefore it could not be the case. Jungian psychology similarly posits a "collective unconscious," and it is ultimately your acceptance of the existence of that collective unconscious which qualifies you to practice Jungian analysis. You can't be a Jungian and not accept the collective unconscious. Cognitive dissonance theory posits that the human mind (or brain) can't accept two mutually exclusive propositions without feeling agitation to resolve them. I have occasionally debated this point with cognitive therapists, and found that evidence against this central proposition is finally dismissed. It has to be, as the central principle can't be proven, nor can it be disproven: it must be accepted on faith.

Yet psychology retains the respect due only to real sciences, and with it the force to legally deprive a man of his freedom, his job, or certain rights which are available only to those held to be "mentally competent" to exercise them. Psychology's ability to maintain this illusion is due to its empiricism--that is, to the fact that it bases its conclusions on real-world examples, which gives it the flavor of science. Empiricism, practiced by Aristotle, was indeed the precursor of science. I said that Dr. Horney was empirical, and she is. She really has done a lot of research, and a lot of analysis, and a lot of thinking about the examples she has met. Empiricism is not science, however. That is another way of addressing the line of questions which takes the form, "But if (e.g.) behaviorists can in fact explain all human behavior without reference to a mind--if they can really do it--does that not show that they are right?" The answer lies with the Greeks.

Ancient Greek navigators developed a complex mechanical device for navigation, called the Antikythera mechanism. It aided navigation by predicting where certain stars should be in the sky at given times of the night, at given points of the year. The Greeks thought that the earth was the center of the universe, however, which should pose a problem for correct prediction of astral movements. When they encountered those problems, though, they just thought around them:

The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga. (These models, which predate the mechanism, were subsequently incorporated into the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD.)

Epicycles were able to correctly account for the movement of astral bodies without discarding the core--and inaccurate--principle of the earth's centrality. The development of epicycles is an astonishing, indeed a magnificient, human accomplishment. It is a beautiful piece of human artifice. Its only flaw is that it fails to be correct.

Psychology is in just this position. Insofar as it simply wishes to guide a given ship to a given port (say, an unhappy person to that vision of sanity) it may serve as a perfectly useful model. So long as it is applied to that, and only that, it may be functional. The problem arises when you start making wider judgements based upon its core principles--for example, what sort of people ought to enjoy freedoms, or ought to hold jobs. If the core principle is wrong, you could end up making very bad, hurtful judgements.

Ultimately epicycles were set aside because they partook of the realm of physics, and better methods of observation allowed us to see plainly that the earth was not the center of the universe. Psychology is a different animal because its core principles are finally untestable, unfalsifiable, and unscientific. There is no evidence that can be brought to bear, either today or conceptually in the future, that could really put an end to the question of whether or not we have minds separate from our brains; or whether "inner conflicts" yield "disorders" from some kind of normality, rather than simply informing the development of a unique person who wasn't meant to be anything other than what they are. These things at last can't be tested.

I have nothing against people making decisions in their personal life on the basis of psychology, if they feel inclined. I don't mind them choosing this thing over that thing on the basis of Tarot card readings, for that matter. I have said that arts are the noblest of human endeavors precisely because they are the most human. Psychology is an art. It should be proud of it. It must also, however, discard the false authority that it has laid claim to under the guise of being a science. People can--should!--choose to build their lives around the mastery of some art that is particularly appealing to them. No government or corporate entity, though, should make decisions involving fundamental liberties on the basis of signs and portents, the readings of seers, or the analysis of a psychologist.

May Day:

Although the Washington Post lists the story as "World Marks May Day," it's really mostly a few crowds of communists and the remnant of the hard-left labor unions. The exceptions are in Germany, where this seems to have turned into an annual riot-for-fun-and-profit day among the youth; and Russia, oddly enough:

In Russia, pro-Kremlin parties and trade unions stole the show from the fading Communist opposition by organizing a rally in central Moscow that drew an estimated 25,000 people. The peaceful, flower-waving crowd cheerfully marched down Moscow's main thoroughfare, joined by the city's mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

More Bad Thinking:

Textbooks are heavily censored--we wouldn't want to teach the wrong lessons, right? Even Plato talked about that in the Republic. It's a lesson holders of education degrees take seriously:

What do dinosaurs, mountains, deserts, brave boys, shy girls, men fixing roofs, women baking cookies, elderly people in wheelchairs, athletic African Americans, God, heathens, witches, owls, birthday cake and religious fanatics all have in common? Trick question? Not really. As we learn from Diane Ravitch's eye-opening book "The Language Police," all of the above share the common fate of having been banned from the textbooks or test questions (or both) being used in today's schools.

I always thought it was odd that Plato made Socrates the mouthpiece for this idea when it was presented in the Republic. Socrates' life was one of searching out and examining all ideas, everything he could, though in the end it meant his death to carry on. I have never understood why Plato felt it was appropriate to make Socrates an advocate for censoring what children encounter in order to control the development of their minds and attitudes. Socrates' approach was the opposite: to encounter widely, but think it through.

But the panels making these decisions were obviously not taught to think things through. Rather than introducing textbooks and tests that would expand student's horizons, they try to restrict the horizons as much as possible to avoid testing them on unfamiliar concepts:

Stranger still, a story about a heroic blind youth who climbed to the top of Mt. McKinley was rejected, not only because of its implicit suggestion that blind people might have a harder time than people with sight, but also because it was alleged to contain "regional bias": According to the panel's bizarre way of thinking, students who lived in non-mountainous areas would theoretically be at a "disadvantage" in comprehending a story about mountain climbing. Stories set in deserts, cold climates, tropical climates or by the seaside, Ravitch learned, are similarly verboten as test topics, since not all students have had personal experience of these regions.

What exactly do they teach at education school?

Link via Arts & Letters Daily.

Pakistan: Ally?

Reports are mixed, but this report in Pakistan's Daily Times is encouraging. The US government considers them a key ally, and reports that Pakistan is third in the world in the seizure of terrorist assets. The first two governments are the US and Switzerland, for reasons that will be obvious. Pakistan is surely third in part because of the massive number of terrorists operating out of, or through, its offices. Still, the fact that they are so heavily involved in seizures indicates that terror groups do not enjoy the full backing of the government, but only of elements within it.

Anti-Terrorism:

First, the good news: six members of al Qaeda have been arrested in Pakistan, including Tawfiq bin Attash. The other five look like small fish, but Tawfiq has in the past been named by the CIA as one of the leaders of the Cole bombing and the attacks on our African embassies.

Now the bad news: The United States has signed a ceasefire with a terrorist group. The group in question is the People's Mujahidin, an Iranian organization that we were bombing just fifteen days ago.

There are two things about this which are of concern. The more important is, what standing does a terrorist group have to enter into formal negotiations with the United States? The willingness of the government to negotiate with them gives them a legitimacy that they, being in fact a band of brigands, do not deserve. We will certainly regret this.

The second area of concern has to do with the image of the United States in terrorist-producing regions. It was precisely the image of weakness after Somalia, we now know, that inspired the Cole and embassy bombings; and the weak response against those was central to the planning of 9/11. For now, it looks like the response is muted: the Balochistan Post reports the story under the headline, "United States signs deal with terror group: Big terrorist seeks help of small terrorists." The story reads like pragmatism rather than cowardice on our part, as the People's Mujahidin are opposed to the current government in Iran. This looks like it is part of a US effort to undermine the Iranian government, and perhaps it is.

Speaking of terrorism, the dispute between the IRA and Northern Irish groups has managed to derail the power-sharing elections again.

A great career awaits:

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Iraqi information minister may still be alive. According to the report, he's tried to turn himself in to US forces, but they don't think he's important enough to arrest.

Derbyshire:

John Derbyshire's column today is remarkable on several occasions. Here are two, but the whole column--indeed, the whole body of his political writings--deserves reading when leisure permits:

It is easy to think of very large and disastrous social consequences that have followed from private sexual activity. There is, for example, the great explosion of illegitimacy that followed the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and that has wreaked such havoc on our society. There is also the dreadful AIDS epidemic, spread in the USA mainly by private sexual activity, which has killed tens of thousands of people. There is of course a great deal more to be said on both these topics, and room for plenty of opinions about the proper scope and authority of the state in these things. I am only pointing out that the proposition: "Society at large has no legitimate interest in citizens' private sexual activities" is so obviously false as to be, well, infantile. And yet, amazing to say, a lot of grown-up people seem to believe it.

And the second:

The Santorum business brought to the fore an outfit called "The Human Rights Campaign." You would never know from its name that this is a homosexualist lobbying organization. I have no problem with HRC's existence � homosexuals have as much right to organize and lobby as the rest of us � but I do have a problem with that name � viz., it's dishonest. The name of an organization ought to give some clue as to what the organization is for. Why don't they call themselves "The Homosexual Rights Campaign," or "The Campaign for Tolerance of Alternative Sexuality," or something like that? If they want to be a little more in-your-face, they could go for something with a defiant or humorous twist: "The Sodomite Sodality," perhaps. Don't they understand that this straining at bland respectability just makes them look shifty?

Readers, I have decided to launch a movement for the legalization of dog meat as a marketable foodstuff. My movement will be named: "The Campaign for Truth, Justice, Harmony and Peace." Everyone OK with that?

Al Qaeda in Iraq:

A terrorist is captured in western Iraq. Administration officials quickly point out that they don't know if he had any connection to the Iraqi government. I'm always amazed by how cautious the Bush administration is with its pronouncements, in view of their public image as outrageous cowboys.

A Mythic Day:

...in the Corner. Thanks to them for these links, one to a magnificient archaeological find that may be the tomb of Gilgamesh. Also, there is a link to this article on dragons.

Caves in Afghanistan:

U.S. Special Forces find 80 metric tons of high explosives and 124 metric tons of small arms ammunition hidden in Afghan caves. But that's not all:

Earlier this month, Romanian soldiers discovered thousands of rockets and more than 1 million rounds of ammunition in what the US military then described as the largest weapons cache discovered by US-led forces in Afghanistan.

The find near Qalat, capital of southern Zabul province, included 3,000 107mm rockets, 250,000 rounds of 12.7mm machinegun ammunition, about 1 million rounds of small arms ammunition and other ammunition and mines.

Afghan forces earlier this month also discovered about 18 caves full of ammunition and weapons near Maimana.

Each cave was 15 metres by five metres by four metres high, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said when he announced the finds.

Those weapons appeared to have been stockpiled during Afghanistan's 1992-1996 civil war, however, not a Taliban or Al Qaeda arsenal.

US special forces also uncovered six smaller caches of weapons including 400 107mm rockets and machineguns in the Madr valley north-east of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

Link via the Agonist.

Now I know what to get as a wedding gift:

Minnesota passes a "shall-issue" law on concealed firearms. Maybe I'll spring for a pistol for Kevin, my sister's suitor.

The "Ban that Polarized a Nation":

Foxhunting in Scotland. Really, though, outright banning of traditional liberties should always polarize a nation--preferably into the camp in favor of voting out the scoundrels who did it, and camp composed of only the scoundrels themselves.

Great, if true:

Mugabe to step down?

Progressing right back...

Earlier this week, I said:

Progressive--I like that. Let's progress right on past the wasteland of modernism, exactly by returning to the old values of classical liberalism. It was, after all, the classical liberal who first propounded the idea that all men were created equal, and that some rights were endowed inalienably.

From The Nation, an article by William Grider:

ROLLING BACK THE 20th CENTURY

...The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President.

I'm not aware of being part of any movement, but it sounds like I may have some allies out there. If they want to stop at 1900, though, they're pulling up short. I say we keep right on rolling to, say, 1787. If we get to pick our period of values and power relationships, I'll take the Washington administration.

PBR Watch:

My grandfather's beer, and my favorite American beer, has apparently reached the apex of coolness. Jonah Goldberg of NRO mentions it today, and even links to the PBR Homepage. Always did like the stuff--good to see it getting its due.

Mr. Powell blows smoke:

Today's NY Times article on the DPRK negotiations includes this gem from Colin Powell:

Mr. Powell said the North Koreans had not threatened during the talks to begin testing nuclear weapons. They never "used the word test," he said.

Did they use the word "is"? Or was it just that we can say they didn't use the word "test," as the statements were written in Korean?

The DPRK has, in the past, signed specific treaties and then broken them immediately. The State Department is now trying to read things into their choice of words in nonbinding negotiations? This is akin to a judge deciding to let a career criminal go unpunished, not because he promised not to rob any more banks, but because, describing his plans to visit the bank next week, he didn't use the word "rob."

Antagonistic?

An offer from the DPRK hinges upon our abandoning our antagonistic policy toward them. What policy would that be? Forswearing war at every opportunity?

Arts & Sciences:

From the beginning of a piece on failed civilizations:

In particular many of the so-called hard scientists such as physicists or biologists, don't consider history to be a science. The situation is even more extreme because, he points out, even historians themselves don't consider history to be a science. Historians don't get training in the scientific methods; they don't get training in statistics; they don't get training in the experimental method or problems of doing experiments on historical subjects; and they'll often say that history is not a science, history is closer to an art.

Historians often say that history is not a science because history is not a science. One of the central problems with modern society is its increasing inability to tell the difference between what is a science, and what isn't. This is directly related to the prestige that has come to be associated with the label of "science" during the 20th century.

In part because of the tremendous material advances brought us by science, the concept of science enjoys considerable standing. The best way to make sure that your ideas are put into practice is to convince others that they are scientific: to say that something is scientific is commonly thought to be the same as saying that it is true beyond the possibility of counterargument. Psychology (from the Greek, psyche-, or "spirit/soul," and -ology, or "study of"), which claims to be the science of the mind, has so convinced the majority of Westerners that it is scientific that a psychologist's testimony alone can strip a man of his freedom, serve as reason not to hire him, or to fire him from a job he already has. A man can be subjected to forced injections of drugs and imprisonment based on nothing more than a psychologist's assessment.

This all rests upon a misunderstanding of just what science is. Science is one kind of inquiry, a particular kind that rests upon two general principles: the method of making no assertions that cannot be tested and falsified; and the complete transparency and open debate of all assertions being made, none of which are ever to be taken as invunerable. Science is indeed a great thing; it is indeed powerful.

It isn't -everything-, though, and it isn't all powerful. There are some endeavors that are not, and can not be, science. History is one of them. So, as it happens, is "psychology," which would be more honestly called philopsyche, after the fashion of philosophy. Anything which involves the working of the human mind isn't and cannot be a science. This is simply because the human mind isn't observable, and therefore, it is not testable. Regardless of how cautiously you design your tests, the fact is that you are simply guessing about the why of a given decision. You can't really observe the process of decision making.

Stripping these so-called "social sciences" of the notion that they are sciences is one of the greatest services we could do for our culture. There is nothing more noble than art, exactly because there is nothing more human than art. We ought to be proud to be performing the arts, practicing the arts. There are too many, though, who are unwilling to compete in a fair and open atmosphere. They wish to hide behind the authority of science, even if they must do so illegitimately.

And they must: science was never about stifiling debate, but always about enforcing it systematically. Psychology, sociology, and the rest do not--as history does--recognize honestly the fact that their methods simply cannot be scientifically tested, cannot be falsified, cannot be proven nor disproven. As such, all of their assertions deserve a healthy scepticism. That scepticism should be the healthier for the fact that these so-called disciplines will not admit the truth about their methods. They are a blight upon our way of thinking, and of conceiving the world.

Still--

This article from the Policy Review deserves special mention.

Arts & Letters Daily:

My favorite of all similar sites, Arts & Letters Daily is one I rarely link to because I'd feel the need to speak to almost every piece. If you don't make a habit of reading it, you might wish to reconsider.

On which topic:

Babbin today:

There were several night missions aimed at capturing Saddam last week. The Marines and spec ops guys searched several caves and tunnels near Tikrit. Some had been recently occupied, but neither Saddam nor his sons were found.

A Very Merry Un-Birthday:

To Saddam, who is surely dead--or soon to be. One almost hopes he is alive, just so he can enjoy a birthday celebration in constant expectation of the arrival of Marine Force Recon.

Libya's chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission:

Even Le Monde can't let it go any longer.

Les choses avaient mal commenc�, cette ann�e, avec l'aide regrettable de la France, par l'�lection malencontreuse � la pr�sidence de la repr�sentante de la Libye, et elles se sont mal poursuivies. . . .
Cette commission est devenue une parodie d'elle-m�me et la majorit� des 53 Etats membres se satisfont de cette situation.

My French is what it is, but that's roughly, "Things began badly, this year, with the regrettable aid of France, with the election to the presidency of Libya's representative, and they have continued badly. . . . This commission has become a parody of herself, and the majority of the 53 member-states are satisfied with this situation."

Arab Conspiracy Theories:

From Albawaba.com.