Patterico%27s Pontifications%3A %3Ci%3ENew York Times%3C%2Fi%3E Hit Piece on the Swift Vets Finally Comes Out

Swifties:

Well, the New York Times has now weighed in. Hat tip Sovay, who noticed the piece and finds it completely convincing, so much so that she titles her piece "Swift Boat Liars."

Patterico wasn't quite so pleased with it:

...The piece makes one telling point. It provides quotes praising Kerry from three of the Vets who currently condemn him -- A Roy F. Hoffmann, Adrian L. Lonsdale, and George Elliott. I think this is fair commentary -- the only fair commentary in the piece. If three Vets praised Kerry in previous years, that's a fair point. They should explain why they are saying something different now.

That makes three of over 250 veterans who are in the group.

What is both amazing and utterly predictable is that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story is saved for the very end. This is the one accusation made by the Vets where the facts are clear -- and the facts show that Kerry was not truthful, as even the Kerry campaign has had to admit. How does the New York Times characterize the "Christmas in Cambodia" story?

Take a deep breath. It says that the story is "the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest." Not "the allegation that has forced Mr. Kerry's campaign to explain that Mr. Kerry has not been telling the truth." Just the one allegation that they haven't yet "put to rest...."

Simply unbelievable. Nothing about the magic hat. Nothing about his gun-running missions. Nothing about the memories being "seared -- seared" into Kerry's head.

The longer this goes on, the more troubling I find it. There are, as the gentleman points out, 250 sailors represented by SBVFT. They are speaking out against just one sailor, John Kerry. Kerry's defenders say they want to make sure that Kerry's service is not slandered, which is a fine and noble goal. They ought to take care not to slander 250 men in their rush to defend their own, one, man.

Some of these questions -- I put all the Bronze Star issues into this category -- can probably be resolved by recognizing that people's memories of combat are often vastly different, one to another, as with any high-stress event. Some of them may simply be mistakes or misunderstandings. I expect Kerry to be exonerated on many of these charges, including the Bronze Star, which is enough to say that I think he was for at least that one moment a real war hero.

But some of these charges aren't going to be resolved without shame coming hard on someone's head. It's going to be Kerry's, or it's going to be 250 other fighting men.

The Christmas In Cambodia story has already been admitted to be false. Navy SEALs have written to say that no swift boats were used for Cambodian insertions; the Navy's entire chain of command for the region has said so. All of Kerry's boat companions have written to say that they don't recall ever being in Cambodia. MACV-SOG had its own boat service, which used PTF "Nasty" boats rather than SWIFT boats, and therefore had no need of taking on an inexperienced LTjg to do what they had experienced operators to do, or using a SWIFT boat for a mission that a PTF could do better. The CIA likewise had its own budget for these matters.

This leaves two remaining possibilities consistent with Kerry telling the truth:

1) He was performing missions that were illegal in the real sense, having not been approved by anyone in the chain of command. This is not entirely implausible; our SEAL noted that they sometimes did things without asking because they didn't trust the chain of command. If they thought young Kerry was a sucker, some operators might have convinced him to do something that would have gotten him into a lot of trouble if it had been discovered. It's much more likely they would have used one of their own for this mission (again, per the SEALs), but it is not completely impossible that someone decided to con the LTjg into doing it for them. Problem for Kerry: his boatmates still don't remember this mission.

2) All 250 sailors are lying, including Kerry's entire chain of command; his boatmates who do support him are also lying about the Cambodian incursions.

And none of that touches the geography issues, which are still unexplained. There is not yet enough information to evaluate these claims, except to say that Kerry's story to date is not consistent with the facts of how the rivers run. Attempts to find another river nearby that does comply with Kerry's story are underway, and that's fine. It may be that this is going to prove to be another area in which it is only the vagaries of memory that are in dispute.

The Cambodia story remains a serious problem, however. Defenders of Kerry should take care not to slander 250 servicemen to protect the principle of not slandering servicemen. Until there are answers, we can't say for certain which group is telling the falsehood: the one career politician, or the 250 men from all walks of life.

Blogs for Bush%3A It Was Actually John Kerry Before It Was Bob Kerrey

B4B:

Grim's Hall has joined the Blogs for Bush, as some of you may have noticed. I have recently explained what I think is a sufficient cause to vote against Kerry in the upcoming election, regardless of all other factors. Grim's Hall, while recognizing Bush's flaws, will nevertheless fight for him as the best man on the field.

We have a fair number of liberal readers here, however, although most of them don't comment much in the comments section. (You know who you are.) I don't wish to drive them off, as many are friends and some are family. I will therefore be gathering "Blogs for Bush" material under the heading B4B, and those of you who are already rock-solid certain to vote for Kerry or Nader can skip the entries. Those of you who are almost certain are encouraged to keep an open mind, although I doubt these articles will convince you, as they appear to be preaching to the choir.

This week, B4B has three articles they'd like mentioned:

It Was Actually John Kerry Before It Was Bob Kerrey

Does Kerry Really Condemn MoveOn?

51% of Democrats Blame America for 9/11

I must admit to a certain disdain for the politics: on the first question, I object to kicking a man while he's down (Ed: and it's hard to get lower down than Kerry, these days... Quiet, you!); on the second, I'm not sure why it matters; but on the third, I can see the point. There are a certain number of Democrats, myself included, who are voting for Bush this year largely because they don't wish to support the party of blaming America, and especially wish to avoid voting into power candidates who blame America. The policies that result from that position are bad ones, as they leave our foreign policy timid, our military constrained, and our enemies therefore bolder and freer -- to say nothing of leaving them alive, which I already consider a major concession, to be offered only in exchange for great service.

Sharp Knife

Sharp Knife:

Thanks to Noel, who provided me with some ammo in a debate earlier today (re: antisemitism), and then came up with this Steyn quote, appropriate to the redeployment of our 70,000 troops:

This will undoubtedly be welcome news to the likes of Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, who famously declared that the purpose of the European Union is that "it's one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination". It must surely be awfully embarrassing to be the first superpower in history to be permanently garrisoned by your principal rival superpower.

I laughed for quite a while after reading that.

Mudville Gazette

Greyhawk:

The Mudville Gazette has been particularly active lately.

CrimLaw

From Southern Appeal:

A new, and successful, tactic in criminal law: "The Damn Yankee Defense."

Froggy Ruminations%3A SEALs %26 Swift boats

A SEAL Speaks:

Now here is someone who will know the answer to Hugh's question: were swift boats used for insertion operations? This fellow is a former SEAL, and the son of a SEAL to boot. He says no; the SF used swift boats, but not the SEALs; and swifties were definitely not for cross-border insertions.

I've met a couple of SEALs in my time. Very impressive lads. Not so much their physical prowess, although that is extremely high; still, I've met their equals from other services (although not their betters). What is really impressive to me is the combination of that physical prowess with the technical expertise. The SEALs I've known have always been highly technical: in addition to SCUBA gear, and being trained paratroopers, they were also competent with at least one other piece of machinery that would normally be an operational specialty on its own. One of the guys I knew was an electronic weapons officer for a Naval fighter; the other trained dolphins and knew how to use several kinds of underwater equipment.

SF are impressive too, don't get me wrong. Their language skills are something I've always aspired to myself, although I've lacked both the training and the chance to travel as widely. Everyone's heard of how physically difficult the Q-course is, but the real trick is the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery). I took it once and scored an 82, but you have to have scored at least an 85 to pass. It's an artificial language test, very tricky but a lot of fun. I did very well on the written portion, but my hearing isn't great and the listening portion wrecked my score. Alas, misspent youth, gunfire without adequate hearing protection, etc.

Anyway, you can go and read what this hero and son of a hero has to say. His father was there; he asked him too.

The New York Times > Magazine > Questions for Ray C. Fair: Bush Landslide (in Theory)!

I Love Game Theory:

Not just because it is a fantastic model for understanding the world, but also because it creates exchanges like this:

Are you a Republican?

I can't credibly answer that question. Using game theory in economics, you are not going to believe me when I tell you my political affiliation because I know that you know that I could be behaving strategically. If I tell you I am a Kerry supporter, how do you know that I am not lying or behaving strategically to try to put more weight on the predictions and help the Republicans?

I don't want to do game theory. I just want to know if you are a Kerry supporter.

Backing away from game theory, which is kind of cute, I am a Kerry supporter.

I believe you entirely, although I'm a little surprised, because your predictions implicitly lend support to Bush.

I am not attempting to be an advocate for one party or another. I am attempting to be a social scientist trying to explain voting behavior.

Leaving aside my irritation at the term "social science," I have to say that I love it. Hat tip: Southern Appeal.

Byron York on John Kerry, David Alston & Vietnam on National Review Online

Retrenchment:

Kerry's campaign explains that Captain Ed is wrong to say that he hadn't served with Alston. However, the retrenched explanation once again creates new inconsistencies with the established storyline: once again, you have to shift all the dates Kerry has used in the past to account for the new story. It really is time to sign that Form 180, and just let people see the records.

UPDATE:

Hugh Hewitt is apparently spending a lot of time and energy on research into these allegations. I'm familiar with the SOG, but it was before my time. I'm afraid I have nothing to add on the question of whether or not they used swift boats.

BOROWITZ report.com

Olympic Jitters:

"Olympic security officials in Athens, Greece conceded today that they had failed to notice a giant wooden horse that had been wheeled to within meters of the Olympic stadium sometime late last week."

USATODAY.com - Reservists say war makes them lose jobs

The "War To See Soldiers Treated Decently"

A report from the frontlines of this war, oddly enough being waged by the Labor Department. There's good news and bad news. Complaints are up, but not as much as expected; most of the time employers are obeying the law. However, there are some "grey areas" in which our soldiers are not being treated as well as we'd like, particularly for law enforcment officers who are also Reservists:

The county required that they exhaust their leave before receiving a county salary supplement that bridged the gap between military and civilian pay. This meant some employees had to count some of their time in a war zone as vacation days or forfeit the extra pay.

"Our members were not able to decompress," said Percy Alston, president of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge representing the county's police officers. His members have challenged the policy through labor grievance procedures and expect an arbitrator will decide the matter.

I'm generally opposed to public-sector unions, but somebody needs to fight for these guys. It's to nobody's benefit to bring a soldier back from a war zone, and then stick him out policing our streets with no time to readjust to the United States. Saving a few bucks on his salary is going to seem like a false economy the first time something bad happens that could have been avoided with a proper readjustment.

GeorgeWBush.com :: The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush

Intel:

The Bush-Cheney team has put out a new ad called Intel. It shows that they are finally recognizing that this is an area in which Kerry is terribly vunerable.

One can understand why the Bush administration would be cautious in citing intelligence issues as a reason to vote for them. "Intelligence failure" has been an all-too-common phrase in the last few years, and while the Bush administration is not to blame for the worst failings of the intelligence services, they have exacerbated the problem in certain key respects. The Bush administration can't be blamed for the fact that the CIA got nearly all our Iraqi agents killed in a coup attempt in the late 1990s; they can't be blamed for the fact that the CIA/DIA didn't keep up ties in Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. We saw in the released President's Daily Briefing the fruits of that -- the information was based on old UBL speeches, 'media reports,' and the like. This was what the CIA could come up with: open source intelligence that you or I could dig up in Nexis.

The fact is that the services had blinders on by 2001, and rebuilding HUMINT networks in particular takes a lot of time. It takes time on both ends: in the sharp end, it's hard to recruit and keep secret your agents; and on our side, it really takes decades to build up the sort of deep and intimate understanding of a foreign culture and its personalities that drives the best HUMINT.

So, these are problems that couldn't be fixed overnight. They stemmed from bad decisions made many years earlier, but which echo with particular resonance in the intelligence community.

On the other hand, Bush didn't help matters much. To his credit, he started doing what Clinton had not, which was taking very regular meetings with the DCI. He took his briefings seriously, and -- as we know from Kessler's book, The CIA At War -- came into office with advice from Bush Sr. to keep the agency close.

In spite of that, the President seems to have fallen prey to serious intelligence failures. Some of these were pre-9/11, when the whole Federal apparatus fell down on the job. State approved visas in plain violation of its regulations; the CIA didn't deal with foreign warnings about some of the terrorists; the FBI didn't deal with CIA warnings. Bush could not be expected to fix these sorts of massive systemic problems in a few months, but the greater problem is that he doesn't seem to have noticed them. "Why don't we have anything on this bin Laden that isn't several years old and from the press?" should have been a natural question.

The Iraq war intelligence has been thoroughly explored, and there is no reason to go over it again here. As all investigations have discovered, the intel was widely believed worldwide, and there were good reasons for believing some of it. Still, there are honest questions about why we haven't seen more of a shakeup in the services. "We were waiting on the 9/11 Commission recommendations" doesn't cut it with me, especially since key recommendations are bad (e.g., the 'intel Czar').

So, for all these reasons, one can see why Bush might be careful about mentioning intelligence as a reason to vote for him. Even for those matters in which there was little he could do, the President bears some responsibility for answering to things that happen on his watch.

However, it is plainly true that Kerry is worse. Indeed, it's one of the only things we can really know about Kerry for certain.

I've been having this discussion with a young liberal I know from Del's Freespeech.com. Here are the relevant bits:

I mention Stansfield Turner in the clip. Will asked me to look into how 9/11 changed his views, if it did. I should have mentioned this earlier, but I have looked up Stansfield Turner's writings since 9/11. The University of Maryland has a selection, if you're inclined to see for yourself.

I'm afraid that I have to report little if any change from the retired Admiral. Now, Turner is a nice fellow -- he broke our intel services not out of malice, but because he felt that HUMINT is by its nature unethical, and he wanted a fully ethical CIA. So he focused on signals intelligence -- SIGINT -- and gutted the HUMINT-based clandestine service, as well as firing lots of our best officers.

His recent papers discuss HUMINT, but invariably include lots of what I would call "warnings" about it: 'it often fails,' 'it isn't moral,' and the like. He also plays up SIGINT in his current writings, saying it's underestimated as a source of intelligence.

One can't object to his tone, or even to his motives. It all sounds very nice, and I don't doubt that he really believes it. But, at the last, he's wrong -- and he's wrong in a very deadly way for the United States of America. I must report that my investigation has left me more certain than ever that he can't be trusted to run American intelligence, and that the Kerry campaign, depending on his advice, can't be trusted with it either.

Will asked me for more information about SIGINT and why it wasn't an answer:

SIGINT means "signals intelligence." It is the intelligence that can be gained, for example, from monitoring cell phone conversations, internet transmissions, and the like. It's not that I'm against it -- it has its place -- but it's not the solution Adm. Turner would like to believe.

There are some civil liberties concerns, to start with. You can imagine how much it would please the average European to discover that his phone calls are being monitored by CIA or NSA (as it is sometimes rumored that they are).

Also, the "signal to noise ratio" is a difficulty. Briefly, how do you know which phones to listen in on? Well, you don't, unless you've got a tip from the HUMINT field. If you're relying on SIGINT primarily, you end up listening to a whole lot of people's conversations about their shopping lists. At some point, you have to hire extra analysts to analyze all this "noise." It's expensive, and the chance of catching the one piece of "signal" is small no matter how much you spend on it.

Turner likes SIGINT because he thinks it's relatively moral. Nobody gets hurt if the government listens in on private conversations (right, Vikingas?). HUMINT, on the other hand, involves lies and spying. It involves, frequently, breaking the law. It's immoral and it means dirty tricks.

However, finally, it's the only thing that really works. As I suggested above, even SIGINT works a lot better if you've got tips from HUMINT to focus your SIGINT efforts. The same is true for all the other forms of intelligence too (e.g., OSINT -- "open source intelligence" -- is more effective if you know what to be watching for. It suffers from a similar 'signal/noise ratio' problem).

Finally, you've got to be willing to get down and dirty as a regular, day to day sort of thing. Intelligence doesn't work any other way. That's unhappy, I agree, but it is the truth. If you want to know what killers are doing, you have to win their trust and get them to tell you. You can't do that except with dirty tricks, and a lot of stuff we'd really rather not do.

But the alternative, the only alternative, is not knowing what they are doing....

I realize you probably made your mind up a while ago, and a man must vote his conscience. Still, for what it's worth, I couldn't vote for Kerry and his team. I honestly think it would put the republic in danger. I don't doubt their good intentions -- as I said, Stansfield Turner is a kindhearted fellow who only wants to be completely moral in our dealings with the world. It's hard to fault that.

At the last, though, I must fault it. I think we all must. I see no alternative, in spite of the failures and the failings, but to vote to re-elect Bush. I won't hold it against you however you vote -- a man must vote his conscience. But this is how I see it, for what it is worth.

Will finally asked if, aside from Turner's position as a senior advisor to the Kerry team, I thought there was reason to believe that the Carter approach would take hold in a Kerry administration:

There are reasons to think that the Carter team will be more important in a Kerry administration than they were in the Clinton administration. Clinton kept their members at arm's length, allowing Carter to serve as a member of a delegation to Haiti during his administration, but not otherwise putting him front and center. Neither Carter nor his fellows played any important role at the 1992 convention.

Kerry, on the other hand, gave Carter a prominent speaking role at the convention. Kerry, unlike Clinton, gave Stansfield Turner a seat on his senior policy staff. Turner's role during the Clinton administration was a professorship at U. Maryland, not a policy role.

There are two reasons this is important. The first is that there is a power struggle in the Democratic party, between the DNC (Democratic National Committee) faction which the Clintons represented, and the faction composed of those to the left of the DNC. In the two-party system, it's usually the centrist faction that enjoys greater success with the electorate. The preference for Carter's wing of the party over Clinton's is not to be ignored.

The other, and more important, reason is that the government is currently talking loudly about establishing an 'Intel Czar.' In the 1980s, the main reason we were able to respond to the Soviets in Afghanistan and elsewhere was that intel was bifurcated. The CIA was wrecked -- Mr. Turner had seen to that, as we've discussed. However, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) duplicated a lot of the CIA's functions from the military side. They started the program in Afghanistan, which the CIA took over later.

The DIA and CIA would both fall under the new Intel Czar, if it is in fact created. (For the record, I oppose the notion. The 9/11 Commission is just wrong on this point. The bifurcation is beneficial, as it gives us two separate views on what goes on worldwide; too much centralization will cause an increase in "stovepiping," and therefore worse intel failures).

If that Czar is Stansfield Turner -- already on Kerry's senior staff -- or someone operating on Turner's theories, we'll see a breakage of American intel at all levels. There won't be a DIA to save us this time; the DIA will be broken too.

That's the gamble, and the odds are in favor of Kerry approving just such a breakage. I can't take that chance.

I don't recommend that gamble to anyone. The Bush ad mentions several reasons to be concerned about Kerry and intel, but there are more serious reasons too. We can't afford a Kerry administration. The risks are too great.

BLACKFIVE

Steyn on Cambodia:

Via "the Paratrooper of Love," BlackFive, we have a piece from Mark Steyn:

But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''

So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?

It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.

And it turns out it's total bunk....

Captain's Quarters

More on Cambodia & Vietnam:

Captain's Quarters has, as most of you will have seen, newly disproven another of Kerry's claims about his service in Vietnam. This is starting to become alarming. As I said in the comments to the last post on this topic, I'm willing to insist on a strict standard of evidence for all of these charges -- but that applies to Kerry, too. When he makes claims that can be proven false, he deserves what he gets.

People's Daily Online -- Typhoon Rananim sweeps Zhengjiang

Charley Shmarley:

Glad I'm not in HangZhou today. This is our old neighborhood, from when we lived in China. Looks like so far, 115 dead, about 2,000 injured, and 42,000 houses destroyed. Whee.

Mudville Gazette

"Big Boom"

The Mudville Gazette has an interview with a (strongly pro-Bush) Air Force F-16 pilot who has been supporting operations in Najaf. Greyhawk has a question:

The terrorists and other anti-coalition elements "really are not winning," our pilot correspondent says. "Not even a little."

Anyone need that translated?

Hurr. Kitty

Hurricane Kitty:

Sovay, whose site I've been reading faithfully lately, carries on the tradition of some lefty blogger whose name escapes me of "Friday Catblogging." It happens that one of her cats used to live with me, before I found a suck... er, a kind hearted Sovay to take her in.

As she reminds me today, this cat, Arganti, appeared to me in the wreck following Hurricane Floyd. The wife and I were down Savannah way at the time, living on the inauspiciously named "Waters Avenue" (little did we know that meant 11-inch flash floods in our living room during the storm season). I was out 'walking one morning for pleasure,' when I saw a little white kitten stalking through the storm damage. As soon as she saw me, her tail shot up into a point, and she started running in my direction. She followed me all the way home -- I never touched her or offered her food or even encouragement -- and right through the door into my house. I named her and sent her to Maryland to live with Sovay, who flew down to pick her up.

So yeah, she's been through fire and high water. Tough cat, that one.

BLACKFIVE: Military Absentee Vote Registration Deadline Approaches

Vote Now!

If you're in the military, that is. BlackFive reminds us that the deadline for military absentee voters to register is August 15! Don't forget.

If you need help, the Marines have put up a good site for the military voter abroad. Get the word out, register, and vote on time! We don't want any military ballots discarded this time.

The Chronicle: 8/13/2004: Revising the Grecian Formula

Pun-ishing history:

Groan.

The Command Post - Op-Ed - John F. Kerry - Fighter Pilot?

J.F. Kerry: Fighter Pilot:

I hadn't heard about it until today, but apparently Kerry claims to have flown with the Israeli Air Force into Egypt, in addition to his Cambodia claims. He made this claim in remarks to the Anti-Defamation League, this very year. The Command Post concludes that... well, they don't want to call it an outright lie, although his claims are surely stretchers at least.

Good gracious. By the way, if you drop over to read the post, be sure to scroll down to the comments section. There's some well informed discussion about the nature of swift boats.

Marine Corps Times - News - More News

MOUT:

The Marine Corps Times describes the MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) training that the 11th MEU is using in Najaf. It has certainly been impressive, even to old hands like Wretchard at the Belmont Club.

In today's mainstream press, everyone is repeating the commonly understood pieties. Al-Reuters has a piece citing a fellow from the Royal Institute of International Affairs who says, "The problem is the foe they are trying to defeat is in many ways indestructible." Since we cannot win, the only hope is to try not to make these people mad at us. By that standard, fighting in Najaf -- indeed, in Iraq, in the Middle East at all -- is madness. This seems to be the position of the whole Fouth Estate, as well as the non-military NGOs.

It is interesting to read the reflections of those who have some knowledge of military science. They begin from the point of view that regardless of strength, all enemies can be defeated, as can we ourselves. The question is sorting out how, so that you may pursue the course most likely to result in the enemy's defeat, and least likely to result in your own.

Wretchard's writings on the topic are interesting, not only because his is one of the finest minds operating in the blogosphere, but also in that he has apparently had a change of opinion since Fallujah. Both he and I were initially on the side of restraint where sacred ground was concerned. At the time of the Fallujah incursion, I had revised my opinion, but Wretchard remained on the other side. I see today that he has come to a new conclusion:

Yet something has changed for the Iraqi government to authorize a near-fatal assault on Sadr and countenance the Marines approach to within rock-throwing distance of the Imam Ali Shrine. Whether it has changed enough is the question.

It now seems clear that Sadr overestimated the degree of protection which the necropolis and its proximity to the shrine afforded him. Yet the shrine itself cannot be so lightly trespassed. It is protected by a boundary civilized men hesitate to cross. In an irony that Sam Harris would appreciate, sanctity, though it be of the Christian Church of the Nativity, has become an object that can always be pressed into service to shield Islamic fundamentalists though it provides none for those they would slay. That becomes the danger itself; for the shameless abuses of Sadr and similar thugs inevitably cheapen and corrode the very restraints upon which civilization depends; that distinguish the civilian from the combatant; the church from the battlefield. When like the Najaf necropolis, sacred objects finally lose their power to restrain, it more than brick that is destroyed. The real metaphor for the terrorist war on civilization is not wide-bodied aircraft crashing into the twin towers. It is mortars firing from the courtyard of the Imam Ali Shrine by men who don't even sandbag their positions, secure in the knowledge that they can slay men too decent to fire back.

In the end, Sadr's walk-away position is to dare Rubaie to assault the Shrine: dare him to be a barbarian. In the face of that challenge, Rubaie must convince Sadr that he is prepared to cross that line, to pull down his temple if it means saving his soul.

To this I have nothing to add, having said my piece before. I agree.

KRT Wire | 08/12/2004 | Filip Bondy | U.S. team serves as model for Greek-Americans

US Defeats America:

A weird story from the Olympics.

PixelPress

A Beautiful Site:

PixelPress is the host for some well-done photography of our servicemen at war. Thanks to JHD for the link.

Getty Images Editorial - Detail View - GINSWEB01

Congratulations:

Congratulations to the Iraqi "football" team. Best to the lads, and good hunting. I hope you take the silver (having, for patriotic reasons, to hope the gold goes elsewhere). :)

NRA News

Grim on NRANews:

If any of you wonder what Grim sounds like when you catch him completely off guard, and start asking him pointed questions while he's been thinking about something else entirely, you can drop by NRANews.com today. About twenty-five percent of the way through the program, I'm the fellow in the John B. Stetson hat being interviewed on the relative qualifications of Bush and Kerry.

I hope I sound a bit better when I've taken the time to prepare a response. For what it's worth, I thought they guy who stopped me was just asking for directions. I get asked for directions no matter where I go -- I guess I just look like I know where I'm going, so people assume I might know where they're going too. It always shocks me in D.C., though. Anyone paying half a moment's attention would notice that mine is the only cowboy hat in view. Why they'd think I'm a local baffles me.

Anyway, I was down on the Mall and this fellow asked if he could ask a question, and I said, "Yeah, sure." So he whipped a mic out from behind his back, and suddenly his accomplice turned up with a television camera, and they started asking about the election. I didn't find out they were with NRANews until after the brief interview (which they seem to have run without any editing). I don't think they store back-issues of the show online, so if you don't see it between now and tomorrow at 2 PM, you've probably missed it. No great loss if you do; I was hardly at my best, in a bit of a hurry, and preoccupied with certain questions relating to China and Korea that have been on my plate this week.

Range Day 2

Home on the Range:

I got out to the range today, in advance of the tropical storm rolling in. I went last week, but due to an unexpected traffic problem I missed the last ceasefire and couldn't shoot that day as a result. Today, however, everything went fine, and I got to the range at about two o'clock.

I had a pretty good day. After warming up, I put down a pretty good group:

That nice little group in the black is four rounds, not three as it may look at first. Here's a closeup:

That's a pretty good improvement over last time, and fair shooting for a .357 magnum.

I also tried a couple of new things today. In addition to a box of .357 Magnum, I bought a box of .38 Special to try. Everyone tells you that you can shoot it out of a .357, and you can, although it mucks up the throat with soot because the brass is short. Still, I can see why it's popular. It cuts the recoil in half at least, and is four bucks cheaper a box to boot. For target practice, that's probably fine, though I share the USMC motto: "Train as you fight, fight as you train."

Finally, for my fellow Knights of St. John Moses, I should mention that I fired a Colt 1911A1 that the shootist in the next stall had brought out. I wish I could show you that target. I was just on my way out, having recovered my targets and picked up my brass, when he invited me to have a go with the thing. As a consequence, I don't have the target to photograph for you. But man, what a sweet shooting piece.

Sweet, that is, when it worked. It was loaded with Winchester hardball, but for some reason it still didn't feed right twice in six rounds: the first time it choked clearing the spent brass, and the second time it fed the new round into the throat but didn't drop to battery. I can't say why, although my guess is she wasn't properly cleaned by her shooter. Still, when she shot, she shot true.

FreeSpeech.com

An Honest Debate:

It's getting harder to find one, as the election comes closer. But you still can, at Del's FreeSpeech.com. Today's is a debate over the Christmas in Cambodia charges, which I think is worth reading and thoughtful replies.

Results - News Release Generator

11th MEU:

US CENTCOM has released an official report on 11th MEU fighting in Najaf. Take a look.

Channelnewsasia.com

Asia's Six Days War:

Taiwan is staging a war game today to see if it could withstand a Chinese assault. They have just finished another, computerized simulation. Things do not look good:

The drill came as Defense Minister Lee Jye confirmed a report that in a recent computer-simulated exercise, Taiwanese troops were wiped out 130 hours after the People's Liberation Army (PLA) started invading.

The Apple Daily said the blitz was simulated as happening in 2006, the year when Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian is scheduled to push for a new constitution, which Beijing has warned against.

After the first day of the Chinese "attacks", Taiwan's airports, bunkers, harbours and key government buildings were destroyed by extensive bombings featuring 700 ballistic missiles.

The simulated battles ended when the PLA captured the capital Taipei in the sixth day of the attacks.

China itself staged war games last month on Dongshan Island. The exercise...

which began last week, resembles what Chinese analysts say a military strike on Taiwan would look like: commando raids and elements of a so-called "decapitation strike" on Taipei, including night bombing runs - something the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not practiced before in a coastal exercise....

State media are at volume levels not heard since 2000, the last time Chen, who desires a separate identity for Taiwan, was elected. Newspapers show Chinese frigates shooting rockets. They list Chinese weapons that "Americans are afraid of" - including the mobile-launched long range Dongfeng-31 and Dongfeng-4 rockets. Party newspaper People's Daily issued an angry broadside Tuesday on a July 15 resolution in Congress supporting the Taiwan Relations Act. The law allows US weapons sales to Taiwan for defensive purposes so long as the island is threatened. People's Daily argued that Congress "fabricated a Chinese military threat in order to justify arms sales to Taiwan - a blatant intervention into China's internal affairs."

In case you didn't catch that, the PRC state media is directing our attention to its thermonuclear forces. The 31 in particular is a mobile ICBM carrying a MRV warhead. Each one is capable of destroying as many as three US cities, and these are estimated to be only a small part of China's nuclear capability. Under a threat of nuclear retaliation, support for Taiwan's defense would have to be highly delicate. Unfortunately, Congressional cuts to the Virginia-class submarine program have greatly weakened our ability to fight in the Taiwan strait, and doubly weakened our ability to do so in a deniable fashion.

There is one last point to be made about the Chinese nuclear threat. Those of you who like to hold grudges will note this paragraph from the Federation of American Scientist's report: "The DF-31 is equipped with many technologies stolen or bought from America during Clinton's term. The DF-31 success was so spectacular that the the PLA 2nd Artillery will deploy 24 missiles by the end of 2004." We've been wondering what the price of that negligence would be. Now we know the probable cost of the down payment: Taiwan, and with her the loss to China's R&D team of all the advanced US military technology we've sold Taiwan over the years.

Options for avoiding this scenario are few. We can encourage Taiwan to negotiate a peaceful return to the PRC, removing as part of the negotiations what we can of our previously-sold technologies; or we can encourage Taiwan herself to go nuclear, and arm her to the teeth. The latter position creates another nuclear power finally outside of our control, and could cause an escalation into the very war we'd like to avoid. There are no happy choices here.

The Liberal Conspiracy - Satire, Informed Commentary and 9-11 Research

On the Shrine of Ali:

My old friend Sovay has been worrying about the Shrine of Ali. The US military has been given permission by the Iraqi government to enter the shrine, if necessary to arrest al-Sadr. Since the US military often issues arrest warrants attached to TOW missiles (e.g., the Hussein brothers), I suppose there is some reason to be concerned.

However, I think we've passed the point at which we ought to refrain from returning fire, or chasing fugitives, just because they enter into an Islamic holy building. I have heard, and I have understood, the objection that damaging these holy buildings will create new terrorists and raise the level of hatred for the US in the Muslim world. I have heard, and understood, that this particular building is especially sacred. I'm simply no longer convinced that we should consider these objections to be a primary concern.

What I suspect is the greater producer of terrorists is the sense among radicals that the West is afraid of Islam. What we have been pursuing as an act of decency has been taken as a sign of weakness. Weakness is even more provocative than wrath.

Bin Laden himself wrote that when people see a strong and a weak horse, they naturally like the strong horse. During the war and the initial stages of the occupation, the US military shied from any confrontation that would involve a mosque of any sort. We searched them only with apologies, bombed them only by accident. The result was not a recognition by our enemies that we were fundamentally decent: it was a further endangerment of the innocents in Iraq, as the insurgents integrated their operations into these areas where people lived and prayed. By leaving these holy sites untouched, we left them lawless. By leaving them lawless, we left the people who use them in peril.

The Shrine of Ali has been the scene, since the lawlessness began, of knife-murders, assassinations of high clerics, and bombings -- sometimes all at once. Blood has darkened its stones regularly, and the honest people of Najaf are in danger every time they go there because of the Medhi army and the international villians who are disguised in their uniform.

The Marines took out the tower of a Mosque in Fallujah that was being used as a sniper tower, and rightly so. The eruption of anger was short, and quickly forgotten.

It would be worse, louder and longer, in the event of damage to the Shrine. But it would also pass. In the time beyond, people could return there in safety, under no threat from followers of braying clerics promising to shed their last drops of blood upon its stones.

We have heard that this would be worse for Shias even than the shelling of the Vatican for Catholics. Perhaps. But what if the Vatican had already seen the Pope assassinated in the street before St. Peter's? What if it were now occupied by those same criminals, now armed and defying the world to try and bring justice to them? Sanity demands a cleansing of such places: first by fire, though holy water may follow if it will.

Better, I agree, if Iraqis would do it. Better, I agree, if Sadr would come out and give a stand-up fight. Better to damage it than to destroy it; better grenades than missiles; better knives than grenades. Yes, yes.

But worst, worst by far, to leave such a place in the hands of the wicked.

Mudville Gazette: The Swifts

Milbloggers & Swift Vets:

The Mudville Gazette is conducting interviews with the Swift Vets. I have some thoughts on the matter which I haven't had time to put down, and I don't really have time to put them down now. As a sketch:

1) It's interesting that the Swift Vets who oppose Kerry are not his boatmates, but (a) those from the boats teamed with his, and (b) his chain of command (which was pretty long, since he was a Lt. Junior Grade). His surviving boatmates seem to be supporting him.

2) I wonder if this has something to do with perspective. Consider the much-discussed case of the ambush in which Kerry's boat rescued an overboard Special Forces Lt. Early on in the fight, Kerry's boat speeded out of the kill zone. From the point of view of a draftee in the boat, that's quick thinking that saved your butt. From the point of view of every other boat (and his commanders), that's breaking formation, and skitting away with the backup you yourself are depending upon. Different opinions of whether or not it was the right thing to do are only natural.

Similarly, people under fire see and hear different things, and combat does strange things to the memory (as do other high-stress events like violent crime: ask any cop how many different stories he will usually get from eyewitnesses to the same crime). A number of these differences in accounts are to be expected -- indeed, speaking as a historian, they would be conspicuous by their absence.

3) That kind of thing can clear up only some of the disputes, however. I see little joy for Kerry in the "Christmas in Cambodia" business. His office has let this one go for days now without a response (except to say that he was misquoted, which doesn't wash because the quote is in the Congressional Record), and I'm starting to wonder if it's because there isn't one.

4) Then there are the real charges of war crimes, in particular indiscriminate shooting at civilians. Frankly, this one seems highly likely to be true. I say that because it isn't a disagreement: both parties have attested to it. Kerry himself stated that he did it: "I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages." The Swift Vets' claims only echo what Kerry himself has said. The odds, if you like to calculate odds, are highly in favor of Kerry being guilty of some of these war crimes.

5) There remain other claims that will take time to evaluate. Foremost among these is the charge that Kerry was sent out of Vietnam by a chain of command that didn't trust him -- that is a devastating charge, but one that needs full examination. Second is the charge that he faked or manipulated his medals. That one I have considered disproven thanks to Snopes; we'll see if there is new evidence or not.

6) The brutality of the political response to these charges has not encouraged me to believe that Kerry is the victim. Neither has the refusal to release his records. But the worst thing of all has been that he hasn't answered the charges. He's got a lot to answer for, particularly on the Cambodia and war crimes questions, where his own recorded statements are evidence against him. These are not small matters, but accusations Kerry made that great crimes were committed under his eyes and under his command. It is past time that he answered to the charges he has himself raised.

BLACKFIVE

Help the Troops:

I occasionally get asked (even, some of you may be surprised to know, by Sovay) for ways to help support the troops. There are a number of good options available. BlackFive has a partial listing today, which includes a number of good ones, some I've mentioned to you before and some I haven't. (Those of you who read several MilBlogs regularly, however, will be familiar with all or most of them.)

Thanks to B-5 for putting the list together. It's a good one, to which I'll refer people who ask in the future.

donga.com [english donga]

The End:

...is nigh for Kim Jong-Il.

UPDATE: You can see pictures of the exercise here, at the website of the RENK NGO. If you read Japanese, you can read their eyewitness account of it.

UPDATE II: For you Information Operations warriors: back in January, China issued a bald territorial claim to much of Korea. It did this through claiming an ancient kingdom called "Goguryeo," also romanized as "Koguryo." This is a pre-Korean kingdom, in the sense that the language we have recovered from it is not Korean, but older. China has claimed it as a part of 'Greater Historic China,' which is incidentally exactly the reason they claim the right to own Tibet.

In late June, China managed to get the World Heritage Committee to recognize its claim. It did this through an expensive presentation that really "wowed" the WHC. This is not normally a political body -- but it means that China can now claim "international recognition" for its territorial ambitions.

Now that you know that, have a gander at today's Google News on the topic. Lot of ink for an ancient kingdom, eh?

Iraq offers amnesty in bid to gain insurgents' help

A Nice Analogy:

On a day when Iranian diplomats were being taken hostage by Iraqis who want Iran to stay out of their business, Iran's state radio has carried a charming statement by Ayatollah Khamanei. He says that America, in Iraq, is "like a trapped wolf."

It is oddly reflective of Jefferson:

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self preservation in the other.

Khamanei is righter than he knows. Iran has caught the wolf by the ears. Their activities in support of the insurgency, Hezbollah, and Qaeda elements is the last wrench of their strength to hold on. But the wolf will come free. When it does, it will not be gentler with them than it was with us:

Yet, if God wills that... every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

So surely they would say in Iran, thinking of a different god. Indeed, the attention they have demanded from us is such that we can almost hear the words, that we know many of them: "Inshallah... sayyaf... Allah... halal."

Now they have the wolf by the ears. Let them see where he carries them.

SteynOnline

We Love You, Mark, But...

SteynOnline is hosting a discussion of whether shotguns can be used for deer hunting. The occasion is the John Kerry quote about 'crawling about on his belly' with his trusty 12-gauge. Mark's British readers are highly suspicious of the concept.

Well, never mind what posture he adopts to shoot: check out his choice of firearm. He refers to "my trusty 12-gauge". This would be what we in England call a 12-bore shotgun. Now, I don't know about Massachusetts, but in England and Scotland deer are stalked and shot with a rifle fitted with a telescopic site, and I can't believe it is any different in the U.S....

I just have two questions:

(1) Can (or should) you take deer with a 12-gauge shotgun?...

Good God, Mark, you missed a big one! You must not be a hunter either, or surely you would have said something about the larger faux pas.

No, you don't crawl around on your blinkin' stomach to hunt deer... but you also NEVER use a shotgun, because 1) it's illegal everywhere, and 2) it doesn't work worth a damn. If you did manage to hit one with your 12ga, most likely it would only wound the animal and you'd never catch up with it....

Almost nobody hunts deer any more with a shotgun, certainly not by choice....

Let's hope John-boy isn't out hunting deer with a 12 gauge, even if on his stomach. It is illegal to do so in every place I've heard of; you use a shotgun for birds, not large game....

Only a complete moron would hunt deer with a shotgun WITHOUT USING A SLUG. Nobody on the face of the planet (that I have ever heard of) does that....

Uh-huh. Look, it's obvious that Kerry hasn't done any deer hunting -- that business about crawling about on his belly gives him away. But come on -- Ya'll ever heard of a little invention called "buckshot"? What kind of "buck" did you think they meant?

Fortunately a couple of his readers finally set him straight, rather late in the Saturnalia.

The Scotsman - Top Stories - Judges clear policeman convicted of rape on DNA evidence

On Evidence:

The Scotsman today has a story of a policemen, just released from prison after serving four years for rape. He was the first man convicted in Scotland on DNA evidence; the prosecution told the jury that the odds were 1 in 100,000 that he was the wrong man.

But he was the wrong man.

The overturn of his conviction is a step forward. However, there is a particularly sad note to this tale. In a nation in which violent felons are regularly paroled within the smallest fraction of their sentence, Mr. Kelly served four years of the six to which he was sentenced. The reason he was not paroled sooner? "[H]is release on parole was delayed because he continued to deny his guilt."

Another life lesson, like those in the Havamal:

A snapping bow, a burning flame,
A grinning wolf, a grunting boar,
A raucous crow, a rootless tree,
A breaking wave, a boiling kettle,

A flying arrow, an ebbing tide,
A coiled adder, the ice of a night,
A bride's bed talk, a broad sword,
A bear's play, a prince' s children,

A witch' s welcome, the wit of a servant,
A sick calf, a corpse still fresh,

A brother's killer encountered upon
The highway, a house half-burned,
A racing stallion who has wrenched a leg,
Are never safe: let no man trust them.

Neither trust the state, when it bases its claims on some innovation in science. Not that, nor the word of prosecutors, who are only another sort of politician. When called to jury, be wary of such things. Put your trust in hard facts, and the testimony of men you deem honorable.

How big Al Qaeda's footprint is in the US | csmonitor.com

Al Qaeda:

If victory is in sight, yet some dangers still remain. Al Qaeda's footprint in the US is of unknown size, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, and it is possible that they may succeed in carrying out spectacular assaults even in their death throes.

US officials have closed down several major fundraising operations believed to have terrorist ties. They've also worked successfully with intelligence agencies overseas in attacking Al Qaeda at its core. "We've had some major successes [overseas with Al Qaeda.] We've slain the dragon, but now we're dealing with room full of snakes," says Frank Cilluffo of George Washington University and a former security adviser to President Bush. "What you've seen now is the franchising of Al Qaeda. They're in England, Jordan, Spain, and there've been a number of arrests recently that bode well."

But the question remains, how many snakes are there in the US ... and can they be caught before they strike again.

:: Digital Marine ::

Afghan Front:

Our lad Digital Marine has an update on the 22nd MEU(SOC).

bloodletting.blog-city.com

What Victory Looks Like:

Are we winning? Doc Russia joins the chorus, which already includes me and the Belmont Club. That last voice looks at the trends not just for Iraq, al Qaeda and Islamism, but for the intifada as well.

The intifada has vented its suicidal wrath on Israelis, but in recent weeks criticism of the Palestinian Authority has ensconced itself in common parlance. "Not only was the intifada a failure, but we are a total failure. We achieved nothing in 50 years of struggle; we've achieved only our survival."

And as terrorist warfare slows to a gasping halt, Zubeidi sees the violence turning inward.

The handover in Iraq has been everything we hoped it would be. When, in April, we found our soldiers and Marines fighting al-Sadr's men, they faced outrage from the press and the protests here at home. When they fought them this week, there has been near silence about it. The only article on CNN's weekend edition focuses on Allawi's peace overtures, not on the slaughter of these hardened fighters by the far more deadly US Marines. We kept our promises. We put Iraq on the road to freedom, and we're helping to keep her there. Iraqis see it, know it, and even the press can't ignore it any more.

(An aside: CNN could use a better editor. That article includes this line:

Iraq has temporarily reinstated a limited version of its death penalty, the interim minister of state announced Sunday.

A limited version of the death penalty. Well, now, that is progress.)

This is what victory looks like. It's not over, and we continue to lose brave men to ambush and murder. We continue to see outrages in the press. But we are winning. It's a straight road to victory. We just need to carry on.

Op Sum Fun

Riot in Iraq, No Press Coverage:

Via the Mudville Gazette, this story about a riotous event in Iraq. Somehow, unlike long-ago riots, this one didn't get any press coverage except for one local paper. Greyhawk wonders if the casualty count was just too low to draw press interest. Still, he says, if this mob has anything to say about it, some GIs may never go home from Iraq.

It certainly seems like a story worthy of some interest.

Kim du Toit - View Original Post & Comments

Freedom, Police & the Military:

Kim du Toit has begun an excellent discussion on the topic of whether modern police agencies too much resemble the "standing armies" that worried the Founders. It's a long piece with many thoughtful replies (plus a reply from me, which I hope others will consider thoughtful). I won't try to reprise the discussion here -- I just refer you to it, for consideration.

For those of you not familiar with Kim's site, the original post is at the bottom.

The Scotsman - Top Stories - Al-Qaeda suspects on run

Get 'em, Boys:

Following the leads uncovered by US and Pakistani military intelligence, Scotland Yard goes after five Qaeda suspects. They apparently escaped raids earlier in the week, and a nationwide manhunt continues.

SteynOnScreen

Movie Review:

I haven't seen King Arthur, though I had wanted to and may yet if I can still find anywhere showing it. This review by the redoubtable Mark Steyn, however, is worth reading even if you never see the flick.

there's a complicating factor. A huge Saxon army has just hit the beach and they're also interested in the bigshot Romans, as potentially lucrative hostages. If you think there's too much Saxon violence in the movies these days, wait'll you see these guys. Their general, Sir Dick or, as I discovered in the closing credits, Cerdic, is a mountain of blond hair extensions. Perhaps some insensitive locals tittered at him as he waded ashore, but, for whatever reason, the Saxons slaughter everyone they come across in a frenzy of Woad rage. As Cerdic, Stellan Skarsgard hams up his dialogue with a throaty rumble that sounds like he came first in this year's Stockholm round of the Nick Nolte karaoke competition. When he hears about the Roman estate nearby, he dispatches a rape'n'pillage squad led by his son Cynric, because it takes his child to raze a village.

BLACKFIVE

Ambush!

Our lad (and new father! Congrats, and welcome Grace!) BlackFive has a video of a truck full of fellow contractors getting ambushed in Iraq, while part of an Army convoy. Short version: They punch the gas, and keep their position with the US Army Hummers they're convoying with.

It's worth watching to hear the voices. Once again, I feel justified in my pride at being a Southerner. The leader, and coolest head, has an accent I would place at the Northern Alabama/North Georgia border. Just the kind of fellow I'd want riding beside me, in a pinch.

Ambassador's CV

Singapore:

For reasons much too complicated to rehearse, I spent Tuesday night at the Embassy of Singapore in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the National Day of Singapore, which is their version of Independence Day. I got to meet Tom Ridge, who came to give a short speech praising Singapore's economic growth and stout alliance to the U.S. war on terror.

I also met Ambassador Chan Heng Chee. Singapore has three main ethnic groups: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. The Chinese, like Ambassador Chan, are the majority. In her nine years in D.C., she's learned Western manners completely, and manages to be sufficiently forthright to be charming. Forthrightness in women is not highly encouraged in Chinese culture, which prefers politeness and the maintenance of social harmony to truth-telling. She does all right, though.

It was a pretty hefty crowd who came out to celebrate Singapore's National Day. There were quite a few Defense contractors -- not DOD-exclusive contractors like me, but people who represented firms that hoped to do business with Singapore itself. There were also some State people, but what really caught my eye were the naval officers. Men in uniform were everywhere, but almost none of them were from branches of the service other than the navy. Almost every navy in the world was represented: I saw an Egyptian naval officer conversing with an Israeli, met an Aussie captain, and saw officers from every Scandinavian navy afloat.

After the speechmaking and dinner, I ended up hanging around with a US navy captain in the submarine service. I've written before about the quality of the sailors in the submarine service, which I've always found to be excellent. I spent a good portion of the evening comparing notes on hurricanes with the gentleman -- his favorite was one he rode out in the Atlantic, four-hundred feet down, which still caused the boat to roll. I'm not sure if mine was Floyd -- which was the size of Texas when she made landfall -- or Opal, which rode all the way up into the North Georgia mountains and rocked the Appalachians near Camp Frank D. Merrill. You can get out to Amicalola Falls State Park, if any of you are deployed at Camp Frank, and see where there are still a lot of trees down from Opal. I rode out Isabel last year, but she wasn't much. I have a couple of good stories about her, but really there was never any danger.

I relate all this to convey a bit of the "diplomatic" work behind the GWOT. I don't often have anything to do with it myself, but these kinds of things go on every night, all around the world. Just like the intelligence work mentioned below -- which famously belongs to the CIA, but which the military does tirelessly and often better -- diplomacy isn't just the State Department. The men in uniform do a hero's share of that work too. If "diplomacy" isn't a dirty word, I expect it's their doing that keeps it clean. Honesty, integrity, and the pride of the service go a long way to enhancing the strength of a man's word.

Pity the fellow with that duty, though. It was a pleasant enough evening, but if I had to do it every night, I think I'd go nuts pretty quickly. It's no better duty than kitchen patrol -- a necessary, tiresome duty that someone has to perform.

Taliban flush with cash for attacks - War on Terror - www.theage.com.au

The Afghan Front:

There's a story out of the Age of Australia called "Taliban flush with cash for attacks." Bad news sells more papers, as they say, and the editors have chosen the bad news from the story for the headline and lead paragraphs. But there's some very good news inside:

General Khan's forces captured Mujahid, a former deputy defence minister, on July 6. They seized a satellite phone, a notebook of expenses and a diary of phone numbers, including that of a mobile phone used by the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, a close ally of bin Laden. Mujahid is now being interrogated by the Americans at Bagram air base, near Kabul.

A US military official declined to say what else had been gleaned from Mujahid, but his arrest, along with the recent capture of several relatives and aides, has given US and Afghan intelligence officials a crucial insight into Taliban operations. The mobile number was traced to Quetta in Pakistan.

"Afghan agents made Mujahid ring Omar's number, but Omar put the phone down after Mujahid mentioned a code word that meant he had been captured," said General Khan. "It was just bad luck." The discovery that Omar is apparently directing operations from inside Pakistan has increased pressure on Islamabad to curb Taliban activities on its soil.

Grim's Hall noted the satellite phonecall to Mullah Omar when it was first reported. It looks like his residence in Quetta was why they didn't hit him with a guided missile. Today's report brings new detail about the level of intel that's being captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Two things worth noting -- the intelligence officers involved on our side are "US military officials." That underlines a point about the nature of the GWoT: the majority of intelligence victories we've seen are coming from military actions, not from the civilian intel agencies. This includes not only the captured files of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, or the surrender of the Libyan nuclear program by a dictator who didn't want to be next. It also includes all of these captured fighters, their documents, and so forth. Pakistan's ISI and our CIA are surely not idle, but the ones we see getting the job done are military men. That should settle the question of whether or not the GWoT is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement" operation: even if it is that, the military does it better.

The second point to reflect on is how many captures there have been in Pakistan lately. That we know of, we've got Mujahid, a formerly high-placed official; the "High Value Target" Qaeda capture of last week; and the computer junkie who had all the pictures of financial centers. All of these captures were disclosed to us only some time after they were made -- "several weeks" in the case of our computer cowboy, allegedly "days" in the Qaeda case, and so forth.

The war is rolling along, and I see every reason to be cheerful about it. They've got millions; we've got billions. They can move in relative freedom, we hear, though we capture them now and then -- but when did you last hear of a US general officer being captured by the Taliban, or anyone else? It was actually tried in Ramadi, with the result that the US Marine Generals took up rifles and ran the enemy off. Staying the course, bold and brave, is the road to victory.

Marine Corps News> Lejeune battalion calls in air power to clear the road

Fire From Heaven:

What do you do when you've got a tanker truck blocking your road, and local HUMINT tells you that there's an IED placed inside of it? The headline tells the story: "Lejeune battalion calls in air power to clear the road."

JHD writes to draw attention to this part of the story: "Once the elements were on site, a cordon was set to block traffic and clear the area of civilians. Some members of the unit believed there were terrorists hiding in a nearby palm grove so the air controller arranged a surprise for them." Heh, heh.

lgf: coffee break's over. back on your heads.

Afghanistan:

From LGF, we see what is really amazing news: 90% of Afghans are registered to vote. This is a UN figure, so it's probably a distortion of the truth... but still, even the UN can only distort so much.

The Green Side

A Letter from the Front:

The Green Side presents another letter from Fallujah, by a Major of Marines who signs his name simply as "Dave."

FreeSpeech.com

The Sudan:

Well, it finally happened. One of the conspiracy theorists has finally spouted off on the Sudan. It happened over at Del's FreeSpeech:

By the way...Soudan is everyday looking like another Rwanda....where are the good american- peace- reatoring-soldiers...???

Aahhhhh [expletive -- see how the bracket thing works? -Grim] ...I should have known better...THERE IS NO OIL IN SOUDAN !!!!

There actually is quite a bit of oil in the Sudan. In fact, control over the oil and its revenue is the main thing the Sudanese are fighting over.

The oilfields are in the South of Sudan, which is primarily Christian and animist by faith; but the export facilities are all in the north, which is under the control of the Muslim militants.

These last, it should be remembered, are not the legitimate government of Sudan -- they violently overthrew the legitimate government, and established control over the North by force. Now they are trying to do the same to the South, precisely because they can't afford secession by the region which has all the oil.

Both sides are trying to bill this as a contest between religions, and to some degree that's true -- but not to a very large degree. The agitation for the Sha'riah law in the North of Sudan, for example, comes mostly from the populace rather than from the militants who control the area. The populace, which by and large recognizes these militants for the thugs that they are, wants a Sha'riah system because it removes judicial control from the militants, and places it instead in the hands of local imams everyone knows and trusts.

The South is resisting the Sha'riah because they aren't Muslims, and want to be independent. The ethnic cleansing is an attempt to destroy the groups that want independence -- which happens to be the Christians and the animists. But the war in Sudan really is all about oil, or at least, the great majority of it is.

So my question to you: if the US is a Crusader power, that is runs its foreign policy based on oil, why aren't we already in Sudan? We could deal a defeat to a Muslim state, erect a Christian one in the South, and then build ourselves an oil pipeline that would give us sole control of the Sudanese oil fields -- a rather nicer deal for us than that mythical Afghanistan pipeline that we supposedly want, but somehow never get around to building. The UN might even applaud us for our actions in the Sudan.

So why aren't we?

Instapundit.com

Fun with Brackets:

Via Instapundit, the article on Kerry and the Marines. I was reading this over, and a thought struck me:

The Marines -- two in uniform and two off-duty -- were polite but curt while chatting with Kerry, answering most of his questions with a 'yes, sir' or 'no, sir.' . . .

'He imposed on us and I disagree with him coming over here shaking our hands,' one Marine said, adding, 'I'm 100 percent against [him].'

Usually brackets are used by editors to repair verb tenses when they're using a partial quote, or to change a pronoun to a [Kerry] so you'll know of whom they're speaking. I don't think I've seen brackets used to insert a pronoun in quite this way before.

Which leads to the question: Just what did they replace? I'll wager that it was something unprintable.

American Digest: What Lincoln Would Say Were He Speaking in Springfield Today

Lincoln Variations:

From the American Digest, via the good Doc.

Grim's Hall

Gun Show Notes:

Just got back from today's gun show at the Dulles Expo Center in Fairfax County, Virginia. A few notes from the day:

* This is the first gun show in Fairfax County in quite a long time. The county had instituted a waiting period for gun purchases, the effect of which was to make it impossible to hold a gun show -- the dealer wouldn't be around in thirty days to hand over the weapon you'd bought, and the cost of shipping it to you more than overrides the savings you'd get from attending the show.

* One of the state senators who worked hardest to override the law got on the PA system to congratulate all the folks -- many in the room -- who had worked to make the show possible. There was a resounding round of applause.

* Lots of political activity in the hall. People were talking about gun-control proposals from both the state and federal governments, and every official up for re-election must have had a table. And no wonder: I was standing by one poor fellow, a man in his late fifties, who learned while asking about parts for an old firearm of his that he was a felon. Some ATF official had, without benefit of legislation, ruled that a kind of firearm he'd owned for thirty years was illegal -- and didn't grandfather in existing ones. (See, this is one reason why people get irritated by gun-control laws. The ATF takes a guy who's never been in any sort of trouble his whole life, and turns him into a felon with a stroke of a pen.)

* There must have been several thousand people in the Expo center, with more coming and leaving by the minute. The show was obviously a great success.

* I haven't been to a gun show in probably ten years. Indeed, I only went to this one because the wife and wee one are out of town, and I had the day free with nothing else to do. I always forget several things about gun shows:

1) They are incredibly crowded events, no matter how big the hall is. This is the main reason I don't like them. I was raised in the Georgia mountains, and I hate crowds. For me, that's any room with more than about two people in it, although if it's a really big room I can endure a dozen.

2) The gun show really is an event for collectors. All those people who fret about these things being crime marts can quit worrying. I would estimate that fully 80% of the tables aren't selling anything that would be useful to a criminal. Most of them are selling antique long arms, or blackpowder revolvers from the 19th century, or other weapons so outdated that you'd really need to spend some time learning to operate them. Between the antiques and the collectibles, the books, the knife merchants, the people selling holsters and carrying cases, the people selling bumperstickers, and the people selling militaria (old uniforms, etc.) there's actually very little space devoted to anything "dangerous." I'm always surprised by how few people there are selling modern firearms. Maybe 10% of the tables have them for sale; maybe another 10% have knives. The rest is stuff no criminal would even want.

3) They had two separate areas for simulators, one of which looked top notch. It had a big screen which displayed real movies of potential tactical situations -- when I walked by there, it was a display of a college classroom where someone was taking hostages. The whole thing was linked to a lightgun, so that you could test yourself under realistic conditions and timing. It's intended for police training, and is similar in form to some of the things the Marines do for MOUT training. It should produce good results in improving tactical responses. I noted that, although it was developed for cops, it was portable and the sign said that they'd bring it out to your club if you wanted to hire them for a weekend.

4) The other simulator was simpler, but had one really nifty element. They'd rigged up some .45 frames with lasers, but also with a motor that would "kick" in the right way to simulate recoil. They then had targets that could tell where the laser was pointed when you pulled the trigger. You could therefore practice with realistic recoil, without ammo.

* I only bought one thing: a holster for my new revolver. It was pretty hard to find one. I don't care for cloth or formed-ballistic-nylon holsters, which is the great majority of what is available. I like gunleather, and in fact, I insist on it.

I spent nearly forever looking around, but found few dealers that had leather holsters, and none that had what I wanted. Then, in the very back of the hall, I found a place called "Backwoods Gunleather," which had some beautiful stuff. I looked it over and grabbed a single-loop holster.

I took it up to the guy, and asked if he had one in that make that would fit a K-Frame Smith & Wesson. He said no, that he only made this particular holster for single-actions, mostly for Cowboy Action re-enactors. I said I thought this one I had in my hand was the right size, but he insisted that it wouldn't fit. He gave me a long speech to talk me out of buying it, explaining several things I already knew about the technical differences between single and double action revolvers.

Finally, seeing that I was not deterred, he sighed and said that he didn't even have a K-frame "red gun" (a plastic mockup in the right size, used by police for training and holster-makers for construction of holsters). Or, at least, he thought he didn't. Well, he'd look. Hey, actually, he did. So he brought it over and slipped it into the holster...

...and it fit like a glove. I bought it and brought it home. It's like it was made for me, and just waiting on me to show up and buy it. It's even a crossdraw design, which I happen to prefer.

All in all, a good day. They're open tomorrow too, so if you're in the area, you might stop by.

Marine Corps News> 11th MEU Marine awarded Navy Cross for legendary day during OIF

Congratulations II:

Another set of congratulations are due. Let's hear it for Marine First Sergeant Justin D. Lehew, winner of the Navy Cross. It's taken more than a year to get the paperwork approved, but it was finally awarded on 24 July.

Article

A Gunslinger:

Congratulations to Marine Gunnery Sergeant Brian Zins.

24th MEU History

USMC Iraq Updates:

The 24th MEU(SOC) is now fully deployed in Iraq; JarHeadDad points out that they're bunking with the 2/2 Marines. The 24th has a short but proud history, including the daring rescue of downed pilot Scott O'Grady in the Bosnian conflict.

In other news, Marines are taking worthless souvenirs of their time in Iraq, and riding around with the Army while taking over stability operations. They're also making Iraq a safer place by destroying enemy munitions by the mountain, and using up some of their own stockpiles, too.

The Economics of Obesity

Smoke 'Em:

This one is mostly for Doc Russia, who was advocating a good cigar the other day:

We have also unmasked a second and perhaps more surprising culprit in the alarming rise in obesity: the crackdown on smoking via tax increases. Higher cigarette taxes and higher cigarette prices have caused more smokers to quit -- but these smokers seem to have begun eating more as a result. According to our research, each 10 percent increase in the real price of cigarettes produces a 2 percent increase in the number of obese people, other things being equal.

Clearly, those who curtail their habit or quit smoking altogether typically gain weight as the appetite-suppressing and metabolism-increasing effects of smoking come to an end. This is no small effect: The inflation-adjusted price of cigarettes has risen by approximately 164 percent since 1980. This large growth resulted in part from four federal excise tax hikes, a number of state tax hikes, and the settlement of the state lawsuits filed against cigarette manufacturers to recover Medicaid funds spent treating diseases related to smoking. The rise in the real price of cigarettes is the second-most important factor next to the growth in restaurants in the trend in the post-1980 obesity trend. We estimate that it accounts for almost 20 percent of the growth in obesity.

There you go. Smoke, and you increase your risk of heart disease and cancer; don't smoke, and you increase your risk of heart disease and diabetes, depression, and cancer. Smoke, and you may join the 430,000 people a year who die from smoking-related illness; don't smoke, and you may join the 400,000 people a year who die from obesity-related illness.

Once again, a life of regulated vice seems to be the wisest choice.

KeepMedia | Esquire: The Case for George W. Bush

Bring Me Everyone:

I don't turn to Esquire looking for philosophy, but maybe I should. Thanks to The Mudville Gazette, I see that they've printed a piece of particular power and insight into the nature of war, and the war on terror.

Telegraph | Arts | For love of liberty

On Germany:

The Telegraph has a piece on Germany. It contains, in analyzing one of Germany's leading thinkers, a cutting insight:

He agrees that the European Union is, among other things, a project to avoid war at all costs, but he does not see what a burden this throws upon America, Britain and, indeed, the free world which he loves.

Exactly.

Haaretz - Israel News

OutStanding!

The Arrow lives! This was pretty close to a make-or-break test, and it's good to see that it's pulled through.

Tim Worstall: Anybody but Sully Project.

Ponies in the Rain:

For those of you participating in the anti-Andrew Sullivan pledge drive, Grim's Hall is endorsing Tim Worstall's project. He's supporting a charity that does "sports therapy" for handicapped kids, putting them on horseback and teaching them to ride.

Grim's Hall feels that horseback riding, like the regular practice of gunfighting skills, is the God-given right of every American. For my leftist readers (I'm always surprised by how many I have), I would point out that Edward Abbey supported both.

The notoriety brought by The Monkey Wrench Gang, together with the literary respectability of Desert Solitaire, combined to provide him a bully pulpit, which he used to spout off on feminism (bad), mountain lions (good), immigration (give 'em a rifle and send 'em home), cowboys (peasants on horseback), and the National Parks (rip out the roads).

Teddy Roosevelt did too, as it happens. In fact, it's how he overcame a severe case of asthma, and went on to become a hero to those who enjoy a life fully lived. His example lives on in this charity, and it therefore deserves our support and admiration.

CNN.com - Pakistan captures high-level al Qaeda operative - Jul 29, 2004

Stories that Really Are True:

CNN reports that Pakistan has captured a high-level al Qaeda operative. There is only speculation as to exactly who it is, although Reuters names Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani based on a report from Al Arabiya.

UPDATE: In regard to the speculation we're seeing about this, here is what I wrote about this on 8 July, when the New Republic story broke:

This rumor has been bouncing around for a while now--since early May for certain. Josh Marshall first aired it in the English language press, citing "chatter" among Pakistani intelligence sources.

Evaluating intelligence, as we've discussed, is like figuring odds for poker. The odds are high that these propositions are true:

1) Someone that Marshall believes to have connections to the ISI said something like this to him, and,

2) Someone (perhaps the same someone) said the same thing to someone from TNR, and,

3) There probably really is a rumor to this effect circulating in Pakistan.

Proposition three is likely to be true because Pakistan contains the highest per-capita ratio of conspiracy theorists on the ground anywhere. A few days' reading of the Frontier Post (out of Peshawar), the Balochistan Post, and the Nation of Pakistan (all available online) will demonstrate what I mean.

The odds are a lot lower on this proposition:

4) The US told the ISI to capture someone important around 28 July.

This proposition requires the Bush administration to be Machivellian enough to plan in those terms, and also confident of the ISI's capability to believe they could capture a high value target on demand, and also confident that the ISI would carry out such orders. Opinions can differ on point one, but points two and three would require a faith in the ISI's competence and loyalty totally unjustified by past events.

Here's a piece of personal speculation on a more likely proposition:

5) A high-value target has already been captured.

In this scenario, the ISI need only be cynical enough to believe that the announcement will be made during the DNC--which is, given Pakistani politics, only reasonably cynical. They would, in this case, be gaming their media contacts to win increased influence with the TNRs and Josh Marshalls of the world. That's just what intelligence agents do--game people based on secret information, in order to manipulate them.

I'd lay money that proposition 5 is the true one, and we've got someone big that we haven't admitted to yet because we're still benefitting from interrogating them. We'll see, in the fullness of time.

Our Josh Marshall really ought to learn this part by heart: clandestine service officers game people. He's been getting it hard for the last several months, and he doesn't even see it. I'm sure these guys are really sympathetic when they leak him "secret" information. 'You have such a vivid voice,' I reckon they tell him. 'I wish I could write like you, and get the truth out about this administration. You see through all the mist. Here, this can help you...'

And Josh, who wants nothing more than to believe that he's smarter than you, prints it. I hate to be the one to tell you, son, but these people lie for a living. I'm sorry to break your heart, but you're not in the secret club. This is just what they do. What you probably really do believe is the Secret Truth is just a tale told to move your heart, whereby you are used to advance their careers, fight their little bureaucrat wars, and advance their political interests.

Stories you wish were true

Stories You Wish Were True:

The Russian newswires are reporting, I am told, that Zarqawi has been arrested by US and Iraqi forces. I haven't heard any confirmation of this from any non-Russian source, and I rather doubt it simply because I can't imagine why the Russians would know. Probably it isn't true -- but we can wish, and even hope.

UPDATE: The report is now online. Unhappily, there is also a denial.

Dispatches�From Fallujah - On an�April day, 30 Iraqi lives, one brave Marine�and another's hands, and another's legs�were lost. By Owen�West

Recon:

Even among Marines, there are legends. Recon is one of them.

Grim's Hall

Pistols in the Barroom, Ponies in the Rain:

Just got back from the range. Now, I have a confession to make about that to my fellow Knights of St. John Moses: I haven't been to a range in way too long. I spent the last year resident in Maryland, where shooting sports are quasi legal and tightly regulated, and to participate in them you have to register your guns with the state (like hell, says I). As a consequence, it's been over a year since I've shot.

However, now that I am happily resident out Virginia way, that's going to change. A gun shop down the highway has a range out back, and so long as you buy your targets and ammo there, you can shoot for free as often as you like, 0900 to 1700 daily. They keep a range safety officer on duty, and my experience today was that he was highly competent. It is, in other words, a cheap, pleasant, safe place to shoot.

I'm going to make it a habit to get down there at least once a week, for at least a box of ammo, until I'm shooting back at the level I used to aspire to in my tactical match days. After that, I'll be making a monthly trip at least.

All that said -- have a gander:

This group came from my brand new .357 Magnum. I shot six rounds to get the feel of the thing, then shot these six on a standard 75-foot range. Smith & Wesson makes fine weapons: the very first round out of the box went through the center ring. For this group, the first round was the one in the center, and then they began to pull up. You can see I adjusted fire down for the sixth round. Still, first one in the white, while the other five in this group stayed in the black. Kim du Toit was talking about how a .357 Magnum with a four-inch barrel is hard to control in sustained fire, and he's right:

Very few people can control a 4"-barreled .357 Mag revolver properly (unless the barrel is ported), especially when it comes to getting off the second shot quickly. I would never consider a .357 Mag with anything less than 6" -- size does matter, in this case. But a Ruger .357 revolver is an excellent choice.

Still, I hope you all noticed the irony that, just a few inches later, Kim advocated the S&W "Mountain Gun" in .44 Remington Magnum with a 4" barrel. I have one of those too, and it's a bear. Still my favorite piece to hike around with.

I may take his advice and get the barrel ported, just for speed on the second tap. I certainly will want a trigger job. Still -- for a guy who hasn't shot in a year, using a brand new gun in a challenging caliber, I think I did OK. Always did love a Smith & Wesson.

PS: If the title of this post means nothing to you, it's a line from a song by Cowboy Nation, one of the few good things besides Hollywood Marines to come out of California.

BLACKFIVE

Shirley Temple Awards:

I was doing some reading over at BlackFive today, when I came across a disused category called "The Shirley Temple Drink Awards":

Blackfive says, "Hey, Jackass, let me buy you a drink!" - A Shirley Temple!...

Michael Moore - Big lying scumbag who wins an Academy Award for a documentary that contains moslty fabricated material (Nuclear Missles in Columbine, buying a weapon over the counter, etc. ad nauseum). This guy might possibly do more to harm America than any traitor we have ever had.

It happens that I am a regular purchaser of Shirely Temples (with extra cherries)... for dear Sovay, who drinks little else. In any event, I'd like to lobby B-5 to resume this neglected category. If anyone else would care to join my petition, feel free to drop into the comment section any nominees. Remember the Hall comment policy, though, adopted from the Texas Mercury:

As we see it, modern society has all the important ideas of life exactly backwards: we are completely against the belief in sensitivity and tolerance in politics and raffish disregard in private life. The Texas Mercury is founded on the opposite principles- our idea is of tolerance and polite sensitivity in private life and ruthless truth in politics. Be nice to your neighbor. Be hell to his ideas.

Buying people drinks is nice, right?

Liberty Dad - a World Without Dictators

A Useful Fantasy:

Liberty Dad has written a very good speech for President Bush. It is on the topic of Darfur in the Sudan, but by way of that, it's about another topic even more important: the use of force by a democracy.

Marine Corps News> Marine battalion defeats attackers in Ar Ramadi again

Ooh-rah!

Marine Corps News> Iraqi soldiers' sacrifice in Marine zone saves lives of 250

Brethren in Arms:

Does it matter that they are Iraqis? Only to the good, I think.

The Australian: Secrets of a terror turncoat [July 17, 2004]

Speaking of Which:

As for the chances of turning terrorists, The Australian has an interview for you to read.

UK forms special unit to fight Al Qaeda

Intel Reform:

The British are ahead of us, as usual.

A new special forces regiment is being formed in Britain to effectively tackle terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, a report said today.

The Reconnaissance and Surveillance Regiment will work closely with the Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service. Its mission will be to penetrate groups, either directly or by "turning" terrorists into double agents....

It will be given the authority to operate around the world, working closely with friendly intelligence agencies such as the US intelligence agency CIA and Israel's Mossad, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

lgf: lost and found

Daily KOS:

Charles at LGF wants to remind us just who Zuniga of the Daily KOS is, and what he's done. Charles is interested, because the DNC has given Zuniga credentials at its convention.

I haven't forgotten. Nor shall I soon.

Instapundit.com

InstaPundit & the 9/11 Commission:

The Sage reports that the 9/11 commission has been repeating the words of bloggers.

We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb.... We also need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive.

He's right.

Well, as to that: Here's mine, current as of 25 March 2003. It speaks to Qutb, but also to Socrates, Alcuin, Ingeld and Christ. I'll stand by it, a year and more on. Who else has something?