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.