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.