Dramatic advances in public attitudes are sweeping Iraq, with declining violence, rising economic well-being and improved services lifting optimism, fueling confidence in public institutions and bolstering support for democracy.
The gains in the latest ABC News/BBC/NHK poll represent a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq’s sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. The sweeping rebound, extending initial improvements first seen a year ago, marks no less than the opportunity for a new future for Iraq and its people. . .
While deep difficulties remain, the advances are remarkable. Eighty-four percent of Iraqis now rate security in their own area positively, nearly double its August 2007 level. Seventy-eight percent say their protection from crime is good, more than double its low. Three-quarters say they can go where they want safely – triple what it’s been.
Few credit the United States, still widely unpopular given the post-invasion violence, and eight in 10 favor its withdrawal on schedule by 2011 – or sooner. But at the same time a new high, 64 percent of Iraqis, now call democracy their preferred form of government. . .
The number of Iraqis who call security the single biggest problem in their own lives has dropped from 48 percent in March 2007 to 20 percent now. Two years ago 56 percent called it the single biggest problem for the country as a whole; that’s down to 35 percent now, including a 15-point drop in the last year alone. Fifty-nine percent now feel “very” safe in their communities, up 22 points from last year and more than double its lowest. Recent local fighting among sectarian forces is reported by 6 percent, compared with 22 percent a year ago.
Optimism and confidence have followed. Sixty-five percent of Iraqis say things are going well in their own lives, up from 39 percent in 2007 (albeit still a bit below its 2005 peak). Fifty-eight percent say things are going well for Iraq – a new high, up from only 22 percent in 2007. Expectations for the year ahead, at the national and personal levels, also have soared, after crashing in 2007. And the sharpest advances have come among Sunni Arabs, the favored group under Saddam Hussein, deeply alienated by his overthrow, now re-engaging in Iraq’s national life. . .
Basic views on governance also mark the sea change in Sunni views: In March 2007 58 percent of Sunnis said the country needed a “strong leader – a government headed by one man for life” (presumably a throwback to their one-time protector, Saddam), while just 38 percent preferred a democracy. Today that’s more than flipped: Sixty-five percent of Sunnis want a democracy; just 20 percent, a strong leader.
Critically, there’s been a complementary change among Shiites – in their case a drop in preference for an Islamic state from 40 percent in 2007 to 26 percent now, and a concomitant 21-point rise in favor of democracy. Kurds, for their part, have been and remain broadly pro-democracy.
There’s much more. It is a pity they don’t credit the United States, but gratitude was never the point. The point is that Iraq is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism, nor a danger of becoming so again. Besides, why should Iraq be different from other democracies that exist due to American efforts (which is to say nearly all of them)?
President Obama has determined that the United States will no longer hold enemy combatants, er, in the sense that we will no longer use the word “enemy combatant.” In substance, the policy remains essentially unchanged. In the new policy, disclosed Friday, President Obama claims an ever so slightly broader authority to hold Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and an ever so slightly narrower authority to hold others. Scotusblog has the rundown. (Via Instapundit.)
I think Ed Whelan has the right idea. Next we can resolve the Guantanamo problem in a similar manner, by renaming Guantanamo.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance. . .
No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration.
The groups also cited an increase in “third-party collections” estimated in the 2010 budget proposal — something they said could be achieved only if the Veterans Administration started billing for service-related injuries.
Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under “consideration.”
“A final decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said.
Currently, veterans’ private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.
Charging for service-related injuries would violate “a sacred trust,” Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis said. Davis said the move would risk private health care for veterans and their families by potentially maxing out benefits paying for costly war injury treatments.
I’m honestly shocked by this. Set aside the obvious (or so I would have thought) immorality of charging veterans for treatment of injuries incurred while serving their country. Also set aside the bizarre spectacle of arguing for universal health care while cutting back health care for veterans. And set aside the strange decision to demand sacrifices of veterans while the government goes on a deficit-financed spending spree.
All that aside, it strikes me as terrible politics. Why slap veterans in the face with a plan that will never be enacted? I don’t get it.
Andy McCarthy notes that the ACLU is a fair-weather supporter of judicial independence:
The chutzpah here is stunning, even by ACLU standards. Since they were first announced in 2001, the military commissions have been condemned as illegitimate by the ACLU because the judges are not independent like civilian court judges — they are military officers, and thus they answer to the Defense Department’s convening authority, the Secretary of Defense and, ultimately, the President. Now, the ACLU is complaining that the military judge is defying the commander-in-chief, and wondering whether Secretary Gates is asleep at the switch in allowing such insubordination.
McCarthy goes on to point out that the ACLU also misunderstands the facts; that the judge in question actually is not defying any orders.
The Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison.
U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.
Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.
The officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to release the information, said Rasoul has joined a growing faction of former Guantanamo prisoners who have rejoined militant groups and taken action against U.S. interests. Pentagon officials have said that as many as 60 former detainees have resurfaced on foreign battlefields. . .
More than 800 prisoners have been imprisoned at Guantanamo; only a handful have been charged. About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.
If these figures are right, about 1 in 9 detainees released from Guantanamo have resumed the fight, and those were the ones deemed to pose no danger. Think of what will happen when we start releasing the others.
Perhaps this is China’s modus operandi now, to measure the mettle of a new US president. At roughly the same point in the Bush administration (April 1, 2001), Chinese harassment of US spy planes resulted in the Hainan Island incident, in which a US Navy plane was hit by a Chinese fighter and forced to make an emergency landing, and China held its crew for ten days.
The top U.S. military official said Sunday he believes Iran has enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Islamic Republic is a long way from having a bomb.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency revised its assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, saying it was wrong in earlier reports about Iran’s ability to enrich enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “We think they do, quite frankly,” when asked Sunday about Iran’s capacity.
But rest easy, Iran probably hasn’t actually assembled a bomb yet:
But Gates said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Iranians are not close to getting a weapon at this time.
“They’re not close to a stockpile, they’re not close to a weapon at this point and so there is some time,” he said when asked whether Tehran could be deterred from pursuing its weapons effort.
Have you noticed that the comforting assessments they give us keep getting less comforting? We’ve gone from “Iran has halted its program and (with moderate confidence) they haven’t restarted it” to “years away from material for a bomb” to “months away from material for a bomb” to “haven’t actually assembled a bomb”. Soon the comforting assessment will be “Iran hasn’t nuked anyone yet.”
POSTSCRIPT: This assessment seems to have been spot on.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s blurt during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week forced the U.S. intelligence and military community to acknowledge on Thursday that the U.S. is targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives using unmanned drones based in Pakistan.
The senator’s slip sent reporters into overdrive and led to the discovery of a 2006 picture provided by Google Earth that appears to show Predator drones at Shamsi air base 200 miles southwest of Quetta. . .
Feinstein’s remarks, which were characterized as “foolish” by U.S. officials, were unusual for the experienced chairwoman of the intelligence panel.
According to intelligence sources, Feinstein’s statement, at a hearing on the threat assessment with new Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, appears to be the first time a member of the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged that Predator vehicles are operating from a base inside Pakistan. . .
The Predator campaign, considered the single greatest factor in degrading Al Qaeda’s capabilities, is credited with the killing of eight members of the terrorist group’s leadership since last summer.
We could very well lose the base because of this. As if we didn’t have enough problems.
Four weeks after the cessation of Operation Cast Lead, the IDF finally opened its dossier on Palestinian fatalities on Sunday for the first time, and presented to The Jerusalem Post an overview utterly at odds with the Palestinian figures that have hitherto formed the basis for assessing the conflict.
While the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose death toll figures have been widely cited, reports that 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the fighting, amounting to more than two-thirds of all fatalities, the IDF figures shown to the Post on Sunday put the civilian death toll at no higher than a third of the total.
The international community had been given a vastly distorted impression of the death toll because of “false reporting” by Hamas, said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), which compiled the IDF figures. . .
Basing its work on the official Palestinian death toll of 1,338, Levi said the CLA had now identified more than 1,200 of the Palestinian fatalities. Its 200-page report lists their names, their official Palestinian Authority identity numbers, the circumstances in which they were killed and, where appropriate, the terrorist group with which they were affiliated.
The CLA said 580 of these 1,200 had been conclusively “incriminated” as members of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Another 300 of the 1,200 – women, children aged 15 and younger and men over the age of 65 – had been categorized as noncombatants, the CLA said.
Counted among the women, however, were female terrorists, including at least two women who tried to blow themselves up next to forces from the Givati and Paratroopers’ Brigades. Also classed as noncombatants were the wives and children of Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas military commander who refused to allow his family to leave his home even after he was warned by Israel that it would be bombed.
The 320 names yet to be classified are all men; the IDF has yet complete its identification work in these cases, but estimates that two-thirds of them were terror operatives.
Do you have to be anti-Israel to believe Palestinian lies, or is Palestinian mendacity so well-constructed, so plausible, and so well disseminated by collaborative media outlets like Al Jazeera that even well-meaning people can’t help but believe the worst of Israel?
As recently as a few months ago, ostensibly serious people could be heard to claim that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons. Not any more:
Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.
In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran’s “development of a nuclear weapon” before correcting himself to refer to its “pursuit” of weapons capability.
Obama’s nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. “From all the information I’ve seen,” Panetta said, “I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”
The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.
This is progress, of a sort, but too late. Those lost months were a disaster.
What is particularly maddening is that the vaunted NIE didn’t actually say that Iran had ended its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Here’s what it did say:
We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.
ASIDE: Did anything happen in 2003 that might have changed Iran’s calculation of the wisdom of its nuclear efforts? Hmm.
Anyway, the NIE had only “moderate” confidence that Iran’s effort was entirely halted, only “moderate” confidence that it hadn’t been resumed by mid-2007, and no assessment at all after mid-2007:
Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program. . .
We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
Also, this “halt” was of a peculiar sort; during it they were still running uranium centrifuges and bringing more on-line:
We assess centrifuge enrichment is how Iran probably could first produce enough fissile material for a weapon, if it decides to do so. Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January 2006, despite the continued halt in the nuclear weapons program. Iran made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges at Natanz. . .
Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so. For example, Iran’s civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing.
(Emphasis mine.) Finally, the NIE explicitly disclaimed the idea that Iran had given up for good:
We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult. . . In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons—and such a decision is inherently reversible.
Despite all this nuance in an easily read document just over two pages long, the press reported the NIE as a categorical statement that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons. Why did they do that? Even with an opinion of the media as low as mine, it’s hard to understand that kind of fecklessness.
Things look different when you have to take responsibility for the nation’s safety yourself:
The larger story here is that the anti-antiterror lobby is losing the man it thought was its strongest ally. During his campaign, Mr. Obama talked as if he really believed that the Bush Administration was uniquely wicked on national security. Joe Biden cosponsored Senate legislation that would have prevented the executive branch from making state-secrets claims to shelve lawsuits, rather than shielding individual evidence from judicial (and public) scrutiny.
Now it seems that the Bush Administration’s antiterror architecture is gaining new legitimacy, just as Eisenhower validated Truman’s Cold War framework. Mr. Obama claims to have banned coercive interrogation techniques, except in those cases where more extreme measures are necessary to save lives. He says he’ll shut down Gitmo in a year or so, but his subordinates — including Elena Kagan during her confirmation hearings for Solicitor General this week — admit that indefinite detention will still be necessary for some terrorists. He walked back his wiretap absolutism even before he was elected. Now the Administration has endorsed the same secrecy posture that he once found so offensive, merely saying that it will be used less frequently. We’ll see.
These are all laudable signs of Mr. Obama’s antiterror progress. Perhaps some day he’ll acknowledge his debt to his predecessor.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Some Democrats are irresponsible enough to have pressed on with their anti-antiterror ideology once in office. Carter would have, to be sure. I thought Obama was another, so I’m pleasantly surprised.
Unfortunately, President Obama has also continued President Bush’s inaction in important areas. Iran is months away from a nuclear bomb, is led by a man who believes he can usher in the end of the world, and has explicitly called for the destruction of Israel. President Obama’s policy, like his predecessor, seems to be to do nothing.
If the Guantanamo prison base is shut down, critics say, some military combatants currently held there will be sent back to their home countries — where they will rejoin terrorist groups and ultimately kill Americans.
It’s already happened.
A New York woman was killed in a terrorist attack at the U.S. Embassy in Sana, Yemen, in September. And U.S. counterterrorism officials have now confirmed that Said Ali al-Shihri, 35, who was released from the Guantanamo Bay prison center in 2007, is the deputy leader of Al Qaeda in that Mideast country and is a suspect in the attack.
State Department officials have identified Susan Elbaneh, 18, of Lackawanna, N.Y., as one of at least 16 people — including her Yemeni husband — who died in the coordinated strike.
The United Nations has retracted a claim that an Israeli strike which killed more than 40 people in northern Gaza city of Jabaliya last month hit a school run by a UN agency.
“The humanitarian coordinator would like to clarify that the shelling, and all of the fatalities, took place outside rather than inside the school,” the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest weekly update on the situation in Gaza.
(Via LGF.) More here. It’s worth noting that Israeli confusion muddied the waters briefly, but they got their facts straight in short order, while people were still paying attention. The UN waited nearly a month.
CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a “complete al-Qaida defeat” in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan.
The officials say the terrorist network’s leadership cadre has been “decimated,” with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.
“The enemy is really, really struggling,” says one senior U.S. counterterrorism official. “These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we’ve seen in several years.”
Another senior U.S. official described “a significant, significant degradation of al-Qaida command and control in recent months.” . . .
The CIA has been using drone aircraft to carry out attacks on suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan for several years, but such attacks were significantly expanded last summer under orders from President George W. Bush. They also became more lethal, with the CIA for the first time using Reaper drones, an enhanced version of the Predator model used previously. The Reaper is capable of carrying two Hellfire missiles, as well as precision-guided bombs. . .
“In the past, you could take out the No. 3 al-Qaida leader, and No. 4 just moved up to take his place,” says one official. “Well, if you take out No. 3, No. 4 and then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to revive the leadership cadre.”
Even while dismantling [other anti-terrorism] programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
President Obama deserves a little credit here for recognizing that fighting terror requires a more than just hope and change; we have to keep at least a few tools available. How will the liberal base respond, now that renditions aren’t evil incarnate, but once again a necessary tool? (Funny how renditions are necessary exactly when a Democrat is in office.)
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened “harsh and disproportionate” retaliation after Gaza militants fired at least 10 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel on Sunday, wounding three and raising the specter of a new round of violence days ahead of Israel’s general election.
A late afternoon mortar barrage on the village of Nahal Oz, next to the Gaza border fence, wounded three — two soldiers and a civilian, the military and rescue services said. Earlier, a rocket landed near a kindergarten in a community near Gaza, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Warning sirens sent residents scrambling for shelter.
Since an unwritten truce ended Israel’s offensive in Gaza two weeks ago, a trickle of rocket and mortar fire has been increasing. Israeli retaliation, including brief ground incursions and bombing runs aimed at rocket launchers and smuggling tunnels, is also intensifying.
Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reported on Tuesday.
The think tank made the prediction in its ‘Military Balance 2009,’ an annual assessment of global defense and military developments.
Announcing the new report on Tuesday, Mark Fitzpatrick said the threat may not necessarily as big as it sounds.
“Being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having nuclear weapons,” he said.
In addition, the report placed doubts over U.S. intelligence estimates that Iran halted its work on nuclear weapons six years ago and pointed to Tehran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles able to reach targets in Israel and beyond.
Forget the economy. This is the crisis that will define the Obama administration.
Marc Thiessen reminds us that information obtained from CIA coercive interrogations stopped a string of terrorist attacks. After the jump, the story as recounted by President Bush on September 6, 2006.
As an example of why the Gitmo detainees can’t simply be released, the NY Times reports:
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
I’m glad the NY Times reported this, but of course, they can’t resist editorializing:
Although the Pentagon has said that dozens of released Guantánamo detainees have “returned to the fight,” its claim is difficult to document, and has been met with skepticism. In any case, few of the former detainees, if any, are thought to have become leaders of a major terrorist organization like Al Qaeda in Yemen, a mostly homegrown group that experts say has been reinforced by foreign fighters.
“Has been met with skepticism” is classic weasel language. Skepticism by whom? If you don’t tell us, you’re just inserting your opinion. (Doesn’t the NY Times style guide say something about this?) Moreover, who would be surprised if few former detainees become Al Qaeda leaders? How many leaders do they think Al Qaeda has?
Russia and neighboring Central Asian nations have agreed to let supplies pass through their territory to American soldiers in Afghanistan, lessening Washington’s dependence on dangerous routes through Pakistan, a top U.S. commander said Tuesday.
Securing alternative routes to landlocked Afghanistan has taken on added urgency this year as the United States prepares to double troop numbers there to 60,000 to battle a resurgent Taliban eight years after the U.S.-led invasion. . .
U.S. and NATO forces get up to 75 percent of their “non-lethal” supplies such as food, fuel and building materials from shipments that traverse Pakistan, a volatile, nuclear-armed country. . .
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus said America had struck deals with Russia and several Central Asian states close to or bordering Afghanistan during a tour of the region in the past week. . .
Petraeus gave few details, but NATO and U.S. officials have said recently they were close to securing transit agreements with Russia and the patchwork of Central Asia states to the north of Afghanistan.
Analysts say the United States’ dependence on Pakistani supply routes means it has little leverage to push Islamabad too hard on issues of bilateral concern, such as the campaign against al-Qaida.
An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.
The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.
He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.
“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.
Some encouraging news about public opinion regarding Gaza; a scientific poll shows that the public (registered voters to be specific) can see who is responsible for the Gaza conflict. Highlights:
66% blame Hamas, 17% blame Israeli leaders.
73% say the conflict is about ideology and religion, 19% say conflict is about land.
53% say Israel wants peace, 14% say Palestinians do.
54% say Israel works to minimize civilian casualties, 11% say Palestinians do.
65% say Israel only wants to defend its people, 19% say Palestinians do.
The so-called “Iranian Unit” of Hamas has been destroyed, according to Gaza sources cited Thursday by the Haaretz daily. The sources said most of the unit’s 100 members were killed in fighting in the Zeytun neighborhood of Gaza City.
The terrorists had been trained in infantry tactics, the use of anti-tank missiles and the detonation of explosives, among other skills, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Hizbullah camps in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, as well as sites in Iran.
The United Nations agency that administers a school in Gaza where dozens of civilians were killed by Israeli mortar fire last week has admitted to employing terrorists to work at its Palestinian schools in the past, has no system in place to keep members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad off its payroll, and provides textbooks to children that contain hate speech and other incendiary information. . .
A spokesman for UNRWA adamantly said that the agency is now free of terrorist connections. “We’re composed of social workers and teachers,” the official explained. “We take every step possible to have only civilians inside UNRWA facilities.”
But the U.N. Personal History form for UNRWA employees does not ask whether someone is a member of, or affiliated with, a terrorist organization such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. And there is no formal screening to ensure that employees are not affiliated with terrorist entities. . .
In 2004, former UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen told the Canadian Broadcasting Company, “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime.” He added, “We do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.”
There have been several high-profile examples of terrorists being employed by UNRWA. Former top Islamic Jihad rocket maker Awad Al-Qiq, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last May, was the headmaster and science instructor at an UNRWA school in Rafah, Gaza. Said Siyam, Hamas’ interior minister and head of the Executive Force, was a teacher for over two decades in UNRWA schools.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill say they are also concerned that terrorist propaganda is being taught in UNRWA schools. A notebook captured by Israeli officials at the UNRWA school in the Kalandia refugee camp several years ago glorified homicide bombers and other terrorists. Called “The Star Team,” it profiled so-called “martyrs,” Palestinians who had died either in homicide bombings or during armed struggle with Israel. On the book’s back cover was printed the UNRWA emblem, as well as a photo of a masked gunman taking aim while on one knee.
There is evidence that students educated in UNRWA schools are much more likely to become homicide bombers, said Jonathan Halevi, a former Israeli Defense Forces intelligence officer who specializes in Palestinian terrorist organizations. Halevi has spent several years building an extensive database for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs of terrorist attacks by Hamas and other Islamic extremist groups.
Though he cautioned that estimates are tricky because the identity of an attacker is not always made public, Halevi estimated that over 60 percent of homicide bombers were educated in UNRWA schools. By comparison, roughly 25-30 percent of Palestinian students in the West Bank, the origin of almost all homicide bombers since the start of the intifada in 2000, attend UNRWA schools, according to the agency’s figures.
After the incident, the UN quickly proclaimed that their school could not have been used by terrorists. Given the ties between UNRWA schools and terrorists, as well as the fact that UNRWA schools have been used by terrorists before, it’s hard to see how they could have been so confident.
Pajamas Media has a very troubling article reporting that the Army War College is failing to study militant Islam, and that at least one analyst has been sacked for warning of the omission. (Via Instapundit.)
The NYT reports on Hamas’s violations of the laws of war:
Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.
Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. . .
A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called “a knock on the roof.” . . .
Israeli officials say that they are obeying the rules of war and trying hard not to hurt noncombatants but that Hamas is using civilians as human shields in the expectation that Israel will try to avoid killing them.
Israeli press officers call the tactics of Hamas cynical, illegal and inhumane; even Israel’s critics agree that Hamas’s regular use of rockets to fire at civilians in Israel, and its use of civilians as shields in Gaza, are also violations of the rules of war. Israeli military men and analysts say that its urban guerrilla tactics, including the widespread use of civilian structures and tunnels, are deliberate and come from the Iranian Army’s tactical training and the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hamas rocket and weapons caches, including rocket launchers, have been discovered in and under mosques, schools and civilian homes, the army says. The Israeli intelligence chief, Yuval Diskin, in a report to the Israeli cabinet, said that the Gaza-based leadership of Hamas was in underground housing beneath the No. 2 building of Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza. That allegation cannot be confirmed.
(Via Power Line.) (ASIDE: In my previous post, I noted how the final point sheds some light on CNN’s fake video.)
Bad enough, but John Hinderaker argues that this actually underestimates Hamas’s evil:
It is commonly said that by storing weapons in mosques and firing rockets and mortars from residential areas and school yards, Hamas is using human shields in Gaza, a war crime. But the truth is really worse than that. Hamas doesn’t endanger civilians in hopes that it will deter retaliation; it does so in the hope and expectation that civilians will be killed and wounded.
This tactic is part of a larger strategy to create tragedy and disaster, which the Palestinians have developed into something akin to an industrial process. They build tunnels, but they do not build bomb shelters. They do not, apparently, suspend classes in schools in the midst of bombardments. And Hamas, with the tolerance if not approval of most Gazans, uses schoolyards as launching zones for rockets and mortars. Think about it: is there anything about a schoolyard that makes it a particularly desirable place from which to fire ordnance? No. Hamas uses schools (and mosques, and residential areas generally) in this way in the hope that civilians, especially children, will be killed.
Hamas on Monday raided some 100 aid trucks that Israel had allowed into Gaza, stole their contents and sold them to the highest bidders.
The IDF said that since terminal activity is coordinated with UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel could do nothing to prevent such raids, Israel Radio reported.
Between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the army had ceased all military activity in Gaza and once again established a “humanitarian corridor” to help facilitate the transfer of the supplies.
The Kerem Shalom and Karni crossings had been opened to allow in the aid trucks.
The UN, which earlier leapt to accuse Israel (falsely, it appears) of firing on a relief convoy, has yet to protest this raid by Hamas, at least as far as I can tell from searching Google News.
Two days ago, a UN convoy came under fire, killing two UN workers. The UN immediately accused Israel of firing on the convoy. In contrast, the IDF likes to get its ducks in a row before responding to this sort of accusation. Having completed their investigation, they now say they aren’t responsible. The Jerusalem Post has reported further on how flimsy the accusation was:
On Friday, the Post reported that contrary to foreign press reports, it was not certain that an IDF tank shell hit the aid truck, and that in all probability, the aid workers were hit by Hamas gunfire.
The foreign press reports were based on UN sources, who later admitted to the Post that they were not sure in which direction the truck was headed when it was hit, and could also not say with certainty that tank shells were responsible.
Foreign press reports said the dead Palestinian and two others were hit by tank shells. A MDA medic at the scene told the Post that soldiers in the field said Hamas snipers targeted the aid workers. A Post probe revealed that the two wounded Palestinians were being treated at Barzilai for gunshot wounds.
Having milked its immediate accusation for two days of anti-Israel propaganda, the UN now says it wants to investigate:
[UNRWA spokesman Chris] Gunness added that the UN was keen to “clear the fog of war” and get to the bottom of the incident.
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
And:
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.
How much effort, and how many human lives, have been wasted trying to make peace with these people?
In its latest war with Hamas terrorists, the IDF has begun to offer videos of their operations, presumably in part to show the world the care they are taking, and in part to show what they are accomplishing. Either way, Hamas and its sympathizers don’t want you to see them.
First, they induced YouTube (owned by Google) to take down the videos. They are finally back up now, under a content warning. In the meantime, Power Line decided to host some of them on their site. About an hour later, Power Line was under a denial of service attack. Fortunately, Power Line’s service provider was up to the challenge, and they were back up shortly.
You can subscribe to the IDF channel here. Here is their latest:
Note the trail of a rocket cooked off by the blast.
If Israel is at war, it must be time for accusations of a “disproportionate response.” (For example.) Israel, you see, really ought to keep the intensity of the war at a proportionate level, that is, one that Hamas can match. Israel should not try to win.
But let’s be honest, Israel isn’t really supposed to launch a proportionate response either. They are just supposed to curl up and take it. Hamas is allowed to fire rockets into Israel; they’ve got it coming. (What makes Israel so special? I can’t quite remember.) If they get tired of it, they can leave. I’m sure the Israelis can find somewhere else in the world where people will be happy to have them. . .
On a less sarcastic note, I’m happy to say that many people seem to be catching on to the “disproportionate response” crap (in America anyway). For example, this editorial from the Chicago Tribune. And this statement from Barack Obama.
Also, here’s an interesting article about how Israel prepared for its current war with Hamas, which was inevitable from the day the “cease-fire” began. And, Michael Ledeen places the war in context. (Via Instapundit.)
UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru has an insightful comment on what a sensible doctrine of proportionality would be:
Critics of Israeli military action say that it is “excessive” or “disproportionate” to Hamas’s provocation. But that’s the wrong way to think about proportionality in war. The traditional just-war standard is that military action should be “proportionate” in that it causes fewer harms than it seeks to prevent. That’s a sane and sound moral standard. It does not mean that military means must inflict only as much pain as the enemy has inflicted.
The newfangled proportionality standard has several perverse implications, not the least of which being that military victories would almost always be considered morally illegitimate.
Iran is no longer actively supplying Iraqi militias with a particularly lethal kind of roadside bomb, a decision that suggests a strategic shift by the Iranian leadership, U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Thursday.
Use of the armor-piercing explosives — known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs — has dwindled sharply in recent months, said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, head of the Pentagon office created to counter roadside bombs in Iran and Afghanistan.
Metz estimated that U.S. forces find between 12 and 20 of the devices in Iraq each month, down from 60 to 80 earlier this year. . .
Asked if the elite Iranian Republican Guard Corps has made a deliberate choice to limit use of EFPs, Metz nodded: “I think you could draw that inference from the data.” . . .
The U.S. cites the spread of powerful EFP roadside bombs as the clearest Iranian fingerprint. U.S. military officers say they know the EFPs come from Iran because they bear Iranian markings and because captured militants have told them so. The workmanship is so precise they could only come from a modern factory with machine tools available in Iran but not Iraq.
EFPs account for only about 5 percent of the roadside bombs found in Iraq but 30 percent of the casualties, Metz said.
The followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr once were powerful enough to do battle against the U.S. military, play kingmaker in choosing Iraq’s prime minister and declare themselves the true defenders of the country’s Shiite majority.
But parliament’s approval last week of a security agreement that requires U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, a date the Sadrists consider far too distant, has underscored the movement’s waning influence. Sadr’s loyalists are on the defensive, struggling to remain politically relevant as the U.S. role in Iraq diminishes and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gains stature.
The day after the agreement’s passage, anger lined the face of Hazim al-Araji, Sadr’s top aide. Inside a gold-domed shrine in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyah neighborhood, he railed against Iraq’s lawmakers. “They ignored our ideas and thoughts when they signed this agreement,” he said from his pulpit. “They paid no attention to all our martyrs who gave their blood fighting the occupation.” . . .
The congregation of a few thousand was smaller than usual, a sign of the Sadrists’ uncertain future.
An independent commission has concluded that terrorists will most likely carry out an attack with biological, nuclear or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world in the next five years unless the United States and its allies act urgently to prevent that.
In a report to be released this week, the congressionally mandated panel found that with countries like Iran and North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons programs, and with the risk of poorly secured biological pathogens growing, unconventional threats are fast outpacing the defenses arrayed to confront them. . .
The report is the result of a six-month study by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which Congress created last spring in keeping with one of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission. . .
Among the commission’s many recommendations is this important one:
The commission urges the Obama administration to work to halt the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs, backing up any diplomatic initiatives with “the credible threat of direct action” – code for military action, a commission official said.
Two weeks ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb.
Being a pragmatist, I’m willing to let them have it, if it gets them on board. Historically, Republicans support Democratic wars (Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo), but generally not vice versa (Civil War, Gulf War, Iraq). If revising the history is the price for getting Democrats to support the effort, so be it.
November 19, 2008: Japanese Aegis/SM-3 test unsuccessful.
November 1, 2008: Aegis/SM-3 dual target test mixed (one target intercepted, one not).
September 17, 2007: THAAD test aborted (target missile failed).
There have been no intercept tests of the best known missile-defense system, the GBMD (ground-based midcourse defense), during that time. November was a tough month for the Aegis/SM-3 system, making only one of three attempted intercepts. If we set aside the aborted THAAD test, the Aegis/SM-3 is the only system to fail since missile defense was deployed in December 2002.
UPDATE (12/6): Another test of the GBMD system yesterday was a qualified success. The system intercepted the target, but the test was intended to include countermeasures that failed to deploy, so it wasn’t as difficult as intended.
Popular Mechanics has an interesting article on the technology of missile defense. It takes a somewhat skeptical tone, which I suppose is fair, but what isn’t fair is their misrepresentation of the testing record:
Which leaves a vital question: Does the system work? That’s a matter of fierce debate, and the success rate of tests is mixed. Since 1999, the MDA’s strategic defense system has passed seven out of 12 hit-to-kill tests. But in the six years since President George W. Bush pushed for deployment to counter North Korean missiles, only two of the ground-based interceptor tests have been successful.
There have been exactly two GBMD intercept tests during that time (2006 and 2007 (pdfs)), so the fact that “only two” were successful isn’t exactly a mixed record. One might criticize them for lack of testing, but that’s an entirely different critique. (Full-fledged intercept tests are very expensive, so they run a lot more tracking tests (pdf) and so forth.)
Today’s mission — observing the progress of the peace — makes for boring journalism, but it made me very happy. I was smiling all day. This victory, like all real triumphs, is monumental and historic — though our military will not be allowed to express their feelings of pride and sense of well-earned glory.
When the war was on full-steam there was so much to report that it was impossible to keep track. And now that peace is breaking out, it’s equally impossible to keep track of all the progress. There’s still focus on the attacks, most of which are directed against Iraqis, not us. And so this “mission” was more like an armed errand to remove some concrete barriers between neighborhoods.
The Israeli Air Force is ready to attack Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons project if diplomacy fails to persuade the Islamic Republic to halt uranium enrichment, said Commander Ido Nehushtan in an interview published Tuesday.
The news comes as the U.N. watchdog agency reports Iran is probably at the point of being capable of making a nuclear bomb.
“We are prepared and ready to do whatever Israel needs us to do and if this is the mission we’re given then we are ready,” Nehushtan told German magazine Der Spiegel.
A strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities “is a political decision,” the IAF commander said, “but if I understand it correctly, all options are on the table … The Air Force is a very robust and flexible force. We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us.”
Asked if the Israeli military would be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are spread around the country, with some built underground, Nehushtan said, “Please understand that I do not want to get into details. I can only say this: It is not a technical or logistical question.”
While Israel has fought all its immediate Arab neighbors, its pilots have had limited capabilities to carry out missions as far away as Iran. A strike on Iraq’s sole nuclear reactor in 1981 was an extraordinary exception at the time but analysts say the F-16I has made long-distance strikes more possible.
It’s been increasingly clear that the war in Iraq is essentially over. The mortality rate in the Iraq theater has dropped well below the comparable civilian population. (In the last year, we lost more Americans on the streets of Chicago than in Iraq, and that period includes the surge itself.) Unfortunately, counterinsurgencies don’t have sharp conclusions, so there won’t be any particular day that we can celebrate as V-I day.
Zombietime wants to rectify that by proclaiming November 22 as Victory in Iraq day. (Via LGF.) I’m not sure why he picked that day in particular, but it’s as good as any other.
Here’s a picture of what that victory has accomplished:
More than two-thirds of the 275-seat legislature attended Monday’s session, raising confidence that parliament will be able to muster a quorum for the Nov. 24 vote. . .
The Cabinet approved the pact Sunday, meaning the political parties in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition government are expected to have similar success in securing parliamentary support. If parliament approves, President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies must ratify it.
Under the agreement, U.S. forces must vacate Iraqi cities by June, leave Iraq by the end of 2011 and grant Iraqi authorities extensive power over the operations and movements of American forces. It also prohibits the U.S. from using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, like Syria and Iran.
The last provision is a little odd, and I suspect it’s been garbled by the AP. More likely it says it prohibits us from doing so without Iraqi permission, which would be much the same arrangement as any other sovereign country that houses U.S. bases.
That’s what Michael Yon tells Glenn Reynolds about the war in Iraq, and he’s been closer to it than any other journalist. At his own web site he echoes that assessment, but that’s not the end of it. The war in Afghanistan is heating up, and most of our allies are useless. The primary front in the war on terror is shifting back to Afghanistan, and it’s too early to say how it will end.
The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon’s missile defense projects said that American interests would be “severely hurt” if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.
Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters Wednesday that he is awaiting word from Obama’s transition team on their interest in receiving briefings.
During the campaign, Obama was not explicit about his intentions with regard to missile defense. . . Obama has said it would be prudent to “explore the possibility of deploying missile defense systems in Europe,” in light of what he called active efforts by Iran to develop ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weapons.
I’d be surprised if Obama okays the European deployment. It’s true that at times he was vague about whether he would, but I think that was election-season equivocation. In the general election, the anti-war left had no additional support to give him. (Earlier, before the nomination was locked up, he was strident in opposition to missile defense.)
My guess (or perhaps I should say my most realistic hope) is that Obama will cut the baby in two: keep the North American missile defense system that’s already deployed, but abandon a European shield. Shutting down a working system would be a truly rash step, beyond (hopefully) what President Obama would do. If he did, and it ever were needed, history would not be kind to him.
Whether ongoing research will continue I cannot hazard a guess. Obama has said we will “work with NATO allies to develop anti-missile technologies,” whatever that means.
But the wild card is whether Obama will meet with Obering:
Obama expressed some skepticism about the technical capability of U.S. missile defenses. . . Obering, who is leaving his post next week after more than four years in charge, said in the interview that his office has pulled together information for a presentation to the Obama team, if asked.
“What we have discovered is that a lot of the folks that have not been in this administration seem to be dated, in terms of the program,” he said. “They are kind of calibrated back in the 2000 time frame and we have come a hell of a long way since 2000. Our primary objective is going to be just, frankly, educating them on what we have accomplished, what we have been able to do and why we have confidence in what we are doing.”
If he gets the chance to make the case, he can point to a very successful testing record since the system was deployed in 2002. Perhaps that will sway the President. Conversely, if Obama won’t even listen, that’s a bad sign.
With the United States soon to pull out of Iraq, one worry is whether the Sunnis who began working with us during the Sunni Awakening will be willing to work for a government controlled by Shiites. This is a promising sign:
It’s pay week for the patrolmen who helped flush al Qaeda militants out of their Baghdad neighborhoods. Only this time, it is the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government that is paying the mainly Sunni fighters, rather than the U.S. military.
Putting the fighters, many of whom were once insurgents, on the payroll of a government they once fought is seen as a major test of reconciliation as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw.
The Iraqi army began paying them at dozens of stations opened this week throughout Baghdad.
The U.S. military says the fighters number 100,000, about half of them in Baghdad province. The government took charge of the Baghdad fighters last month and plans to take on those in other parts of the country in coming months.
Hundreds of people joined Iraqi officials on Tuesday in reopening a major bridge linking Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad — a further sign of improving security in the Iraqi capital. . .
The Imams Bridge in north Baghdad was barricaded shut three years ago following a deadly stampede during a Shiite procession that killed almost 1,000 people. The bridge remained closed during the sectarian bloodletting that plagued the city in 2006 and 2007.
But U.S. and Iraqi security forces have grabbed the upper hand against extremists in recent months, contributing to a general drop in violence in the capital. Those gains have allowed officials to replace sealed barricades on the bridge with checkpoints and reopen the east-west artery in north Baghdad.
Sunnis, Shiites and government officials hailed the event as a triumph over sectarianism and celebrated with the ritual slaughter of a half-dozen sheep.
The Economist has an interesting article on the long-awaited arrival of ray guns to reality. The first prototype directed-energy weapon is deployed in an “undisclosed theatre of war,” and more are on the way.
Does this mean we’ll finally have flying cars soon?
Spurred by a continued decline in violence, the U.S. military will reduce its presence in Iraq from 16 combat brigades to 14 this month, at least two months earlier than planned.
Military officials say two brigades from the 101st Airborne Division will leave Iraq this month, and only one will be replaced. A brigade is roughly 3,500 soldiers. Initially the 3rd Brigade, 101st Division, was scheduled to leave this month, and the 2nd Brigade, 101st Division, was to leave by February.
On Wednesday, the military announced the 2nd Brigade will instead return this month to its home base, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after serving 13 months in Iraq rather than the expected 15.
The unit served in northwest Baghdad, where violence has plunged, including a 50 percent decline in overall attacks in the area and a more than 90 percent drop in murders.
U.S. forces also have seen a dramatic decline in troop fatalities, with deaths falling to their second lowest monthly level in October. Fourteen U.S. troops killed last month, including seven in combat. That total was one more than the 13 deaths in July, the lowest monthly level of the war.
Back in 1999, terrorists on the daylight-saving West Bank built several time bombs, delivered to co-conspirators in Israel and scheduled to explode at a set time. Problem was, Israel had just switched back to standard time, so the only people injured were the terrorists themselves when the bomb detonated an hour earlier than they expected and killed them all.
The Italian government gave Libya early warning of the 1986 U.S. airstrikes launched in response to a deadly attack on a disco in Germany, Libyan and Italian officials said Thursday.
Libya’s Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalgam was quoted by the ANSA and Apcom news agencies as saying the Italians warned him of the raids launched from a NATO base on Italian soil because they were opposed to the action. Shalgam said the Italians informed him personally since, at the time, he was Libya’s ambassador in Rome.
“I don’t think I am revealing a secret if I announce that Italy informed us a day before — April 14, 1986 — that there would be an American aggression against Libya,” the agencies quoted Shalgam as saying.
Shalgam was quoted as saying that the United States launched a strike from a NATO base on Lampedusa, a tiny Sicilian island close to the African coast, “against the will of the Italian government.”
The agencies also quoted veteran politician Giulio Andreotti, who in 1986 was Italy’s foreign minister, as saying that the attack was “a mistake” and confirming that the Socialist-led government of Bettino Craxi warned Libya.
(Emphasis mine.)
This seems to be a persistent problem. Years later, during the Kosovo campaign, France leaked information on bombing targets to Belgrade. (To be fair, France prosecuted an army intelligence officer for the leak. But the crime was clearly not seen as serious. The officer, despite being convicted of treason, was sentenced to little more than time served.)
POSTSCRIPT: Shalgam’s talk about Italian bases is strange, since the raid was launched from aircraft carriers and British bases.
A respected Israeli intelligence expert says he has been told the [U.S. helicopter attack on Al Qaeda within Syria] was carried out with the knowledge and co-operation of Syrian intelligence.
Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, makes the claim in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, based on briefings with two senior American officials, one of whom he says until recently “held a very high ranking in the Pentagon”.
Mr Bergman told Sky News the raid happened after America had lobbied Syria intensely to deal with an al Qaeda group conducting activity on the border.
The Syrians were unwilling to be seen publicly bowing to US pressure to tackle the group, he says, but in the end gave the Americans the green light to do so themselves. . .
U.S. military helicopters struck a network of foreign fighters in Syria, a U.S. military official said Sunday, killing eight people and earning recrimination from Damascus, which condemned the raid as “serious aggression.”
The official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the special forces action within Syrian territory close to the Iraqi border, was meant to send a message. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach. . .
The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.
Ninety percent of foreign fighters enter Iraq through Syria, according to U.S. intelligence estimates. Foreign fighters often enter Iraq in order to bring cash to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s chief. They also are deadly — trained in bomb-making and willing to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks. . .
“The one piece of the puzzle we have not been showing success on is the nexus in Syria,” the official said speaking of other areas of assistance in Iraq and neighboring countries.
On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a “different story.”
“The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,” Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.”
A 62-year-old lawmaker held captive eight years by leftist rebels walked to freedom in a western Colombia jungle on Sunday along with the young guerrilla commander who had been his jailer.
President Alvaro Uribe said the rebel and his girlfriend would be rewarded with cash and asylum in France.
Oscar Tulio Lizcano is the first Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia hostage to gain freedom since the July 2 rescue of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors.
His escape is yet another blow to Latin America’s last major rebel army, which is battling record desertions under withering pressure from Colombia’s U.S.-backed military.
I know hardly anyone is paying attention to Iraq any more, but I still think it bears notice: the “triangle of death” region has been handed over to Iraqi control:
U.S. forces declared an area once known as the “triangle of death” safe enough for Iraqi troops to take charge on Thursday, handing over responsibility for security in Babil province to Iraqi forces.
The province south of Baghdad is the 12th of Iraq’s 18 provinces in which primary responsibility for security has been given to Iraqi forces.
With violence at four-year lows, only the capital Baghdad, four ethnically and religiously mixed northern provinces and Wasit province along the Iranian border still require day-to-day U.S. patrols of Iraqi streets.
A poll by the Military Times newspaper group suggests that there is overwhelming support for John McCain among U.S. troops in every branch of the armed forces by a nearly 3-1 margin.
According to the poll, 68 percent of active-duty and retired servicemen and women support McCain, while 23 percent support Barack Obama. The numbers are nearly identical among officers and enlisted troops.
The Military Times, which publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times, polled 80,000 subscribers from Sept 22 to Sept. 29. The non-scientific survey gathered 4,300 respondents — all of them registered and eligible to vote. . .
The Military Times offered certain caveats for its poll, which was open only to its 80,000 subscribers. Responses were entirely voluntary and were not focused on a representative sample of the public, as scientific polls are. The troops polled were also somewhat older than average enlisted servicemembers and included more officers than is representative of the military as a whole.
Yet judging by the numbers, it appears that the Democratic party has not made many inroads into the traditionally Republican military.
UPDATE: Yes, this is a non-scientific study. As far as I’m aware, there’s no way to do a scientific study of the military. So take it for what it’s worth. (I would note that the left has found Military Times polls credible when they favored them.)
Still, the result is consistent with my experience. Liberal servicemen tend to support Democrats, and conservative ones tend to support Republicans, but the military tends to attract or create conservatives much more than liberals. I’ve been out of the military for years, but I doubt that’s changed.
Also, the campaigns clearly recognize that servicemen vote Republican. Remember Florida 2000:
Both parties quickly recognized the importance to Mr. Bush of the uncounted overseas ballots, especially those from military installations. But the Democrats were preoccupied, particularly with their pursuit of manual recounts in several heavily Democratic counties. And their strategy for absentee ballots, which consisted of challenging as many overseas ballots as possible, backfired after they were accused of disenfranchising men and women in uniform.
It’s not for no reason that Democrats try to prevent the military from voting. We can’t be sure of the 68/23 figure, but you can be sure than McCain has more support than Obama.
UPDATE (10/27): That same article sheds a little bit of quantitative light on the question:
Applying widely varying standards from one county to the next, election officials threw out 1,527 ballots, according to an unofficial tally by The Associated Press, or 41 percent of the total, and the remaining ballots produced a net gain of 630 votes for Mr. Bush.
This gives us enough information to compute (with some algebra) the proportion of the late overseas vote that wasn’t thrown out as 64% Bush and 36% Gore. Now this doesn’t precisely give us an estimate of the military voter nationwide. However, there don’t seem to be any systematic factors that would bias this number towards Bush. Florida voters closely mirrored voters nationwide in 2000, and the fact that the vote also includes expatriates would only shift the numbers toward Gore. So unless voting late correlates with voting Bush, which there’s no evidence for, we can guess that the 2000 military vote went at least 64/46 for Bush. This suggests that a 68/23 figure today is plausible.
If there’s anyone left who still denies that Iran is operating inside Iraq, they should consider this Long War Journal report:
Iraqi police and border guards have arrested seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps since Oct 18. The arrests come as the senior US commander in Iraq accused Iran of attempting to bribe Iraqi members of parliament to vote against the status of forces agreement that will allow US forces to remain in Iraq past 2008.
Iraqi police captured three armed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers today in the city of Al Kut in Wasit province, a police official told Voices of Iraq. “Three Iraqi Revolutionary Guards along with their guide were detained on the border region between Iraq and Iran in eastern Wasit after entering Iraq illegally,” said Police Major Aziz Latief al Imara. “The forces seized amounts of ammunitions found in their possession.”
On Oct. 18, Iraqi border guards captured four more members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps in the Mandali district in Diyala province. “A force from the 4th contingent of the Iraqi border brigade in Diyala province arrested last night four members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard inside the Iraqi territories,” an anonymous official told Voices of Iraq. “The four were in military uniform with guns in their possession and were moving within the Iraqi territories.”
The seven Iranians were likely members of Qods Force, the elite special operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The unit reports directly to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Qods Force has supported various Shia militias and terror groups inside Iraq, including the Mahdi Army, which it helped build along the same lines as Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran denies the charges, but captive Shia terrorists admit to being recruited by Iranian agents, and then transported into Iran for training.
When Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly deployed to Iraq in February, the violence had fallen so low in Anbar province that he began figuring out how to start closing bases and prepare to go home.
In the last 10 months the Marines in Fallujah have done what was unthinkable before the surge began — they have quietly transferred out of one of Anbar province’s largest cities. FOX News has learned in an exclusive interview with Kelly from Fallujah that 80 percent of the move is complete. In February there were 8,000 Marines living at Fallujah base. Now there are about 3,000 left. By Nov. 14 there will be none. . .
Marines will no longer be seen in city centers such as Fallujah — a major step toward leaving Iraq, and one step closer to Iraq’s goal of having U.S. troops out of its population centers by mid-2009 — one of the key points enshrined in the Status of Forces Agreement being reviewed on Capitol Hill today. . .
They dubbed [their departure] “Operation Rudy Giuliani” because they were cleaning the streets up and returning Fallujah to normalcy — taking down barbed wire and tearing down checkpoints and Jersey walls that made Anbar look like a war zone.
“There is almost no barbed wire left anywhere in Fallujah,” Kelly said. An Iraqi no longer sees barbed wire when traveling in and around the city.
Between 300 and 400 concrete barriers that divided the city were removed by Navy Seabees.
There’s an interesting tactical tidbit:
One of the big changes Kelly made when he took command in Anbar was to remove fixed checkpoints, and Iraqi vehicles no longer had to pull off to the side when a military convoy was on the road. His troops risked car bombs, but the gamble paid off in what had once been Iraq’s most dangerous province. The new road rules instantly lowered the tension between military and locals. Soon he transitioned to moving military convoys only at night, so they would not encounter locals. This also stymied many of the insurgents laying IEDs or roadside bombs, which they often had done at night.
Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.
“They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”
The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close.
The AP reports that Russia is finally pulling out of Georgia, more than a month-and-a-half later than they promised. I hope it’s true. Meanwhile, Stephen Green worries that Russia is preparing a pretext for a continued or resumed occupation.
For my part, I’m skeptical. A genuine settlement would be welcome, of course, but it seems more likely (if the CNN story is accurate at all) that they are merely trying to drive a wedge between their enemies.
Here’s an AP story about a supposed mistake by Sarah Palin:
Gov. Sarah Palin cites vigilance against Russian warplanes coming into U.S. airspace over Alaska as one of her foreign-policy credentials. But the U.S. military command in charge says that hasn’t happened in her 21 months in office. . .
The spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, Maria Comella, said in an e-mail trying to clarify Palin’s comments that when “Russian incursions near Alaskan airspace and inside the air-defense identification zone have occurred … U.S. Air Force fighters have been scrambled repeatedly.”
Now the story comes to the point:
The air-defense identification zone, almost completely over water, extends 12 miles past the perimeter of the United States. Most nations have similar areas.
However, no Russian military planes have been flying into that zone, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for the Alaska region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage.
“To be very clear, there has not been any incursion in U.S. airspace in recent years,” Herritage said.
Note that Major Herritage’s actual quote doesn’t support the indirect quote the story attributes to him. Herritage says that there’s been no incursion into US airspace, which does not mean that there’s been no incursion into the air-defense identification zone (ADIZ). To the contrary, the ADIZ is where the Air Force turns back intruders before they get to US airspace.
So, have Russian planes been entering the ADIZ or not? Yes, they have, according to the very same Major Allen Herritage. The Air Force Times reports:
More and more American and Canadian fighter jets are scrambling and intercepting Russian bombers flying off the Alaskan coast, exacerbating tensions between the former Cold War foes.
There have been 16 such intercepts since July, Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Howie Chandler told the Anchorage Daily News on March 27. That compares with just one in 2005, and none in the previous 10 years, Chandler said. . .
None of the Russian bombers has entered American airspace, which extends 12 miles out from U.S. soil, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for NORAD’s Alaska region. Rather, the bombers have been intercepted after entering the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, a buffer that extends even further out.
So Palin was right, Russian bombers have been intruding into the Alaska ADIZ and have had to be turned back by American fighters.
ASIDE: One might claim that Palin erred by confusing US airspace with the US ADIZ. Since Palin was using figurative language (“when Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States”), it’s far from clear that she meant the term literally. But even if you assume she did, it’s meaningless hair-splitting, and it doesn’t at all damage her larger point.
But wait, there’s more. Returning to the AP story:
What Palin might have been referring to was a buffer zone of airspace that extends beyond the 12-mile strip. Although not recognized internationally as the United States’ to protect, the military watches it.
That zone is where there has been increased Russian bomber exercises, about 20 in the past two years. When Russian bombers enter that expanded area, sometimes called the outer air-defense identification zone by the military, U.S. or Canadian fighter jets are dispatched to check them, Herritage said.
The “outer air-defense identification zone”? What is that? I’d never heard of it so I looked it up. Wikipedia has an article on the ADIZ, and it doesn’t mention an “outer ADIZ.” Ah, but they have a second article. It turns out there are actually two zones with that name: one surrounds the United States and Canada, and the other, created after 9/11, surrounds Washington DC. The latter one turns out to have an outer area called the outer air-defense identification zone. In fact, if you google the term, you find three sorts of pages: (1) pages that don’t actually use the term, (2) pages referring to the zone around Washington DC, and (3) pages that refer to this very AP article.
So the outer ADIZ is around Washington, thousands of miles away from Alaska, and I feel very safe in assuming that Russia has not been conducting bomber exercises there!
To summarize, someone is confused, but it’s the AP, not Sarah Palin. Russian bombers are indeed intruding into the Alaska ADIZ, exactly as Palin says, despite the AP’s denial. On the other hand, the “outer ADIZ,” into which the AP says Russia is intruding, is thousands of miles away and has nothing at all to do with it.
POSTSCRIPT: Can you imagine the ridicule if Palin, rather than the AP, had inadvertently suggested that Russia was running bomber exercises around Washington DC?
When are dead pirates a bad thing? When those pirates died mysteriously after capturing an Iranian ship bound for Somalia:
A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.
Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.
Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”
The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels. . .
The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military.
The MV Iran Deyanat was brought to Eyl, a sleepy fishing village in northeastern Somalia, and was secured by a larger gang of pirates – 50 onboard and 50 onshore. Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair. Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates have also died.
Obama has denied the New York Post report that he interfered with an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq. Or has he? From AFP, here’s the denial:
Barack Obama’s White House campaign angrily denied Monday a report that he had secretly urged the Iraqis to postpone a deal to withdraw US troops until after November’s election.
In the New York Post, conservative Iranian-born columnist Amir Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying the Democrat made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July, while publicly demanding an early withdrawal.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview, according to Taheri.
But, I’m not quite sure the Obama campaign understands how a denial is supposed to work:
Obama’s national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri’s article bore “as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial.”
In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.
In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration’s hands on Iraq.
Recall that the central allegation of the report was precisely that Obama was trying to delay an agreement with Iraq until a new president takes office:
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
So the campaign is denying the report while confirming its substance.
BONUS: Finally, the chutzpah:
Obama said the president was belatedly coming round to his own way of thinking, but also accused Bush of “tinkering around the edges” and “kicking the can down the road to the next president.”
That’s the exact opposite of the truth. Bush is trying to strike an agreement with Iraq, while Obama wants him to kick the can down the road.
BONUS SNARK: Don’t we deserve a president who at least knows how to issue a bogus denial properly?
EXTRA BONUS SNARK: If the report bears “as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial,” maybe that reflects well on McCain campaign commercials.
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
UPDATE: Added a question mark to the title, since there’s apparently some question about the reliability of the reporter.
Also, Jonah Goldberg asks if Obama has violated the Logan Act. There’s no question he has, if this story is true:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent . . . to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Nevertheless, no one has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act.
UPDATE: Obama denies it. Of course, he also (falsely) denied the Goolsbee meeting. We’ll wait and see.
There have been hints of this for months, so this isn’t exactly a scoop, but here it is:
President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
U.S. General David Perkins told FOX News Wednesday that the military has intercepted a letter in which senior Al Qaeda operatives reveal their fury over militants’ failure to keep up with the campaign against U.S.-led forces in Iraq. . .
The letter blasts Al Qaeda in Iraq for failing to maintain communication and for poorly-planned attacks. Al Qaeda leaders also slam operatives for sending fighters into battle alone, without direction.
Al-Zawahiri also criticizes them for posting videos online using archive footage of violent attacks, yet presenting them as new evidence of their success.
The letter reads, “[Aby Ayyub al-Masri]… is not strong enough to bear this great great responsibility, and is weak at […] decision making. He is weak […] he is totally isolated [..] this is affecting his grip on reality.”
The United States military said Al Qaeda in Iraq responded to the criticism with claims of being financially cut off, and unable to recruit capable new members.
President Bush’s top defense advisers have recommended he maintain 15 combat brigades in Iraq until the end of the year contrary to expectations that the improved security in Iraq would allow for quicker cuts, The Associated Press has learned.
Military leaders told the AP that the closely held plan would send a small Marine contingent to Afghanistan in November to replace one of two Marine units expected to head home then.
If Bush follows the recommendations, he would delay any additional buildup in Afghanistan until early next year, when another brigade would be deployed there instead of to Iraq.
That move would cut the number of brigades in Iraq to 14 in February.
Gen. David Petraeus, outgoing commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, is recommending that one U.S. army brigade be withdrawn from Iraq before a new administration takes over in January.
A senior U.S. Defense official who has seen Petraeus’ recommendations to the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Gates and President Bush told FOX News the likely brigade to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan is the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y. . .
Several reports also suggest that Petraeus is also recommending 1,500 Marines also be redirected from service in Iraq and sent to Afghanistan.
Eric Posner collates various pronouncements of doom made by the NYT and its columnists on the Surge:
The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional. — Paul Krugman, NYT, 1/8/07
There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq. — NYT Editorial, 1/11/07
What anyone in Congress with half a brain knows is that the surge was sabotaged before it began. — Frank Rich, NYT, 2/11/07
Keeping troops in Iraq has steadily increased the risk of a bloodbath. The best way to reduce that risk is, I think, to announce a timetable for withdrawal and to begin a different kind of surge: of diplomacy. — Nicholas Kristof, NYT, 2/13/07
W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/17/07
The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work. — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 2/24/07
Now the ”surge” that was supposed to show results by summer is creeping inexorably into an open-ended escalation, even as Moktada al-Sadr’s militia ominously melts away, just as Iraq’s army did after the invasion in 2003, lying in wait to spring a Tet-like surprise. — Frank Rich, NYT, 3/11/07
Victory is no longer an option in Iraq, if it ever was. The only rational objective left is to responsibly organize America’s inevitable exit. That is exactly what Mr. Bush is not doing and what the House and Senate bills try to do. — NYT Editorial, 3/29/07
There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left. — NYT Editorial, 4/12/07
… the empty hope of the “surge” … — Frank Rich, NYT, 4/22/07
Three months into Mr. Bush’s troop escalation, there is no real security in Baghdad and no measurable progress toward reconciliation, while American public support for this folly has all but run out. — NYT Editorial, 5/11/07
Now the Bush administration finds itself at that same hour of shame. It knows the surge is not working. — Maureen Dowd, NYT, 5/27/07
Mr. Bush does have a choice and a clear obligation to re-evaluate strategy when everything, but his own illusions, tells him that it is failing. — NYT Editorial, 7/25/07
The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. — Paul Krugman, NYT, 9/14/07
These people don’t actually understand military operations. They have one template, Vietnam. Somehow, that template failed to work in the Gulf War and Afghanistan, but finally they thought they were getting to use it. Now, inexplicably, we seem to have won. What happened?
Despite the left’s love of the Vietnam object lesson, they have never actually understood it. Vietnam was a counterinsurgency. That’s why the Gulf War and Afghanistan never looked like Vietnam, because those wars were not counterinsurgencies. (ASIDE: Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency, now. See below.) Those wars had enemies that we could defeat on the battlefield, and we did, easily. Iraq too had an enemy we could defeat (easily) on the battlefield. Our failure in Iraq was to anticipate that an insurgency would follow and prepare for it.
But insurgencies can be beaten, with the right force applied using the correct strategy. General Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency. In the Surge, Petraeus changed our strategy and was given the force he needed. Now we’re winning. It’s as simple as that. The usual rule of thumb is it takes 10 years to beat an insurgency. Iraq isn’t over yet, but it looks like we’ll be done in far less than that.
ASIDE: The Taliban is reforming itself as an insurgency in Afghanistan, and has created a situation where we must employ a sound counterinsurgency strategy there as well. With General Petraeus in command at CENTCOM, I think we can trust that we will do so, if the next president lets him.
There is a lesson to be learned from Vietnam, but it isn’t the one the NYT thinks. The lesson isn’t “America will always lose” or even “America will always lose counterinsurgencies.” Indeed, despite all our mistakes (far more than in Iraq), we didn’t even lose the counterinsurgency in Vietnam. We ultimately defeated the Viet Cong insurgency, and then we defeated a North Vietnamese invasion. We left behind a South Vietnam that was able to stand largely on its own.
But then we made a historic mistake. The anti-war movement took over Congress and cut off all military support for South Vietnam. North Vietnam was still supported by the Soviet Union, and we stood back and watched as the communists conquered South Vietnam. At the eleventh hour we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It was America’s greatest humiliation.
What is the lesson of Vietnam for Iraq? We have (largely) defeated the insurgency in Iraq, and will leave a country that is largely able to stand on its own. Will we cut off all support for Iraq as we did for South Vietnam? The “anti-war” movement would like nothing better. If we do, we will again turn a hard-won victory into a humiliating defeat.
Sixty-three percent of Americans say that if diplomacy fails to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, they would approve of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, a new poll has found.
The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and commissioned by The Israel Project, also finds that 87% of US voters feel that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the US.
Meanwhile, 80% of Americans said it was likely Iran would use nuclear weapons if it acquired them.
The threat of Iran is apparently felt across the political spectrum, with 85% of Democrats and 97% of Republicans believing the Islamic Republic represents a serious threat to the US.
However, 62% of those polled also felt that it was still possible to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
The approval rate for American military action against Iran was lower than that of an Israeli operation, with 55% supporting targeted strikes by the US and its allies.
It’s good to see some good sense in the American public. It is a little dismaying to see the difference in support between an Israeli action and a U.S. action — apparently some people see the threat but want Israel to do the dirty work for us — but there’s still a majority without them.
This is the guy that was supposed to shore up Obama’s foreign policy credentials.
If Obama wins (God forbid), this makes it a near certainty that Israel takes action before the inauguration. They wouldn’t be able to trust us once Bush leaves office.
UPDATE: I don’t think it changes anything if Biden said it three years ago. It’s being reported in the Israeli media today.
One point raised by Sarah Palin’s supporters is that she has military experience as Commander of the Alaskan National Guard. That point struck me as a little lame, although Palin has taken her military job more seriously than many governors (visiting troops in the Middle East and injured troops in Germany), it still didn’t seem very substantial. Certainly it never seemed convincing when Governor Bill Clinton made that point.
But, it turns out that there is much more substance to the Alaskan National Guard than I thought. A National Review correspondent writes that, due to Alaska’s location next to Russia, its National Guard is much more serious than any other. For example, it has a unit on permanent active duty manning a missile interceptor system protecting all of North America.
I’m glad to hear it. But, it still sounds lame. They need to get the facts out, and fast.
UPDATE and BUMP: Here’s two articles on the Alaskan Guard’s missile defense mission, from 2006 and 2007. (Via the Corner.)
Extremely cool. I agree with Glenn Reynolds that the deniability aspect doesn’t make much sense, but it would be just as awesome used overtly:
According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it. The illustration shows a theoretical 26-second engagement in which the beam deftly destroys “32 tires, 11 Antennae, 3 Missile Launchers, 11 EO devices, 4 Mortars, 5 Machine Guns” — while avoiding harming a truckload of refugees and the soldiers guarding them. It reminds me of how the Lone Ranger could always shoot the gun out an opponent’s hand without injuring them; if that could really be done from an aircraft circling overhead, it would certainly be an impressive feat.
This precision should make the ATL a highly effective anti-personnel weapon, able to target (or “assassinate,” depending on your politics) a specific individual in a group with sniper-like precision.
It has dropped out of the news, but Russia is still flagrantly violating the cease-fire it agreed to by remaining in Georgian territory (even outside the breakaway regions) and blocking Georgian refugees from returning to their homes.
Michael Totten is in Georgia and has a lengthy account of the origins of the war, but he leads with a huge scoop:
Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.
Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.
Via Instapundit, who reports that, by curious coincidence, Totten’s site was under a denial of service attack earlier today. I can confirm that I had trouble loading it earlier today, and it usually stands up perfectly well under an Instalanche.
US Army officials continue to push for speedy production of Future Combat Systems (FCS), saying they are confident the system will save lives after observing its performance in a limited preliminary user test near Fort Bliss, Texas in late July.
Army officials tested the FCS ‘Spin Out 1’ kit during a training exercise from 27 to 31 July, operating the network of weapon systems in a mock village between White Sands Missile range and Fort Bliss. . .
FCS Spin Out 1 consists of a Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) for precision fires; a ‘B-kit’ computer system to share imagery; unattended sensors; an aerial drone known as the Class I Block 0 Micro Air Vehicle (MAV); and a ground-based robot known as the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle.
I’m skeptical, but, for what it’s worth, the AP is reporting mixed signs of a Russian pullout.
UPDATE: It appears that at least a partial pullout is underway. The AP and the Washington Post are both reporting that Russia is out of Gori at least. They are also both reporting that the pullout is incomplete.
Let’s take the hard power first. The Soviet Union was able to pose a serious military challenge to the US by pouring vast resources into its military – as much as 40 or 50 percent of GDP, according to some estimates. Today Russian military spending is a tiny fraction of America’s (about 10%). Even if it wanted to, Putin’s regime lacks the power to impose the kinds of draconian sacrifices on its people that it would need in order to rebuild its military power to Soviet-era levels. The poor performance of Russia’s military in conflicts with weak adversaries such as Georgia and the Chechen rebels suggests that its forces have deteriorated in quality as well as quantity.
Russia’s “soft power” deficit is even more glaring than its relative lack of military power. Unlike Communism, which at its height appealed to intellectuals and others all over the world, the ideology of Russian nationalism has little if any appeal to anyone who isn’t Russian. Indeed, most of Russia’s neighbors find it offensive and threatening, which is why they are now uniting behind Georgia and drawing closer to the West. States such as the Ukraine, Poland, and the three Baltic countries are no match for Russia individually; but they can certainly hope to counter it collectively – especially given the poor state of the Russian armed forces. The more nationalistic and aggressive Russia becomes, the more its neighbors – most of whom have powerful historical memories of brutal Russian imperialism – are likely to unite against it. . .
Finally, it is far from clear that Russia will continue on the course set by Putin. If oil prices decline and Putin’s military adventures meet with setbacks, the political pendulum could swing back in favor of more liberal forces.
Posted by K. Crary 
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