Right Wing Nut House

There’s news from the nuclear minor leagues. Apparently both North Korea and Iran seem hell bent on breaking into the majors any way they can. First, this from the New York Times:

The Bush administration on Sunday warned North Korea for the first time that if it conducted a nuclear test, the United States and several Pacific powers would take punitive action, but officials stopped short of saying what kind of sanctions would result.

“Action would have to be taken,” Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, said on the CNN program “Late Edition.” Asked earlier on “Fox News Sunday” about recent reports that intelligence agencies have warned that North Korea could conduct its first test, Mr. Hadley added: “We’ve seen some evidence that says that they may be preparing for a nuclear test. We have talked to our allies about that.”

But he cautioned that North Korea was “a hard target” and that correctly assessing its intentions was nearly impossible.

What kind of “action” would be taken? Japan, who’s direcly under the gun of the nutty NoKo’s and their certifiably insane leader Kim Jong Il, may take the issue to the Security Council:

On Sunday afternoon, senior administration officials said that concerns about baiting North Korea helped to explain why Mr. Hadley did not specify what kind of penalty was possible. Instead, Mr. Hadley noted that “the Japanese are out today already saying that those steps would need to include going to the Security Council and, potentially, sanctions.”

He appeared to be referring to comments by Shinzo Abe, the secretary general of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party. Returning to Japan from a recent trip to Washington - where he met Mr. Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney and others - Mr. Abe said Japan faced the most direct threat if North Korea proved that it could detonate a nuclear weapon.

“If North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons becomes definite,” Mr. Abe said on Asahi TV, and North Korea “conducts nuclear testing, for instance, Japan will naturally bring the issue to the U.N. and call for sanctions against North Korea.”

Unfortunately as I’ve pointed out here, China has gone on record saying that UN sanctions against North Korea (and probably Iran) are not the answer. That means that if Japan and the US take the DPRK to the UN, China will almost certainly veto any sanctions resolution. And given the timidity of the International Atomic Energy Agency and their nuclear enabling leader Mohamed ElBaradie it’s doubtful any sanctions would be forthcoming even if China abstained on a sanctions vote. The IAEA under Mr. ElBaradei has taken the attitude that “if we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” when it comes to the North Koreans. Even a DPRK test of a nuclear weapon would probably not move that agency to recommend sanctions.

On the good news front, the North and South are about ready to re-open talks at the staff level in order to facilitate a meeting between high level officials later this year:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea resumed working-level talks on Monday in the DPRK, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)reported.

The inter-Korean talks, reopened in the southern border city of Kaesong after a 10-month suspension, were attended by two delegations led by Kim Man-gil, deputy director of the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland from the DPRK, and Rhee Bong-jo, South Korea’s vice-minister of Unification, the report said.

For his part, according to Seoul-based Yonhap News, Rhee called on the north side to normalize suspended inter-Korean relations and rejoin six-party talks over the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

“We told the North Korean side that if it comes out to the dialogue table, we’ll make important proposals for practical gains in talks aimed at resolving the nuclear issue,” the chief South Korean delegate told reporters.

With both South Korea and China now urging resumption of the six-way talks, Kim may be threatening to test a nuclear weapon in order to pressure the two nations to grant him major concessions before the talks could resume. Tech transfers from South Korea and more food and fuel from China would probably be on the table.

Meanwhile, the radioactive mullahs are quaking in their slippers now that France, Germany and Great Britain have sent them the dreaded “toughly worded letter” about resuming their not so secret uranium enrichment program. This hasn’t phased the mullahs that much. They’ve just warned the Europeans that they have one last chance to make a deal:

Iran said Monday it will give the European Union a last chance to salvage a nuclear deal at talks on May 23 before it resumes atomic work which Washington fears is part of a weapons program.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency that Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani would meet the foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany on May 23 to try to reach an 11th-hour compromise.

But Iran has become frustrated with the talks and said it would restart making nuclear fuel, an action that would marshal the Europeans behind U.S. attempts to haul Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Iran said it would give ministerial level talks one last shot before announcing the return to making atomic fuel.

The Iranian parliament has already voted to go ahead with an accelerated enrichment program that most experts agree would allow the mullahs to have a weapon by year’s end. But according to the Lebanon Daily Star, they may continue to delay the start up of the enrichment process - if they get some satisfaction from the Europeans:

Iran said Sunday it was postponing its threatened resumption of sensitive nuclear activities, but insisted the climbdown was merely a temporary gesture ahead of “last chance” emergency talks with European officials.

The move came hours after a defiant Iranian Parliament voted to oblige the government to develop a nuclear fuel cycle - which would include the controversial process of enriching uranium.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, warned that long-term nuclear negotiations could not continue without Iran first resuming uranium work.

“We cannot continue the negotiations with the Europeans without having resumed some of our activities,” Rowhani told state television, adding Iran’s decision to resume conversion of uranium - a precursor to enrichment - was “still valid.”

Clearly Iran wants some kind of concession from the Europeans on enrichment. They may wish to present the Europeans with a fait accompli regarding some kind of enrichment (there’s a way to enrich uranium that would be slower and have a lower yield of bomb-grade uranium) which might satisfy the appeasers in Germany and France. The mullah’s goal has to be to split the Europeans off from the Americans. Even picking off France would be a victory and probably result in a failure to impose UN sanctions if we took the Iranians before the Security Council.

We’re now poised on the razor’s edge. Will it be confrontation? Or will we be able to get the rest of the world to stand with us and prevent two states - Iran and North Korea - from getting these enormously destablising weapons? I’m not confident that a confrontation with Iran can be avoided. North Korea however, is so desperately poor that given the right incentives and some pressure by the Chinese and South Koreans, we may be able to roll back Kim’s mad nuclear scheme that has bankrupted his country.

Post Script: For a good laugh, check out the North Korean website. I definitely want to get me some of them badges!

The real joke? Click on the link marked “shopping.”

Any way you look at it, former senior Venezuelan intelligence officer Luis Posada Carriles is not a very nice fellow. In fact, by any objective standard, he’s a murderous terrorist.

He’s been implicated in the plot to blow up a Cuban airliner in 1976 that took the lives of 73 innocent people. And Fidel Castro has accused Carriles of trying to kill him, a deed which if successful could have saved thousands of Cubans from enjoying the hospitality of El Presidente’s communist gulags and secret police torture chambers.

Although an estimable goal, one deed full of good intentions does not wash away the multitude of mortal sins committed by Carriles.

And now Mr. Carriles, 77 years old and apparently retired, would like to spend his remaining years in the United States. A Miami attorney who claims to represent the terrorist says that Mr. Carriles would like asylum.

Mr. Carriles is no freedom fighter. He’s an assassin. He’s been tied to the CIA of the 1960’s when the agency was hell bent on getting rid of Castro by hook or by crook. To that end, the spooks used some of the slimiest low lifes in the western hemisphere in order to get close to the Cuban dictator including vengeful mafioso, loony Cuban exiles, dope smugglers, and various riff raff who always seem to hover around the edges of intelligence operations.

According to FBI files, they seem to have the goods on Mr. Carriles’ involvement in the terror attack on the commercial airliner:

The decision on whether an anti-Castro activist will get to stay in the United States may end up hinging on the word of a dead man.

The problem is, the dead man told two tales about Luis Posada Carriles, a man some hail as a hero and others condemn as a terrorist.

Ricardo “Monkey” Morales was once an informant for the Miami-Dade police, and according to previously secret U.S. government documents, Morales said Posada was present for two meetings to plan the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 76 people.

“Luis Posada Carriles and (Morales) were present,” Detective Raul Diaz wrote in a report to the FBI describing what Morales had told him about Posada.

The Miami Herald reported in 1982 that during an unrelated drug smuggling case, Morales said he was the “conduit” for explosives used in the bombing.

Not long after that newspaper article, Morales was shot and killed in a Key Biscayne bar brawl.

Still more documents show that Mr. Carriles had other dirty tricks up his sleeve - as long as you were willing to pay the price:

Other documents say Posada was also a CIA agent in the 1960s and that he was paid about $300 by the CIA while working with an alliance of several groups based in the Dominican Republic that sought Castro’s overthrow.

Still another FBI document quoted an unnamed Cuban refugee as saying Posada was paid $5,000 in 1965 by a prominent Cuban exile in Miami to finance an attempt to attach powerful explosive mines to Cuban or Soviet ships in the port of Veracruz, Mexico.

The documents were released by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization based at George Washington University that collects government records.

Their release comes as U.S. officials wrestle with the political asylum request from Posada, who is regarded by Cuba, Venezuela and some in the United States as a criminal or terrorist.

In the past, the United States has employed some pretty nasty people to help achieve one goal or another. During the 1980’s former National Guardsmen for Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza were employed by the CIA to initially help recruit and train the Contra army that eventually succeeded in bringing down the Sandanistas. And there’s some evidence the spooks used drug smugglers to ferry arms to those same contras.

At the time, a real politiker like me could condemn the people involved but support the policy because it furthered national ends at an absolutely critical juncture of the cold war. We relied on far worse to help us in World War II including Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslavian freedom fighter every bit as murderous as his genocidal successors from the 1990’s,

In this day and age, however, there’s no conceivable justification for allowing Mr. Carriles into this country for any purpose except to hand him over to the Venezuelans for prosecution. If perception is reality in politics, in order to maintain our credibility on terrorism we must be like Cesar’s wife; above reproach. And the fact that Castro was one of Mr. Carriles’ targets should not sway our opinion that he’s anything except a criminal that needs to be prosecuted and made to answer for his crime against innocents.

At this juncture, the US government is waiting for an extradition request from the Venezuelan government. It would send the strongest possible signal to our friends and enemies if we were to honor that request.

The election is over. There’s no need to pander to the exile community in Florida any longer. Carriles must be handed over not because Castro desires it, but because it’s simply the right thing to do. He must not be allowed a quiet retirement while his victims cry out for justice from their graves.

CORRECTION:

In the original post, I erred in saying that Tito was a Serb. Tito was in fact half Croat and half Slovene. He did however, carry out several massacres in WWII which is the point I was trying to make.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

The Iranians appear to be keen on forcing a showdown with both Israel and the United States over its nuclear program:

In Tehran and here on the world stage, an emphatic Iran said Tuesday it will press on with its uranium-enrichment technology, a program that has drawn Washington’s fire and ratcheted up global nuclear tensions.

On the second day of a nonproliferation conference, Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said his country is “determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

In Iran’s capital, a government spokesman said nuclear activities suspended during talks with European negotiators would be resumed, but not enrichment itself - the processing of uranium gas through centrifuges to produce either fuel for nuclear power or the stuff of atom bombs.

Since both Israel and the United States will do whatever it takes to keep the radioactive mullahs from acquiring their own nuclear weapon, it seems clear that Tehran is ready to play out whatever strategy they’ve concocted to deal with the eventuality of an attack by either or both countries.

Is the Iranian leadership so insulated, so out of touch that they fail to realize the danger of an attack, especially by Israel? Not likely. One possibility is that they’re banking on any military action being unable to take out the guts of their nuclear infrastructure - a pretty good bet since they’ve been burying their facilities underground for the last five or more years. This means for any attack to be successful, there must be a follow-up ground assault to destroy any facilities that remain.

Israel has excellent special forces units that theoretically could be used in a series of commando raids to finish the job started by IDF bombers. The problem is that the Iranians have turned these facilities into almost impregnable fortresses so that any operations carried out against them would not only incur huge casualties but would probably fail.

The only military options then that would have a chance of being 100% successful would seem to be a bombing operation coupled with some kind of invasion. Given that the US is the only country that could carry out a large scale assault of this nature and that any military action of this kind would inflame passions in the middle east against us, the radioactive mullahs may think they’ve checkmated both the United States and Israel and forestalled any meaningful action against them.

They may be right. While carrying out a bombing raid using their brand new American made GBU-28 “Bunker Busting” bombs, the IDF would be unable to destroy Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure as they did when they attacked Saddam’s Osirak Nuclear complex in 1981. This would put the onus on the United States to follow up with ground assault that could lead to an oil embargo, condemnation by NATO, and even the prospect of UN sanctions. While we could veto any sanctions in the Security Council, there’s a very real possibility that many countries would abide by them anyway. In short, we’d find ourselves more isolated internationally than we’ve ever been in our history.

And yet, both the US and Israel have decided that it would be unacceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. What can be done?

Whatever is going to be done must be done soon. Perhaps some kind of blockade by US warships would bring Iran to its senses. While militarily a dead end, a blockade would serve as a wake up call to Europe that we’re absolutely dead serious about Iranian nukes. And it would be preferable to a bombing attack and/or invasion. But it wouldn’t do a thing about ridding the world of the Iranian nuclear threat. And the effect on politics in the middle east would probably be the same as an invasion.

The radioactive mullahs have thought this through carefully. The end game is in sight. It’s now up to the US and Israel to play their hands in this extremely dangerous and volatile situation.

When Italian communist and propagandist Giuliana Sgrena first began her rollercoaster ride to leftist stardom following the tragedy at the Bagdhad checkpoint, I thought that the most damage she could do with her crazy-quilt patchwork of lies and distortions of fact was in undermining the Italian government’s steadfast support for US policy in Iraq. After all, the Italians have 3000 troops assisting our military in trying to secure that country and Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has had a tough time trying to maintain support for the mission while trying to stay in power himself.

It now appears that Sgrena’s lies have taken on a life of their own with devastating consequences for our military in Iraq as well as some innocent civilians here at home.

The fervor whipped up by Sgrena’s bloodcurdling tales of being targeted by the US military for her anti-war beliefs have roiled Italian politics. Not only has the Prime Minister agreed to start withdrawing Italian troops beginning in September, but the investigation into the checkpoint incident by the US government has been completely discredited by Italian investigators to the point where they will issue their own report later this week accusing the military of tampering with evidence:

The official Italian report on the incident expected to be published this week will accuse the American military of tampering with evidence at the scene of the shooting.

The Americans invited two Italians to join in their inquiry, but the Italian representatives protested at what they claimed was lack of objectivity in presenting the evidence and returned to Rome.

Relations between Rome and Washington remain tense.

In short, Berlusconi won’t touch the American report on the incident with a ten foot pole. Thanks to Sgrena’s propaganda campaign (with a great big wet kiss salute to the rabidly anti-American Italian media) and the fact that Berlusconi is in an impossible political position, Italian authorities are, in effect, forced to partially acknowledge Sgrena’s point, albeit in a roundabout sort of way. By accusing the American military of tampering with evidence, they concede American duplicity but not culpability. Sgrena’s claim she was targeted is allowed to die a quiet death while the Italian media rails against American falsity and a cover-up of trigger happy GI’s who shoot first and ask questions later.

It’s all Berlusconi’s got and it will probably work.

Meanwhile, the entire report absolving the soldiers at the checkpoint, including material that was orginally classified, was published over the weekend in Italian newspapers:

A Greek medical student at Bologna University who was surfing the web early on Sunday found that with two simple clicks of his computer mouse he could restore censored portions of the report.

He passed the details to Italian newspapers which immediately put out the full text on their own websites.

The missing text contains the names and ranks of all of the American military personnel involved in the killing of Nicola Calipari, the Italian agent who was given a state funeral and awarded Italy’s highest medal of valour.

Revealing the names and ranks of all the soldiers involved in the attack is flat out irresponsible. Not only does it place those soldiers at risk of retaliation by any number of loons and crackpots-including rogue elements in the Italian intelligence community who may seek revenge- it also places their families at risk here in the United States. As sure as night follows day there are already reporters hard at work trying to track down parents, spouses, siblings, and other family members of those soldiers who will just as surely reveal their location. These innocents will now live in fear for their lives as terrorists wishing to make a media splash or some domestic anti-war moonbat could target them.

At the very least, once their names are revealed, the families will suffer harassment at the hands of the anti-war crowd - a price no family with sons or daughters in a war zone should ever have to pay.

The classified sections of the report make pretty dry reading -unless you’re a terrorist or insurgent seeking to kill American soldiers. Here’s Austin Bay’s excellent analysis in which he points out an advantage to our enemies if they decide to target an armored vehicle called a “Rhino Bus.”

The “classified” sections on “Rhino Bus” (armored bus) convoy operations leave me cold, but for that matter, so do the unclassified sections. If I could erase anything from the posted document it would be this material– but I can’t. Once it’s on the Internet it’s out there. (The Rhino Bus schlepps US and coalition personnel between installations in Baghdad. It’s an impressive beast with bullet-proof glass and armor.)

That’s my gut reaction. Now a cooler caveat. Close observation of the freeway gives a clever enemy those details, and Route Irish passes hundreds of houses and apartment buildings– each one a p0tential observation post. The Rhino Bus material from the report (probably) confirms the details gleaned by enemy observers.

So how do we deal with it? The enemy knows what we want to do (move the Rhino Bus). He knows how we’ve done it in the past (based on his intelligence gathering and now this report).

Commanders will now change the routine– amend convoy times, vary routes, vary convoy vehicle mix, vary the lay-down of traffic control points. (The Sunni holdouts and Zarqawi’s klan change tactics and procedures– it’s a vicious dynamic of war.

Other operational details could, according to Mr. Bay, simply confirm information that the insurgents already had. While not as damaging, by confirming intel the insurgents can now reassign assets that would have been used in trying to validate the information. In other words, the release of classified material just made our enemies job a little easier.

The released report comes on the heels of some leaked information regarding satelite evidence that confirm the fact that Sgrena was lying through her teeth when she said that the car was going at a “normal” speed of about 30 MPH. The images show the Italian’s car was travelling closer to 60 MPH which probably means the driver was intent on running the checkpoint.

At the very least, Giuliana Sgrena’s lies set in motion a series of events that now lead to the probablity that Americans both here and in Iraq are in greater danger. For that alone, she should be held in the utmost contempt by decent people everywhere. Her actions following the tragedy at the checkpoint have proven her to be a small time bunko artist whose 15 minutes of infamy have now turned into an unending nightmare for our military and their families.

Others with Analysis and Updates:

Michelle Malkin does her usual great job with some prescient analysis and links to the best sources of information on the story.

Blackfive points out why Kevin Drum and the gloating left should keep their damned mouths shut.

Kevin at Wizbang questions the CBS story on satelite evidence regarding the Italian car and links it with the released report.

Rhiel World questions the docs themselves finding some interesting discrepancies.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

UPDATE

The Captain points to the Italians issuing their report today. He also pokes some pretty gigantic holes in their story if they’re going to contradict what they said a few weeks ago about not informing the Americans of the transfer:

Readers who have followed this story closely will already see the holes developing in the Italian rebuttal, if the BBC report is accurate. First, the three-second warning does not reflect on American action nearly as much as it indicates the rate of speed that Calipari’s car approached the checkpoint. By acknowledging the three-second time span, Italy admits that the car traveled at much faster speeds towards the checkpoint than Sgrena first claimed, making the reason for shooting the car plain. Second, it demonstrates that the Americans did try to warn the driver to slow down and did not simply open fire, either out of malice or incompetence.

As far as whether the Americans knew about Calipari’s mission at all, Italian newspapers answered that question in March, when two of them reported that not only did Italian commander not tell the Americans about the hostage release, he may not have known about it himself. General Mario Marioli sent his report to Rome, where presumably investigators still have access to it. The reason for the secrecy emerged within days of Sgrena’s release and subsequent wounding, when Italy’s ransom payment to the terrorists became public knowledge.

I think the Capn’ has nailed it. Any way you want to look at it, the Italian report will be for domestic consumption. They’ll probably ignore any contradictory statements made previously and stonewall when it comes to any explanations for the discrepancies.

It’s going to happen again. Terrorists will strike somewhere in America and, as every expert has said since September 12, 2001, it will happen sooner than later.

Then why in the name of God has this country rolled over on its collective side, hit the snooze button, pulled the covers up over its head and gone back to sleep?

Tony Blankley has a column today that asks the same question:

But I have to say that the public has let me down, some. It is less than four years since the September 11 wake-up call — the day that the murderous malice of our enemy was so tragically compounded by years of Washington inattention and incompetence — but after that rude awakening, it seems both Washington and the public have hit the snooze button.

After December 7 the public expected action — and plenty of it. From that day on until almost the day he died, FDR rarely let a day go by without vigorously acting on and talking about the threat and how to defeat it.

But after a flurry of energy and bold and courageous actions from the Bush administration in the first couple of years, one has the sense that things have returned to business as usual.

Is it something in our national character that allows us to be so sublimely unaware of danger? Or is it some flaw that goes deeper; a true ignorance of the peril we’re in coupled with a willful blindness that shuts out the unpleasantness and darkness that pervades so much of the planet?

Whatever it is, it’s going to cost us dearly. Blankley takes the Democrats to task for attacking the President from the wrong side of the debate - the side that advocates less firm measures to counter the implacability of our enemies. He speculates what would have happened with a Democrat in the White House:

It may turn out to be the second tragedy of our time that the president’s opposition has criticized him from the weak side of the war effort. If a Democrat had been president on Sept. 11, it is a virtual certainty that the Republican Party (in recent generations the more aggressive military party) would have kept up a daily barrage for the president to do more. They would be howling at the fact that only 5 percent of the cargo containers entering our country’s ports are inspected on or before arrival by American inspectors.

They would be chastising a notional Democratic president for not building up the size of the active and reserve forces of our military. They would surely have held hearings demanding that the Pentagon explain how it would actually invade and occupy, say, Syria, Iran and Pakistan while also holding Iraq and Afghanistan and fulfilling all the other worldwide responsibilities we have assigned to our troops, with the current strength levels — should such actions be judged necessary for our national security.

All of these are legitimate criticisms of the President and I would add a few others. I believe the President’s gravest mistake has been in carrying on with his domestic agenda as if we weren’t at war. This has not only caused people to forget the price we’re paying in Iraq and Afghanistan with our young men’s blood and nearly $300 billion in national treasure, it has caused massive federal deficits that can be brought down only through huge cuts in entitlement programs and/or hefty tax increases. Given that the political will to do either is sorely lacking, the deficits remain and could become a drag on the economy if the nation’s economic recovery were to stall.

Will it take another massive attack by terrorists to finally wake us up to what needs to be done? According to this article in the Washington Times, the possibility that the murderous thugs who are targeting America will once again use airplanes to assail us would seem improbable after 9/11. Indeed, the story referenced in the article was widely ridiculed on the left and generally scoffed at by so-called air line security professionals.

If this were the case, why is the Department of Homeland Security still investigating the incident?

The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general is investigating an incident involving 14 Syrian passengers aboard a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles last summer described by many federal air marshals and passengers as a dry run for a terrorist attack.

The investigation began shortly after the June 29 incident, but did not become public until the final phase of the inquiry when passengers reported facing hours of questioning in March from inspectors.

The interviewed passengers said the questioning by inspectors suggested the flight had faced a serious situation. Some federal officials have dismissed the incident and suggested passengers had overreacted and were never in danger.

The incident was written about by Annie Jacobsen in womenswallstreet.com.” The truly scary thing is that to this day, no one is sure exactly what those 14 Syrian passengers were doing. Why did their actions scare the heck out of dozens of passengers and cause so much concern that federal agents met the plane when it landed? And if, as some have suggested, the passengers were unduly alarmed, why the continued interest? And how the heck in the aftermath of 9/11 could the feds not have checked their visas?

Just before landing, seven of the men stood in unison and went inside the restrooms. Upon returning to his seat, the last man mouthed the word “no” as he ran his finger across his throat.

At least four other passengers also were questioned, and learned from inspectors that the musicians from the terrorist-sponsor state of Syria had traveled back and forth across the country with one-way, cash-paid tickets, and entered the country on P-3 cultural visas. Two months prior to the flight, the FBI issued a warning that terrorists may be trying to enter the country under P-3 cultural or sports visas.

When the men were detained briefly for questioning after the flight, only two of the 14 were questioned and officials did not notice the men’s visas had expired, inspectors said.

Is this political correctness run amok? Or do we really have a bunch of scatter-brained dullards in charge of protecting us?

Annie Jacobsen received an enormous amount of flack for telling her story. Since then, other passengers from that flight have come forward to corroborate her story. The Federal Air Marshals, who have a vested interest in downplaying the threat due to their lack of action against the Syrians, have stopped talking. In the meantime, other passengers from other flights have told of similar possible “dry runs” by terrorists.

Can we come to any other possible conclusion except the brutal fact that not only are we going to be hit again but that more than 3 1/2 years after the unthinkable happened we’re still not doing enough to protect ourselves?

SHHHHH…Go back to sleep now…Nothing to worry about.

In war, when leaders screw up, men die.

It’s a simple equation really. The number of soldiers who die needlessly can be directly correlated to the inverse proportion of bureaucrats and politicians who are responsible for making sure they have everything they need to do the job.

In this case of Marines speaking out about their experiences in Iraq, what becomes frighteningly clear is that from the top down - including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his boss, the President of the United States - our civilian leadership has failed on a variety of levels to insure that the men and women they send to Iraq are given everything they need to not only do the job, but make it home in one piece to their loving families.

And while I generally try to take whatever I read in the New York Times with a grain of salt, in this case there are too many Marines willing to go on the record to ignore. There are few if any “unnamed sources.” Marines quoted in the linked article give their names and ranks. The criticism they give is professional, and to the point.

What they describe is what Marines call a “clusterf**k.”

On the rare occasions I’ve ventured to criticize the Administration’s war effort, it’s been in the area of post-invasion planning. The more we learn about the situation on the ground in the aftermath of large scale combat operations, the more we see that the Pentagon, simply put, “screwed the pooch” in just about every way imaginable.

And what also becomes clear is that despite the best efforts of Secretary Rumsfeld, the Pentagon is an ossified, backward, pitiful giant that moves at a pace that makes snails seem fleet of foot and appears to care more for it outmoded, antiquated procedures than it does about protecting their most precious resource - the men and women we ask to go into harms way and protect us.

Two years after the end of combat operations, we’re still asking soldiers and Marines to do their duty in Iraq with inferior equipment. When our warriors have to scavenge scrap metal from junkyards in order to protect themselves, something is seriously wrong.

I can understand the shortage of armored Humvees at the outset of the occupation. But to have two years go by with the problem unresolved is just plain criminal:

Company E’s experiences still resonate today both in Iraq, where two more marines were killed last week in Ramadi by the continuing insurgency, and in Washington, where Congress is still struggling to solve the Humvee problem. Just on Thursday, the Senate voted to spend an extra $213 million to buy more fully armored Humvee. The Army’s procurement system, which also supplies the Marines, has come under fierce criticism for under performing in the war, and to this day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new Humvee.

Marine Corps officials disclosed last month in Congressional hearings that they were now going their own way and had undertaken a crash program to equip all of their more than 2,800 Humvee in Iraq with stronger armor. The effort went into production in November and is to be completed at the end of this year.

“…and to this day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new Humvee.” (???)

Are you trying to tell me that out of the $420 billion we’re spending on the defense of the United States of America that we can only find one small company in Ohio to armor our Humvees two years after the occupation began?

This is preposterous.

Also two years after the occupation began “Marine Corps officials disclosed last month in Congressional hearings that they were now going their own way and had undertaken a crash program to equip all of their more than 2,800 Humvees in Iraq with stronger armor.”

LAST MONTH! What in God’s name have you been doing for the last two years while the men you’re responsible for protecting have been getting blown to bits?

If I had family in Iraq I’d be on my way to Washington right now. I’d camp myself in front of Rummy’s office and demand that he see me. And when I got in there, (and I have no doubt that he would see me, the Secretary proving time and again that he does care about the men under his command) I’d let him have it with both barrels, telling him exactly what I thought of the job he and the brass hats sitting on their overly ample asses are doing.

There is some historical context to how military organizations have always viewed the troops. Until the Crimean war and Florence Nightingale, the value of an individual soldier was judged by what he could do for that army on the battlefield. If he got sick or wounded, armies pretty much let the poor devil fend for himself. Army doctors were notorious for incompetence. And even if dedicated, the state of medical knowledge until recently made a trip to the infirmary a soldiers worst nightmare. Florence Nightingale and later, Clara Barton, changed that by demanding that the soldiers get decent care at army medical facilities. Their efforts paved the way for the ultra-modern, first class military trauma units of today.

This negligent attitude carried over into how armies have supplied the troops as well. In Normandy, when it became clear that the half tracks we were using were poorly armored (.50 caliber rounds could easily penetrate its thin skin), the army was terribly slow in solving the problem. And in an eerie echo of Iraq, our men scrounged and scavenged pieces of metal to reinforce the half track’s armor for more protection. (HT: Stephen Ambrose)

The military didn’t solve the problem then for the same reason they’re not solving it today. It’s one thing for Rumsfeld and top brass to fire off memos demanding that the job get done. It’s quite another to light a fire under the slower than molasses procurement bureaucrats whose god is procedure and who worship at the Church of Regulations.

The problem is not easily solved. Those procedures and regulations are in place to prevent corruption and graft. They generally do a good job of doing that. But the impediments they place in the way of quick action costs lives. Only a massive overhaul of the Pentagon procurement system - something that’s been promised since the early 1980’s - would solve the problem. But for all the internal studies and Congressional hearings held on the subject, nothing concrete has changed.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld promised to reform the military when he took office in 2001. His efforts have been generally well intentioned and well received. But an organization with a budget exceeding $400 billion and nearly three quarters of a million employees cannot be “reformed” in any real sense. Rummy can move pegs on the map board and fiddle with numbers but in the end, he’s left with unarmored Humvees two years after the Iraq occupation began. And that fact is killing our soldiers.

“It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.” (E.R. Bulwer-Lytton

The report clearing General Sanchez and other top brass of responsibility in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. That is, unless you believe Major Generals have the time and inclination to participate in fraternity style pranks and hazing:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who became the senior commander in Iraq in June 2003, two months after the fall of Baghdad, had been faulted in earlier investigations for leadership lapses that may have contributed to prisoner abuse. He is the highest ranking officer to face official allegations of leadership failures in Iraq, but he has not been accused of criminal violations.

After assessing the allegations against Sanchez and taking sworn statements from 37 people involved in Iraq, the Army’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Green, concluded that the allegations were unsubstantiated, said the officials who were familiar with the details of Green’s probe.

Green reached the same conclusion in the cases of two generals and a colonel who worked for Sanchez

Only the most willfully self deluded among us believed the hysterical denunciations and wild charges being made by the President’s opponents in politics and the media. Did you really believe these cretins care one whit about the poor Iraqi terrorists and criminals who were the victims of juvenile hazing rituals and demeaning sexual game playing? Or is it more likely that the President, riding a wave of popular support for his strong leadership in the war on terror, needed to be smeared with wild headlines and false charges of complicity in order to defeat his reelection bid?

The “torture as national policy meme” was bogus from the start. Here’s a summary of nearly two years of inquiry by both Army and civilian investigators:

Barring new evidence, the inquiry, by the Army’s inspector general, effectively closes the Army’s book on whether the highest-ranking officers in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be held accountable for command failings described in past reviews.

Only one of the top five officers, whose roles the Senate Armed Services Committee had asked the Army to review, has received any punishment. That officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer who commanded the military police unit at the Abu Ghraib prison, was relieved of her command and given a written reprimand. She has repeatedly said she was made the scapegoat for the failures of superiors.

The findings, which provoked outrage from some civil rights groups and Democratic aides, came nearly a year after shocking photographs of American military police officers stacking naked Iraqi prisoners in a human pyramid and of other abuses first telecast nationally. Shortly afterward, an internal Army report chronicled the virtual collapse of the command structure at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, in the fall of 2003.

So far, only a small number of soldiers, mostly from the enlisted ranks, have faced courts-martial for their actions at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Dozens of others have faced administrative discipline for abusing captives at other detention sites and battlefield interrogation stations across Iraq.

The facts are clear. Now the only line of attack left to the President’s political foes is the spurious charge of “whitewash:”

But some Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, civil rights groups and lawyers for lower-ranking soldiers who have been disciplined voiced dismay on Friday at the findings, which they said would fuel the perception that the Army was trying to protect its senior leaders at the expense of junior officers and enlisted soldiers.

Democratic aides, who along with their Republican counterparts were briefed this week on the Army inquiry’s findings, said Friday that they disagreed with the conclusions and would review the full investigation before determining their next step.

In other words, the Democratic aides need to figure out what else they can do to try and keep the “scandal” alive in the press and in front of the public. Never mind that they’re undermining the efforts of the military to win in Iraq. Never mind that every time the New York Times publishes another story from some Iraqi who says he was beaten or abused by those sex-crazed American female GI’s that it inflames the “Arab street” against what we’re trying to accomplish in that part of the world. These things don’t matter when placed against their overarching goal of politically damaging the President.

Great bunch of Americans, what?

The pitifully few cases of actual torture have been proven to be due to the employment of psychopaths and sadists in both the army and intelligence services; a black mark on those institutions but in no way reflective of the heroic efforts of the overwhelming majority of professional interrogators who’ve done a tremendous job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

And even though this investigation exonerates the government of any kind of involvement in “creating the climate” in which either torture or the prankish, unprofessional behavior at Abu Gharaib could be carried out, I personally am sick of the whole damn story and just wish we could move on to better things.

You can crawl back home
Say you were wrong
Stand out in the yard
And cry all night long
Go ahead and water the lawn
My give a damn’s busted

(chorus)
I really wanna care
I wanna feel something
Let me dig a little deeper
No, sorry…nothing

(Jo Dee Messina)

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Yesterday was the second anniversery of the fall of Bagdhad. Radical Shi’ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr took advantage of the occasion to put on a show for the western media while also demonstrating a little of his street cred:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 9 - Tens of thousands of Iraqis marked the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein by marching here in the capital on Saturday to demand the withdrawal of American forces. Meanwhile, one of the most lethal insurgent groups warned Iraqis against joining the army or the police force.

Most protesters were followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric who has led several armed uprisings against American forces but who has recently begun to take part in democratic politics.

Despite the symbolism of the day, the rest of Baghdad was mostly quiet. The demonstration was peaceful, and far fewer people took part than the one million Mr. Sadr’s aides had predicted. Representatives of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a leading group of Sunni clerics that has expressed sympathy for the guerrilla insurgency, said its followers had taken part in the march.

In fact, there was another demonstration in Iraq. You know…the one you didn’t hear about.

Iraqis take to the streets on the second anniversary of the liberation of Baghdad. Iraqi government declared it as national day, the day Iraq was freed from Saddam’s barbaric rule. Many of the banners call for the Trial of Saddam and his gang. Other banners condemn terrorist and terrorism. Al-Sadr (who received no seats in the current parliament, because very few voted for him) is taking this opportunity to call for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq. His request is counter to what the elected government is asking for.

HT: Powerline)

A couple of interesting points: First, as the Powerline correspondent points out, the holy Sheik didn’t win a single vote in parliament. Not one. Any political clout he has is negative in that he only has the power to destroy, not build. And the Iraqi people are aware of that which is why he fell a little short of his guarantee of a million man march:

The protest in Baghdad’s famous Firdos Square was the largest anti-American demonstration since the U.S.-led invasion, but the turnout was far less than the 1 million called for by radical Shi’ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.

“I do not accept having occupation forces in my country,” said protester Ali Feleih Hassan, 35. “No one accepts this. I want them out. They have been here for two years, and now they have to set a timetable for their withdrawal

Something that went completely over the head of the reporter is that Mr. Hassan is not threatening to kill, maim, behead, or otherwise harm American soldiers. He wants us to set a “timetable for withdrawal”!

That’s the best kind of progress.

Also, the holy Sheik’s demonstration featured all sorts of carefully made and very artistic signs. What made me notice them was that they were all in English. Do you think that had anything to do with the fact that the demonstration was crawling with western reporters? I knew you’d think that.

Conversely, all the signs at the pro-liberation rally were in Arabic. What does that tell you? Either none of the thousands of Iraqi’s supporting liberation speak English or they were more concerned about getting a point across to their own countrymen rather than lefty moonbats in the US.

Not to be outdone in the anti-Americanism, the moonbats at the Democratic Underground just about had an orgasm looking at all the pretty pictures of American flags burning and signs (again, in English) comparing Bush to Hitler and Saddam:

Here’s a sampling of their “thinking” on the subject:

The effigies should all have bloody hands

In Iraq they (women) used to be more emancipated than in most Muslim countries. (And don’t forget the kites!)

I long for the 60s and REAL news with Walter…(REAL???)

THIS is what DEMOCRACY looks like! Hot Damn!

YES!! The Linkage of Bush, Blair AND Saddam is brilliant! That needs to be shown more often!

Very slowly, Iraq is learning what a democracy is. If al Sadr can turn out 100,000 people good for him. Now let’s see him translate that into votes. Only then will any of his protests carry any weight with the Iraqi people. Along with these demonstrations, the Iraqi’s also made good progress toward forming a national unity government this week. All in all, two years after the fact, the Iraqi’s are proving that they have what it takes to make their own democracy and not have one imposed on them from the outside by the United States.

When is it wrong to kill in war? According to a military court, when your adversary is wounded and helpless:

WIESBADEN, Germany (March 31) - A military court on Thursday found a U.S. Army tank company commander guilty of charges related to the shooting death of a wounded Iraqi last year

Prosecutors said Maynulet violated military rules of engagement by shooting a man who was wounded and unarmed. Maynulet, 30, maintained that the man was gravely wounded and that he shot him to end his suffering.

Maynulet’s 1st Armored Division tank company had been on patrol near Kufa on May 21, 2004, when it was alerted to a car thought to be carrying a driver for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and another militiaman loyal to the Shiite cleric.

The U.S. troops chased the vehicle and fired at it, wounding both the passenger, who fled and was later apprehended, and the driver. The killing was filmed by a U.S. drone surveillance aircraft

The judgment sounds reasonable to me. Capt. Rogelio ”Roger” Maynulet said that his company’s medic said there was nothing to be done for him at which point he said that he wanted to end the man’s suffering. This could have been done without shooting him because of the morphine syrette’s carried by medics. According to one medic who served in Viet Nam, he routinely gave overdoses of morphine to gravely wounded soldiers to ease their pain and put them out of their misery:

I was trained for this at camp and on the battlefield I was begged by my fellow soldiers to relieve their pain or send them on into the next world. In the field there was so much noise from artillery fire, whizzing bullets, choking smoke and confusion that we medics were forced to play God over life and death. Mercy killing you might call it or as I was trained, euthanasia. I’ll admit that I purposely gave too much morphine to about 2% the soldiers I treated, but this was only because they were too far gone for any medical care. When you’re under explosive fire and you see arteries shooting blood out, as a medic you have to make a medical decision about your fellow soldier. Is there any chance he’ll make it or is there no chance? When a boy or a man gives you that look in the eyes, that final look, I knew I was there to give them their final relief. Only death can bring final relief.

And then the crux of the matter emerges; of what value is the life of an enemy?

He further testified that, as company commander, he had more important priorities on the mission than saving the Iraqi, including searching for two escaped passengers and maintaining the safety of his men.

He testified that he was reluctant to expend limited first aid resources on a man he had been told would die anyway.

I’m sure that this kind of incident was repeated perhaps dozens of times in Iraq and any other conflicts for that matter. The question that nags at me is why the military felt it necessary to try this man? Was it to make an example of him so the world will see that we try to play by the rules of the Geneva Convention in war? Could Abu Gharaib have had anything to do with this prosecution? Or was this soldier’s transgression more egregious than what could be termed “normal?”

The fact that the incident was captured on tape by a US Spy Drone probably had something to do with it. Plus, I think that the Army was correct in its judgment that this incident was especially un-called for:

Questions from the six-member panel - the equivalent of a civilian jury - focused on whether Maynulet tried to hide his actions by failing to report the shooting at the end of the day. Maynulet said he discussed the shooting in a debriefing that immediately followed the mission and denied trying to hide the killing.

Maynulet’s excuse; that he was too busy tracking down the other wounded Iraqi and that his medical supplies were limited doesn’t stand up to scrutiny if he deliberately withheld reporting the incident in his after action report.

Maynulet has a spotless record and was praised during his trial by an Iraqi Defense Ministry official:

Iraq’s interim deputy defense minister, Ziad Cattan, testified later Wednesday that he worked with Maynulet when the soldier was stationed in Baghdad and had contact with Iraqi officials.

Cattan, a district council chairman at the time, described him as ”a good soldier and a good officer.” Asked about Maynulet’s attitude toward Iraqis, Cattan said: ”He is very compassionate.”

Given the facts, I would hope for leniency of some kind. He’s a good soldier who made a horrible mistake. He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last. Such is the nature of war.

Austin Bay has a link to a Defense News article that should prick the Radioactive Mullah’s interest in Iran:

Turkey is planning to accept “very soon” a U.S. request to use the critical air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey as a logistical hub for operations east of the country, a Turkish official said late March 23.

“I expect a Turkish government decision on Incirlik very soon. I don’t know exactly when, but very soon,” said Murat Mercan, deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling party. He spoke at a panel of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Mercan did not elaborate, but other Turkish officials in Washington said that Ankara was preparing to accept Incirlik’s use as a logistical hub for U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan…

(HT. Instapundit)

“Operations east” of Turkey could include Iraq and Afghanistan…as well as Iran, Syria, and perhaps even Kyrgyzstan as Mr. Bay points out.

But I think there’s little doubt that Iran is setting itself up for a huge fall. While we’ve heard many good reasons for not trying to take out the Iranian’s nuclear bomb building capability, someone is going to do it and soon. If not us, then certainly the Israeli’s. The introduction of a true “Islamic Bomb” would be just as destablizing and dangerous in the middle east as Kruschev’s placing medium range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Israel has already purchased the ordinance necessary to do the job; 500 ‘bunker busting” bombs from the United States.

If you’re dusting off your war scenarios, try this one. The Israeli’s bombs Iranian nuke facilities but don’t take out their entire capability. For that, you need boots on the ground. And a commando raid won’t suffice because the Iranians have turned their facilities into armed fortresses guarded by elite shock troops supplied by the Revolutionary Guard. Who you gonna call? We just happen to have 135,000 troops a stone’s throw away in Iraq.

While it would be unprecedented for Israel and the United States to work together militarily, it would make sense from that standpoint only. Strategically, it would be a colossal mistake, a blunder that would set back our mid east diplomacy for the forseeable future. Not to mention that we’d probably have to face an oil embargo from the Arab states that would truly be frightening for the economy.

All in all, not a good idea…unless the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons is worse.