Here's an unofficial translation of a Project Harmony document (thank you Powerline) on the flow of truck traffic from Iraq into Syria prior to the March 2003 invasion. No one knows with any certainty what was in the trucks, but it’s been pretty well established that there was a heavy traffic flow from Iraq into Syria before and immediately after the invasion commenced. On page 84 of his book, Fiasco, Tom Ricks notes that:

Baathists and intelligence officials [were able] to flee to the sanctuary of Syria, taking money, weapons, and records with them with which to establish a safe headquarters for the insurgency that would emerge that summer. Some of this movement occurred before the war began, when, according to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, the head of the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency, satellite imagery showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria.

On October 28, 2003, Agence France Presse reported:

The director of a Pentagon agency that analyzes imagery from satellites and spy planes said Tuesday Iraqi leaders may have moved weapons of mass destruction "material" into neighboring Syria before the war.

Retired Lieutenant General James Clapper said senior Iraqi leaders made an intensive effort to bury, hide and disperse equipment, documents and other material related to their weapons of mass destruction programs in the months before the war, moving some of it out of the country.

"I think personally that the senior leadership saw what was coming and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said, director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. "I'll call it an educated hunch."

He noted there was an "uptick" in truck traffic from Iraq into Syria before the onset of combat and even as the war was raging.

Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, acknowledged that there were limits to what overhead surveillance can detect inside trucks.

"But certainly, inferentially, the obvious conclusion one draws is that the certain uptick in traffic ... may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material," he said….

I wonder if Gen. Clapper still holds this view today.

We will know whether the latest security strategy for Baghdad has worked in the coming weeks but comparisons to Beirut are not encouraging. The AFP reports that the “mood in Sunni west Baghdad turns in favor of US troops” but also quotes Maj. Coulson:

"Right now we're kind of at that level that Beirut was, at its worst, with different militias controlling different neighborhoods," said Major Scott Coulson, operations officer for the 8th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry.

The militias have filled the security vacuum – a vacuum deepened by inadequate troops levels beginning in mid-2003 when the insurgency was gathering steam and some on Capitol Hill were calling for more forces to fill the security void. In Corbra II, Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor (fyi, Trainor supported the invasion) note that the lack of troops hurt our intelligence gathering capability (see p. 493 for example) – a crucial element in an effective counterinsurgency campaign – and cite a Rand study of past post-war operations that found that “not only did small forces encourage adversaries to think they could challenge the peacekeepers but they also led the occupation force to rely more on firepower to make up for their limited numbers.” (p. 477) At this point, whether a large surge in forces (there hasn’t been one yet) in Baghdad will make a difference or another strategy should be employed is an open question.

(From the Herald Sun: "The images...show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon…. Another [picture] depicts the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket in the middle of a residential block blown up in an Israeli air attack. "Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he said. "Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated.")

Posted July 30, 2006:

May 2000: Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon; UN establishes "Blue Line," the line of demarcation between Israel and Lebanon.

UN Security Council Resolution 1559, September 2, 2004: “Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non- Lebanese militias….”

From The Sunday Times, July 30, 2006:

Hezbollah’s stockpiling of arms and preparation of numerous bunkers and tunnels over the past six years have been key to its resistance. “If it was not for these preparations Lebanon would have been defeated within hours,” [Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s second in command] said.

Hezbollah is believed to be in possession of four types of advanced missile: Fajr missiles with a range of 100 kilometres; Iran 130 missiles with a range of 110km; and Shahin missiles and 355mm rockets with ranges of 150km. He said that Hezbollah will use its weapons to strike deep into Israel should the attacks in Lebanon continue.

From a piece in the "Week in Review" section of today's New York Times:

Many experts and members of both parties say they worry about the long-term consequences of such bitter partisan polarization and its effect on the longstanding tradition — although one often honored in the breach — that foreign policy is built on bipartisan trust and consensus.

“The old idea that politics stops at the water’s edge is no longer with us, and I think we’ve lost something as a result,” said John C. Danforth, a former senator and an ambassador to the United Nations under President Bush….

Democrats say the Republicans repeatedly broke the old rules, treating national security as a wedge issue to make Democrats look weak and unacceptable, especially in 2004. “George Bush decided to make foreign policy partisan in a way that Ronald Reagan or the first George Bush never did,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, “The divisions over Iraq and national security are the house that Karl Rove and George Bush built.”

“Politics stops at the water’s edge” hasn’t been true for many years. The 1980 election, for example, was dominated by the economy and national security. Jimmy Carter warned voters that Reagan was a dangerous man to elect in a nuclear-armed world, while Reagan accused Carter of weakness in the face of Soviet expansionism. Once in office, the majority of Democrats fought against Reagan’s national security polices. There was a bitter ideological divide on Central America and Reagan’s buildup-build down approach to the Soviets. Walter Mondale, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and many other Democrats pushed the nuclear freeze and the notion that America was less secure under Reagan’s leadership. In fact, in his announcement speech for president, Mondale said he was running “not just to seek a victory, but to point toward sanity. “Mindless, wasteful madness” is how he characterized Reagan’s nuclear policies. But despite vocal Democratic opposition, Reagan was able to score many legislative victories on security issues with the help of something that is in short supply in today’s Democratic Party -- Scoop Jackson Democrats.

Today, the one Democrat who most embodies that tough-minded spirit (a spirit embraced by Sens. Dole and McCain on Kosovo), Sen. Joe Lieberman, is being purged from his party and woke up this morning to read an editorial from the nation’s most prominent liberal newspaper endorsing his primary opponent – the darling of Moveon.org.

And with all due respect to Sen. Schumer and Rep. Emanuel, once it become clear that wmd stockpiles were not going to be found, Democrats – see here and here – were happy to use Iraq as a political issue against the GOP.

Yesterday's performance by Sen. John Kerry at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing for John Bolton was a classic. Aside from lecturing Bolton on the virtue of the 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea – an agreement he evidently didn’t know required Pyongyang to forgo all nuclear weapons development and an agreement that allowed the North to keep the same fuel rods they may now be reprocessing – Kerry also invoked Reagan to hammer the Bush administration and asked Bolton to envision the world through Kim Jong Il’s eyes:

BOLTON: Senator, really, it's hard to understand how you can't look at the notion of conducting the bilateral conversations in the six-party talks and not say that North Korea has an opportunity to make its case to us.

KERRY: Sir, with all due respect, I mean, you know -- what I've seen work and not work over the course of the years I've been here depends on what kind of deal you're willing to make or not make and what your fundamental policies are.

If you're a leader in North Korea, looking at the United States, and you've seen the United States attack Iraq on presumptions of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, if you announce a preemptive strategy of regime change, if you are pursuing your own new nuclear weapons, bunker busting nuclear weapons, and you're sitting in another country, you would have a perception of threat that makes you make a certain set of decisions.

And historically throughout the Cold War, that drove the United States and the then-Soviet Union to escalate and escalate. And first one did and then the other.

In fact -- in fact -- in every single case, we were the first, with the exception of two particular weapons systems to develop a nuclear breakthrough first. They followed -- until ultimately, President Reagan, a conservative president, and President Gorbachev said we're going to come down in Reykjavik to no weapons.

So we reversed 50 years of spending money and chasing this thing.

Of course, back in the Reagan years, Kerry led the charge against the very policies that led to the sweeping arms reduction agreements. He backed a nuclear freeze, opposed the Reagan defense build-up and aligned himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party on most other national security issues. So, John Bolton is in pretty good company in having Sen. Kerry as a critic.

Alan Dershowitz writes in today's Washington Times:

On the basis of his performance, I have become a Bolton supporter. He speaks with moral clarity. He is extremely well prepared. He is extraordinarily articulate. He places the best face on American policy, particularly in the Middle East during this crucial time….

Were he not to be confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at this crucial juncture it would send a powerful message to the international community that Senate Democrats do not stand behind our policy in the Middle East. It would be seen as undercutting American policy toward Israel. Even if that were a misunderstanding, it would have a devastating impact on the world's perception of America's solidarity with Israel….

Mr. Bolton is absolutely justified in pushing for reform of the notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucratic structure in Turtle Bay. As he once said, "If member countries want the United Nations to be respected ... they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect."

Most importantly, Mr. Bolton understands that his job is to represent the United States and our interests to the world, and not the other way around….

I have observed Mr. Bolton's performance with regard to Israel and its conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. On many other fronts he has proved himself a staunch advocate of freedom and human rights — specifically in Sudan, North Korea and Cuba. Some critics have argued that Mr. Bolton is better in his public role as advocate than in his behind-the-scenes role as conciliator. But at this point in history, the United States needs a public advocate who can further its case in the court of public opinion. No one does that better than John Bolton.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece, "Split Among Arab-Americans Curbs Political Clout." It notes.:

Many Lebanese exiles and their families complain that Arab-American advocacy groups focus disproportionately on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the exclusion of all other concerns…. Many Lebanese-Americans were infuriated when an Arab-American delegation led by a senior official [from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the largest such groups in the U.S.] visited Damascus in late February, just as the United Nations had begun considering measures demanding that Mr. Assad end Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.

‘The Syrians killed more Lebanese in one month in 1978 that Israeli has done in 30 years of war, but these big groups appear to believe that it’s OK for one Arab country to invade another Arab country and abuse people there,’ says Joseph Hage, a wine merchant in Miami whose American Lebanese Coordination Council is an organizer of today’s event [on Capitol Hill].

All this brings me to Sen. Joe Biden’s Boston Globe piece today on what to do in Lebanon. He makes some good tactical suggestions but has little to say on the real problem in the region. He notes:

A remarkable confluence of views -- and interests -- can be the foundation for this effort. Not just the United States and Israel, but the European powers, Russia, and the Sunni Arabs all hold Hezbollah and its patrons in Syria and Iran responsible for the breach of the peace….

So what does the senator suggest to deal with those “responsible for the breach of the peace”? Call for Security Council-imposed sanctions on Damascus for its role in undermining Resolution 1559 and for obstructing the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri? Ask that the Council hold Tehran accountable for undermining 1559 and for continuing its uranium enrichment efforts? Spotlight the unhelpful role Russia and China have played on the Security Council in holding Tehran and Damascus (and Khartoum for that matter) accountable for their actions? Not a chance.

As to Syria, Biden writes, “Egypt and Saudi Arabia can bring pressure to bear on Damascus.” On Iran, Biden says, “We lack a comprehensive dialogue with Iran,” which I presume means the U.S. should hold direct talks with the regime. That’s it. If this is Sen. Biden’s plan to hold Syria and Iran “responsible” for promoting “proxy wars,” I suspect officials in Damascus and Tehran would welcome a Biden presidency.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, is a fan of John Bolton. He told the Washington Post that Bolton’s arrival at the UN has been a

breath of fresh air at Turtle Bay precisely because he's not your typical diplomat. I'm certainly not going to tell the Senate or House of Representatives how to vote, but if John Bolton were to be confirmed by the Israeli Knesset, he would get all 120 votes.

Unfortunately, Senate Democrats don’t agree. Cheered on by Howard Dean, they may again block a confirmation vote. After the August recess, Republicans should put Bolton’s confirmation on the Senate floor and pound away at Democratic obstructionism. Let Senator Reid and company explain to the American people why they’re siding with UN bureaucrats against a tough-minded American. Some Senate Democrats, I'm told, aren’t interested in a big Bolton fight, which is precisely why Senator Frist should elevate the Bolton debate as much as possible.

I wonder if the Speaker will invite President Bush or Rudy Giuliani to testify at these (scroll up) field ”hearings”? Both oppose the House-passed immigration bill and support comprehensive reform.

Two editorials worth reading this morning:

From the Wall Street Journal:

Security in the Iraqi capital has been deteriorating, and especially worrisome is the increasing number of killings by sectarian militias. Many Baghdadis are afraid to leave their neighborhood and sometimes even their homes on normal business. Increasing numbers are fleeing for safer regions of Iraq or nearby foreign countries. While this isn't yet "civil war," current trends are planting the seeds of one….

Here are a few key issues:

More security forces for Baghdad. Whatever one thinks about the number of U.S. troops overall in Iraq, there is no question too few have been deployed in the capital. So news that American troops will be redeploying from relatively peaceful areas of the country to help out in Baghdad is encouraging.

Unfortunately, we suspect that Washington's preferred solution -- reducing U.S. troop levels outside the capital in order to bring relief to Baghdad -- is more likely to expand the problem from Baghdad to include other parts of Iraq than to lead to an overall reduction in crime and violence.

Of course, the issue of inadequate troop strength goes back to 2003, with some on Capitol Hill arguing at the time that more forces were needed post-invasion. And two new books just out add much more evidence of insufficient troop levels (more on this later). In one of them (Cobra II by Gordon and Trainor), the authors, based on an interview with then Army Secretary Thomas White, also recall one pre-9/11 proposal that luckily never saw the light of day:

As the two-war doctrine was being amended, the secretary and his aides turned their attention to trimming the forces. Shortly before September 11, Rumsfeld had presided over a meeting at which Cambone [his senior aide] laid out several options, including one to reduce the Army by as much as two divisions, a proposal that drew vociferous and ultimately successful protests from the Army leaders, who argued that the service was already stretched thin. (page 9)

Today the AP reports:

Putting more U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad risks a new showdown with a radical anti-American cleric who has modeled his movement after Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.

Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has re-emerged as a key force in the majority Shiite community after suffering substantial losses during two uprisings against the U.S. military in 2004.

In Paul Bremer’s book, My Year in Iraq, he noted that Powell pressed for an attack on the Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia early on. In fact, Bremmer writes that when the first attack on his militia was about to commence, Powell told the president, the vice president, and others:

It's not just a question of his militia. At the end of the operation, Muqtada's got to be gone. (page 331)

Given her recent remarks, Madeleine Albright should take some time to read Max Boot in today’s Los Angeles Times. He writes:

Well, then, why on earth are so many pundits blaming President Bush for the current mess in the Middle East? A typical example comes from fellow Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks, who writes: "The Bush administration's tunnel-vision approach to foreign policy has pushed the U.S. and the world into a devastating tailspin of conflict without end….We promised to make the world safer, but we've turned it into a tinderbox."

We've turned the world into a tinderbox? Wasn't it a tinderbox long before 2001? And why is the United States, much less Bush, responsible for every conflagration?

Iran was developing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism long before Bush came into office. Critics attack him for not being diplomatic enough with Tehran, but in fact he has been supportive of the efforts of France, Germany and Britain to strike a deal. More recently, his secretary of State has offered to talk to Tehran directly. So keen is the Iranian government for such talks that it hasn't deigned to reply to the U.S. offer.

Bush hasn't exactly been a warmonger when it comes to Iran's ally, Syria, either. Even as Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was turning his country into a staging ground for the Iraqi insurgency, the Bush administration repeatedly sent envoys to Damascus in an attempt to negotiate. Far from being interested in a deal, Assad was only emboldened into thinking that he would suffer no consequences for his hostile acts.

Both Iran and Syria have continued backing Hamas and Hezbollah, but this is hardly a new problem; it dates to the Reagan presidency. Critics suggest that these terrorist groups have gotten more powerful because of Bush's push for democracy. Hamas, after all, now runs the Palestinian Authority, and Hezbollah is part of a coalition government in Lebanon. But their power doesn't derive from their political positions; it comes from their militias, which remain outside the democratic process. Hamas was attacking Israel even when it was in opposition. So, for that matter, was the party it replaced — Yasser Arafat's Fatah.

ARAFAT, you may recall, launched a terrorist onslaught against Israel in 2000, when President Clinton was still in office. Ariel Sharon, with Bush's backing, managed to defeat the suicide bombers through a combination of measures defensive (the West Bank barrier) and offensive (targeted killings of terrorist bigwigs). This paved the way for an Israeli pullout from Gaza, exactly what "peace processors" had wanted all along.

This hasn't exactly won the goodwill of Palestinian militants, but, if you're a typical liberal critic, you can hardly blame Bush for encouraging Israeli concessions.

But surely, you say, Bush has made things worse in Iraq. Admittedly, the situation there is grim. But is it more grim than when Hussein was invading his neighbors and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own people? Or when the U.S. was enforcing sanctions that killed an estimated 60,000 babies a year? Many now claim that Hussein was a bulwark against Iranian adventurism, but Iranian-backed terrorists were at least as active in the 1980s (when they grabbed dozens of Western hostages in Lebanon and blew up the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut) as they are today.

Critics are right that Bush hasn't transformed the Middle East into a bastion of peace, love and harmony. But he never promised to work miracles; he has consistently spoken of our current struggle as a generational challenge — the Long War. Sure, he could have done more to help win the war. But there is no reason to think that the critics' preferred approach — more diplomatic blather, more international confabs, more concessions to the terror-mongers — would have produced any better results. In any case, to suggest that his policies are the cause of today's woes, rather than a reaction to them, reveals a stunning historical amnesia.

Slate's Christopher Hitchens has some interesting material on the Iraqi-Niger yellowcake story.

(The Manhattan Institute's Tamar Jacoby seconds, in the Washington Post, an argument Rudy Giuliani has been making to audiences. She writes: “The point is obvious enough: We need to take the busboys out of the equation (by means of a temporary worker program) so that Border Patrol can focus on the smugglers and terrorists who pose a genuine threat. And, just as urgent, we need to find a way to bring the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country onto the right side of the law, creating incentives for them to come forward, then registering, screening and, as long as they stay here, keeping track of them.”)

Post on April 5, 2006:

Opponents of President Bush's immigration position like to claim the high ground on national security. They rightly claim that we must secure our border, especially in a post 9/11 world. But at the same time many also contend that a guest-worker program would weaken U.S. security. Well, Mayor Giuliani argues that 9/11 is a reason why we need such a program.

From today's Chicago Sun Times:

Giuliani wants to 'regularize' immigrants to improve safety:

Turning 11 million illegal immigrants into criminals is not the way to secure the nation's borders or prevent another terrorist attack, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Tuesday.

The way to do that is to "regularize," document, photograph and fingerprint immigrants to drive what Giuliani called "this vast underground" above ground....

"The president is right to support a guest-workers program," Giuliani said. "If we recognize it, document it, photograph it and know who and what it is, then we can concentrate our attention on the people who aren't coming in to be guest workers but are coming in to bomb us, or coming in to sell heroin or cocaine or to launder money.

"By having this vast underground, we are much more insecure," said Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney. "And by trying to do the impossible, we're much more insecure. If you have 11 million people in this country who are illegal or undocumented, and you have similar numbers coming in through this underground, that is a much, much more dangerous situation for terrorists to exploit, drug dealers to exploit and other criminals to exploit."

...On Tuesday, Giuliani acknowledged that the immigration issue has divided his Republican Party and the nation. But that's partly because it's being conducted "as a theoretical debate," when immigration is "a fact" of life, he said.

"People want to come to the United States. That is a good thing. We want people to want to come to the United States. That means we're still the shining city on the hill. We're still the place [where] people see greater opportunity, greater freedom, a better way to create a better life for themselves and their families," he said.

This guy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was supposed to be dead according to media reports last November. Guess not. In his interview published on the Time magazine website, al-Douri claims that he and other Saddam loyalists are behind much of the insurgency. One of Saddam’s top henchmen, al-Douri was a senior leader in charge of the forces that doused Halabja with chemicals in 1988 during the Anfal campaign. During the first Gulf War, he warned Kurds to stay out of the fight or face another chemical attack: "If you have forgotten Halabja, we are ready to repeat the operation." Saddam and his senior Baathist leadership targeted Halabja (and other towns) with a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agent. Here’s a reminder of the result:

(source: http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil)

And here’s what the Iraq Survey Group concluded on Saddam’s wmd production capability:

[T]here is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD production after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD production as soon as sanctions were lifted.

The ISG continued:

Based on an investigation of facilities, materials, and production outputs, ISG also judges that Iraq had a break-out capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard CW agent, but not nerve agents....

Iraq retained the necessary basic chemicals to produce sulfur mustard on a large-scale, but probably did not have key precursors for nerve agent production. With the importation of key phosphorus based precursors, Iraq could have produced limited quantities of nerve agent as well. Mustard production could have started within days if the necessary precursor chemicals were co-located in a suitable production facility; otherwise production could have started within weeks. Nerve agent production would have taken much longer.

After losing power, I'm sure al-Douri would like to "repeat the operation" in Halabja if given the opportunity.

(For more on al-Douri and his ties to militant Islamists see here.)

In Michigan, Senator John Kerry, commenting on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, said: "If I was president, this wouldn't have happened." I doubt a President Kerry would have done much to disarm Hezbollah, but, in any event, we do have a strong indication of how a President Kerry would have handled Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Back then Senator Kerry opposed the resolution authorizing force to eject Saddam from Kuwait. He argued on the Senate floor that "time is not on Saddam Hussein's side, but ours. Sanctions cost Iraq much, they cost us little." But after the war ended, we found something unexpected -- a massive nuclear weapons program that had gone undetected by Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On August 11, 1991, the Washington Post reported that:

International inspectors . . . unearthed one of the most important--and disturbing--finds of the post-Cold War era: a huge assembly line for the covert manufacture of equipment to make an Iraqi bomb.

The location of the sophisticated, secret factory for manufacturing hundreds of uranium gas centrifuges was unknown to any foreign intelligence agency despite intense scrutiny and untouched by five weeks of severe aerial bombardment during the Gulf War that supposedly eviscerated the Iraqi nuclear project. As such, it is a monument to the world's ignorance about what a determined bomb-builder such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein can do.

The factory was a key component in Iraq's elaborate highly redundant and largely secret network of physics, chemistry and metallurgical laboratories, industrial mines, metalworking factories, electrical power generators, nuclear research reactors and radioactive waste processing sites - all aimed at swiftly putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the world's most ruthless leaders.

The Post also reported just how close Saddam came to getting a nuclear bomb:

Despite repeated warnings and Saddam's own public statements, Western experts consistently underestimated Iraq's scientific and technical capabilities. Inspection officials now believe Iraq was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb, not five to 10 years as previously thought.

Now, it’s possible that a President Kerry would have ordered an attack on Iraq in mid-1991. I have my doubts. It’s more likely that some sort of phony deal would have been cut, and Saddam would have gone nuclear. We can only speculate what the Middle East would look like today with a nuclear-armed Saddam sitting in Baghdad.

Passed in 2004, UN Security Council Resolution 1559 demanded the "disbanding and disarmament" of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Instead, the group increased its firepower with weapons supplied by Syria and Iran. Now, some UN officials are busy denouncing Israel for taking action against a terror state within state that the UN, predictably, refused to do anything about.

Though little reported in the Western media, Thailand has been facing an insurgency of its own. From the BBC:

A teacher has been shot and killed in front of a classroom of children in southern Thailand, according to police. Gunmen disguised themselves as students to shoot the Buddhist teacher at the primary school in Narathiwat district.

The attack is the latest in a string of violent incidents in the Thai south, where more than 1,300 people have been killed since January 2004.

Officials blames Muslim insurgents for much of the unrest, although criminal motives are also thought to be at work. The southern provinces are predominantly Muslim, with a separate language and culture to much of the rest of Thailand.

Police blamed militants for the killing of Prasarn Martchu, 46. "He has taught at this school for 20 years and has no fight with anyone," police Colonel Bunleu Chawet said. "This is the work of insurgents."

The shooting prompted some 20 local schools to close indefinitely, an official said.

At least 30 teachers have been killed since the beginning of the insurgency. Militants target schools and teachers because they see them as symbols of the Buddhist Thai authorities.

In many areas of the south, the government now provides teachers with armed escorts to and from their classes to prevent them from being harmed. In June, five security officers escorting teachers to school were killed by a roadside bomb in neighbouring Yala province.

Here and here are two takes worth reading on the military difficulties facing Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has had six years to prepare for the Israelis, and thanks to its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, the group's weapons have turned out to be more advanced than Israeli and U.S. intelligence assessed prior to the anti-ship cruise missile attack on an Israeli naval vessel off Lebanon's coast and rockets landing in places like Tiberias. Last week, the New York Times ran a piece, "Arming of Hezbollah Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots." It noted:

The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria.

While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said….

The officials interviewed agreed to discuss classified intelligence assessments about Hezbollah’s capabilities only on condition of anonymity. …[O]fficials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria.

“The Israelis did forensics, and found several were Syrian-made,” said David Schenker, who this spring became a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy after four years working on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “Everybody recognizes that Syria has played an important role in facilitating transshipment — but not supplying their own missiles to Hezbollah.”

Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.

But it was Friday’s successful launching of a C-802 cruise missile that most alarmed officials in Washington and Jerusalem. Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s, until the United States pressured Beijing to cease the sales.

Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah….

Such intelligence “blind spots” aren’t especially good news in a post-9/11 world. Two terror-sponsoring states arm their client, which operates in a relatively small area, with advanced weaponry we know nothing about until it’s used. What else have we missed? Has North Korea proliferated more to Iran than we believe? How good is our grasp of the relationship between rogue regimes and terror groups? You get the point.

Once again, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has become an issue in a presidential campaign. This time in Nicaragua, where Chavez has been showering gifts upon Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega. Today’s Washington Post reports:

Ortega, 60, whose armed revolution made him the Reagan administration's chief antagonist in the hemisphere during the 1980s, is also getting a boost this time from Washington's current bête noir in Latin America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Among other shows of support, Chávez recently bypassed Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños and negotiated a deal directly with Ortega to sell oil to Nicaragua under a long-term credit scheme intended to free more government funds for social spending…. In addition to the oil deal, Chávez has arranged to distribute fertilizer at cut-rate prices to Nicaraguan farmers through an association allied with the Sandinistas….

But there are signs that Chávez's assistance could backfire. In a recent poll commissioned by the Nicaraguan weekly Confidencial, 49 percent of Nicaraguans said they thought Venezuela was interfering. And there are rumors that Chávez is directly financing Ortega's campaign -- fueled by the abundance of enormous posters of Ortega's smiling face across not merely the capital but also in the countryside.

Aside from delivering a political black eye to the U.S., Chavez may have other things in mind with his oil charity and in pushing for an Ortega victory. He may hope that a President Ortega returns the favor by derailing Managua’s current plan to allow for more extensive oil exploration off its coast. The prospect of tapping these potentially large oil deposits is something that I’m sure doesn’t sit well with the oil-rich Chavez. Stay tuned ...

(No surprise here.)

Posted on July 20, 2006:

Some EU officials are pushing for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that continued fighting will weaken the democrats inside Lebanon’s government. But the more likely outcome from a premature cease-fire would be an emboldened Hezbollah with democrats under siege. And you can bet on Damascus and Tehran taking a victory lap to boot. That said, today’s Washington Post editorial, “Diplomatic Traps,” is spot on.

Another plausible-sounding diplomatic option is for the United States to get behind a U.N. proposal to send a peacekeeping force to Lebanon, after a cease-fire. But that's been tried before, too, and if the result is to allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm, Hezbollah will have achieved its war aim: to strike a blow against Israel while preserving its status as a state within a state. An international force would help only if it had a mandate and the capability to enforce Hezbollah's disarmament. That won't be possible unless Israel's military campaign greatly weakens the movement.….

The unprovoked attack across an international border by Iran's client Hezbollah succeeded in turning the world's attention from the nuclear crisis to the Middle East -- just as Iran must have hoped. The best response is to shift the focus back -- and make clear that the United States and its allies will not be intimidated through war-by-proxy.

A few weeks back, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen chastised Sen. McCain for his support of the president on Iraq. Cohen noted that he, too, once supported the war, but his reason for doing so vanished once the claim of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be “bogus.” The problem is back in March 2003 Cohen's argument for the war went beyond the issue of Saddam's wmd stockpiles. But a reader wouldn’t know this from reading his May 2006 column.

The other day, George Will took issue with a series of Weekly Standard foreign policy editorials. Fine: There should be serious debate about U.S. national security policy. But to read his comments about Iraq in that column, one could get the impression that Will was opposed -- or at the very least was neutral -- on the question of removing Saddam from power. The record suggests otherwise. Here are just a few examples of Will on Iraq in no particular order:

Commentary delivered on ABC’s This Week, March 16, 2003:

[O]pposition to the war against Iraq rests on and sometimes does not rise above a truism, the fact that war costs lives. Opponents say if we leave Saddam in power but continue today's policy of containment, lives will be saved. But that is not true…. Under the UN sanctions, Saddam is allowed to sell enough oil to purchase food and medicine to meet the basic needs of the Iraqi people, but Saddam uses the money to fuel his war machine and lets the babies die. So another ten years of containment would involve the slaughter of at least another 360,000 Iraqis, 240,000 of them children under five. Walter Russell Mead says those are the low estimates. If the UN's numbers are right, another decade of containment would kill one million Iraqi civilians, including 600,000 children. So as Americans debate the morality of the war against Iraq, remember these numbers and remember this picture of an Iraqi child suffering the effects of the current policy of containment.

Duluth News-Tribune column, February 23, 2003:

Today's demonstrators against a war to disarm Iraq can hardly be explained by fear for their safety, or by sympathy for Saddam Hussein's fascism. The London demonstration -- 1 million strong, the largest in British history -- was not as large as the death toll from the war Saddam launched against Iran. The demonstrators simultaneously express respect for the U.N.'s resolutions and loathing for America, the only nation that can enforce the resolutions. This moral infantilism -- willing an end while opposing the only means to that end -- reveals that the demonstrators believe the means are more objectionable than the end is desirable….

And the demonstrators must know that if they turn President Bush into "the noble Duke of York" (who "had ten-thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill, and he marched them down again"), Saddam will bestride the Middle East, and emulators -- and weapons of mass destruction -- will proliferate....

Times Union column, March 5, 2003:

Counting from April 18, 1991, the 15th day after passage of U.N. Resolution 687, more than 4,330 days have passed since Iraq put itself in material breach of international obligations. It did so by ignoring that resolution's 15-day deadline for listing the locations, amounts and types of all its chemical and biological weapons, all "nuclear weapons-usable" materials, and for disclosing the location of Scud and other ballistic missiles with ranges beyond 90 miles. So the current "rush" to war has consumed almost half again as many as all the 3,075 days of U.S. engagement in World Wars I and II and the Korean War.

As the world waits to see whether the United Nations will cudgel Iraq with a "second" U.N. resolution, which actually would be the 18th, President Bush weighs when, not whether, he will order an attack on Iraq that Congress authorized by much larger majorities than his father achieved on Jan. 12, 1991, authorizing the Gulf War. And the President's domestic and foreign critics, showing an amazing tolerance for cognitive dissonance, fault him simultaneously for acting as though the United States can be the world's constable -- and for allowing Iraq to divert him from the task of solving the North Korean crisis….

Into this welter of foolishness….

ABC’s This Week, March 23, 2003:

TERRY MORAN: Are there any signs that … people … are welcoming us?

GEORGE WILL: Well, when it's over they're not going to come out in the street and say, please bring back Saddam Hussein. That's not a regime that's hard to improve on. And I think once they're sure it's gone, and once they know that they're not going to be betrayed as they feel they were betrayed internally after the '91 cease-fire, then you will see that. But on the protection of civilians. One of the most morally dubious wars we fought was the one in Kosovo, not because it wasn't worth fighting, but we fought it at 15,000 feet. It was a war worth killing for, but not worth dying for. Zero NATO causalities. But sometimes the civilians took the punishment because we were doing this from a distance and we're fighting a more just war this time….

They may be assuming, as Osama bin Laden assumed, on the basis of the Marines being blown out of Beirut airport by one bomb, and on Black Hawk Down, the Mogadishu shambles, that the American people have what the strategists call, casualty dread, and they can't keep, take casualties. They should understand the American people look upon this as a continuation of the war that began September 11th and therefore we've already taken 3,000 casualties. If you take all the terrorism back to the Berlin disco in '83 or whenever it was, we've had 5,000 and some casualties. The American people are not casualty averse when they know what they're fighting for and this time they do….

Charleston Daily Mail column, March 11, 2003:

The war against Iraq has begun - much as America's war against Nazi Germany really began months before Pearl Harbor and Hitler's Dec. 11 declaration of war on America…. Soon the bow wave created by the movement of the great ship America into full-scale war will wash away Lilliputian nuisances, such as French diplomacy….

It is not a "scenario," it is a virtual certainly that absent Israel's 1981 pre-emptive attack, Iraq would have had nuclear weapons in 1991, and today, as Gerard Baker of the Financial Times writes, Kuwait would be the 19th province of Iraq - and Saudi Arabia would be the 20th.

France's goal - less violence - would have been achieved because the First Gulf War could not have been fought.

Fortunately for the United States, which has serious things to think about, the French foreign minister continues to demonstrate the absurdity of his country's demand to be taken seriously.

ABC’s This Week, March 30, 2003:

MICHEL MARTIN: The issue is not just, Iraq is not the only issue. The broader audience for this is the broader Arab and Muslim world. And in fact, the question is, how are [they] going to see [sic] seeing these people's doors knocked down? They've seen these pictures already in the disputed territories of Israel, and it's infuriating.

GEORGE WILL: How are they, how are they going to feel when they see the police apparatus of Saddam Hussein put on trial? How are they going to feel when there's actually an election? How are they going to feel when there is a large state in the middle of an Arab culture without a democracy….

Again, Michel, two months, two months from now, let's suppose the war is over in two months, and I don't think that's an extravagant thought, all of this, these micro-frictions are not going to matter. The brute fact of changing the regime of a nation of that size and complexity is going to radiate through the Middle East.

Chicago Sun-Times column, March 20, 2003:

The president demonstrated Monday night that he understands a tested political axiom: If you do not like the news, make some of your own…. To Saddam Hussein, his two sons and other satraps, the president said: Get out of Dodge by sundown Wednesday. To the incredibly inflated United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who earlier Monday had said that a war without UN approval would be illegitimate, the president reasserted America's "sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security." To the Iraqi people, who could listen to a broadcast of a simultaneous translation of his words, he said the war is against "the lawless men who rule your country" with "torture chambers and rape rooms." To Iraqi officers he said: "Your fate will depend on your actions." Do not fight "for a dying regime." And he warned that the Nuremberg defense--"I was just following orders"--would be unavailing at the war crimes trials that await officers who order the use of weapons of mass destruction "against anyone, including the Iraqi people."

… Monday, a few hours before the president spoke, Daschle said the president had "failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." Well. Presumably Daschle meant that Bush has failed to secure the support of the French and a majority of other Security Council members for enforcing the plain meaning of Resolution 1441, which the French co-authored and which the Security Council unanimously adopted. But had the president succeeded, the result would have been the "serious consequences" 1441 calls for: war. The French and everyone else, including Daschle--the regime-change-endorsing, use-of-force-authorizing Daschle--understood that….

ABC’s This Week, March 2, 2003:

GEORGE WILL: The Administration has been very clear that the liberation of Iraq means the liberation of a unified Iraq, with its territorial integrity. One part of Woodrow Wilson's heritage that we've seen quite enough of and are not embracing this time around is ethnic self- determination which produces Yugoslavias…..

FAREED ZAKARIA: …Everything we know about building democracies is if you go, if you get out quickly, the whole thing will be a shambles.

GEORGE WILL: But, again, Japan was not a promise, after generations of military fascism was not a promising place for a laboratory of democracy, 1950, it was on the way to democracy, same was true of Germany. I'm not saying that . . .[sic]

FAREED ZAKARIA: Yeah but that's five years, George.

GEORGE WILL: Five years, my goodness, we're still on the Rhine.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think we're prepared for that kind of .

GEORGE WILL: Yes. The American, General Howe was the first, but not the last, to underestimate the staying power of the American people.

ABC’s This Week, February 23, 2003:

GEORGE WILL: I don't think there's a slightest chance of this because Saddam Hussein is clearly trying to string this out until public opinion shifts in his favor and the allies crack. Now, he's underestimating his adversary who is not Hans Blix, it's not Kofi Annan, it's George W. Bush. George W. Bush is not going to make the defense of the United States against successive acts of war contingent upon the permission of a Security Council that includes France, busy in Ivory Coast without the UN permission, China, the butchers of Tianenmen Square and suffocators of Tibet without the UN permission and Russia, currently waging war in Chechnya….But even there it seems to me this is not apt to be in 2004 an election on it's is the economy, stupid. We're going to be at war then. One war will be over by then, but we'll still be engaged in a protracted war against terrorists. And that is how the people are going to cast their votes. And I come back to the fact that the Democratic party on the most vital issue of our day is at daggers drawn with itself.

Chicago Sun-Times column, February 20, 2003:

Today the UN, toyed with by France, is making more likely a war that might not be impending if the UN had not been so centrally involved in dealing with Iraq 12 years ago. In August 1990, the first President Bush vowed that Iraq's aggression against Kuwait "will not stand." He said that before involving the UN in reversing the aggression. Had he organized the reversal of that aggression outside of UN auspices--as President Bill Clinton organized the 1999 campaign against Serbia--Iraq's regime might have been changed. One reason Desert Storm did not reach Baghdad was that it was constrained by a UN mandate to merely liberate Kuwait….

Now, fast forward to Hans Blix addressing the Security Council last week, continuing the 12-year tutorial of Iraq concerning UN unseriousness. Blix--no Pollyanna, he--acknowledged that Iraq has so far, in his priceless locution, "missed the opportunity" to account for thousands of tons of chemical and biological agents that "many governmental intelligence organizations" believe exist. But this little missed opportunity was less important to Blix than his being able to report:

That "we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq." That Iraq had enacted "legislation" forbidding itself to have weapons of mass destruction. That Saddam Hussein has formed not just one but two commissions, one to search high and low "for any still-existing proscribed items," and the other--with "very extensive powers of search in industry, administration and even private houses"--to look "for more documents relevant to the elimination of proscribed items and programs."

That Iraq has provided inspectors with papers that contained "no new evidence" but "could be indicative of a more active attitude" by Iraq.

And that Iraq remains committed to "encourage" people whom the inspectors want to interview outside the country to comply. These inanities illustrate why Iraq can feel confident that its comprehensive noncompliance with Resolution 1441 will have no consequences. That resolution, the text of which announced zero tolerance of Iraqi deviations from it, now stands as proof that the UN policy is inexhaustible tolerance.

The next application of that policy may have been foreshadowed last Sunday when the French ambassador to Washington, appearing on ABC's "This Week," would not say that if Iraq refuses to destroy the missiles that are proscribed, the refusal would constitute a "material breach" of 1441….

The UN's serene reception of Blix's most recent report subtracted further from the UN's dwindling stature. Another such reception of another such report should put the UN in the company of the Hanseatic League. UN inaction on Iraq is further proof of its irrelevance.

From AFP:

An Indonesian journalist detained for posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in his newspaper earlier this year has been released from prison but will still face trial.

Teguh Santosa, 35, was freed from a Jakarta prison Thursday night after being held there for 24 hours by the prosecutor's office, police detective Aries Syarif Hidayat said on Friday.

Santosa, who is the chief editor of the Rakyat Merdeka Online newspaper, will still have to face trial for publishing the cartoons in February, Hidayat said. He faces a maximum five years' imprisonment….

Santosa, quoted by the Koran Tempo newspaper on Friday, said he was only trying to give readers a complete story on the controversial cartoons.

"It was in accordance with my job as a journalist," he reportedly said….

From the senator's office:

U.S. Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell made the following statement Thursday regarding U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s comments about Israel’s response to terrorist attacks:

“Kofi Annan is wrong. He ought to read Resolution 1559 which not only called for the Syrians to get out of Lebanon but also for Hezbollah to disarm. Unfortunately for the Lebanese they are living with armed terrorists in their midst and unfortunately for the Israelis this group is right next door. Imagine if we were attacked by a neighbor here. We wouldn't sit still and take it—we would go after the people lobbing rockets onto our population. The Israelis’ response, it seems to me, is appropriate under the circumstances.”

Expect the Iranian regime to have lots and lots of questions and concerns for the international community on August 22, 2006 – see here.

Some EU officials are pushing for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that continued fighting will weaken the democrats inside Lebanon’s government. But the more likely outcome from a premature cease-fire would be an emboldened Hezbollah with democrats under siege. And you can bet on Damascus and Tehran taking a victory lap to boot. That said, today’s Washington Post editorial, “Diplomatic Traps,” is spot on.

Another plausible-sounding diplomatic option is for the United States to get behind a U.N. proposal to send a peacekeeping force to Lebanon, after a cease-fire. But that's been tried before, too, and if the result is to allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm, Hezbollah will have achieved its war aim: to strike a blow against Israel while preserving its status as a state within a state. An international force would help only if it had a mandate and the capability to enforce Hezbollah's disarmament. That won't be possible unless Israel's military campaign greatly weakens the movement.….

The unprovoked attack across an international border by Iran's client Hezbollah succeeded in turning the world's attention from the nuclear crisis to the Middle East -- just as Iran must have hoped. The best response is to shift the focus back -- and make clear that the United States and its allies will not be intimidated through war-by-proxy.

Things are apparently better in Dili -- for now at least. While places like East Timor and Kosovo are out of the headlines nowadays, they are still areas where the international community must remain engaged for the long haul.

The FARC must be feeling the heat especially after the landslide reelection of President Uribe. From the EFE News Service:

The FARC guerrillas on Wednesday sent a letter to the president of the European Union, Matti Vanhanen, asking the EU to take the group off its list of "terrorist" organizations.

The missive, signed by Raul Reyes, the spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, appeared on the Web site of Colombia's Anncol news agency, where the guerrilla group's communiques habitually are published.

"We accept the solidarity of governments without conditions or blackmail, and without discrediting lists claiming the alleged fight against terrorism," said the member of the FARC leadership council in the letter to Vanhanen, who is also prime minister of Finland.

The EU and the United States both place the FARC among the groups they consider terrorist entities, which include the leftist National Liberation Front and the ultra-rightist United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the latter of which are in the process of demobilizing.

The FARC, Reyes noted in his letter, had been included four years ago "on the list of terrorist groups by the foreign ministries of the 15 then-members" of the EU, a decision Reyes called a "regrettable error." The FARC, which has an estimated 20,000 fighters, sometimes employs car bombs - attacks which have killed scores of civilians - as well as selective assassination of civilian authorities it considers linked to the government.

(From Jane's Defense Weekly: Israel's INS Hanit, a Eilat (Sa'ar 5)-class missile corvette, was struck on 14 July by an Iranian-made C-802 Noor (Tondar) radar-guided anti-ship missile, fired by Hizbullah from Beirut. "We were not aware that Hizbullah possessed this kind of missile," said Rear Admiral Noam Faig, Israel Navy (IN) head of operations, told Jane's. "We are familiar with that missile from other areas but assumed that the threat was not present in Lebanon." The Noor, based on the Chinese C-802, was reported to have a 200 km range during manoeuvres conducted by the Iranian Navy in April 2005….)

Posted on July 15, 2006:

What's clear is that Israeli intelligence underestimated the range of Hezbollah’s rockets.

(Number of the sites in the north of Israel struck by Katyusha rockets so far today – courtesy of the Jerusalem Post)

Tiberias, for example, is 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border and was thought to be safe from attack. One lesson in all this is that a nation, in this case Iran, can substantial enhance the capabilities of its proxy and that state sponsors must be held accountable for their actions. The current bout of international finger wagging isn’t going to do the trick. From the Jerusalem Post:

Hours after its first rocket attack since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Tiberias sustained a second barrage of Katyusha rockets. Two of the rockets hit residential areas, while two others fell in open areas, police said. Another rocket hit an apartment building shortly later….

Between the two strikes, rockets fell in numerous other places along the northern border, including Nahariya, Safed, Mahanayim, Hatzor, Ben Ami and Karmiel….

The first strike on Tiberias early Saturday afternoon represented a further extension of Hizbullah's rockets' range, since Haifa was struck on Thursday. Tiberias is located on the western shore of the Kinneret, some 35 kilometers south of the Lebanese border, which was previously assessed to be outside the area that would be hit by Katyushas….

Moshav Kfar Hitim, near Tiberias, along with Migdal, Evron, and Abu Snan in the western Galilee were also hit.

Earlier, a senior Israeli intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said that Hizbullah has 150 missiles that could reach a distance of 45 kilometers, and another 20 with a range of 100-200 kilometers.

"They may hit Tel Aviv," the official said, adding that intelligence officials were not sure why Hizbullah has not used the missiles since it started firing rockets at Israel on Wednesday….

After reading yesterday's Washington Post column by George Will decrying the Weekly Standard, a Standard fan dug into the archives and sent along this piece (yes, it’s a parody) Will penned in early 1942:

FDR and his Critics

The Roosevelt administration, justly criticized for its military premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East, East Asia, North Africa, and Europe are opaque to most people, but to the Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservativism'' -- everything is crystal clear: Germany is the key to everything.

"No Nazi Germany, no Anschluss. No Nazi Germany, no one to prop up the Mussolini regime in Italy. No German support for Quisling ... '' You get the drift. So, the Weekly Standard says:

"We might consider countering this act of Japanese aggression [at Pearl Harbor] with a military strike against German military facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a Nazi Germany can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.''

"Why wait?'' Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in the Pacific Ocean area and East Asia. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Louis Napoleon and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than France. And if Hitler’s regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard's hoped-for second war, with Germany, does the magazine hope for a third and fourth?

As for the "healthy'' repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Japan has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement'' that the Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (June 1, 1940) editorial advocating war with yet another nation -- the bombing of Italy?

From the BBC:

Argentines have been marking the anniversary of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead and about 300 injured…. A prosecutor last year blamed Hezbollah for the blast, which the group denied….

The blast on 18 July 1994 reduced the seven-storey Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre in Buenos Aires to rubble.

The scale of death and destruction left Argentina's 200,000-strong Jewish community, Latin America's largest, in shock….

Local Jewish groups have long said the bombing bore the hallmarks of Iranian-backed Islamic militants.

Iran has repeatedly and vehemently denied any involvement in the attack.

Last November, an Argentine prosecutor said a member of the Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, was behind the attack and had been identified in a joint effort by Argentine intelligence and the FBI.

But Hezbollah said that the man, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, had died in southern Lebanon while fighting Israel.

If the world flinches and the Iranian regime is allowed to move forward with its nuclear weapons plans, does anyone honestly believe the Israelis won’t act at some point to stop or degrade Tehran’s ability to produce a bomb – even if it takes weeks to do it? I doubt they want to go down this road and would prefer a Security Council-imposed solution. But I also doubt the Israeli government will be convinced by op-ed writers making the case for a policy of containment of a nuclear-armed Iran. After experiencing the result of the Iranian-supplied Hezbollah arms buildup and dodging a bullet with the capture of the ship the Karine A (in 2002 the Iranians sought to consolidate another beachhead against Israel by smuggling 50 tons of weapons, including Katyusha rockets, into Gaza), it’s unlikely they’ll sit idly by as Iran goes nuclear while most of the world shrugs its shoulders. All of this is why a failure of the UN Security Council to act forcefully in the face of Tehran’s continued defiance will likely set the stage for a far larger conflict down the road. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime is banking on the continued protection of Russia and China from UN-imposed sanctions – sanctions that would likely wreck havoc with Iran’s economy and put pressure on the government to forgo its nuclear weapons plans. That said, today's Wall Street Journal editorial explains all this much better than I can:

The war between Hezbollah and Israel is a tragedy for its victims, but it could also be a clarifying moment if the world draws the proper lessons. To wit, this is a preview of what the Middle East will look like if Iran succeeds in going nuclear.

The threat of a nuclear Iran isn't primarily that the mullahs might actually use such a weapon if they got one. The more immediate threat is that Iran would use the weapon as a shield to pursue its hegemonic ambitions throughout the Middle East, promoting terrorist attacks on its enemies and intimidating anyone with the nerve to fight back. The Hamas-Hezbollah double assault on Israel is a portent of things to come unless the world gets serious about Iran's radicalism….

The question going forward is whether the Bush Administration will acknowledge this Lebanon conflict as the strategic threat it is and fight back accordingly. That means at a minimum allowing our ally in the region, Israel, the time and diplomatic support to deal Iran's Hezbollah proxies a heavy blow. Israel has already cut off supply lines from Syria by land and air. And now it is working systematically to destroy the military force that Hezbollah has accumulated, especially its missiles, which now include radars that can hit a warship and perhaps have the range to reach Tel Aviv….

The better and necessary response is to let Israel's counterattacks continue until Hezbollah's military power is substantially degraded. As for the G-8 and the U.N., they can be constructive by moving swiftly to impose sanctions on Iran for rejecting the generous offer to negotiate directly with the U.S….

Iran is testing the world right now. And if there is to be any hope at all of a diplomatic solution to its nuclear program, the mullahs have to see that their military option won't be tolerated.

Evidently, the one person at the G-8 summit who has irked the Kremlin the most isn’t even an elected official. From the Telegraph:

Cherie Blair goaded the Kremlin yesterday when she volunteered legal assistance to Russian campaigners seeking to challenge a law that imposes strict controls on activists.

The Prime Minister's wife was hailed as a heroine by Russia's browbeaten human rights community when she slipped away from the G8 summit in St Petersburg to meet some of the Kremlin's fiercest critics.

She was the only leader's spouse to break away from the official summit, leaving her colleagues as they toured a handicraft exhibition….

Mrs Blair's offer of legal assistance from Matrix, the legal chambers where she works, will irritate the Russian president further. Despite the likely problems, Mrs Blair pressed ahead with the visit organised by Human Rights Watch and Citizen's Watch, a St Petersburg group.

Most of the meeting was conducted in secret but the offer of help came when discussions turned to the non-governmental organisation (NGO) law.

Critics say it gives officials the power to close groups critical of the government and imposes such draconian bureaucracy on operations that their ability to function is seriously hampered….

The Democratic Leadership Council's Marshall Wittmann has a few things to say about Israel’s right to self-defense and a lot more to say about Israel’s critics – see here.

Today's Washington Post has a piece on wealthy donors who fund liberal organizations.

An alliance of nearly a hundred of the nation's wealthiest donors is roiling Democratic political circles, directing more than $50 million in the past nine months to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives.

Bernard L. Schwartz, retired chief executive of Loral Space & Communications Inc. and an alliance donor, said the group offers partners "an array of opportunities that have passed their smell test." This is most helpful, he said, for big donors who lack the time to closely examine their political investment options.

Schwartz is a longtime Democratic Party donor. From a January 10, 2002 Associated Press piece:

A long-running investigation into Loral Space & Communications' transfer of highly sensitive information to China is at an end, with the company paying a $14 million civil fine.

The settlement comes four years after Justice Department lawyers expressed concern that their probe was being jeopardized by the Clinton White House. Bernard Schwartz, Loral's chairman and CEO, donated nearly $1 million to Democrats from 1995 to 1998.

At issue in a Justice Department probe was whether Loral illegally helped the Chinese in 1996 by offering technical help after a rocket carrying a Loral satellite exploded.

The Pentagon concluded in a report that sensitive technology involving missiles was transferred to the Chinese. Loral denied its assistance helped China militarily.

In a statement Wednesday, Schwartz said Loral "made an immediate and voluntary disclosure to the State Department" when the company learned an employee had mistakenly sent a report on the rocket failure to the Chinese.

"Loral accepts full responsibility for the matter and expresses regret for its failure to obtain appropriate State Department approval," Schwartz said. The company will pay the fine to the State Department.

The company also said it has strengthened its export compliance program with changes that will cost at least $6 million.

Schwartz said the company has instituted an extensive new training program, added staff and greatly improved oversight of export control.

In 1998, during the investigation, Justice Department attorneys cautioned that the probe could be harmed if the Clinton administration cleared the way for another Loral satellite to be launched by China. President Clinton approved the deal.

Before Clinton's decision, then-national security adviser Sandy Berger wrote the president that "the criminal division of the Justice Department has cautioned that a national interest waiver in this case could have a significant adverse impact on any prosecution (of Loral) that might take place, based on a pending investigation of export violation. On fairness grounds, we believe it is inappropriate to penalize (Loral) before they have even been charged with any crime."

In a 1998 memo marked "the president has seen," White House aide Phil Caplan wrote that the "Department of Justice believes that, if the matter ever reaches a trial, a jury would likely not convict" the company "if the jury were to learn that a waiver was issued."

Clinton said his decision "was the right one," adding that "I can assure you it was handled in the routine course of business."

Over at The New Republic, the author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East offers his thoughts on what to do about Assad's continued provocations.

The G-8 meeting is supposed to send a clear signal to Tehran: stop enriching uranium or else – the else being UN-imposed sanctions. Unfortunately, the one message -- aside from the meeting's muddled response to Iran's proxy war against Israel -- the Iranian regime has apparently taken from the summit so far is that it expects Russia (and China) to cover its back on the Security Council. According the Islamic Republic News Agency, Tehran “expects Russia and China to defend its inalienable nuclear rights…. Asked about remark by Russian President Vladimir Putin in a joint press conference with his US counterpart George W Bush Saturday on Iran's nuclear case, he [the foreign ministry spokesman] added,

‘Putin's remark should be regarded as comprehensive. He announced Russia does not agree to imposition of sanctions against Iran.’”

From today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave strong support on Saturday to Israel's reaction to the capture of two of its soldiers, despite international criticism that the country's offensive against Islamic militants in Lebanon has been too harsh.

At a political fundraiser for Illinois state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois, McCain delivered gave a scathing condemnation of the Hezbollah guerrillas who made an incursion into Israel on Wednesday, seizing two soldiers and killing eight. In response, Israel began a massive bombing campaign of Lebanon's infrastructure.

"You have probably seen our European friends say, well, the Israelis have got to stop," said McCain, who was a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War.

"What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers? Do you think we would be exercising total restraint?"

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah -- a conflagration that on Saturday threatened to develop into a regional war -- was only part of McCain's wide-ranging speech on foreign affairs.

McCain specifically called on Iran to stop its assistance of Hezbollah, which is also a declared political party in Lebanon's government. The group is also supported by Syria.

"Israel has neighbors on its borders that are bent on its extinction," McCain said. "This crisis is not going to be defused until Hezbollah is disarmed and Iran discontinues its sponsorship of Hezbollah."

McCain's speech at a luncheon in a golf course restaurant had started out as a gushing review of Topinka, punctuated by self-effacing humor and a little banter about Arizona, in the style of Garrison Keillor.

But the audience hushed as McCain turned serious. Noting the Group of Eight summit taking palce in Russia, he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is hosting the meeting of the leading industrialized nations, to pressure Iran to stop backing Hezbollah.

McCain also denounced Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls the Palestinian Authority. Militants linked to Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier on June 25. That abduction resulted in an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip.

McCain didn't stop with the Israeli crisis; he dressed down North Korea for its saber-rattling and rocket tests earlier this month. McCain specifically singled out China -- now a tentative ally of the United States -- as needing to step in.

"The Chinese are really the only people who have any influence over this two-bit dictator (Kim Jong-Il)," McCain said. "The Chinese have to understand that there are repercussions for our relationship if they don't do the right thing."

McCain, who received a standing ovation from the crowd, said he also felt the need to comment the U.S. fighting in Iraq, criticizing Democrats who have advocated a troop withdrawal sooner rather than later….

What's clear is that Israeli intelligence underestimated the range of Hezbollah’s rockets.

(Number of the sites in the north of Israel struck by Katyusha rockets so far today – courtesy of the Jerusalem Post)

Tiberias, for example, is 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border and was thought to be safe from attack. One lesson in all this is that a nation, in this case Iran, can substantial enhance the capabilities of its proxy and that state sponsors must be held accountable for their actions. The current bout of international finger wagging isn’t going to do the trick. From the Jerusalem Post:

Hours after its first rocket attack since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Tiberias sustained a second barrage of Katyusha rockets. Two of the rockets hit residential areas, while two others fell in open areas, police said. Another rocket hit an apartment building shortly later….

Between the two strikes, rockets fell in numerous other places along the northern border, including Nahariya, Safed, Mahanayim, Hatzor, Ben Ami and Karmiel….

The first strike on Tiberias early Saturday afternoon represented a further extension of Hizbullah's rockets' range, since Haifa was struck on Thursday. Tiberias is located on the western shore of the Kinneret, some 35 kilometers south of the Lebanese border, which was previously assessed to be outside the area that would be hit by Katyushas….

Moshav Kfar Hitim, near Tiberias, along with Migdal, Evron, and Abu Snan in the western Galilee were also hit.

Earlier, a senior Israeli intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said that Hizbullah has 150 missiles that could reach a distance of 45 kilometers, and another 20 with a range of 100-200 kilometers.

"They may hit Tel Aviv," the official said, adding that intelligence officials were not sure why Hizbullah has not used the missiles since it started firing rockets at Israel on Wednesday….

(With the ambassador back in the news, this is a good time to review some material that much of the media neglects to mention in its coverage of him.)

Posted on April 9, 2006:

You've got to hand it to Joe Wilson. He has certainly cashed in on his celebrity as he tours college campuses making ludicrous statements. Wilson is also someone who is curiously forgetful about facts that involve his behavior and those surrounding his trip to Niger.

''It seems to me that first and foremost, the White House needs to come clean on this matter,'' Wilson told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's ''This Week.'' ''My own view of this is that the White House owes the American people and particularly our service people who have been sent into war, an apology for having misrepresented the facts.''

In case you forgot, Joe Wilson once claimed a role in exposing the Iraq-Niger documents as forgeries. But that wasn't true, as the Senate's 2004 bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq pointed out:

Page 45

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article…which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

And media reports to the contrary, Wilson did not "debunk" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium. In fact, most intelligence analysts believed his trip "lent more credibility" to reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, and the CIA continued to approve the use of the Iraq-Niger-Uranium language "in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union."
The same Senate report states:

Conclusion 13 (page 73)

The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be wiling or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

Conclusion 12 (page 72)

Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.

Conclusion 19 (page 77)

Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.

And, for the record, the British have stood firm in their intelligence on the matter. In fact, the July 2004 Butler report states that the president's uranium reference in his 2003 State of the Union address was "well-founded" and based on intelligence having nothing to do with the forged documents.

Here are the "relevant" bits, on pages 123 and 125:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa'

was well-founded.

And,

From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

I wonder why none of this makes it into Mr. Wilson's speeches.

The latest poll is gloomy news for Republicans but there’s one interesting number the GOP should pay attention to.

One bright spot for the GOP is that Republicans hold an advantage over Democrats on issues such as foreign policy and fighting terrorism _ 43 percent to 33 percent _ and a smaller edge on handling Iraq _ 36 percent to 32 percent.

The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted after the divisive Democratic debate in the Senate over setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. Potential voters were paying attention to the GOP complaint that Democrats want to "cut and run."

"It seems like the Democrats want to pull out or start to pull out, and I don't think that's the correct thing to do," said Eric Bean, 24, a college minister in Fort Worth, Texas. "I'd much rather see a Congress that would support our president. I think George Bush is doing the best he can. I think Republicans will support him."

If Democrats were hitting Republicans from the right on national security issues, the GOP would be in far deeper trouble. But naturally they’re not, which gives Republicans an opening to schedule as many security-related votes as possible before November 7. During the August recess, the GOP leadership staff should devise a floor strategy that will make life difficult for Democratic election strategists post-Labor Day.

The Times in Britain reports that anti-American Member of Parliament George Galloway will join hands with a radical Islamist cleric and accused war criminal:

A HARDLINE Islamist cleric who government advisers wanted banned from Britain is scheduled to fly to London this weekend to attend events alongside Muslim community leaders.

The Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office considered excluding Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, an MP in Bangladesh who preaches violent hatred against the West and is accused of war crimes, last year. But despite a series of e-mail exchanges in September, his visa was never revoked and the Home Office issued no exclusion order….

Mr Sayeedi was last in Britain weeks after the July 7 bombings. Tomorrow he is scheduled to visit a housing fair at the London Muslim Centre, part of the East London Mosque. The mosque’s chairman, Muhammad Abdul Bari, is the newly elected leader of the Muslim Council of Britain. Mr Sayeedi is then due to attend a rally in a nearby park alongside the MP George Galloway.

In leaked e-mails seen by The Times, the Home Office sought advice from research analysts in the Foreign Office while considering the case for excluding Mr Sayeedi.

Internal messages between advisers discussed the threat that he allegedly posed, and one attached a report from a Bangladeshi human rights organisation. The report quotes Mr Sayeedi as saying that Britain and the US “deserve all that is coming to them” for overturning the Taleban in Afghanistan.

The e-mail from one adviser, Eric Taylor, continues: “He [Mr Sayeedi] has made a particularly offensive comment about Bangladeshi Hindus, comparing them to excrement. He also appears to defend attacks against the Ahmadiya (Islamist) community.

“. . . Previous visits to the UK have been reportedly marred by violence caused by his supporters. In 2000, during one of his talks in Oldham, his supporters reportedly attacked and beat up five Bengali elders.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius informs us today that the U.S. and Israel have a “public opinion” problem. We’re further told that America needs to be an “honest broker” between Israel, a democracy, and the tyrant states and terrorist groups that surround it. But, as Charles Krauthammer writes in his excellent Post column today, Israel’s “PR” problem, in the eyes of many, begins with its very existence.

From AFP:

The United States has reason to feel "strategically optimistic" about the future of Iraq, Washington's envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, said, despite rampant sectarian bloodshed.

"Americans should be strategically optimistic about Iraq, even as the continuing difficulties in Iraq will require tactical patience," said Khalilzad, appearing before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

The envoy hailed various "positive developments which give the Iraqi government and friends of Iraq real hope," particularly in the political arena.

"Political progress that has been made in Iraq has created opportunities and put Iraq on the right trajectory," he said.

Khalilzad cited a "tectonic shift" among Iraq's Sunni community, which, after months of boycotting the postwar political process, is now actively involved.

He also noted Iraq's successful elections and the formation of the country's national unity government earlier this year.

Khalilzad conceded, however, that neither Washington nor the Baghdad government had found the answer to "curbing sectarian violence and defeating terrorism."

Among the challenges that persist, he said, are "extremely difficult" security conditions -- especially in Baghdad, which "has become the focal point of terrorist and sectarian violence."

The diplomat also charged that "a few countries, most notably Syria and Iran, appear intent on fomenting instability in Iraq.

"Syria and Iran continue to engage in actions to destabilize Iraq, providing sanctuary, training, arms and financing to the extremists fighting the new government," said Khalilzad….

Critics on the Senate panel, including Senator Joe Biden, the panel's top Democrat, insisted that progress in Iraq must be measured in more concrete terms, including the delivery of essential services to the Iraqis.

"If the government can't do basic things -- like turn on the lights, provide clean water, make payrolls or supply and sustain the army -- then we'll leave behind a failing state when our troops come home," Biden said….

In a visit to Iraq on Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that militias as well as insurgents were undermining security, but like Khalilzad, he said he was hopeful that a robust political process would eventually help to end the bloodshed.

This quote from the Russian foreign minister is rich. The Kremlin took a flamethrower to Groznyy and made much of it a wasteland by conducting an air and artillery bombardment with no concern for civilian casualties. Israel’s actions are the exact opposite of how the Russians operate. From Reuters:

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced both Israel's attack on Lebanon and its operations against the Palestinian territories.

"This is a disproportionate response to what has happened and if both sides are going to drive each other into a tight corner then I think that all this will develop in a very dramatic and tragic way," he told reporters on a flight from Paris to Moscow, Interfax news agency reported.

Former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg made three points this morning in a Fox News interview: 1) Hezbollah wouldn’t conduct cross-border raids into Israel without the green light from Iran; 2) the failure of the US and other nations to keep heavy pressure on Damascus following the Cedar Revolution was a mistake; 3) the UN Security Council has called repeatedly for the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon to be dismantled. One of the latest, Resolution 1583, was unanimously adopted in 2005. Obviously, the disarmament never happened. Hezbollah has been stockpiling weapons, including rockets, near the Israeli border for quite awhile. In his November 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial “Our Troops Must Stay” in Iraq, Senator Lieberman noted that “the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next” to be disarmed if we are to continued putting terrorist groups and their client states on the defensive. Ultimately, the images on today’s television screens aren’t the fault of Jerusalem or Washington. Damascus and Tehran have given the green light to their clients. Iran, in particular, seeks to divert the world's attention from its continued stiff-arming over its nuclear enrichment activities. It would be nice if other capitals woke up to this reality.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, meets Syria’s Assad yesterday for talks (via the Islamic Republic News Agency)

Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa predictably blames Israel for the current fighting, the Associated Press reports, and denies any Syrian role in the Israeli soldiers’ abductions. But what is noteworthy is that he chose to deliver his regime’s message during a press conference held in Damascus with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.

Al-Sharaa made the comments at a news conference with, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, whose country is also a top backer of Hamas and Hezbollah.

"When the Zionist entity attacks and slaughters the Palestinian people ... resistance is necessary," Larijani said.

Perhaps Mr. Larijani was in Damascus to get some advice on whether Tehran should suspend its nuclear enrichment activities and get out of the terrorist-sponsoring business.

Today in Baghdad, where security has not improved post-Zarqawi, Gen. Casey indicated that a change in strategy might be on the horizon. He made his comments during a press conference he and Secretary Rumsfeld held following their meeting. From the AP:

Casey said he was consulting with the Iraqi government on means of counteracting the violence. Asked whether that might include putting more U.S. troops in the Baghdad area, Casey replied, ''It may, yes.''

''We'll make sure there are adequate forces available for the Iraqis to succeed in Baghdad,'' he added. Rumsfeld said earlier Wednesday that the number of Iraqi and U.S. troops in Baghdad had recently grown from 40,000 to about 55,000.

Casey and Rumsfeld were meeting later with Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki and members of his Cabinet, who are under growing pressure to show better results from a monthlong crackdown on violence in the capital.

Also, the Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece on Marine operations in Ramadi.

Rather than a direct assault, the goal in Ramadi, officials say, is to shrink the insurgent-dominated areas by creating a ring of combat outposts around the center of the city. The approach uses tactics honed last year by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in the much-smaller city of Tall Afar, near the Syrian border.

Making the population feel more secure is key in fighting an insurgency.

This time things would be different. North Korea had badly miscalculated in firing its missiles, as some claimed in the immediate aftermath of the launch. Kim Jong Il’s belligerence would be met by a tough, united international response. But has it miscalculated? The one nation with enormous economic leverage on the North, China, refuses to employ it and Japan, a strong U.S. ally, has watched its proposed UN resolution get emasculated. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who’s in Beijing, said today that “China is working very hard and taking its responsibility very, very seriously in trying to get the six-party process going again.” The reality is China hasn’t been “taking its responsibility very, very seriously” – far from it. Until they’re serious, Pyongyang will likely continue its provocations.

Missile Launch Pad, North Korea

(Courtesy of Globalsecurity.org)

From the AP:

The Navy will christen its new 684-foot warship the Green Bay on Saturday at a shipyard near New Orleans….

This ship, designed to carry troops for rapid deployment, launch and recovery, will be a major part of the U.S. amphibious fleet and carry 360 Navy sailors along with up to 800 Marines….

Former U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Danzig says the city’s “commitment to team efforts” is why the name was chosen, and former Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr will appear in a video that will be played at the christening ceremony.

“The tradition and history of the team is unmatched anywhere,” Starr says. “When you combine the historical strength with the unique fan support that is there, it’s an honor to be identified with that great community.”

Lombardi Middle School Principal Nancy Croy will attend the christening as part of the school’s relationship with the Navy. Also, Stephanie Favre, cousin of Packers quarterback Brett Favre, works in production control at the shipyard.

“To end up on working on this project, it’s really weird,” Favre said. “This is my way of contributing to the defense of our country.”

Surely this bit of news from Reuters will prompt the Russians and Chinese to get serious about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program:

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator rebuffed Western pressure for an immediate answer to an offer of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment ahead of crucial talks with the European Union on Tuesday….

But Ali Larijani told reporters before he met EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana for a second round of talks in five days: "We have expressed our view regarding the deadline. We are not used to acting before thinking."

Iran has said it will reply in late August to a package of technology, economic and political sweeteners, and an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman suggested its full answer would only emerge later during detailed negotiations on the offer.

"Iran's answer will not be given suddenly. The answers will be given during the negotiations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying by state radio, adding Tehran saw "ambiguities" in all three areas of the package.

An Iranian deputy foreign minister said Iran was not considering freezing its uranium enrichment activities as part of a solution.

"We did it before, we did it for two and a half years. It proved that it didn't work," Manuchehr Mohammadi said on a visit to China. "Nothing came as the fruitful and useful conclusion."

Mohammadi said Iran was optimistic about what he called Western "flexibility" over the incentives, but warned that any resort to sanctions would be counter-productive.

Diplomats say Russia and China, both veto-holders in the U.N. Security Council, are wary about imposing sanctions on Tehran and so acknowledge there is little pressure on Iran to give an early reply to the offer presented by Solana on June 6….

From AFP:

China has repeated its rejection of a proposed UN resolution on possible sanctions against North Korea, dashing US and Japanese hopes for quick action over Pyongyang's missile tests.

A foreign ministry announcement that the draft Security Council resolution was an "overreaction" came amid another flurry of shuttle diplomacy to address the crisis in the wake of last Wednesday's missile launches.

Considering the cover of this week's Time magazine, President Bush is in good company on the “cowboy” front. The media and the Democrats used all sorts of “cowboy” combinations to lampoon President Reagan and the conduct of his foreign policy -- from nuclear arms control and S.D.I. to Central America. Here are just a few examples I found doing a quick Nexis search of newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad:

Trigger-happy cowboy

Dangerous cowboy

Quick-draw cowboy

Missile-toting cowboy

Space cowboys

Hollywood cowboy

Lone cowboy

Hip-shooting cowboy

Missile-riding cowboy

Rough-and-ready cowboy

Nuclear cowboy

Macho cowboy

Cowboy president

Cowboy diplomacy

Cowboy era

Cowboy days

In 1988, presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was particularly derisive of Reagan’s America “wandering around the world like a lonesome cowboy.” And his chief foreign policy advisor, Madeleine Albright, also remarked that a Dukakis administration would jettison Reagan’s “lonesome cowboy” approach to the world.

Some things never change.

The Republican governor of Arkansas and possible presidential candidate must be getting his foreign policy talking points from fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. From the Des Moines Register:

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa Saturday downplayed the threat North Korea's missile testing last week posed to the United States, but discouraged U.S. officials from confronting the actions without strong international collaboration.

"They are doing some saber-rattling, but their swords are very dull and very rusty," Huckabee, a Republican weighing a presidential campaign, said about the rogue communist nation as he began a three-day swing through Iowa.

Having returned from a trip to South Korea and Japan just days before the test, Huckabee said North Korea's missile technology is so crude that South Koreans are less concerned than Americans about the developments.

"They don't really have the weaponry that's advanced enough to have people ducking and covering just yet," he said in an interview. "But this clearly can't be another situation where the U.S. goes it alone."

The governor may want to spend a little more time with Japanese government officials. From today’s AP:

Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on the North's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible U.N. Security Council vote on Tokyo's proposal for sanctions against the regime.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

This is from the same guy who embraced the phrase "centrist Democrat" when he was running for the North Carolina senate seat. I also don’t recall John Edwards scalding reporters for referring to him as a “centrist” when he was running for president in 2004. For that matter, his aides pushed Edwards’ southern centrist roots as a major reason John Kerry should put him on the ticket. Now, he’s running around Iowa repudiating centrists and his Iraq War vote and sticking it to Joe Lieberman. Classy. From Saturday’s Des Moines Register:

Former Sen. John Edwards, in Iowa Friday, railed against moderate Democrats and declined to endorse his former colleague Joseph Lieberman, the Senate's leading Democratic proponent of the Iraq war.

Edwards' tone during a congressional fundraiser in Cedar Rapids was more evidence of the North Carolina Democrat's effort to project himself as an anti-war populist, after himself voting for the resolution that authorized President Bush's use of force in Iraq.

"I don't believe in a party that's trying to navigate its way to the political center and to see how careful we can be," the 2004 vice presidential nominee told a cheering crowd of 80 party activists at a downtown cafe.

((From AP: "Iran has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove the head of the inspection team probing Tehran's nuclear program….The inspector, Chris Charlier, has not been back to Iran since April because of Iranian displeasure with his work….However, Charlier remains the head of the team, they [the UN] said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue was confidential. The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported Sunday that Charlier had been removed from his post and assigned to other duties. It quoted him as saying he believes Iran is operating a clandestine nuclear program and suggested it was linked to weapons. IAEA spokespeople in Vienna, Austria, declined comment Sunday. Charlier, 61, has previously complained publicly that Iranian constraints made inspection work there difficult." I wonder how vocal the reaction of the U.S. State Department will be to the obvious sidelining of Charlier.)

Securitywatchtower.com points to an interesting piece (note: translation is a little rough) in the German newspaper Die Welt on a demoted IAEA inspector, a Belgian nuclear expert familiar with Iran’s program. The scientist claims that Iran’s top nuclear negotiator pushed for his demotion and succeeded. If accurate, stay tuned….

No help on Iran. No help on North Korea. No help on Darfur and Sudan. Somehow this story from today’s Washington Post doesn’t surprise me:

BEIJING, July 7 -- The Chinese government is preparing to prosecute a blind peasant who exposed excesses by authorities in enforcing the one-child policy in eastern China, where local officials were accused by residents of forcing thousands of people to undergo sterilization or to abort pregnancies. The decision, disclosed by court officials Friday, follows a prolonged bureaucratic stalemate in the ruling Communist Party over how to handle the allegations in the city of Linyi, and it highlights the growing clout of hard-liners in the party since President Hu Jintao took office three years ago.

Chen Guangcheng, 34, the blind rural activist who drew international attention to a violent crackdown on unauthorized births in Linyi last year, is scheduled to be tried July 17 on charges of destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic, according to his attorney, Li Jinsong.

The charges stem from an incident in March in which Chen is accused of leading a protest against local officials who had illegally confined him to his house and who were beating villagers who tried to help him, Li and residents of Chen's village said.

Chen's trial could renew international scrutiny of China's population-control practices, and it represents a major setback for reformers in the government who have been trying to soften the one-child policy and eliminate the abuses long associated with it.

Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid offers some insights on the Damascus regime in Beirut’s Daily Star.

[A]after a period of lying low, the Assads are re-emerging as one of the Middle East's chief backers of radical groups - Islamist or ultra-nationalist. The recent showdown with Israel over the fate of an abducted Israeli soldier is a case in point, as the kidnapping seems to have been instigated, if not orchestrated, by Hamas leaders residing in Damascus, where they live under the protection of the Assads.

Together with the Syrian regime's continuing dabbling in Lebanon and its strengthened alliance with Iran, the Assads seem to be thumbing their noses at the international community….

Bashar can never truly be interested in a final resolution of Syria's outstanding foreign entanglements. Having to continuously manage outside crises is the only way for him and his family to maintain their grip on power. Adventurism, therefore, will remain a mainstay of Syrian foreign policy, no matter how suicidal it might seem at this time, considering the constantly changing geopolitical realities in the region.

So, and in a typical fashion, Assad and the rest of his family will continue to up the ante in their confrontation with the international community.

From yesterday's Jerusalem Post editorial:

When President George W. Bush first stated in 2002 that Iran and North Korea were joined in an "axis of evil," there was much snickering, not only at the use of moralistic language, but at the implication that such disparate countries were in any way connected.

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, for example, called Bush's comments "a big mistake" and pointed out that "first of all, they [Iran, Iraq and North Korea] are very different from each other."

They certainly are different, but the connections between the two remaining axis regimes are real.

Among the missiles that North Korea test-fired this week were short-range Scud-C missiles and intermediate range Rodong missiles, both of which, The New York Times reports, North Korea has sold to Iran, Pakistan and other nations….

The timing [of the missile launch] reasonably led the Times to speculate that North Korea's "core goal was simply to ratchet up the pressure for greater aid and diplomatic recognition, perhaps mirroring the Western incentives offered to Iran to suspend its nuclear program." Attempts to engage and bribe Iran and North Korea into better behavior appear not only to be failing, but to be spurring those nations to greater levels of belligerency.

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, who did a good job while in office, had a lot to say Wednesday night on Hardball. He’s opposed to the president’s immigration position, which he has every right to do. But in explaining why, the Virginia Republican totally mischaracterized what’s in the Senate-passed bill -- a bill that basically tracks with the president’s view on immigration reform – and he forgot to mention that fellow Virginia GOPer Jerry Kilgore recently lost his gubernatorial election bid after making his Gilmore-like position on immigration the centerpiece of his campaign. Gilmore also commented on Sen. Lieberman's primary challenge from the anti-war Ned Lamont:

Question: What does this tell us governor that an anti-war candidate could beat Senator Joe Lieberman?

GILMORE: Well, I always say that when your enemy is destroying himself, don’t interrupt, right? But I think this: I think that it really is an indication as we have seen over and over, that we start to begin to reward people who are breaking away from party loyalty.

I think it’s becoming more and more of a characteristic with Democrats and Republicans. We reward people who break away from party loyalty.

Excuse me, but shouldn’t we applaud a Democrat who has stood with a Republican president on a war because he believes national security trumps party loyalty? A fierce anti-communist, Democratic Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson often bucked his McGovernite party on foreign policy and defense issues. Was he wrong to do so? Despite deep Republican reservations, Senator Dole backed President Clinton in the Balkans. Was he wrong too? Sorry Governor, but you’re way off base on this one.

This piece in the Washington Post is encouraging assuming more Iraqi units act as well in the field. This unit held together, engaged Sadr’s Shiite militia and apparently routed them. But what the Post doesn’t report and would be interesting to know is whether the unit is comprised mostly of Shiites. I suspect it is.

BAGHDAD, July 7 -- Iraqi soldiers clashed Friday morning with Shiite militiamen in the eastern Baghdad slum of Sadr City, killing or capturing 30 to 40 fighters in one engagement, according to a statement from the U.S. military.

While the statement did not name the militia involved, that area of Baghdad is controlled by the Mahdi Army -- a force loyal to firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. One of those taken prisoner was a "high-level" leader of "multiple insurgent cells" responsible for kidnappings and killings, including the deaths of two Iraqi soldiers, the statement said.

From Marine Corps News -- here and here.

When the North Korean dictator says jump (this time in the form of lobbing missiles) many Clintonites ask, "how high?" Bill Richardson, Madeleine Albright, Wendy Sherman, etc. have been all over the media pushing for direct talks with Pyongyang. They believe the U.S. can strike a deal with the North the same way the Clinton administration did in the 1990s. And we know that approach worked well. From today’s Wall Street Journal editorial:

Kim is at it again because his previous provocations have typically been rewarded. The most famous example is the 1994 Agreed Framework in which the Clinton Administration responded to Kim's nuclear threats by offering aid and the promise of nuclear energy plants. That deal collapsed in 2002 when Kim repudiated it, announced a secret nuclear program and kicked out U.N. inspectors.

Or consider what happened the last time Kim launched a missile, sending the Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998. The Clinton Administration went back to the negotiating table and came close to concluding a missile version of the 1994 nuclear agreement. As part of that deal--negotiated by then-State Department Counsellor Wendy Sherman--the U.S. would launch North Korean satellites in return for the North's pledge to stop developing long-range missiles.

Given Pyongyang's abysmal record at keeping its promises, the more likely outcome would have been the theft of U.S. technology and the strengthening of the North's missile program.

And Sen. McCain had this to say yesterday:

It would be the height of folly to reward this lawless rogue regime with diplomatic benefits, including the bilateral talks it seeks. In the 1990s we nurtured Kim Jong-il’s expectation that threats of attack will garner benefits, when the United States agreed to provide fuel oil and construct two civilian nuclear reactors in return for a freeze on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs. Mr. Kim cheated on that agreement, and now the world faces a nuclear-armed North Korea. While the U.S. and our allies have presented incentives within the context of the six party talks, these can only go forward if North Korea gives up its nuclear program completely and verifiably. In the meantime, the world has seen the course Mr. Kim prefers, and we must respond accordingly.

Of course, despite the best efforts of UN Ambassador Bolton, I doubt the Security Council will do much beyond passing a resolution with a few tough words in it. One person suggested to me that the US should go ahead and let Russia or China veto a resolution with teeth to expose to everyone just what enablers they are of the North Korean dictatorship -- and the regime in Khartoum for that matter. After that, go ahead with the weaker resolution. Interesting thought but it won’t happen in this go around.

Iran is taking its sweet time responding to the UN Security Council on its offer of aid in exchange for the regime’s suspension of uranium enrichment. Its latest excuse for not getting back with an answer is fear of hit squads. From AFP:

Iran postponed key talks in Brussels between its chief nuclear negotiator and the EU foreign policy chief until July 11 for fear of hit squads, the state news agency IRNA reported.

And after watching the Security Council’s weak response to North Korea’s missile volley the Iranian regime will likely continue the stall.

From Reuters:

A French terrorism trial was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday by a report French agents secretly interviewed the six accused during their detention at a U.S. military camp on Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

The Liberation daily published a French diplomatic telegram referring to intelligence agents conducting interviews at least twice while the men were held without charge on the Caribbean island….

Some of the suspects arrived at the main Paris Criminal Court brandishing Liberation's front page and appeared relaxed and all smiles inside the courtroom as they discussed the surprise development.

Presiding Judge Jean-Claude Kross noted wryly the diplomatic telegram was dated April 1, 2002 -- April Fool's Day -- but refused to halt the three-day-old trial over a document whose authenticity had not been fully established.

And how did these six fellows end up in Gitmo? French prosecutors “allege the six men joined a terrorism network based in Britain and the Afghan-Pakistan border, passing through Britain en route to al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan” -- where they were scooped up by the US military. Liberation’s editors must be all smiles with “alleged” terrorists trumpeting their newspaper for the media’s cameras.

Call me a skeptic of the comments made by some U.S. government officials and pundits that North Korea badly miscalculated in firing its missiles. The U.N. Security Council isn’t likely to do much beyond condemning the “provocation” and pleading with the North to return to the six-party talks. If anything, there will be a new push for the U.S. to directly engage the North. The Clintonites have already taken to the airways this morning calling for just that. Madeleine Albright blamed yesterday’s events on a “failure of diplomacy,” which is her way of blaming the Bush White House for abandoning her administration’s North Korean policy. But the lesson the North most likely learned from the Clinton days was that blackmail works. The one nation in the region that seems serious about dealing with the North is Japan. Unlike some Clinton folks, the Japanese may not believe that the North is seeking a grand bargain with the international community in which the hermit kingdom gives up its nukes and nuclear-capable missiles in exchange for economic aid and security guarantees. Pyongyang may actually intend to put nuclear warheads on its missiles and may have concluded that the Security Council (thanks to Beijing, for now at least) is too dysfunctional to impose strong, lasting sanctions. Yes, the North Koreans have “provoked” the international community but if past is prologue I doubt they’ll do much about it. Let's hope I'm wrong.

After capturing Kabul in 1996, it wasn't long before the Taliban imposed a harsh brand of Islam. The capitol’s soccer stadium became a killing field where pre-game festivities included executions and the chopping off of limbs. Today, in southern Somalia, a new Taliban may be emerging. From the BBC:

Two people are reported dead after Islamist gunmen in central Somalia opened fire in a cinema where people were watching a banned World Cup match.

The cinema owner and a young girl were reportedly killed by militia loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts, who seized control of parts of Somalia last month.

The courts have introduced Sharia law in areas under their authority, including a World Cup broadcast ban.

If Sen. Lieberman goes down in his August primary, Republicans should be ready to wrap his loss around the neck of the national Democratic Party. Lieberman is well liked and respected by people outside of the leftwing fever swamps. He polls well among Republicans and most importantly with independents. A Lieberman loss will garner mega media coverage and the GOP message should be simple: the Democrats have purged their strongest voice on national security and are the party of retreat in the war on terror. Republicans should also quote liberally from the senator's many floor speeches and op-eds defending the decision to remove Saddam from power and explaining his opposition to Democratic withdrawal plans. Some in the Democratic establishment believe a Lieberman loss won’t matter much on election day. They’re wrong. A Lieberman defeat, combined with an aggressive security-related legislative strategy with lots of debate and votes, should pay the GOP dividends in November. In reaction to the New York Times piece revealing the details of the terror-financing tracking program, New York Democrat and campaign committee head Sen. Chuck Schumer said that he wanted more congressional debate on this issue and other related ones; Republicans should fulfill his wish.

This past February a remarkable and peaceful demonstration took place in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of mainly Sunnis marked the first anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Some carried signs, the AP reported, “calling for ‘The Truth’…. Others carried placards critical of Syria and its president, Bashar Assad. ‘Isn't it enough, Bashar?’ said one, listing the names of anti-Syrian Lebanese who have been slain in other bombings in the last year. ‘Those who killed Hariri meant to kill Lebanon, but they failed. A new united Lebanon was born,’ said Samia Baroudy…. Holding a Lebanese flag, she said Hariri's death was both 'a disaster' and 'a miracle' that brought the Lebanese together.” In December 2005, Secretary Rice wrote in the Washington Post that “had we done nothing, consider all that we would have missed in just the past year: A Lebanon that is free of foreign occupation and advancing democratic reform.” At the time, there was also momentum for UN-imposed sanctions on Damascus for its obstruction of the Hariri investigation.

But lately, the international pressure on Damascus has ebbed while the regime remains a destabilizing force in the region. David Satterfield, senior advisor to Secretary Rice on Iraq, recently stated to the Al-Hayat daily that Syria remains a “main passageway for suicide bombers in Iraq.” And Beirut’s Daily Star reports that “prominent Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt lashed out at Damascus on Sunday, saying he 'feared the current Syrian regime is trying to turn Lebanon into another Iraq by exporting Al-Qaeda fighters into the country.'"

Lebanon has come a long way, as Secretary Rice wrote a few months back, but the road to its continued progress leads to Damascus -- and keeping Assad’s feet to the fire is critical if Lebanese democrats are to prevail.

On ABC's This Week on Sunday, Sen. McCain criticized the New York Times for publishing the details of the highly classified program that tracks terrorist money flows.

I don't think they should have. I think there are laws that were passed that allow programs such as this. I think it's a very important program, tracking the money is always a vital tool. And members of Congress were kept informed and agreed to this program. So, no, I don't think they should have published it.

He also noted the disingenuousness of Times’ current efforts to downplay the significance of its original piece disclosing the program.

[I]f The New York Times thinks the story was inconsequential, the legitimate question is, why was it on the front page?

Good question for the paper’s executive editor.