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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
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| American Legion: Kerry "Should Apologize Now" |
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The nation's largest veterans organization, The American Legion, released the following statement a short time ago: American Legion to Sen. Kerry: Apologize Now Vets for Freedom has also released a statement on Kerry's remarks. ![]()
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| McCain Blasts Kerry |
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Sen. McCain released the following statement today in response to Sen. John Kerry's patronizing remarks on Monday: Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. Kerry’s remarks are a disgrace, but not surprising. Though ineptly delivered, Kerry’s line on the uneducated, poor soldier is a myth routinely pushed by the Left. From the March 12, 2006 New York Times: The American military does not depend on poor recruits to sustain itself, argues Tim Cavanaugh in ''Middle-Class Warfare: Military Recruits and Poverty'' in Reason magazine. Good for McCain for nailing Kerry on it.
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| Coalitions of the Willing |
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Given the Security Council's routine dithering, it's good to see the Bush administration steadily building a parallel and flexible structure to deal with threats rather than just debate them at Turtle Bay. On Monday, the New York Times reports, more than two dozen countries, including three gulf states, practiced intercepting and searching vessels suspected of trafficking in unconventional weapons in major military maneuvers on Monday that emphasized their coordination and willingness to aggressively block the spread of arms. The exercise was part of the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative -- a program created in 2003 to track and intercept illicit wmd trafficking by rogue nations.
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Monday, October 30, 2006
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| Rudy, Gingrich & 2008 |
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It's no secret that a Giuliani presidential run would complicate McCain's primary strategy just as a Gingrich candidacy would complicate Romney’s. Giuliani has obvious strength with independent voters, and he can be very tough on the Democrats. Because he’s not a fan of the liberal media establishment, I suspect Giuliani would pick some fights with them to score points with conservative Republicans turned off by his social views. As mayor, Giuliani frequently battled The New York Times and its editors over his policies. Getting in a fight with the Times and other liberal icons won’t lose him votes in the GOP, and it would put pressure on McCain to do much the same or risk hemorrhaging too many conservative votes to Giuliani. If Gingrich takes the plunge, Romney’s strategy of becoming the sole conservative alternative to McCain would probably take much longer to achieve. The former speaker would presumably seek to be anti-McCain (with a populist twist) candidate, and I can envision the extremely articulate Gingrich staying on the debate stage for some time. To swing anti-McCain voters to his side, Gingrich would likely portray Romney’s record as governor as far less conservative and innovative than meets the eye and also contrast Romney’s more liberal statements as a candidate for office in Massachusetts with what he is saying today to win the GOP presidential nod. Though I have trouble seeing candidates Giuliani or Gingrich ultimately capturing the GOP nod, they would surely make the race fun to watch. Stay tuned…
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| (Update) Mehlman to the Giuliani '08 Camp? |
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(Did some checking. It won't happen.) The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker told NBC's Chris Matthews on Sunday that RNC Chair Ken Mehlman “is going to be leaving the National Republican Committee, possibly heading over to the Giuliani camp.” That would be big news. ![]()
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| What Kerry Didn't Say on Iraq |
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Sen. John Kerry recently claimed on ABC's This Week: "Our own generals tell us the solution in Iraq is not military. If it's not military, don't talk as John McCain does, about putting more troops in…. Talk about how you resolve the political and diplomatic dilemma and sectarian dilemma between Shia and Sunni and the region." Is this the same Kerry who’s been running around the nation calling the current strategy – one devised by “our own generals” – a huge failure? He then turns around and trumpets their counsel on troop levels. Of course, these generals have also been telling us that that Kerry’s rapid troop withdrawal plan for Iraq would be a disaster. He didn’t mention that on ABC. But is it true that “our own generals” oppose more troops? Well, the retired generals who spoke before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee in late September certainly believe Kerry is wrong – and remember, the Democrats invited these generals because they’ve been harshly critical of Sec. Rumsfeld’s handling of Iraq. From the Washington Post: But Democrats, while celebrating Batiste's criticism of the administration, exercised some selective listening at the hearing when Batiste and his colleagues offered their solution: more troops, more money and more time in Iraq. People may disagree on troop levels, but John Kerry has his own credibility problems on Iraq.
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Sunday, October 29, 2006
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| Enabling Iran |
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The Kremlin hasn't been too interested in slapping stiff sanctions on Iran over its rogue nuclear program. On the Security Council, Russia, with an assist from China, has acted more like defense counsel for Tehran than a responsible member of the international community seeking to stem nuclear proliferation. While Beijing invests in Iran’s (and Sudan’s for that matter) energy industry, the Russians have opened the arms spigot to Tehran. Today's New York Times reports on a new Congressional Research Service study of international arms sales: The [Russian] sales to improve Iran’s air-defense system are particularly troubling to the United States because they would complicate the task of Pentagon planners should the president order airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
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Saturday, October 28, 2006
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| People Power! |
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Politicalmoneyline.com reports that Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont has tapped his trust fund again and donated another “$2 million … to his campaign committee, raising his General Election contributions to $8,750,000. This is in addition to the $4,001,500 he contributed to his primary election campaign.” Considering Lamont’s weak poll numbers, he may be better off cutting personal checks to each Connecticut voter with a note begging for their vote.
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Friday, October 27, 2006
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| Armey v. Gingrich in '08? |
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Don't be surprised to see former Majority Leader Dick Armey on the debate stage, perhaps in South Carolina this May. Armey knows full well he won’t win the nomination. But, as one knowledgeable source told me, he is seriously considering jumping in for the national exposure and for the chance to duke it out with Newt Gingrich. It’s no secret that Gingrich may run and that Armey isn’t a big admirer of the former speaker. The libertarian Armey, never a fan of the Iraq War which Gingrich supports, has reserved his strongest criticism for “enforcement-only” Republicans, along with the Christian Coalition and evangelical leader James Dobson. Armey strongly supports the president’s call for comprehensive immigration reform and a guest-worker program; Gingrich is steadfast against it. After Armey recently criticized the GOP for having “pandered to Christian evangelical conservatives,” Gingrich fired back on Fox News: “When Dick Armey looks at Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel and huge tax increases he's going to love those evangelicals.” So, buckle up. If Gingrich (who I believe is more likely to run than Giuliani) and Armey enter the fray, the GOP debates should be just as entertaining as those on the other side of the aisle. Stay tuned…
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| Hillary's Carrots |
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A few weeks back, Senator Clinton and Senator McCain got in a tussle over the Clinton administration’s 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. Sen. Clinton said the Framework was a policy success and a lesson for how to deal with Pyongyang. McCain called it a “failure” and something we shouldn’t repeat. Back in 1994, he forcefully argued against the deal with the “crumbling regime” because it was all carrots and no sticks. He also noted: “We will reach a moment when it is apparent to all” that the Framework was a failure. “That will be when North Korea begins reprocessing the fuel now in cooling ponds into weapons-grade plutonium.” All this brings me to this piece, “In ’97, U.S. Panel Predicted a North Korea Collapse in 5 Years,” in today’s New York Times. The Times reports: A team of government and outside experts convened by the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in 1997 that North Korea’s economy was deteriorating so rapidly that the government of Kim Jong-il was likely to collapse within five years, according to declassified documents made public on Thursday. So did all those carrots – from the U.S. and Pyongyang’s neighbors over the years – sustain a regime that was on the verge of collapse? Did all those carrots give Pyongyang the time it needed to advance its missile and nuclear programs? On thing is for sure: The Clinton-McCain North Korea debate hasn’t ended.
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Thursday, October 26, 2006
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| Open Letter on Darfur |
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The Henry Jackson Society has released an open letter “on the crisis in Darfur, signed by fifty-five politicians, opinion formers, academics and journalists, to both raise awareness of this pressing moral and strategic issue, and call on the international community to end ethnic cleansing in Darfur.”
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| A Victory for Free Speech in Denmark |
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From the AP: A Danish court rejected a lawsuit Thursday against the newspaper that first printed the controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Arab politicians and intellectuals warned the verdict would widen the gap between Westerners and Muslims, but said mass protests were unlikely…. I’d say the odds are pretty good that the violent intimidation tactics used against Denmark will be employed again against those exercising their freedom of speech in a democratic nation.
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| Iran, Students & Weapons Programs |
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Today's New York Times reports: "The United States and three European allies have given Russia and China a draft text for a Security Council resolution against Iran’s nuclear program. The proposal includes the extraordinary step of preventing Iranian students from studying nuclear physics at foreign universities and colleges.” The Times continues: It was unclear just how far-reaching the proposed ban against nuclear education for Iranian students abroad would be, and the diplomats involved in the negotiations did not seem to have resolved that issue. In fact, recent history suggests the U.S. and our allies have good reason to be concerned about such contributions to Iran’s weapons programs. Saddam, as I have noted before, tapped foreign universities to boost his nuclear program – a program that “was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb,” the Washington Post reported in August 1991, “not five to 10 years as previously thought.” In a 1995 Washington Quarterly article, “Denial and Deception Practices WMD Proliferators: Iraq and Beyond,” former weapons inspector David Kay wrote that Iraq hid its nuclear weapons program by keeping it “heavily compartmentalized” and employing a variety of deception techniques. For example, Iraq created a network of front companies to import nuclear-related materials “in quantities that were below the size that triggered controls.” Kay continued: The Iraqi nuclear program involved at least 20,000 personnel, many of whom had training and contacts abroad. This was a potentially large source of leakage of information on the aims and direction of these activities. Iraq faced this problem and adopted a series of deception practices designed to limit any such loss. First, Iraq managed its flow of personnel to ensure that students were not all sent to the same universities and countries. This had several advantages. Training in most scientific disciplines follows somewhat different approaches in different countries and provides access to multiple networks of information. This is particularly true in the various engineering and science disciplines that most concern a nuclear weapons program. For example, information concerning the ability and techniques involved in focusing X-rays was classified in the United States long after it was part of the general physics literature in Japan, Germany, and Britain. So the American effort to diminish Iran’s ability to do the same thing is not “extraordinary.” It’s common sense.
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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
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| The Saudis Adopt the Dukakis Furlough Program |
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From the Los Angeles Times (sub. req'd): U.S. officials, apparently caught off guard by the Saudi government's recent release of more than two dozen former Guantanamo Bay prisoners, are voicing fears that the men will join the camp of violent extremist groups.
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| Kerrey v. Kerry on Joe |
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The former Democratic senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey, understands why the John Kerry-endorsed Ned Lamont must be defeated. He is campaigning with Joe Lieberman today in Connecticut. Kerrey is a member of “Dems for Joe,” a band of Democrats who haven’t bailed on Joe. The group includes former Sens. David Boren (OK), John Breaux (LA), Bryan (NV), DeConcini (AZ), and Johnston (LA).
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| Kagan on Iraq |
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The American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan on... our responsibility in Iraq: Both honor and our vital national interest require establishing conditions in Iraq that will allow the government to consolidate and maintain civil peace and good governance. It doesn't matter how many "trained and ready" Iraqi soldiers there are, nor how many provinces are nominally under Iraqi control. If America withdraws its forces before setting the conditions for the success of the Iraqi government, we will have failed in our mission and been defeated in the eyes of our enemies. and why we need a larger Army/Marine Corps: The strain on the soldiers and Marines must be eased. Recruiting and training takes time, of course, and many will argue that it is too late: We'll be out of Iraq before they take the field. That same argument was made in 2003, 2001, 1999, and 1997. If we'd started at any of those times to increase the size of the ground forces, new soldiers would be on the ground today where they are badly needed. How many times are we going to repeat this mistake?
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| John Howard's No Pelosi |
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Australian Prime Minister John Howard hasn't shied away from speaking out on the global intimation campaign against free speech. He’s also not about to run away from Iraq, and he understands the consequences of defeat. Prime Minister John Howard said Wednesday the Iraq mission was not easy, "but we have to ask ourselves is Australia's security enhanced by Western defeat in Iraq." Contrast Howard’s position with that of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a supporter of a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, who had this exchange with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes: STAHL: Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror? So the “war on terror is the war in Afghanistan” but not in Iraq, even though, by her own admission, terrorists have moved into Iraq. The terrorists in Iraq, Pelosi says, will “stay there as long as we’ve there.” Pelosi didn’t say where the terrorists would go once we exited. Some may stay in Iraq; others may go to Afghanistan, South Asia, Somalia, Europe, or the Pacific Rim. In this regard, Pelosi joins the other Howard who also believes the only "fight on terror" is in Afghanistan.
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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
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| Changing Course |
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Phillip Carter, who served with the 101st Airborne in Iraq, has an interesting piece, “The Thin Green Line,” in Slate. He argues precisely against the kind of "over-the-horizon" troop redeployment advocated by many senior Democrats. Some highlights: Despite having 140,000 troops in Iraq, our military is still forced to play a game of whack-a-mole with the insurgency and militias, because it cannot dominate the country enough to secure every city and hamlet. The U.S. military constitutes a thin green line capable of containing the insurgency when deployed, but it cannot be everywhere. The inability of Iraqi police and army units to retake Balad on their own demonstrates the continuing problem with the U.S. exit strategy of "standing up" Iraqi security forces so we can "stand down." Without a radical change of strategy, the mission in Iraq will fail….
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| Mecca Imam on the West |
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From AFP: Fear of the spread of Islam in non-Muslim countries motivates attacks on Muslims in the West, the imam of Islam's holiest shrine has told worshippers celebrating Eid al-Fitr feast.
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| Pelosi's Politicized Intelligence |
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For all her talk about changing the tone in Washington, Rep. Pelosi evidently wants to inject more partisanship into the House Intelligence Committee. Today’s New York Times reports that a Speaker Pelosi would not appoint Rep. Jane Harman to chair the committee. Why? It isn’t because Harmon isn’t qualified. She’s one of the most articulate and thoughtful Democrats on national security. No, Pelosi won’t appoint Harmon because she isn’t partisan enough. Representative Jane Harman has gained national prominence as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, but even her supporters now concede that she is unlikely to become chairman if her party wins control of the House. The anti-Harman campaign has gotten so nasty that someone leaked to Time magazine that Harman was the focus of an F.B.I. "inquiry." Ms. Pelosi’s allies say that she is infuriated by the lobbying effort and that the outside pressure has made her even less likely to consider Ms. Harman. In a Pelosi-run House, the White House would be wise to cultivate closer relations with moderate Democrats like Harman. The combination of a unified GOP and a core group of Democrats uneasy with its leadership could score the administration some surprising legislative victories.
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Monday, October 23, 2006
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| Hillary's Ticking Time Bomb Conversion |
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Senator Clinton is a very shrewd politician. She's trying to pull off the nearly impossible: be tough on national security while not alienating too many Democratic primary voters. Her latest two-step is on the terror detainee bill. She opposed the bill and drew wild applause from the Left with this speech she delivered on the Senate floor: The deliberative process is being broken under the pressure of partisanship and the policy that results is a travesty…. Now, after the bill is off the front pages and the media focus back on Iraq, Clinton says that she’s ok with torture if there’s "an imminent threat to millions of Americans." She adds: "That very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances is better than blasting a big hole in our entire law." But why didn’t she offer such an amendment – one that gave “a blank check to torture” only under “ticking time bomb” scenarios -- when the bill was on the Senate floor and the Democratic grass roots fully engaged? I checked. She didn’t. In fact, had her argument won the day our interrogation program, which has yielded solid intelligence, would have been shut down. Senator Clinton is trying to have it both ways and, judging from the press coverage of her latest torture remarks, she’s succeeding.
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| Sound Advice for the GOP |
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Rather than engage in this nonsense, the RNC should take the advice of former Clintonite Dick Morris in today’s New York Post: Here's one possible ad: We see and hear a wiretapped conversation, with a terrorist revealing his worst plans to his associate - and, inadvertently, to government eavesdroppers, too. Then, when he's about to spill the beans on when and where the next attack is going to come, the line should go dead, with a dial tone, with a machine voice saying "This wiretap terminated in the name of privacy rights by the Democratic U.S. Congress." Connecticut’s Nancy Johnson has run a similar campaign ad. For more on the terrorist surveillance program, see Democratic Center, R.I.P.
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| (Update) The Emerging North Korea of the Middle East? |
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("Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program," reports the AP, "even as the U.N. Security Council focuses on possible sanctions for its defiance of a demand to give up the activity and ease fears it seeks nuclear weapons….”) USA Today has a good editorial on Russian complicity in Iran’s nuclear program. It took the explosion of a nuclear bomb by North Korea — fortunately just a test — for China to start enforcing sanctions and applying pressure in a way that suggests it finally grasps the proliferation dangers, to itself, the region and the world, that its erratic neighbor represents. Of course, Russia isn’t alone in coddling Iran. Beijing has done its share. Moreover, China could put much more economic and political pressure on Pyongyang. There’s also the question of how vigilant Beijing will be in enforcing the sanctions regime against the North. Still, some progress is better than none.
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Sunday, October 22, 2006
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| Fly the Friendly Skies |
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The Associated Press reports: 43 French bag handlers denied clearance
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Saturday, October 21, 2006
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| (Update) Reach Out and Touch Someone |
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(From today's LA Times: "The option of regionalizing the effort -- with the help of Iran and Syria -- appears to have the support of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the Iraq Study Group co-chairman. The senior U.S. official said that such an approach would require Washington to set aside other goals regarding Syria and Iran -- including its push to keep Tehran from gaining a nuclear weapon. â€The question is, are they willing to throw out their Iran and Syria policies to help their Iraq policy?’ he said. â€That's hard for me to conceive.’" Me too. See here for more on the Baker-Hamilton Commission.) Posted on October 17, 2006: Yesterday's Los Angeles Times reports: The former secretary of State, who was a longtime aide to former President George H.W. Bush, also said he favored reaching out to Iran and Syria. But what do we do in the face of continued Iranian defiance over its nuclear program? Engagement hasn’t worked so far, and I suspect Tehran will demand that in exchange for its “cooperation” in Iraq we must stop pushing for punitive action against them and end our support for democrats inside in Iran. It will be interesting to see if the Baker-Hamilton Iraq commission discusses any of this.
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Friday, October 20, 2006
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| "These Are The Stakes" |
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| How about an Apology Senator Kennedy? |
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From the Associated Press: A controversial U.S. military propaganda program used in the Iraq war was legal, a Pentagon investigation has found. To refresh some memories, here is what Sen. Kennedy said about the above program last December: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to the Defense Department's inspector general asking for an investigation into the program and the Lincoln Group contract. Kennedy called it "a devious scheme to place favorable propaganda in Iraqi newspapers."
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| Some Hardball Questions |
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Here's a taste of what Chris Matthews had to say the other night to a college audience at Iowa State: MATTHEWS: How many in this room believe in the war in Iraq from beginning to now, support the war in its full reality? The senator is one of those. Who else agrees with him? Stand up. Does Chris Matthews support the war in Afghanistan? If so, has he prodded the military to let him serve there in some capacity? How about working for an NGO in Kabul? They’re also a part of the war effort in Afghanistan. Does Matthews support the use of force in the Darfur region? If so, will he urge the military to let him participate in some way in that operation? Will he join one of the NGOs that will likely flood into Darfur once some security is established? How about Kosovo? Did Matthews support President Clinton’s policy? Did he push the military to let him serve in some capacity in the operation? How about after the bombing stopped? Did he offer to help out KFOR, the peacekeeping force that went in? How about lending a hand to the NGOs still working in Pristina and other parts of Kosovo? Perhaps a student at the next stop on the Hardball College Tour can asked Matthews about all this.
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| "Flags of Our Father" Director Clint Eastwood on McCain |
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Via Hotline blog: Entertainment Weekly: So is there any conceivable possibility in the modern world for the assertion of conventional heroism?
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| False Flags |
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Today's New York Times has an interesting piece on North Korea's history of proliferating weapons and related material by registering its ships under foreign flags. It also shows how critical it is that Beijing aggressively inspect North Korean shipments coming across the Chinese border. Beijing’s lackadaisical attitude on this point is not encouraging. The incidents illustrated North Korea’s adroit use of so-called flags of convenience to camouflage the movement of its cargo vessels as they engage in tasks that sometimes violate international laws.
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| Israel, Iran & the Bomb |
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In July, I noted the following: 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. Yesterday, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News reported: GRIFFIN: Israeli leaders have long painted Iran and its nuclear program as the world's problem. No longer. Ehud Olmert, on his first visit to Moscow since becoming prime minister, sounded defiant. "The Iranians need to be afraid that something will happen to them," he said, "if they continue pursuing their nuclear program."
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| Will the West Stand with Tbilisi? |
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Putin's efforts to destabilize the Republic of Georgia, a pro-Western democracy, continue. The Associated Press reports that Russian sanctions have effectively severed the Caucasus nation from its biggest market and supplier. Transport and postal links are suspended. Russian canned foods, cooking oil, and sausage are disappearing from store shelves; Newsstands report a run on popular Russian-language magazines, especially women's journals that don't appear in Georgian translation. Where is the West’s condemnation of all this? Is anything being done to help our friends in Tbilisi? Will Russia, a G8 member, succeed in breaking the Georgians?
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
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| North Korea's Other Path |
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Secretary of State Rice told a news conference held today in Seoul: I hope it (China) has been successful in saying to North Korea that there is really only one path, which is denuclearization and dismantlement of its programs. But there’s another path Pyongyang may be eyeing: pop off a few more nukes, wait a few months for the international uproar to subside, then engage its neighbors and the rest of the world as a nuclear power and leader of the Third World.
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| The GOP's "Tet" Test |
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The media have been waiting for an Iraqi "Tet" for a while. In October 2004, dozens of news stories talked about the enemy’s Tet strategy in Iraq. Attacks did spike before the presidential election, but not enough to derail Bush’s victory. Now, the Tet talk is back with the president's latest interview on ABC News. But what if the enemy does execute synchronized major attacks around Iraq, especially hitting targets inside the Green Zone, before or even after the election? Democrats will use the images, which the media will widely broadcast, to press for the large-scale withdrawal of US troops. But what will Republicans do? President Clinton said during his tirade on Fox News that some Republicans wanted him to withdraw US troops immediately after the Mogadishu ambush. That’s true. Too many did call for their immediate withdrawal, something Clinton rightly refused to do. U.S. troops were pulled out a few months later -- a withdrawal bin Ladin would later use as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. Today, should substantial “let’s get out fast” panic set in among Republicans following an Iraqi Tet, they will deserve to be a minority party.
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| The Pakistan Pipeline |
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From AFP: Islamic extremists "viewed 7/7 (the July 7, 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport network) as just the beginning," an unnamed senior source said….
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
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| On Khartoum's Orders |
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Here are two pieces on Khartoum's support for the Arab militias that are brutalizing the people of Darfur. A defector tells the BBC that the Janjaweed take orders directly from the Sudanese government. "The Janjaweed don't make decisions. The orders always come from the government," he said. The International Herald Tribune also reports on Khartoum’s use of the Arab militias to do its dirty work: The attitudes and general despondency of the Sudanese troops held here underscore why Sudan, despite its large military, well supplied by arms bought from China with Sudan's growing oil wealth, has relied primarily on brutal Arab militias to carry out its grim counterinsurgency campaign against the rebels in Darfur. It was a strategy Sudan perfected in its 20-year civil war in the south, where it used Arab tribal militias as a paramilitary force. The militias terrorized Southern Sudan, razing villages, raping women and kidnapping children. The militias in Darfur, known as the janjaweed, have carried out a similar campaign.What to do? So far, the Arab League isn't interested in doing much. The same holds for China and Russia. But Senators Dole and McCain have some ideas and so do the folks at the International Crisis Group.
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| Hand Over the Christian for Execution |
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Remember the Afghan man who faced execution because he converted to Christianity? Well, radical Islamists what him back presumably so they can kill him. And if the Italian government doesn’t hand him over, the group says they'll murder the Italian journalist they’ve kidnapped. Disgusting. From AFP: The kidnappers of an Italian photojournalist in Afghanistan have demanded the return of an Afghan Christian convert living in Italy in exchange for keeping the reporter alive, an Italian online newspaper reported….
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| An Advisor Deficit in Iraq? |
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Max Boot, author of War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today, writes in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd): OF THE MANY failures that have bedeviled the American military effort in Iraq, few are as inexplicable and costly as the failure to commit more resources to the Iraqi security forces. The only way U.S. troops will be able to go home without having failed in their mission is if Iraqis are capable of establishing order on their own. Yet U.S. efforts to train and equip the Iraqis got off to a laughable start in 2003 and have only slightly improved since….
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
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| Tribunal Shopping |
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Following today's signing ceremony for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a close friend and top-notch lawyer emails: Any challenge to this law will be forum shopped--most likely in San Francisco or perhaps in Michigan somewhere. It will likely be overturned at the District Court level and then go to the Court of Appeals. The best shot for these plaintiffs will be the 9th Circuit, so expect a challenge to be filed in California somewhere in the next day or two.Today’s Christian Science Monitor has more on the anticipated legal challenges here. Of course, all this legal wrangling will also play out on the presidential campaign trail. Sen. Clinton has harshly attacked the McCain-endorsed bill for giving the administration “a blank check to torture, to create secret courts using secret evidence, to detain people, including Americans, to be free of judicial oversight and accountability, to put our troops in greater danger.” McCain has called the legislation “very, very critical for the future security of this nation.” The bottom line: expect more Hillary v. McCain to come.
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| Reach Out and Touch Someone |
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Today's Los Angeles Times reports: The former secretary of State, who was a longtime aide to former President George H.W. Bush, also said he favored reaching out to Iran and Syria. But what do we do in the face of continued Iranian defiance over its nuclear program? Engagement hasn’t worked so far, and I suspect Tehran will demand that in exchange for its “cooperation” in Iraq we must stop pushing for punitive action against them and end our support for democrats inside in Iran. It will be interesting to see if the Baker-Hamilton Iraq commission discusses any of this.
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| Joe for Bolton |
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In a debate yesterday, Sen. Lieberman urged Senate confirmation of John Bolton to be the permanent UN ambassador. "I see no reason not to be for Bolton,” said Lieberman. This is another reason to admire the senator from Connecticut who will soon cruise to reelection on November 7.
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Monday, October 16, 2006
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| A New U.S. Military Command for Africa? |
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Going back to the early 1990s, Africa has been a target for al Qaeda. Two letters, dated September 30, 1993 and May 24, 1994, captured during US military operations in Afghanistan related directly to al Qaeda “African Corps” operations in Somalia before and after the U.S. withdrawal in early 1994. Sudan provided a safe harbor for bin Laden before he fled to Afghanistan in 1996, and our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998. Since September 11, the Algerian terrorist group GSPC has formally aligned with al Qaeda. And in Somalia, a burgeoning Taliban has emerged that has engaged in an assassination campaign against moderate Muslim scholars, introduced suicide bombing as weapon against their enemies, and closed the doors on media outlets that don’t follow the fundamentalist line. At the same time, the US military has been engaged throughout the continent, so much so that some in the Pentagon believe a separate command for Africa should be created. Reuters reports: The U.S. military is sharpening its focus on counterterrorism in Africa, a top general says, as it faces challenges including a newly announced alliance between a regional militant group and al Qaeda.
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| (Update) Chavez to the Security Council? |
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(The AP reports some good news: "Guatemala, whose candidacy had been backed by the United States, received 109 votes, 15 short of the necessary 124 and triggering a second round. Venezuela trailed with 76 votes." Russia and China reportedly backed Chavez.) Posted on August 9, 2006: This fall the UN will vote to replace the current non-permanent members of the Security Council with new nations. Though little reported in the media, for many weeks Hugo Chavez has been traveling the globe trolling for enough votes from regimes opposed to the U.S. to get on the Council. He’s been offering cut-rate oil deals and has signed agreements to buy weapons. His latest campaign swing brought him to Tehran, where he lavished praise on the regime for standing up to the Americans. Now, he’s taken up the cause of Hezbollah and has accused Israel of perpetrating a “new Holocaust” in Lebanon. On Monday, Israel withdrew its ambassador to Venezuela. Earlier, Chavez recalled Venezuela’s charge d’affaires to Israel. In a recent televised speech, the BBC reports, Chavez said that he had no interest in maintaining diplomatic relations, or offices, or businesses, or anything with a state like Israel…. At least one very senior Republican I know of believes the Bush administration must make denying Chavez a seat on the Council a top priority. Specifically, all U.S. ambassadors should let their host country know that the U.S. government would view a vote for Chavez as an unfriendly act. The administration should also encourage a friendlier nation in Latin America to seek a Security Council seat. One thing is for sure: If Chavez succeeds, it would be very bad news for the U.S.
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| Consensus for Bigger Army/Marine Corps Grows |
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The Army's top brass have been privately telling folks around D.C. that they could use another 60-80,000 troops. Last week, Senator McCain argued that our ground forces are “overstretched at a time of widespread and very serious challenges” and that we need to “increase substantially the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps by at least 100,000.” Even Sen. Hillary Clinton has joined the “more troops” chorus. Along with Senators Lieberman, Nelson (NE), and Reed, she has co-sponsored “The United States Army Relief Act,” which calls for an increase in end strength of 20,000 “per year over the next four years, giving the Army the breathing room to reduce the overburden on our active duty troops as well as our Guard and Reserve and rebuild our capacity to respond to future threats.” Of course, such increases should have been undertaken years ago.
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Sunday, October 15, 2006
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| "President Kerry" & the Taliban |
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This Kerry interview from today's Washington Post suggests that post 9/11 he wouldn’t have overthrown the Taliban regime as part of his strategy to go after bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders: KERRY: …For instance, in response to 9/11, there's clarity. We've got to go kill al-Qaeda.... In fact, I would have thought about starting that war differently.
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Saturday, October 14, 2006
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| Hunting the Bali Bombers |
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From The Australian: An elite Australian Special Air Service team of about 20 soldiers has been involved in a joint military operation in the southern Philippines to hunt down Asia's most wanted terrorists, including two of the 2002 Bali bombers.
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| No Shame in Clinton Land |
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Of all the presidential camps to use Vietnam against McCain, the Clinton folks should be the last one. This is from Maureen Dowd’s column in today’s New York Times: Privately, Hillary's camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, "looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates." The McCain camp has fired back. Asked for a response, John Weaver told the New York Daily News: I never expected the Clintons or their allies to know much about Vietnam. But is disappointing to see one of her spokespeople purposefully lie about John's war record and time in a Hanoi prison camp. There was no such tape recording; though he did once give up the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers while under extreme duress. Senator Clinton's spokesperson does a disservice to all who were there and served so bravely and honorably. Also, Jay Ambrose has a good piece, “Rewards that Failed,” on the Clinton administration’s deeply flawed 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea.
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Friday, October 13, 2006
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| "Is China Disrupting U.S. Satellites?" |
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InsideDefense.com's Elaine Grossman tackles that question here.
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| Pressuring Khartoum |
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The International Crisis Group has released its latest report on Darfur. They write: Unless concerted action is taken against the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), Khartoum will continue its military campaign, with deadly consequences for civilians, while paying only lip service to its many promises to disarm its Janjaweed militias and otherwise cooperate. No one can guarantee what will work with a regime as tough-minded and inscrutable as Sudan’s, but patient diplomacy and trust in Khartoum’s good faith has been a patent failure. The international community has accepted the responsibility to protect civilians from atrocity crimes when their own government is unable or unwilling to do so. This now requires tough new measures to concentrate minds and change policies in Khartoum. To “concentrate minds,” the ICC report offers some suggestions that I'm sure many on Capitol Hill would support: On 31 August, Security Council Resolution 1706 authorised a UN mission of at least 20,600 troops and police to deploy to Darfur with a Chapter VII mandate allowing the protective use of force. Sudan’s consent for this deployment, which would replace the over-stretched African Union (AU) force, is only “invited” not required, but troop contributing countries are unwilling to take part if Khartoum does not agree.
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| Jimmy Carter's Omission on North Korea |
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Did anyone else notice that in Jimmy Carter's history of North Korea’s nuclear program he failed to mention even once that after 1995 Pyongyang had been running a secret uranium enrichment program, a program that violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which the North was still a party to at the time) and the 1994 Agreed Framework? Consider this from Carter’s New York Times piece: But beginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country and to its political regime. Here’s one key fact Carter left out: In October 2002, North Korea confirmed it had a secret uranium enrichment program after the Bush administration confronted the regime about the program. That December, Pyongyang kicked the IAEA inspectors out of the country. Evidently, these facts didn’t fit into Carter’s storyline.
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Thursday, October 12, 2006
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| Scoop Jackson Democrats Fade Away |
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I'm sorry to hear that former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner has bowed out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. If you’re a JFK-Scoop Jackson Democrat, where do you turn? Hillary? Gore? Kerry? Edwards? All four have now positioned themselves to the left on major national security issues, and Bayh and Vilsack won’t last beyond Iowa, if that. With Warner’s departure, Lieberman’s pending victory, the DLC's passiveness in challenging the left, and the recent national security votes on Capitol Hill, the Scoop wing of the Democratic Party is nearly extinct today. In the old days, Scoop Democrats challenged Nixionian realism and détente with the Soviets and backed Reagan against their own party’s liberals on key security issues. Those days are long gone -- for now at least -- and that's a shame.
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| The Slow Talibanization of Southern Somalia? |
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Here's more evidence from the AP: The U.N. said Thursday it has temporarily pulled international staff out of parts of Somalia controlled by Islamic radicals after receiving written threats.
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
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| Democrats, McCain & North Korea |
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Many Americans probably view Sen. McCain's statement that the Clinton administration's 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea was a “failure” as an obvious point. McCain’s comment came after Sen. Hillary Clinton and other senior Democrats were all over the media touting the ’94 agreement as a model for how to deal with the North Korean dictatorship. McCain’s point is a simple one: if we are going to effectively deal with the North’s nuclear weapons program, we have to acknowledge how we got to this point and not make the same mistakes again. But senior Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson, Madeleine Albright, and John Kerry, etc. – won’t admit the ’94 deal was a mistake. Quite the contrary, as Bill Richardson argued last night on CNN: “The reality is, had we not had the agreed framework with North Korea on nuclear weapons, they would maybe have 50 nuclear weapons today. For eight years they didn't enrich uranium.” Richardson is arguing as if the administration had no other policy options. But that isn’t true. The Clinton administration chose the path of meeting the North’s hostile behavior and violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with further concessions – a path McCain and others vigorously argued against at the time. In May 1994, McCain catalogued all the North Korean threats and treaty violations, along with the US concessions, that led to the Agreed Framework -- an agreement advertised as freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear program. It didn’t. The North began a secret uranium enrichment program after 1995 and never gave up working on nuclear weapons. Democrats now argue that at least the deal put the fuel rods under the eye of international inspectors before they were kicked out in 2002 on Bush’s watch. Of course, they fail to note that this happened just after the North confirmed U.S. intelligence reports that it had a clandestine enrichment program – one that violated the NPT (they later withdrew from the treaty) and the Agreed Framework. In any event, the failure to demand the speedy removal of the rods from the North was a major strategic flaw in the ’94 deal. Back then, McCain argued that leaving them in place would allow the dictatorship to kick the inspectors out and reprocess the rods at a time of its choosing. Here’s what he wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1994: Using sticks such as their threatened expulsion of IAEA inspectors, North Korea has consistently intimidated Administration diplomacy. To divert the United States from punishing his violations of the NPT, Kim Il Sung has raised, then withdrawn his stick, masking his forbearance in the disguise of a carrot…. And here we are today. Despite the apparent nuclear test, the missile launches, the proliferation, the secret enrichment program, and all the other history going back over a decade, many Democrats still embrace the '94 deal and still argue for more carrots.
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| Sound Advice |
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From today's Wall Street Journal editorial: Are Messrs. Reid, Dean, Menendez et al. concerned about nuclear weapons getting into terrorist hands and U.S. ports? They tell us they are. Then perhaps they might publicly call on China and Russia to join the Proliferation Security Initiative, the most successful effort yet to interdict the transfer of illicit weapons.
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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| Hillary Clinton, North Korea & Iran |
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Since Sen. Clinton is fond of her administration's 1994 deal with North Korea, I wonder if she feels the same about the deal the Clinton administration cut with the Russians a year later -- a deal that “emboldened Moscow to ignore other agreements, particularly on sales of missile and nuclear technology to Iran, according to Gordon C. Oehler, who directed the Nonproliferation Center of the Central Intelligence Agency until he retired in 1998." The deal also led to the sale of “highly threatening military equipment such as modern submarines, fighter planes, and wake-homing torpedoes" to Iran, according to this October 2000 letter: Statement by Former Secretaries of State, Defense, Directors of Central Intelligence and National Security Advisors on the Sale of Russian Weapons to Iran, October 24, 2000 By 2000, Iran’s nuclear program appeared to be gathering steam: CIA Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Related to Weapons of Mass Destruction, 1 January through 30 June 2000: Russia also remained a key supplier for civilian nuclear programs in Iran, primarily focused on the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant project. With respect to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, Russian assistance enhances Iran's ability to support a nuclear weapons development effort. By its very nature, even the transfer of civilian technology may be of use in Iran's nuclear weapons program. We remain concerned that Tehran is seeking more than a buildup of its civilian infrastructure, and the Intelligence Community will be closely monitoring the relationship with Moscow for any direct assistance in support of a military program. Testimony of John A. Lauder, Director of the CIA's Nonproliferation Center, to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, October 5, 2000: Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin with a few comments on Russian aid to Iran's nuclear power and nuclear weapons program. The Intelligence Community judges that Iran is actively pursuing the acquisition of fissile material and the expertise and technology necessary to form the material into nuclear weapons. As part of this process, Iran is attempting to develop the capability to produce both plutonium and highly-enriched uranium.
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| McCain v. Clintons on North Korea |
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The senator's office just released the following statement: McCAIN CALLS FOR TOUGH SANCTIONS BY U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL, REBUTS SEN. CLINTON’S CRITICSM, CITING FAILURE OF CLINTON ADMINISTRATION POLICIES ON NORTH KOREA Back in 1994, Sen. McCain was a leading opponent of the deal President Clinton struck with North Korea. He told PBS's Robert MacNeil that the US would come to "regret [the deal] very, very much" and noted that even though North Korea has "violated the nonproliferation treaty egregiously time and time again, ... we are now rewarding them.... And not only are we saying it's okay to Korea, but we'll be saying that it's okay to Iran and other countries who will demand a similar deal."
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| Peters: Expand Army & Marine Corps |
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In today's New York Post, Ralph Peters calls for a larger Army and Marine Corps and also notes: “Had the same voices demanded another 100,000-plus troops in 2003 or even 2004, it would have made a profound, positive difference. Now it's too late.” But there were voices back then worried that we didn’t have nearly enough troops to conduct an effective counterinsurgency. For example, in a speech early November of 2003, Sen. McCain called for more troops as he would many times in the months to follow: To win in Iraq, we should increase the number of forces in-country, including Marines and Special Forces, to conduct offensive operations. I believe we must deploy at least another full division, giving us the necessary manpower to conduct a focused counterinsurgency campaign across the Sunni Triangle that seals off enemy operating areas, conducts search and destroy missions, and holds territory.
That is what the Bush Doctrine of "regime change" means, or should mean: Not blowing out the bad regime and then leaving others to pick up the pieces, but staying long enough to ensure that a good regime can take its place.
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Monday, October 09, 2006
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| Same Old Story in Iraq |
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Since 2003, there haven't been nearly enough U.S. troops in Iraq (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). And today this from AP: For months, soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade fought in riverside towns of western Iraq, trying to clamp off the flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers that commanders said were terrorizing Baghdad. Now hundreds of these same U.S. soldiers have been sent to deal with what U.S. officials say is an even greater threat — rising attacks between Sunnis and Shiites in the capital itself.
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| Iran is Watching |
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This isn't just about North Korea. You can bet that Tehran is watching the world’s reaction to Pyongyang’s defiance very closely. If confirmed, will North Korea pay a price for exploding a nuclear weapon or will the world community huff and puff and sweep all this unpleasantness under the rug? Will the Security Council impose Chapter 7 sanctions and enforce them or go wobbly? If the major capitals of the world fail to act decisively, Ahmadinejad’s hand will be further strengthened against the few inside the regime who may be arguing that the scale and pace of Iran’s nuclear weapons program isn’t worth the price. We may also have to face the reality that no amount of diplomacy – and we’ve had lots of it -- will convince either regime to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
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| The Dear Leader's Nuke |
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Three months ago Pyongyang fired off a missile, but the Security Council didn’t do much about it. Today they reportedly conducted a nuclear test, and some commentators are already saying we can’t do much about it except engage in “direct talks” with the North. Not so, says the AEI’s Dan Blumenthal, former senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs, who offers some policy advice in the current Weekly Standard. He writes: We also have other means of deterring the Dear Leader, mitigating his threats, and working toward his eventual demise. Unrelenting pressure can be put on the trade in illicit goods that keeps Kim's regime alive. We can adopt a more robust nuclear posture in Asia. We can mitigate the artillery threat to Seoul through counter-battery weaponry. We can intensify our Proliferation Security Initiative activities, and place a quarantine and inspection regime on ships moving to and from North Korea. We can also accelerate the deployment of missile defenses to our regional allies. We can launch an international campaign to ameliorate human rights abuses and absorb refugees, and so on.
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Sunday, October 08, 2006
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| (Update II) Catching a Cab at the Airport |
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(Are seeing-eye dogs next? A faithful reader from Australia emails this from the Herald Sun.) (The Australian weighs in with this editorial: “It is a situation which both demonstrates the global nature of the debate on values and which presents a textbook case of how not to deal with Islamic fundamentalists in the West. Rather than threatening such cabbies with fines or loss of licence for refusing to carry fares, the Metropolitan Airports Commission has proposed special colour-coded lights to indicate which taxis are driven by non-Muslims and those willing to tote alcohol and those where sharia applies bumper to bumper. This is exactly the wrong solution. It opens moderate Muslim taxi drivers who are willing to carry passengers possessing alcohol open to harassment from their more radical co-religionists. It violates the long-enshrined legal principle that taxis are a public conveyance open to all….” I suspect the airport commission believed it had no choice: either give in or face chaos on the sidewalk. I also doubt this will end at the airport curbside. Some of these same cabbies may decide to keep the special colored light on while in the queue to pick up fares at area hotels, for example. What about if you call for a cab? In some places, will we reach the point where the dispatcher has to ask if you will be carrying liquor? I hope not. In any event, having the government’s imprimatur on such an airport policy raises many other questions that I'm sure will be debated. Stay tuned.) Posted on October 1, 2006: I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP: Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars
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Saturday, October 07, 2006
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| Assassination in Moscow |
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Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered last night in Moscow, reports Reuters: Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow, police said. I’m told that Politkovskaya had written an article on Russian atrocities in Chechnya due to be published on Monday.
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| (Update III) Georgia On Our Mind |
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(The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial (sub req’d) this morning on standing with Georgia. They write: “The world needs to watch Russia’s current pressure on Georgia. Its decision this week to ban trade, travel and postal links to neighboring Georgia isn’t the first time Moscow has tangled with the former Soviet republic. But it is a fresh reminder of just how paranoid and bullying the Kremlin’s foreign policy has become in the hands of President Vladimir Putin…. The world should not let the Russians bring Georgia to heel.”) (The Russian screw tightens, reports The Independent in Britain.) (Moscow has never fully accepted Georgia's independence and continues its intimidation campaign against this struggling democracy. Last January, the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine to punish Kiev. Is Tbilisi next? Will the E.U. and the U.S. stand firmly against another Russian power play?)
Since the Georgian democratic revolution in 2003, U.S.-Georgia relations have warmed considerably. The U.S. military recently signed another military assistance accord with the former Soviet republic, and Radio Free Europe reports that NATO will announce tomorrow that formal talks will begin with Tbilisi that could eventually lead to full NATO membership. As you can see, Georgia sits in a strategically significant region of the world and, so far, has been a success story for American diplomacy.
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| McCain Calls for Bigger Military |
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From the AP: McCain spoke to a crowd of more than 120 Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force veterans and their families [in South Carolina] at a monument to dead service members. One wing of the monument had a handful of names of people killed in the first Gulf War and during the past two years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Friday, October 06, 2006
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| An Attack Thwarted in the Czech Republic? |
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Reuters reports: PRAGUE, Oct 6 - Islamic extremists planned to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them, the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported on Friday.
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| A Class Act in New York |
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Though I'm a rabid Red Sox fan, I have to say that the New York Yankees are a class act when it comes to helping our injured men and women in the armed forces. I am on the board of the Wounded Warrior Project, and the Yankees have helped our Wounded Warriors in many ways. Without their generosity and that of many others, our Project could not survive. The latest Yankee contribution comes from Johnny Damon, the son of a career Army NCO.
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| Republicans & the Security Vote |
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The Foley mess has thrown Republicans back on their heels, and the Democrats would like to keep them off balance. But through it all, one poll number has remained relatively constant: the GOP still has a sizable edge on the security issue in many surveys. Today’s Wall Street Journal notes (see here for more security-related poll data): Security remains Democrats’ vulnerability. Among independents, just 29 percent express high confidence that Democratic Party policies will keep America safe from terrorists…. Republican Nancy Johnson, who represents Connecticut’s 5th district, had been in a tight race until she began pounding away on the security issue by running this campaign ad. Nancy Pelosi says this election “shouldn't be about national security,” and I can understand why. Republicans should follow Johnson’s lead.
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Thursday, October 05, 2006
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| A New Doctrine in Search of More Boots |
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The NYT's Michael Gordon reports on the military's new counterinsurgency doctrine. Some highlights: [The doctrine] draws on the hard-learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy…. All this suggests the need for a larger ground force.
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| (Update) The GSPC and the Terror War in Europe |
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(Today's Washington Post has a lengthy piece on the GSPC. A couple of points: The Post suggests that since 2003 the GSPC “has planted deep roots in Europe [and] in the past year, authorities have broken up cells in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland…” But there’s evidence (see below) that the GSPC had its European network up and running by 2000 with the help of al Qaeda-linked Abu Doha. Also, were any GSPC terrorists trained in Iraq prior to the March 2003 invasion? It would be nice to get a conclusive answer one way or the other. The Senate Intelligence Committee doesn’t mention the GSPC in its recent report on Iraq.) Posted on September 14, 2006: The BBC reports on Zawahiri's latest claim "that a radical Algerian Islamist group has joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France.” In the video that aired on a website on September 11, Zawahiri stated: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat] has joined al-Qaeda." He called on the Algerian-based terror group to become "a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders.” The GSPC has since released a statement: “We pledge allegiance to Sheikh Osama Bin Laden... Our soldiers are at his call so that he may strike who and where he likes.” How did the GSPC come about? In 1997, a splinter group emerged from Algeria’s GIA (Armed Islamic Group) called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC. Stanley Bedlington, who worked counterterrorism for the CIA from 1986 to 1994, told USA Today in December 2001 that "we traced considerable sums of money going from bin Laden to the GIA in Algeria. We believed some of the money came from Iraq." But how close a relationship the GSPC had with al Qaeda before this recent pledge has been difficult to nail down. Some say there wasn’t much of one; others believe the GSPC had close ties to bin Laden. A January 2004 analysis from the Center for Defense Information noted this on the relationship between the GSPC and bin Laden: The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) has emerged in recent years as a major source of recruiting and other support for al Qaeda operations in Europe. A splinter faction of the Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the GSPC is engaged simultaneously in efforts to topple Algeria's secular government and to organize high-profile attacks against Western interests on the continent.... The group's possible contact with Saddam’s regime was touched on in the January 2006 Weekly Standard cover piece, "Saddam's Terror Training Camps." Regarding the training of Algerian terrorists, in particular, Stephen Hayes wrote: The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army.
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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
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| The Arab League Disgrace in Darfur |
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Hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs have been killed in Darfur, with more killed and displaced every day, and this is the cheap politics being played by Arab governments. From the Associated Press: Maamoun Fandy of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London said the Arab League is unlikely to push Khartoum on Washington's behalf unless the U.S. changes its policy toward Israel.
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| (Update) Catching a Cab at the Airport |
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(The Australian weighs in with this editorial: “It is a situation which both demonstrates the global nature of the debate on values and which presents a textbook case of how not to deal with Islamic fundamentalists in the West. Rather than threatening such cabbies with fines or loss of licence for refusing to carry fares, the Metropolitan Airports Commission has proposed special colour-coded lights to indicate which taxis are driven by non-Muslims and those willing to tote alcohol and those where sharia applies bumper to bumper. This is exactly the wrong solution. It opens moderate Muslim taxi drivers who are willing to carry passengers possessing alcohol open to harassment from their more radical co-religionists. It violates the long-enshrined legal principle that taxis are a public conveyance open to all….” I suspect the airport commission believed it had no choice: either give in or face chaos on the sidewalk. I also doubt this will end at the airport curbside. Some of these same cabbies may decide to keep the special colored light on while in the queue to pick up fares at area hotels, for example. What about if you call for a cab? In some places, will we reach the point where the dispatcher has to ask if you will be carrying liquor? I hope not. In any event, having the government’s imprimatur on such an airport policy raises many other questions that I'm sure will be debated. Stay tuned.) Posted on October 1, 2006: I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP: Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars
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| "Europeans Have Stopped Defending Their Values" |
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Germany's Spiegel has a provocative interview with Bassam Tibi, the Syrian-born Islam expert who became a German citizen in 1967. SPIEGEL: The administrator of one of Berlin's opera houses, the Deutsche Oper, has cancelled the Mozart Opera "Idomeneo" out of fear of an Islamist reaction. Is this the first sign of Germany bowing down to Islam? Read the entire interview here.
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Tuesday, October 03, 2006
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| (Update) McCain v. Clinton |
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(Will Sen. Clinton et al. file an amicus brief in this case? According to Reuters, "attorneys for 25 men being held in Afghanistan launched a pre-emptive strike Monday against President Bush's plan to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects. Court documents filed Monday demand that the men be released or charged and allowed to meet with attorneys. Such a filing, known as a habeas corpus petition, is prohibited under the legislation approved by Congress last week.") Posted on September 28, 2006: The Senate passed the terrorist detainee bill tonight, 65 to 34. The minority leader opposed final passage, as did all the prospective Democratic presidential candidates – Bayh, Biden, Kerry, Feingold, and Hillary Clinton. Here’s Sen. Clinton’s statement opposing the bill: The Senate, under the authority of the Republican Majority and with the blessing and encouragement of the Bush-Cheney Administration, is doing a great disservice to our history, our principles, our citizens, and our soldiers. The deliberative process is being broken under the pressure of partisanship and the policy that results is a travesty…. And here is McCain’s urging its passage: This legislation will allow the CIA to continue interrogating prisoners within the boundaries established in the bill. Let me state this flatly: it was never our purpose to prevent the CIA from detaining and interrogating terrorists. On the contrary, it is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to do so. At the same time, the CIA’s interrogation program has to abide by the rules, including the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act….
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| Iran's "Star" Students |
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Radio Free Europe reports: There was a time when teachers in Iran's schools used to give students golden paper stars to encourage them.
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| Who's President? |
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George Will, a supporter of the Iraq invasion, writes approvingly about this nugget from Bob Woodward’s State of Denial: The book actually includes one heartening story that should enhance Rumsfeld's reputation. On Veterans Day, 2005, the president traveled to a Pennsylvania Army depot to deliver a speech announcing the new military policy for Iraq, the policy of "clear, hold and build.'' Woodward says Rumsfeld, having read the speech, called Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, a half-hour before Bush was to deliver it, and said, "Take that out.'' Card replied that the three words were the centerpiece of the speech, not to mention the war strategy. Rumsfeld replied, "Clear, we're doing. It's up to the Iraqis to hold. And the State Department's got to work with somebody on the build.'' Astonishing. The commander-in-chief is announcing a new war strategy for Iraq and his defense secretary stonewalls it. If Secretary Rumsfeld didn’t agree with the “clear, hold and build” strategy, fine. He should have stepped aside and handed over the keys to the Pentagon to someone who supported the new strategy. Instead, the new strategy was implemented without sufficient forces, a critical problem going back to 2003 (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) and noted again today in this piece by a 101st soldier. This Washington Post piece, “Rice's Rebuilding Plan Hits Snag," is a good example of how the stonewalling worked: On Nov. 11, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced trip into Mosul, Iraq, to grandly inaugurate a new concept for rebuilding the country that she said "will marry our economic, military, and political people in teams to help these local and provincial governments get the job done." And during all this, Woodward writes, Henry Kissinger is visiting the White House advising the administration against “even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops [which] could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory.” But that’s exactly the message that was coming out of the defense secretary’s office. And so it goes.
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Monday, October 02, 2006
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| Lehman Looks Ahead |
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A couple of things from this interview with former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman: "We're building only five ships a year; we're on the way to a 150-ship Navy" he says. In his view, that is courting disaster. "That is not enough to cover our security requirements," he says. "Seventy-percent of the world is covered by water. We no longer have basing rights around the world. If you have combat operations going on you need air cover and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that comes from the Navy. To fly one ton of cargo into Iraq takes 14 tons of fuel. That's not cheap. It's got to go by sea, so you have to protect it. The Iranians, for instance, have very good submarines." The ultimate threat, he says, is China, which "is now building their 600-ship Navy, to fill the vacuum, and they're very good ships." The New York Sun also reports that Lehman is “a fan of Senator McCain, and will be working for his presidential campaign.”
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| (Update II) Georgia On Our Mind |
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(The Russian screw tightens, reports The Independent in Britain.) (Moscow has never fully accepted Georgia's independence and continues its intimidation campaign against this struggling democracy. Last January, the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine to punish Kiev. Is Tbilisi next? Will the E.U. and the U.S. stand firmly against another Russian power play?) Posted September 20, 2006: Since the Georgian democratic revolution in 2003, U.S.-Georgia relations have warmed considerably. The U.S. military recently signed another military assistance accord with the former Soviet republic, and Radio Free Europe reports that NATO will announce tomorrow that formal talks will begin with Tbilisi that could eventually lead to full NATO membership. As you can see, Georgia sits in a strategically significant region of the world and, so far, has been a success story for American diplomacy.
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| Iraq and Iowa's 1st Congressional District |
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The war is a big issue in an extremely competitive eastern Iowa Congressional race. Democratic Bruce Braley wants to runaway from Iraq (see here for more on Dem withdrawal plans), while his opponent, Mike Whalen, doesn’t. Braley has been warmly embraced by the very liberal Sen. Tom Harkin and is so far left on the war that his Democratic primary opponent, Rick Dickinson, ran this ad in June: (Courtesy of Hotline) ANNCR: "No matter how you feel about the Iraq war, everyone agrees we must do everything to protect our troops. Everyone it seems, but Bruce Braley. When asked by Des Moines Register reporter David Yepsen to define his stance on the war, Braley declared he would vote to cut off the funds supporting our troops on the ground. Is that a position you support?" Braley’s Iraq position, the Des Moines Register reports, has also pitted two U.S. senators against each other: Two senior U.S. senators Friday leaped into the increasingly nasty fight for a U.S. House seat in eastern Iowa, trading charges over the conduct of the war in Iraq.
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Sunday, October 01, 2006
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| Catching a Cab at the Airport |
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I suspect this issue will surface at other airports in the U.S. From the AP: Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars
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| A Good Start on Enlarging US Ground Forces |
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Yesterday's Washington Post reports: Senate and House conferees also agreed yesterday on $463 billion in overall defense spending for fiscal 2007, a 3.6 percent increase over 2006. To ease the strain on U.S. ground forces, the conference report called for an increase of 30,000 soldiers and 5,000 Marines in 2007, with additional increases authorized through 2009. See this Weekly Standard editorial for more on why we need a larger force.
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