It's worth remembering as we consider the consequences of exiting Iraq along the lines advocated by some Washington politicians.

“The first stage," Zawahiri wrote in his July 2005 letter to Zarqawi, is to “expel the Americans from Iraq.” He also counseled Zarqawi to be prepared:

[T]hings may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam -- and how they ran and left their agents is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them. We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us, wherein our lot would be to merely resist their schemes.

Such an outcome will be anything but “peace with honor.”

(The assassin speaks. From the AP: "Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday his country will continue to challenge U.S. efforts to exert control over the Middle East, sounding a defiant tone ahead of President Bush's arrival in the region for talks on Iraq. 'Colonialism has not ended. In the past they used to call it colonialism, today it is called liberation of people. ... Names differ but the essence is the same. As colonialism continues, revolution and resistance continue.... '")

From Reuters:

France and the United States agree there is no point in talking to Syria because the conditions for an honest dialogue do not exist, President Jacques Chirac said on Wednesday.

His comment came as President Bush is under strong domestic pressure to talk to Syria and Iran in an effort to reduce sectarian violence and avert civil war in Iraq.

Speaking after a NATO summit in Latvia, Chirac said he was always in favor of dialogue in principle provided it led to results and was based on honesty and a commitment to carry out what was agreed.

"In the current state of affairs, this is not exactly the characteristic of the dialogue which some European countries have started with Syria. I deplore that," Chirac said.

"I understand that the American president's position is exactly the same as France's," Chirac said.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem accused Paris on Tuesday of trying to destabilize his country.

France took the lead with Washington last year in a United Nations resolution to force the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a close friend of Chirac.

CNN reports today:

Pelosi 'sad' over Bush's Iraq representation

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said Tuesday she feels "sad" President Bush blamed insurgent violence on al Qaeda while he dismissed notions Iraq is in a civil war.

"My thoughts on the president's representations are well-known," Pelosi told reporters while meeting with Deputy Italian Minister Francesco Rutelli. "The 9/11 Commission dismissed that notion a long time ago and I feel sad that the president is resorting to it again."

But in her recent 60 Minutes profile the incoming speaker conceded that non-Iraqi terrorists are NOW in Iraq.

STAHL: Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?

Rep. PELOSI: No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan. That is what...

STAHL: But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?

Rep. PELOSI: (Unintelligible). They have.

STAHL: Well...

Rep. PELOSI: The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. That means--they'll stay there as long as we're there. They're there because we're there.

Guess Pelosi was referring to the non-al Qaeda foreign terrorists operating in Iraq.

Will the Baker-Hamilton Commission endorse the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq on a hard timetable? That’s highly unlikely. The president has flatly rejected withdrawal timetables, so it’s hard to believe Sec. Baker would go along with such a recommendation for this reason alone. What about tweaking the current strategy? That's also unlikely. The Commission isn’t going to release a report endorsing the same basic policies that brought about the Commission in the first place. So what then?

The two most revealing public comments about where it may be headed came from defense secretary nominee Bob Gates and Iraq War opponent Gen. Anthony Zinni. After his nomination was announced, a news story surfaced noting that, after a Baghdad visit, Gates was astonished that his soon-to-be predecessor had let the security situation deteriorate so badly. Thus, it’s a good bet Gates doesn’t believe things will getter better in Baghdad in the short term with fewer troops, especially given the conclusions on troop levels contained in this intelligence assessment published in today’s Washington Post. A bit after the Gates piece appeared, there was another news story in which Zinni publicly called for more forces in the Baghdad area to stabilize the downward spiral. I’ve also learned that at least one senior member of the first Bush administration not named Baker has been telling folks that we cannot leave Iraq in its current state and that a precondition for any U.S. drawdown must be a relatively stable Baghdad, which, this person believes, will require a surge in forces.

Merits aside, I suspect we may be looking at a call for more forces in the short term, combined with a regional conference (and possibly an Iraq-only one also) and an economic aid package of some sort aimed at the Sunnis, followed by a recommendation for a significant drawdown or redeployment thereafter, and the transformation of the remaining force to a largely advisory command. I also wager that there will be some vocal dissents -- in public and on background. Whatever the Commission does, President Bush alone will have to decide whether their report advances his often-stated objectives in Iraq or undermines them and act accordingly.

Newt weighs in on the Iraq commission here.

I'm confident the Iranian regime will act even more responsibly if it manages to acquire nuclear weapons. From today’s New York Times:

A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr.

The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria….

General Abizaid also said it was hard to pin down some details of relationships between armed factions in the Middle East, adding: “There are clearly links between Hezbollah training people in Iran to operate in Lebanon and also training people in Iran that are Shia splinter groups that could operate against us in Iraq These linkages exist, but it is very, very hard to pin down with precision.”

From the November 24 Wall Street Journal:

Tensions in Tehran are intensifying, leading Afghan officials to worry about potential spillover into their country. Iran has developed a pervasive economic and intelligence capacity inside the Central Asia state, which it could potentially turn against American forces. “They have a destructive capability,” says Said Jawad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

From the November 16 New York Times:

More than 700 Islamic militants from Somalia traveled to Lebanon in July to fight alongside Hezbollah in its war against Israel, a United Nations report says. The militia in Lebanon returned the favor by providing training and — through its patrons Iran and Syria — weapons to the Islamic alliance struggling for control of Somalia, it adds….

The report also says Iran sought to trade arms for uranium from Somalia to further its nuclear ambitions, though it does not say whether Iran succeeded….

While the sources of the information remain unclear, the report is dense with details about arms shipments to the groups vying for power in Somalia.

It states that in mid-July, Aden Hashi Farah, a leader of the Somali Islamist alliance, personally selected about 720 combat-hardened fighters to travel to Lebanon and fight alongside Hezbollah.

At least 100 Somalis had returned by early September — with five Hezbollah members — while others stayed on in Lebanon for advanced military training, the report says. It is not clear how many may have been killed, though the report says some were wounded and later treated after their return to Somalia.

The fighters were paid a minimum of $2,000 for their service, the report says, and as much as $30,000 was to be given to the families of those killed, with money donated by “a number of supporting countries.”

In addition to training some Somali militants, Hezbollah “arranged for additional support to be given” by Iran and Syria, including weapons, the report found. On July 27, 200 Somali fighters also traveled to Syria to be trained in guerrilla warfare, the report says.

It also indicates that Iran appears to have sought help in its quest for uranium in Dusa Mareb, the hometown of Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the Islamist alliance in Somalia, which is known as the Council of Islamic Courts.

“At the time of the writing of this report, there were two Iranians in Dusa Mareb engaged on matters linked to the exploration of uranium in exchange for arms” for the Council of Islamic Courts, says the report, which is dated Oct. 16.

Those claims, if proved, could worsen global tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran ignored an Aug. 31 deadline to suspend its uranium enrichment, and the United States has been leading a United Nations effort to impose sanctions….

The report recommends that the Security Council blockade Somalia….

The truth is the UN Security Council could put enormous pressure on Syria and Iran to end all the above, but, regrettably, there’s little chance they’ll do much anytime soon. And so it goes.

Have Rep. Tom Tancredo face off against Mark Udall for the Allard seat. From the Denver Post:

The buzz in U.S. Senate circles is that Wayne Allard might honor his pledge to serve just two terms and retire to that new home he and his wife, Joan, are building in Jackson County….

Allard is in the minority in Congress for the first time since he was elected in 1997 and word is he isn't too keen on the situation. The list of Republicans who might run in 2008 if Allard does not includes U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, former Reps. Scott McInnis and Bob Schaffer, and outgoing Gov. Bill Owens.

Regardless of the GOP ticket, Rep. Mark Udall plans to run and will make a formal announcement sometime next year. His campaign coffers now hold $1.2 million.

Speaking of immigration, CNN has just released a presidential poll of GOP voters. The result: Giuliani, 33%, McCain, 30%, Gingrich, 9%, and Romney, 9%. Rudy and McCain both hold the president’s view on immigration; Newt and Romney agree on immigration and oppose the president’s position. Yet, the polls consistently show Giuliani and McCain with a large share of the GOP vote. Does this suggest that the views of rank-and-file Republicans on immigration may be more varied than those on talk radio and in the blogoshere? Perhaps.

A few weeks ago, I noted that Tehran would likely demand that in exchange for its “cooperation” in Iraq the U.S. must stop pushing for punitive action against them on the Security Council. Guess what? On Sunday, the AP reports, Ahmadinejad said that “he would help the United States bring calm to Iraq if Washington changes what he described as its ‘bullying’ policy toward Iran."

Of course, the Security Council has been anything but “bullying” on Iran. Its done practically nothing since Iran ignored the UN-imposed August 31 deadline to stop its enrichment activities. The international community has been so passive with Iran that Ahmadinejad now jubilantly declares that the world has lost its will to counter Iran's nuclear program. So far, Iran’s bullying – in weapons and words -- across the Middle East has paid dividends for Tehran and, given the attitude of Moscow and Beijing and other capitals, there’s no sign Tehran's investment will go south anytime soon.

This (free sub. req'd) quote -- "Rumsfeld is being vilified for our fate in Iraq. He does not get enough credit for dragging the DOD, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century" -- from the former undersecretary of defense in yesterday’s Miami Herald reminds me of what Marion Barry, then mayor of Washington D.C., told a national press club audience in 1989: "Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."

“Dragging … kicking and screaming” aside, Secretary Rumsfeld failed to adequately expand U.S. ground forces post 9/11 and deploy enough forces to post-invasion Iraq -- as some had called for over three years ago as the insurgency picked-up steam.

I have to wonder what exactly the president got out of his stopover in Moscow on his way to the APEC summit a little over a week ago. He traveled well out of his way to chat with Putin. Since then, and despite our objections, the Kremlin has gone ahead with the delivery of an air-defense system to Iran. The Tor-M1 system will reportedly be deployed around Iran’s nuclear facilities – facilities the Russians are helping to build.

Tor-M1

(Source: AFP)

On top of this, Russia and China show no sign of acting responsibly on the UN Security Council in the face Tehran’s continued defiance over its nuclear enrichment program. The Council gave Iran until August 31 to stop its enrichment program or face real consequences. Iran ignored the deadline, and today the Council dithers.

After Air Force One departed Moscow, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters that the Putin meeting “really wasn't about business it was about social, it was about personal." That’s nice. It would also be nice to believe that when they did talk “business” the president received a private assurance from Putin that Moscow would back tough action against Iran, but it’s a hope getting dimmer by the day.

On Iran, the Russians appear to be all business.

Evidently, the world soccer federation is a tougher outfit than the UN Security Council. From the AP:

ZURICH, Switzerland - Iran was suspended from international soccer by FIFA on Thursday because of government interference with the country's soccer federation.

The decision was made Wednesday at an emergency council meeting of soccer's world governing body. FIFA said it had given Iran a Nov. 15 deadline to reinstate elected soccer federation president Mohammed Dadgan and comply with FIFA regulations.

"This deadline was not met," FIFA said.

FIFA said Iran was not abiding by rules regarding the "independence of the decision-making process of the football governing body in each country and the way in which changes in the leadership of associations are brought about."

Iran, which played in the 2006 World Cup and has qualified for the 2007 Asian Cup, will be reinstated only after drafting new statutes and organizing a new election under the supervision of FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation.

"The lifting of this suspension would depend on the above road map being accepted and fully implemented by the relevant authorities in Tehran," FIFA said.

On this day, I wanted to highlight two organizations that assist active duty service members and disabled veterans. Profiled in the Weekly Standard, Unmet Needs is a charity that helps military families facing financial difficulties.

In addition, I am on the board of the Wounded Warrior Project, a non-profit that assists severely wounded soldiers and their families with a variety of programs.

To all those who have served, America thanks you.

The biannual Top500 supercomputers list is out. IBM retains the top spot with its BlueGene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. BlueGene's performance comes in at 280.6 trillion calculations per second. Of the ten most powerful supercomputers in the world, seven are in the U.S. with the other three in Japan, France and Spain. Overall, 306 of the top 500 systems are in the U.S.

The Connecticut senator made some blunt comments last night on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes:

HANNITY: [I]f Barack Obama and Senator Levin want to cut and run [from Iraq]? Are you going to stand in strong opposition to them?

LIEBERMAN: You bet I am. I mean, they're now proposing that we begin a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq within the next four to six months. I think that would -- that's a road to disaster. That's basically the beginning of giving up on Iraq. And as bad as things are in Iraq today, they would be dramatically worse if we just pick up and leave.

…[W]hen General Abizaid was before the Senate Armed Services Committee, on which I'm privileged to serve, I asked him, "What would be the effect on the sectarian violence if we began a withdrawal in four to six months, regardless of what's happening on the ground?" And he said it would become much worse. And then Ambassador Satterfield from the State Department was there. And I said, "I know some of the people that want us to begin a withdrawal in a time certain think that's the only way we can get the Iraqi government to do what they want to do, to take control of their destiny." I asked Satterfield, "What's your reaction to that?" He said, if we began to arbitrarily withdraw in the next four to six months, it will have exactly the opposite effect on the Iraqi government. They'll begin to hedge their bets, because they'll see us heading for the door, and they'll see that what's going to follow is out-and-out civil war, maybe even regional war. We cannot let that happen.

Iraq is now a central battlefield in the war on terrorism, and we've got to have a success strategy there.

Of course, incoming Speaker Pelosi disagrees that “Iraq is now a central battlefield in the war on terrorism.”

(Darn. The conspiracy has been exposed.)

It's no surprise that Senator Lieberman has tapped Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council to be his communications director and informal political advisor. During the campaign, Wittmann, a registered Independent, frequently battled the leftwing bloggers who were trying to put the anti-war Ned Lamont in office. But Connecticut voters gave Lamont and his far left backers a good thumping on November 7. Like his new boss, Wittmann’s a big fan of the late Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Democratic senator from the state of Washington who fought his party’s dominant McGovern wing. The bottom line: don’t look for Lieberman singing "Kumbaya” with the liberal Senate leadership anytime soon.

(From Reuters: "Anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said on Wednesday he expected more assassinations of ministers and members of parliament aimed at undermining the ruling majority. 'We have to expect, and this is my impression unfortunately, more assassinations of ministers and parliamentarians,' Jumblatt told a news conference. Lebanese Minister Pierre Gemayel, a member of the ruling bloc, was shot dead on Tuesday.")

The failure of the US, Europe and the UN Security Council to hold Syria accountable for its actions in Lebanon has evidently not gone unnoticed in Damascus. Syrian hands were all over the Hiriri assassination, and now this report from Reuters:

Syria played a part in the assassination of Lebanese Christian minister Pierre Gemayel, Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri told CNN on Tuesday.

"We believe the hand of Syria is all over the place," Hariri, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, said from Beirut shortly after Gemayel was shot dead near the city.

Gov. Romney's interview with the Washington Examiner is interesting not for his direct attack on Sen. McCain, one of the few politicians who has actually exhibited leadership on the Iraq War, but this statement: “I’m a conservative Republican, there’s no question about that…. I’m at a different place than the other two [McCain and Giuliani].”

Well, as I’ve noted before, it’s clear from the comments of Giuliani and his staff that if the mayor does jump in, he’s not about to concede conservatives to anyone. Indeed, it wouldn’t take much effort for Rudy to question his opponents’ conservative credentials on some issues just as they question his. McCain’s record is well known, so look for the Giuliani camp, in public and on background, to target Romney’s record and past statements a bit more in the early stages of the campaign.

I still very much doubt the mayor can win the nomination, but nothing in Rudy’s background suggests he’ll be a punching bag for his opponents. He’ll throw just as many jabs as he’ll absorb. And if he doesn’t run, the former prosecutor would be an excellent surrogate for the presidential camp that lands him. Then there’s Newt…and Brownback…

From the Sunday Telegraph:

Ayatollah who backs suicide bombs aims to be Iran's next spiritual leader

An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country's next supreme spiritual leader.

In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.

Considered an extremist even by fellow mullahs, he was a fringe figure in Iran's theocracy until last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow fundamentalist who views him as his ideological mentor. He is known to many Iranians as "Professor Crocodile" because of a notorious cartoon that depicted him weeping false tears over the jailing of a reformist journalist…

Appointing Mr Mesbah-Yazdi as supreme leader would be a massive blow to Western efforts to get Iran to cease its nuclear programme and backing of militants in Lebanon, Iraq and among the Palestinians. Although he has never spoken publicly on the issue, Mr Mesbah-Yazdi is thought to support the idea of an Iranian nuclear bomb…

The run-up to the vote has been marred by complaints of rigging in favour of hardliners. The guardian council, a hardline conservative body that vets candidates, is accused of vetoing reform-minded clerics from taking part. Around half of nearly 500 applicants have been banned from standing.

(The Washington Post reports: "British police are investigating the poisoning of a former Russian spy and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and have placed him under protective guard at a London hospital…. Alexander Litvinenko, 43, began vomiting shortly after he had lunch on Nov. 1 with a man who gave him documents related to the recent killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist.")

Posted on October 7, 2006:

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.

"According to initial information she was killed by two shots when leaving the lift. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift.

Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya.

"The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don't see any other motive for this terrible crime," said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, a deputy editor of the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked.

I’m told that Politkovskaya had written an article on Russian atrocities in Chechnya due to be published on Monday.

Here's a big thing many Americans wouldn't expect early on from Democrats: passing legislation to substantially enlarge the ground force. The Democratic leadership would enjoy strong bipartisan support for something that should have been done years ago. Just how bipartisan? Well, consider today’s New York Times editorial:

But keeping the Army in its present straitjacket would bring bigger and more immediate problems. Even assuming an early exit from Iraq, the Army’s overall authorized strength needs to be increased some 75,000 to 100,000 troops more than Mr. Rumsfeld had in mind for the next few years.

A force totaling 575,000 would permit the creation of two new divisions for peacekeeping and stabilization missions, a doubling of special operations forces and the addition of 10,000 to the military police to train and supplement local police forces. The Marine Corps, currently 175,000, needs to be expanded to at least 180,000 and shifted from long-term occupation duties toward its real vocation as a tactical assault force ready for rapid deployment.

The sooner Congress debates and sorts out the budget issues involved the better. Though, I seriously doubt they’ll adopt the Times’ funding proposals.

Gingrich on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: You say Mitt Romney. McCain started an exploratory committee this week. Thirty seconds: Are you going to do the same?

GINGRICH: No. We have a program called American Solutions we're working on. And in September of next year, I'll be glad to come back and talk with you about running for president, but not until...

WALLACE: Not until that late?

GINGRICH: Not until September.

A Newt run would certainly shake things up.

In a speech yesterday, Gen. John Abizaid was quite blunt in assessing the threat posed by Islamic radicalism. He also questioned whether the West has the will necessary to confront it now before a broader war erupts. From Reuters:

The top U.S. general in the Middle East said on Friday that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.

Army Gen. John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said in a speech titled "The Long War," at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend."

Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilizing the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs.

"Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq," said Abizaid, who earlier in the week warned Congress against seeking a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from the country that is wracked by insurgent and sectarian violence.

"The sacrifice that is necessary to stabilize Iraq, in my view, must be sustained in order for the region itself to become more resilient," Abizaid said.

Other senior officers have echoed Abizaid’s view on the centrality of Iraq in this war, and the need to stay engaged. Also, though it got little media attention, this November 16 piece from the back pages of the New York Times is another example of what Abizaid is warning about.

Weighing in at 364 pages, the Rand Corporation has just released a two-part study, “Beyond Al Qaeda.” Al Qaeda espouses a "global revolutionary creed” with an “ideology that is radical and Islamist at its core, but also borrows from 20th century Western totalitarian traditions.” Its goals, Rand notes, “are to mobilize Muslims for a global jihad against the West; topple ‘apostate’ regimes, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan; and create an Islamic government spanning the Muslim world based on an ultra-orthodox interpretation of Sunni Islam that would isolate the majority of Sunni Muslims as well as Shi'ite Muslims.”

On Iraq, Rand outlines three scenarios:

In the end, terror alone cannot guarantee success for the insurgents. The insurgency can continue to wreak havoc but will become an exercise in political futility. In these circumstances, three general scenarios are possible:

In the most benign case, significant elements of the Sunni community realize that a return of the status quo ante is no longer viable and accept a minority role within a democratic Iraq. The Sunnis might find a common interest with the Kurdish parties in balancing Shi’ite predominance, and a rough balance of power could develop, allowing for what we called in another study “democracy with Iraqi characteristics.”

In the second scenario, the representatives of the Sunni community are too alienated or terrorized to enter into a political arrangement with the Shi’ites and the Kurds. The insurgency could continue, perhaps at high levels of violence, but would be unable to transcend its narrow social base or to prevent the nascent government from gradually consolidating its control over the country.

In the third scenario, if the new government is unable to contain the insurgents and terrorists, or to win broad support among the diverse ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, it will be no match for local warlords and will have to contend with the growth of terrorist infrastructures. A failure of central authority could lead to a formal or de facto partition of the country.

Would an American troop withdrawal, along the lines suggested by many senior Democrats, make the third scenario more or less likely?

Here’s volume one, The Global Jihadist Movement , and volume two, The Outer Rings of the Terrorist Universe .

This is a strange story first reported on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) radio:

US authorities have uncovered a plot to set up a flight training school in the Pacific nation of Kiribati and suspect the man behind it may have had links to September 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta.

Since the plot emerged, Kiribati had asked for Australia's help to fight terrorism, ABC radio reported today.

The US' Federal Bureau of Investigations said Wolfgang Bohringer was considered a "person of interest".

It said Bohringer had close connections with a US flight school [in Florida] used by Atta, who masterminded the plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into key targets in the United States five years ago, the ABC saod .

Bohringer had fled Kiribati on his yacht, leaving questions about his intentions.

He surfaced in the Pacific nation about a year ago and began talking up plans for a resort and flight school on Fanning Island - a remote outpost with no phones, no functioning airstrip but among the closest to Hawaii.

Bohringer is not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

The AP reports that "House Democrats have chosen Rep. Steny Hoyer as House majority leader, the No. 2 leadership post.” Democrats showed some sense on this. Murtha would have been a disaster for the Democrats, though good for the media. With Lieberman's big victory and now Murtha's trouncing, the anti-war left will need to regroup a bit.

Despite the comments of Rep. Pelosi ("The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan”) and DNC chair Howard Dean (Afghanistan “is where the fight on terror is.”), the Global War on Terror is, in fact, global. Today’s New York Times reports:

More than 700 Islamic militants from Somalia traveled to Lebanon in July to fight alongside Hezbollah in its war against Israel, a United Nations report says. The militia in Lebanon returned the favor by providing training and — through its patrons Iran and Syria — weapons to the Islamic alliance struggling for control of Somalia, it adds….

The report also says Iran sought to trade arms for uranium from Somalia to further its nuclear ambitions, though it does not say whether Iran succeeded….

While the sources of the information remain unclear, the report is dense with details about arms shipments to the groups vying for power in Somalia.

It states that in mid-July, Aden Hashi Farah, a leader of the Somali Islamist alliance, personally selected about 720 combat-hardened fighters to travel to Lebanon and fight alongside Hezbollah.

At least 100 Somalis had returned by early September — with five Hezbollah members — while others stayed on in Lebanon for advanced military training, the report says. It is not clear how many may have been killed, though the report says some were wounded and later treated after their return to Somalia.

The fighters were paid a minimum of $2,000 for their service, the report says, and as much as $30,000 was to be given to the families of those killed, with money donated by “a number of supporting countries.”

In addition to training some Somali militants, Hezbollah “arranged for additional support to be given” by Iran and Syria, including weapons, the report found. On July 27, 200 Somali fighters also traveled to Syria to be trained in guerrilla warfare, the report says.

It also indicates that Iran appears to have sought help in its quest for uranium in Dusa Mareb, the hometown of Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the Islamist alliance in Somalia, which is known as the Council of Islamic Courts.

“At the time of the writing of this report, there were two Iranians in Dusa Mareb engaged on matters linked to the exploration of uranium in exchange for arms” for the Council of Islamic Courts, says the report, which is dated Oct. 16.

Those claims, if proved, could worsen global tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran ignored an Aug. 31 deadline to suspend its uranium enrichment, and the United States has been leading a United Nations effort to impose sanctions….

Not only has the volume of arms flowing into Somalia grown, according to the authors, but more sophisticated weapons like surface-to-air missiles are being brought in. The conflict could grow into a regional war, with Somalia’s neighbors, Ethiopia and Eritrea, backing opposing sides.

The report also accuses Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria of supplying the Somali Islamists with arms, advisers and fighters. It says three nations — Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen — are aligned with the so-called transitional government based in Baidoa, an inland city….

The report recommends that the Security Council blockade Somalia….

I’m confident the UN Security Council will act swiftly against the apparent chief state sponsors of the above – Syria and Iran.

Its significance was on display at yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. From today’s New York Times:

But no sooner had Mr. Levin outlined his case for a phased pullout of troops beginning in four to six months than the new Independent Democratic hero of the hawkish wing, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, began acting the role of cross-examiner, leading Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Middle East, to say that such a withdrawal would increase violence and instability.

''I take it by your answer that you profoundly disagree?'' Mr. Lieberman asked. With the Democrats, he meant. ''We have a window of opportunity and, really, responsibility now, after the election,'' he said, ''to find a bipartisan consensus for being supportive of the efforts of our troops and our diplomats there to achieve success.''

To this, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic contender for the 2008 race, knocked back the remains in her coffee cup.

His comments on immigration, the party leadership races, and 2008 may be found here.

If John Bolton decides to bow out of the UN post because of continued Democratic opposition to his confirmation, the president should seriously consider former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson for the job. Like Bolton, he’s tough, well versed in national security, extremely articulate and would be a forceful public advocate for the president’s policies. Democrats would be hard pressed to deny him an up or down vote on the Senate floor. A Thompson pick would also send a bold signal that the president isn’t about to run-out-the-clock on his term. I’m hopeful the president could persuade Thompson to accept the nomination, but he will probably have to do so over the objections of a few, particularly in the intelligence community. With his background as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Thompson has routinely questioned the performance of our intelligence agencies over the years.

The bottom line: Bush shouldn’t answer the Bolton critics by appointing an anti-Bolton type, as some are clamoring for; he should up the ante and put the Democrats on the defensive. Nominate Thompson.

During the past year, senior Democrats have often cited the remarks of Gen. Zinni and Gen. Batiste, in particular, in their attacks on the administration’s conduct of the war. But I doubt they’ll be citing them anymore -- or these officers for that matter. Zinni wants more forces in Iraq, and Batiste characterizes Democratic troop withdrawal plans as “terribly naïve.” From today’s New York Times:

One of the most resonant arguments in the debate over Iraq holds that the United States can move forward by pulling its troops back, as part of a phased withdrawal. If American troops begin to leave and the remaining forces assume a more limited role, the argument holds, it will galvanize the Iraqi government to assume more responsibility for securing and rebuilding Iraq.

This is the case now being argued by many Democrats, most notably Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who asserts that the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq should begin within four to six months.

But this argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies.

Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command and one of the retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it.

“The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this,” General Zinni said in an interview, referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.”

Instead of taking troops out, General Zinni said, it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces….

But some current and retired military officers say the situation in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq is too precarious to start thinning out the number of American troops. In addition, they worry that some Shiite leaders would see the reduction of American troops as an opportunity to unleash their militias against the Sunnis and engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing to consolidate their control of the capital.

John Batiste, a retired Army major general who also joined in the call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation, described the Congressional proposals for troop withdrawals as “terribly naïve.”

Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, also argued that a push for troop reductions would backfire by contributing to the disorder in Iraq.

“If we start pulling out troops and the violence gets worse and the control of the militias increases and people become confirmed in their suspicion that the United States is not going to be there to prevent civil war, they are to going to start making decisions today to prepare for the eventuality of civil war tomorrow,” he said. “That is how civil wars start.”

From the Islamic Republic News Agency:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Tuesday referred to Iran's peaceful nuclear activities as the most complicated challenge in the country's diplomacy, saying time is running in Iran's favor in this respect.

"The greatest and most complicated challenge in the country's diplomacy has been removed by the grace of the Almighty and thanks to resistance and vigilance of the Iranian nation," he told domestic reporters.

"Today the Iranian nation possesses the full nuclear fuel cycle and time is completely running in our favor in terms of diplomacy."

Referring to Iran's peaceful nuclear activities as one of the most important issues since he came to office 15 months ago, he said it is an issue on which almost all big powers stood against the Iranian nation to prevent it from attaining its rights.

However, he said, by the grace of God and thanks to the resistance of the Iranian nation a large number of those who could not tolerate Iran's launch of fuel cycle have accepted this today and are coexisting and interacting with a nuclear Iran.

Also, the IAEA has reportedly "found unexplained plutonium and highly enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran." Will the Security Council now act or will the Russians and the Chinese continue to do Tehran's bidding?

From AFP:

Lebanon's Western-backed cabinet is facing a deep crisis as pro-Syrian opponents called for a change of government after it adopted a UN plan to try suspects in former premier Rafiq Hariri's murder.

Despite the resignations of six pro-Syrian ministers, the cabinet on Monday approved the UN draft to set up an international tribunal for the February 2005 assassination of the five-time prime minister….

An ongoing UN probe has implicated senior officials from Syria, which for decades was the power-broker in its smaller neighbour, and also Lebanese accomplices. Damascus strongly denies any connection with the Hariri killing.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the root of the crisis in Lebanon was that "some (people) are very, very nervous -- including in Damascus -- about where this tribunal issue is going".

Perhaps Western diplomats will get another opportunity to talk with President Assad about Hariri’s killing should the much ballyhooed regional peace conference ever take place. Let’s hope Damascus and Tehran haven’t toppled the current Lebanese government by then.

Last January, the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine to punish Kiev. Earlier this month, the AP reported that Gazprom “would more than double the price of gas for Georgia,” a struggling pro-Western democracy. Now, the Financial Times reports:

A confidential study by Nato economics experts, sent to the ambassadors of its 26 member states last week, warned that Russia may be seeking to build a gas cartel including Algeria, Qatar, Libya, the countries of Central Asia and perhaps Iran.

The study, by Nato’s economics committee, said Russia was seeking to use energy policy to pursue political ends, particularly in dealings with neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine….

Although there is disagreement over whether Russia could create any such cartel, the report highlights the deepening tensions between Western Europe and Moscow over energy security.

Energy company executives say the biggest threat to gas prices comes from Russia’s own investment shortfalls and possible moves by Moscow to convince other producers, such as Algeria, to limit investment.

Russia supplies 24 per cent of Europe’s natural gas, with Norway selling 13 per cent and Algeria, a major exporter to Spain and Italy, supplying 10 per cent.

Last week, the International Energy Agency warned of “the possibility of major gas-exporting countries co-ordinating their investment and production plans in order to avoid surplus capacity and to keep gas prices up.”

…Last month, before an EU summit with Russia, Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, highlighted a Russian deal with Algeria, which he said stopped Algeria selling majority stakes in gas projects to foreign investors.

“We are witnessing some form of mutual agreement as Russia and Algeria restrain investment,” said one industry analyst.

“Moscow has tightened the grip using Gazprom and Algiers has just changed its hydrocarbons law giving [Algeria’s] Sonatrach 51 per cent of every project instead of 30 per cent.”

In July, the G-8 held its annual summit near St. Petersburg, Russia. One of the major topics discussed: energy security.

The DNC head released this statement the other day on the resignation of Secretary Rumsfeld:

I am glad that President Bush has finally listened to the growing chorus of retired Generals, civilian leaders and Democrats who long ago called for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. This is a good first step but the American people have spoken and it must be followed by a real change in direction in Iraq and in America's foreign policy by the President. Democrats are united and ready to get to work with Republicans to find real solutions to the challenges we are facing in Iraq. Our brave troops fighting in harm's way deserve nothing less.

Here’s what a “chorus of retired” officers told the Democrats about what our troops “deserve" when they spoke before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee in September. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted, they delivered a message the Democrats didn’t want to hear.

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.

"We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge," Batiste warned.

"We better be planning for at least a minimum of a decade or longer," contributed retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes.

"We are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short," added retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of building the Iraqi Security Forces.

That last remark caused Schumer to shake his head, indicating he was not so sure. And, indeed, the retired officers' recommendations were off-message for the Democrats. Six of the seven Democrats at the hearing supported legislation calling for the start of a troop withdrawal from Iraq this year. One, Richard Durbin (Ill.), voted for the pullout to be mostly complete by next summer.

In post-election Washington, it sure doesn't sound like the Democrats "listened" to what these officers had to say.

Rudy hasn't wavered in his support for stronger border security plus broader immigration reform. From the Times Leader (PA):

He recommended that political leaders “do immigration reform” before the 2008 Presidential election cycle begins because it should be easy for both sides to agree on such legislation. “I think that would restore people’s confidence in government (to) get something done,” he said….

Turning to immigration, he said “Illegal immigrants have some constitutional rights,” and the authority of local governments to legislate on immigration issues “depends” on whether the laws infringe upon those rights. He supports “strict” border security, but “at some time, (the government should) allow for people who are working, who are legitimate, to make them come out of the underground.”

“We need to know everybody in the United States,” he said, “because a larger underground network makes it easier for terrorists to hide in America.”

First Jane Harman feels the wrath of the new speaker and now Steny Hoyer. Pelosi is backing Jack Murtha for majority leader because of the boost he gave the Democratic faithful by calling for the rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his “strong voice for national security.” Murtha first called for the “immediate withdrawal” of U.S. troops last November. Pelosi endorsed the Murtha plan at the time, but Hoyer opposed it. “I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq,” Hoyer warned, “could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility.” Also in the fall of 2005, Hoyer joined a handful of other centrist Democrats to form a group to counter the party’s weak image on national security issues. One of the other prominent Democrats involved in the group: Jane Harman.

Some highlights from the senator's appearance on Meet the Press today:

On the election:

MCCAIN: That we Republicans have lost our way, that we came to Washington to change government and government changed us. The spending, the ethics, the massive programs such as Medicare prescription drug program, that—our failure to address their priorities as opposed to our own, and there was a—obviously a reaction to it. The Iraq war obviously is very frustrating. I know we’re going to talk more about that, but there’s—very frustrating to the American people. But I would submit, if they were all against the Iraq war that you probably would not have seen my friend Joe Lieberman, who I’m sure will talk about it, re-elected. So they’re frustrated by the war, but I also believe that many of our, our spending, our—the scandals, the ongoing scandals, the large government programs. In, in other words, one of the pillars of the Republican Party is fiscal conservatives. They were alienated by the fact that we let spending lurch out of control….

I am a proud conservative, both economically and socially. And I am a conservative Republican, and I will remain so in the school of Ronald Reagan—who, by the way, brought our party back after a defeat in 1976 and gave us hope and optimism. And I believe this party will rebound. I believe that we will get our bearings straight and we’ll get back on course, because I believe America is still a conservative right-of-center nation, and our message, our Republican message, is best.

On what to do in Iraq and the consequences of defeat:

MCCAIN: The question is, is what’s the solution? And I believe that a withdrawal, or a date for withdrawal, will lead to chaos in the region, and most military experts think the same thing. I believe that there are a lot of things that we can do to salvage this, but they all require the presence of additional troops.

Now, if you want to, to give up on, on Iraq, then fine, and take the consequences. I think there will be chaos in the region. But we need to control the—this insurgency, we need to embed people with the police and the military, we need to clear and hold—and “hold” is the important part—so we can expand areas of security. There’s a lot of things that we can and must do. But if we don’t want to do that, fine, but that is a decision that I think will have profound consequences. I’m not prepared to go to an American family and tell them, “Well, you know, we’ll—you just stay there for a while and we’ll delay this withdrawal and defeat for a year or two,” I’m not prepared to tell them that. I’m prepared to tell them that if we have the will to win, we will do what’s necessary to win. But I’m not interested in seeing a scene of the American Embassy on the, the roof of the American embassy in Saigon multiplied a thousandfold.

RUSSERT: …How can you go to the country after these elections and say, “Send more troops to Iraq”?

MCCAIN: I can only do what I think is best for these young men and women who are in the military. To do otherwise would be immoral and dishonorable. I believe that we have sacrificed enormously because of mistakes that have been made that were serious, which have been well-chronicled on this program and in many books. You have to make a decision as to whether you’re going to pursue a path that can bring to—about a stable Iraq and freedom and dem—for the people of Iraq, or you’re going to have some kind of, of situation where we either withdraw immediately or delay. And there are some who will say, “Well, we, we can stabilize the situation and withdraw gradually,” I don’t accept that, I think that what’s going to happen is that, as you withdraw, that you will see these—the sectarian violence increase, I think you’ll see involvement by Iran and Syria, and I think you will see a serious situation. I have to do what I think is morally right, and that’s been what has guided me throughout my life, and I do have some experience in some of these issues.

Feingold bows out for 2008. Will the anti-war left give in to Hillary or now push for a Gore candidacy to challenge the aura of inevitability surrounding the New York senator?

On this Veterans Day, I wanted to highlight two organizations that assist active duty service members and disabled veterans. Profiled in the Weekly Standard, Unmet Needs is a charity that helps military families facing financial difficulties.

In addition, I am on the board of the Wounded Warrior Project, a non-profit that assists severely wounded soldiers and their families with a variety of programs.

To all those who have served, America thanks you.

From the AP:

North Korean television Friday carried a report on the U.S. midterm election, saying the Republican Party suffered a ''crushing defeat'' and claiming that President Bush fired his defense secretary in its wake.

The unusually quick response, carried on the North's Korean Central Television Station, reflects the high interest that Pyongyang is believed to have in the Tuesday election.

The tightly controlled media of totalitarian North Korea rarely report on foreign news. When they do, such reports come days or weeks after news breaks.

''The Democratic Party ... has come to seize control of Parliament,'' an anchorwoman of the North's television said, according to footage shown on South Korea's new cable channel YTN. ''This midterm election ended in a crushing defeat by the Republican Party.''

The election outcome could affect Washington's foreign policy, including its approach toward North Korea. Democrats have called for bilateral dialogue with Pyongyang to end the country's nuclear programs.

In between victory laps around D.C., the incoming Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid may want to release a joint statement that American will is not "teetering" in Iraq and that al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq will be defeated. Our enemies haven’t gone away. From Reuters:

An alliance of Sunni insurgents headed by the Iraq branch of Al-Qaeda announced the creation of an independent Islamic emirate in Iraq in a video posted on the Internet on October 15 after parliament in Baghdad approved a federal constitution for the war-ravaged country.

In Friday's message, [al Qaeda’s top terrorist in Iraq] Muhajer lashed out at US President George W. Bush, describing him as "stupid," and said US forces occupying Iraq were preparing to cut and run.

"The enemy is now teetering under the blows of the mujahedeen ... and preparing to pack up and flee," he said.

Sure doesn't sound like the terrorists will leave Iraq if we make a speedy withdrawal, as Rep. Pelosi suggested on 60 Minutes three weeks ago.

STAHL: Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?

Rep. PELOSI: No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan. That is what...

STAHL: But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?

Rep. PELOSI: (Unintelligible). They have.

STAHL: Well...

Rep. PELOSI: The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. That means--they'll stay there as long as we're there. They're there because we're there.

This brief post-election blurb, which I comment on here, has been updated with a longer commentary on why the GOP lost on Tuesday. It’s McCain’s fault, you see. Of course, the fact that you have to read several paragraphs in before Iraq is even mentioned, and then only in the context of the "Frist-Warner alternative," is a good sign of severe out-of-touchism. It's pretty clear that the deteriorating security situation in Iraq had a major impact on the election -- Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Montana, Missouri and Rhode Island included. Going back to the fall of 2003, McCain had warned again and again about the erosion of security and had called for a much greater commitment to win the war in terms of troop strength (we never had enough) and counterinsurgency strategy. In November of 2003, McCain argued for more ground troops to give “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.” He continued:

Security is the precondition for everything else we want to accomplish in Iraq. We will not get good intelligence until we provide a level of public safety and a commitment to stay that encourages Iraqis to cast their lot with us, rather than wait to see whether we or the Baathists prevail. Local Iraqis need to have enough confidence in our strength and staying power to collaborate with us. Absent improved security, acts of sabotage will hold back economic progress. Without better security, political progress will be difficult because the Iraqi people will not trust an Iraqi political authority that cannot protect them. By all means increase the number of Iraqis involved in security…. But given the time it will take to train and deploy sufficient numbers of Iraqi forces and the competence required to root out a hardened foe, for the foreseeable future, Iraqi forces aren't a substitute for adequate levels of American troops.

Guess this tidbit wasn't fit to print. I don’t recall Hewitt forcefully pressing Secretary Rumsfeld and the White House to dramatically ramp-up its prosecution of the war during the critical years of 2003 and 2004, when the insurgency formed and deepened, or in the subsequent months for that matter. Perhaps if Hewitt had joined McCain early on in pressing the administration from the right on Iraq, the U.S. may have been painted a bit less Blue on November 7. Oh, the road not taken.

(The Wall Street Journal reports: "GINGRICH EMERGES as top conservative prospect for Republican 2008 field. Ebbing fortunes of Santorum, Allen and Frist leave opening for architect of Republicans’ 1994 sweep. Gingrich faults Bush for “very disturbing” post-election news conference, saying earlier replacement of Rumsfeld might have saved control of the Senate and 10 House seats." Get ready for Newt ’08.)

George Will writes in today's Washington Post:

Yet with Allen much diminished and perhaps out of contention, and with Rudy Giuliani not yet doing serious groundwork for a national campaign, the Republican field is already down to two. That is good for only one of them: Romney.

But what about Newt Gingrich? He’s given every indication -- publicly and privately -- that he will run; yet Will doesn’t mention the former speaker at all in his column. Gingrich won’t need much of a “ground game” to make waves in New Hampshire. He’s powerful on the stomp, a first-rate debater, and isn’t likely to concede the “conservative majority of the party” to anyone. On that score, a candidate Gingrich, or McCain for that matter, would likely hit Romney from the right on several fronts on which he is vulnerable, making it more difficult for any one candidate to consolidate the right in the early races.

Folks shouldn’t underestimate the impact of a Gingrich candidacy. He won’t win the nomination, but along the way don't expect Newt to assume the fetal position against his opponents -- whether they're named McCain or Romney.

Over at TCS Daily, J. Peter Pham of James Madison University and George Mason's Michael I. Krauss weigh in on the pending Democratic control of the House Intelligence Committee.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal cut to the chase today on Democrats and Iraq. They write:

The biggest question mark, and responsibility, for Democrats is on Iraq and the war on terror. They could do themselves and the country much good by working with Mr. Bush on a strategy toward achieving victory in Iraq as well as against al Qaeda. This means more than bromides about a "phased withdrawal" of troops next year, which won't encourage Iraq's militias to disarm; and it means more than Mr. Murtha's "redeployment" to Okinawa or somewhere else where the world would see that the U.S. has given up on Iraq.

But, so far, Democratic leaders haven’t been ending their calls for a “new direction in Iraq” with the word “victory” or even the words “to put us on the path to victory.” Speaker-to-be Pelosi’s press release on Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation is just one of the many examples:

I welcome the long overdue change in leadership at the Pentagon – now we need a change in policy. Secretary Rumsfeld has lost the confidence of his most crucial constituency: the men and women of our armed forces who rely on the civilian leadership of the Pentagon to provide them with the support needed to do their dangerous jobs as effectively and safely as possible. Mr. Rumsfeld failed to do that – that is why I called for him to step down nearly three years ago.

A new direction on Iraq is also long overdue. I hope the departure of Mr. Rumsfeld will mark a fresh start toward a new policy in Iraq, signaling a willingness on the part of the President to work with the Congress to devise a better way forward. Our troops deserve no less.

Mr. Gates has a great deal of experience on national security matters. The Senate will need to review his credentials closely to determine if he is the right person to serve as Secretary of Defense at this critical time.

But don’t “our troops deserve” politicians committed to victory or at least not pulling the rug out from underneath them? Our troops seem to understand the stakes in Iraq far more than many in Washington. Consider what Capt. Mike Lingenfelter, of the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, told the Washington Post: “We'll pull their feet out from under them if we leave… It's still fragile enough now that if the coalition were to leave, it would embolden the insurgents. A lot of people have put their trust and faith in us to see it to the end. It would be an extreme betrayal for us to leave."

All this brings me to another press release on Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation. This one from Sen. McCain:

I welcome the President’s decision today to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with former CIA Director Robert Gates. While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans’ respect and gratitude for his many years of public service. He has mine.

This important change offers the administration and Congress a fresh opportunity to examine all aspects of our strategy and tactics in Iraq, and make whatever changes are necessary to succeed there. I look forward to discussing with Secretary-designate Gates his ideas for correcting the mistakes of the past – whether we are following the right strategy today, and whether or not we have sufficient forces in Iraq to provide the level of security that is indispensable to defeating the insurgency, and achieving a political resolution of sectarian conflict there. I also intend to discuss with Mr. Gates the urgent necessity of increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps to alleviate the terrible strain on our active duty forces, Guard and Reserve, and meet the many challenges that confront us in this difficult time.

I believe this change today also provides an opportunity for greater bipartisan cooperation on Iraq policy – for Republicans and Democrats of good will to work together toward securing victory.

Victory is still attainable in Iraq. Our defeat there would have very dangerous consequences for the United States, our allies, and those Iraqis who have risked their lives to work with us. It is difficult to imagine the United States escaping from the chaos that would ensue in Iraq and in the broader Middle East without serious damage to our most vital interests, not to mention our standing in the world. We must prevail. However weary Americans are of the war in Iraq, doing what we must do to win there will bring our troops home as quickly as we can, with the victory that they have sacrificed so much to achieve.

If politicians aren’t interested in working “together toward securing victory,” the commander-in-chief should work with those who do and not give an inch to those who don’t. As Speaker-to-be Pelosi says, “Our troops deserve no less.”

From AP:

After battling, Panama wins seat on U.N. Security Council

Panama got 164 votes in the 192-member U.N. General Assembly, more than the 120 needed to win the two-year term starting January 1. Venezuela got 11 votes, Guatemala 4 votes, and Barbados 1 vote.

Here's a novel take on the election results that I couldn't disagree with more. And here's an alternative view: Burns lost because of Jack Abramoff. Chaffee lost because heavily Democratic R.I. loathes the GOP national leadership. Corruption has hollowed out the Ohio GOP, which, in turn, impacted the campaign of Mike DeWine – and that of Ken Blackwell for that matter. Sen. Allen didn’t run much of an ideological campaign, except on immigration where he ran many ads against “amnesty” – a campaign tactic that also failed fellow Virginia GOPer Jerry Kilgore, who lost his gubernatorial election bid to Tim Kaine. Santorum didn’t lose by 18 points because of the “Gang of 14” or the Senate's failure to rubber stamp the House immigration bill.

In the House, the swirl of corruption cost a number of seats, as did immigration. Speaking of, today’s Wall Street Journal notes that among Hispanics, “some 27 percent voted Republican – an 11-percentage-point drop from the prior mid-term election in 2002.” Of course, hovering over all this – the ethical issues, the profligate spending (though, to his great credit, John Boehner strongly opposed his party's pork binge), and the immigration mess -- is the war in Iraq. One of the very few people to fully grasp the deteriorating situation, early on, was the senator from Arizona. The bottom line: to recapture our majority and keep the White House in 2008, Republicans should assess the election results based on reality, not delusions.

(The claim that the president and the Senate supported an immigration "amnesty" bill was always bogus, but that didn’t stop some Republicans from making that canard the centerpiece of their campaigns. The three most vocal House candidates to do so – in Colorado-7, Arizona-5 and Arizona-8 – lost, 55-42, 50-46, and 54-42, respectively. Also, according to the Washington Post "about six in 10 voters said that they believe illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, a position that was supported by Bush but rejected by House Republicans who have pushed an enforcement-first approach to controlling illegal immigration. Democratic candidates won support from 61 percent of those who backed a path to citizenship, according to the [exit] poll.")

Posted on May 17, 006:

Too many conservatives have short memories. When the Clinton White House and the media falsely portrayed GOP efforts to slow the growth of Medicare spending as "cuts," conservatives complained bitterly. House Republicans even put out a 39-page press kit to rebut the "the lies the Democrats and their allies" were spinning on the GOP's spending proposal. Times have changed. Today, many conservatives, particularly in the House, have simply adopted the same Democratic tactic in an effort to undermine the president's immigration proposal. As the editors of the Wall Street Journal note,

[The president] also realizes that, for the illegals already here, mass deportations are impractical and would spell political suicide for the GOP. Hence, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is trying this week to garner more support for a bipartisan plan that would put these illegal workers on a path to citizenship if they pass a background check, pay fines, learn English and satisfy other requirements.

This is derided in some circles as "amnesty" -- a scare tactic thrown around to end discussions -- but the 11 or 12 million illegals already here are hardly likely to come out of the shadows if they know they will be deported.

It's bad enough that Republicans have embraced Democratic spending habits. Now, some of them have incorporated the Democrats' Medicare scare tactics into their own rhetoric on immigration. No wonder we could be looking at Speaker Pelosi.

Lieberman wins, and he did so without compromising his position on Iraq. Indeed, he defended it. I know some Democratic strategists were privately advising him to trim his support for the war. He ignored them. Good for Joe.

Apparently, Tehran's "art exhibition" was quite a success. From the Islamic Republic News Agency:

The International Holocaust Exhibition was held at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on Wednesday November 1 and was warmly welcomed by Iranian and foreign artists….

Twelve caricaturists were selected as the best, including five from Iran, one from Morocco, two from Jordan, two from Brazil and one from Syria.

Some 480 articles on holocaust were also submitted to the event's secretariat.

Out of 1,193 caricatures from 67 countries submitted to the exhibition's secretariat, 250 professional works were selected by the jury and showcased at the event.

The three major questions raised by the event include, `Why is the philosophy of freedom forgotten when Holocaust is criticized?', `Why should Islam countries and Palestine have to pay the price for the Holocaust?' and `What about the actual holocausts taking place in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons?'.

The evidence that we never had enough post-invasion troops in Iraq is overwhelming (see here) -– and, no, it isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking to say it. As I have noted many times, the “more troops” chorus, though small, began in 2003, in the face of a clearly deteriorating security environment, and continued in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Evidently, Gen. Sanchez agreed, according to Amb. Paul Bremmer. In his book, My Year in Iraq, he wrote:

On May 17 [2004], I had a meeting with General Sanchez to discuss the war.

What would you do if you had two more divisions, Rick? I asked him.

He was a practical soldier who didn't normally speculate about the hypothetical when there were so many concrete problems to address each day.

But he answered immediately. "I'd control Baghdad."

He hated the fact the insurgents seemed able to operate openly in the capital....

Today, some argue that it’s too late for more troops to do much good or that Secretary Rumsfeld would never increase the force enough to make a decisive difference, so why bother. Well, put the National Review’s Rich Lowry in the Frederick Kagan camp. Lowry has followed-up this piece with another interesting one "Against Half-Measures” in Iraq.

The recriminations over the Iraq War have long been raging, but now some of the war’s staunchest supporters have joined the blamefest. The list of what has gone wrong is long and varied, with liberal opponents of the war and conservative supporters all having their own ideologically congenial items.

But if there’s one consistent lesson from our experience in Iraq, it is to avoid half-measures — go to war with more troops, more deadly force, and more vigor rather than less. Muddling through and hoping to succeed with just barely enough resources, is a fool’s policy.

As Napoleon said, “When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.” We took Baghdad, but never with the level of commitment to ensure it would stay taken in any form worth having.

(With the opposition splintered, an Ortega victory seems likely according to preliminary results today. If he wins, will President Ortega keep some distance from Chavez or embrace him? Will President Ortega keep his campaign promises or will he go back to his old socialist, anti-American ways?)

(The latest poll has Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega leading the presidential race by 10 points. Venezuela's Chavez, who's been lobbying for a seat on the UN Security Council, has been just as busy trying to put Ortega in office. A Chavez win on both counts would obviously not be good news for the U.S.)

Posted on July 23, 2006:

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 ...

"Soldiers in Iraq Say Pullout Would Have Devastating Results," is the headline on page A-13 of today's Washington Post. Do you think the Post’s editors would have splashed this piece on the front page had these troops embraced plans for large-scale “redeployments” out of Iraq?

The reality is most Democrats do “support the troops,” but the troops don’t support their withdrawal plans. They want to win.

The one thing the war is not, however, is finished, dozens of soldiers across the country said in interviews. And leaving Iraq now would have devastating consequences, they said.

With a potentially historic U.S. midterm election on Tuesday and the war in Iraq a major issue at the polls, many soldiers said the United States should not abandon its effort here. Such a move, enlisted soldiers and officers said, would set Iraq on a path to civil war, give new life to the insurgency and create the possibility of a failed state after nearly four years of fighting to implant democracy….

In the north, where Iraqi army and police units have made strides toward controlling their own territory, U.S. soldiers said they were at a critical point in helping the Iraqi forces develop.

Capt. Mike Lingenfelter, 32, of Panhandle, Tex., said that U.S. troops have earned the trust of residents in Tall Afar over the past couple of years and that leaving now would send the wrong message. His Comanche Troop of the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment is working with Iraqi forces to give them control of the city.

"We'll pull their feet out from under them if we leave," Lingenfelter said.

"It's still fragile enough now that if the coalition were to leave, it would embolden the insurgents. A lot of people have put their trust and faith in us to see it to the end. It would be an extreme betrayal for us to leave."

(With Hussein's death sentence for ordering the murder of 148 Shiites in the town of Dubail in the early 1980s, it’s unclear whether his other trial will continue.)

Posted on August 21, 2006:

Saddam's second trial begins today. This time for genocide (see here for info. on Camp Slayer), as the New York Times reports:

Mr. Hussein sat stone-faced in a courtroom in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, listening as prosecutors gave a detailed account of how Mr. Hussein and six co-defendants embarked on an eight-stage military campaign in 1988 to eliminate the Kurds from swaths of their mountainous homeland in northern Iraq. Prosecutors said the campaign, called Anfal, killed at least 50,000 Kurds and resulted in the destruction of 2,000 villages.

Recently, Time magazine published an interview with a senior leader in charge of the forces that doused Halabja and other villages with chemicals in 1988 during the Anfal campaign. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri also claims that he and other Saddam loyalists are behind much of the insurgency. 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 Kurdish villages 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.

Senator Mel Martinez of Florida said that it would not the other day on Fox News:

I believe that cutting and running from a difficult endeavor is not a way to strengthen our military, but a way to weaken it.

Martinez was referring to the “strategic redeployment” plan advocated by many senior Democrats. In the current Weekly Standard, Frederick Kagan explains why Martinez is right and why “redeployment on any significant scale will not incentivize the Iraqi military. It will lead to its collapse.”’ Kagan continues:

There will be no "decent interval" here during which we withdraw in reasonably good order--the withdrawal itself is likely to occur in the midst of rising violence. Instead of pictures of Americans on the embassy roof in Saigon, we will see images of Iraqi death squads at work with U.S. troops staying on their bases nearby. And let us not forget that in the world of Al Jazeera, we will be accused of encouraging those death squads. The overall result will be searing and scarring. The damage to the morale of the military could be far greater than what will result from burdening soldiers with longer or more frequent tours of duty in a stepped-up effort to achieve victory. Those who are concerned about the well-being of the Army should fear defeat of this type more than anything.

I'm skeptical, but let's hope. Via Hotline blog:

Pew is out with their final pre-election poll and just like the ABC/Wash. Post poll, Pew shows Republicans with momentum. In the generic ballot, Dems lead by just 4 points. More importantly, the GOP has made significant cuts into the Dems once gigantic lead among indies. Also of note, from the release:

"There also are some indications that Sen. John Kerry’s “botched joke” about the war Iraq may have had a modest impact on the race. Fully 84% of voters say they have heard a lot or a little about Kerry’s remarks – with 60% saying they have heard a lot.

Soldiers of the Minnesota National Guard serving in Iraq, we thank you.

The History Channel notes that on this day in 1979:

Student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini send shock waves across America when they storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The radical Islamic fundamentalists took 90 hostages. The students were enraged that the deposed Shah had been allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment and they threatened to murder hostages if any rescue was attempted. Days later, Iran's provincial leader resigned, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's fundamentalist revolutionaries, took full control of the country--and the fate of the hostages.

I wonder what the current Iranian president was up to back then

(On October 2, 2006, I wrote: "Last January, the Kremlin cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine to punish Kiev. Is Tbilisi next?” Evidently, it’s approaching that line. The AP today reports: “Russia’s state-controlled natural-gas monopoly [Gazprom] said it would more than double the price of gas for Georgia, raising the economic pressure on Moscow’s small southern neighbor amid tensions between the two countries.” So if the Georgian democracy crumbles, the West should be sure to thank its fellow G-8 member for delivering the blow.)

Posted October 20, 2006:

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.

Georgian businesses say millions of dollars worth of orders are stuck at Russian checkpoints. Georgian Airlines, banned from flying into Russia, predicts its losses will exceed $600,000 by month's end.

Hundreds of Georgians have been deported as allegedly illegal migrants, and more are rumored to be on the way, putting at risk the estimated $2 billion that Georgians in Russia send home annually to feed their families. Some analysts predict the blockade could shave a percentage point off the country's GDP growth rate of around 6 percent….

Georgians say they have learned to cope with hardships. Power cuts are routine, so they stock candles. They maneuver their cars over axle-busting potholes. Some apartment blocks get running water only two hours a day…. The official unemployment rate is 13 percent and thought to be unrealistically low. The average salary is about $75 a month.

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?

(Since the media is focused on Saddam's nuclear weapons program and Iran's ongoing one, I dusted off this post from last month.)

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.

The prohibition would ban any training and education of Iranian citizens if it could eventually contribute to nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But whether such a ban would extend to all physics courses, or even to mathematics and other courses, remained undetermined.

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.

Also, by dispersing students, Iraq made it more difficult for any one country to fully appreciate the breadth of technical skills being built up in Iraq. And this dispersal of students certainly made it more difficult to track individual Iraqi scientists. Concerns with privacy and academic freedom as well as a low collection priority have meant that systematic data on foreign students are collected in few countries and seldom shared with other countries.

So the American effort to diminish Iran’s ability to do the same thing is not “extraordinary.” It’s common sense.

This piece in today's New York Times notes that Saddam was “as little as a year away” from getting a nuclear weapon. He was that close, as I have noted before. But while I’m no fan of how the Times often frames news stories, it’s pretty clear the reporter is referring to 1991 – the year inspectors discovered Saddam’s clandestine nuclear program was 12 to 18 months from a bomb – and not saying that Saddam was a year or so away from a bomb in 1995 or 1998 or 2002, as some on the Web have suggested. We now know that the inspection process had decimated Saddam’s nuclear weapons program, though, for the record, that wasn’t the belief at the end of the Clinton administration.

That said, the fact that Saddam’s bomb program went undetected by Western intelligence agencies is rarely mentioned nowadays. We tend to forget that while our intelligence agencies can overestimate a target nation’s capabilities (the 2002 Iraq NIE being the obvious example) they can also underestimated them – as was the case with Saddam in 1990-91 and North Korea.

In an editorial today, "STRAIGHT TALK ON THE ARMY." the editors of the New York Post write:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona wants more troops. Both in Iraq - and for the Army and Marine Corps generally. McCain is poised for a presidential bid in '08, so there's a bit of political risk to his proposal.

But his views on Iraq have long clashed with those of many in the establishment - Democrats, the mainstream media, even some Republicans. Yet once again he's talking honestly about the war.

For all their calls for timetables, phased withdrawals and other dressed-up versions of cutting, running and surrendering, the fact is, even most Democrats know that America can't simply abandon Iraq to the terrorists.

Which is why, in its prudence, the Army this month announced it's making plans to maintain at least current troop levels, about 141,000, through 2010 - just in case they're needed.

And why President Bush, while stumping for fellow GOPers, has been reminding listeners that America "will not run from thugs and assassins" in Iraq. McCain - a Vietnam hero - last week called for an extra 20,000 troops in Iraq. That, he said, would mean "expanding the Army and Marine Corps by as much as 100,000 people."

As we've noted, the case for beefing up military manpower (not to mention stocks of combat-ready equipment) should be more than obvious. Some units are being asked to do their third tour of combat duty in Iraq.

Given the War on Terror and high levels of hostility elsewhere in the world, more troops may be needed beyond Iraq - though a good way to avoid that necessity would be to have a visible and overwhelming number set to pounce, subject to need.

McCain deserves praise not just for speaking so candidly about the realities in Iraq - but for doing so while so many others are making the exact opposite pitch, even if only for political gain on the eve of an election.

It can't be said often enough: The stakes in Iraq are huge. And given the range of possible threats elsewhere, America needs to be prepared. Adults - like McCain - put those needs above partisan politics. Too bad more pols don't do likewise.

The senator is right, of course. If the objective is to restore and maintain some order in Baghdad in the next few months, many more US troops will be needed. The idea that we can’t wait a few more months for more Iraqi troops to come on line is a fantasy. A bigger fantasy is that large-scale “redeployments” carried out in the next few months will improve the security situation. It won’t. It will get worse and greatly undermine the progress we have made with some Iraq Army units. Since 2003, the administration has used multiple excuses (international troops are on the way/more Iraqi troops are in the pipeline) to keep U.S. troops levels far too low given the stakes involved in a conflict the president has called the central front in the War on Terror. Failure, as the president rightly says, is not an option. Yet, for the recent security operations in the capital we dispatched only about 6,000 US troops – and many of these troops were drawn from the volatile Anbar province. As the New York Post’s John Podhoretz wrote the other day:

The president should be imposing timetables on his own generals and Pentagon. As in, "We need to win this thing. We need to break the backs of the bad guys in a big and decisive way. I want to know how we're going to do this in six months."

The president used to say that he disdained "smallball" - referring to baseball strategy that aims to win by ekeing out singles and stealing bases and getting a run here and there. But in terms of waging war in Iraq, he's been playing "smallball." When he says, "We're adjusting tactics all the time," he's playing smallball. When the military moves 6,000 men into Baghdad for a few weeks, that's smallball.

If Iraq collapses, it won’t just be the Iraqis' problem. We will have to live with the consequences. Since 2003, Sen. McCain has been calling for more US troops in Iraq to help stem the deteriorating security environment. Too bad it wasn’t done back then when it could have done the most good.

(CNN just released a presidential preference poll for '08. They note: “On the Republican side, there is a virtual tie for first place, with 29 percent of registered GOPers expressing preference for Giuliani and 27 percent opting for McCain. McCain has picked up 6 points of support since September, with Giuliani holding steady. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of Georgia is the only other Republican to make it into double digits, with 12 percent.” And, as I’ve noted before, I believe it’s more likely Newt runs than Rudy -- for now at least.)

Posted on November 1, 2006:

George Will writes in today's Washington Post:

Yet with Allen much diminished and perhaps out of contention, and with Rudy Giuliani not yet doing serious groundwork for a national campaign, the Republican field is already down to two. That is good for only one of them: Romney.

But what about Newt Gingrich? He’s given every indication -- publicly and privately -- that he will run; yet Will doesn’t mention the former speaker at all in his column. Gingrich won’t need much of a “ground game” to make waves in New Hampshire. He’s powerful on the stomp, a first-rate debater, and isn’t likely to concede the “conservative majority of the party” to anyone. On that score, a candidate Gingrich, or McCain for that matter, would likely hit Romney from the right on several fronts on which he is vulnerable, making it more difficult for any one candidate to consolidate the right in the early races.

Folks shouldn’t underestimate the impact of a Gingrich candidacy. He won’t win the nomination, but along the way don't expect Newt to assume the fetal position against his opponents -- whether they're named McCain or Romney.

Reuters reports that Beijing is being its usual helpful self on Darfur.

Sudan must first agree before any United Nations peacekeeping force enters its war-wracked Darfur region, China said on Thursday, as its President Hu Jintao met the president of the African state.

Beijing is hosting dozens of African leaders for a summit opening Friday and intended to show China as a benign force for development on the largely poor continent. But among them is Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused by critics of abetting a vicious civil conflict in Darfur.

China has lucrative business interests in Sudan, which sells it large amounts of oil, and is a major arms supplier to the country. Beijing has resisted calls to authorise U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur without the nod of the Sudanese government."

Last February, Fortune magazine published a piece, ”China's African Safari,” on Beijing’s “benign” activities on the continent.

...African governments view China as a more cooperative partner than the West. China has refused to back regular Western rebukes of African corruption and human-rights abuses and last year used its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to block genocide charges against Sudan--source of about 7% of China's oil--for the massacres in Darfur. "The U.S. will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment," says Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, who has visited China seven times. "The Chinese just ask, 'How do we procure this license?'"

China has become the biggest foreign investor in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe's policies have beggared the country and left millions homeless. Zimbabwe doesn't have oil, but it is the world's second-largest exporter of platinum, a key import for China's auto industry. Chinese radio-jamming devices block Zimbabwe's dissident broadcasts, and Chinese workers built Mugabe's new $9 million home, featuring a blue-tiled roof donated by the Chinese government. While Western politicians railed against Mugabe last year for flattening entire shantytowns, China was supplying him with fighter jets and troop carriers worth about $240 million, in exchange for imports of gold and tobacco.

And so it goes.

The most powerful military alliance in the world can’t muster any more troops for its ground commander? From AFP:

NATO troops in Afghanistan are insufficient to guarantee a swift victory for coalition troops there, the organisation's commander in the Asian country said in interviews for the British press published.

Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British leader of the NATO troops in Afghanistan, also said that coalition soldiers would focus more attention on reconstruction within the country than on fighting the Taliban militia over the winter.

"If you said to me, if your aim is to win, I'd say no. I haven't got enough (to) win this, say, in the next six months, but I can continue to make sufficient improvements to keep the people here confident in us and in their government," Richards said, speaking to the Financial Times from Kabul….

Richards, who commands about 31,000 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops from 37 countries, said that it would be possible to "persuade through substantive improvement, the people of this country that we are making real progress."

"Something that really hit me in the eye was just how important it was for the Afghan people for us to prove that we could fight and defend their areas," Richards told The Times.

Today's Financial Times has an interesting piece on Moqtada al-Sadr, who Powell advised dealing with long ago, and the Mahdi militia:

Mr Sadr's movement probably began to splinter in late 2004, when he called off an insurrection against US and British troops. It appears to have disintegrated even further after February 2006, when his followers embarked on a campaign of sectarian killing in response to the demolition of a Shia shrine.

Mr Sadr's ideology has long emphasised Sunni-Shia unity against the Americans and he is reportedly dismayed by the violence, not least because it delays the withdrawal of US troops. He has called on his followers not to shed Iraqi blood without permission. He may however have to gauge how much political capital he is willing to spend to rein in a militant movement that now considers Sunni radicals, rather than Americans, to be their primary enemy.

Mr Sadr has reportedly tried with varying degrees of success to replace insubordinate commanders in cities in the south. He has been surprisingly quiet about US-Iraqi raids targeting Mahdi Army cells that have allegedly involved themselves in death squad killings.

US commanders however complain that other Mahdi Army commanders still enjoy political protection, and are forced to release detained militiamen at the request of government officials including Mr Maliki himself.

However dangerous Mr Sadr's followers may be, the Iraqi leadership may be betting that it best to bolster the one man who still has some authority over them.

The veterans group released the following statement:

Vets for Freedom, America’s largest nonpartisan orgaization representing the active duty troops and veterans of the War on Terror, called for an apology from Senator John Kerry for his remarks belittling U.S. troops.

In a campaign stop in California yesterday, Senator Kerry told supporters, “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Vets for Freedom strongly condemned Senator Kerry’s remarks, which implied that the military was only for the lazy and uneducated. Vets for Freedom has called for Senator Kerry to apologize to the troops for his insensitive comments.

Vets for Freedom’s executive director, Wade Zirkle, who voluntarily joined the Marine Corps after earning a bachelors degree, said this about the remarks, “On one level, these remarks are insulting and disparaging, and Senator Kerry should be ashamed. One another level, the remarks are simply false. This is an all-volunteer military with overwhelmingly positive recruitment and retention numbers, and these comments are just baseless.”

Senator Kerry today refused to apologize, and instead projected the controversy by bizarrely insulting a radio host and White house Staffers.

Said Zirkle, “Senator Kerry is out of touch with the trigger-pulling class of today’s military. This military attracts the best and brightest individuals in America, and it is shameful that someone would try to publicly belittle us for any reason.” Zirkle served two deployments to Iraq as a Marine infantry officer before being wounded in action.

George Will writes in today's Washington Post:

Yet with Allen much diminished and perhaps out of contention, and with Rudy Giuliani not yet doing serious groundwork for a national campaign, the Republican field is already down to two. That is good for only one of them: Romney.

But what about Newt Gingrich? He’s given every indication -- publicly and privately -- that he will run; yet Will doesn’t mention the former speaker at all in his column. Gingrich won’t need much of a “ground game” to make waves in New Hampshire. He’s powerful on the stomp, a first-rate debater, and isn’t likely to concede the “conservative majority of the party” to anyone. On that score, a candidate Gingrich, or McCain for that matter, would likely hit Romney from the right on several fronts on which he is vulnerable, making it more difficult for any one candidate to consolidate the right in the early races.

Folks shouldn’t underestimate the impact of a Gingrich candidacy. He won’t win the nomination, but along the way don't expect Newt to assume the fetal position against his opponents -- whether they're named McCain or Romney.