Interested in finding out who's acting as a paid representative of a foreign government here in the United States? Want to know how many people are lobbying for the United Kingdom, or Mexico, or Iran? You'll want to consult the new online portal for the Foreign Agents Registration Act, just posted by the Department of Justice:

Initial searches of the database show it does link to substantial documents, such as contracts between lobbyists and foreign governments as well as advocates’ reports listing contacts between them and policymakers.

The records are compiled under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Passed in 1938 to register propaganda by German Nazi agents before World War II, the act now keeps track of lobbying and public relations efforts by foreign governments and politicians.

Users are invited to offer feedback at the website. Once it is complete, Boyd expects DoJ will put out a press release to announce the new feature.

The interface for the library is pretty user-friendly, allowing you to search by country, by lobbyist, by status of the contract (active or terminated) as well as other criteria. For those interested in how foreign governments navigate the American political system, the database is quite useful.

Posted by Brian Faughnan at 11:01 AM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebar, yesterday's kidnapping of five Britons, one adviser, and four security guards from the Finance Ministry is believed to have been carried out by elements of the Mahdi Army. Reports suggest the raid was carried out by Mahdi fighters who infiltrated the police and the ministry's security forces. "The number of people who were involved in the operation to seal off the building, to set roadblocks and to get into the building with such confidence must have some connections," said Mr. Zebari. The ministry is located near Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Neighborhoods of Sadr City have been cordoned, and at least two raids have been carried out.

A Soldier from Company A, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment (Light), 25th
Infantry Division, fires a MK19 Automatic Grenade Launcher during Operation
Baton Rouge in Samarra, Iraq. Photo by Staff Sgt. Klaus Baesu

Coalition forces captured "five suspected terrorists and one suspected cell leader" in a raid in Sadr City today. It is unclear if this is one of the two raids directed at Mahdi Army fighters involved in the kidnapping of the five Brits. "The individuals detained during the raid are believed to be members of the secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training," Multinational Forces Iraq reported today. This is the fourth such raid in Sadr City since Friday. Seventeen members of this network have been killed and 38 captured during numerous raids over the past three weeks.

In Salahadin province, al Qaeda murdered four family members of the leader of the Salahadin Salvation Council. "Four relatives of the head of the Salahadin Salvation Council, Sheikh Hamad al-Hasan, were killed when unidentified gunmen attacked their house in al-Hajjaj village, in southern Bayji," Voices of Iraq reported. "The gunmen killed the council head's four nephews, then set the bodies and house on fire," according to an unnamed source. The council was formed less than two weeks ago to counter al Qaeda in that province.

The U.S. military has confirmed that the attack helicopter lost in Diyala province on Monday was shot down. A military spokesman claimed the helicopter was brought down by small arms fire. Al Qaeda in Iraq took credit for the attack. "God enabled the soldiers of the Islamic State in Iraq to down a Super Cobra aircraft ... in Diyala and kill the two Crusader pilots aboard," Al Qaeda's proxy political organization said in an internet posting. Al Qaeda in Iraq has established anti-aircraft cells in an attempt to disrupt U.S. air operations, but U.S. forces have been largely successful in dismantling those cells.

In Baqubah, the local government there formed an "operations room" in conjunction with national authorities and which "includes the province's government, municipal council and security services." This is much like the Joint Coordination Center in Fallujah, which serves to coordinate Iraqi and Coalition security forces with the local government there. Over 100 tribes are said to be assisting in security operations in Baqubah and the surrounding regions, according to Al Sabaah. These tribes are very likely part of the Diyala Awakening.

Coalition forces captured 23 members of al Qaeda's network during raids in Baghdad, Mosul, Sadr City, and Anbar and Salahadin provinces. Iraqi soldiers captured 15 insurgents during three days of operations in central Iraq, from May 26-28. On May 29, Iraqi Special Forces captured a cell leader "accused of commanding a kidnapping and assassination cell that has been conducting extra judicial killings in the Baghdad area." In Hit, Coalition forces detained "the district police chief, Hamid Ibrahim Jazaa, along with his brother and 14 bodyguards" for "murder, corruption and crimes against the Iraqi people."

Posted by Bill Roggio at 06:44 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Senator Lieberman was in Iraq today touring a Joint Security Station, a Forward Operating Base, and a Baghdad market. While he was there, he told a CNN reporter:

I'd say what I see here today is progress--significant progress from the last time I was here in December. When you can see progress in war, that means you're heading in the right direction.

You can see the video here, and you can see the left go into convulsions here. Apparently, like McCain, his "rosy assessment" is belied by the fact that he is wearing "full battle gear." Also, there's the painful reality that this past month was among the bloodiest for American troops since the start of the war. But, any reasonable person should recognize the fact that an increase in American casualties does not necessarily correspond to a lack of progress on the ground. In this case, casualties are rising as more troops hit the streets and as they deploy forward to areas that had once been no-go, and which are now playing host to Joint Security Stations and the like.

Just look at Anbar province, which saw only 15 U.S. servicemen killed in May, one of the lowest casualty counts in that province since the start of the war. In December of 2006, 47 servicemen were killed in the province. Anbar has become one of the big Coalition success stories. So is Lieberman really going out on a limb to say that we're making progress now and things are better than they were in December?

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 04:45 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

From Commentary: The Case for Bombing Iran, by Norman Podhoretz.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Testing the Waters, by Stephen F. Hayes.

From the American Thinker: Venezuelan Revolt, by A.M. Mora y Leon.

From Contentions: Secretary Slaughter? by Gabriel Schoenfeld.

From the Fourth Rail: A look at the surge from Baghdad, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.

Bonus Audio File: Military.com podcast featuring Bill Roggio and Ward Carroll.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 03:01 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

The Democrats promised reform when they took back Congress, but those promises continue to unravel. Though they came to power promising to take the mystery out of earmarking, and require full disclosure, Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey recently said that earmarks will only be inserted in legislation at the last minute--immediately before final passage:

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said Tuesday he would not include earmarks in appropriations bills until they reach conference, angering some of his Republican counterparts and prompting accusations that Democrats were going against their pledge to reform and bring transparency to the earmarking process...

Any such earmarks dropped into the conference report will comply with House disclosure rules, Obey promised.

“If we choose to insert earmarks in conference, it will be under the rules that require every one to be inserted by name,” he said.

But Republicans complain that Obey’s decision effectively bars Members from attempting to strike individual earmarks on the House floor, and they fear Democrats could use the threat of losing earmarks as a club over Republicans.

Under the rules adopted by House Democrats at the start of the Congress, pork-barrel projects inserted into conference reports are subject to the same disclosure requirements as earmarks in other legislation. However, conference reports are pretty much never amended on the House floor, removing the ability to strip egregious wastes of taxpayer money. Furthermore, conference reports are typically voted on mere hours after they are agreed to; there's rarely enough time to read the report--even if you can get your hands on it.

It's also hard to take Chairman Obey's promises on disclosure seriously, since he asserted the right a few months ago to insert a whole class of earmarks without any disclosure at all. The underpinning for the argument seems to be that when a committee chair introduces a bill with earmarks, he isn't really a person bound by disclosure rules--he's more of an institution.

The backtracking on earmarks hasn't gone entirely unnoticed; CNN recently produced this piece on the failure of Congressional Democrats to clean up the institution as promised. Obey and his counterpart in the Senate--Robert Byrd--feature prominently:

The more things change...

Posted by Brian Faughnan at 01:43 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

The Council on Foreign Relations posted an interesting interview with the Carnegie Endowment's Karim Sadjadpour, who seems to have a good understanding of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Much of what he says conforms nicely with a piece we recently ran on THE DAILY STANDARD by AEI's Omeed Jafari.

Sadjadpour explains "that there’s a small but very powerful clique within Iran, among the political elite, who actually have entrenched political and financial interests in retaining Iran’s isolation." Asked to elaborate, he says:

You have hardline elements within the Revolutionary Guard, who right now have enormous financial assets, and they maintain a kind of a private mafia. And the last thing they want is Iran to open up to the rest of the world, to join the WTO. I think their logic is that right now Iran is a closed society, and the less open the merrier.

Jafari's piece was the first I'd heard of what I think is really an interesting story. Basically, as foreign companies leave Iran due to the high risks associated with doing business there--the likelihood of further sanctions or even war--the Guard has moved in to fill the void, winning billions of dollars in no-bid contracts. This has given the Guard and its allies even less incentive to work towards some kind of diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff, or to stop meddling in Iraq. Anyway, read the interview, and the Jafari piece. As I said, interesting stuff.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 01:36 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Go over and read how Ed Morrissey's innocent question to Sen. John McCain in a media conference call led to a significant new hurdle for the Senate immigration bill. This is the end result:

House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.

The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a 'blue slip' for the color of its paper.

This has happened before. In fact, it happened less than a year ago, with the same piece of legislation. The Senate included a provision in its version of the immigration bill to require the repayment of back taxes. This led the House to 'Blue Slip' the measure, forcing the Senate leadership to find a procedural work-around.

The Senate is not entirely without moves of its own that it can make. The House has passed a few tax bills this year that the Senate might 'amend' by adding the immigration bill. This would create a significantly broader piece of legislation--but it would technically satisfy the Congressional stipulation that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives.

Alternately, leaders from the House and Senate might strike a bargain in advance, and have the Senate strip the tax provisions before sending the measure to the House--with the understanding that the House would add them back in later.

Lastly, Don Wolfensberger--a former Staff Director for the House Rules Committee and a procedural whiz--wrote last year ($) that the House can vote to ignore the violation--more or less:

If the Senate, either intentionally or inadvertently, originates a revenue-raising bill, any Member of the House has the option of calling up a 'blue-slip resolution' (named after the color of paper it is printed on after passage) to send the measure back to the Senate. The resolution gets immediate consideration as a matter of constitutional privilege, is debatable for an hour and is not subject to amendment (though it may be tabled or referred to committee).

If the political will exists, there are several ways for the Senate to eliminate this problem and expedite passage of the measure. However, for legislation that's none too popular already, this is a problem its proponents ought to have tried harder to avoid.

Posted by Brian Faughnan at 11:44 AM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

InsideDefense.com reports today on the "first combat firing of a 155 mm precision artillery shell in Iraq." The shell, the XM982 Excalibur, was fired at an al Qaeda safe house earlier this month:

Standing on a rooftop some 700 meters from the safehouse with his fire support team, Clausen [commander of the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment] said he witnessed two consecutive rounds penetrate the target: “Never in my wildest imagination as a field artilleryman did I expect to see two consecutive rounds go through a roof into a house and have the effects that we needed to destroy that particular target.”

It all sounds very impressive--Clausen adds, "We’re looking to improve efficiency in everything we do. Precision means you need fewer rounds, and fewer man hours in moving large numbers of rounds...That’s how you cut the logistics tail.”

Precision guided artillery has a short history. The Army developed a laser guided 155mm projectile called Copperhead in the 1980s, and the round was used in combat in the first Gulf War. But the Copperhead was expensive, and laser targeting requires a high cloud deck and a soldier on the ground to illuminate the target--it wasn't ideal and the program was killed. But Excalibur may finally give the Army the guided munition it's been looking for.

Still, not everyone's convinced. This morning I spoke with Stuart Koehl, a military analyst at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Transatlantic Relations, who called the strike "a stunt, because they didn't have to use an artillery round, they could have used an airplane--it would have been a lot cheaper." I also spoke with WEEKLY STANDARD contributor Tom Donnelly, who said that, "without being dismissive, I would kind of agree....We're hardly suffering from a want of firepower in Iraq." But Globalsecurity.org's John Pike took the opposite view--"JDAM [the GPS guided Joint Direct Attack Munition] is widely regarded as having revolutionized aerial warfare, and things like Excalibur, I think, have the potential to do that with artillery."

Koehl says the question is whether "the increased lethality [is] worth the increased cost as compared to conventional artillery rounds, [particularly] when one takes 'non-lethal' effects such as suppression and disruption into account." Which is to say, "I didn't have to hit a tank or an APC with a $50,000 golden BB round, because firing a couple of dozen [high explosive] or DPICM rounds could have the same effect at something like $200 [per round]."

Of course, American troops aren't targeting tanks, they're targeting insurgents in urban areas, where firing a couple dozen rounds would mean a lot of collateral damge. Still, Koehl says, "in counterinsurgency this kind of thing is mainly irrelevant. If I really need the long-range indirect fires, I've got total air supremacy, I've got all-weather capability, I really don't need an artillery round when I could drop it from an airplane. It just makes a lot more sense to have something right there on the scene shooting from a much shorter range...a JDAM dropped from overhead is going to go right down the pipe, no matter what." Pike disagreed though, saying that "if all I want to do is blow up one building, JDAM's just too much of a good thing."

Koehl says the Army ought to be focused instead on developing a precision mortar capability. The war in Iraq is being waged by small infantry units in urban areas and in close combat. Precision mortars would give much needed firepower and flexibility to those units--"a 5-pound mortar bomb on the roof does the trick, and with a lot less collateral damage than even a 100-pound GPS-guided projectile." Pike was also eager to see mortars upgraded with a precision capability: "Having [precision guided] mortars in direct support of a small unit, you can't get any better than that, because that's organic fire support. The time on target is short relative to field artillery, you don't have the elaborate fire support planning that goes into tube artillery, and you have a face-to-face relationship between the mortar team and the other people who are in the fight. So by all means...let us put GPS guidance on our mortar rounds as well."

While some foreign militaries, including the Brits and the Swedes, have developed precision mortars, the U.S. Army has no such capability. "We've been trying to make a precision guided mortar munition since I was working at Picatinny [New Jersey's Picatinny Arsenal, also the site of the Excalibur program office], and that was the late 1980s," Koehl says. "They just can't get their act together because it's not important to them...it's nothing but a stovepipe with a nail on the bottom."

But Koehl isn't totally dismissive of Excalibur. He says that "if we were going to fight the Chinese someplace, or if we were going to have a conventional war with the Koreans, Excalibur would be a nice thing to have--not essential--but a nice thing to have. On the other hand, a guided mortar projectile, or just a wider range of mortar projectiles, is something that we could use right now." Donnelly, however, thought that "a guided mortar wasn't going to add all that much one way or another, but I'd sort of like to have it all...and I'd rather have more infantry than either." And when I asked Pike if Excalibur had an important role to play in conventional or counterinsurgency operations, his answer: "We're going to find out."

You can read more about Excalibur here, and you can read the fact sheet from Raytheon here.

The XM982 Excalibur

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 06:24 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

The New York Times reports on the problems that Democrats are having in convincing their base that they're not responsible for the continuation of the Iraq war--that it's the president and Congressional Republicans who are at fault:

No one would mistake Peter A. DeFazio for a supporter of the Iraq War. One of the House’s most liberal members, the Oregon Democrat voted against authorizing the war in 2002, and this year he’s been a reliable vote for measures to withdraw U.S. troops. When Democratic leaders agreed last week to give President Bush a war funding bill without withdrawal timetables, DeFazio was an instant “no” vote.

But even DeFazio hasn’t been immune to complaints from the party’s liberal base. Last week, on the morning after the funding deal was announced, he vented his frustration in a telephone call to the Air America radio station in Portland. Anyone upset that Congress hasn’t ended the war, he said, should focus on persuading more House members to support a withdrawal of troops — not “waste their time” on the 169 Democrats and two Republicans who voted for a withdrawal earlier this month.

DeFazio has a point--the Iraq appropriations bill that the president will sign could not have passed without strong Republican support. But after months of promising that the Congress wouldn't give the president any more 'blank checks' on Iraq, the speaker has led her party to do just that. Of course, that's not how she sees it:

The funding bill's passage "was the start of a whole new direction in Iraq," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. "I think that the president's policy is going to begin to unravel now."

If this were the case, you have to wonder why it took so long to get started on this 'new direction.'

Liberal anti-war groups don't seem to be buying the argument, either:

And MoveOn organizers said Democrats also are likely to see skirmishes in their districts.

"This is not partisan anymore. This is not about staying away from Democrats to make them look good or attacking all Republicans to make them look bad," said Susan Shaer, cochairwoman of the Win Without War coalition. "We don't care who you are or whether we usually like you. This vote was wrong."

Some Democrats have even claimed that they never had power to cut off funds in the first place--that the president has 'Food and Forage' authority to continue the Iraq operation even in the face of a Congressional withdrawal of funding. (Imagine what would have happened if the president or vice president had suggested the existence of such authority!)

It's true that the support of Congressional Republicans was necessary to pass the bill, but it's equally true that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid had it in their power to deny funds for the war. They could have refused to bring up funding legislation--and they should have if they really believed that Iraq is not worth 'one more drop' of American blood. There was never any compulsion to fund the troops--only a reasonable fear that the voters might punish Democrats for not doing so.

Whatever faults this administration may have, fear of doing what they believe to be right in Iraq--regardless of the political consequences--is not one of them. The only reason the president won this showdown is because Democrats do have that fear.

Posted by Brian Faughnan at 05:22 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

In Baghdad, after a brief lull in major attacks, today saw two high profile bombings as well as a kidnapping of foreign workers in the capital. One bombing occurred at a Shia mosque in the Amil neighborhood in the western Rashid district. A suicide car bomber killed ten Iraqis and wounded at least 35 more in the attack. The second bombing occurred in a largely Shia neighborhood in central Baghdad. "At least 22 people were killed and 55 wounded when a parked minibus exploded in central Baghdad," Al Jazeera reported. "The bomb went off in a busy commercial area where many day labourers, mostly Shias, often wait for work."

Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division
provide security before conducting house to house searches
in the Sadiyah section of Baghdad, Iraq on May 6.

IraqSlogger notes that there are conflicting accounts of the kidnapping in Baghdad. Early reports indicated a small number of German advisers to the Ministry of Higher Education were abducted by several dozen men dressed in Iraqi Police uniforms. Now, it appears that "five Brits had been abducted, including four bodyguards and a finance expert," but reports of several Germans captured persist.

Today's attacks occur as Iraqi and Coalition forces continue clearing operations in the Baghdad districts. U.S. and Iraqi security forces recently started clearing operations in the East Rashid district (note that today's suicide attack occurred in West Rashid.) Also, clearing operations were conducted in the northern section of the Adhamiyah District on May 26. The newly formed and yet to reported on 3rd “War Eagle” Battalion,1st Brigade of the 11th Iraqi Army Division participated in the operation. Nine insurgents were detained.

On Monday, Task Force 145 captured nine al Qaeda during raids in Mosul and Haditha. The Haditha raid netted "a Syrian suspected of facilitating foreign fighters and his Iraqi liaison." Today, Coalition forces captured 14 al Qaeda during raids in Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Taji. The Baghdad raid resulted in the capture of the "al-Qaeda in Iraq emir in charge of the Hay al-Jamah area of the city," while the Mosul raid resulted in the detention of the former "emir of Ansar al-Sunna in Mosul," who had fled to Syria in 2005. The Iraqi Police also captured nine al Qaeda suspects in Samarra after a tip from an anonymous informant.

Posted by Bill Roggio at 05:08 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

From THE WEEKLY STANDARD: The Army We Need, by Tom Donnelly.

From the Wall Street Journal: The Conservative Mind, by Peter Berkowitz.

From Asia Times: Why Iran will fight, not compromise, by Spengler.

From the New York Post: Messing Up the Mullahs, by Peter Brookes.

From the New York Sun: Welcome Back, Netanyahu, by Hillel Halkin.

Artist's rendering of new British carriers, which the Telegraph
reports are likely to 'face delay' if the French are brought into the program.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 02:01 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Roll Call ($) reports today that with the bitter and draining fight over Iraq funding now behind them, Congressional Democrats intend to focus on domestic issues for no more than a few weeks before returning to Iraq once again:

Democrats, meanwhile, will spend the bulk of the week on gas prices and broader energy issues as a lead-in to their domestic agenda work. According to Democratic aides, Reid has placed a top priority on talking about domestic issues over the next several weeks to take advantage of the lull in the Iraq debate.

One leadership aide said Reid hopes to use the recess to lay the groundwork for several weeks of floor work on the domestic front, starting the resumption of the immigration fight next week, followed by a full week on energy legislation. “I’d like to have a solid week to work on energy to demonstrate to voters that we get it” and are working on issues beyond the war, the aide said.

However, the spate of domestic agenda work may not last very long. Reid already has penciled in debate on the Defense authorization bill for the last week of June, and his war room is expected to use the week before to resume the rhetorical fight with the White House and Senate Republicans on the need to end the Iraq War. Although Reid has yet to settle on a strategy for the authorization fight, he is expected to continue Democrats’ push to pass legislation restricting President Bush’s ability to prosecute the Iraq War and begin the process of reducing the U.S. military presence there.

With health care, the economy, immigration, energy, and other issues all rated as very important to voters, it's important for Democrats to be seen as offering answers on something other than the war in Iraq. The minimum wage increase that is about to be enacted has attracted virtually no attention; which is appropriate, given how trivial an issue it is. Because their proposals to address energy and gas prices include nothing to encourage supply, but instead revolve around tax increases and gimmicks, Congress is unlikely to produce anything substantive on energy--or other priorities--anytime soon. Reid and Pelosi would do well to produce some actual legislation before returning to Iraq.

Posted by Brian Faughnan at 01:42 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Last Friday, the Pentagon released its "Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007."

The English-language media have widely reported how a Sunday editorial in People's Daily by staff writer Xi Laiwang blasted the Pentagon report as "exaggerating, misleading, and one-sidedly playing up the 'China threat.'"

The Sunday editorial is actually a rehash of a dispatch published in the Chinese-language edition of People’s Daily on Saturday with the byline "Xi Laiwang, correspondent to the United Nations." The original article ran under the title "Is there no exaggeration in the 'Report on Chinese Military Power'?"

In it, Xi notes that at a DOD press conference on May 24th (the day before the release of the annual report) Secretary Gates "made a point of reporting happily" that the report on Chinese military power does not contain any "arm-waving" or "exaggeration of the threat."

Xi continues:

But after a careful reading of the 50-page "report," people will have no difficulty discerning that it is not dissimilar from previous annual "reports." It makes the same reckless criticisms of China’s security strategy, strategic military thinking, and military capability…One might say that the "report" greatly exaggerates the "Chinese military threat."

Xi further claims that the Pentagon report characterizes China as a "hostile country with a Cold War style."

Also worth noting is that on the same day that the Pentagon released its report, Xinhua re-published a commentary by Chinese Air Force colonel Dai Xu that had originally appeared in zhongguo guofang bao, a newspaper run by the PLA.

Titled “Chinese colonel: the only way to avoid a new military generation gap is for the PLA to spur into action to catch up,” Dai describes military modernization as a "life-and-death race that concerns national development and national destiny."

Dai argues that China cannot afford to lag behind in the "global military transformation," which, he says, "has entered its final stage of qualitative changes." He defines the "global military transformation" as "a World War carried out during a time of peace without the smoke of gunpowder."

Dai quotes Li Hongzhang, the Qing dynasty official who represented China in several humiliating diplomatic negotiations, as having observed that "foreigners take heed of power, not reason." Dai asks, "What does the word 'power' refer to? It refers to military power. To be powerful means to have reason on your side; to possess real strength means to have dignity."

That these nationalistic sentiments are shared by many of China’s netizens is suggested by the hundreds of angry postings on Chinese Internet bulletin boards, like this one found at the popular Web portal sina.com:

Revitalize China for the good of our nation.
Bolster our defense capability.
May the day soon dawn when we are truly feared by our enemies.

Posted by Jennifer Chou at 10:57 AM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Fox News Sunday and This Week both took a long look at second tier Republican candidates claiming to be the only choice for real conservatives this primary season. Mike Huckabee, taking a break from celebrating his wedding anniversary, talked to Chris Wallace about his plan to eliminate the IRS, a tactic sure to endear him to conservatives from coast to coast:

Here’s how the fair tax works: You get rid of income tax, you get rid of all of withholding, you get rid of corporate taxes completely, totally, because those taxes are not really paid by the corporations, they’re passed onto the customer. With a 22 percent embedded tax in the system, you eliminate that, which means that the prices of what you purchase will go down. You replace it with a 23 percent consumption tax. Now, that sounds expensive, but here’s what happens. You only pay when you purchase something new. Whether it’s a product or it’s a service. The point is it’s a completely transparent tax system, it doesn’t increase taxes, it’s revenue neutral, but here’s what it will do: it will bring business back to the United States that’s leaving our shores because our tax laws make it impossible for an American based business to compete.

Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, meanwhile, tried to cement his status as a Washington outsider in this exchange with George Stephanopoulos about the immigration compromise.

Let me tell you what conservatives are concerned about: conservatives are concerned that all the discussion, including on this show, was more of a technical, insider type of fix of the situation and not a real discussion of principle. And the real principle here is that we can’t have a sovereign state that doesn’t control its own borders. We simply have to put that first and make sure that we control our borders so that we can control the situation. Otherwise you’re going to do some kind of compromise or insider sort of deal, here in Washington, D.C.

On the Democratic side of the ledger, Bill Richardson staked out a position to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with regard to Iraq during his appearance on Meet the Press.

Tim, I know this region well. I was U.N. ambassador. Eighty percent of my time was spent on the Iraq issue. I faced down Saddam Hussein, brought back two American hostages. I know the region well. I know the leaders there. I regret not having pushed more diplomatically early on with President Bush. I do regret that. But look where we are now. There's a civil war, there's sectarian conflict. Right now I believe we must withdraw all our troops by the end of this calendar year with no residual forces because our troops today are a target.

Posted by Sonny Bunch at 01:15 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

This Memorial Day weekend, while most folks are heading to the beach, Operation Gratitude will be kicking off one of its biggest events of the year, what the group's founder, Carolyn Blashek, calls their "Patriotic Drive." The drive will have the group packing boxes starting this weekend and running non-stop until July 1--boxes that will be shipped to American servicemen in Iraq throughout the summer.

I spoke with Blashek this morning, and she told me they hope to send at least 50,000 packages to the troops this summer, and then another 50,000 during their holiday drive, which kicks off on Veteran's Day. She tells me that their last holiday drive "was by far their biggest," with over 58,000 boxes shipped. They'll have "hundreds and hundreds" of volunteers packing boxes every weekend for the next four weeks in an effort to break that record.

Blashek says the packages include non-perishable food items that the troops can take with them when they go out on patrol--beef jerky, gum, candy, etc. They also include a variety of personal care items--sunscreen, foot powder, lip balm. And finally, entertainment items--CDs, DVDs, flash drives, decks of cards, and what Blashek says is the most popular item: Beanie Babies. If you're wondering why American troops would be clamoring for Beanie Babies, here's a letter the group got from a Marine stationed in Iraq:

I am one of the many Marines that you sent a care package. I want to thank each and every one of you for supporting us and for letting us know how much people support us back at home. I live with 17 Marines and Sailors in one room. Everyone got a package and everyone loved it especially the cookies and beanie babies. The cookies are excellent and the beanie babies help us out a lot with the local kids. We give them candy and toys and they give us the location for IED's. Once again, thank you for everything and for all the hard work that you put into the package. LCPL ND

Blashek says that after receiving that letter, they've made sure to include the toy in every box they ship.

So, the bottom line: All the products they ship are donated by major corporations and individuals from around the country, BUT the postage on each box is $9.15, and Blashek says "there's nothing we can do about it, except pay it." She says the group's overhead only adds about 50 cents to the cost of each package, but that the value of each package is somewhere between $100 and $120. She needs $1.2 million just to cover the group's postage, and they've still got a ways to go.

If you have a friend or family member serving in Iraq, you can head to the website and request that the group send them a package. I'm sure they'd be extremely grateful for any donation you can make as well. And if you want to see your donation at work, Fox News will be covering the kick-off all afternoon tomorrow.

Click here to go to the Operation Gratitude website, and click here to donate.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 07:03 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

The return of Muqtada al Sadr from a self-imposed four month exile in Iran dominated the news from Iraq today. Sadr, who leads the Sadrist movement and commands the Mahdi Army, had taken shelter in Iran, under the watchful eye of Iran's Qods Force. Today, he made a grand entrance in Kufa and gave a sermon to some 6,000 followers in which he denounced the U.S. 'occupation.' "No, no for Satan. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel," Sadr chanted at the opening of his sermon. "We demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces, or the creation of a timetable for such a withdrawal... I call upon the Iraqi government not to extend the occupation even for a single day."

Sheik Ahmed Azziz, Sistani's representative in Diyala, talks to about 60
of Diyala's tribal sheiks during a meeting with the provincial leadership
in Baqubah, Iraq, May 23. Photo/Sgt. Serena Hayden.

Sadr's reasons for returning remain a mystery. It remains to be seen if he can reorganize the fractured Mahdi Army, which split apart after the militia's leadership and paymasters fled to Iran. He may also be attempting to take advantage of the absence of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), which recently made an official break from Iran and is now working closely with the Iraqi government.

Multinational Forces Iraq and Iraqi Special Forces gave Sadr a nice welcome home present in the form of two high-profile raids--one in Sadr City, and another in Basra. In Basra, the British killed Abu Qader, the leader of the Mahdi Army in that region, along with his brother and two aides. Qader "was suspected of involvement in planting roadside bombs, weapons trafficking, assassinations and planning and participating in attacks against British troops," Reuters noted. Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducted a raid in the heart of Sadr City, Muqtada's purported stronghold, and captured a Mahdi fighter "suspected of having direct ties to the leader of the EFP network as well as acting as a proxy for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer."

Coalition forces are keeping up the pressure on al Qaeda's network, capturing 20 al Qaeda during raids in Baghdad and Mosul. The Baghdad raids netted an al Qaeda "battalion commander... responsible for numerous attacks in Baghdad, including assassinations, attacks on news media and attacks on the city’s infrastructure," as well as an "explosives expert... known to have knowledge of explosively formed penetrators," and "a close associate of a Libyan who facilitates the movement of foreign fighters in the area."

Also, Multinational Forces Iraq announced that it had found a ‘how-to’ torture manual during a raid on an al Qaeda safe house in Iraq several weeks ago. The manual contains "drawings [that] show how to drill hands, sever limbs, drag victims behind cars, remove eyes, put a blowtorch or iron to someone’s skin, suspend a person from a ceiling and electrocute them, break limbs and restrict breath and put someone’s head in a vice."

Al Qaeda conducted two notable attacks today, it bombing another bridge over the Euphrates river, and executing yet another commando styled assault in Diyala province. The bridge links Baghdad's al-Adl district to the al-Khadra district. "The bombing is part of serial attacks targeting bridges and crossings in Baghdad in a bid by militants to destroy Iraq's infrastructure facilities," a source told the Kuwaiti News Agency. This the eighth bridge targeted by al Qaeda. At least two have been destroyed, one of which has since been replaced.

In Diyala, al Qaeda attacked "a mainly Sunni village near Baqubah, killing five people, in the ongoing battle for control of al-Anbar and Diyala provinces between al-Qaeda and an alliance of local Sunni tribes." Al Qaeda fired "indiscriminately at civilians before fleeing." This follows a recent meeting between 45 tribal sheikhs and the Diyala government, Iraqi police and military, and U.S. forces. The Diyala tribes have formed the Awakening Movement, modeled on the Anbar Awakening that had such success in beating back al Qaeda in large swaths of Anbar province.

Posted by Bill Roggio at 07:02 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

From Time: A Campaign Role Reversal, by William Kristol.

From Government Executive: Launching a New Navy, by Greg Grant.

From FP Passport: The "supernotes" conspiracy theory, by Blake Hounshell.

From War is Boring: Lebanese Army: Not Outgunned, by David Axe.

From the Fourth Rail: Sadr Returns From Iran, by Bill Roggio.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 01:19 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Press Release from Senator McCain:

"I was very disappointed to see Senator Obama and Senator Clinton embrace the policy of surrender by voting against funds to support our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This vote may win favor with MoveOn and liberal primary voters, but it's the equivalent of waving a white flag to al Qaeda."

Ouch!

Update: So Obama responds:

This country is united in our support for our troops, but we also owe them a plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe the course we are on in Iraq is working, but I do not.

What's wrong with this statement? From McCain:

While Senator Obama's two years in the U.S. Senate certainly entitle him to vote against funding our troops, my service and experience combined with conversations with military leaders on the ground in Iraq lead me to believe that we must give this new strategy a chance to succeed because the consequences of failure would be catastrophic to our nation's security.

By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket.

Double Ouch!

Posted by Michael Goldfarb at 12:02 PM | Permalink | E-mail the author | E-mail article

Dr. David Kilcullen, who currently serves as senior counter-insurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus and Multi-National Force Iraq, participated in a conference call with bloggers and reporters this morning.

Kilcullen has a distinguished record, having served as chief counter-terrorism strategist for the U.S. State Department, senior analyst in Australia's Office of National Assessments, and special adviser to the Pentagon for counter-terrorism during the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. He also blogs at the Small Wars Journal.

The call lasted nearly 45 minutes, so I won't try and cover everything that was discussed, but there will be a complete transcript and audio file posted here sometime today.

So, a few highlights:

A reporter from the San Antonio Express News asked Kilcullen "to elaborate one one of the accelerants--Iran. We understand the connection between the Iranian regime and the Shia extremist groups, but what's perplexing to many of us is the dynamics between Iran and the Sunni extremists."

KILCULLEN: "I think it's really important to understand as a sort of first thought that the groups that are fighting in Iraq, mostly are fighting for political advantage, and, in fact, if you look at the different groups that are fighting, some of them appear to be very different religiously--there are what look like far-right Sunni groups and what look like extremist Shia groups, but actually, you often find people that know each other in those groups and they sometimes cooperate on a tactical basis. If you think about it as a purely religious phenomenon, that's confusing: why would extreme Shia cooperate with extreme Sunni? But the thing is, you gotta remember that every Iraqi has at least two identities. They've got a pre-2003 identity, from when before we arrived, and then they've got their current identity, under the environment that we're in now. So a lot of these people know each other from Saddam days and they do tend to act like an old oligarchy that's trying to preserve their interests. And you often find Shia and Sunni groups sort of tactically cooperating in some ways, or leaders in different groups knowing each other. So, first of all, it's not quite as sharp a dichotomy between Sunni and Shia as you might think. The second point, Iran has a history of this and there's a current pattern of Iranian behavior, both in Afghanistan, where they're supporting the Taliban, who used to be their enemies, and in Iraq, where they're supporting both Sunni and Shia groups in different ways. Essentially, what they're trying to do is bog us down. Their strategy is to soak us up, make it hard for us to maneuver, get us, if you like, decisively committed here in Iraq and over in Afghanistan--to sort of achieve freedom of maneuver for themselves. So it's Iranian national self-interest that's involved here more than some kind of religious dynamic. If you see the Iranians as fundamentally Shia, you get the wrong answer. They are Shia, but what motivates their activity, I think a lot of the time, isn't Shia politics, it's Iranian influence, if you like, Persian interests. And so a lot of these guys who work with the Iranians may think that they are working on behalf of their faith, but they are actually essentially Persian stooges is how I would put it. And in the case of the Sunnis, it's more of a tactical alliance of convenience where the Iranians believe there's benefits, and various Sunni leaders who know them, or have contacts, will exploit that. And why wouldn't you, if you know that someone's offering to give you assistance?"

I got in the last question. I asked Kilcullen about how airpower fits into the Coalition's counterinsurgency operations--a topic that's been much discussed, particularly by the Air Force, which appears to feel a bit marginalized by the Petraeus Doctrine:

KILCULLEN: "Airpower is actually critical in counterinsurgency. I know that there's a bit of a fight going on now between--what is it?--Army and the Marines, who wrote the field manual, 3-24, and the Air Force is kind of out there writing an alternative manual at this point. There's actually been a lot of really good work done on this by RAND, a guy that I think is best-qualified to talk about this is a guy called Alan Vick at RAND, who's been really a pioneer in thinking about working through airpower issues in counterinsurgency. I'm aware there's this debate going on. I think here in Iraq, there's a number of sort of airpower writ-large functions--air reconnaissance very important, aerial surveillance, both by manned and unmanned vehicles, is critical, it gives us this, if you like, unblinking eye that allows us to understand what's going on in the environment; the use of fast air combat power for interdiction and strike is important, it's more important in desert areas and underpopulated rural areas than it is in cluttered, sort of target-rich environments like in cities, where you can really do a lot of damage to the civilian population. So we don't tend to use airpower heavily inside cities. Having said that, if we do need to, we certainly do draw on that capability. And we do tend to use sort of cannon and direct strafing activity, rather than necessarily going straight for the kill-box approach, where you deluge an area in high-explosive. I think the other really important function is transport and mobility. Obviously, I'm defining airpower broadly, but, you know, helicopter mobility, the ability to move around in fixed-wing airtransport aircraft really gives us an edge in terms of being able to react quickly when things happen. So, I think, there isn't a lot of air to air combat in counterinsurgency, and I think, therefore, on the surface, it kind of seems like, well, what role does airpower have? But, actually, airpower's got a critical role in surveillance, transport, targeting of precise targets, interdicting or isolating areas of the battlefield--it's got a whole range of f