If you're planning on hitting the links tomorrow, you ought to know that September 1 is Patriot Golf Day. Here's the deal:

On September 1, golfers across the country have the unique opportunity to donate $1 to Wounded Warriors, Inc., which will also benefit the Fallen Heroes Foundation to support families of those who have become disabled or lost their lives in the line of military duty. So, before you tee it up, honor those who served us so valiantly.

The WWS has a long history of plugging the good work of Wounded Warriors, stretching back to the tenure of my predecessor Dan McKivergan. It's an exceptional outfit and worthy of whatever support you can offer. The other organization involved is the Fallen Heroes Foundation, which helps out with education costs and other needs for those families who have lost a family member to the war. So if you have the opportunity to drop a dollar or two off at the course tomorrow, do it. If you want to donate online, click here.

From the Times: Ramadi Returning to Normal, by Martin Fletcher.

From the Wall Street Journal: Pyongyang's Upper Hand, by John Bolton.

From the New York Post: Back From Hell, by Ralph Peters.

From Powerline: Just Read the Headline, Don't Ask Any Questions, by John Hinderaker.

From Flight: Israel sets F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Specifications, by Arie Egozi.

Bonus Video: O'Hanlon on the GAO Report.

From Ares: Underscoring the threat posed by non-nuclear submarines, the Canadian navy has released a photo [of the British carrier HMS Illustrious] taken through the periscope of HMCS Corner Brook, one of the service's four Victoria-class SSKs.

From the Australian:

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year, a doubling in the seizure of insurgents' weapons caches between January and August, a rise in the number of al-Qa'ida "kills and captures" and a fall in the number of coalition deaths from roadside bombings.

"We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al-Qa'ida is off balance at the very least," he said....

He acknowledged there was still too much violence and that al-Qa'ida and militias with the "malign involvement" of Iran were still serious threats. But the surge strategy had turned the US forces into pursuers instead of defenders. "And that is a much better place to be than to be doing a deliberate attack into their defences, like we had to do in Ramadi," he said. "Ramadi was like Stalingrad."

According to General Petraeus's figures, which will be put to Congress, the number of ethnic- and religious-related deaths would be down to a quarter of what they were last December by the end of August. He said "ethno-sectarian deaths" were the most important measure of progress.

"If you look at Baghdad, which is hugely important because it is the centre of everything in Iraq, you can see the density plot on ethno-sectarian deaths," he said.

"It's a bit macabre but some areas were literally on fire with hundreds of bodies every week and a total of 2100 in the month of December '06, Iraq-wide.

"It is still much too high but we think in August in Baghdad it will be as little as one quarter of what it was."

There's a lot more there, certainly worth clicking through to read the whole thing. But Petraeus is obviously optimistic about the impact of the surge on the situation in Iraq, as most serious observers have been. So one wonders what the reaction of the left will be. Can Petraeus be painted as a liar? Unlikely, he has a great deal more credibility with the American people than anyone in Congress--or the White House for that matter. But I think we got a glimpse of it last night from Glenn Greenwald who was a guest on the Hugh Hewitt show. Greenwald's basic argument was that Petraeus isn't a liar, but that his military background leads him to face problems with optimism and a can-do attitude. Therefore we should take his report with a grain of salt and give weight to the more sober (read defeatist) assessments of those on left--like Greenwald.

However, I don't see how that approach works when Petraeus is basing his assessment on hard data like that provided above. The numbers are impressive.

If you've not yet bookmarked In From the Cold, take a moment to do so. 'Former Spook' often has excellent insights on intelligence and national security issues.

Today he looks at the data for U.S. casualties in Iraq in August. He looks both at what the media are likely to claim, and what the reality is. As with so much of Iraq reporting, the two are very different:

Using data from the icasualties web site, we determined that 54 U.S. military personnel were killed in combat in Iraq during August. The other 25 died mostly in accidents, including two helicopter crashes that claimed a total of 19 American lives. The continued drop in combat deaths follows a trend that's become increasingly evident, as detailed by this monthly breakdown, which includes the number of hostile fire and non-combat deaths:

In other words, Americans combat deaths in Iraq has dropped by almost 50% over the past three months--while the number of troops in harm's way has increased (the surge hit its peak less than two weeks ago), with a corresponding spike in our operational tempo. We mourn for all of our fallen heroes, but the significant drop in casualties--during a period of greatly expanded operations--offers clear proof that the surge is working, and that their sacrifice was not in vain.

Source: iCasualties.

It is, to my recollection, the absolute worst, cheesiest, most preposterous Vietnam war movie ever made, but feel free to send in any titles you think rival the flick for that prize. In fact, the movie was so bad it was impossible to take seriously as an indictment of the Vietnam-era American military, but that didn't stop it from winning a Golden Globe way back when. Still, the story, if I remember correctly, pretty much mirrors that of De Palma's latest title, Redacted: American soldiers rape a young girl in between 'insane warfighting schedule' of murdering civilians.

At least in Casualties of War, the main character was troubled by what was transpiring and tried to save the abducted Vietnamese villager. In this movie, De Palma needn't portray any Americans in a positive light, since it's based on a true story--and we all know that in the real world there are no good American soldiers. Still, one might note that the four Americans who participated in the savagery depicted by De Palma in Redacted were all held to account and are currently serving lengthy prison sentences (in Casualties of War the military chain of command was portrayed as complicit in the crime and the cover-up).

Meanwhile, al Qaeda is busy chopping off peoples heads and killing women and children, but they make their own movies, so why bother depicting that on the big screen. And as De Palma says:

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

It is surprising that Americans ever went to see another movie war again after this picture:

Update: Confederate Yankee weighs in:

It seems almost certain that if De Palma covered the battle for Okinawa in 1945, his predilection for vilifying the American military would no doubt have led him to tell the story of the noble schoolteacher who led her classroom of children over the cliffs to their deaths at Humeyuri-no-to, and the bloodthirsty Marines they escaped from into death.

Sounds about right.

The Washington Post reports this morning that several lawmakers visiting Baghdad were angry to discover that soldiers and others had been provided with brief 'bio cards' summarizing the lawmakers' views and votes on Iraq:

In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."

The bio of Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) -- "TAU (rhymes with 'now')-sher," the bio helpfully relates -- was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. "Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight," the bio quotes.

"This is beyond parsing. This is being slimed in the Green Zone," Tauscher said of her bio.

I have not seen the 'bio cards,' and have no information on who prepared them. If any reader is able to provide that information, or a copy of the actual cards, we'd like to see it and post it here. Further, to the extent that the cards were inaccurate, or unfair representations of the Members' views, then any reasonable person might be angry--but the only real complaint seems to be that one of the bios was out of date. The only serious allegation made by the Post, and apparently confirmed by all three members of the delegation, is that "an American" was whisked away by security personnel after he tried to approach the group:

At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."

"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."

It sounds troubling, but if the three of them couldn't even say whether this American was a member of the U.S. military, how do they know that he was trying to get their attention "to voice concerns"?

And what else? The Iraqi national security advisor prefers watching cartoons to speaking with Jim Moran? Who wouldn't?

Update: Think Progress has the bios. It seems the only real distortion was that the bio stated that Moran didn't vote to set a timeline for withdrawal when he did. Is it possible the Post meant that these Dems were being slimed as supporters of the war?

Merkel inspects PLA troops outside the Great Hall of
the People in Beijing August 27, 2007. (REUTERS/Jason Lee)

The current cover story of Germany’s weekly magazine Der Spiegel, titled "The Yellow Spies: How China Spies Out German Technology," has triggered a big political debate in Berlin about how to manage the country’s political and economic relations with Beijing. According to undisclosed sources cited by Der Spiegel, German domestic security agencies believe that Chinese hackers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) installed Trojan spy programs camouflaged as Word and PowerPoint documents on several computers at the Federal Chancellery, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Economics and Technology, as well as the Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

In its first reaction, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin issued a statement rejecting the allegations, calling the Spiegel report "irresponsible speculation based on no factual evidence." The German Interior Ministry, for its part, pointed out that cyber attacks against government computers are a constant problem, but that no damage had been caused by them so far. Politicians from across Germany’s political spectrum strongly condemned the Chinese hacker attacks and urged the Merkel government to make sure that such attacks would not happen again. The opposition pro-market FDP party also wants to raise the issue in the Bundestag to determine whether the IT security standards of the German government are really up to date.

The timing of the story’s publication was certainly designed to ensure maximum impact, as it came on the eve of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s on-going week-long Asia tour, which would lead her first to China and then to Japan. While Merkel declined to discuss the Chinese hacker allegations in public, she vowed to raise the issue of intellectual property protection during her talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. A spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry declared that Beijing "has always been against and strictly opposes the criminal action of hacking and harming computer systems," adding that China and other countries have established good cooperation mechanisms to strike against hacking and that Beijing "is willing to strengthen cooperation with Germany on the issue." Other top agenda items include efforts to fight global climate change, recent Chinese product safety issues, and, last but not least, human rights concerns, particularly in connection with Darfur and China’s close energy ties to the Sudanese government in Khartoum.

It remains to be seen what impact the recent cyber attacks revelations will have on German perceptions of China. For a long time, European countries, especially strong trading powers such as Germany, have viewed China above all as an economic opportunity, and not as a military or geostrategic competitor. The reverse has generally been true for the United States, where China is viewed both as an economic threat (by protectionist-minded Democrats) and as a strategic military threat (primarily by Republican security hawks in the current administration and on Capitol Hill). China, of course, is not the only problem. The head of the domestic intelligence agency of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s biggest state, just warned that Iran and Russia are trying hard to steal sensitive commercial/dual use technologies from German companies.

Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, pens a piece worth reading at RedState today. McCotter argues that the Iraqi national Parliament is not a leading indicator of progress on political reconciliation, but a lagging one:

This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.

Let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how in representative democracies Parliaments and Congresses do not dictate to sovereign citizens; sovereign citizens dictate to Parliaments and Congresses. Thus, in Iraq each citizen in his or her respective tribe, town and province must inform and consent to federal laws being enacted, implemented, and honored; and, when this consent is individually granted in sufficient numbers, Iraq will complete its transformational emancipation from tyranny to liberty.

Further, let us, as the sovereign citizens of our free republic, ever remember how we cannot abandon Iraq’s fledgling democracy – or any democracy – under terrorist attack. The War for Freedom must be won through ideological, political, economic, diplomatic and – as an ultimate resort – martial means. If the U.S. abandons Iraq’s democracy, we will also abandon our and the entire free world’s inherited legacy of and professed commitment to freedom. If this betrayal of ourselves and the Iraqis occurs, our enemies will be empowered and we will be ideologically disarmed in the face of the enemy. If not liberty, what political principle will a discredited and defeated U.S. promote to turn the Middle East’s oppressed away from Al Qaeda’s extremism?

Opponents of engagement in Iraq frequently argue that there's no 'military solution.' McCotter makes pretty clear that supporters would agree. Ultimately, stability in Iraq can only come from disparate groups deciding that their best chance for peace and progress lay in compromise. But as in so much of our politics, Congress does not lead the people--Congress follows. McCotter makes plain why we can't hold the bums in Baghdad to a higher standard than the bums in Washington.

Read the whole thing.

From the Danger Room: Tactical Pharmacology, by David Hambling.

From Brussels Journal: Will France Annex Wallonia? by Paul Belien.

From Captain's Quarters: An Interview with Fred Thompson, by Ed Morrissey.

From the AP: Pentagon Disputes Parts of Iraq Report, by Matthew Lee and Robert Burns.

From Protein Wisdom: The Big Picture, by Karl.

Bonus Video: Danger Close, by JD Johannes.

Bonus Pics: Cougar takes a licking, keeps on--well, no one died, via Defense Tech.

Neptunuslex Caption Contest: "G-3! Miss! G-4! Miss! G-5! Miss! G-6! Miss..."

Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) has returned from Iraq and given an interview to a liberal blog site--Think Progress--in which she complains about a 'Green Zone Fog' that clouds the minds of Members of Congress. She is to be congratulated on getting so close to the truth; we have identified it here as a 'Jedi Mind Trick' performed on elected officials by General David Petraeus. Fortunately, Tauscher is too disciplined to be fooled by Master Petraeus. She insists that the surge is not working, and that Iraq is in fact 'dramatically worse' than when she last traveled there two years ago.

In this respect she differs from--well, from most every serious person who has recently addressed the situation. Certainly those who travel beyond the Green Zone believe that things have gotten better. Those include O'Hanlon and Pollack, Tony Cordesman, Congressmen Ellison, McNerney, and Mahoney, and even Hillary Clinton from her perch stateside.

And this anti-surge jag actually represents a bit of a departure for Tauscher, who has formerly been targeted by the left for her 'Bush Dog' views. One liberal site suggests that it was pressure from the Netroots has forced Tauscher to toe the company line:

But politicians react to fear, and the threat of a Democratic primary challenger is often what it takes to get these Bush Dogs in line. Earlier this year, there was lots of buzz in the liberal blogosphere to challenge Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, who has generally fought against progressives since getting elected. Even without a candidate emerging, Tauscher has taken a stronger stand against the War after the bloggers scared her.

The Wall Street Journal apparently agrees; they noted before she went to Iraq that she had moved to the left to avoid criticism from the base:

Tauscher, long known for her national security credentials, has toned down her hawkish impulses, voting against the recent surge and taking a harder line on missile defense.

One example of her shift: on July 29, the DailyKos criticized Tauscher for arguing that legislation to impeach the Attorney General was unconstitutional. By August 2, she had signed on as a cosponsor of the same measure.

None of this is to say that Tauscher is wrong in her views on Iraq--though she is. But there is clearly reason to believe that she will go to great lengths to please the battiest readers of ThinkProgress, DailyKos, and other liberal blogs.

And it's clear that Tauscher went to Iraq intent on not accepting anything said by General Petraeus or any other representative of the U.S. military. She says that she refused to go to Iraq for two years because she did not want to be forced to "drink the Kool Aid." She says that the military showed her nothing that did not support their contention, shaped by 'empirical facts,' that things have gotten better. Yet she somehow saw that sectarian strife remains an insurmountable problem, and that there is no reason to continue the U.S. presence.

That presents one problem though: it is universally agreed that sectarian violence will follow the U.S. departure. Indeed, Democrats insist that the U.S. depart precisely because such violence is an intractable problem for the foreseeable future, and we can do nothing about it. Many predict a spasm of ethnic cleansing after we withdraw, perhaps coinciding with the collapse of an unstable government.

It seems rather silly then for Tauscher to insist that the withdrawal not resemble a '"Saigon-like helicopter liftoff trying to remove people" and not be followed by "ethnic cleansing and devastation of Iraqis." The continuation of Operation Phantom Thunder is intended by the military and the government to prevent both of these outcomes. If Tauscher has some plan to withdraw that is just as effective, then she ought to share it.

I don't know how I missed this story, now almost a week old, but it is priceless:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an airshow near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported Friday.

The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the U.S. delegation and asked to buy the bomber, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said.

An astounded member of the U.S. delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $500 million if it were to be sold on the spot.

"That is no problem. It is such a cool machine," the Russian was quoted as saying by the newspaper, which said its reporter overheard the conversation. The bomber was not sold.

The Russians have definitely developed a firm grasp of capitalism. Democracy--not so much.

Via Ace HQ. And in case you missed yesterday's extremely popular link to some of the best photography from the Moscow air show, here it is again

Instapundit is cataloging the responses to today's wacky editorial from the New York Times in which the paper's editors expose their complete ignorance of the United States Constitution--mainly that they think it somewhere guarantees the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Writing on Senator Coburn's (admirable) effort to prevent any infringement upon the rights of American veterans, the Times writes:

As the Army’s suicide rate hits record levels in the Iraq war, there’s small wonder practically everyone in Congress wants to deal with the parallel emerging crisis of depressed veterans tempted to take their own lives. Everyone, that is, except Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. He stands alone in blocking final passage of a suicide prevention bill in fear that the government’s record-keeping on troubled vets might somehow crimp their ability to purchase handguns.

Even the craven gun lobby should manage some shame over this absurd example of Second Amendment idolatry.

Ah, the craven gun lobby, cravenly protecting rights that actually are guaranteed by the Constitution. My own reading of the Constitution, and admittedly I'm neither a lawyer nor an editor at the Times, has failed to turn up an exception to the Second Amendment for veterans who fail to meet some psychological standard set by--who exactly? Best response yet, from Charlie Foxtrot:

My only question would be, how does having government "specialists" tracking people that they consider to be "high risks" fall under the category of "Liberty"? Hmm? Just so long as were are not tracking people with terrorist ties via the Patriot Act, right NYT? Only the stressed out soldiers need to be tracked as risky.....

Just posted at THE DAILY STANDARD, William Kristol on the Washington Post's "Pathetic Preemptive Strike":

The Washington Post, working hand-in-glove with Democrats in Congress, has gotten out front in preparing the domestic battlefield for September's fight over the war in Iraq. The Post led today's paper with an account of a leaked draft report from the Congressionally-controlled Government Accountability Office (the GAO's final report is due next Tuesday). The headline: "Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals; GAO Draft at Odds with White House." Here's the good news: If this is the best war opponents have to offer, the administration is in amazingly good shape going into September.

The Post reporters--both strongly anti-Iraq war--characterize the GAO judgments as "strikingly negative." But there's nothing striking about them. The Democratic Congress ensured that the report would deliver negative "grades" for the Iraqi government by asking the GAO to evaluate whether or not the benchmarks have been met now--just two months after the major combat operations of the surge began. For the report from the White House, Congress asked the administration to detail if the Iraqis are making "sufficient progress." But Congress asked the GAO, by contrast, to report if the Iraqis had "completed" the benchmarks. This ridiculous standard was a Congressional trap that forced the GAO to waste time and taxpayer money to come out with a pre-ordained and meaningless judgment, since no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the benchmarks by now. And the GAO report doesn't really shed light on the key question: Are the Iraqis making progress?

And what are the benchmarks that Congress set up? Do they include criteria that matter? No. Grassroots political progress? Not in the GAO report. The turn of the Sunnis against the insurgency? Not in the GAO report. The stabilization of Anbar province? Not in the GAO report. And progress against al Qaeda--the single most vital and direct American national interest in Iraq? Not in the GAO report.

Go read the whole thing.

WWS pal Christian Lowe has an interesting post up at Defense Tech on the Active Denial System, aka the Pain Ray. The system got a fair bit of play in the news early this year when the Pentagon invited camera crews to witness an Army test of the device and "almost cooked an AP reporter." Christian reports:

Well, it looks like commanders in Iraq have been pleading for the device, which is pretty far along in its development. But fearing the post-Taser backlash from some groups, the Pentagon denied the technology in favor of more lethal methods...

It seems this is the sort of catch-22 the military is in when it comes to non-lethals. The devices conjure up grim images of pain and discomfort when you look at what they do, so groups object to them often on human rights grounds and ethics.

Go read the whole thing, it includes a note from one of the engineers who developed the system and is "convinced that the tragedy at Fallujah would not have occurred if an Active Denial System had been there."

This latest flap over non-lethal weapons brings to mind a similar situation that developed over the "green beam designator," which allowed soldiers to temporarily blind drivers approaching a checkpoint. There were repeated calls to deploy the device to Iraq, but fear of a backlash, as well as a 1995 UN agreement banning the use of lasers that could permanently blind, prevented the device from being rapidly put into the field. It has since made its way to Iraq, but like the Pain Ray, concerns about misuse and the possibility of relatively minor injuries were allowed to slow the process. Of course, the only other option available to most soldiers working a military checkpoint is an M-16 or a .50 cal--weapons that are likely to do much worse than blind the target.

This system has the potential to peacefully diffuse a situation that might otherwise spin violently out of control (OR NOT--SEE UPDATE BELOW). It'd be a shame if American troops weren't given access because of some Pentagon fear of lawsuits.

Update: Bill Sweetman has an alternate explanation for the Pentagon's failure to deploy the ADS. Click here to read it. The bottom line is that Iraq is apparently too hot for this technology:

The ADS, as we learned at an IQPC Defense conference in London in February, generates its millimeter-waves (not goolie-toasting microwaves) with the help of a commercial-technology gyrotron, an assembly of superconducting magnets which won't do its voodoo unless it is cooled to 4 degrees Kelvin - that is, a smidge above absolute zero and somewhat colder than a June day in International Falls.

The Humvee-mounted version that we've all seen can't carry a cooling system big enough to do the job on more than a 95-degree day. So ADS works fine in San Francisco, and would work in International Falls if anyone could be bothered to leave Rudy's Saloon for long enough to demonstrate about anything, but is not that much use in the Sandbox.

I must defer to Sweetman.

Just one day after major clashes between Iraqi Security Forces and the Mahdi Army during a Shia religious celebration in Najaf, Muqtada al Sadr has ordered the Mahdi Army to halt all attacks in Iraq, including attacks against Coalition forces. The fighting in Najaf resulted in 52 killed and over 300 wounded, according to reports, and have harmed Sadr politically while placing him in the crosshairs of U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Sadr's aides were out in force, calling for the Mahdi Army to lay down its arms. "We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued," said Sheik Hazim al-Araji, an aide of Sadr, while reading a statement from Sadr on Iraqi state television. The statement was backed up by Sadr's spokesman. "It also includes suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers as well as others," said Ahmed al-Shaibani, Sadr's spokesman.

The major fighting in Najaf broke out on Tuesday, after police and Shia pilgrims clashed the previous day. "Gunmen believed [to be] from the Mahdi Army began firing on security forces and the Badr guards," security officials told the Associated Press. A curfew was declared in Karbala, and the religious festival marking the anniversary of Imam Mahdi, the "12th Imam," was canceled. Mahdi Army fighters are still said to be occupying the center of the city.

The police in the area are believed to be loyal to the Badr Brigades, the political opponents of the Sadrists. A Sadrist member of the Karbala city council denied the Mahdi Army was behind the attacks, and even blamed the attacks on "pro-Iranian groups among security forces that guard the Karbala shrines." Shaibani, Sadr's spokesman, also denied the Mahdi Army was involved in the Karbala fighting, though the timing of Sadr's call for a cessation of Mahdi Army activity casts serious doubt on these statements.

Muqtada al Sadr's backdown exposes his confrontational approach to both the Iraqi government and Coalition forces as highly problematic, and it also makes clear his weakening political position inside Iraq. Since Sadr fled to Iran in January, he has lost operational control over elements of his Mahdi Army, which in reality is an amalgamation of criminal and ideological elements. And with this loss of control, Iran has begun to exercise more direct control over some Mahdi commanders--the Qazali brothers and the Sheibani Network, for instance--rather than controlling them by proxy through Sadr. The elements of the Mahdi Army can be roughly described as follows:

David Kilcullen, who was the chief counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraeus, has posted another item over at the Small Wars Journal. Kilcullen always makes for interesting reading, and he doesn't disappoint with this latest.

Kilcullen offers some deep insight into al Qaeda's current troubles in Anbar--specifically, why it is that the terrorist groups Iraqi affiliate, AQI, failed to cement its relationship with the tribal sheiks in that region. The answer is surprisingly simple--AQI failed to abide by Rule #1: Bros before Hoes:

Islam, of course, is a key identity marker when dealing with non-Muslim outsiders, but when all involved are Muslim, kinship trumps religion. And in fact, most tribal Iraqis I have spoken with consider AQ’s brand of “Islam” utterly foreign to their traditional and syncretic version of the faith. One key difference is marriage custom, the tribes only giving their women within the tribe or (on rare occasions to cement a bond or resolve a grievance, as part of a process known as sulha) to other tribes or clans in their confederation (qabila). Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done. AQ, with their hyper-reductionist version of “Islam” stripped of cultural content, discounted the tribes’ view as ignorant, stupid and sinful.

This led to violence, as these things do: AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha’r) on his people, who attacked AQI.

AQI also broke Rule #2: Don't mess with another man's livelihood:

Other tribesmen told me women weren’t the only issue. The tribes run smuggling, import/export and construction businesses which AQI shut down, took over, or disrupted through violent disturbances that were “bad for business”. Another factor was the belief, widespread among the tribes (and with at least some basis in fact) that AQI has links to, and has received funding and support from, Iran. In their view, women were simply the spark – AQI already “had it coming”. (Out in the wild western desert, things often tend to play out like The Sopranos… except that AQI changed the rules of the game by adding roadside bombs, beheadings, murder of children and death by torture. Eventually, enough was enough for the locals.)

Kilcullen is pretty clear that while these developments are significant, and translate to real political progress at the grassroots level, the project could still go either way. But even if things don't work out as planned, Kilcullen still sees an upside in the Coalition's re-engagement with the tribes of al Anbar.

Indeed, the Coalition Provisional Authority deliberately side-lined the tribes in 2003 in order to focus on building a “modern” democratic state in Iraq, which we equated with a non-tribal state. There were good reasons for this at the time, but we are now seeing the most significant political and security progress in years, via a structure outside the one we have been working so hard to create. Does that invalidate the last four years’ efforts? Probably not, as long as we recognize that the vision of a Jeffersonian, “modern” (in the Western industrial sense) democracy in Iraq, based around entirely secular non-tribal institutions, was always somewhat unrealistic. In the Iraqi polity, tribes’ rights may end up playing a similar role to states’ rights in some other democracies. They will remain a competing power center to the religious political parties, and hence will probably never be popular with Baghdad politicians, but if correctly handled they have the potential to actually enhance pluralism in Iraq over the long-term, by restraining the excesses of any central government or sectarian faction.

Go read the whole thing.

Congressional Quarterly reports today that 67 Democrats who voted to slash the defense budget by more than 20 percent have won earmarks for home-district projects, totaling about half a billion dollars. Nine of the 12 Democrats who voted against funding defense completely were among those who received earmarks. Some of the highlights:

• Dennis Kucinich, who proposes shifting $75 billion from the “bloated, wasteful Pentagon budget” toward education programs, voted against funding the Defense Department--even though the bill included his earmark of $1 million for a “highpower, lightweight zinc-air battery” made in Kucinich's district.

• Maxine Waters--another consistent critic of high Pentagon spending--got $1 million in the defense bill for launchers for air-to-air Sidewinder missiles not sought by the military. The launchers are built in Inglewood, California, in Ms. Waters' district.

• Marcy Kaptur secured $58 million for her district, including $4 million for a 'Geospatial Airship Research Platform' (otherwise known as a blimp). She too, voted to cut the DoD budget by 21 percent.

• Congressman Jim McDermott, who voted against the bill, secured $11.5 million for his district, including $1 million for an 'Extended Cold Weather Hand Protection System.' Presumably this is far more than he would have gotten for 'gloves.'

• Barbara Lee, who has railed against 'unnecessary weapons programs,' secured funds for two projects the Pentagon regarded as unnecessary. The first was a grant of $2 million for a “lithium ion metal battery” made in Berkeley, and the second was $1 million for the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, Calif., which includes a park, planetarium, observatory and exhibits.

Is it defending her to point out that Ms. Lee at least, is putting her money where her mouth is, and insisting that defense dollars NOT be spent on defense? And of course, Ms. Lee ultimately voted against the funding bill, as well.

The next time Democrats complain that the Defense Department has wasted money on unnecessary projects, or mixed up its priorities and left our soldiers holding the bag, remember how they have chosen to spend scarce defense dollars. Remember too, that if many Democrats had their way, the dollars available would be far scarcer.

Newsweek runs the piece from Cpl. Mark Finelli, a noncommissioned Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006. Finelli bemoans the failure of the Bush administration to institute a draft in the months after 9/11, or more generally to ask Americans to make any kind of sacrifice on behalf of the war.

The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001—something I certainly believed would happen after running down 61 flights of the South Tower, dodging the carnage as I made my way to the Hudson River [I worked at the World Trade Center as an investment adviser for Morgan Stanley at the time]. But President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not. Allow me to build a squad of the five brightest students from MIT and Caltech and promise them patrols on the highways connecting Baghdad and Fallujah, and I’ll bet that in six months they could render IED’s about as effective as a “Just Say No” campaign at a Grateful Dead show.

I'm a bit sympathetic to Finelli's argument, especially because it comes from the right place: he doesn't want a draft for the same reason the Charlie Rangel does, i.e. to turn people against the war, but in order to make the American military a more effective fighting force:

Democracies at war abroad cannot wage a protracted ground operation when the only people who are sacrificing are those who choose to go. This is the greatest lesson of my generation. Young Americans: you may not want to kill jihadists, but they are interested in killing you and your loved ones. Wake up.

Part of you has to love this guy. He thinks we can kill more terrorist through a draft. But still, I'm not sure his analysis is supported by the facts, and on at least one fact, the folks at Newsweek were asleep at the wheel, allowing Finelli to make a statement that is patently untrue. Finelli starts off with the subject of MRAP:

According to the Pentagon, no service personnel have died in an MRAP. So why isn’t every Marine or soldier in Iraq riding in one? Simple economics. An MRAP costs five times more than even the most up-armored Humvee. People need a personal, vested, blood-or-money interest to maximize potential. That is why capitalism has trumped communism time and again, but it is also why private contractors in Iraq have MRAPs while Marines don’t. Because in actuality, America isn’t practicing the basic tenet of capitalism on the battlefield with an all-volunteer military, and won’t be until the reinstitution of the draft.

Like in the first quote, Finelli seems to think that if only the sons of the rich were called to Iraq, the IED problem would miraculously solve itself. But that seems unlikely--and the fact is that American soldiers have died from IED blasts while riding in MRAP vehicles--at least three last fall in an incident that remains classified and six Canadian soldiers were killed riding in an MRAP earlier this summer. These are just two incidents I know off-hand, I suspect there are others--after all, American soldiers have been killed by IED blasts while riding in the much more heavily armored Bradley and Stryker APCs, and even in the M1-A1 Abrams. It's just not true to that MRAP vehicles are a silver bullet to the IED problem, and the military is set to spend some $20 billion on the program anyway, because they do offer U.S. soldiers increased protection. If it's a travesty that the military didn't respond more quickly to demand for MRAP, then the current problem is just the opposite: a rush to field systems that may not be ready for combat and that may not be the best solution available.

As far as the draft, again, I'm sympathetic. It's unfortunate that the Bush administration failed to call upon the nation's best and brightest to serve in the Armed Forces in the wake of 9/11. But conscription threatens to create problems that the military spent decades trying to solve: rampant drug and alcohol abuse in the ranks, low morale, etc. Finelli stipulates that the draft he wants would be different from the draft that created those problems in the Vietnam era, but he points to deferments as the source of those problem--there is no evidence to support his logic on that count. THE WEEKLY STANDARD ran a piece late last year by William Groom examining some of the problems with a draft:

Kim Kagan has produced her latest Iraq Report for THE DAILY STANDARD, this one detailing Iranian activity inside Iraq over the last 15 months. The report is the most comprehensive document on this subject I've come across, and it includes a series of maps and other images that help illustrate the mechanics of Iranian influence in Iraq.

I follow this stuff pretty closely, but I've never been quite clear on exactly what constitutes the "special groups" that MNF-I discusses so frequently, who finances them, what shape they take, etc. Kagan goes a long way toward clarifying this:

The Qods Force and Hezbollah trained Iraqis in groups of 20 to 60 so that they functioned as a unit--a “secret cell” or “special group.” The Iraqis returned to Iraq after their training, maintaining their group’s organization. Thus, each “special group” in Iraq consisted of 20 to 60 Iraqis who had trained together in Iran in how “to use EFPs, mortars, rockets, as well as intelligence, sniper and kidnapping operations.” These special groups could be combined into larger organizations. The director of the Amin Allah charity coordinated “more than 200 rogue JAM members” and “ordered them to conduct assassinations on local citizens and government officials who oppose the group’s illegal activities.”

How about the Sheibani network we've heard so much about?

By August 2005, Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani had developed an extensive “network of insurgents created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.” Sheibani’s group introduced into Iraq “‘shaped’ explosive charges,” based on a model used by Hezbollah against the Israelis, and its fighters trained in Lebanon as well as Sadr City and “‘another country,’” according to U.S. intelligence sources. An American military official in Baghdad explained that “the U.S. believes that Iran has brokered a partnership between Iraqi Shiite militants and Hizballah and facilitated the import of sophisticated weapons that are killing and wounding U.S. and British troops.” An American Special Operations Task Force report claimed “the Lebanese Hizballah leadership believes that the struggle in Iraq is the new battleground in the fight against the U.S.” Sheibani’s group was estimated to include 280 fighters organized into 17 bomb-making teams and death squads.

And on the effect of the surge on Iranian activities:

In 2006, Coalition forces were also spread too thin to cover the lines of communication south of Baghdad. For example, only 200 soldiers from the Polish Division in Multi-National Division Central-South were stationed in Kut through spring 2007, detached from the bulk of their unit. Thus, smugglers could bring Iranian weapons without expecting interdiction along open routes in 2006.

The surge of U.S. and Coalition forces, including the addition of another Division Headquarters, made it possible to begin interdicting weapons flowing along the major highways and the Tigris River. Multi-National Force-Iraq reinforced Kut with 2,000 soldiers from the Republic of Georgia, who arrived in July and August 2007 for operations that will commence in September. MND-C plans to use this brigade to search every truck coming along the highway through Kut.

There's so much information in this document, it's hard to rip just a few items from the text. Still, for anyone trying to understand the role of Iranian forces in Iraq, and the complex networks the supply and sustain, "The Iran Dossier" is a must-read. Click here or on the image above right for the pdf.

From the Atlantic: Rereading Vietnam, by Robert D. Kaplan.

From Slate: Should We Be Worried About Russia and China Ganging Up on the West? by Ian Bremmer.

From the New York Daily News: Front-line Lessons from the Iraq Surge, by Michael Totten.

From the Mudville Gazette: Wearing the Black Flag, by Greyhawk.

From the Wall Street Journal ($): Bombs Away, For Good, by Linton Brooks.

The babes of the Moscow air show, via Alert 5.

The Manchester Union Leader ran an embed piece earlier this week by Nathan S. Webster, a freelance photojournalist and creative writing instructor. Webster was embedded with the 82nd airborne, though a different brigade from the seven Sergeants who penned the recent op-ed for the Times. Webster's style, and his reporting, is somewhat reminiscent of another aspiring creative writer, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except there's a sense of balance and honesty that was conspicuously absent from the work of TNR's Baghdad Diarist. Webster writes,

Every soldier in Bayji doubtless had moments of doubt and fear, of bone-deep exhaustion, of hard breaths taken after a legitimate near-miss. It's no different for a reporter - but I got to leave when I wanted. I learned a few things, about our soldiers at war and where they fight.

The desert heat is Biblical. Under the ceramic body armor plates, your chest feels like a faucet, ceaselessly dripping, absorbing, stinking.

Yes, a bit overwrought--certainly would make for an interesting semiotic analysis--but not bad. He goes on:

I learned the most cynical soldier would be the one most eager to pose for pictures with Iraqi children. The best squad leader and NCO will laugh about his long-past demotion, that being a Pfc. was much better the second time around.

They can be cruel. Some throw rocks at stray cats or are pointlessly mean to the Iraqis they work beside.

Almost nothing is off limits to their gallows humor. They laugh about a guy who was shot through both arms and got sent home, "but he's totally okay, so it's funny." They take nothing seriously. Except for everything.

When they tell what it's like to lose a friend, they speak with a quiet weariness entirely out of place in a 21-year-old.

I took hundreds of pictures. In the end, they all show the same thing.

Each picture's subjects - U.S. and Iraqi - are patriots, heroes and men.

Petty cruelty juxtaposed with daily acts of courage and heroism, gallows humor that conceals a deeper concern for one's comrades--it certainly passes the smell test.

One of the key issues that Congress will need to address when it returns in September is legislation to restrict energy production in the U.S. It's not framed that way, of course. The legislation being considered is ostensibly supposed to help produce more energy, but that's not the effect it will have.

Among the myriad problems with the House bill for example, is that it allows anyone 'harmed' by global warming to bring suit against any federal agency that fails to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as required in the legislation. Plaintiffs are specifically authorized to recover $1.5 million, and to be compensated for legal fees win or lose, as long as the court determines it to be 'appropriate.'

During debate on the legislation in the House, Congressman Darrel Issa described the provision like this:

Mr. Chairman, this piece of legislation is a license for an unlimited amount of suits against the government by the extreme environmental groups. In fact, this bill pays a $75,000 bounty on top of unlimited legal fees to anyone who sues the government even if, in fact, that suit is based on this body's failure to act. Yes. Lawyers will be telling us, by suing us, that we must do more, and there will be no controls. They can sue in all 92 locations around the country. They can sue for any reason. We will have to pay the bill. When they lose, too bad. When they win, they get paid for taking from us not only 100 percent of their legal fees but $75,000 on top of that.

This is a license for America to be held hostage by the trial lawyers. It was deliberate. It was slipped through the committee. They said it was going to be fixed. In fact, nothing has been fixed; and we have been prevented from having an amendment on the House floor. This is undemocratic, and the Democrats know it.

The Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman has written a short paper on the problems with the House and Senate energy legislation, and he manages to fill the paper with problems bigger than this--a sure indication of just how much harm these bills might do, if enacted.

Yesterday I pointed out that the lefty bloggers seem to regard Congressman Jerry McNerney as a weak-minded victim of General David Petraeus's 'Jedi Mind Trick'. Today it seems that Brian Baird was also seduced by the Dark Side:

It’s becoming apparent that these people are being bombarded with such bad information, so many “experts” whose only expertise seems to be at abject failure, that they can’t see the patently obvious any more. Watch the YouTube above. Baird’s constituents are sputtering with rage as he sits there and rubs snake oil all over his head and says “see, really, it makes the hair grow, just like the guy said. You just watch.”

Just a few months ago the left was enraged that George Bush stuck to the same plan in Iraq regardless of changing facts. Ultimately, of course, the lack of success in Iraq led him to switch commanders and plans, with positive results. Yet it's the left which now calls on their leaders in Congress to ignore the results and stick with the same plan--regardless of facts.

More importantly, can Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid risk allowing General Petraeus to testify on the results of Operation Phantom Thunder in open session? How many simpletons are there among Congressional Democrats, who might be fooled as easily as McNerney and Baird?

The Bush administration will soon deliver its September assessment on progress in Iraq. It's clear that in addition to reviewing the challenges to reconciliation at the national level, officials will consider 'bottom-up' progress. NBC's First Read carries a report on progress in Ramadi:

Since then, the PRT's have worked to help the local officials build their government and to bring back essential services to the people there. Suttee noted that there have been 102 days without attacks (though that is not consecutive days). The military is finding weapons caches at a greater rate, he said, and PRT officials are able to travel in two-vehicle convoys down from four vehicles several months ago.

State Department official Kristin Hagerstrom reported that she is now able to walk on the streets and, for example, "you can buy an ice cream cone."

You can view Ms. Hagestrom's briefing, or read it here:

It's hard to measure progress based on the ability to buy ice cream without fear of attack, but it is worthwhile to consider the progress made by the PRTs in many parts of Iraq. The State Department recently released a summary of PRT progress by province.

From the Middle East Journal: The Future of Iraq, by Michael J. Totten.

From Contentions: Syria Hysteria, by Max Boot.

From the Wall Street Journal: A Denier's Confession, by Bret Stephens.

From the Sacramento Bee: England is Vanishing, by Cal Thomas.

From Defense Tech: Japan Launches Carrier...Sorta, by Norman Polmar.

As U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces continue to push out into the Belts surrounding Baghdad, al Qaeda and insurgent groups are attempting to push back. Two significant attacks occurred in Salahadin and Diyala province, while U.S. and Iraqi forces press the raids on al Qaeda's network and the Iranian-backed Shia terror cells.

Iraqis serving in the Indigenous Counterinsurgency Force prepare
for a mission at their checkpoint in Al Namer, Aug. 19.

Salahadin

Southern Salahadin province, the region just north of Baghdad, remains a hot spot for al Qaeda and the insurgency. While reports last week of a massed al Qaeda attacks on Iraqi police stations in Samarra turned out to be false, about 30 al Qaeda fighters did attempt an attack in the city on August 27. U.S. and Iraqi forces successfully repelled the attack, and killing 12 and captured 14 enemy fighters in the process. Two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civilians were killed during the fighting.

In Tikrit, the Iraqi Army captured "the leader of a network of terrorist cells linked to the former regime of Saddam Hussein," and his daughter, Raghid Hussein. Raghid finances the insurgent network while in exile in Jordan. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Raghid on August 17, and for her role in financing the Iraqi insurgency, she has been placed on the list of America's 41 most wanted. Iraqi Army Scouts also captured a cell leader responsible for several assassination attempts, including the 2004 assassination of the governor of Ninewa province.

Diyala

U.S. and Iraqi forces maintain the pressure in Diyala province after successive U.S. and Iraqi offensives in Baqubah and the northern Diyala River Valley cleared al Qaeda from the region. The latest operation occurred in Khalis, where a joint U.S. and Iraqi Army air assault resulted in 33 al Qaeda operatives killed and three captured during a series of firefights and helicopter strikes in the city. Voices of Iraq reported that the bodies of an additional 11 al Qaeda fighters were found after the operation.

As U.S. and Iraqi forces operate in Baqubah and the north, al Qaeda in Iraq has struck in the south and east. Al Qaeda operatives dressed as Iraqi soldiers set up fake checkpoints and kidnapped nine civilians in Muqdadiyah. The government has imposed an indefinite curfew in the district while implementing a "new security plan." The city has been hit with a string of suicide attacks and assassinations.

Al Qaeda and Special Groups

The special operations forces raids against al Qaeda's network continue and a significant number of al Qaeda operatives are being killed in the latest round. Eight al Qaeda operatives were killed and 11 captured during raids in Kirkuk, Tikrit, and Baghdad on August 28. Nineteen al Qaeda were killed and 22 captured during raids in Baghdad, Salman Pak, Kirkuk, Ba’ajah, Muqdadiyah, Hawija, and Taji on August 26 and 27. A suicide bomber coordinator, a cell in the Arab Jabour region, an administrative emir, and a foreign terrorist facilitator were among those killed or captured. On August 25, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed three al Qaeda operatives and captured eight during raids in Husaybah, Kut, and Baghdad.

The raids against Iran's proxy terror groups continue as well. On August 27, Coalition forces captured eight members of the Iranian-backed special groups terror cells during a raid Baghdad's Sadr City. The main target of the raid, a "Special Groups senior level facilitator with possible Iranian connections," was captured along with seven suspected cell members. On August 28, Iraqi and US forces captured a weapons distributor who is connected to the special groups network and who has "direct ties to other senior commanders in militias operating in and around Baghdad."

The New York Post's Ralph Peters scored an interview with Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of Multinational Force Iraq.

ASKED about Muqtada al-Sadr, Odierno responded: "He's a figurehead . . . erratic in his behavior . . . unpredictable. . . but he's the individual who reaches out to the Shia nobody else reaches out to. The problem is that he's lost control of some parts of his movement, the Special Groups and others - many of whom are funded by Iran.

"We need to separate those elements and kill or capture them - while working with those closer to the mainstream."...

So what about Iran? "It's a difficult problem . . . it's important to have regional and international awareness of what they're doing."

But the general feels that, before we take any cross-border military action, we need to think through the second- and third-order effects. He'd much prefer a diplomatic solution - if possible.

A diplomatic solution would be ideal. But as Odierno says, the question is whether such a solution is possible. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch recently explained the extent of Iranian influence on the violence in his area of operations, which stretches from the Saudi border to Iran:

He said about 50 Iranian and Iraqi operatives, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and working for Iran, are active in his area, and are part of the same group that killed five U.S. soldiers in Karbala province in January.

Lynch said "a new wave of lethality" -- including 48 attacks using explosively formed projectiles and 66 attacks using precision rockets -- has killed 13 U.S. troops in his area since April. In one incident, he said, more than three dozen Iranian-made rockets were aimed at a U.S. base in the area, and when insurgents fired some of them and hit the base on July 11, one soldier was killed and 15 others were wounded.

Further, today we hear from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahamadinejad:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Tuesday that a power vacuum is imminent in Iraq and said that Iran was ready to help fill the gap.

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran, referring to U.S. troops in Iraq. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

Allahpundit responds:

I think this is what David Ignatius meant on Sunday about Iran overplaying its hand. What a silly thing to say ahead of the Bush-Congress showdown. If you want America out so you can move in — and he does — why give U.S. hawks any leverage by announcing that fact publicly?

But a few months ago Reuel Marc Gerecht offered an explanation of Iranian behavior in THE WEEKLY STANDARD that may better explain Ahmadinejad's statement, and its timing:

An assumption of the Iraq Study Group was that the clerical regime wants stability next door in Iraq. Hence it might be willing to work with Americans. Yet Iran has benefited enormously from Iraqi instability. Traditional, moderate clerics like Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been willing to work with Americans, have been battered and bruised by the violence. The radical Moktada al-Sadr, a little-known and little-admired scion of a famous clerical family, skyrocketed to prominence because of the strife and thanks to critical Iranian aid to him. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its more radical military wing, the Badr Organization, has also benefited enormously from the violence. SCIRI is a key Iraqi player that has received substantial assistance from Tehran. What is particularly regrettable about SCIRI is that the bloodletting has made life more difficult for moderates within the organization. And the violence has made it harder for SCIRI to pull away from Iranian patronage.

Does Iran want to stop this process? Iraq's Arab Sunni community--detested by the Iranians--has been routed from much of Baghdad, badly bloodied, and put to flight by the hundreds of thousands. This is a bad thing in the eyes of Tehran? Where does Iran have the most influence in Iraq? In Basra, where Shiite-versus-Shiite violence is at its worst. This is not a coincidence. Tehran has benefited massively from Iraqi Shiite division and internecine strife. What the United States should expect from Iran is that it will continue to ship its deadly explosives to Iraq and, through violence, feed the radicalization of the Shiite community. Success through Hezbollah in civil-war-torn Lebanon is the model to remember. Until now, it's been Iran's only successful foray abroad. "Stability" in Iraq means only one thing to Tehran: an American success.

Would the Iranians would benefit from a diplomatic solution, or more to the point, would they benefit from an American withdrawal? It seems Iran's best chance for avoiding a direct confrontation with the U.S. military is to keep the U.S. military tied down in Iraq--which means doing whatever they can to foment violence and prevent a U.S. withdrawal. From that perspective, if Iran overplays its hand, it will not have missed an opportunity to consolidate its regional position, as Ignatius posits. Instead, Iran will have missed an opportunity to avoid a direct military conflict with the United States. Given the success in dealing with the Sunni insurgency, American commanders are now turning their attention to Iran and its support of Shia militias and the "special groups." As Odierno explained his priorities to Peters:

"First, I worry about Shia extremism and Iranian interference, which is increasing."

Democrats and war opponents have for months argued for a withdrawal from Iraq, partly on the grounds that neither the people of Iraq nor its government would seriously attempt reconciliation so long as the U.S. commitment there seemed open-ended. Some Democrats went so far as to say that by insisting on a date-certain for withdrawal, they were helping the administration by playing 'bad cop' to President Bush's 'good cop.' If the Iraqis believed that Congress might really force a withdrawal, the argument went, they would press for reconciliation with more urgency.

Well, the central story from Iraq today (even if it only made page nine of the Washington Post) is the agreement in principle on oil revenue sharing, federalism, and de-baathification:

Iraqi officials said the five leaders had agreed on draft legislation that would ease curbs on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party joining the civil service and military.

Consensus was also reached on a law governing provincial powers as well as setting up a mechanism to release some detainees held without charge, a key demand of Sunni Arabs since the majority being held are Sunnis.

The laws need to be passed by Iraq's fractious parliament, which has yet to receive any of the drafts.

Yasin Majid, a media adviser to Maliki, told Reuters the leaders also endorsed a draft oil law, which has already been agreed by the cabinet but has not yet gone to parliament.

Given the timing -- just a few weeks before Congress is expected to review the White House report on progress on benchmarks and receive the testimony of General Petraeus on the state of Iraq -- Democrats might at least attempt to argue that they were right. But they aren't -- because that would require an admission of progress, which might justify a continued commitment to Iraq. Democrats would prefer to argue that nothing has changed.

Or worse -- some seem to be arguing that General Petraeus has an almost Jedi-like power over the weak-minded -- like Congressman Jerry McNerney:

In this comparison, it seems to me that McNerney is the victim of inexperience. It's almost as if he's a young, impressionable teenager. I'm sure it's quite convincing to sit across the table from General Petreus and listen to him assure you that progress has been made...

He would also do well to consult with more senior members of his party. Maybe it is a little unreasonable to suggest this, but I think he needs a "congressional mentor." Normally, a seasoned chief of staff would fill this role until a member became accustomed to the demands of office. However, McNerney has his own impressionable newbie chief of staff.

Perhaps Jan Schakowsky will take McNerney under her wing and show him the way. Otherwise McNerney could end up on the wrong side of the biggest and most important issue of our time.

Congresswoman Schakowsky presents a favorable contrast according to the Huffington Post, because in her brief tour of Iraq, she was able to view all of General Petraeus' presentation and come away with her mind unchanged. She was convinced of the necessity of a prompt withdrawal before her visit, and nothing she heard or saw was able to change her mind.

And if nothing else, it does require extraordinary mental discipline to look at changed circumstances and not for a second consider whether they should cause a change in one's opinion.

A truly special example of left wing idiocy popped up over the weekend. It came from the Huffington Post (where else), which allowed "humorist" Martin Lewis space to request that General Pace arrest the commander-in-chief for conduct unbecoming.

To be crystal clear - I am NOT advocating or inciting you to undertake any illegal act, insurrection, mutiny, putsch or military coup. You are an honorable patriotic man.

I am NOT advocating or inciting you to interfere with any of the civilian duties of the President. That would not be a legal action by you.

However you have the legal responsibility - under Article 134 of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice - to protect the troops under your command by relieving the President of his MILITARY command…

In addition to relieving him of his command as Commander-In-Chief, you also have authority to place the President under MILITARY arrest.

It's always good when you have to preface a piece with a statement clarifying: 'I am not advocating a military coup.' Lewis has since backtracked and written an even more ludicrous post scolding conservatives for failing to see the humor in his original piece. Allahpundit notes that Lewis's furious rebuttals in the comments section of his first post (yes, even the HuffPo commenters failed to get the joke), put the lie to his current position that it was all some misguided attempt at satire:

I ask General Pace to do two things. One is to relieve the President of his command as Commander-In-Chief. The other is to place the President under military arrest. It is arguable as to the conflict between the Constitution and the Uniform Code Of Military Justice. One of the important legal ramifications of My Lai was the obligation to relieve a senior officer of his/her command in exceptional circumstances. If General Pace was performing a military imperative in a peaceful, non-threatening manner and simply informed Mr. Bush that he was being relieved of his military command, there would be no justification for the Secret Service to act as you suggest. Whatever the ultimate consequence, the impact of such a courageous and noble act on behalf of his nation, would be significant.

Ha ha, very funny--I get it. I'm sure the other regular contributors to the Huffington Post--Murtha, Pelosi, Feinstein, Richardson--all thought that was a hoot.

From the OC Register: They Wait for Us to Run Again, by Mark Steyn.

From the Providence Journal: The Obama Doctrine, by James Kirchick.

From Policy Review: Three Centuries of American Declinism, by Alan Dowd.

From the New York Post: Bear Chooses Chill, by Peter Brookes.

From Newsweek: Deadly Persian Provocations, by Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Bonus Video: How the Boomstick Works, by the Dissident Frogman.

Will Waddell has posted a report at the Institute for the Study of War on the grassroots fight against al Qaeda in Iraq.

What began in Anbar as a local movement of tribes is developing into a national phenomenon. In Baqouba, the erstwhile capital of al Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq, between 40 and 60 al Qaeda operatives sought on August 15 to attack the southern Buhriz neighborhood of that city. As the first wave of attackers entered they were met with withering fire from a group of concerned citizens, calling themselves the ‘Baqouba Guardians.’ These volunteer fighters killed seven in that first clash, including two suicide bombers interdicted before they could reach their intended targets. A call for Coalition gunship support broke up the next attack even as it prepared for action. At the end of the fight some 21 al Qaeda terrorists were dead.

Not simply another militia group, the Guardians were formed in late July at the initiative of the townspeople and are sworn to cooperate with Coalition Forces. Additionally, the group is uniformed and registered in a U.S. Army database. Already they are credited with the identification of several al Qaeda suspects and the discovery of several caches of ordnance within the city. Perhaps even more significant is the group’s goal – to join the established Iraqi Security Forces. Attacks against Coalition Forces have fallen off citywide by 79% and by 93% in the hotly contested western portion of the city.

The Coalition has had great success in cultivating these "concerned citizens" movements in the provinces, but the concern has been whether this success could be recreated in the more ethnically diverse and complex battlespace of Baghdad. Waddell thinks there's reason to be optimistic, noting developments in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. Go read the whole thing, very interesting stuff.

Spiegel reports that Chinese hackers have targeted computer networks operated by the German government. "German security officials managed to stop the theft of 160 gigabytes of data which were in the process of being siphoned off German government computers," the magazine reports. And Chancellor Merkel, who is currently in China, apparently raised the issue with Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was all smiles after meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday, praising relations between the two countries as open and constructive.

But her visit has been marred by a report in SPIEGEL that a large number of computers in the German chancellery as well as the foreign, economy and research ministries had been infected with Chinese spy software. Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, discovered the hacking operation in May, the magazine reported in its new edition, published Monday.

The Chinese government has vehemently denied the report, with the Chinese Embassy in Berlin describing the accusation of state-controlled hacking as "irresponsible speculation without a shred of evidence."

But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Merkel that measures would be taken to "rule out hacking attacks."

Earlier this year, military officials at the Naval Network Warfare Command told reporters that Chinese hackers "will exploit anything and everything" and that the nature of the attacks makes it "hard to believe it’s not government-driven.” It seems German officials have come to the same conclusion.

Chinese media do not typically devote much effort to covering developments in India. In recent weeks, however, they have produced numerous reports on the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal known as the "123 Agreement."

The August 13th issue of Study Times, the official journal of the Chinese Communist Party Central Party School, ran a lengthy piece on the strategic implications of the Agreement, under which the U.S. will provide nuclear fuel and technology to India. Aiming its criticism primarily at Washington, rather than New Delhi, the article calls the deal "a dangerous precedent" and accuses the United States of practicing "double standards" by making concessions to India while opposing efforts by Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons.

The article also presents the following take on the economic motivation behind the deal:

It goes without saying that the United States is the biggest beneficiary of the Agreement. The General Electric Company of the United States has formed with Hitachi of Japan a joint venture in India to build nuclear reactors. By GE’s estimate, this project alone will contribute to an eight-fold increase in its revenue between 2005 and 2010.

GE's current annual revenue is well north of $150 billion--an eight fold increase seems unlikely. And although China is not identified by name, the article suggests that geopolitics plays a role in the nuclear deal as well, with Washington "molding" India into a regional counterweight:

To promote America’s policy objectives and meet its global strategic needs, the United States hopes to bring India into its strategic orbit as a new partner in Asia. Its intent is to take advantage of India’s strategic location in South Asia in order to achieve a balance of power in Asia.

Official Chinese media have also been recounting with evident glee the strong opposition to the 123 Agreement by India’s leftist lawmakers. For example, this August 20th People’s Daily report, titled "Causing Discord, Indo-US Nuclear Agreement May Not Pass India’s Parliament," states:

The Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement was regarded as a virtually done deal. But then the unexpected happened – a chorus of opposition surfaced in the parliament. To this day, the United Progressive Alliance government led by the Congress Party hasn’t yet figured out where it all went wrong.

Beijing itself may hold the key to that question. The 123 Agreement has plunged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three-year old coalition government into its worst-ever political crisis, and elements within the Indian government are reported to believe that "the Left’s campaign against the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is inspired by Beijing." The Times of India, in an August 21st report titled "Chinese Whispers," notes that the deadlock between the UPA government and its leftist ally "bears Beijing’s imprimatur."

The Agreement must also be cleared by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which counts China as a member. While Beijing is obviously keeping a close eye on the development, it has not yet announced what position it will take when the 45 member states of the NSG meet to discuss the matter. Should India’s leftist lawmakers succeed in derailing the deal prior to an NSG vote, Beijing would be rescued from having to make a difficult choice that might put improving Sino-Indian relations at risk.

Over at Meet the Press, Michael Gordon talked about the progress that has been made since the beginning of the surge. The Cobra II author was somewhat optimistic about conditions as they stand now, telling Tim Russert

MR. GORDON: Well, I spent most of the summer in Iraq in Diyala province and then south of Baghdad, and really a lot has changed on the security front in Iraq. And there's been a very important development which has been the enabling of the Sunni tribes and some of the former insurgents. This is not just in Anbar. And there's a very delicate political game under way right now to try to find a way to connect these disparate Sunni groups who are working with the American military, with the Maliki government, and that's a work in progress. It's really just in the early phases.

MR. RUSSERT: If we, in fact, are arming the Sunnis and we’ve already armed the Shiites, are we arming both factions in a civil war?

MR. GORDON: Well, we’re not arming these groups. They’re not being given arms by the Americans, but you’re pointing to one of the very real risks. I mean, the potential here is by organizing these Sunni groups in Baquba and...(unintelligible)...and...(unintelligible)...and all sorts of places in Iraq, we do have a mechanism to provide local security and really to drive out al-Qaeda of Iraq. The downside is unless this becomes institutionalized and these people become either Iraqi police or somehow approved by the Iraqi government, we might be setting the stage for more intensified civil war.

Later in the program on the NIE and the surge:

MR. GORDON: Well, the natural life of the surge, if you were to do nothing and just let it run its course, would be around March or April. Because at that point the troop levels in Iraq need to—will decrease unless they extend the tours further, which they’re—have already ruled out doing, going beyond 15 months. So force levels will begin to recede, and indeed, that’s anticipated by General Petraeus’ two-year campaign plan which he’s projected out for the summer.

MR. GORDON: But there’s really—in the latest N.I.E., people are focused on the message that there’s not political reconciliation at the national level. But there was a second message in the N.I.E., and the N.I.E. said that a large-scale withdrawal of American forces and a change of the mission from fighting counterinsurgency to advising the Iraqis and just going after al-Qaeda would erase the security gains that were made over the summer so far. So that’s something that also has to be taken into account in this upcoming congressional debate.

MR. RUSSERT: So what do you do? If, in fact, you stop the surge, you could erase some of the gains you’ve made. And yet, we do not have the capacity to continue the surge because of the strain on our military.

MR. GORDON: Well, the surge will run its course, and then, as Tom said, we’ll begin to reduce our forces. There’s no question we’re going to reduce our forces, and it’s going to be more than 5,000 next year. The issues is at what pace these forces are reduced, what their mission is—no one likes to talk about the mission, they simply talk about the numbers game—and how this is connected up with the politics of Iraq.

And finally Richard Engel had this to say about calls for an American withdrawal:

And going back to, to their points, if you pull back the troops, the troops themselves are going to be furious. They have done so much and worked so hard and sacrificed so much that if you start pulling them back because of political debates and domestic pressure in the United States, they’re going to be livid. They’re not going to thank the Americans, and they’re probably going to end up blaming Democrats, who said, “We never got a chance to complete the mission and all of our hard work hasn’t been accomplished.” So I think there’s a real risk if you draw them—draw the troops down and don’t give them a new mission that they’re going to feel that they were just used and, and, and manipulated.

On This Week, guest host Terry Moran went after Virginia Senator Jim Webb, one of the foremost proponents for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

“[Video Clip] Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch: If coalition soldiers were to leave, having fought hard for that terrain, after denying the enemy that sanctuary, what would happen is the enemy’d come back. He’d start building the bombs again, he’d start attacking the locals again, he’d start exporting that violence into Baghdad, and we’d take a huge step backwards.

Terry Moran: So whatever security progress has been achieved, purchased with American sacrifice, you’d give up?

Jim Webb: I don’t think it’s a question of giving anything up. It’s a question of how you fight a guerrilla war and how you use your troops.

On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace took Bill Moyers, revered liberal icon, to task for sloppy reporting. Responding to a Moyers letter (in which the veteran PBS journalist complained about having his facts questioned), Wallace lectured:

“If you want to find out about someone’s religious beliefs, a good first step might be to ask him. If you had talked to Rove as I did, you would have found out he reads a devotional every day, and the biggest charitable contribution he ever made was to his church. Of course, you never called Rove. That’s Reporting 101, but it would have gotten in the way of a tasty storyline about a nonbeliever flimflamming the Christian Right. I guess, Bill, reporting is easier when you don’t worry about the facts.”

Al Qaeda in Iraq has ramped up its attacks against Iraqi civilians and Iraqi and U.S. security forces over the past 48 hours. The effort demonstrates that al Qaeda in Iraq still possesses the capacity to launch a counteroffensive to the ongoing U.S. and Iraqi operations and is seeking to influence the upcoming debate in the U.S. Al Qaeda in Iraq has launched its version of the Tet Offensive.

Over the past several days, al Qaeda in Iraq conducted five high-profile attacks against Iraqi and U.S. targets. Four out of five of the attacks occurred outside of Baghdad--two in Diyala province, two in Salahadin province. Three of the attacks were conducted with suicide bombers, the other two attacks were conducted as infantry-type assaults.

Diyala

Just as Coalition and Iraq forces wrapped up Operation Lightning Hammer in the Diyala River Valley north of Baqubah, al Qaeda in Iraq conducted two major strikes in the province on August 23: one south and one east of the provincial capital. The first attack, and infantry-style assault against two villages south of Baqubah, was the more sensational of the two.

Over 200 al Qaeda in Iraq fighters assaulted mosques and the homes of tribal sheikhs in the village of Kanan. "They blew up the mosque, then they bombed houses crowded with family members." Brig. Gen. Ali Dalayan, the police chief of Baqubah told AFP. Al Qaeda targeted the tribal sheikhs recently pledged to fight the terror group. Twenty-three people were killed during the battle, including one of the sheikhs, several of his sons, and a policeman, AFP reported. "The attackers however managed to abduct 15 people, eight women and seven children." Twenty-two al Qaeda fighters were later detained south of Kanan.

Multinational Forces Iraq stated 10 civilians were killed and eleven wounded. "An unknown number of terrorists were killed, said Sheik Thar al-Karki, the paramount sheik for the Karki tribe, stating they could not determine the number because AQI members load the bodies in vehicles during attacks."

The 1920s Revolution Brigades--a Sunni insurgent group who turned on al Qaeda--backed Iraqi police in the battle against al Qaeda in Kanan. The 1920s Revolution Brigades has battled al Qaeda in Iraq several times in Diyala province over the past year.

In Muqdadiyah, east of Baqubah, an al Qaeda suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a police convoy as it patrolled a market in the city. At least 38 police and civilians were wounded in the attack. U.S. and Iraq forces have yet to move against al Qaeda in Iraq in force in the Muqdadiyah and in other areas such as Balad Ruz, and al Qaeda is exploiting these gaps in security.

John Edwards takes his turn in Foreign Affairs, explaining his foreign policy and showing how it differs from that of President Bush and his rivals for the Democratic nomination. On the critically important questions of how to deal with Iraq, and how to respond to international crises, Edwards is aimless--saying one thing, and proposing to do the opposite. He calls the approach 'smart power,' but it sounds more like 'hope for the best.'

Edwards goes wrong early on:

This century's first test of our leadership arrived with terrible force on September 11, 2001. When the United States was attacked, the entire world stood with us. We could have pursued a broad policy of reengagement with the world, yet instead we squandered this broad support through a series of policies that drove away our friends and allies.

It's not that Edwards is wrong in valuing close relations with other nations; it is that this is entirely the wrong prism through which to view the September 11 attacks. The question was not whether we would use them to improve relations with allies and rivals; it was whether the nation would act to make sure that such an attack was not repeated. In just the 5th paragraph of this lengthy piece, Edwards makes us seriously question whether he has the judgment to fill the office he seeks.

In the next paragraph, he recasts history--crediting Ronald Reagan with building international respect for the US, and bringing down the USSR:

For 50 years, presidents from Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton built strong alliances and deepened the world's respect for us. We gained that respect by viewing our military strength not as an end in itself but as a means to protect a system of laws and institutions that gave hope to billions across the globe. In avoiding the temptation to rule as an empire, we hastened the fall of a corrupt and evil one in the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan was criticized bitterly by Democrats for provoking the USSR and dividing U.S. allies, allegedly leading to a diminished respect for the US abroad--echoing modern criticisms of George Bush. His pursuit of missile defense, the placement of Pershing missiles in Europe, the labeling of the USSR as an 'Evil Empire'--Democrats claimed that all these actions provoked the enemy, threatened relations with our allies, and would prolong the conflict with Communism. But if Edwards were running for president in 1984, he'd probably say the same thing of Reagan that he is saying of Bush today.

Most of the rest of Edwards' piece amounts to a collection of unfounded assertions and election slogans: 'the war on terror is a bumper sticker,' we've 'walked into the terrorists' trap,' Bush is pushing 'a policy of fear'--all stuff that we've heard many times before. Interestingly, Edwards compliments local law enforcement for breaking up plots like the attack planned at New York's JFK, but he doesn't compliment you know who for the prevention of any terror attacks in the US since 9/11.

This paragraph seems the best summary of Edwards' near-term plans:

We should begin our reengagement with the world by bringing an end to the Iraq war. Iraq's problems are deep and dangerous, but they cannot be solved by the U.S. military. For over a year, I have argued for an immediate withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. combat troops from Iraq, followed by an orderly and complete withdrawal of all combat troops. Once we are out of Iraq, the United States must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide, a regional spillover of the civil war, or the establishment of an al Qaeda safe haven. We will most likely need to retain quick-reaction forces in Kuwait and a significant naval presence in the Persian Gulf. We will also need some security capabilities in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the U.S. embassy and U.S. personnel. Finally, we will need a diplomatic offensive to engage the rest of the world--including Middle Eastern nations and our allies in Europe--in working to secure Iraq's future. All of these measures will finally allow us to close this terrible chapter and move on to the broader challenges of the new century.

So get out of Iraq, leave a 'quick-reaction force' in Kuwait, a military garrison at the Embassy in Baghdad, and enough troops in the region 'to prevent a genocide.' Then commence a 'diplomatic offensive' in Europe and the region.

But if Edwards is concerned about a genocide, why does he advocate a withdrawal? Surely the U.S. risks fewer lives in Iraq by continuing the mission that exists today, as opposed to leaving ASAP and returning to prevent the genocide? Or does Edwards hope that the 'diplomatic offensive' will convince Iran or some other regional power to take charge of security?

And in light of his plan for Iraq, can one really take this next paragraph seriously:

We also need to renew our commitment to engagement and diplomacy in order to solve problems before they occur, rather than scrambling to deal with crises after they have erupted. With engagement comes far greater knowledge and the potential for progress and even trust...

So in the case of Iraq, we should ignore military progress, leave the nation to fend for itself, and insert American troops in a full-blown civil war to prevent a genocide. But more broadly, we should practice 'engagement and diplomacy' to prevent crises before they develop. Taken together, this sounds like a 'hope for the best' approach. And indeed, when he describes his approach to Iran, it confirms it:

Kristol had a back and forth with Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning. Pretty good stuff. Don Surber has the video here and the transcript:

KRISTOL: “There is no question that security is better in much of the country and there’s no question that from the ground up, there is political progress. The flip in Anbar province where the Sunni Tribes have joined us and have basically expelled al-Qaeda from what was their stronghold is impressive. We are defeating al-Qaeda. The Shi’ite militia are a bigger problem. The national political situation is a big problem. But it can only be addressed as security continues to improve. And as the NIE released yesterday says it can’t be addressed, the political situation, if we start to withdraw.”

LAUER: “That’s true. And I want to talk about this National Intelligence Estimate and I want to start by saying because I think you are very right to point out that they say we can see more chaos if we pull our troops out now. But they do seem to differ with you on a couple of key points: very little hope for reconciliation among the feuding factions within Iraq, overall violence remains at a very high level, the Iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to twelve months, they say that Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively, and they say al-Qaeda in Iraq retains the ability to conduct high profile attacks. Are they looking at the same country that you just saw?”

KRISTOL: “Sure. They say that al-Qaeda is weaker than it was. The national political leadership is really challenged. If we can provide continued increased security, they will have to step up to the plate. But the only way to get them to improve, maybe Maliki will be removed by the parliamentary system that Iraq has. But the only way that we can have a peaceful transition over there and actually achieve political progress is by continuing to provide more security. I think that’s what the National Intelligence Estimate says.”

LAUER: “But it paints a much more pessimistic picture than you just painted for me.”

KRISTOL: “I don’t agree with that. People should read the Estimate. It’s a four-page summary, declassified findings. And frankly the reporting on it has been misleading, people can go online and read the estimate themselves. I urge them to do so.”

LAUER: “So you think most people if they read the entire Estimate, they are going to come away thinking things are going better in Iraq?”

KRISTOL: “Things are going better enough that we should sustain the current strategy, which is working. Look at everybody’s predictions in January, ‘Oh the surge, how ridiculous you can’t improve security. Anbar province, that was supposed to be lost, you can’t get the Sunnis to cooperate. Parts of Baghdad that were in terrible shape, you can’t improve the situation there.’ It is improving, no one really doubts that. Is it improving fast enough? We can debate that. But I think the President has an awfully strong case to say, ‘Give me six more months’, basically continue Petraeus’ strategy, let’s see where we are in the spring.”

The Washington Post reports on comments by Virginia senator John Warner:

Sen. John W. Warner, one of the most influential Republican voices in Congress on national security, called on President Bush yesterday to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in time for Christmas as a new intelligence report concluded that political leaders in Baghdad are "unable to govern effectively."...

"I can think of no clearer form of that than if the president were to announce on the 15th that, in consultation with our senior military commanders, he's decided to initiate the first step in a withdrawal of armed forces," Warner said. "I say to the president respectfully, 'Pick whatever number you wish.' . . . Say, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year. That's the first step."

The White House politely rejected Warner's advice, saying any decisions would wait until after Petraeus's presentation next month. "I don't think that the president feels any differently about setting a specific timetable for withdrawal," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "I just think it's important that we wait right now to hear from the commanders on the ground about the way ahead."

And commanders on the ground seem to think such a move would be counterproductive. According to CNN, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch had this to say in response to Warner's proposed draw down:

Lynch said troops, helped by the U.S. escalation called the "surge," now are able to operate proactively against insurgents and have made strides against militants. He said "if we were to lose that capability, the enemy would come back."

"We would take a giant step backward," said Lynch, who said he needs the troops he has at present to battle both Shiite and Sunni militants and to confront significant Iranian influence in the region.

He said the fight is so detailed and complicated that there is "no time between now and Christmas to move forces out."

By next spring or summer, however, it is possible there could be enough progress to spur such a move, he said.

Still, one wonders what purpose a purely symbolic drawdown like Warner's might serve...other than politics. Shouldn't the situation on the ground determine troop levels, rather than a call for the White House to "pick whatever number you wish." Even the moonbats connect their calls for immediate withdrawal to an interpretation of the situation on the ground--as misguided as that interpretation might be. And if the number doesn't matter to Warner, why bother at all?

Still, if someone had said six months ago that this would be the shape of the "Republican Rebellion" on Iraq--a lone senator telling the president to pick a number out of a hat as part of some empty political gesture--no one would have believed them. The real rebellion is on the left, where Democratic support for the surge has threatened to scuttle that party's plans for pushing a date for withdrawal.

From the Seattle Times: Our Troops Have Earned More Time, by Rep. Brian Baird.

From the Wall Street Journal: Another Vietnam?, by Max Boot.

From the Washington Post: The Iraqi Convergence, by Charles Krauthammer.

From the Spectator: Now, more than ever, Britain must stay in Iraq, by William Shawcross.

From the Danger Room: MRAP vs. Superbombs, by David Hambling.

The F-22A Raptor takes off with afterburners during a demonstration Aug. 20 at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. The demo was the closing event of the 90th Fighter Squadron's 90th anniversary. The aircraft was flown by Maj. Paul Moga, the Air Force's sole F-22 demonstration pilot. He is assigned to the 1st Operations Group at Langley AFB, Va. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Garrett Hothan)

The Congressional Budget Office has released its August update of economic and fiscal data. Due to surging income tax receipts, the federal deficit for 2007 is expected to be $158 billion--a decline of $19 billion from the March projection, and $90 billion less than 2006. It's unclear right now (but should be better understood when more detailed data are available) what is causing the surge in income tax receipts. It could be (as CQ points out) due to greater 'income inequality' pushing more income into higher tax brackets, but there's no way of knowing yet.

According to this baseline projection, the deficit will fluctuate up and down through 2011, then come into surplus in 2012, after the 'Bush tax cuts' expire. By adding more than $150 billion in anticipated revenue, the CBO projects a surplus of $62 billion.

Congressman Paul Ryan, the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, points out that the improved projections are due to higher revenues, resulting from improved economic growth. But that growth is threatened by the tax increases that Democrats propose--including the expiration of Bush's tax cuts, as well as increases in energy and tobacco taxes.

Further, these projections do not take into account the new spending proposed by the Democrats. Congress has already passed $48 billion more in emergency appropriations than previously anticipated--and CBO does not consider this. The expansion of S-CHIP will cost $35 billion over the next 5 years (or much more over 10), and Congress needs 9 million new smokers to fund it--or it will increase the deficit. (Smoke'm if you got'em?)

Further, the economy has been growing nicely and consistently for years. The $400 billion tax increase advocated by Democrats is likely to effect that--and not for the better. In addition to the possible negative effect on the economy, there's also the recent finding by the Joint Economic Committee that tax increases lead to higher spending. (But maybe this tax increase will be different.)

Lastly, we are now growing closer to the period in which unfunded entitlement programs begin to adversely impact the deficit. CBO projects that in 2017, the Federal Government will begin to draw down the Social Security surplus. Put another way, we will begin to transfer funds from income tax and other federal revenues to Social Security, to pay for benefits. For years we have done the opposite -- transfer from Social Security revenues to pay for general government spending.

Starting in that year and lasting for decades after that, Social Security will no longer help pay for deficit spending, it will be a new source of deficit spending to be paid for. Few in Congress seem eager to address that problem.

On Tuesday this week, Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet voted to extend for another year what has arguably been Germany’s most controversial military operation since the end of WWII, namely the 2006 deployment of Bundeswehr naval forces off the Lebanese coast to interdict arms shipments to Hezbollah forces as part of the UNIFIL mission. In October 2006, the German contingent, which currently consists of about 1,000 soldiers and eight ships, took the lead in UNIFIL’s maritime mission, which counts a total of 2,000 forces and is also supported by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria.

Chancellor Merkel visited UNIFIL military personnel
aboard the Brandenburg earlier this year.

In August last year, UN Security Council resolution 1701 had authorized up to 15,000 UN peacekeepers (about 13,000 troops were subsequently deployed) to help keep the shaky ceasefire in the wake of the 2006 Lebanon War--the bloody, destructive, and ultimately inconclusive 34-day proxy war between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.

In a piece for THE DAILY STANDARD published almost exactly a year ago, titled "Germany Goes to the Middle East," I analyzed why the Bundeswehr’s naval deployment in Lebanon proved to be so divisive for Chancellor Merkel's Grand Coalition government, the three opposition parties, and German public opinion:

Ironically, both supporters and opponents of Germany's military engagement in Lebanon have made veiled references to the Holocaust in support of their positions. Those in favor of sending troops argue that Germany has a moral obligation to do everything in its power to help guarantee the existence of the Jewish state. […]

In contrast, Germans opposed to sending soldiers to police the ceasefire argue that this would have the potential of setting Bundeswehr against Israeli soldiers. […]

And still others argue that precisely because of Germany's pro-Israel stance, it cannot be part of a neutral U.N. force in Lebanon which, by definition, would have to respond equally to ceasefire violations by either party.

On Tuesday, the German government portrayed the Lebanese naval mission as a success story. According to German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung, Bundeswehr forces checked more than 8,500 ships via radio, 35 of which were subsequently searched by the Lebanese in their ports. According to official statistics, none of these searches yielded any weapons. It should be noted that no ship was ever searched by force.

Under German law, the Lebanon mission’s 12-month extension (like all Bundeswehr deployments abroad for that matter) has to be approved by the Bundestag in a parliamentary vote, which is now scheduled for mid-September. It is widely expected that the governing CDU/CSU-SPD Grand Coalition parties and the Greens will provide overwhelming support for the naval operation. In contrast, the pacifist-populist post-Communist Left Party and parts of the pro-market Free Democratic Party (FDP) are still adamantly opposed to the Bundeswehr mission. The Left Party opposes any Bundeswehr mission abroad and wants to strictly limit the military to Germany’s territorial defense. The FDP is particularly concerned about the potential for German-Israeli military clashes and demands more assurances from Chancellor Merkel’s government that those issues have been addressed.

In fact, in October last year, several incidents involving German UNIFIL ships/helicopters and Israeli fighters took place off the Lebanese coast. While the Israeli government denied reports that its jets had fired two shots at an unarmed German reconnaissance vessel, Prime Minister Olmert had a 40-minute conference call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel a few days later to apologize for the unspecified incident and to assure her government that these things would not happen again.

The "Key Judgments" section of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), titled "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive," was released today. I am generally skeptical about the merits of NIE’s since it is often not clear what their judgments are based on, what type of intelligence went into formulating these judgments, and what intelligence was left on the cutting room floor. And, as with the NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs in 2002, the Intelligence Community frequently errs in its assessments. Since the NIE is a consensus document, the analysis is also confined to the lowest common denominator that all agencies can agree upon, which doesn’t tell you much more than you can learn from reading open sources or making simple guesstimates. This is not to say that the NIEs are totally without merits, and occasionally they contain an interesting nugget of information.

In at least two instances, the latest NIE is a good example of all the problems I described above. The following paragraph appears on the last page of the NIE:

Syria has cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability, but the IC now assesses that Damascus is providing support to non-AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] groups inside Iraq in a bid to increase Syrian influence.

Notice that the NIE limits Syria’s support to non-al Qaeda in Iraq groups inside Iraq. But, what of Syria’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq? Is this one of the groups the authors of the NIE contend that Syria has "cracked down on"? It seems unlikely, to say the least, that Syria is really inhibiting al Qaeda’s operations in any meaningful way. In fact, according to intelligence cited by Senator Joe Lieberman, Syria is doing just the opposite. From Senator Lieberman’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal:

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others. . . .

That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide bombers--and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered. Syria refuses to tighten its visa regime for individuals transiting its territory.

Before al Qaeda's foreign fighters can make their way across the Syrian border into Iraq, however, they must first reach Syria--and the overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East, and the most vulnerable chokepoint in al Qaeda's war against Iraq and the U.S. in Iraq.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad cannot seriously claim that he is incapable of exercising effective control over the main airport in his capital city. Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.

So, on the one hand we have an NIE stating that Syria still supports non-al Qaeda groups in Iraq, with no mention of the Assad regime’s complicity in al Qaeda’s terror. And on the other hand we have Senator Lieberman’s reference to "recently declassified American intelligence" indicating the precise opposite.

It would be interesting to learn what intelligence Senator Lieberman is referring to and why it wasn’t included in the NIE’s Key Judgments. In the meantime, based on all of the open source reporting I’ve seen on the topic, I am inclined to believe that Senator Lieberman is right. It is hard to believe that al Qaeda terrorists are transiting through Damascus International Airport without, at the very least, the Assad regime’s approval.

As usual, the Aviation Week blog scoops the competition with what I believe are the first pictures of the MiG's Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicle. This comes as the Moscow air show kicks into high gear. The WWS will have plenty more coverage from Moscow as our own correspondent, Reuben Johnson, is at the scene as well, emailing us this morning with a vivid description of the conditions there:

Conditions here are nothing short of catastrophic. This place - and this air show - are a goatf%&* operating inside of a raging furnace. I have never in my 20 years of going to these things ever encountered such brutal, debilitating, life-threatening, overheated summer weather at such an event, and at the same time have never seen less capacity by an organization to handle it (i.e. no air conditioning anywhere to escape from it all, not water stations, no shade, no emergency services on hand in sufficient numbers, and - for the first two days of the show - almost no place open or with electricity hooked up where you could even purchase some water for money). I am afraid the weekend public days are going to see loss of life due to the heat and no one who knows what to do about it.

But getting back to the scoop from Ares, Bill Sweetman offers some interesting analysis of the MiG UCAV:

MiG's Skat unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) mockup, first of all, is not a copy of an X-45, X-47, Taranis, Neuron or anything else. So far, nobody's figured out how to make a UAV detect a threat in time to shoot back or evade it, so the only valid approach to survival is all-aspect stealth over the widest possible bandwidth, and an all-wing tailless configuration is still the best way to do that. That's why all UCAVs look like B-2s, because the B-2 design addressed the same problem.

Go read the whole thing, it's fascinating--at least if you're an aviation geek like me. Also, stay tuned for more from Reuben--that is unless he's overcome by that terrible Moscow winter summer. (The forecast for tomorrow, 91 and sunny.)

The MiG Skat. See more pictures here.

One of the lessons of 9/11 is the danger of 'stovepiping' in our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It's not enough for agencies to collect the data they need to piece together and disrupt a plot; the analysts who 'own' those critical nuggets must be able to find others with relevant information and piece it together. Recognizing this problem, the 9/11 commission recommended that new networks be created to facilitate the sharing of data across agencies.

The New York Times described the problem last year:

The spy agencies were saddled with technology that might have seemed cutting edge in 1995. When he went onto Intelink — the spy agencies’ secure internal computer network — the search engines were a pale shadow of Google, flooding him with thousands of useless results. If Burton wanted to find an expert to answer a question, the personnel directories were of no help. Worse, instant messaging with colleagues, his favorite way to hack out a problem, was impossible: every three-letter agency — from the Central Intelligence Agency to the National Security Agency to army commands — used different discussion groups and chat applications that couldn’t connect to one another. In a community of secret agents supposedly devoted to quickly amassing information, nobody had even a simple blog — that ubiquitous tool for broadly distributing your thoughts.

The intelligence community now seems eager to catch-up to the private sector. It has created Intellipedia, blogs, and now a 'MySpace'-type system in order to boost the sharing of information:

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of “MySpace for analysts” – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community. He says the technology can also help process increasing amounts of information where the number of analysts is limited.

“Burying the same number of analysts in ever higher piles of hay would no more increase the number of needles,” says Mr Fingar...

A-Space will be equipped with web-based email and software that recommends areas of interest to the user just like Amazon suggests books to its customers. The site will also allow users to create and modify documents, and determine user privileges, in a similar fashion to Google Documents.

Congressman Pete Hoekstra, Ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with me on a break from his annual August bike tour of his Congressional district (pictures from the 2006 tour are on Mr. Hoekstra's website here).

Hoekstra said that he's encouraged to see the CIA and the intelligence community more broadly experiment with new models for information sharing after showing little interest at the onset. He credits DCI McConnell for 'taking the ball and running with it,' when it comes to improving the ability of his team to share information. Hoekstra says that Admiral McConnell clearly means to do more than just "keep the seat warm" until the end of the Bush administration, but to "build an intelligence community to keep America safe."

Hoekstra didn't express an opinion as to whether one or more of these new applications would prove revolutionary, or even beneficial, in improving the security of America and American interests. But he expressed an eagerness to see how they turn out, and, given the community's past failures, we suspect there's nowhere to go but up.

That's the story over at Military.com:

An Iraqi man saved the lives of four U.S. Soldiers and eight civilians when he intercepted a suicide bomber during a Concerned Citizens meeting in the town of al-Arafia Aug. 18.

The incident occurred while Soldiers from 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, were talking with members of the al-Arafia Concerned Citizens, a volunteer community group, at a member’s house.

"I was about 12 feet away when the bomber came around the corner," said Staff Sgt. Sean Kane, of Los Altos, Calif., acting platoon sergeant of Troop B, 3-1 Cav. "I was about to engage when he jumped in front of us and intercepted the bomber as he ran toward us. As he pushed him away, the bomb went off."

The citizen’s actions saved the lives of four U.S. Soldiers and eight civilians.

Kane felt the loss personally because he had met and interacted with his rescuer many times before the incident.

"He was high-spirited and really believed what the group (Concerned Citizens) was doing," Kane said. "I have no doubt the bomber was trying to kill American Soldiers. It was very calculated the way the bomber tried to do it. If he hadn’t intercepted him, there is no telling how bad it could have been."

Kane believes the citizen is a hero.

"He could have run behind us or away from us, but he made the decision to sacrifice himself to protect everyone. Having talked with his father, I was told that even if he would have known the outcome before hand, he wouldn’t have acted differently."

Go read the whole thing, and you can read more about the Concerned Citizens in Jeff Emanuel's recent piece for THE DAILY STANDARD.

Peter Wehner has a must-read post up at the contentions blog. Wehner, quoting from the memoir of Henry Kissinger, recounts the story of Cambodian prime minister Sirik Matak. The United States had offered to evacuate Matak and other Cambodian political leaders following a decision by Congress to cut off funding to the former ally. But few accepted the offer, and this was the response from Matak to U.S. ambassador John Gunther Dean:

Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

S/Sirik Matak

When the U.S. finally withdrew on April 13 of that year, the New York Times headline read "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." Four days later, the Khmer Rouge took the capital of Phnom Penh. Mattak "was shot in the stomach and left without medical help. It took him three days to die." Conservative estimates put the number of civilian deaths from the Khmer Rouge at 1.5 million. And of course there was the slaughter of America's allies in South Vietnam. Wehner's conclusion:

This is a sober reminder that there are enormous human, as well as geopolitical, consequences when nations that fight for human rights and liberty grow weary and give way to barbaric and bloodthirsty enemies.

Senator Lieberman had harsh words for his Democratic colleagues who seem to have focused their rhetorical attacks on our allies in Iraq rather than our enemies:

“As even many critics of the Iraq war now acknowledge, General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy is making real and significant progress in our fight there. Whereas a year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq controlled large swaths of territory, it is now being driven out of its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces by the surge in U.S. forces and their increasingly capable Iraqi allies. Whereas a year ago, sectarian violence was spiraling out of control in Iraq, it is now being damped down, and the militias that once terrorized Baghdad are being rolled back. Whereas a year ago, Iraq’s Sunni Arab community was largely allied with the insurgency, more and more Sunnis are coming over to our side, to fight against al Qaeda.

“Forced by facts on the ground to acknowledge the progress of the American and Iraqi militaries since the new surge strategy started, some of these opponents of the war are now turning their harshest criticism on our allies in Iraq instead of our enemies. This is a mistake. Whatever the shortcomings of our friends in Iraq, they are not an excuse to retreat from the real enemies who threaten our vital national interests there.

“I share the frustrations about the performance of the Iraqi government. But the fact is, as my colleagues know, Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus are meeting every day with Iraq’s democratically-elected leaders to help them reach compromise and reconciliation on a range of complex, painful, and existential issues. Political progress in Iraq depends on this kind of steady statecraft and patient diplomacy on the ground in Baghdad, rather than scapegoating and congressionally-ordered coups.

“Ironically, it was not so long ago that many in Congress criticized the Bush administration for what they described as its heavy-handed and patronizing treatment of our most important allies in the world. Now many of those very critics make the exact same mistake in their treatment of the Iraqis, whose citizens--lest we forget--are fighting and dying every day in the struggle against al Qaeda, and in far higher numbers than any other nationality.

“Ultimately, the choice we face in Iraq is not between the current Iraqi government and a perfect Iraqi government. Rather, it is a choice between a young, imperfect, struggling democracy that we have helped midwife into existence, and the totalitarian, terrorist regime that al Qaeda hopes to impose in its place, should we retreat.

“Indeed, while it is true there is no pure “military” solution to the violence in Iraq, it is worth remembering that neither is there any pure “political” solution. Al Qaeda in Iraq and other irreconcilable extremists must be defeated and destroyed in order for Iraq to be stable and free, and for the United States to be safe. Al Qaeda is not mass murdering hundreds of Iraqi civilians in suicide bombings because the Iraqi government hasn't made enough progress toward political reconciliation, but because al Qaeda is determined to destroy any hope of political reconciliation.

“We have made enormous progress in defending and advancing America’s vital national interests in Iraq over the past six months against our two deadliest enemies in the world—-al Qaeda and Iran. Realism requires that we recognize these gains, not dismiss or disparage them--and that we distinguish between our allies in Iraq, and our enemies.”

The Autoblog reports that the Chinese military, in conjunction with Dongfeng, has developed a copycat version of AM General's iconic Humvee. But it seems that the PLA, perhaps as a result of having glimpsed the Humvee's vulnerability in Iraq, is no longer interested in the vehicle, opting instead for the BJ2S Warrior (see a picture here).

So what will Dongfeng do with this vehicle, which required four long years of reverse engineering and intellectual property thieving? It seems they'll do what any good capitalists would, try and pitch it to the country's gigantic domestic automobile market, complete with a radio and CD player.

The name of the vehicle: The Crazy Soldier.

Dongfeng's Crazy Soldier

A number of supporters of victory in Iraq have come together to create Freedom's Watch, which is launching "a nationwide grassroots campaign...to ensure a strong national defense and a powerful effort to confront and defeat global terrorism.” That advertising campaign will be a sharp contrast to the left's call for a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. The ad campaign will run in 20 states and dozens of Congressional districts.

Take the time to view the Freedom Watch ads at YouTube. They are powerful, and it doesn't hurt that they have "absolute moral authority":

A list of the supporters of Freedom's Watch is here.

It seems it was just a few months ago that liberal activists were talking proudly about their ability to put litmus tests aside and search for Democrats who could win marginal seats and bring a majority. When Democrats reclaimed control of the House of Representatives, these moderate-to-conservative Democrats were called 'majority makers.' When many of them cast tough votes to specify a date-certain for withdrawal from Iraq, or to increase taxes by $400 billion... well, the activists didn't really thank them, but at least they didn't attack them, either.

But now that some of them have voted not to defund the troops in Iraq, and in favor of continuing warrantless surveillance of terrorists operating abroad, the Netroots are bringing back the litmus tests. Oh well, 'voting your conscience' was nice while it lasted, but now is the time to start the purge of the 'Bush Dogs:'

The first step in stopping this behavior is to identify the people engaging in it and offer up criticism. There are a few reasons for this. One, many of these members feel no pressure to vote correctly or uphold progressive values. Criticism is the signal they are relying on to let them know when they err. Two, some of these members may need to face a primary challenge, and it's useful for potential primary challengers to know that there is criticism of these members. Three, other members considering joining the Bush Dog caucus may be dissuaded if they know there will be criticism. Four, candidates running for office will finally have a signal on how they should talk about being good Democrats that are willing to take tough votes...

This is going to be uncomfortable for many of us. Criticizing the people we just elected, people who may even be nice to us personally, is never easy. And shifting away from raw partisanship, which was necessary from 2002-2006, towards the idea that we need good Democrats and not Bush Dog Democrats, is going to take some slight adjustments. We're going to be told that we are jeopardizing candidates in swing districts, that we are hurting the possibility of retaining the majority. We're going to be told we're bad Democrats.

The model for success of this effort is--don't laugh--former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. As you recall, Senator Lieberman was denied renomination as a Democrat only to coast back into office as an Independent. 'Chastened' at the hands of the Netroots, Senator Lieberman allies himself with Republicans more than ever and is backing one of his Republican colleagues (Susan Collins) in the Senate over her Democratic challenger.

There are currently 38 Democrats on the list of those in danger of getting 'Liebermaned,' but organizers expect to 'expand the pool.' So far, the names are a virtual 'who's who' of Southern Democrats and swing seat Democrats. There are very few who could be replaced by a 'real Democrat' in the primary who would have any chance at holding the seat in the general.

If this is their plan, and this is their model for success--sign us up! We can make calls, talk to friends, or do whatever is necessary to to teach those 'Bush Dogs' a lesson. And if it means 'we' lose a few seats to the Republicans, well--you can't make an omelette...

Be sure to watch this interview with Representative Brian Baird, whose statement of support for continuing the mission in Iraq we spotlighted here a few days ago. Baird is clearly one of those Democrats guilty of voting his conscience, but he's not on the list--yet:

As Coalition and Iraq troops continue the hunt for al Qaeda throughout Iraq, a senior Baathist who years ago threw in his lot with al Qaeda has flipped. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the former vice president of Saddam's revolutionary council and number 6 on the "deck of cards" of the 55 most wanted, has "decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces," Abu Wisam al-Jashaami told Adnkronos International. "In return, for cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda, al-Douri has asked for guarantees over his men's safety and for an end to Iraqi army attacks on his militias."

Al Douri swore bayat (an oath of allegiance) to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq's former commander, sometime in early 2004 according to an Internet posting on a jihadist website intercepted by The SITE Institute. The bayat ceremony was described as follows:

The Mujahideen had made preparations to greet them until it was possible to bring them together with Zarqawi, and the "Heroes' meeting" took place ... In an atmosphere full of enthusiasm and high spirits for everybody, with the company of his three sons and a number of Mujahideen, Izzat Ibrahim Al Douri took off to meet with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. At their arrival, the Mujahideen greeted them amidst calls of "Allah Akbar" (3 times) [God is Greater]. Then the sound of gunfire was heard as Zarqawi rushed out, surrounded by the Mujahideen, covered by the dust of their blessed journey," according to the network. It added that, at the sight of Zarqawi, Izzat Ibrahim shouted: "You are the commander and we are your soldiers." His son Ahmad handed him a copy of the Quran. His father took it, placed his hand and the hands of his sons on it, and they made an oath to God, pledging allegiance to Zarqawi in the Jihad until victory or martyrdom, in good and bad times."

Al Douri maintained the Baath Party was still in operation and criticized al Qaeda in Iraq and the Zarqawi's tactics of creating sectarian strife in an email interview with Time in 2006. "I participate with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his belief in faith and the unity of God, but I differ from him fundamentally in the style, method, and path through which he expresses his faith," al Douri said to Time. "I harbor great respect and appreciation for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and I rejoice in his courage, the strength of his faith, and the sacrifices of his fighters, [but] I call on him and his fighters to direct their jihadist struggle against the enemy that has invaded the land of Arabdom and Islam. Let none of us be drawn into the occupying enemy's game of igniting hateful sectarianism."

While it is unclear how much influence al Douri possesses with former Baathists turned al Qaeda, or how much of Saddam's money he controls, his turn against al Qaeda serves as an indicator of how actors in the insurgency view the situation on the ground. Al Douri clearly sees that the Coalition and Iraqi government have momentum against the insurgency and al Qaeda.

Reconciliation with the likes of al Douri will be difficult, if not impossible. He was just placed at the top of the list of the Iraqi government's most wanted individuals. Al Douri was viewed by some to be Saddam's successor, and he was a ruthless operative directly responsible for the murder of Shia and Kurds during Saddam's rule. His submission to al Qaeda only compounds his past crimes. The Iraqi government will find it almost impossible to reach some sort of agreement with al Douri but must work hard to split any remaining al Douri-led factions from al Qaeda in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and Coalition forces maintain the relentless pressure against al Qaeda in Iraq's network. A raid targeting al Qaeda-allied terrorist networks in the Owesat and Fetoah areas on August 20 resulted in the capture of 13 suspected terrorists. Twenty-four al Qaeda operatives were captured during raids in Samarra, Tikrit, Baghdad, Bayji, and in Anbar province on August 21 and 22. Another five al Qaeda operatives were killed and 11 captured during operations in Baqubah, Mosul, and Tikrit on August 22.

President Bush used "the V-word" in his speech to the VFW today:

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that "the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror -- but it's the central front -- it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)

THE WEEKLY STANDARD addressed this subject more than a year ago in a feature piece by David Gelernter titled "No More Vietnams":

NOT LONG AGO RICHARD COHEN of the Washington Post wrote a column about Iraq headlined "As in Vietnam, dereliction of duty all over again." The Vietnam analogy has been part of the Iraq war story since the fighting started (in fact, since before it started). The Bush administration often deals with its critics by ignoring them. This time it can't. Too much rides on the president looking these critics in the eye and telling them: Damned right this is Vietnam all over again. Only this time we will not get scared and walk out in the middle. This time we will stand fast, and repair a piece of the American psyche that has been damaged and hurting ever since we ran from Vietnam in disgrace way back in April 1975.

Better late than never...go read the whole thing.

From the New York Post: Iraq's Re-Liberation, by Ralph Peters.

From the New York Sun: The New War, by the editors.

From Contentions: Friedman’s Folly, by Peter Wehner.

From ynetnews: Arabs Surf Israeli Porn, by Adar Shalev.

From Self-Promotion: Freedom Fuel, by Bill Roggio and Michael Goldfarb.

The Washington Post reports today on a phenomenon that's been clear to most of us for a while now: the improvement in security that has accompanied the surge has forced Democrats to change their rhetoric:

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions.

But while Democrats recognize that Operation Phantom Thunder has changed the reality on the ground, that's no reason to re-think their stances in favor of withdrawal by a date certain--at least according to Rahm Emanuel:

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) made a round of calls yesterday to freshman Democrats, some of whom recently returned from trips to Iraq and made news with their positive comments on military progress. "I'm not finding any wobbliness on the war -- at all," Emanuel said.

Senate Democrats confirmed General Petraeus in January to oversee the implementation of a new strategy in Iraq. House and Senate Democratic leaders brought legislation to the floor in May to fund that new strategy. Now that the strategy is working--but has only been in place since June--they say that no change on the ground could affect their view on a withdrawal.

If Democratic leaders now declare that the surge was never going to be given a chance to succeed, the American people would be right to ask why they agreed to commit American blood and treasure to it in the first place. Can Americans have any faith in the leadership of a party that would consent to a plan such as Operation Phantom Thunder, then attempt to pull the rug out just as it was seeming to work? What does the Democratic party have to offer in the war on terror if they refuse to take advantage of a chance for victory on a battlefield that Osama bin Laden regards as the central front in the war against the West?

We can only hope that Rahm Emanuel has misread his caucus. Members like Brian Baird and Jerry McNerney among others seem to recognize the simple logic that we may be 'winning' in Iraq, that there is a growing consensus among elected officials and independent analysts that things have changed, and that Congress must at least consider showing patience.

Check out this excellent piece by the New York Post's Ralph Peters on how General Petraeus has implemented a strategy to 're-liberate' Iraq.

Col. Richard Simcock (USMC), Commander of Regimental Combat Team-6, spoke with bloggers this morning to disucss operations in eastern al Anbar--specifically operation Alljah in the city of Fallujah--as well as the implementation of new technologies such as the MRAP.

Simcock was optimistic about the progress being made in Fallujah, his area of operations. He said that Iraqi Army recruitment among the local Sunni population had increased dramatically, and that this represented a "huge step forward in reintegrating" that group into the Iraqi society. He added he doesn't "see a lot of problems in the Army between Sunni and Shia."

He also said that his men rarely had use for "heavy assets" like artillery, tanks, etc. And as far as airpower, Simcock said that his command mainly used air assets for reconnaissance to stymie attacks and reduce Coaltion casualties. While he was wary of making the connection between the use of heavy assets and military progress, he implied that other metrics had demonstrated the success of current operation in the Fallujah region. He added that there's nothing in his AO that a Marine rifle squadron can't handle on its own.

When asked what, precisely, Simcock and his Marines need to do their job more effectively, he said "we need more engineers and route clearance." Simcock says they have engineers, but they are all out "either building something or tearing something down." And his emphasis on route clearance was a nice segue into discussion of MRAP.

Simcock said that his men had recently taken delivery of 25 additional MRAP vehicles, which offer increased protection against IEDs, and that he'd been promised as many as 400--though the inability of manufacturers to keep pace with demand makes it unlikely he'll get those vehicles in the near future. Still, he said he'd "take whatever I can get." David Axe asked Simcock if he'd had trouble maintaining the vehicles--MRAP logistics are problematic owing to the numerous makes and models entering service--but Simcock said his mechanics had been trained on MRAPs before heading to Iraq and they were working out the glitches with time.

Others on the call: Blackfive, Danger Room and QandO.

From adnkronosinternational (AKI) we learn that the Iraqi Baathists, led by Saddam's former righthand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, have decided to “disown al-Qaeda.” It is in an interesting development in the insurgency since Saddam's Baathists have fought alongside al Qaeda since the beginning of this war. I don't know if this latest development is a result of the "surge" or not. It may be that al-Douri has realized that being on al Qaeda's team is a losing proposition given the success American-led forces have had in routing al Qaeda in places like Anbar. We'll wait to see if the new schism is temporary or more permanent. But in the meantime I'll just note that the Iraqi Baathists had to be working with al Qaeda in the first place in order to now “disown” them. (See Mark Eichenlaub’s Regime of Terror web site for a handy list of Baathists who have been working with al Qaeda.) Here is AKI's report:

The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

"Al Douri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces," al-Jashaami said.

Al-Douri has decided to deal directly with US forces in Iraq, according to al-Jashaami. He figures in the 55-card deck of "most wanted" officials from the former Iraqi regime issued by the US government.

In return, for cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda, al-Douri has asked for guarantees over his men's safety and for an end to Iraqi army attacks on his militias.

Recent weeks have seen a first step in this direction, when Baathist fighters cooperated with Iraqi government forces in hunting down al-Qaeda operatives in the volatile Diyala province and in several districts of the capital, Baghadad.

Although the Baath party was officially banned after US-led forces in 2003 toppled the regime of Iraq's late president Saddam Hussein, its members have fought in the insurgency.

Until just a few months ago, former Baath party members were helping Islamists carry out terrorist attacks against US forces in Iraq.

HT Counterterrorism Blog.

Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army militia, has been on the defensive over two recent reports in the media. Just one day after Britain's Independent published excerpts of an interview with Sadr, Sheikh Ahmed al-Shibani, Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, claimed the interview never happened.

"The interview published by the paper was fabricated and groundless. His Eminence (Sadr) has never granted this paper any interviews," Shibani told Voices of Iraq, an independent news outlet, in a telephone interview. "We will sue any newspaper, TV station or web site that publishes fabricated news about His Eminence Muqtada al-Sadr or his office," Shibani said.

In the interview, Sadr admitted his close ties with Hezbollah, which include military training and the sharing of tactics. Several members of the Mahdi Army also admitted to training with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On the same day, Sadr's aides issued a statement denying the assassination of two southern governors. On August 20, a roadside bomb killed Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, the governor of Muthanna province, along with a bodyguard as they drove to the provincial capital of Samawa. Two bodyguards were wounded. On August 12, Khalil Jalil Hamza, the governor of Qadisiyah province, and his newly appointed provincial police chief Khalid Hassan were killed in a bombing along with three security guards as they returned from a funeral in a nearby town. Governor Hamza was a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, while Police Chief Hassan "was considered a political independent."

Iraqi police said Sadr's Mahdi Army was behind the murder of the governor of Muthanna province, while suspicion has remained of the Mahdi Army's involvement in the murder of the governor of Qadisiyah province.

Sadr's Mahdi Army has fought pitched battles against Iraqi security forces and Multinational Forces Iraq elements in both provinces. Iraqi and Coalition forces have targeted Mahdi Army cells in Samawa and Diwaniyah, and elsewhere throughout the Shia South.

The murder of the two governors and the clashes between the government and Mahdi Army fighters highlights the splits within the Shia community, which, like the Sunni community, is often portrayed as a single political entity. While Sadr portrays himself and his movement as nationalists, his involvement with Iran's Qods Force and Hezbollah, and the Mahdi Army's attacks on government forces and Iraqi civilians, have tarnished this image.

The Mahdi Army has split into factions described as the "noble Mahdi Army," which has cooperated with government and Multinational Forces Iraq Security Forces, and the "rogue Mahdi Army," which receives support from Iran.

At first, Democrats argued that Iraq was no safer because of the surge, then, when evidence of progress mounted, they shifted to arguing that even though the security situation has improved, it has not led to political reconciliation. Senator Carl Levin seems to have shifted his stance faster than most:

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and senior member Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) offered a mixed assessment of President Bush’s troop surge Monday after returning from a fact-finding mission to Iraq.

Although the lawmakers said in a joint statement that the surge has “produced some credible and positive results,” Levin said later that it has “failed in its critical mission” of trying to provide stability for Iraqi leaders to reach a political compromise.

In their statement, the lawmakers said the surge has provided a measure of stability to the streets of Baghdad and has given Iraqi leaders some “breathing space” to try to reach a political reconciliation.

Levin, however, offered a far less upbeat assessment during a conference call with reporters, saying the surge has failed in its primary objective.

“The purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to ... give the opportunity to the Iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements,” Levin said. “They have failed to do that. They have totally and utterly failed.”

Levin also said he hopes the Iraqi assembly will vote Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki out of office when it reconvenes and replace him with “a less sectarian and a more unifying prime minister and government.”

You can listen to a portion of the Levin call at the lefty clearinghouse ThinkProgress.

It's disappointing to see Senator Levin note the success of the surge in a press release, only to pronounce it a failure in a conference call mere hours later. But listening to the excerpt shows that the Politico may have missed the nuance of Levin's position.

Levin first says that Maliki has clearly failed and ought to be replaced. Only a few moments later however, Levin says Iraq needs to make progress toward reconciliation "in the next few days." The Senator is referring to the ongoing discussions between Maliki and leaders of other groups in the Iraqi government on establishing a stable Coalition that can tackle issues like oil revenue sharing, de-baathification, and other benchmarks. It's a pretty tight time line, but at least one senator has hinted at movement on the political front, saying "there are prospects of political progress in the next couple of weeks." But it sounds like Levin is only giving the troops til Friday.

Nuclear power is poised for a comeback, as consumers and electric utilities look for ways to meet the rising demand for energy in the U.S. According to the Department of Energy, Americans will use 41 percent more electricity in 2030 than they did in 2005, and hydrocarbons like coal and gas are not as attractive as they were a few years ago. Prices have increased, and Americans have become more concerned about global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. With even many environmentalists now favoring nuclear power as part of our energy strategy, it's clear the industry is headed for a revival.

National Journal gives a good all-around look at where things stand today. They report that federal regulators expect 3-5 applications for new nuclear facilities this year, and 8-10 next year. Assuming that this first swath of new generators moves ahead without major trouble, the number could increase after that. Major obstacles remain however, including financing, disposal of fuel, and environmental opposition.

With regard to financing, NJ says that lenders remain wary:

Before the utilities can put a shovel into the ground, they must persuade Wall Street to lend the millions of dollars they need to secure licenses and the billions they need to build. Industry officials say that the engineering, technical, and legal work required to pull together a license application can cost $100 million. The Energy Department, under a program aimed at encouraging companies to order new reactors, will share some of those initial expenses. After a company receives a license to build, the actual construction will probably cost $4 billion to $5 billion.

Most financial experts on Wall Street remain wary of making huge new investments in nuclear power. Bankers remember all too well the bad experiences of the 1970s and 1980s, when tangles of red tape, challenges from the public, and construction mistakes stretched out timetables for completing new plants and forced investors to write off billions. Some facilities were shut down without ever generating a single kilowatt of electricity.

Fortunately, the 'do-nothing Congress' that Democrats ran against in 2006 seems to have taken a major step toward solving the funding problem: The Energy Policy Act of 2005. That legislation offers both loan guarantees for new facilities--which increases the confidence of lenders in nuclear applications--and tax credits for energy generated by nuclear plants. While the licensing process was streamlined by Congress in 1992, no applications were made until after the Act was signed into law. Constellation Energy, for example, has submitted half of its application for a new nuclear generating plant at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland. Constellation's Senior VP says 'we had been interested in pursuing new nuclear... but it was really on the back burner until the Energy Policy Act was passed. The law provided the incentives needed for companies to look toward new nuclear as a source of emissions-free power.'

Nuclear waste disposal remains a more serious concern. Congress in 1982 ordered the Department of Energy to take possession of all the nation's spent nuclear fuel by 1998, with the goal of storing it at a single site, where proper disposal could be ensured. Over the vociferous opposition of the Nevada congressional delegation, Congress in 2002 passed legislation to create that storage facility at Yucca Mountain. The process continues to move forward in fits and starts; the facility might be licensed in the next 3-4 years. This poses a problem for some utilities, who now store spent fuel at the facility where it's generated. Further, Illinois, California, and some other states have adopted moratoriums on the construction of new plants until the question of permanent waste storage is settled. Some utilities regard this as a serious challenge, other aren't letting it stop expansion plans.

But a more serious challenge remains environmental opposition. Attitudes have clearly changed since the 1970s. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which lobbies for the industry in Washington, maintains a growing list of environmental advocates who back increased use of nuclear power, including Patrick Moore -- the co-founder of Greenpeace:

“[N]uclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change. … Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce [CO2 ] emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely."

Many environmentalists share that view. But while Moore and others back nuclear power, the organization he helped found seems unconvinced. From National Journal:

The very embodiment of a newly resurgent Russia is seen here on a fishing trip to Siberia's Yenisei River. He didn't catch any fish, but the mere sight of President Putin with his top off has provoked some deep psychoanalysis from the Times:

As Putin’s careful release of the pictures of his own taut form demonstrate, the deployment of male nudity is, above all, a power play. On one level Vlad is showing us all that he’s a remarkably fit man for his age (54) and that, unlike in the decadent West, Russia’s leaders remain the physical embodiment of their nation’s vigour – classical champions in the manner of those Roman emperors who would renew their mandate to rule on the battlefield or even in the gladiatorial ring. His bare-chested peacockery is, in that respect, in line with the broader cult of Putin as his nation’s silverback – the leader of the band.

And while it’s becoming rarer, the assertion of prime physical vigour through summertime displays of shirtless masculinity has been a trick in several leaders’ repertoires. From Mussolini, to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, baring your torso for a publicity shot was just another way of demonstrating a break from the failed and flabby Old Gang and the arrival of New Hope.

Ah yes, flabby New Hope:

From RealClearPolitics: AFP Takes Lessons From TNR, by Jack Kelly.

From Slate: TNR Says 'Cease & Desist', by Mickey Kaus.

From the Los Angeles Times: Popping the left's Internet bubble, by Jonah Goldberg.

From Defense News: USAF Struggles With Budget Shortfall, by Vago Muradian.

From the New York Post: Desert Sunrise, by Ralph Peters.

Mean Dean makes landfall early this morning on the Yucatan Peninsula.

The hidden world of arms trafficking was in the spotlight last weekend with an Associated Press report uncovering a $40 million weapons deal that would have sent more than 100,000 automatic weapons of Russian design to Iraq. But, before the contract could be completed and shipments put into motion, the Italian and Middle Eastern middlemen in the deal were swept up by Operation Parabellum, an on-going investigation that was begun two years ago by Dario Razzi, an anti-Mafia prosecutor.

This operation targeted against organized crime first began in 2005 when investigators inquired into drug trafficking by Mafia kingpins. The scope of their activity soon widened as the team under Razzi began tracking mafia-linked arms deals first with Libya, and then with Iraq.

Bulgarian-produced weapons of Russian design, like this one
manufactured at the Arsenal plant, made up most of the deal.

The AP obtained Italian court documents showing that the proverbial smoking gun (no pun intended) was unearthed early last year when police in Rome, in the course of a drug trafficking investigation, covertly opened the luggage of a suspect they'd been monitoring after he had checked in for a flight to Libya. They were expecting to find a load of narcotics. Instead, the suitcase contained helmets, body armor, and a weapons catalog.

The purchase of Russian-designed weaponry for Iraqi security forces is not unusual. Russian and other Soviet bloc/Warsaw Pact arms was what the Iraqi forces already had in stock, and it is the type of equipment that the troops now fighting alongside U.S. forces are most familiar with.

Concern about past problems with having the U.S. military make the buys may be one of the reasons that there were Iraqi government officials controlling the purchase. Those same officials also did not inform the U.S. government that the procurement had been initiated, nor did they provide any details of which entities they were dealing with as intermediaries in the deal. Both of these actions are not the norm for these transactions, which have usually been closely controlled by the U.S. military.

In the past, problems with the procurement and subsequent inventory control of Russian-design equipment has cast doubt on the ability of the U.S. military to properly manage these acquisitions. Iraqi security forces have had to wait months longer than promised to receive rather basic equipment, such as armored vehicles. Some of the equipment that they had received was so substandard when compared with U.S. kit that Iraqi officers had quietly taken to telling Coalition and foreign liaison intelligence officers that the rank-and-file Iraqi troops felt at best like “second class citizens.”

Whether or not the arms were actually intended for the Iraqi Security Forces is still unclear, but it is almost certain that officials in Baghdad involved in the deal will use the spotty past performance by the U.S. military on such contracts as justification for their decision to go and freelance this latest purchase on their own.

The mystery deepens with the revelation that intercepted emails and other communications that had been monitored by the Italians state that the Iraqi officials involved claimed the contract for these weapons had official American approval, an assertion that was denied by a U.S. spokesman in Baghdad.

“Iraqi officials did not make MNSTC-I aware that they were making purchases,” said Lt. Col. Daniel Williams. MNSTC-I is the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq - the organization that oversees the arming and training of the Iraqi Army and National Police.

Iraqi Security Forces and Multinational Forces Iraq are pressing hard with Operation Phantom Strike, targeting al Qaeda in Iraq, the Shia terror cells of the Special Groups, and "rogue" elements of the Mahdi Army throughout Iraq. Over the past 24 hours, U.S. and Iraq security forces conducted multiple major raids, with scores of al Qaeda, Mahdi Army, and Special Groups operatives killed or captured.

U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted two major raids against the Iranian-backed Shia terror groups on August 19. Special Operations Forces captured a leader of the Iranian-backed Special Groups who also smuggles weapons, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, from Iran into Iraq. While conducting the raids near Qasirin, which is north of Baghdad, Coalition forces killed eight members of a Special Groups security team and captured two others.

Iraqi Special Forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces advisers, killed 17 members of the Mahdi Army during two separate operations in Baghdad. Six members of the Mahdi Army were also captured during the operations against the Mahdi army cells, which were involved in IED attacks and extra judicial killings.

As the Iranian-backed Shia cells are targeted, U.S. and Iraqi forces are heavily targeting al Qaeda's network. On August 17, Iraqi Army soldiers, backed by U.S. Special Forces advisers, captured 31 suspected al Qaeda in Iraq operatives while conducting a meeting in Sayafiyah. The al Qaeda cell is believed to be behind IED attacks, weapons smuggling and extra judicial killings in the region. U.S. forces launched Operation Marne Husky on August 17 in the Sayafiyah region.

Three al Qaeda operatives were killed and 28 captured during raids against al Qaeda's network in Baghdad, Hawijah, Kirkuk, Mosul, and Bayji on August 18 and 19. Also, in Baghdad on August 19, the local neighborhood watch in the Mechaniks area of the Rashid District captured 11 suspected al Qaeda operatives and turned them over to U.S. forces operating in the area.

Michael Korda has a piece in today's Los Angeles Times that accuses President Bush of "a total lack of interest in the past." The problem, as Korda sees it, is that there is an obvious parallel between the "unwinnable" Korean War and the current "unwinnable" war in Iraq. If only President Bush would look to Eisenhower's example for guidance, he would acknowledge as much:

But it is, above all, Dwight D. Eisenhower to whom Republicans should be looking for sound political wisdom these days.

Part of Ike's great popularity stemmed from his 1952 campaign promise, if elected, to go to Korea and see for himself what was happening. This infuriated Harry S. Truman, who said that if Ike had a plan to end the war it was his duty to give it to the president. Ike ignored him, went, saw and, with the keen eye of a five-star general, surveyed the forbidding terrain. This war wasn't winnable, he determined, at least not without using atomic weapons, not as long as the Chinese were willing to keep on fighting.

He came home and ended the Korean War in about six months with an armistice that is still in effect today. In short, he understood that if you can't win a war, the faster you get out of it the better. He answered criticism from the right wing of his own party by remarking simply, "The war is over, and I hope my son is going to come home soon."

There's another Republican president who was once scorned for his lack of knowledge or curiosity about the past: Ronald Reagan. Of course, Reagan is now viewed as a paragon of wisdom and restraint. But all statesmen seem like pygmies when they're mere politicians; time has a wonderful emollient effect.

But even on the merits, Truman was right that Ike's "I shall go to Korea" declaration was purely a campaign political device to suggest that he, the wise old general, need only take a closer look at the situation to wrap up the problem. When he did go, it’s doubtful he learned anything he didn’t already know--especially since the commanding general, Ridgway, was a disciple of his (and later his choice for CJCS).

Eisenhower’s view was not that the war was not “winnable”--no one seriously proposed re-conquering North Korea since that had been tried by MacArthur and brought in the Chinese--but that he, not Truman, had the political standing to accept the modus vivendi our troops had reached at the 38th parallel. There is no comparison at all between North Korea--which in 1953 was no threat to anybody outside of South Korea--and the war against al Qaeda, which is global in scope and threatens much more than Iraq and U.S. interests in the Middle East. Comparing Eisenhower’s view of Korea 55 years ago with today would have been the equivalent of Eisenhower looking to McKinley’s conduct of the Spanish American war (54 years earlier) for guidance. False historic parallels used exclusively for political effect are a cheap way to seem profound--and nobody ever confused Michael Korda with profundity.

HT Mr. T

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is holding its 108th annual convention in Kansas City this week. Senators Clinton, McCain, Obama, and Thompson will be addressing the group today and tomorrow. With both Democratic contenders opposing the new Baghdad security plan, and its accompanying surge of forces, while instead supporting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, it's not surprising that "McCain received a warmer reception, and louder applause during his remarks," according to the AP. On the other hand, the Iraq portion of Hillary's speech was met with "silence."

This might be because the organization backs the troop surge, which they argue is producing results, as evidenced by the statement from the VFW commander-in-chief upon his recent return from a visit to Iraq:

“Everybody I spoke to over there felt the surge was working, that we have the right strategy,” said Gary Kurpius, the VFW’s commander in chief, who recently returned from Iraq. “Everyone from the top man down ... said if there’s one message to bring back, it is to let Congress and the American public know we want to be successful over here. We are making progress. Give us enough time to finish the job.”

But Clinton also acknowledged that the surge had produced some results: ''It's working. We're just years too late in changing our tactics...We can't ever let that happen again. We can't be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war.'' And then she told the crowd that "the best way of honoring their [those currently serving in Iraq] service is by beginning to bring them home and making sure that when they come home, that we have everything ready for them."

Maybe it was the dissonance between her statement that the surge was working and her subsequent call for withdrawal that left the crowd silent...and confused. But either way, it's good to see that Hillary is aware of the recent military progress in Iraq, even if she's pandering to her party's base in the same breadth.

From the Wall Street Journal: Al Qaeda's Travel Agent, by Joseph Lieberman.

From the City Journal: Why Study War? by Victor Davis Hanson.

From the Chicago Tribune: Gitmo plan has Kansans uneasy, by Kirsten Scharnberg.

From Ares: Su-35 to Debut in Moscow, by Bill Sweetman.

From Ace of Spades: Slight Majority of Experts Oppose Surge, by Ace.

From Op-For: A B-52 Stratofortress leads a formation of Air Force and Navy F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-15 Eagles, and F-18 Hornets over the USS Kitty Hawk, USS Nimitz and USS John C. Stennis Strike Groups during Exercise Valiant Shield exercise Aug.14 in the Pacific. The forces participated in Valiant Shield, the largest joint exercise in the Pacific this year. Held in the Guam operating area, the exercise includes 30 ships, more than 280 aircraft and more than 20,000 servicemembers from the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
Photo Courtesy of the US Air Force.

John: "That's cool and all.....but who invited the Coast Guard?"

Senator McCain spoke with bloggers this morning regarding his speech today to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the current state of his campaign, the war in Iraq, and a host of other issues. Here are some of the highlights.

He said that when the Iraq debate returns to the Senate floor in the middle of September, he "believe[s] that the Democrats are going to push again for a date for withdrawal," despite the fact that, in his view, "this strategy can and will succeed," and that "we are seeing a slight shift in public opinion as a result of the successes on the ground." Of course, it's the apparent lack of any accompanying political progress that has most serious observers worried, but McCain referred numerous times, albeit rather obliquely, to the possibility of a political break through in the next few weeks. What shape such a break through might take was left unclear, but McCain said "I believe there are prospects of political progress in the next couple of weeks, and I hope I'll be right." Adding later that "every pressure is being brought to bear" to get some forward movement.

And what if there is no progress on the political front? McCain acknowledged that "the Maliki government is weak," but he added that there are no apparent alternatives--"No one springs to mind who seems like a Kemal Attaturk."

McCain also said that regardless of the politics being played with the war in Iraq, "president's don't lose wars, political parties don't lose wars, nations lose wars, and when they do they suffer."

And he mocked Harry Reid, who "declared the war lost on the floor of the Senate." McCain's response, "Who won? Al Qaeda?"

When the questions turned to other hostile regimes--i.e. Syria and Iran--McCain returned to his proposal for a League of Democracies. "We need to get together with other like-minded countries. Every time we try and get together and doing something at the United Nations, it's blocked by China and Russia....there's a chance that we could impose meaningful economic diplomatic and trade sanctions" if we work with new, friendly European governments. He singled out Sarkozy and Merkel in particular.

With regards to Syria (the WWS asked whether he agreed with Senator Lieberman's Op-Ed in today's Wall Street Journal), McCain said that

There's a United Nations Security Council resolution that calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah....one of my great and enduring heroes is George Schultz, who said 'Never point a gun at anybody unless you intend to shoot it.' We've got to stop pointing our guns but be prepared to shoot. I'm not sure I would bomb the [Damascus] airport but I would certainly make it clear to the Syrians...I would probably go back to the Security Council...but we have to make clear that there are consequences...I don't have a real good answer in the short term, except starting to enforce the existing sanctions, the existing investigations...including concluding the investigation into the assasination of the Prime Minister of Lebanon.

With regards to Iranian activity inside Iraq, McCain said that he'd "be going after anybody who is in that country illegally from any other country." Though he quickly added that "We have found out on our own southern border," just how difficult such action is.

And on the domestic political front, McCain said that the first priority for those supporting the new strategy isn't to change the minds of Democrats, but "to shore up shaky Republicans...we cannot afford to have 60 votes in the Senate" in favor of withdrawal, and without Republican help, the Democrats won't reach that number.

McCain said that Petraeus would likely deliver his report on September 11. Asked if this was an appropriate date, McCain explained that the report would be publicly released on the 15th and that Petraeus ought to be able to deliver his report to the Congress prior to that date. Given that Congress is closed on the 13th and 14th for the Jewish new year, and that Petraeus would have to appear in the House on the 12th, McCain said the 11th was the only date available.

And in closing he mentioned the Sunday Op-Ed in the New York Times in which seven U.S. soldiers collaborated to make the case that the Iraqis should be left to their own devices and fight it out amongst themselves...that peace would only come when "reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere." (Read more on this at Hot Air). McCain said that he hears "from soldiers sailors, Marines and airmen every day and that is not the opinion I hear...I hear three words, 'Let us win.'"

More at the AmSpec Blog, NRO, and Outside the Beltway.

In the brilliant BBC comedy series 'Yes Minister,' we learn that the best way to dissuade a politician from a certain course of action is to describe it as 'courageous.' Think of that when you read the comments of Representative Brian Baird (D-WA) upon his return from Iraq:

"I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against them, and I still think they were the right votes," Baird said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

"But we're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work..."

"People may be upset. I wish I didn't have to say this," Baird said. He added that the United States needs to continue with its military troops surge "at least into early next year, then engage in a gradual redeployment. … I know it's going to cost hundreds of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars..."

Activists rallied Thursday at the state Capitol, saying they want Baird, who represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Olympia, to vote for withdrawing U.S. troops. But Baird said he believes that to the extent Iraqis think the United States would withdraw before bringing security to a functioning Iraqi government, "that might contribute to the infighting and instability of the government."

With the arrival in a few weeks of the September report on military and political progress in Iraq, there's a great deal of pressure on Congressional Democrats to toe the party line--that the surge is not making a difference, and that because there is a lack of political progress in Iraq the U.S. ought to withdraw. Baird deserves credit for tackling that argument head on. He represents exactly what Jim Clyburn had in mind when he said that success in Iraq causes problems for House Democrats. If Baird speaks for even a few dozen Democrats, it will make it much harder for the Congressional leadership to force a precipitous withdrawal.

The online game "Incorruptible Fighter" was an instant sensation in Chinese cyberspace upon its debut on July 25th. Developed by civil servants in the city of Ningbo, in the prosperous eastern province of Zhejiang, it offered gamers a virtual world where they could hunt down, torture and execute corrupt officials, their children, and their bikini-clad mistresses. It was downloaded more than 100,000 times in its first week. The server capacity provided for the game (500 players at one time) was woefully inadequate, and on August 3rd the website announced it was taking the game offline for an upgrade.

Created with the aim of making a "lighthearted counterpoint to constant accusations of endemic corruption" in officialdom, the game’s roaring popularity seems to have touched a raw nerve. A July 31 article on the website of China Radio International (CRI) called the game "shallow, vulgar, and childish." On August 15th, the cutting-edge Southern Metropolis Daily reported that the website hosting "Incorruptible Fighter" had, in fact, been shut down "on orders from related departments."

As "Incorruptible Fighter" was giving rise to lively online debate over the propriety of this latest shot at rampant corruption, the communist party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on August 7th that 10 prosecutors from impoverished Anhui province had been punished for forging an invitation from Finland’s ministry of justice to visit that country.

The now infamous junket to Finland took place last November. Finnish immigration officials quickly determined that the document was a fake and the delegation, led by Xu Wenai, vice procurator-general of Anhui, was deported shortly after arriving at the Helsinki airport. The excursion, paid for by the Chinese government, would have taken the group to eight cities in five countries.

Xu Wenai is reported to have been removed from his post, and the organizer of the tour, Ye Bin, has been stripped of party membership and faces criminal prosecution.

While traveling abroad on phony invitations has become increasingly common in recent years, judging from the tone of Chinese media reports, this particular incident has proved to be especially offensive to the face-conscious Chinese.

Chinese nationals living in Helsinki are reported to be mortified by the prominent coverage given to the scandal by Helsingin Sanomat, the largest daily in Finland. The "face losing" factor was compounded by the fact that Xu and his traveling companions were themselves prosecutors and were caught in--of all places--Finland, ranked by Transparency International as the world’s least corrupt country.

But in China, corruption is so entrenched that in 2004 the central committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) cautioned in a policy paper that the anti-corruption drive was a "life and death struggle" for the party. In January the following year, President Hu Jintao warned that corruption was "the most dangerous factor to weaken the CPC’s ruling basis."

Perhaps even more dangerous than "Incorruptible Fighter."

2nd Lt. Jacob Becker observes the streets of
Al Furat, Iraq, Aug. 9 for insurgent activity.

Al Qaeda in Iraq continues to face opposition from Sunni insurgent groups. In the Buhriz district in Diyala province, the 1920s Revolution Brigades assisted Iraqi police in fending off an attack of upwards of 60 al Qaeda fighters. Multinational Forces Iraq identified the Sunni insurgents as the "Baqubah Guardians," however IraqSlogger reported that the al-Ishreen Revolution Brigades (1920s Revolution Brigades) had engaged in the fight. Multinational Forces Iraq described the fighting, and notes the coordination between the insurgent group, the local police and U.S. attack helicopters:

In an unprecedented combined action in Diyala Province, Iraqi police and citizen volunteers defeated a coordinated attack of approximately 40-60 al-Qaeda terrorists in the southern Burhitz area of Baqubah, Wednesday, and killed an estimated 21 insurgents, wounding more.

As the terrorists entered the city of Burhitz, a group of concerned local citizens, called ‘Baqubah Guardians,’ and IPs stationed in Burhitz engaged the first wave of attackers, killing seven. At least two suicide bombers were killed before they reached their intended targets, with the bomb vests detonating prematurely.

The IP notified the Provincial Joint Coordination Center and requested Coalition Force attack helicopter support after the first engagement. Attack helicopters arrived and engaged another large group of heavily armed fighters staging near the first attack site, killing or wounding an estimated 14 terrorists.

The 1920s Revolution Brigades previously drove al Qaeda in Iraq out of Buhriz, with the help of U.S. forces. The battles between the 1920s Revolution Brigades and al Qaeda began in April. The Anbar Salvation Council, through its ties to the 1920s Revolution Brigades, helped organize the anti-al Qaeda resistance in Buhriz. As these groups work with the U.S. and Iraqi security forces, they are being integrated as local police or as provincial security forces.

The degree to which Sunni insurgent groups have turned against al Qaeda and are now working with U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces is an underreported story. Approximately 25,000 Sunni insurgents from groups such as the 1920s Revolution Brigades, the Jaysh Mohammed, and the Islamic Army of Iraq have turned against al Qaeda at the behest of their tribal leaders. "Tribe members and others who agree to support Iraq's government have to sign a pledge form and consent to biometric scans of their fingerprints and retinas so their data can be kept on file," USA Today reported on August 6. "They are also vetted by the Iraqi government."

The strategy of turning the tribes and insurgent groups against al Qaeda has been successful in Anbar and is now being applied inside Baghdad, Diyala, Salahadin, Ninewa and Babil provinces. This is reconciliation at the micro level. Al Qaeda is threatened by this development and is actively targeting members of the groups that have turned on them.

Al Qaeda in Iraq's heinous multiple suicide bombing of a Yazidi villages near Singar in Ninewa province on Tuesday is the single greatest mass casualty strike since the war began. The initial reports of 175 killed have climbed to at least 400 killed, with the Kuwaiti News Agency reporting over 500 killed and 375 wounded.

Col. Stephen Twitty, commander, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division warns that it is too soon to know the death toll. “So far the accounting of casualties has been very speculative,” said Col Twitty. “The villagers and rescue workers are still trying to find those missing; and their efforts, and those of the local, provincial and central government leadership, along with the ISF here, have been tremendous." Multinational Forces Iraq estimates are 275 killed and 400 wounded.

Blog readers are today treated to a stunning display of hypocrisy among opponents of the Iraq war.

Blogs on the left have spent the last few months tearing David Petraeus down, and expressing concern that come September, President Bush and his senior advisers would leave the limelight to the General. The worry was that given his excellent reputation, his communication skills, and the respect he has earned among Blue Dog Democrats, Petraeus would come off as some latter-day Oliver North, and frustrate Congressional Democrats trying to demonstrate the failure in Iraq. With the skilled, telegenic, and sympathetic General Petraeus as the face of the war, Democrats would be unable to mobilize the American people and scare enough Republicans to force an end to the war.

Andrew Sullivan said that Petraeus is a partisan aligned with Cheney, who will deliver only spin. Glenn Greenwald said that his report ought not be trusted, since "he has a history of making almost uniformly optimistic claims about Iraq." The Huffington Post has characterized him as an incompetent partisan. Numerous columnists criticized Bush for building up Petraeus excessively. Frank Rich accused the White House of 'hiding behind' the General. And a Post columnist wrote about speculation that the White House was setting Petraeus up as a fall man.

Among elected officials, Speaker Pelosi has said that Petraeus is likely to produce a "rosy scenario" report, about which we should be skeptical. Harry Reid said said flatly that he would not believe Petraeus if he said that the situation in Iraq is improving.

With a report today that the White House has suggested that Secretaries Gates and Rice brief Congress on progress in Iraq, with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker delivering only private briefings, the left has instantaneously completed a 180 degree turnabout.

Washington Monthly now anticipates a negative report, and suggests that the White House is trying to hide the two from the public. Crooks and Liars also fear that they are being shielded from public scrutiny. Another wonders whether they've been 'muzzled.' And this is all fresh on the heels of complaints that Petraeus and Crocker would have their findings reviewed and potentially edited by the White House, even though that is precisely what Congress ordered.

This is a perfect pivot in a matter of hours. Just yesterday the left was warning that Bush would hide behind Petraeus, rather than take responsibility for the war in Iraq. Today the same critics are apoplectic that Petraeus and Crocker won't be on CNN 24/7 to discuss their findings. If the White House bows to the criticism and sends Petraeus and Crocker to the Hill instead of Gates and Rice, how long will it take them to spin back?

It must be WEEKLY STANDARD week on the Daily Show. On Monday, Jon Stewart interviewed Kristol (see the video here) and last night he interviewed Steven Hayes, discussing his latest book and his op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal...

The August recess is a time when many members of Congress go on fact-finding missions to luxurious locales. This year some Members are choosing to spend their time in Iraq, to see for themselves how things are going there, and to prepare for the report from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

According to the Hill, some Members are preparing by promising not to take too seriously whatever the leaders on the ground have to say:

Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats say they fear that Bush’s handpicked commander in Iraq will paint an unreasonably rosy picture of the progress on the ground.

“I’m very concerned that they will kick the can further down the road or talk about a few anecdotal successes that they’ll try to pass off as the situation in Iraq,” Pelosi told a group of journalists recently.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Petraeus may be confident enough in the improved security in some areas to recommend a drawdown of U.S. troops in those areas:

Intent on demonstrating progress in Iraq, the top U.S. general there is expected by Bush administration officials to recommend removing American troops soon from several areas where commanders believe security has improved, possibly including Al Anbar province.

According to the officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus is expected to propose the partial pullback in his September status report to Congress, when both the war's critics and supporters plan to reassess its course. Administration officials who support the current troop levels hope Petraeus' recommendations will persuade Congress to reject pressure for a major U.S. withdrawal.

A dramatic step like this might be necessary to ensure a fresh look at the surge. But given the polarization in Washington, even that not be enough.

With these stories in mind, I spoke today to Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), who is recently returned from Iraq. I asked for his impressions on what he saw, and his thoughts on how Congress should judge General Petraeus' report.

He told me that a major problem in Washington has been the inability of Republicans and Democrats to come together on criteria for measuring progress in Iraq. He cited it as one reason that Washington is "almost irreconcilably divided" on the war, and one reason that "there's probably nothing David Petraeus can say" to change the minds of Democratic leaders about the war.

He said that from his day in Iraq (on a trip with Representative Schakowsky and four other members), he got an update from the military on some of the progress that has been made: 353,000 Iraqi troops trained, dramatic increases in tips from Sunnis and Shia, and the continued discovery of many weapons caches. He also said (as others have) that speaking to General Petraeus, he recognized him as "a straight shooter," who wants to return home--and have our servicemen and women return home--as much as anyone. But he is focused on making sure that if and when the U.S. withdraws, it doesn't mean losing the ground that has recently been gained.

Kingston also spoke of the importance of distinguishing between Baghdad and the provinces when considering progress on reconciliation. He said that Deputy Prime Minister Salih told the Congressional delegation that he considered it a great step forward just to get a Shia and a Sunni together in the same room; to accomplish the benchmarks that Washington is seeking would be "like asking the U.S. to pass civil rights legislation in 1865." But just as Republicans and Democrats work together in America even though Washington is deadlocked, so Sunnis and Shia are working together outside Baghdad. We need to look at the progress throughout the country he said, not just in Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi security forces are pushing forward on two fronts against al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shia terror groups. In the regions north and east of Baqubah in Diyala province, Operation Lightning Hammer is in its third day. Nationwide, U.S. and Iraqi security forces continue intelligence-driven operations against rogue elements of the Mahdi Army, the Iranian-backed Special Groups cells, and al Qaeda. Meanwhile, al Qaeda in Iraq pulled off one of the biggest attacks in the war after four suicide bombers murdered upwards of 200 civilians in a small village in northwestern Iraq.

Lightning Hammer

Operation Lightning Hammer, the follow-on operation to Arrowhead Ripper, has been underway since August 13. The operation is targeting specific al Qaeda strongholds in the Diyala River Valley north and east of Baghdad. About 10,000 U.S. troops, including "special operational elements from the Army, Marines and Air Force," and 6,000 Iraqi security forces are involved in the operation. Over 200 al Qaeda fighters are estimated to be in the target areas.

The offensive began with an artillery barrage and air strikes, followed by multiple air assaults against "carefully selected targets." Les Neuhaus, who is embedded with U.S. forces in Diyala, reports on Lightning Hammer:

Right now we already have the objectives isolated,” Col. David Sutherland, U.S. commander of security forces in Diyala, told Stars and Stripes late Monday night before helicopters lifted soldiers to the cities of Abu Karmah and al Mukhaysah. “The goal is to expand the clearance of Baqubah to get the provincial and local-level governments up and going.”

Sutherland said efforts since Operation Arrowhead Ripper, carried out in June and July, were meant to force elements of al Qaida in Iraq who weren’t captured or killed during the mission to flee east of the city, trapping them in anticipation of Lightning Hammer.

U.S. forces are also operating in the Hamrin Lake region. U.S. troops "defeated several ineffective small arms attacks, killing three al Qaeda gunmen, detaining eight, and uncovering a weapons cache, numerous IEDs and a booby-trapped house."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Stephen Hayes has a must-read piece in today's Wall Street Journal on the the vice president's preoccupation--"When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it?"

He still awakens each day asking the same questions he asked on Sept. 12, 2001. Then, as he sips his morning coffee, he pores over the latest intelligence on his own before receiving an exhaustive briefing on the latest threat reports. After that, he joins his boss for the president's daily intelligence briefing. All of this happens before 9 a.m. He mentions the war on terror in virtually every speech he gives, and in a letter he wrote to his grandchildren he acknowledged that his "principal focus" as vice president has been national security.

The way that he has gone about his job has won him many critics. His approval ratings are low. A small but growing group of congressional Democrats is mobilizing to impeach him. Respected commentators from respected publications have suggested that his heart problems have left him mentally unstable. Others have called on him to resign. Some conservatives have joined this chorus of criticism, with one prominent columnist labeling the vice president "destructive" and another dismissing those who share his views as "Cheneyite nutjobs." This past Saturday, protesters near his home outside Jackson, Wyo., tore down an effigy of Mr. Cheney in much the way Iraqis famously toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein.

So President Bush should ignore Mr. Cheney's advice and the White House communications team should keep him hidden from public view, right?

Nonsense. With intelligence officials in Washington increasingly alarmed about the prospect of another major attack on the U.S. homeland, and public support for the Bush administration's anti-terror efforts reclaiming lost ground, we need more Dick Cheney.

Go read the whole thing, and there's plenty more in Hayes's latest book, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President.

One of the last things Congress did before adjourning for the August recess was to pass the Protect America Act, which clarifies the authority of the Executive Branch to intercept without a court order the communications of suspected terrorists who are foreign nationals, located abroad. It represents nothing more than the preservation of the original effect of FISA, updated to reflect changing technology. The legislation lasts just 6 months, which means Congress must quickly consider a longer extension.

As Rob Bluey has pointed out, the left is hard at work concocting a fiction about politicization of the issue. They ignore the fact that Democrats knew of the problem for months and chose not to act, they pulled the rug out from under Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell when he was slated to testify about it, and once again drafted a 'Democrats-only' solution with no Republican inputl--which ultimately forced them to pass a Republican alternative rather than a bipartisan response.

In the weeks since passage, the Democratic base has focused much of its anger on the Democrats who supported the measure. The Post's EJ Dionne talked about why the Democratic leadership caved. The Huffington Post asks whether we are a country 'that allows fear and vague threats to browbeat our leaders' into passing laws that 'violate our Constitution.' And Markos "Screw Them" Moulitsas called the Democrats who had voted for the measure "cowards."

Of the 41 House Democrats who voted for the FISA extension, 13 are so-called 'majority makers'--Democratic freshmen who flipped GOP seats to the Democratic column. At DailyKos, there's talk of lining up primary opponents for to challenge those Democrats who sit in safe seats. And Soren Dayton finds others on the left who want to go further. He says they're getting ready to eat their own by choosing to fight on an issue where Democrats are split and independents side with the president:

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Republicans believe that allowing the government to intercept such calls makes the nation safer. Forty-eight percent (48%) of Democrats agree along with 53% of those not affiliated voters.

This looks like a no-win situation for Democrats, but the party's base is unwilling to accept a continuation of the status quo--which they believe puts too much power in the hands of an administration they do not trust. There's a great deal of pressure on Congressional Democrats to create a new requirement for court orders, which will significantly undermine the ability of our intelligence agencies to discover and prevent attacks planned against the U.S.. And because the 'fix' passed by Congress lasts just a few months, Democrats will be forced to take up the issue again in the heightened atmosphere of a presidential race.

In the latest edition of CQ Radio, Ed Morrissey hosts Representative Pete Hoekstra, the Ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and a strong proponent of updating FISA. The interview is extremely illuminating. Go have a listen.

I recently joined several other bloggers in a discussion with a senior administration official familiar with the ongoing effort in Iraq. The conversation reflected the changed dynamic on the ground--one where the improving security situation focuses greater attention on political progress and reconciliation. In that vein, it's becoming clear that General Petraeus and Admiral Crocker believe that the U.S. needs to look at reconciliation at the local and provincial level, rather than just the federal level, in order to get a true sense of what's happening in Iraq.

The official began by acknowledging forthrightly that political progress has lagged behind that made in the realm of security. He pointed to the 'crisis conference' called by Maliki as an important opportunity to bridge issues and take advantage of the breathing space created by a reduction in violence. He said that while August is important for 'laying the foundation' for progress at the national level, we must also look beyond Baghdad for signs of how things are going.

When asked it if was a mistake to focus benchmarks on the national level, the official said that the White House cannot ignore the benchmarks that have been set out, but 'they are not the only indicators out there.' He described them as 'a tall order'--especially for a government just 18 months old, and in which key ministers have only been in office for 12-14 months. He clarified that it was not a mistake, but that 'you have to marry the top with the bottom.'

When asked directly if Petraeus and Crocker will stress progress in the provinces, this official said that they are 'definitely' likely to talk about it. He said something that will not surprise readers of this site- that the greatest success so far is in Al Anbar. He pointed out that just a year ago, the dramatic strides in security, cooperation with the U.S., rooting out of Al Qaeda, and creation of economic opportunity would have been unimaginable.

He concurred with some of the recent comments of American leaders in Iraq, that a sort-of 'Mini-Tet' offensive by insurgents would be no surprise in advance of the September 15 deadline. (It may already have begun.) He said that the insurgency has demonstrated an understanding of the U.S. media, which tends to 'inflate the day's activities and overcome the successes.' He said that it behooves U.S. officials to think things through carefully.

With that in mind, I wonder if we might not see the 'September 15 report' some time in advance of that deadline. It's worth remembering that the 'July 15' report was delivered on July 12. There's no reason that the administration cannot deliver this one early, as well. Such a move allow the administration to seize the initiative here in Washington, rather than allowing the opposition to drive events. Whenever it is delivered, it's becoming clear that it will point to the successes, note the failures, and include recommendations on how to build on progress that has already lbeen made. It will be very interesting to see how Congress responds.

Read also McQ and NZ, particularly for an insight into the official's comments that Iranian influence is a growing problem in Iraq.

Yesterday, Multinational Forces Iraq announced the start of two major operations--Phantom Strike and Lightning Hammer. Operation Phantom Strike “consists of simultaneous operations throughout Iraq focused on pursuing remaining AQI terrorists and Iranian-supported extremist elements,” while Operation Lightning Hammer is directed at al Qaeda in Iraq and allied insurgent groups that escaped Baqubah and are organizing north of the city in the Diyala River Valley. These operations are the continuation of the Baghdad Security Plan and Phantom Thunder, the operations in Baghdad and the Belts that established a security presence in areas from which Iraqi and Coalition forces were absent throughout 2006.

Firing teams "Gunny" and "Storm" from the 2nd Battalion, 82nd Field
Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division fire an
M109A6 Paladin, a self-propelled howitzer, into the Diyala River Valley
in support of Operation Lightning Hammer.

In a response to Lightning Hammer, al Qaeda in Iraq is attempting to disrupt Coalition supply lines. A suicide bomber detonated a fuel tanker on the Thiraa Dijla Bridge in Taji. At least ten civilians were killed and six wounded in the attack, with an unknown number of people missing in the water. The bridge, which was heavily damaged, spans a canal and serves as a vital link from Taji to Diyala province, as well as from Baghdad to Mosul. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been using Taji as a staging point.

While the full scope of Lightning Hammer, which consists of elements of two Iraqi divisions, four U.S. infantry brigades and a U.S. combat air brigade, has yet to be determined, the operations against al Qaeda and the Shia terror cells have picked up the pace over the past week.

Attacking the Iranian-Backed Shia terror cells

The announcement for Operation Phantom Strike made clear that the Iranian-backed elements of the Mahdi Army, as well as the Qods Force-created Special Groups terror cells, are major targets. Since the announcement of Phantom Strike, Iraqi and U.S. troops have hit these Iranian-backed groups especially hard in Baghdad and Najaf, the two strongholds of Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

Coalition forces killed four "rogue Jaysh-al-Mahdi" (Mahdi Army) operatives and captured eight more during a raid inside Sadr City. Multinational Forces Iraq has made its position explicit--killing Mahdi fighters is as good as capturing them. "The purpose of the raid was to capture or kill an extremist militant and his operatives," the press release stated. The cell has attacked both Coalition forces and Iraqi civilians. "These militants are also known to have ties to illicit materials smuggled from Iran that have been used in extra-judicial killings." No Coalition forces were killed or wounded during the attack, despite taking small arms fire and being on the receiving end of two IEDs.

On August 13, Iraqi Special Operations Forces captured 12 Mahdi Army operatives during "synchronized intelligence driven operations" in Baghdad. Iraqi troops captured a brigade commander, battalion commander, two company commanders and one leader of an extra-judicial killing cell, along with seven other Mahdi operatives. "The brigade commander is responsible for five groups under his control," Multinational Forces Iraq stated. "Reports indicate that he transports IEDs from Iran into Iraq and recently ordered an IED attack that caused the death of two U.S. Soldiers. The suspect also reportedly ordered his JAM members to set up illegal checkpoints to hunt down and assassinate Sunni citizens." Also on August 13, Coalition forces captured "a key financier of Special Groups terrorists" during a raid in the Bayaa district in Western Baghdad.

On August 12, the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducted a series of raids in Najaf and Baghdad. The Najaf raid, led by the 8th Iraqi Army Division and U.S. Special Forces, resulted in the capture of a "a high-value rogue Jaysh al-Mahdi special groups facilitator." The facilitator "operates the Amin Allah Cultural and Humanitarian Establishment in An Najaf and allegedly funnels humanitarian funds through the establishment in order to coordinate rogue JAM activities," and used the money "for recruiting foreign fighters, training rogue JAM operatives in lethal attack tactics and trafficking illegal weapons from Iran." He has organized over 200 Mahdi fighters, and is believed to be behind the assassination of several government officials, including the Kufa police chief in 2004. The raid in Baghdad resulted in the capture of a Mahdi Army platoon leader and five cell members.

Attacking Al Qaeda in Iraq

As the Shia terror cells are targeted, Coalition and Iraqi security forces maintain the pressure on al Qaeda's network throughout Iraq. Seventeen al Qaeda operatives were captured during raids in Tikrit and Mosul on August 12 and 13. An al Qaeda in Iraq medical doctor who also provided logistical support to the terrorists was captured in Baghdad on August 12. Iraqi and U.S. soldiers rescued six hostages and captured five al Qaeda operatives during a raid on an "al Qaeda prison" in Mosul on August 13. Sixteen more al Qaeda operatives were captured during raids in Baqubah, Taji, western Baghdad, and Balad on August 14.

The aggressive pace of operations since January has resulted in an explosion in the prison population. There are currently 42,000 detainees in Iraqi and Multinational Forces Iraq custody. Of those detained, 2,760 are foreigner fighters as of August 8. This number includes over 800 Iranians.

David Axe has an interesting post on F-22 over at Ares. We posted the picture at right a few days ago showing the arrival of the F-22 at Elmendorf, Alaska, where some 40 Raptors will ultimately be deployed. The aircraft will be split between two squadrons--the 90th and the 525th Fighter Squadrons--and the Air Force Reserve will also fly the planes as part of the 302nd Fighter Squadron. Axe explains,

The 302nd is an associate unit. In other words, it has no airplanes of its own, just pilots and maintainers. During a crisis, the 302nd’s people would reinforce the regular squadrons, as I explained a few months back while in Japan visiting the deployed 27th Fighter Squadron, the first Raptor unit, and its associate 192nd Wing from the Virginia Air Guard...

It's very interesting the extent to which the Army and Air Force have become integrated, maybe even dependent, on reserve units...

Axe also notes the Air Force's deployment plans for the F-22:

Elmendorf isn’t the only Pacific base slated to receive Raptors. An Air Guard unit at Hickam in Hawaii will get the last 18 operational Raptors around 2011, after Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico gets its allotment of 40. In all, 58 of the Air Force’s 138 front-line Raptors will be based in the Pacific. (Another 50 will reside in training squadrons or the depot maintenance pipeline.) Europe-based units, by contrast, won’t get any Raptors. This represents a clear shift in the Pentagon’s focus...

The Air Force needs more Raptors, and where it needs that technology the most--in the Pacific--there's an easy way to get it. Sell 100 of the air superiority fighters to the Japanese and you give a capable and trusted ally a huge advantage in any potential conflict. Further, such a sale would bring the unit price of the aircraft down enough to give the Air Force half a chance at buying another 100 copies.

There's been a lot of speculation on whether Congress, and the president, will ultimately move to export the plane--a move that would require the repeal of the 1998 Obey amendment banning such a sale. Recently Admiral Timothy Keating spoke against such a move. Defense News reports:

The top U.S. military official in the Pacific region is opposed to the notion of selling the Pentagon’s prized F-22A Raptor to Japan, America’s closest ally in the area.

A new U.S. “capabilities assessment group” -— composed of Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Office of the Secretary of Defense and industry officials -— has launched a comprehensive review of Japan’s fighter requirements. That group will deliver a formal recommendation to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and eventually President George W. Bush on which American-made war plane Washington should pitch to Tokyo.

Adm. Timothy Keating, commander, U.S. Pacific Command, said he has passed his recommendation that the Raptor not be sold to Japan to that study team. His comments came during a July 24 briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

If Japan doesn't get the F-22, the U.S. will likely push the F/A-18 and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is another plane with spiraling costs that might be reduced through Japanese participation. But it's also unlikely that F-35s could be built for Japan until 2013 at the earliest, and even then, planes would need to be diverted off the assembly line and away from other customers, like the United States. It would be a challenge to replace Japan's aging fighter fleet in time. And the F/A-18 would offer the Japanese interoperability with the U.S. service that will be the first on the scene in any potential conflict--the U.S. Navy--but it has none of the stealth characteristics of the F-35 and F-22.

In the long term, selling Japan the F-35 might be the best option for both countries, and, at present, Keating doesn't seem overly concerned about China--he says he's an “optimist by nature" and isn't "kept up at night" by anything. But a quick sale of F-22s to Japan might let Washington's pessimists sleep easier, too.

The boss appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night...worth watching, if only for the last line.

Update: If the video isn't working, click here.

The New York Times expresses its disappointment that the United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would allow the U.S. to contend with Denmark, Russia, and others for the rights to minerals under the North Pole:

The United States does not find itself in a strong position. Misplaced fears among right-wing senators about losing “sovereignty” has kept the Senate from ratifying the Law of the Sea even though the United Nations approved it 25 years ago. This, in turn, means that the United States, with 1,000 miles of coastline in the Arctic, has no seat at the negotiating table.

President Bush and moderate Republicans like Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, will try to remedy this blunder when Congress reconvenes. This would at least enable Washington to stake its claims to the continental shelf extending northward from Alaska. We may never need a share of that oil, but it seems foolish not to keep it in reserve.

It's nice to know that the Times believes that the U.S. should keep some oil in reserve. It's just that the Times does not believe that oil in reserve should actually be used. In its most recent editorial on the subject I could find, the New York Times editorialized against drilling in ANWR in 2005:

In addition to the familiar economic arguments - that the refuge is America's last great untapped source of domestic oil and is crucial to its competitiveness - Norton has emphasized that drilling technology has advanced to the point where billions of barrels of oil can be extracted without harming the refuge's fragile ecology or abundant wildlife.

Environmentalists beg to disagree. Where Norton sees undisturbed tundra, they see pipelines, roads and drilling platforms that would fragment wildlife habitats. But what troubles us most about President George W. Bush's fixation on drilling is what it says about the shallowness of his energy policy.

Why pass a treaty to enable a dubious claim for a reserve of unknown value, if you are dead-set against tapping the existing, known reserve you already hold? Perhaps conservatives ought to make a deal with the Times: as soon as you editorialize in favor of expanded drilling in ANWR, we'll take another look at the Law of the Sea.

Bob Owens, the Confederate Yankee, has debunked another claim made by Private Beauchamp in his columns for the New Republic. This is from Beauchamp's second dispatch, titled "Dead of Night":

As we slowly started moving back toward the Humvee, we could hear the dogs filling in the space behind us. I turned around and saw their green eyes flashing in the deep shadow where we'd left the body. Part of me thought we should have shot the dogs or done something to keep them from eating the body, but what good would it have done? We only would have been exposing ourselves to danger longer than we needed to.

Back in the Humvee, Hernandez started talking to me without looking in my direction. "Man, I've never seen anything like that before," he said.

"What? A guy killed by a cop?" I asked.

"No, man, zombie dogs. That shit was wild," he said, laughing.

Something inside of me fought for expression and then died. He was right. What else was there to do now but laugh?

"I took his driver's license," I said.

"You did?" questioned Hernandez.

"Yeah. It said he was an organ donor."

We chuckled in the dark for a moment, and then looked out the window into the night. We didn't talk again until we were back at our base.

Owens sent a couple of quick emails and was able to discover that the Iraqi DMV does not, in fact, provide driver's with the option of donating their organs. Owens quotes from an exchange with Hassan Elsaadaoui, a CPATT liaison with the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad:

I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license. Also our medical system and doctors are not ready for this type procedure, because of the situation. They do not have the equipment and many of the very good doctors are now outside the country.

Owens has other experts saying the same thing...organ donation is not common in Iraq, and there is certainly no indication of organ donation status on the Iraqi driver's license. Go read the whole thing. Was Beauchamp's buddy just joking? Was the whole story a joke?

Update: Owens now wonders if the whole thing isn't a joke...I read it that way, too. But I think his update pretty much captures my sense of the thing:

Is Beauchamp merely making a joke above? I admittedly didn't read it that way, but it very well could be the case.

The first experience most of us had with Beauchamp was with his last article first, and his allegation that he verbally assaulted a burn victim. It doesn't seem much of a stretch from abuser of the burned to robber of the dead, so I took his comments at face value as a real claim.

I suppose that it is just an indication of just how little credibility TNR and Beauchamp have that it isn't easy to tell his joking fake claims from his sincere fake claims.

Glenn Greenwald, president of the WWS fan club, spends an extraordinary amount of ink today trying to debunk the credentials of Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack as critics of the war in Iraq. He also argues that because their visit to Iraq was coordinated by the U.S. military, with the military arranging most of their visits and interviews in Iraq, that their opinion on the success of the surge is called into serious question.

But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented -- both by Pollack/O'Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military -- a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them.

Leaving aside the fact that Sandals doesn't arrange tours of Iraq, and that Greenwald's premise assumes that the military is a deceitful institution intent on manipulating the American people, O'Hanlon and Pollack are in good company in speaking of the changes in Iraq since the implementation of Operation Phantom Thunder. We await Greenwald's debunking of the optimistic comments from Senators Durbin, Casey, Levin and Reed, and Representatives Ellison and McNerney. Are all these war critics being fooled when they speak of the military progress in Iraq? The only other alternative--that they are closet supporters of the war in Iraq--can be dismissed out of hand.

Perhaps Greenwald can take the time to look at the puzzling case of Representative Jan Schakowsky, who saw only what the U.S. Embassy wanted her to see while in Iraq, but came away equally certain that the surge is failing. Is she simply that much more of a clear thinker than the senators and representatives who preceded her in Iraq? Or is she being intellectually dishonest--looking at the same facts as the others but refusing to accept them?

Max Boot is interviewed in this video put together by contentions, Commentary magazine's blog, where Boot is also a contributor.

Official Chinese media have given extensive coverage to the August 2nd planting of a Russian flag on the ocean floor beneath the ice at the North Pole.

Russia plants the flag, or a scene from Titanic?

Long on facts but short on emotion, Chinese criticism of Moscow’s latest attempt at territorial expansion has been muted and limited to quoting analyses in the Russian press that the fight over oil- and gas-rich Arctic seafloor may turn the North Pole into a "new battleground" between the superpowers and lead to "serious international consequences--even an escalation of the arms race and military conflicts."

Whatever angst Beijing may be experiencing over this turn of events has been expressed primarily by references to the negative reactions of U.S. and Canadian officials. For example, the following statement by the Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay is displayed in bold as the sub-heading of a Xinhua report:

This isn’t the 15th century. You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say "We’re claiming this territory."

Another Xinhua piece, "The U.S. Says Russia’s Flag-Planting under the North Pole Has No Substantive Significance," cites State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey as saying Russia’s action is legally non-binding. And an August 3rd report by Xinhua titled "U.S. sees no ‘legal standing’ for Russia flag-planting in Arctic" quotes Casey as saying:

I’m not sure of whether they’ve put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn’t have any legal standing or effect on this claim…"

Characterized by official media as "one of the important non-[A]r[c]tic countries that are nearest to the North Pole," China launched its first North Pole scientific expedition in 1999. Four years later, a second Arctic expedition took place. In 2004, China’s first North Pole research station, the Yellow River Station, was erected on Norway’s Svalbard Island. The mission of the Chinese scientists involved in building the Yellow River Station also included the construction of an Arctic GPS satellite tracking station and the creation of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the polar region.

Chinese explorations of the South Pole preceded its Arctic ventures. Since 1984 China has conducted 22 Antarctic expeditions and set up two permanent South Pole research stations--Changcheng (Great Wall) in 1985 and Zhongshan in 1989. Xinhua reported last week that renovation work on the Changcheng Station--at a cost of some $13 million--was to conclude by the end of this year and that the upgrading of the Zhongshan station was to begin soon. In 2006 alarms were sounded within the U.S. intelligence community over Beijing’s plans to install a high-frequency radar at the Zhongshan Station.

Meanwhile, China’s third Antarctic research station, this one on Dome A, the highest point on the continent, is scheduled to be completed by 2010.

I recently emailed Col. Steve Boylan asking for whatever information he could provide regarding the status of the investigation of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Here is his response:

His command's investigation is complete. At this time, there is no formal what we call Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) actions being taken. However, there are other Administrative actions or what we call Non-Judicial Punishment that can be taken if the command deems appropriate. These are again administrative in nature and as such are not releasable to the public by law.

We are not stonewalling anyone. There are official statements that are out there are on the record from several of us and nothing has changed.

We are not preventing him from speaking to TNR or anyone. He has full access to the Morale Welfare and Recreation phones that all the other members of the unit are free to use. It is my understanding that he has been informed of the requests to speak to various members of the media, both traditional and non-traditional and has declined. That is his right.

We will not nor can we force a Soldier to talk to the media or his family or anyone really for that matter in these types of issues.

We fully understand the issues on this. What everyone must understand is that we will not breach the rights of the Soldier and this is where this is at this point.

Diyala province, once the stronghold of al Qaeda in Iraq, remains a major focus of Operation Phantom Thunder, the overarching security operation to eject al Qaeda from the Baghdad Belts. As operations in Baqubah, once the capital of al Qaeda in Iraq's puppet state, have "shifted from combat operations to reconstruction and humanitarian missions," offensives in the outlying areas of the provincial capitol have increased.

U.S. Marines cross the Pegasus Bridge. Photo: Sgt. Andy Hurt.

Iraqi and Coalition forces have recently shifted combat operations to the cities and towns north and east of the city. On August 8, a joint US and Iraqi force cleared al Qaeda from the town of Abu Tina, which is about 10 miles northeast of Baqubah. Two al Qaeda fighters were killed and four captured during the operation.

The operation in Abu Tina followed recent operations to the north and east. On August 4, an offensive in the Had-Muaskar area north of Baqubah resulted in five al Qaeda killed and ten captured. At the end of July, a two day operation in Miqdadiyah resulted in seven insurgents killed and one captured, while an operation to secure the Turki village resulted in eleven insurgents killed and 13 more captured. These operations appear to be shaping operations designed to keep al Qaeda off balance and prepare the cities and towns for the hold phase.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda is attempting to push back in Diyala. In an outdoor market in Baqubah, Iraqi police captured a suicide bomber before he could detonate, and insurgents fired Katyusha rockets and mortars at an Iraqi Army checkpoint in the town of Jwamir near the Iranian border. Al Qaeda in Iraq has conducted a series of violent attacks against civilian and military targets along the Iranian border since the United States began beefing up forces in the province.

Further north in Tamim province, an Iraqi Army and police force backed by U.S. troops launched an operation about 40 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Kirkuk. Twenty insurgents were captured in the operation. A suicide bomber killed five civilians and wounded 29 in an attack on a market in Kirkuk. Insurgents reportedly destroyed a bridge linking Salahadin and Kirkuk on August 9. While this bridge bombing has not been claimed, al Qaeda has destroyed a series of bridges stretching from south of Baghdad to north of Tikrit, and along the Euphrates River in Anbar province.

U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to press operations against al Qaeda in Iraq's command and facilitation network. Coalition forces killed four al Qaeda operative and captured 43 during raids in Tarmiyah, Balad, Mosul, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Muqdadiyah on August 9 and 10. The al Qaeda operatives captured include the military leader in southern Tarmiyah, a car bomb maker in Mosul, and an emir in Kirkuk. The leader of a foreign al Qaeda cell was also killed during the raids. Iraqi security forces captured five al Qaeda operatives during raids near Sinjar on August 6 and 7.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have maintained a high attack tempo against the Iranian-backed elements of the "rogue" Mahdi Army. On August 8, the same day a raid in Sadr City resulted in the death of 30 members of the Iranian "Special Groups" and the capture of another 12, an Iraqi Army operation in the Baghdad neighborhood of Mahmudiyah resulted in the capture of five Mahdi operatives, including a cell commander, a weapons trafficker, an IED cell leader, and a death squad commander.

Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army and the Sadrist movement, is still believed to be in Iran, Col. John Castles told reporters during a briefing in Baghdad. Col. Castles commanders the US military forces in Sadr City. Sadr is believed to have left for Iran in the beginning of July, after returning from a prior four month stint there from January to May in self-imposed exile.

TNR has posted another "statement" that barely requires a response.

If you want to read one anyway, Bryan does a good job at Hot Air.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: Iraq works slowly on developing a process, by Kevin Ferris.

From McClatchy: Cheney urging strikes on Iran, by Warren P. Strobel.

From the Wall Street Journal: Get it Done, by Peggy Noonan.

When a New York Times reporter called me earlier in the week to ask some follow-up questions about Scott Thomas Beauchamp, she started off by saying that "this is a story that just won't die." Indeed, it won't, if only because the editors at TNR refuse to kill it, preferring instead to stonewall while even Beauchamp has decided to cut his losses.

But the story has moved onto a new phase, as commentators ask, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, 'Why did the New Republic run it?' Krauthammer's theory:

Because it fits perfectly into the most virulent narrative of the antiwar left. The Iraq war -- "George Bush's war," as even Hillary Clinton, along with countless others who had actually endorsed the war, now calls it -- has caused not only the sorrow and destruction that we read about every day. It has, most perniciously, caused invisible damage -- now made visible by the soul-searching of one brave and gifted private: It has perverted and corrupted the young soldiers who went to Iraq, and now return morally ruined. Young soldiers like Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

Krauthammer also seizes on the one "error" that TNR has acknowledged, that the incident involving the disfigured woman, whose identity remains a complete mystery, occurred in Kuwait, and not in Iraq as Beauchamp had claimed in the piece:

Except that it is now revealed that the mess-hall incident happened before he even got to the war. On which point, the whole story -- and the whole morality tale it was meant to suggest -- collapses.

And it makes the rest of the narrative banal and uninteresting. It's the story of a disgusting human being, a mocker of the disfigured, who then goes to Iraq and, as such human beings are wont to do, finds the company of other such human beings who kill dogs for sport, wear the bones of dead children on their heads and find similar amusement in mocking the disfigured.

We will soon learn if there actually was a dog killer or a bone wearer. But the New Republic seems not to have understood how the Kuwait "detail" undermines everything.

There are some other interesting stories out there. The New York Sun also focuses on why this happened to TNR, again.

Bias complaints against the mainstream press usually involve the stubborn use of a preferred story line when facts are shaky or nonexistent. The New Republic's current trouble may be in this category.

The magazine's three "Baghdad Diarist" columns by an anonymous American soldier, later identified as Private Scott Beauchamp, presented a sour view of American troops. It included an anecdote about Mr. Beauchamp and a comrade humiliating an Iraqi woman whose face had been "melted" by an IED. The editors set forth the narrative line — the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war" are unbalancing some American troops.

Maybe so, but the Weekly Standard reports that Mr. Thomas signed a sworn statement admitting that his columns were exaggerations and falsehoods. Did the New Republic run these articles because it respected and trusted the writer, or because the writer reflected the magazine's disgust with the war?

Ross Douthat, writing from his perch at the Atlantic, suspects that the New Republic's motivations in running the story were not so malicious:

...this was a case of a magazine giving a break to a young writer not because his work "fits perfectly into the most virulent narrative of the antiwar left," as Krauthammer would have it, but because the young writer's likeable wife asked them to. They got burned as a result, and deservedly so. But not because they hate America.

Maybe, but Jeff Emanuel, writing at NRO, returns to an earlier statement from milblogger John Noonan that seems to sum it up pretty nicely:

None of this detracts from the fact that, of the 160k troops in Iraq, TNR choose a real dirtball to serve as their correspondent. When other soldiers are out building schools, providing medical care, and running security operations for the Iraqi people, TNR decided to highlight a real slug of a mechanic who mocks the disfigured and disrespects the dead for kicks.

At least in his imagination anyway.

...and all I got was some lousy Post Office naming bills.

With Congress off on its August recess (after ending session with a huge floor fight over a vote whose outcome shifted after the gavel came down), this is a good time to assess progress.

To date, there have been 56 bills signed into law by President Bush. Of those, 'only' 20 are measures that rename federal facilities. Of the other measures signed into law, four would be considered major legislation, while the other 32 would be ranked anywhere between minor and trivial. There's also one major piece of legislation--the lobbying reform bill--that has been neither signed nor vetoed.

The four major pieces of legislation signed into law are:

* The FY07 Appropriations Bill: When Republicans adjourned in 2007 after losing control of the Congress, they failed to enact 10 of the 12 regular appropriations bills. Those bills covered about half of all federal discretionary spending. To ensure speedy consideration and enactment, Democrats refused to subject this omnibus legislation to the normal amendment process. Further, the legislation contained earmarks despite promises to the contrary by Democratic leadership.

* Supplemental funding bill for the War on Terror: In the most prominent conflict between Congress and the president, Democratic leaders ultimately backed down from any of a range of restrictions proposed for Iraq war funding. After President Bush vetoed legislation to impose a timetable for withdrawal, Democrats decided not to pursue 'installment' funding for the war, readiness requirements, binding benchmarks, and other measures to undercut the effort in Iraq.

Instead, Congressional leaders scheduled action on a 'no-strings-attached' funding bill that most Democrats opposed. Once the measure passed with mostly Republican support, Democratic leaders again resumed criticism of the war effort and vowed real efforts to end it. The bill also included a provision to raise the minimum wage.

* Implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations: This legislation theoretically requires full screening of cargo entering U.S. ports and of baggage on commercial aircraft (but allows indefinite delays in implementing those requirements). It provides for disclosure of the overall intelligence budget, provides funds for rail and mass transit security, and changes the formula for distribution of homeland security funds. Notably, the legislation does not address the Commission's recommendation on Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, where it looks like Congress made a bad problem worse.

It should be noted that House Democrats also supported passage of legislation to bar disclosure of the intelligence budget just one week after passing legislation to require it. Is this the fastest flip flop by this Democratic Congress--they're coming so fast it's hard to keep track.

* Modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: On the request of the White House and the director of National Intelligence, the Senate and the House quickly passed legislation introduced by Senators Bond and McConnell to clarify that a FISA warrant is not needed to listen to the communications of foreign terrorists overseas.

Much like the war on terror appropriations, the House Democratic leadership apparently decided that they could not afford the public relations 'hit' of blocking the measure. Thus the legislation was scheduled for floor consideration, passed with mostly Republican votes, and then attacked by the leaders who scheduled it for a vote.

Action on the 9/11 commission recommendations and FISA (as well as the lobbying reform bill) all occurred in the last week of session. Even counting those, Congress and the nation have relatively little to show for seven months of Democratic leadership in Congress. Fortunately for conservatives, half of this Congress's noteworthy achievements (war funding and FISA) are pro-security bills enacted only because of President Bush's insistence. From that point of view, Democratic leaders have done less damage than they might have.

If you weren't already aware, the boss recently returned from Iraq where he spent time meeting with American commanders, troops, diplomats, etc., and generally getting a better sense of the situation on the ground there. His latest column for Time is now available and includes his impressions from the trip:

I spent a week in Iraq recently, and here's what impressed me most: the Americans. In particular, the quality and character of the American soldiers and Marines who are fighting there and trying to help rebuild the nation. I don't mean to slight, in some ethnocentric way, the steadfastness and courage of the Iraqi people. But it was meeting and watching the American soldiers at work that I found most interesting.

I've served in government, and I'm familiar with Washington, and I'm not an uncritical cheerleader for the American military. Indeed, I'd say that some of our general officers--until this past year, when General David Petraeus and Lieut. General Ray Odierno took over--haven't particularly distinguished themselves. But the brigade and battalion commanders and the company and platoon leaders I saw in Iraq are really impressive.

Before going to Iraq, I didn't fully appreciate all the things our military leaders are doing there. Obviously, they're fighting--and doing so more discriminately and effectively than they did in 2003 or 2004. But that's just the beginning. Now that Petraeus and Odierno are pursuing a real counterinsurgency strategy, their subordinate commanders and officers are spending a lot of time engaging the local population in security, political and economic efforts. It's clear from the briefings by colonels and lieutenant colonels at various forward operating bases that they have internalized Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine. Occasionally you'll hear a leftover Rumsfeld-era talking point about how our job is to get out of the way and transition everything over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. And I did see a brigade commander who, when asked by an Iraqi shopkeeper why electricity was so sporadic, replied politely that electric power wasn't his job.

But that was the exception. The rule in Iraq is that brigade and battalion commanders--and even captains and lieutenants--are also taking on responsibilities as diplomats, politicians, development consultants, educators. The limited number of American civilians (and the virtual absence of Europeans) has thrown all the responsibility of nation building--more accurately, community building--on the U.S. military. And rather than complain, the soldiers do it willingly and even cheerfully, and with remarkable competence.

Go read the whole thing.

The Sky Talk blog reported yesterday that Lockheed Martin had worked out a deal to repay the Pentagon $265 million, plus interest, for a "billing error" that had resulted in the company overcharging the government. The error was not a one off, but rather Lockheed had been overcharging the government in each of eleven separate billing periods over nearly six years. That's an extra $24 million and change on each bill--roughly half the estimated cost of an F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

The WWS emailed John Smith, the communications director for the F-35 program, for information on how such an error could have occurred. His response:

"This was an inadvertent coding error that was discovered by our own internal review. The government will be totally reimbursed, with interest, very soon so the taxpayers are not out of any money, and LM [Lockheed Martin] did not gain from it. We are certainly examining our processes so it won't happen again."

Smith also passed along an FAQ on the matter, much of which dealt with the potential impact on the company's bottom line. The document says that Lockheed is currently working to determine the appropriate amount of interest, that the company has "initiated a thorough review to determine why the error was not detected sooner," and that "the government will be reimbursed within the next several days."

Here's the key question though:

Q9. How could you make such an error?

A9. This was an error in the way we coded some costs in our billing system. Lockheed Martin employees discovered the error and corrected the problem. We are working with our customer to ensure that enhanced controls will be put in place to prevent this from occurring in the future and will meet with their satisfaction.

And isn't that the most disturbing part--at the end of the day, it was Lockheed employees who discovered the error. Wouldn't you like to see the FAQ from the Pentagon:

Q. Does anyone look at the bills before cutting a check?

A. What for?

HT Defense Tech

Update: Click here to see the DEW Line's top 10 guesses for where all the money went...

The Missile Defense Agency has released a report entitled 'Proposed Missile Defense Assets in Europe.' The document is a handy guide that explains why we're pursuing the system and how it will enhance the security of the U.S. and its allies. It's full of nifty charts and graphs, which point mostly at the chief reason for missile defense in Europe--Iran.

The report also addresses at some length the concerns of Russia that the advanced radar integral to the system has another, covert purpose--monitoring activity in that nation. And the report also argues that this system can have no meaningful effect on Russia's nuclear arsenal.

It's not clear whether the Missile Defense Agency is being straightforward or snarky when it addresses the potential threat to civilians of falling debris: "Intercept debris is minor compared to an intact Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) warhead hitting a major population center." But this presentation comes at a good time. The House and Senate both appear prepared to significantly cut the president's request for deployment of missile defense in Europe. The administration will need to make a strong argument on Capitol Hill to sway leaders to restore funds slated for elimination. Alternately, given that the primary rationale for cutting the funds is to ease tension with Russia, it may be necessary for allies affected by the cut to make clear that these programs are important to them, as well.

I don't know if this soldier would qualify as an expert by TNR's standards (whatever they might be), but via Michelle Malkin, a video by Matt Sanchez:

From Confederate Yankee: When Hidden Experts Are Found, by Bob Owens.

From the Washington Post: Sunni Fighters Find Benefits in Tentative Alliance With U.S., by Ann Scott Tyson.

From the New York Times: Generals Don't Need a Watchdog, by Jack Jacobs.

From FP Passport: China Threatens the Nuclear Option, by Mike Boyer.

From the New York Sun: A Ranking Senate Democrat Concedes Surge Is Working, by Eli Lake.

Elmendorf welcomes F-22A Raptor: "The unmatched capabilities of this superb airplane are simply unbelievable. It furnishes our Airmen with unrivaled air supremacy and provides us with the most lopsided and unfair advantages ever seen in the air power age."

Our colleague Rob Bluey notes that in an apparent response to a challenge by Glenn Greenwald, General David Petraeus has had an interview with Alan Colmes. (It's unfortunate that Greenwald was apparently unaware of the interview, as he's failed to note it on his blog--either to alert readers in advance or to acknowledge it subsequently.) The criticisms of Colmes and Greenwald make clear that war opponents on the left are preparing for a positive progress report in September by trying to undercut Petraeus's credibility.

The Colmes interview constitutes a good preview of the criticisms Petraeus is likely to face surrounding his September 15 report to Congress. (Listen to it at the link above, or read the transcript here.) Echoing Greenwald, Colmes asks Petraeus to respond to allegations that he is essentially, a cheerleader for the war who is unable to render an objective opinion on progress in Iraq. When Colmes asks the general about statements of progress in Iraq dating to 2004 for example, Petraeus says:

...And in fact if you go back and look at those you'll find that generally those reports of progress were also tempered by reports of caution and measured statements. Some of what we did was undone by a variety of different events that tragically transpired...

I think, tragically, the progress that was made in the Iraqi security force arena and again, I think if you look at what I provided at those times, that there were acknowledgments, it was literally always a term of qualified optimism or what have you and it depended on continued progress and continued efforts in certain areas but the sectarian violence of 2006 very sadly undid an awful lot of what had been achieved in previous years and as you know, it spiraled out of control to levels that were really horrific and tore the very fabric of Iraqi society in the latter part of 2006 and into early 2007.

It's worth recalling that General Petraeus was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 81-0. No senator expressed concern during the floor debate on his nomination that his impartiality was suspect. None said that his reports ought to be regarded with suspicion due to any perceived reputation for seeing Iraq through rose-colored glasses. In fact, Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin complimented him on his commitment to fair reporting on benchmarks:

He said: I am going to regularly report to Congress on whether this new strategy is working and whether these so-called benchmarks which the Iraqis have allegedly agreed to, representing their commitments--when will they produce troops; will those troops, in fact, be subject to political pressure; will the Iraqis come through with the commitments relative to the financing of reconstruction? He is going to report to us on all the commitments which the Iraqis have made, all the benchmarks which are supposed to be met. I take him at his word. He is an honorable man, and that is an important representation, again, made at his initiative.

And those who portray Petraeus as some unalloyed optimist may forget his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in January:

Earlier this week, President Bush spoke by phone with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has supported the Iraq war more robustly and consistently than any foreign leader save Tony Blair. (Australia dispatched around 2,000 troops for the initial invasion.) In a subsequent radio interview, Howard discussed his thoughts on the surge and on the consequences of a U.S. defeat:

“The President also brought me up to date on his latest feelings about what’s occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Mr Howard said on Macquarie radio today.

“There is progress being made. It’s tough. It’s not all negative.

“Nobody pretends that it’s easy, but the alternative urged on us by the Labor Party and others of pulling out will guarantee a descent into civil war and chaos and a victory for terrorism, and we’re totally opposed to that.”

Mr Howard admitted Mr Bush was under pressure in the US over the military action.

“He is under pressure at home, of course he is. But he’s not a person who succumbs easily to pressure and he’s right,” Mr Howard said.

“Because if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq in circumstances of a perceived defeat, that would cause enormous instability in the Middle East and it would be a terrible blow to American prestige.

“Whatever you may have thought about the original invasion, you’ve got to deal with the reality of what is happening now.”

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse for the New Republic, Bob Owens reveals what can only be described as a serious deception by the magazine's editors in their statement corroborating Beauchamp's "Shock Troops" article.

In delivering the findings of the magazine's investigation, the editors had stated,

The last section of the Diarist described soldiers using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to kill dogs. On this topic, one soldier who witnessed the incident described by Beauchamp, wrote in an e-mail: "How you do this (I've seen it done more than once) is, when you approach the dog in question, suddenly lurch the Bradley on the opposite side of the road the dog is on. The rear-end of the vehicle will then swing TOWARD the animal, scaring it into running out into the road. If it works, the dog is running into the center of the road as the driver swings his yoke back around the other way, and the dog becomes a chalk outline." TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described. Instructors who train soldiers to drive Bradleys told us the same thing. And a veteran war correspondent described the tendency of stray Iraqi dogs to flock toward noisy military convoys.

Why did TNR not include the name of the spokesman who "confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described"? Because he did no such thing. Owens tracked down this mystery spokesman, now identified as Doug Coffey, head of Communications, Land & Armaments, for BAE Systems, who, it turns out, had never been shown a copy of Beauchamp's story, and who was only asked, in his words, "general questions about vehicle specifications." Owens showed Coffey a copy of the article, and put the question to him: Can the Bradley be operated in the manner described by Beauchamp? His answer, it turns out, was no different than that offered by the Worldwide Standard's own expert, Stuart Koehl, who initially stated that such a maneuver would be virtually impossible, and further that it is inconceivable that such behavior would be tolerated. Here's Coffey:

I can't pretend to know what may or may not have happened in Iraq but the impression the writer leaves is that a "driver" can go on joy rides with a 35 ton vehicle at will. The vehicle has a crew and a commander of the vehicle who is in charge. In order for the scenario described to have taken place, there would have to have been collaboration by the entire crew.

The driver's vision, even if sitting in an open hatch is severely restricted along the sides. He sits forward on the left side of the vehicle. His vision is significantly impaired along the right side of the vehicle which makes the account to "suddenly swerve to the right" and actually catch an animal suspect. If you were to attempt the same feat in your car, it would be very difficult and you have the benefit of side mirrors.

Anyone familiar with tracked vehicles knows that turning sharply requires the road wheels on the side of the turn to either stop or reverse as the road wheels on the opposite side accelerates. What may not be obvious is that the track once on the ground, doesn't move. The road wheels roll across it but the track itself is stationary until it is pushed forward by the road wheels.

The width of the track makes it highly unlikely that running over a dog would leave two intact parts. One half of the dog would have to be completely crushed.

It also seems suspicious that a driver could go on repeated joy rides or purposefully run into things. Less a risk to the track though that is certainly possible but there is sensitive equipment on the top of the vehicle, antennas, sights, TOW missile launcher, commander and if it was a newer vehicle, the commander's independent viewer, not to mention the main gun. Strange things are known to happen in a combat environment but I can't imagine that the vehicle commander or the unit commander would tolerate repeated misuse of the vehicle, especially any action that could damage its ability to engage.

To repeat: A dog could not have been cut in half as Beauchamp described--and that according to the New Republic's own expert--one half of the dog "would have to be completely crushed." Coffey uses words like suspicious, suspect, and unlikely--yet the New Republic did not see fit to print Coffey's concerns. In fact, they didn't even see fit to show Coffey the original article.

And what of all their other unnamed experts? Why does the New Republic feel compelled to grant them anonymity when they can't possibly fear retribution?

From Der Spiegel: "Die Bushkrieger" 8/2002
Illustration: Jean Pierre Kunkel.

When it comes to the Bush administrations’s war on terror and the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, the German weekly Der Spiegel has certainly come a long way. Back in February 2002, the Hamburg-based center-left magazine published the (in)famous cover story "The Bush Warriors: America’s Campaign Against Evil," which featured a controversial drawing of President Bush dressed up as Rambo and flanked by Colin Powell as Batman, Donald Rumsfeld as Conan the Warrior, Dick Cheney as the Terminator, and Condoleezza Rice as Xena, the Warrior Princess. In essence, the article argued that the United States, in response to the 9/11 attacks, had embarked on a world-wide military crusade led by a bible-wielding, trigger happy Rambo in the Oval Office.

From a purely artistic point of view, the pop-art style piece by French-born artist Jean Pierre Kunkel was certainly well done. From a political perspective, however, it is, in retrospect, quite striking that less than six months after the 9/11 attacks (and well before the 2003 Iraq war) one of Europe’s most influential magazines already saw America and Europe on diverging paths in the fight against Islamic terrorism, arguably the defining challenge of our times. Over the past few years, as the transatlantic rift widened due to fundamental differences over hot button issues ranging from climate change to Guantanamo, Der Spiegel has, in general, been very critical of the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic policies.

Against this backdrop, I had my own "O’Hanlon-Pollack moment" when learning that this week’s cover story of Der Spiegel-- titled "Baghdad Babylon: SPIEGEL-Reporter with U.S. Soldiers in the Iraq War," provided an unexpectedly upbeat assessment of the current surge strategy in Iraq. For three weeks in July, Der Spiegel reporter Ullrich Fichtner and his photographer traveled across Iraq under the auspices of the U.S. military to get a first-hand impression of the situation on the ground. Online, the 15-page in-depth Iraq trip article titled "The Hellish Peace" is only available to Spiegel subscribers:

During an online-chat yesterday about his recent trip to Iraq, Ullrich Fichtner provided the following assessments:

"I think that the current troop surge provides a real opportunity for progress that could make a difference [in Iraq]." […]"One can say that the entire North, the Kurdish areas, but also the rural areas around Baghdad are no longer war zones."

At the same time, however, Fichtner also described how certain areas of Baghdad have become completely abandoned ghost towns. In still other Baghdad neighborhoods, "everyone is fighting against everyone." Overall, Fichtner paints a very nuanced picture of the complex situation in Iraq. For sure, plenty of political and military problems remain. But there is also reason for optimism.

Many Spiegel chat users were particularly interested in the morale of U.S. troops in Iraq. Here, Fichtner provided quite a positive account, arguing that many of the American soldiers "were in a surprisingly good mood":

"In fact, my biggest impression was that almost every third [U.S. soldier] had at one point been stationed in Germany. And I had to engage in a lot of conversations about bratwurst, beer, Oktoberfest, and Black Forest cherry cake."

Fichtner also believes that the extent of conflict between Shiites and Sunnis is overestimated by the outside world--that real reconciliation across religious lines is still a distinct possibility:

"It is also a race against the clock. As long as the sectarian murders continue, and there are still about 600 such executions every month, there is no room for talks. But these executions are a Baghdad-specific problem. In the rest of the country [Shiite and Sunni] groups lead a life of peaceful coexistence." […]

Finally, Ullrich Fichtner expressed his hope that people around the world will not be blinded by new photos of bombings; rather they should recognize "that a successful future for Iraq is possible."

It is still too early to say what impact, if any, the Spiegel cover story will have on the German public’s perception of the Bush administration (the president’s approval ratings there have long been in the single digits) or of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. However, if things in Iraq are beginning to move in the right direction, and if General Petraeus’s update report in September is positive as well, European governments could have more domestic political leeway to provide additional political, economic, and police/military training support for Iraq’s stabilization and reconstruction. For far too long, European public opinion has viewed the Iraq war as a lost-cause--a quagmire caused by an unwarranted unilateral U.S. military invasion--that is now essentially Bush’s problem to solve. In the coming months we will see whether improving conditions on the ground in Iraq can also improve public perceptions outside of Iraq, not only in Europe but also in the United States.

That's what the AP reports:

The Army said this week it had concluded an investigation of Beauchamp's claims and found them false.

"During that investigation, all the soldiers from his unit refuted all claims that Pvt. Beauchamp made in his blog," Sgt. 1st Class Robert Timmons, a spokesman in Baghdad for the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., said in an e-mail interview.

The Weekly Standard said Beauchamp signed a sworn statement admitting all three articles were exaggerations and falsehoods.

Calls to Editor Franklin Foer at The New Republic in Washington were not returned, but the magazine said on its Web site that it has conducted its own investigation and stands by Beauchamp's work.

One can parse the language here, but unless Beauchamp comes forward to say otherwise...it's pretty clear the New Republic is standing by a story that even the author does not stand by.

On July 26, TNR published an indignant statement from Beauchamp in which the private said he would "stand by the entirety" of his articles. Since then, the New Republic has been forced to admit at least one "significant error" in his work. Beauchamp has made no further public statements.

I discussed this with Military.com editor Ward Carroll yesterday, listen here. And there's more reaction to the AP story around the web.

Sgt. Christopher Burke provides security during
a patrol in the Rusafa area of Baghdad.

While the U.S. conducted a major strike against the Iranian-backed Special Groups terror cells in Baghdad's Sadr City, resulting in 30 Shia terrorists killed and two captured, the relentless operations against al Qaeda in Iraq's network continue in parallel throughout Iraq. Operations are ongoing in Baghdad and the Belts, and the bulk of operations are occurring against al Qaeda's network in Northern Iraq, Salahadin, Diyala, and Eastern Anbar provinces.

Raids against al Qaeda's network on August 6, 7, and 8 resulted in the death of 19 operatives and the capture of 44. Included in those captured is the al Qaeda in Iraq military emir of Samarra, a Mosul-based emir who assists with terrorist operations in Kirkuk, a battalion commander of a fighter network in Salahadin, and a cell leader in a Baghdad’s VBIED network. The al Qaeda in Iraq emir of the northern belts around Baghdad, along with five operatives, was killed in an airstrike near Tarmiyah.

On August 5, Coalition forces killed four al Qaeda operatives and captured seven during raids in Balad, Samarra, and Fallujah. On August 4, Iraqi Army Forces and U.S. Special Operations Forces captured five insurgents who were behind IED attacks in the Thar Thar region. A senior member of an al Qaeda in Iraq beheading and torture cell in Karmah was also captured near Fallujah on August 4. On August 3, Iraqi Security Forces captured the al Qaeda in Iraq Emir in Samarra, along with his assistant. Also on August 3, Iraqi and U.S. forces captured two members of an al Qaeda IED cell near Taji and three members of an al Qaeda cell responsible for facilitating Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters in the Qaim region in Western Iraq.

In Diyala province, the operations against al Qaeda and its insurgent allies have reached far past Baqubah, the initial focus of operations in the province. The Kuwaiti News Agency reported that a new offensive against al Qaeda was kicked off on August 4 "in the area extending from Had-Muaskar area to north Baqubah." This is a region believed to be infested with al Qaeda fighters. Five al Qaeda were killed and ten captured, KUNA reported.

Meanwhile, Voices of Iraq reported a key al Qaeda leader and 36 operatives were captured in Diyala. The 36 operatives were captured in northern and eastern Baqubah, while Majid Rashid Jawad al-Timimi, a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq in eastern Diyala, was captured in the town of Jalawla. Sheikh Abu Uthman al-Timimi is listed as the Minster of Sharia Affairs for the Islamic State of Iraq, but it is not clear if they are related.

It was a bad week for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of America’s most important allies. First his party took a “thumping” (as George W. Bush might say) in upper house elections on Sunday, July 29th. Then, a day later, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Tokyo to formally apologize and “accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner” for the mistreatment of thousands of sex slaves in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

Japan issued an official apology for the so-called “comfort women” in 1993, but it was never ratified by parliament. Many Japanese conservatives, including Prime Minister Abe, have shown a troubling tendency to downplay or sugarcoat such imperial atrocities. (The Rape of Nanking is another example.) Indeed, a large bloc of Japanese MPs has pushed to revise the 1993 apology.

The “history issue” remains a stubborn and embarrassing problem for Japan. But here is my take, from a few months ago, on why it shouldn’t discredit Tokyo’s new foreign policy agenda, which is based around prudent self-defense, a greater acceptance of international duties, and what Foreign Minister Taro Aso calls “value-oriented diplomacy.” (And here is a related piece on the overblown fears of resurgent Japanese nationalism.)

From Robert Burns, a pretty upbeat piece on the military situation in Iraq and the effect of the surge:

BAGHDAD - The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working.

In two weeks of observing the U.S. military on the ground and interviewing commanders, strategists and intelligence officers, it's apparent that the war has entered a new phase in its fifth year.

It is a phase with fresh promise yet the same old worry: Iraq may be too fractured to make whole.

No matter how well or how long the U.S. military carries out its counterinsurgency mission, it cannot guarantee victory.

Only the Iraqis can. And to do so they probably need many more months of heavy U.S. military involvement. Even then, it is far from certain that they are capable of putting this shattered country together again.

Burns worries about the political piece of the puzzle, as O'Hanlon and Pollack and just about every other sensible observer has, but the sense that the surge is, at the very least, showing significant progress in the military sphere is also having an effect on the debate here at home. Bush's approval rating is up 5 points--it's a start--and support for the initial invasion has ticked up as well, from 35 percent to 42 percent. As the boss asks in this week's editorial, one wonders if the tide isn't starting to turn against the antiwar crowd.

From Contentions: Rational Optimism on Iraq, by Max Boot.

From the New York Times: U.S. Says Iran-Supplied Bomb Kills More Troops, by Michael Gordon.

From the Fourth Rail: US, Iraqi forces kill 30 Iranian-back Special Groups operatives, by Bill Roggio.

From Defense Tech: British Sign Carrier Contract, by Norman Polmar.

From the Wall Street Journal: South Africa's Betrayal, by James Kirchick.

A Russian defense analyst with close ties to the country’s state-run arms export agency has denounced recent reports of a large upcoming sale of Russian weaponry to Iran, describing them as part of a U.S.-U.K.-Israeli conspiracy to disrupt Russia’s attempts to sell arms to other Middle Eastern nations.

Since the Paris air show in June, sources in Moscow and New Delhi have stated that the Russian arms export monopoly, Rosoboronexport (ROE), was preparing to sell a number of sophisticated weapons to Iran. Russian sources had previously confirmed that there was a sale of both Mikoyan MiG-31 and MiG-29M/M2 fighter aircraft in the works. Those sources had not confirmed the end user for these weapon systems, although they were officially being sold to Syria.

An Indian Su-30, similar to those Russia is rumored to be selling to Iran,
at AeroIndia 2007. Photo by Reuben F. Johnson.

But, other sources stated that the expectation was that Iran was financing the sale and that the aircraft would be transferred to Iran. At the same time, there were other rumours about the sale of up to 250 Sukhoi Su-30MK fighter aircraft to Iran, but there were no comments or denunciations at all from Moscow on this sale. That is, until last week when the Israeli website debka.com ran a story on the Su-30MK sale.

This prompted Konstantin Makiyenko, the deputy director general of the Center for Strategy and Technology Analysis, to tell the official RIA-Novosti news service in Moscow that this story was "obvious disinformation."

However, several aspects of this denunciation (and the less than-categorical denials by Russian officialdom of these sales) are suspicious as best.

To begin with, Makiyenko’s think tank is often linked to the Russian government. He is also the one Russian defense analyst who is regularly quoted by Western aerospace and defense publications. At times he appears to be the only Russian expert who is permitted to go on record on this subject.

Makiyenko is also not exactly an impartial observer of Russia’s defense-industrial complex. "He is not only close to the senior management at ROE, but he is also a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO)," said one Moscow colleague. "Need I say anything more?"

MGIMO is the chief higher education institution for those who end up serving in the Russian foreign ministry and intelligence services, and ROE is chock-full of former (and active) employees of the latter. In this world, the Russian version of the "old school tie" still governs the sharing of information and confidences between former classmates.

Also, at this summer's Paris air show, ROE general director Sergei Chemezov publicly stated that no such export contract existed. "Russia has no plans to supply fighters to Syria and Iran," he assured reporters at the agency’s official press briefing. "If talks start with these countries, it will be announced."

Just ten days later, on June 28, Moscow dispatched Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Jerusalem for the express purpose of clarifying the Russian position on arms sales to Syria.

"Whatever we do in the area of arms supplies is absolutely in line with our international obligations," Lavrov told the Israelis. "It's also absolutely in line with the national legislation of the Russian Federation," he said. "Whatever we supply to Syria is transparent and is not offensive. In any case, it is not destabilizing the balance [of power] in the region."

If the Russian government felt it necessary to send Lavrov to Israel to defend Russia's right to make arms sales to Syria, it's hard to believe the statement from ROE that there are no such sales in the offing.

A third curiosity is what Makiyenko said when he made his statement to the Russian state news agency--that no such sale to Iran could be contemplated because "firstly, totally fantastic figures were given. Iran is hardly in a position to find financial resources required for the purchase of 200 fighter jets. According to even modest estimates, one billion dollars will buy no more than 20 aircraft." (Makiyenko seems to be unaware of the current price of oil.)

It appears that today is a watershed day with regard to US policy in Iraq. Democratic leaders now acknowledge that the surge is working. The only catch is, they say it's no surprise, they've known it for a while, and it's nothing significant.

Senators Durbin and Casey are in Iraq, and were interviewed this morning by CNN's John Roberts (video below). Senator Durbin made the first attempt to recognize the success of the surge and dismiss it in one breath:

SEN. DICK DURBIN: There were two important parts of this story, the military type as Senator Casey said the men and women were doing their best and making real progress. We found that today as we went to a forward base. The fifth year of the war, it's the first time we're putting troops on the ground to intercept al Qaeda. There's another side to this story the Brookings institution shouldn't miss. As we are seeing military progress, any political scene is discouraging. We are seeing the al Maliki government once branded the government of unity coming apart. We are seeing Sunnis and others leaving and not becoming the stability of this country.

Senator Casey joins in a moment later:

ROBERTS: I understand all of that. Everybody in the Democratic Party is saying the surge has failed. Senator Casey, do you agree with your colleague there are some signs of military progress here?

SEN. CASEY: Sure, there are, John. We have said in the beginning, our troops are doing their job.

Then Senator Casey complains that President Bush refuses to change course, and is offering the same old policy -- which by his own admission is yielding progress, and which he points out that he opposed:

SEN. CASEY: [continuing] The problem here is the president of the United States continues to insist on a stay the course policy, no change in direction, no sense the American people can determine there's a light at the end of the tunnel. That's why i think there's a bipartisan agreement right now to change the course. I think the president should listen to the will of the American people

ROBERTS: Senator Casey, you supported this bill to bring troops home. Have you seen anything to change your mind on that while you're there?

SEN. CASEY: No. I supported Levin-Reid and I voted initially, way back in the beginning of the year, against the surge. I think they're the right votes and continue to be the right votes. We have to make sure that the diplomacy and the political work that's done in Washington, as well as in Baghdad, what we're seeing now is the Iraqi government officials have left, we're seeing Sunni representatives have walked out and are boycotting. So the political work in Baghdad and Washington has to match the courage and the dedication of our troops. We haven't seen that yet.

Senator Casey's position--put succinctly--appears to be 'There is progress; there has been for some time. I opposed the switch to the current policy and I can't understand why the President won't change it.'

That argument won't fool anyone. Anyone with a television or internet access knows that Democrats have argued incessantly that Iraq in general and the surge specifically are failures. For them to suddenly acknowledge progress--and to pretend that they've been talking about it for a while--is silly.

It's hardly the sort of argument that will sway the American people to oppose a policy that is having success--success that seems to be recognized more each day.

Watch the interview; it runs about four minutes.

Democrats in Congress reacted quickly to the request by the Bush administration for clarification of their authority to listen in on the communications of foreign terrorists located abroad, passing legislation to modernize FISA. President Bush has since signed the measure into law.

But while Democrats acted quickly to schedule this legislation for consideration in both the House and Senate, the party's base wasn't nearly so enthusiastic. A writer at the DailyKos, for example, seems pretty angry about the move--and not just at the 57 Democrats in the House and Senate who voted for the bill:

Unfortunately, you 57 are not the only Democrats at fault for enabling these unconstitutional abuses. Party leaders bear responsibility for not playing hardball. For not using every technique and every bit of clout at their command to at least attempt to block amendments like this atrocity from becoming law. You leaders don’t have to explain about the paper-thin majority. You don’t have point out that it’s important to choose your fights. Understood. But this isn’t about corn subsidies, or earmarks or resolutions establishing Soap Carvers of America Day. Constitutional protections are at stake. Most people won’t blame you for losing if you put up a good fight. But how can you expect to avoid blame when you don’t?

It's essential that the president have the requisite tools to conduct surveillance on terrorists plotting to harm Americans and American interests. It's therefore heartening to recognize that Congressional leaders again lacked the courage of their convictions in opposition to the program. That said, Speaker Pelosi will have to do better to try to convince her base that she's going to 'fix' the program whose passage she just expedited:

Barely an hour after the House voted, 227-183, to clear the legislation (S 1927) late Aug. 4, Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a letter calling on the Judiciary and Intelligence committees to “send to the House, as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes, legislation which responds comprehensively to the administration’s proposal while addressing the many deficiencies in S 1927.” The legislation expires in February.

The pandering here is plain. Congress is out of session until September, at which time debate will resume in earnest on Iraq and the appropriations bills that fund the government. By the time those fights are over, the Thanksgiving and Christmas recesses will arrive. The president will veto any changes, and House and Senate Republicans show little inclination to oppose him on this measure. A reasonable person would conclude that the Speaker's letter is for show, and will be forgotten relatively quickly.

Ed Morrissey analyzes the stance of the Congressional leadership pretty accurately.

The New York Times reports today that

An Army investigation into the Baghdad Diarist, a soldier in Iraq who wrote anonymous columns for The New Republic, has concluded that the sometimes shockingly cruel reports were false.

“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”

Among those interviewed was none other than the author himself, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who, as we reported yesterday, recanted all three pieces he wrote for the New Republic. The Washington Post also reports on the Army's investigation:

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.

The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.

The "error" that the New Republic discovered was significant, as it showed Beauchamp to be an entirely unreliable narrator--a story of malicious taunting of a disfigured woman in a chow hall did not happen in Iraq, as Beauchamp had originally claimed. And even the revised account is highly suspect, the Army calling it an "urban legend or myth."

Michelle Malkin writes about the "incident" at the chow hall in today's New York Post:

It wasn't true. After active-duty troops, veterans, embedded journalists and bloggers raised pointed questions about the veracity of the anecdote, Beauchamp confessed to The New Republic's meticulous fact-checkers that the mocking had taken place in Kuwait -- before he had set foot in Iraq to experience the soul-deadening impact of war.

Military officials in Kuwait tried to verify the incident and called it an "urban legend or myth." Beauchamp's essays are filled with similarly spun tales. How much of a bull-slinger was Beauchamp, an aspiring creative writer who crowed on his personal blog that he would "return to America an author" after serving (which he told friends and family would "add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING I do afterwards")? The very first line of his essay "Shock Troops," which opened with the melted-face mockery, was this: "I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq."

Beauchamp himself has not publicly commented since a July 26 statement on the New Republic's website.

The editors of the New Republic have responded here. Three points:

(1) They neglected to report that the Army has concluded its investigation and found Beauchamp's stories to be false. As Major Lamb, the very officer they quote, has said in an authorized statement: "An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

(2) Does the failure of the New Republic to report the Army's conclusions mean that the editors believe the Army investigators are wrong about Beauchamp?

(3) We have full confidence in our reporting that Pvt Beauchamp recanted under oath in the course of the investigation. Is the New Republic claiming that Pvt Beauchamp made no such admission to Army investigators? Is Beauchamp?

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp--author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns--signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

The magazine's editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety--meant to illustrate the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war"--took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been "melted" by an IED.

Nothing public has been heard from Beauchamp since his statement standing by his stories, which was posted on the New Republic website at 6:30 a.m. on July 26. In their August 2 statement, the New Republic's editors complained that the military investigation was "short-circuiting" TNR's own fact-checking efforts. "Beauchamp," they said, "had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters. If further substantive information comes to light, TNR will, of course, share it with you."

Now that the military investigation has concluded, the great unanswered question in the affair is this: Did Scott Thomas Beauchamp lie under oath to U.S. Army investigators, or did he lie to his editors at the New Republic? Beauchamp has recanted under oath. Does the New Republic still stand by his stories?

Is Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, the self-declared "new face" of American politics, nothing but a unilateralist, trigger happy, national security hard-liner--the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing? That’s probably the reaction that German political observers (as well as other Europeans for that matter) had when learning about the details of Senator Obama’s "comprehensive strategy to fight global terrorism, which he rolled out in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington last Tuesday.

The most controversial element of Obama’s speech, dubbed "The War We Need To Win," is his threat to take America’s military fight against Islamic terrorists directly to Pakistan: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will." Obama’s tough talk about a possible U.S. military intervention in what is arguably the world’s most dangerous (nuclear) hot spot has not only triggered sharp rebukes by his Democratic rivals (except Hillary), but has raised red flags in Germany as well.

In this context, it is important to emphasize that Obama’s "Let’s-Invade-Pakistan" gospel traveled across the Atlantic just days after the Bush administration unveiled plans to sell tens of billions of advanced weapons systems to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other pro-Western Gulf states in an effort to counter the influence of Iran, Syria, al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Just for the record, all of Germany’s political parties as well as the country’s leading newspaper commentators have strongly condemned the arms deal, which is expected to face tough scrutiny in a Democratic Congress.

This past Friday, Germany’s highly-respected conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an editorial page commentary--euphemistically titled "Also robust"--taking issue with the national security advice dispensed by the first-term junior senator from Illinois.

Whoever takes Obama’s remark seriously will soon begin to start brooding, especially because Pakistan and its president are indispensable to wear down the terrorists. For sure, Musharraf has made mistakes and various maneuverings, but to pull the domestic political rug out from under him would further deteriorate the situation. The world that is now keenly looking forward to the end of President Bush’s administration will find out that-- if a Democrat succeeds him--there are certain continuities across U.S. party lines. Unilateralism is not Bush’s invention.

In Germany, a country where Bush’s personal approval ratings have long been in the single digits and where the Democrats are widely seen as the forces of good (back in 2004, polls indicated a German preference for John Kerry by a margin of 85-90 percent), a more differentiated assessment of U.S. politics is certainly welcome news. And so Obama's blunt attempt to re-gain vital national security ground after losing out to Hillary Clinton in the recent Democratic debate has backfired in the States and abroad. As another Democratic candidate for the presidency, Joe Biden, said at a National Press Club luncheon last Wednesday:

"The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it."

The official website of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has been featuring a "hot topic of concern" on cultural diplomacy. Running concurrently on the website of People’s Daily under the title Cultural Diplomacy Propagates China’s True Image," it is a collection of articles on topics ranging from how to incorporate cultural diplomacy into the country’s pursuit of soft power to how to utilize overseas Chinese NGOs to globalize Chinese culture.

Of special interest in this collection of articles is a July 27th piece titled "Cultural Diplomacy Nurtures without a Sound” by Wu Jianmin, president of the China Foreign Affairs University and former ambassador to the United Nations. Wu defines cultural diplomacy as soft power with three characteristics:

1. It has a strong ability to penetrate and spread;
2. Soft power guides hard power;
3. Soft power is something that people love to see and hear and find easy to accept…The most important thing about soft power is to make people like you. Behind this feeling of fondness lies the belief that you are offering them something good that can help enrich their knowledge, elevate their achievements…

A 2004 opinion piece in the English edition of People’s Daily mapped out the subtler approach of cultural diplomacy as a strategic component of a country’s overall diplomacy:

The cultural diplomacy, along with the political diplomacy and economic diplomacy, are regarded as three pillars for the Chinese diplomacy…The Chinese culture is to "go abroad" by insisting the government as a leading force…

This determination to "go abroad" culturally was reiterated in a 2005 People’s Daily opinion piece in a thinly veiled criticism of the United States:

The time for Chinese culture to "go global" in big strides has come. Economic globalization is not tantamount to cultural globalization; in other words, there is no, nor can there be, "globalized culture" under a single value system in the world.

As suggested in a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), declassified this past May, one way for Beijing to push its cultural diplomacy is to establish a global network of Confucius Institutes. Since the launch of a pilot program in 2004 in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, 160 such institutes have been created all over the world, including 13 in the United States.

With the stated goal of "promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching," Confucius Institutes worldwide are operated by China’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL). While there is no overt political or ideological element in the curriculum, NOCFL’s leadership is made up of top officials from 11 departments under the State Council, China’s cabinet. They include the minister of education, the vice minister of finance, the vice minister of foreign affairs, the deputy director of the state development and reform committee, and the deputy director of the information office of the State Council.

This Sunday ABC’s This Week featured the first debate in Iowa among all of the Republican candidates. As with every other similar event so far in the presidential campaign, this was less a debate than parallel press conferences; very few moments of interaction occurred between the candidates, and everyone seemed frustrated with their amount of face time.

George Stephanopoulos, the moderator, opened the event by confronting Mitt Romney with a robo-call paid for by the Sam Brownback campaign. The message highlighted Romney’s pro-choice history, but the former Massachusetts governor dismissed the calls as "desperate " and "negative,"--the back and forth between Brownback and Romney got a little testy. As Romney explains--in a somewhat peevish tone of voice--"I was pro, pro-choice; I am now pro-life.… I changed my position." He gets some support from the crowd when he admits to being tired of the "holier than thou " attitude of his opponents on the issue. When a statement Romney made about Rudy Giuliani’s stance on social issues is brought up, Romney backtracks a little, saying that the former New York City mayor should be allowed to voice his own thoughts, and Rudy gladly does so:

"I support the second amendment. … I clearly believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, though I do support domestic partnerships and still do. A contractual relationship. And I believe the best way we can have common ground in this debate that you’re hearing is if we put our emphasis on reducing abortions and increasing the number of adoptions, which is something I did as mayor of New York City. But I think ultimately that decision that has to be made is one that the government shouldn’t make."

In one of the odder moments of the debate, McCain tried to connect abortion to his main strength, national security, by saying that America’s approach to abortion "says very much what kind of a country we are in our respect for human life; whether it be here in the United States, or whether it be in China or Bangladesh or the Congo, or anywhere else in the world."

Ron Paul spoke about the war in Iraq much as he has in the past, announcing he would "Just come home. … We went in there illegally, we did not declare war, it’s lasting way too long. … We shouldn’t be there, we oughta just come home." The libertarian has a disproportionate amount of supporters in the audience; though he’s polling at just two percent, according to the ABC/Washington Post poll cited at the beginning of the debate, he definitely has more than two percent of the audience cheering for him. Rep. Duncan Hunter is given a chance to respond, and makes a strong case for the American presence in Iraq.

"I watched the Democrat debate. I watched them say, as my colleague has said, just bring them home, come home, and it was a race to see who could stampede for the exit the quickest. And you know something? The Marines in Anbar province, which is almost half of Iraq, have turned that situation around. They’ve brought the communities there fighting on our side against al Qaeda. [Massive cheers, easily louder than Paul’s defeatist friends.] Not a single Democrat candidate paused in their rush for the exit to say to our Marines, ‘Good job. You guys are fighting and achieving with blood, sweat, and tears what this country needs.’ We’ve got our best military leadership in Iraq right now; we’re standing up the Iraqi military, the 129 battalions, when they are stood up, reliable and battle ready, they rotate onto the battlefield they displace American heavy combat forces. That’s the right way to lead, not a stampede for the exits."

The response from the crowd was impressive and made Paul’s support seem minimal by comparison. The rest of the candidates touched on the topic: McCain warned that if we don’t get the job done right the first time, we’ll just have to go back; Giuliani mentioned that in the Democratic debate, not one of the candidates used the phrase "Islamic terrorism"; Romney broke out one of the best lines in the debate (and elicited some chuckles from the crowd) when he mocked Barack Obama’s foreign policy plan--"I had to laugh at what I saw Barak Obama do. In one week he went from saying he’s going to sit down for tea with our enemies, but he’s going to bomb our allies. He’s gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week."

The Confederate Yankee has posted an email from Col. Steven Boylan, Public Affairs Officer for General David Petraeus, announcing the results of the Army's investigation into the allegations made by Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

To your question: Were there any truth to what was being said by Thomas?

Answer: An investigation of the allegations were conducted by the command and found to be false. In fact, members of Thomas' platoon and company were all interviewed and no one could substantiate his claims.

As to what will happen to him?

Answer: As there is no evidence of criminal conduct, he is subject to Administrative punishment as determined by his chain of command. Under the various rules and regulations, administrative actions are not releasable to the public by the military on what does or does not happen.

In the absence of a single shred of corroborating evidence from the New Republic--names, dates, locations, etc.--and in the face of this strongly worded statement from the Army that the allegations were found to be false, there is no reason to believe any of Beauchamp’s claims are true. Even the New Republic has conceded that the central claim of the story is false, that the incident with the burned woman did not happen in Iraq, as Beauchamp had initially and repeatedly claimed, casting great doubt on the private’s credibility. But the New Republic stood by the rest of Beauchamp’s story, and yet produced nothing but their own assurances to support what remains of the soldier’s account. The military’s fact-checking process has produced a much different result. The New Republic promised that if “further substantive information” information came to light, they would share it with their readers--we wonder if the results of a military investigation will qualify.

Another day of digging into Scott Thomas Beauchamp's story reveals, as always, another reason or two to doubt the private's claims. First off, there's the report from FOB Falcon, courtesy of Matt Sanchez, that the Army's investigation into the claims made by TNR's Baghdad Diarist has now concluded. According to Sanchez, Beauchamp's allegations of misconduct have been

"refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false."

We are still working on getting something official. And we just heard from a reliable source that we should "stand by for a statement about to come from the Army saying their review of Beauchamp's story shows it to be a combination of complete fabrication and wild exaggeration."

In other news, we posted a note this morning from an individual who has been at Camp Buehring, where Beauchamp now claims the incident with the badly disfigured woman took place. We've withheld the name of that individual, but we have no reason to doubt his statement that if Beauchamp "saw a burned woman here [at Camp Buehring], then I would like to know where she is, because I haven't seen her in the whole 9 months."

Well, we heard that a lot from the guys at FOB Falcon, and despite TNR's repeated claims of corroboration, it turns out that all our sources were telling the truth--no such woman had ever been there. Now we are hearing the same from Camp Buehring. Confederate Yankee has even more from a PAO at the base:

We have received other media queries on the alleged incident, but have not been able to find anyone to back it up. There is not a police report or complaint filed on this incident during that timeframe. Right now it is considered to be a Urban Legend or Myth.

I am still researching the incident and will have to get back with you later with any new developments.

The story about the woman didn't "smell good" the first time we heard it. We have no reason to believe the result this time around will be any different, and we'll take the word of the good folks at Camp Buehring over Beauchamp's anonymous corroborating witnesses any day.

Other excellent coverage on Scottscam:
Hot Air
Dean Barnett
Powerline
Michelle Malkin
And check Memeorandum for the rest.

It's tradition that before each Congressional recess, House Republican leaders prepare recess briefing packets for their Members. The goal is to ensure that they're up-to-date when they head home, and have a quick summary of any important issues they may hear about while conducting events in their districts.

The WWS has received the recess briefing packets being distributed by leadership to Republican Members, which are now available online. The first thing you notice is that they are much longer and more thorough than any of recent vintage. So if some House Republican is exposed as uninformed on a key issue, it won't be for lack of reading material. (Similarly, if one is suffering insomnia, the cure is here.)

There are two briefing books--one entitled 'The War Against Radical Militant Islamists,' and another on all other issues. Together they total almost 80 pages of talking points, news articles, charts, and graphs.

The documents are pretty authoritative, distilling the key arguments that Republicans are now making regarding everything going on in the House. Since Iraq is far and away the central issue, I'll highlight just a few of the points made by Conference Chairman Adam Putnam and his team. In the document's introductory letter, Putnam notes the recent reports of success in Operation Phantom Thunder, and then says:

What makes these reports so striking is the fact that it was only in mid-June that General Petraeus received the full compliment of troops called for in the surge. It was at that point that U.S. forces began a new offensive against the terrorists. Now some reports suggest al-Qaeda is on the run in previously violence-ridden portions of the country.

We got som