I was hunting some stuff the other day and came across a document entitled Radical Responses to Radical Regimes: Evaluating Preemptive Counter-Proliferation. It was published in 1995. Interesting tidbits:

Numerous preemptive counter-proliferation strikes have taken place since 1940. Allied air forces and special operations forces destroyed German nuclear facilities and heavy water supplies that were an integral part of the Nazi A-bomb research effort. U.S. bombers also destroyed the most important Japanese nuclear research laboratory in Tokyo at the end of WWII. Other raids include: Iran versus Iraq in 1980, Israel versus Iraq in 1981, Iraq versus Iran with seven raids from 1984 to 1988, and the U.S.-led coalition versus Iraq in 1991.

Presidents contemplating a PCP action should realize that they may not know the entire scope of the enemy NBC or ballistic missile capabilities. Unfortunately, if an attack misses even a few such enemy weapons, they could cause tens of thousands of American casualties in retaliatory strikes. Even the relatively complete destruction and occupation of a country might not arrest its NBC and ballistic missile program entirely. Indeed, as former CIA Director Robert Gates has testified, once Iraq is left free to operate independently, he predicted that it will take no more than two years to return to the nuclear technology level it had achieved at the inception of the Gulf War.

Unfortunately, the certainty of a bloody conventional Korean War now, especially if made more dangerous and lethal by one or two North Korean nuclear weapons, outweighs the uncertain future risks created if the DPRK nuclear proliferation goes unchecked. Neither choice is positive, but the choice between jumping into war now, or taking a chance that it could be deterred, is not hard to make.

An interesting document, read the whole thing.

Since Iraq is all about oil and making Dick Cheney rich, why were all those Democrats applauding that Kerry and Edwards say they want to win there? Why would they applaud winning an illegal and unjustified war?

I just have to think the Deanites were squirming.

Wrote this in May, 2003, in a note to Democrats:

No. No "message." You need to to defend our nation. You need to want to defend our nation. You have to feel like our nation deserves to be defended. That isn't a message. Its a belief. And if you don't believe those things, your message can't be credible, no matter how good you are at faking sincerity.

Still appropriate today.

This is good news-bad news.

Catching bad guy (gal) good. "Floods" of middle eastern males coming over Rio Grande bad.

From my reading of the Michael Moore - Bill O'Reilly smackdown Drudge has, Michael Moore thinks that Saddam Hussein was okay as leader of Iraq because hte people did not revolt.

What an idiot. I have heard lots of folks on that side make that argument, and it is just silly. Because the people of Iraq revolted, more than once, and Saddam put down the revolts with force, using chemical weapons if necessary. So Moore seems to be saying because Saddam was ruthless enough to keep his opposition from succeeding, the US was not justified in removing him.

That's where the Left is today. Supporting the most brutal dictators because they are the most brutal dictators. Nice.

Here's your chance to participate in that crazy system we call capitalism! There is an ad on this page, over there on the left, in the sidebar, for a book called "America's Right Turn." Click on it, exchange your storehouse of value for a tangible good, and I act as a middleman and earn from the fruits of other's labor! America, what a country! Now click, click I say! And buy!

I'm going to have to say that I don't find it very surprising that USA Today decided they couldn't publish an Ann Coulter column. As Ann is asking (in all the radio and TV spots she is getting as a result of the spike), haven't they read her columns?

But even for someone who is a fan of Ms. Coulter's stuff, you can't read that column and think "this is going in the McPaper for sure." It's a little strong even for her usual. And she obviously knows that USA Today does not seek out controversy. She might have written her column a little differently for the customer that was paying for it. I think she is enjoying the fruits of being spiked more than she would have being published. She had to know they couldn't publish that column.

But "pie wagons"? That is excellent. I'll have to remember that for the future.

Airports in Turkey have been placed on the second highest terror alert level after officials received intelligence that the Al Qaeda (search) terror network may be planning Sept. 11-style attacks, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

But Jackson has the marquee, even on Fox.

Wow, did Andrew Sullivan evermore like the Democrat convention last night. It had Bill Clinton! Jimmy Carter lecturing on foreign policy! Jimmy Carter! And it was all great because they were all playing "against type," doing the stuff they wouldn't otherwise be expected to do. You know, all the stuff they complained about - politicizing 9/11, and all that.

The same kind of stuff that Sullivan has preemptively dismissed as "lies" because Rick Santorum is not the keynote speaker at the Republican convention.

The man is decidedly unserious. Though his fund raising drive is well timed! Having hoovered conservative pockets, he'll have a bunch of new liberal friends to hit up.

A little while back pittspilot posted on a David Warren column, and it generated a good discussion. One of my problems with the column was that Warren made the point that it was important to properly identify the enemy in the War on Terror, then wasn't terribly helpful in that identification. Some interpreted his column to mean that the enemies were Wahabis, or more broadly, Muslims. I wrote in the comments the following:

I wouldn't characterize our enemy by being Muslim, however. The problem is Islamo-fascism - the combination of Islam with the fascist states that most Muslims live in. Muslims in democracies are not really the problem.

This is of a piece with the latter half of the 20th Century. Radical ideology married to fascist state power is a problem for the rest of the world. National Socialism, a divine Emperor, in Italy, Fascism itself, and throughout the Cold War, Communism were not dangerous because they were beliefs, but because they had state power.

And since the problem is actually similar to what we've faced before, the solution is similar to what we've faced before - breaking the fascist states, either head on like WWII or by wearing them down and beating them ideologically like the Cold War.

In short, I guess, the problem with Islamo-fascism isn't really the Islamic part, but the fascist part.

So I like the article by Michael Ledeen at NRO today quite a bit. It is chock full of quotable goodness, but I will try to keep the excerpting as little as necessary:

All of a sudden everybody's asking, "Who are we fighting anyway?" It's an interesting question, but it's not nearly as important as many of the debaters believe....

You see where I'm going, surely. The debate is a trap, because it diverts our attention and our energies from the main thing, which is winning the war. It's an intellectual amusement, and it gets in our way. As that great Machiavellian Vince Lombardi reminds us, winning is the only thing.

That's why the public figure who has best understood the nature of the war, and has best defined our enemy, is George W. Bush. Of all people! He had it right from the start: We have been attacked by many terrorist groups and many countries that support the terrorists. It makes no sense to distinguish between them, and so we will not. We're going after them all....

He says the way to win the war is to liberate the Middle East from the tyrants who now govern it and sponsor terrorism.

And that's exactly right. There are plenty of terrorists out there who aren't Islamists. (There are even some suicide terrorists who have been forced into it; Coalition commanders are reporting the discovery of hands chained to steering wheels in suicide vehicles.) But all the terror masters are tyrants. Saddam didn't have any religious standing, nor do the Assads, but they are in the front rank of the terror masters. Ergo: Defeat the tyrants, win the war.

Yes, exactly. If we have to go after them all, then whether Iraq or Iran is not the right question. It is how to take on Iraq and Iran (and all the rest), with the resources and allies we have at our disposal. That's an entirely different question - one that George W. Bush clearly understands. Even if he doesn't have the complete answer for it, he's light years ahead of Kerry, who doesn't even recognize that it is a question, much less the question.

One more quick quote from the Ledeen article:

Machiavelli, Chapter Two: If you are victorious, people will always judge the means you used to have been appropriate.

Reading bits and pieces of the 9/11 commission report (haven't read the entirety, yet) and especially others readings of it, it seems that the "Iraq as the central battle of the war on terror" idea forwarded by the administration holds up rather well. One of the better analyses I've read is Byron York's at NRO. Yet it is still kind of convoluted, in part, I think, because York is attempting to score points on the war's opponents with it - the teaser link from the NRO front page reads, "Will Bush�s critics correct themselves about Iraq and al Qaeda?"

But there is a very solid and simple narrative about Iraq and Al Qaeda that can be told without the "in your face, Richard Clarke" stuff. And this story is easily supported with stuff that we already know - stuff that doesn't require secret sources.

The key commission finding on this is that bin Laden had sought safe haven in Iraq in 1997 when his relationship with the Taliban was a little rocky but was rebuffed, or at least got no answer, from Iraq. And then in 1998, Hussein offered safe haven to bin Laden, but bin Laden, cozy in Afghanistan, turned down the offer.

This is of a piece of the commission's conclusion that there was no collaborative, operational relationship for committing attacks on the US. But as for the war on terror, it is very revealing.

Baghdad has been a great place for terrorists on the run since Carlos the Jackal stayed there for a while in 1976. Other terrorists who had their home bases turned inhospitable found their welcome there, guys who had targeted the US, like Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal. So it would not be unreasonable to think that Al Qaeda, pushed out of Afghanistan, might seek safehaven in Iraq, and might be granted it. Again, the commission report states that in 1999 Richard Clarke thought this a likely effect of using U2's for surveillance over Afghanistan - writing that "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad."

Zarqawi's arrival in Iraq shows that this is exactly what happened - Al Qaeda members, pushed out of Afghanistan, went to Baghdad. Zarqawi started operating right away, coordinating the murder of a USAID official in Jordan from Baghdad. And many think that Zarqawi is now the top operational Al Qaeda leader (PDF).

So the very simple narrative is this: the top Al Qaeda operational leader fled from Afghanistan to Iraq, just as the counter-terrorism folks thought would happen, and as history has shown would happen. And that makes it the central battle in the war on terror.

And I get to take the California Bar. My head is so full that it might just explode.

The good news is that I get to miss the Democratic Convention. It's a sacrifice I willingly make.

Wretchard points out the problems with feckless allies, and writes:

The main question facing coalition partners USA and Australia is whether to keep working with the Indonesian and the Philippine governments which seem unwilling or unable to face the forces that are slowly tearing them apart; or prepare for a scenario that accepts the failure of these two states.

I think there is a bigger question than that. The Phillipines have moved from being strong allies - I think that President Arroyo was the first to offer help to the US in the War on Terror - to being worse than weak allies. Not only have they withdrawn their troops, but they provided money directly to the terrorists. The result has been a significantly worse security environment in Iraq.

President Bush said early on you are either with us, or with the terrorists. There is no middle ground. We need to let The Phillipines know that they are on the wrong side.

Andrew Sullivan endorses Kerry. What a surprise!

UPDATE: Allah said July 30.

I noted just 4 days ago that John Kerry didn't list "National Security" as an issue on his website (I noticed that months ago about all of the other candidates except President Bush). Well, they've been redoing the site, and in addition to clearing away a bunch of Sandy Berger and Joe Wilson stuff, they added "National Security" as an issue.

Welcome to the party, pal!

Just got the largest spam attack yet - over 800 comments.

Thank heavens for MT-Blacklist.

Seriously.

As SGT Stryker says, "wait a minute, it's Two-Thousand F***ing Four! Jesus, why am I reading about people from the Clinton Adminsitration?"

Shocking but true!

We were flipping through the on-demand offerings on the digital cable the other day, and came across a movie and I didn't want to commit to spending $5 to watch it right then. Mrs. Blaster looked it up on the Internet and found some people who thought it was very funny. So I put it on the Netflix queue. Boy, was the Internet wrong.

Heed my warning: Evil Alien Conquerors is among the worst movies ever made. Don't fall for any reviews that say otherwise!