196 articles
It may be dawning on some Democrats that letting the tail wag the dog has consequences. The left-wing blogosphere demanded that Democrats mount a filibuster against Judge Alito's confirmation, and naturally (see here), Sen. John Kerry led the charge. The result was a front-page headline, "Failed…
Investor flight is a big worry for Hamas, who now must grapple with the economic consequences of their policies. Before the recent election, the Palestinian Stock Exchange was very bullish. In 2005, the Al-Quds index of the exchange produced gains of nearly 310 percent in 2005, putting its…
CALL IT the war of the State of the Union Address. As you read this, the final battle in that war is underway, with the winners to be determined tonight when the president goes before a joint session of Congress and assorted dignitaries, and the nation, to report on the state of the Union. More…
BRITAIN HAS A PROBLEM with Islam. The British Muslim community is mainly comprised of Indo-Pakistani Muslims. Their mosques are dominated by radical Sunnis, representing Pakistan-based jihad movements, and Saudi-backed Wahhabis. Britain does not want to tackle this problem directly, for a reason…
From Stephen Hayes: A follow-up on Dan McKivergan's post on Russia and Iran. Dan wrote of the worrisome prospect of the U.S. putting its trust in Putin on Iran: "We better have a Plan B if Moscow's recent past is prologue. " The examples he and Mort Zuckerman provide are deeply disturbing. There…
With Hamas' election success, I dusted off the following piece I wrote for Philanthropy magazine in December 1998 on terrorist fundraising inside the United States: Bankrolling Terror Inside the world of terrorist fundraising On December 12, 1992, Israeli Army Sergeant Yuval Tutanji and two other…
Frequent Weekly Standard contributor Dan Twining emails his thoughts on one of the most underreported economic stories out there. While China gets most of the attention on the business pages, India has quietly positioned itself to be a dominant player in the 21st century world economy. If fact,…
"We saw Howard Dean earlier in your interview say that the eavesdropping program conducted under the supervision of Lieutenant General Hayden by the National Security Agency, entirely staffed by career employees -- that that somehow is pernicious, intolerably is kind of domestic spying on political…
ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 6, 2005, Radio Free Asia (RFA) received a frantic call for help from a resident of Dongzhou village, near the port city of Shanwei, in the prosperous southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The caller told RFA that hundreds of paramilitary police had moved into the area and…
THE PLAN WAS THIS: When the visiting German delegation arrived at the White House on January 13, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Bush would spend the first 30 minutes alone, sans interpreter, in the Oval Office. "Her English is just okay," said one European diplomat. Afterward, the remaining…
ON OCTOBER 21, A new message came out of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the land of Wahhabi Islam, with its commitment to financing jihad, its public beheadings, and its total subordination of women. But rather than the usual extremist preaching, promoting the bloody terrorist acts of Abu Musab…
Her Majesty's Spymaster
"POSTERITY WILL NOT SEE such a talent for a century to come." So said Josef Haydn, shortly after Mozart's death at age 35 in 1791. Haydn might safely have said posterity would not see such a talent for two centuries to come--and counting.
LET US STATE THE OBVIOUS: The new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a godsend. The Americans, the Europeans, and even the Russians are now treating clerical Iran's 20-year quest to develop nuclear weapons more seriously. Ahmadinejad's inflamed rhetoric against…
Immodest Proposal
Nicholas Miraculous
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE moments when you realize Congress is not an altogether serious body. There have been others. One that comes to mind is the frantic effort several decades ago to stop the National Football League from blacking out home games on local television (unless stadium tickets have…
IN 1979, WOODY ALLEN made a movie called Manhattan in which a 43-year-old man has an affair with a 17-year-old high-schooler--a relationship that is welcomed and accepted by his friends. In 1986, Woody Allen made a movie called Hannah and Her Sisters in which a man has an affair with his wife's…
Mencken: The American Iconoclast
IN BEYOND Good and Evil, Nietzsche rejoices that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, "the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste . . . still speaks to us" and warns that "alas, some day all this will be gone."
Executing Laws
FELLOW NAME OF PRUFROCK used to measure his life in coffee spoons, but I am beginning to measure mine in favorite old restaurants that go out of business. Another such establishment, The Berghoff in Chicago, bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. It had been in existence for 107 years, and now the…
AT HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING FOR the new post of director of national intelligence, John Negroponte pledged to keep open lines of communication with Congress. He also explained that his experience as the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would help him meet the…
AT MIDNIGHT ON JANUARY 31 Alan Greenspan will hop into bed for his first worry-free sleep in almost two decades. So he told me during a recent visit to London at the invitation of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who credits Greenspan with persuading him to grant the Bank of England…
New York
IN 2003, AT THE height of his influence in Washington, the ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff represented seven Indian tribes, among them the Mississippi Choctaw, the Louisiana Chitimacha, the Louisiana Coushatta, the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla, and the Saginaw Chippewa. Each tribe operated a casino.…
Books in Brief
IN THE WAKE OF THE 9/11 ATTACKS, President Bush famously referred to Islam as a "religion of peace." To display solidarity with this notion, politicians of all rank in both America and Europe hurriedly made their way to the nearest mosque to show that, in spite of the destruction of the World Trade…
PRESIDENT BUSH is a book reader. Last year, he read three books on George Washington and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave him a book on the peace talks after World War I entitled Paris 1919. This year, he's delved into the new biography of Mao Zedong with simple title Mao.
If so, we better have a Plan B if Moscow's recent past is prologue. A little over a year ago, the European Union slapped an arms embargo on the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan for its refusal to allow a legitimate investigation into the shooting of hundreds of protestors there last May. But…
David Brooks, in today's New York Times (sub. req'd), writes: If the Europeans refuse to isolate Hamas, if they forgive radicalism, they will destroy this budding cycle of accountability. They will reward the old revolutionary mentality. They will stop the momentum that makes this the most…
The Pentagon will soon release its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) that will include details on the Army's force restructuring plan. Senior defense officials have resisted calls to permanently increase overall Army troop strength. They have argued that changes in the so-called "tooth-to-tail…
Gerald Baker of The Times (London) thinks so. If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world's greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from…
From today's New York Times: President Bush and the Chinese government both declared their full support on Thursday for a Russian proposal to allow Iran to operate civilian nuclear facilities as long as Russia and international nuclear inspectors are in full control of the fuel. Mr. Bush's explicit…
NBC'S lame-duck series Book of Daniel kicked up a lot of controversy during its brief run, but perhaps not for the right reasons.
''Right now, things just don't make sense." - John Gamelli, January 19, 2006
IN PHYSICS, the law of entropy states that all systems tend toward increasing disorder. Which means, roughly, that the universe is always getting messier. In politics, the Law of Interest Group Entropy states that all advocacy groups tend toward ridiculousness. Which means, roughly, that no matter…
It was late 2002, and governor-elect Mitt Romney of Massachusetts had a request. He asked a top aide to go over his campaign stump speeches and make a list of all the promises he had made to voters. The aide found that Romney had made 93 separate promises while campaigning, and another 7 in the…
The Swedish diplomat is back in the news lecturing everyone on Iran, North Korea and world disarmament. Naturally, he uses the Iraq War as an example of his disarmament efforts being short-circuited. In a speech hosted by the Arms Control Association, he bemoans the "hyping and spinning that takes…
The answer will determine if Hamas changes its terror-bombing stripes and engages in real peace efforts. But the fastest way that will happen, Middle East expert Dennis Ross says, is if the U.S. and Europe "stick together" in demanding that Hamas reject terrorism and accept Israel's right to exist…
From USA Today: The U.S. military cited incidents of insurgent infighting in a rare public description of a split: • At least six ranking members of al-Qaeda in Iraq have been assassinated by Sunni insurgents or tribal gunmen in separate incidents since September, Zahner said. The killings are…
ELIAS ROHAS is a garbage hauler in Seattle. He works for Rabanco/Allied Waste Industries and his beat is Magnolia, the city's tony westernmost neighborhood. According to the Seattle Times, Rohas has been on the job 14 years. He slowly cruises Magnolia streets, using his truck's mechanical arm to…
CANADIANS SENT a message to the political establishment in Ottawa on Monday night that will reverberate for years. The message turned out to be different than either of the two major parties expected or wanted, neither an outright rejection of one nor an embrace of the other.
Senator Clinton, who not long ago claimed she was duped into voting for the Iraq War resolution, is now opposed to the NSA operation. She says monitoring al Qaeda communications should be done in a "lawful way," but doesn't know if the current spy program broke any laws. I'm sure General Michael…
As efforts continue to stop a nuclear-armed Iran and with a new Russian proposal out there, this recent Weekly Standard piece should be kept in mind by U.S. and EU-3 policymakers. Of course, this assumes that the collective goal is an Iran with no nuclear weapons. If nothing else, Roberta…
From USA Today: [Retired Army officer Andrew] Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy....
The Road to Euro Serfdom found this nugget from Britain's Sun: HUNDREDS of EU politicians and welfare officials enjoyed an extravagant weekend junket - to discuss poverty. Britain's pensions minister James Plaskitt was among 250 delegates at Villach in Austria. They ate gourmet meals and many…
"This is the first time an Iranian official makes military threats in a public statement on Tehran's recent disagreements with the West," reports Haaretz. [I]f Europe does not act wisely with the Iranian nuclear portfolio and it is referred to the UN Security Council and economic or air travel…
IN 1999, Henry Ford bested Bill Gates as Fortune magazine's "Businessman of the Century." Ford didn't invent the car, but he revolutionized the mass production process that made cars affordable for everyone.
IRAN KICKED OFF the new year by announcing that it would resume nuclear fuel research. Western governments are scrambling in the wake of this announcement, with no evident overarching strategy for preventing the regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. The United States and E.U. countries are intent…
William Kristol made the following remarks on Fox News' "The Big Story" yesterday: "I think he's [President Bush} got the authority and I think he has an extremely strong legal case.... Al Qaeda released an audio of bin Laden Friday saying operations were being planned against us here in the United…
IS THE New York Times a law unto itself? When the Times published its December 16 exposé of the secret National Security Agency electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications, reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau noted that they had granted anonymity to the "nearly a dozen current…
As a Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Kerry had his staff remove a blog from the Kerry for President web site blogroll because of these comments. But Sen. Kerry now blogs on the same site he once banished because in those days a connection to the site was a political liability for a…
"Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party defeated the long entrenched Liberal Party in Canadian elections on Monday," the New York Times reports. "A Conservative victory is a striking turn in the country's politics and is likely to improve Canada's strained relations with the Bush…
IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME since I sat opposite the CEO of a major oil company at a seminar in which I suggested that shareholders should know how much they are paying the CEO to run what is, after all, their company. He was more than a little annoyed. If everyone knew how much he earned, kidnappers…
Kin-ming Liu, former Washington-based columnist for Hong Kong's Apple Daily, writes in to the Worldwide Standard with some suggestions. He states: "The time is now to place Hong Kong on the front burner of President Bush's democracy enlargement agenda. The administration of Chief Executive Donald…
Here are two pieces worth reading. Philip Sherwell reports in the Sunday Telegraph that, Iran has secretly extended the uranium enrichment plant at the centre of the international controversy over its resumption of banned nuclear research earlier this month, satellite imagery has revealed.... The…
THREE YEARS AGO, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack signed a law banning all human cloning (both for research and for reproduction). But he has just shifted his position 180 degrees, calling upon the state's legislature to legalize human cloning for biomedical research. But rather than just admit he was…
With Congressional hearings set and as today's front-page New York Times story indicates, the NSA spying controversy isn't going to fade away. Opponents of the program claim the president broke the law, while supporters say the president has the constitutional and statutory authority to conduct the…
THERE'S HARDLY EVER A DULL moment in South Korean politics. Awash in frequent and stupendous scandals, Koreans rarely find the time to step back and take the long view. Looking back on 2005, which defining event will Koreans remember, say, fifty or a hundred years from now?
ON THE MORNING PRESIDENT BUSH nominated Samuel Alito to become the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court, I was sitting on an airplane next to a joke-teller, one of those people whose idea of travel is the chance to pass along to strangers all the latest gags. "So," he began, patting his jovial…
An unrepentant rogue state with a history of sponsoring terrorists seeks to develop weapons of mass destruction. The United States tries to work with European allies to deal with the problem peacefully, depending on International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and United Nations sanctions. The…
THIS TIME LAST YEAR, Tony Blair became the first European head of government since Adolf Hitler to abolish foxhunting.
THE PR FOR STEVEN SPIELBERG'S Munich has been deftly engineered. First, the film blends pro-Israel romance, moral equivalence with the Palestinians, and artistic pretension in just the right proportions to stir controversy among the chattering/blogging classes. Second, Munich makes a great pretense…
ABOUT THE ALITO HEARINGS, one thing is certain: If it had been the Concerned Alumni of Princeton that was up for confirmation, the nomination wouldn't even make it out of the Judiciary Committee. Democrats led by Sen. Edward Kennedy portrayed CAP as hostile to minorities and to coeducation and thus…
Queen of the Underworld
MILTON HIMMELFARB, a leading American Jewish thinker, died last week at the age of 87. I think he may well have been the leading Jewish thinker in America.
The Successor
Piano-Playing Butcher?
HAS THE AMERICAN WITHDRAWAL from Iraq begun? The Defense Department has announced troop reductions there amounting to 29,000 soldiers almost immediately and has dropped broad hints that another 31,000 will come out by the end of 2006, "conditions permitting."
Scandal Season
CONGRESSWOMAN KAY GRANGER WAS PRACTICING a stump speech before an audience of big-time Republican donors. Her district, anchored by the bustling city of Fort Worth, is experiencing a host of problems linked to illegal immigration: day laborers loitering in strip malls, an influx of Spanish-speaking…
OF ALL THE SMEARS AIMED at Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, perhaps none was more demagogic than the attack on his opinion in a case involving the body search of a 10-year-old girl during a Pennsylvania drug bust. Leading up to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, the Alliance for Justice, a…
Military Power
The former secretary of state, in today's Sunday Times of London, ... On troop strength in Iraq: "There were enough troops to defeat the army. (But that) was only part of the battle. The difficult part was taking control of a very large country with 25m people and you have just taken out the whole…
MORE THAN TWO MONTHS AGO, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra requested 40 documents captured in postwar Iraq as he sought better understand the activities of the Iraqi regime in the months and years before the U.S. invasion in March 2003. On Friday afternoon, the Office of the…
From the Jerusalem Post (January 20, 2006): Former US president Jimmy Carter expressed optimism Friday over Hamas's participation in next week's Palestinian parliamentary elections. Carter told CNN in an interview that although Hamas were "so-called terrorists," so far "there have been no…
The Washington Post's David Ignatius is always a must read if you want to know some of the foreign policy thinking percolating inside an administration. Today, he writes: They want to avoid, if possible, a situation that appears to be a Bush vs. Iran confrontation. The administration decided last…
The Act's (S. 333) purpose is "to hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition to democracy in Iran." It would tighten sanctions on the current regime in Tehran and, among other things, support "efforts by the Iranian people to exercise…
From Reuters: Putin and Blatter accuse EU of imperialism Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:31 PM GMT MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Sunday accused the European Union of "imperial" aggression in soccer. "As a FIFA chief I have a big problem. The EU…
BY NOW, there can be no doubt that al Qaeda's message to the West has been distilled down to two simple concepts. The first is that the terrorist group can be appeased. The second is that, if they aren't appeased, Westerners face grave consequences. The latest Osama bin Laden audiotape, released on…
AFTER TWO YEARS of patient diplomacy with Iran, representatives of the E.U.-3--Germany, France, and Great Britain--recently acknowledged that their negotiations with the Islamic Republic had reached a "dead end." Spurred by Teheran's decision to restart work at its enrichment facility in Natanz,…
Detroit
FORGET MAGAZINES AND EDITORIAL PAGES. The only endorsements that really matter in the GOP House leadership contest are those from the members themselves, especially the members with clout. Two such Republicans are Jim Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Mike Pence, head of…
Presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton has some tough words on preventing Iran from getting nukes. "We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons," she said. "In order to prevent that…
See here for BBC translation of bin Laden's remarks.
Victoria Toensing in today's Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece (sub. req'd) that takes on critics of the Bush administration's NSA surveillance program. She points out, among other things, the folly of two of the most often heard arguments peddled by critics: 1) you can always go back and…
Yesterday, the Bush administration went a step further in tying top Syrian officials to the insurgency in Iraq. In his daily press briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan stated: We remain deeply concerned about Syria's destablizing behavior in the Middle East and its continued support for…
BEFORE HIS UNTIMELY DEMISE in Damadola, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar--a man known better among both jihadists and intelligence agencies as Abu Khabab al-Masri--was one of the most reclusive members of the al Qaeda leadership. Despite having been identified as a senior member of the Egyptian Islamic…
A MEMORIAL SERVICE for former senator Eugene J. McCarthy was held last Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, and former president Bill Clinton was there to eulogize him. This was not surprising: President Clinton will probably be present to eulogize every other boomer icon, whenever…
THE REVELATION that Saddam Hussein's Iraq trained thousands of Islamic terrorists has important ramifications for European counterterrorism efforts. According to officials, one of the groups trained in Iraq prior to the war was al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate, the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and…
Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post has an interesting piece on Iran here. But Iran is not Libya, Iraq, or North Korea. It does not consider itself a pariah state, nor is it as self-isolated from the world. Though an oil exporter, Iran must import 40 percent of its refined fuel from abroad. Cutting…
A friend of the Worldwide Standard sends along some thoughts on the recent op-ed piece, "The Real Choice in Iraq," penned by President Carter's national security advisor. He writes: In his January 8, 2006 op-ed in the Washington Post, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in enumerating his criticisms of the Bush…
Eric Lichtblau's piece, "2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim," in today's New York Times reports on a high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and…
THE HEARINGS on John Roberts's and Sam Alito's nominations to the Supreme Court featured a Latin phrase most people hear only in connection with Supreme Court confirmations: stare decisis. Stare decisis is the legal doctrine holding that in general, an issue once decided should stay decided, and…
From the Associated Press: LONDON, England -- There is a "very high" probability that a terrorist group will strike using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said in comments published Tuesday. "I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of…
FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS children have gathered on the South Lawn of the White House on the Monday after Easter to roll Easter eggs across the yard and meet the Easter Bunny. Seemingly few (if any) Washingtonians have ever tried to exploit the annual White House Easter Egg Roll for political…
After exposing yet another top-secret program, the New York Times is now doing its best to portray the program as not having much intelligence value. Today's front-page story, "Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends," is the first of what will undoubtedly be a steady stream of other…
THIS MAY BE THE YEAR in which we get some proof that we should be careful what we wish for. The chorus of those demanding that we correct what have come to be called "imbalances" is rising to a decibel level at which it might actually affect policy.
HOW SHOULD WE CELEBRATE the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, who was born in Boston on January 17, 1706? Today, we as a society may be unsure of the answer. But as recently as the 1920s, millions of Americans were quite sure. They honored Franklin by publicly extolling the virtue of thrift, a…
Al Gore is back in the news attacking President Bush's counterterrorist policies. But perhaps Gore's actions as vice president with regard to arming Iran should also be scrutinized. From the October 13, 2000 New York Times: The 1995 agreement allowed Moscow to fulfill existing sales contracts for…
As Amb. Paul Bremer reveals in his book, there was tension within the Bush administration on the issue of troop strength in Iraq while he was in Baghdad. A Washington Post piece, "Rice's Rebuilding Plan Hits Snag," yesterday indicated that the tension over troop levels remains. On Nov. 11,…
THE POST-SHARON ERA began abruptly on January 5, when the 77-year-old prime minister of Israel suffered a massive stroke while visiting his beloved ranch in the northern Negev. By the time Sharon reached the hospital, the bleeding in his brain had already made a return to government for the true…
Benjamin Franklin Unmasked
GIVEN THE PASTING PRESIDENT BUSH has taken over the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, one might have assumed the president's critics were in agreement about how to prevent such disasters. But for years now, the left has been deeply ambivalent about the most logical and time-tested…
WHILE AMERICAN POLITICIANS SPENT THE last months of 2005 arguing over the U.S. military presence in Iraq, their counterparts in the Netherlands were debating the future of the Dutch contingent in Afghanistan. At issue is The Hague's pledge to deploy slightly over 1,000 Dutch troops to the restive…
Martha Washington
Active Liberty
IT'S CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. In fact, it's more than conventional wisdom. It's an article of faith among the enlightened: There was no connection, at least no significant connection, between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Tehran Rising
Concerning Cyprus
The 8:55 to Baghdad
IN A WORLD OF AMERICAN preponderance, European integration, and Asian ascent, it is sometimes hard to take Russia seriously as a great power. In many respects, the country has been in steady decline since the end of the Cold War. Its population is shrinking. Life expectancy is falling. It cannot…
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character…
WHAT IS IT ABOUT EVEN the slightest dissent from Darwin's theory of natural selection that drives liberal elites (and even some conservative elites) bonkers? In the 1920s, in the days of the Scopes trial, it was the fact that anyone could believe the story of Genesis in a literal way that offended…
"THIS IS A REPUBLICAN scandal," Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace in December. Wallace had asked Reid about his relationship with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who last week pleaded guilty, in two separate investigations, to five counts of mail…
Editor's Note: Harvey Mansfield, one of America's leading political scientists and a widely published author, will deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most…
Books in Brief
WHAT IF THE CIA OR FBI should catch wind of an imminent plot to blow an American airliner out of the sky? "Should the government disclose terrorist threats to the public and let passengers make their own decisions about how to react?" Not all that many years ago, the New York Times editorial page…
Upton Sinclair's Ethics
VENICE IS A TOWN, and Italy is a country, where the quality of the panettone is of greater concern than the quality of the nation's central banker. When Italy's central-banker-for-life was forced to resign amid charges of corruption in mid-December, no one save some politicians and the financial…
Michael Schrage in today's Washington Post has an interesting piece, "Use Every Article In The Arsenal," related to this January 10, 2006 Worldwide Standard post: Many liberals want to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, derail the current NSA surveillance operation tracking terrorist communications to…
From Agence France Presse: January 15, 2006 Sunday US must be willing to take military action against Iran: McCain Agence France Presse: Washington should be prepared to take military action if necessary against Iran, a senior US lawmaker said Sunday, calling the standoff over Tehran's nuclear…
The "monsters" were Saddam's Baathist thugs, reports Lewis M. Simons in the January National Geographic, and the baby was unearthed in one of the many mass graves discovered in Iraqi deserts since the March 2003 invasion. Simons went to Iraq to report on Camp Slayer, where scientists examine the…
It's easy to forget that the resolution authorizing force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait barely passed Congress. It's easy to forget that Iraq had passed frequent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections designed to ensure its compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or…
Evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime trained foreign terrorists surfaced soon after coalition forces entered Iraq. And, as this Wall Street Journal editorial explains, more evidence has mounted since. U.S. Marines entered Iraq's Salman Pak in early April 2003. Here's how Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks…
While al Qaeda plots attacks on Americans, the political Left in the U.S. plots the impeachment of President Bush. The ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, demands a special committee be formed to "investigate impeaching" the president, and today he offers "kudos to…
PICK YOUR STATISTIC. He had 694 career goals, 1,193 assists, and 1,887 total points in the regular season--making him the National Hockey League's second all-time leading scorer, behind only Wayne Gretzky--plus 109 goals, 186 assists, and 295 points in the playoffs. He appeared in 15 NHL All-Star…
From AP: The British, French and German foreign ministers said Thursday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program had reached a ''dead end'' and the Islamic republic should be referred to the U.N. Security Council.
From today's New York Times: The story told by the two Iraqi guerrillas cut to the heart of the war that Iraqi and American officials now believe is raging inside the Iraqi insurgency. In October, the two insurgents said in interviews, a group of local fighters from the Islamic Army gathered for an…
"The Bush administration, working intensely to galvanize international pressure on Iran, has secured a guarantee from Russia that it will not block U.S. efforts to take Tehran's nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council," the Washington Post reports. "Still, Bush administration officials who spoke…
ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez's Christian-socialist cant drifted into anti-Semitism. "The world is for all of us," he said, "then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendents of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendents of the same ones that kicked Bolivar…
THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.
The Vice President made the following Iran related comments today in an interview on the Tony Snow Show: "Do you have any doubt that they're trying to build up a nuclear weapons program?" VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think it's pretty clear that that's their objective. If what they're really interested in…
Vice President Cheney made the following comments today on Saddam-al Qaeda links in an interview on the Tony Snow Show: Q Mr. Vice President, you have been spending a lot of time in recent days talking about the war on terror and how important it is to take it seriously. The Weekly Standard over…
As former judge and Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano explained: [In the early 1970s] I was an officer of an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and this was an organization that sought to involve the opinion of the alumni in the governance of Princeton more than was being…
Tom Joscelyn has the story here. More information on the GSPC may be found here.
From an editorial in today's Investor's Business Daily: The Dots Connect Terrorism: If a trove of documents proved Saddam's Iraq served as a training ground for al Qaida-connected terrorists, shouldn't Congress want to know about it? Shouldn't the administration be making the most of it? [The…
SKEPTICS of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda appear prepared to argue that even if Saddam did have substantial connections to Ansar al Islam, the GSPC, and the Sudanese Islamic Army, these relations do not constitute ties to al Qaeda. But unless one is prepared to engage in an extremely legalistic parsing…
Many liberals want to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, derail the current NSA surveillance operation tracking terrorist communications to the U.S., and remain outraged at U.S. covert "propaganda" efforts in Iraq -- Sen. Kennedy has called such efforts "a devious scheme." On this point, Reuel Gerecht…
From a December 3, 2001 USA Today piece>: Saddam, under intense international scrutiny after the Gulf War, also had strong ties to Khartoum, and Iraqi intelligence was well represented in the stew of Islamic radicals, insurrectionists and foreign agents pouring through the city. "We were convinced…
Will Iran be referred to the UN Security Council or will China and Russia thwart real action? BBC News reports that, Iran has removed international seals from a nuclear facility and will begin research there in the coming hours. The move ends a two-year suspension of research, and could result in…
One revealing anecdote from Ambassador Bremer's book, My Year in Iraq, involves West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller. On September 23, 2003, Bremer briefed the Senate Democratic caucus on Iraq. I started to explain why the supplemental appropriation was important by noting "the lessons of history,"…
The top presidential envoy to Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, Ambassador Paul Bremer, is out with his new book, My Year in Iraq. What's clear from his memoir is that there were deep divisions among Bush officials -- particularly between Bremer and Sec. Rumsfeld -- on the issue of U.S. troop levels…
Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the DLC in Washington, DC, wrote the following today on his blog, BullMooseblog.com: Intelligence Design [I] continue to believe that the NSA eavesdropping program was just swell. After hearing the various arguments pro and con on the controversial program, the…
IN HIS END-OF-THE-YEAR COLUMN, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne included this message from an irate conservative reader: "Most liberals and some Democrats hate this president and will do anything to bring him down, including siding with terrorists against the president." Noting that the same…
UKRAINE is the West writ small. Its confrontation with Russia over energy supplies, during the course of which Vladimir Putin gave "cold war" a new definition, is a warning to major energy-consuming countries that their long-term prosperity is in the hands of very dangerous people.
Virginia's Gerard Alexander has an insightful piece in today's Chicago Sun-Times on the divide between European elites and average European citizens. Why are politics so different in Europe and the United States, considering that the two have wealthy economies and share a lot of cultural roots? Do…
This Wall Street Journal editorial explains why. Some critics have argued that the surveillance now at issue could have been conducted within the confines of FISA. But that doesn't appear to be true. FISA warrants are similar to criminal warrants in that they require a showing of "probable…
There are many questions contained in the 9-11 Commission report that remain unanswered. For example, page 66 of the report states: In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an…
Just a thought but Bush administration officials may want to emphasize victory in Iraq a bit more and troop withdrawals a little less.
DNC chair Howard Dean isn't about to let a war get in the way of playing politics. On the DNC web site, -- see here (scroll down a bit) -- you will find a picture of a grinning Dean standing next to a large stack of Freedom of Information Act requests with the caption: Shortly after the New York…
"Hundreds of millions of pounds of equipment was imported into the African country over a three-year period before the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 and has since disappeared," according to The Guardian. The paper has been reporting daily on the contents of a leaked European…
From today's New York Times. Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago. The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's…
NEXT WEEK, Angela Merkel arrives in Washington to meet with President Bush for the first time in her new role as chancellor of Germany. As the Atlantic Times put it, she is "the most powerful woman in the German-speaking region since Maria Theresa (1717-1780)." The visit is long overdue.
AT THE 1972 OLYMPICS, 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists. As the rest of the world continued playing their games, Israel mourned. In the coming years Israel would set out to kill those responsible for the attacks and individuals who would plan, supply, and…
Abdul-Halim Khaddam has more tough words for his former boss, Bashar Assad. Khaddam, who was deeply involved in the Syrian presence in Lebanon, said Assad's ''mistakes'' on the domestic and international front had weakened the Syrian regime beyond repair to the point where ''it can no longer reform…
Madeleine Albright, William Cohen and William Perry and other former government officials met with the president today to confer on Iraq. This may be a good time to review the Clinton administration's case against Saddam Hussein. Some highlights: * The New York Times reported that at a November 14…
Policy Review has an interesting piece available only on its website, policyreview.org. Its author, Tony Corn, has a unique perspective on the "Global War on Terrorism," having served in U.S. embassies in Bucharest, Moscow, and Paris and at the U.S. Missions to the EU and to NATO in Brussels. The…
With a belligerent North Korea on its doorstep, Tokyo announces that it will jointly develop with the United States a sea-based interceptor missile for a missile defense system.
SENATOR CARL LEVIN recently declassified a DIA document from February 2002 that appears to cast doubt on the claims of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda camp commander and a member of bin Laden's inner circle, had maintained, until early 2004, that Iraq had assisted al Qaeda in its…
On October 11, 2001, intelligence officials are worried that al Qaeda sleeper cells inside the U.S. may strike, while Rep. Pelosi apparently worries about the methods the NSA is employing to detect them. Her letter, dated Oct. 11, 2001, to then NSA head General Michael Hayden is quite astonishing.…
BY NOW it is no secret that the timing of James Risen's December 16 bombshell concerning the NSA's eavesdropping program coincided neatly with the publication of his new book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration. As a veteran reporter covering the U.S.…
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Israel should be "wiped off the map" and apparently believes that the rest of the world will huff and puff but do little to stop Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons. From today's New York Times: Iran could be gambling that even if it restarts nuclear…
The Washington Post's David Ignatius has some interesting comments from Lebanon's Walid Jumblatt on Tehran's close link to Damascus and the need for regime change in Syria.
IAN WILMUT, the creator of Dolly the sheep and newly appointed director of Edinburgh University's Centre for Regenerative Medicine, wants to experiment on dying people with embryonic stem cells--even though he admits that such potential treatments "have not been properly tested."
But it's unclear what Rep. Pelosi's position was on the program at the time. Her letter to then NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden leaves many questions unanswered. As a senior Republican Capitol Hill staffer told me: So let me get this straight: Pelosi knew about the NSA work back in October…
Tom Joscelyn has an interesting take here on some of the anonymous sources cited in the New York Times reporter's new book.
This one. Here is what the Daily Kos founder had to say a while back -- comments that got him removed from the Kerry for President web site blogroll. Wall Street Journal BY JAMES TARANTO Friday, April 2, 2004 5:08 p.m. EST 'Screw Them' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the Angry Left Daily Kos…
The year that ended a few days ago was a pretty good one in America--unless you built GM or Ford cars, piloted Delta airplanes, or lived in the path of Katrina. And, sadly, unless you had a loved one killed or maimed in Iraq.
This one. And below is what its founder had to say a while back -- comments that got him removed from the Kerry for President web site blogroll. Wall Street Journal BY JAMES TARANTO Friday, April 2, 2004 5:08 p.m. EST "Screw Them" Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the Angry Left Daily Kos blog, had…
And it isn't to prosecute a more vigorous war against America's enemies. From The Nation: There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control of Congress in '06, but consider this one: If they do, there may be articles of impeachment introduced and the estimable John Conyers,…
Hardly anything has infuriated certain critics of the Bush Administration more than the president's vocabulary to describe the war on terrorism. Bush warns of an "axis of evil," in which rogue nations collude with Muslim extremists to acquire nuclear weapons. He regards Osama bin Laden and his…
New York Times reporter James Risen reaches this conclusion in his just released book, State of War. Let's see how many media outlets bother to quote it in their coverage of the book's other "revelations."
Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute has written extensively on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- see here and here. In the case of the 9/11 plot, Schmitt noted in the Washington Post that FISA might have prevented FBI agents from detecting and preventing the al Qaeda…
Mark Kirk is a worried Republican who represents a House district in the suburbs north of Chicago. In the 1960s, the seat was held by a young Republican named Donald Rumsfeld, now defense secretary. Once safely Republican, the district has been drifting Democratic for years. The last Republican…
The Hand of the Past in Contemporary Southern Politics
In February 2004, Woo--Suk Hwang made world headlines when he claimed to have cloned human embryos using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and then to have derived a line of stem cells from the embryos that could be used for medical research. Enthusiasm for this first "successful"…
I DO NOT APPROVE OF fantasy football as a topic of conversation: With all the real-life sports out there, why noodle over make-believe match-ups? But now, I sort of get it. And it's because of American Ballet Theatre's fall season at New York's City Center. These days, the company is so loaded with…
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a chronic problem. The controversy over President Bush's decision to bypass FISA warrants in the electronic surveillance of al Qaeda operatives has highlighted the act's limitations. But FISA has been a problem ever since it became law in 1978.
Kabul
Since shortly after September 11, 2001-and under the terms of a formal order signed by the president of the United States sometime early the following year-the Pentagon's giant signals--intelligence division, the National Security Agency, has monitored "the international telephone calls and…
From Witchery to Sanctity
We are supposed to be living in the "Information Age." If we are, exactly what topic are people so well--informed about? Video games? The same experts who know for sure that we are in mid--Information Age take it for granted that young people are colossally uninformed. And young people are more…
Rumor, Swiftest of Evils
'DOMESTIC SPYING' for $500, Alex
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories
No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on terror. But leading spokesmen for American liberalism-hostile beyond reason to the Bush administration, and ready to believe the worst about American public servants-seem to have concluded that the terror…
Any assessment of the prospects for the Alito nomination must begin with the fact that Republicans hold the Senate. That matters-a lot. Under the Constitution the president and the Senate play the key roles in Supreme Court appointments. Simply put, the president nominates and the Senate…
The acquittal on December 6 of Sami al--Arian, a former professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, on eight counts relating to terrorism was a setback not only for the Department of Justice and the Bush administration, but also for the struggle against Islamic extremism…
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Baghdad
Here's a thought that's unlikely to occur to twelfth--grade girls as their college acceptances begin to trickle in: After they get to campus in the fall, one in four of them will be mathematically unable to find a male peer to go out with.
The so--called Christmas wars have raged for two months without my help, and I won't be adding to the din. I will admit, however, to being a Christmas fascist. Frequently lampooned, Christians are expected to silently turn the other cheek. But Christmas, it turns out, is a great time for paybacks.…
From today's Washington Post: After the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid just before Spanish elections, a Norwegian think tank, Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, discovered an Islamist strategy paper on an obscure Web site that might have signaled the attacks ahead of time. The document said,…
More straight talk from the New York Post's Ralph Peters. IRAQ made impressive progress in 2005. You wouldn't have known it from the daily news coverage or the surrender-now demands of left-wing extremists, but the long-suffering nation marched forward. Here and abroad, the enemies of freedom…