200 articles
A big rap against Hillary Clinton getting the Democratic presidential nod has been that her position on the Iraq War has put her at odds with the party's anti-war base. Lefty bloggers and prominent liberal journals like The Nation have pounded away at her for not doing a John Kerry-like flip-flop…
HEZBOLLAH LEADER Hassan Nas rallah made headlines last week when he claimed during a rally that Hezbollah still possessed 20,000 rockets and missiles after this past summer's war with Israel. The rally and the announcement were audacious: Some 350,000 supporters gathered in South Beirut to see…
I assume many modern-day Democrats would view FDR as an extra-constitutional tyrant running a "thinly veiled military dictatorship." From today's Washington Post: The [terrorist detainee] bill contains some protections unavailable to the eight Nazi saboteurs who came ashore in the United States in…
(Today's Christian Science Monitor has more on his bid for a Security Council seat: "One country that supports Venezuela's campaign is China, which is perhaps not enthralled with the Chávez rhetoric but is lured by the idea of more countries holding its worldview on the Council. China has not been…
FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR Jim McGreevey might have sensed that something was wrong. Sitting in front of the cameras on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he did not look at ease.
A GREAT AMERICAN HAS DIED, aged 97, and to the disgrace of our national media, he will not be appropriately honored. Rather, even in death, Roy M. Brewer, former leader of the Hollywood Stagehands Union, has been and will be vilified, as heroes are often defamed in an age marked by apologetics for…
The Senate passed the terrorist detainee bill tonight, 65 to 34. The minority leader opposed final passage, as did all the prospective Democratic presidential candidates - Bayh, Biden, Kerry, Feingold, and Hillary Clinton. Here's Sen. Clinton's statement opposing the bill: The Senate, under the…
(The House also passed legislation yesterday authorizing a robust terrorist wiretapping program. 177 Democrats voted against final passage, including Hoyer and Tauscher.) To understand just how much the Democratic center has collapsed look no further than Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer. Last…
A reader emails on this ("Al-Qaida in Iraq: 4,000 Insurgents Dead") AP piece: Yikes. You mean they have an actual number? Do the guys who wrote the NIE think the Iraq war created more than 4000 active, fighting terrorists?
Senator Clinton made the following statement on the NIE on September 25: Its findings as described in the press are deeply distressing because they confirm what a lot of us feared that the policies pursued by this administration have not worked and therefore we are breeding terrorists who will not…
Ned Lamont is still getting trounced in the polls, reports the Hartford Courant: Lieberman maintains a 10-point advantage among likely voters in the poll, leading Lamont 49 percent to 39 percent in a three-way race. Republican Alan Schlesinger trails with 5 percent…. The Quinnipiac poll showed…
SOMETIMES there are pleasant surprises from the much-maligned Church of England. Last week, its former Archbishop of Canterbury defended Pope Benedict's remarks about violence in Islamic history.
Jerusalem
Charlottesville, Va.
Reuters reports: Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Wednesday not to bow to fears of Islamic violence after a Berlin opera house canceled a Mozart work over concerns some scenes could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk. "I think the cancellation was a mistake. I think self-censorship…
Given Sen. Hillary Clinton's remark yesterday, I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current…
"The Intelligence Community has strong indications that Bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States." -Classified document signed by President Clinton in December 1998 YESTERDAY, in the wake of President Clinton's interview on Fox News, Senator Hillary Clinton defended…
In 1998, bin Laden officially declared war on all Americans. It was the "individual duty for every Muslim," bin Laden declared, "to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military." His declaration was apparently an effective recruitment tool. By 2001, al Qaeda had trained in…
From AFP: Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put rewriting the US-imposed pacifist constitution at the top of his agenda, a move that could lead to a more active military role overseas but alarm neighboring countries. Abe, who took office Tuesday as Japan's first prime minister born after…
IN 1980 MOST EXPERTS agreed that oil prices could only go up. Following the panic of the Iranian revolution, the price spiked to more than $80 a barrel adjusted for inflation. I gained some notoriety at the time by publishing an article with William Brown, a Hudson Institute colleague, in the Wall…
Here's the "Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States dated April 2006." Among other things, the NIE, which Democrats have embraced, indicates that a jihadist failure in Iraq would hurt their cause. It will be…
The Supreme Court ruled against aspects of the president's policy on the handling of those captured in the war we are engaged in. The elected president then goes to Congress seeking legislation that is consistent with the Court's Hamdan decision. He comes to an agreement with Senators McCain,…
The folks at Britain's Henry Jackson Society have an interesting response (click on "latest editorial") to David Cameron's recent foreign policy speech that I discussed two weeks ago. They write: The cherry picking between the Hurd-Rifkind school of realism and the liberal interventionism of…
From CBS News: SMITH: I want to go back now to Michael Scheuer once again. Let's talk about what President Clinton had to say on Fox yesterday. He basically laid blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that Osama bin Laden was responsible for a number of…
Yesterday, the Democrats got together with some retired generals who've been highly critical of Sec. Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq War. The generals spoke before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, but, as the Washington Post's Dana Milbank notes, they also delivered a message the Democrats…
BEN BERNANKE and his Federal Reserve Board monetary policy colleagues must have had the words of Ronald Reagan ringing in their ears when they met last week, "Don't just do something, stand there." Which is about all they could have done, given the fact that the slowing economy calls for an…
One way to send a message to Hugo Chavez, as Sen. McCain argues, is for Senate Democrats to stop obstructing the confirmation of John Bolton as UN Ambassador. From the AP: Bolton Derides Venezuela Airport Protest UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.S. Ambassador John Bolton on Monday derided the Venezuelan…
President Clinton also claimed on Fox News yesterday that "all the right-wingers" believed he was "too obsessed" with bin Laden, that he "did too much" in going after the al Qaeda head. The reality is a bit different. Many conservatives applauded Clinton's decision to strike in Sudan and…
LET'S DO A THOUGHT experiment: Perhaps Bill Clinton, an experienced and sophisticated politician, knew what he was doing when he made big news by "losing his temper" in his interview with Chris Wallace. Perhaps Clinton's aides knew what they were doing when they publicized the interview by…
"So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. What I want to know is…." President Clinton's remark aired on the very day two of the nation's most prominent papers, the Washington Post and the New York Times, ran above-the-fold stories on a classified…
The Complete Plays
CAN PRESIDENT BUSH help Republicans retain control of Congress? He thinks so. And so do more Republican candidates than you might guess, given Bush's improved but still relatively low popularity. In fact, he'll appear in many states not ordinarily viewed as Bush country: Connecticut, Illinois,…
President Prolix
THE WORST THING about public life in the United States is the harsh, ugly, barking, bad-faith-assuming, accusatory tone" of most discussion of important matters on which people disagree. So says David Blankenhorn, the unassuming and resourceful founding president of the Institute for American…
LEFT-WING LOUDMOUTH and strident anti-American Günter Grass has admitted that he was a member of the Waffen SS. This came as a shock to the socialist admirers of the German novelist, who had no idea just how National Grass's Socialism was. The New York Times sighed at the revelation: "For many on…
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
According to a report released September 8 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saddam Hussein "was resistant to cooperating with al Qaeda or any other Islamist groups." It's an odd claim. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and well-documented history of cooperating with Islamists,…
One Saturday a few weeks back, my wife and I had a rough morning. I don't remember the exact reason, but it had something to do with the upstairs bathroom. The toilet and shower had been out of commission for much of the summer owing to a remodeling that afterwards made the rest of our little house…
THERE MAY NOT HAVE BEEN such a consequential visit involving gifts for a newborn since the Magi came upon that star shining in the east a couple of thousand years ago. On Monday, September 4, Tom Watson, a hitherto (and if there's any justice, henceforth) anonymous junior defense minister in Tony…
LET US CREDIT the Senate Intelligence Committee with almost getting the name right. On pages 25-26 of its latest report appears the following:
The Changing Face
The New York Times and Washington Post are hard at work airbrushing history to obscure their role in promoting Joseph C. Wilson's incredible tale of his Mission to Niger and subsequent fantasy of martyrdom at the hands of Karl Rove. Both add insult to injury. While minimizing their own…
Frog in the Well
"It [the 2006 election campaign] shouldn't be about national security."
Warwick, Rhode Island
A Temple of Texts
Woodrow Wilson's
IS AMERICA GETTING MORE SECULAR? Not according to a new survey on Americans' religious beliefs, "American Piety in the 21st Century," published this month by Baylor University. According to the Baylor survey, 82 percent of Americans are Christians, 90 percent believe in God, 70 percent pray…
In his Fox News interview, President Clinton stated: All of President Bush's neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much - same people. Not quite.…
Senator McCain made some important points today on CBS' Face the Nation. He pointed out that al Qaeda has recruited successfully over the years by highlighting its "successes" against the U.S., which is why "we need to prevail in Iraq." Indeed, in the 1990s bin Laden would claim that Mogadishu and…
Here are some things Bill Clinton didn't mention in his Fox News Sunday interview that will air tomorrow morning. ABC's "The Path to 9/11," the USS Cole and John O'Neill What Newly Released al Qaeda Letters on Somalia/U.S. Withdrawal Tell Us Does Secretary Madeleine Albright Regret Calling for…
Howard Dean may believe "THE fight on terror" is in Afghanistan. But the reality is the fight is global, as Tony Blair recently noted. Here's another example of what Blair's talking about from Reuters: MANILA, Sept 22 - Islamic militants from Indonesia have been training radicals in the southern…
Here's the transcript from President Clinton's anger-filled interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. The interview will air tomorrow. Clinton does make a few valid points, but he also neglects to mention many others. I'll write more on this later.
(From AP: Bombings inflame tensions in Kosovo -- Over the past week, there have been four bombings…. But parliament speaker Kole Berisha insists the violence is a deliberate attempt to destabilize Kosovo at a delicate stage in its drive for statehood…. But the chances of more violence like the…
(If you get a chance, read Charles Krauthammer's excellent piece in today's Washington Post. He writes: "And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of…
AFP reports: Israel and Saudi Arabia have been conducting secret negotiations, the top-selling Hebrew daily reported on its front page. "Secret negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia," headlined Yediot Aharonot, reporting that contacts had begun during the recent 34-day war in Lebanon between…
Why? The ACLU and the editors at the New York Times don't like the terrorist interrogation deal. The Times is urging Senate Democrats to filibuster the bill and the ACLU is calling it a "charade of a compromise." It doesn't get any better than that if you're a Republican considering a run at the…
AMERICAN TROOPS in Iraq and Afghanistan face any number of difficulties every day. From dodging IEDs to rebuilding war-torn nations, our GIs are bombarded from sunup to sundown with problems we civilians can only dimly conceive. Imagine, on top of that, losing your house or having your family…
Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel were quick to condemn the remarks of Hugo Chavez. Good for them. But there's something else afoot here. I suspect Democratic election strategists are a bit nervous over all this. Americans view Democrats as far more willing to work through the UN to deal with…
As I have noted many times, Australian Prime Minister John Howard is a rock-solid U.S. ally and a strong world leader in the War on Terror. He hasn't taken the David Cameron path of backpedaling on the decision to remove Saddam from power or that of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez…
Two newspapers with two very different opening paragraphs today on the state of the GOP -- From the Los Angeles Times: President Bush's approval rating has reached its highest level since January, helping to boost the Republican Party's image across a range of domestic and national security issues…
SENATOR JOE BIDEN wants to save Iraq by dividing it--sort of. The speech Biden delivered Wednesday morning to the Council on Foreign Relations elaborated on the "five-point plan" he first laid out in a New York Times op-ed (co-written with CFR president emeritus Leslie Gelb) last May. Biden spoke…
From AP: [Chavez] later spoke to hundreds of New Yorkers who filled a college hall Wednesday night, saying he hopes Americans choose an "intelligent president" in the future…. He drew a standing ovation when he said Bush committed genocide during the war in Iraq. "The president of the United…
Since the Georgian democratic revolution in 2003, U.S.-Georgia relations have warmed considerably. The U.S. military recently signed another military assistance accord with the former Soviet republic, and Radio Free Europe reports that NATO will announce tomorrow that formal talks will begin with…
In an interview last night with Fox's Bill O'Reilly, Gov. Mitt Romney made some good points. He spoke on the global nature of the war we are engaged in and warned that too many in the world don't fully understand the threat posed by the "extreme, violent jihadists." The governor criticized those…
The Arizona senator has come under an avalanche of criticism from conservatives (though Reagan Secretary of State George Schulz supports his position) for his opposition to making changes to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Agree or disagree with him, McCain makes his case in today's…
Tony Blankley explains in today's Washington Times.
SINCE IT FIRST BEGAN BROADCASTING 10 years ago, Qatari satellite network Al Jazeera has become the Arab world's media juggernaut, claiming 50 million viewers across 137 countries. A 2005 survey by Brandchannel.com ranked Al Jazeera as the world's fifth most influential brand, just behind Starbucks,…
(According to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, "the Bush administration's strategy of emphasizing the continuing threat of terrorism may be having an effect. President Bush's job approval rating has risen to 44%. Americans have become more positive about the war on terror. Voters are more likely…
Here are two pieces worth reading. The editors at the Wall Street Journal write: It's a familiar spectacle: furious demands for an apology, threats, riots, violence. Anything can trigger so-called Muslim fury: a novel by a British-Indian writer, newspaper cartoons in a small Nordic country or, this…
(I noted in an earlier post that I'd checked to see if any of the material below is discussed and evaluated in the latest Senate Intelligence Committee report. It isn't. In fact, there's not a single mention of either group in the report. ) Posted on September 14, 2006: The BBC reports on…
This time things would be different. If Iran didn't stop uranium enrichment by a date certain, Tehran's defiance would be met by a tough, united international response. Think again. From The Independent: President Jacques Chirac has broken ranks with the US and Britain by calling for the suspension…
The AP reports: The president of Somalia's interim government narrowly escaped a suicide bomber yesterday - a new tactic in a troubled land where an Islamic militia is vying for power. The leader's brother and 10 others died in the blast and a subsequent gun battle. The foreign minister said the…
IT'S TOUGH attending dinner parties these days. Until recently, all an economist had to cope with was a demand for a forecast of house prices--for each of the neighborhoods represented at the table. Now things are harder. Every guest has his own reason for wanting a forecast of oil and gasoline…
Jerusalem
The Mighty
LIEBERMAN VS. LAMONT is the Senate race the whole country is watching. But seldom mentioned amid all the chatter about the two Democrats--the incumbent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, running as an Independent, and Ned Lamont, who defeated him in the primary--is the fact that it is actually a three-way…
With last weekend's finale of the U.S. Open, Andre Agassi's farewell tour is now complete. It's easy to love sports, but hard to love athletes. Agassi was the rarest of breeds: an athlete worth admiring and loving.
The Illusionist
Not a Suicide Pact
AS WALL STREET veteran Hank Paulson settles into his new job as Treasury secretary, the conventional wisdom is that he can't accomplish much in the waning years of President Bush's second term. Paulson fiercely resists such assertions, and there is reason to believe he is right. But the arena in…
Khatami in the Cathedral
INDONESIA is currently embroiled in a high-stakes culture war between forces dedicated to Islamic law and more secular-minded citizens devoted to the freedoms and rights enshrined in the country's constitution. While Islamic conservatives have made significant gains, the entertainment industry is…
Sometime earlier this year the New Leader magazine, after 82 years in business, ceased publication. Not all that many people could have known of the magazine during its existence. The tag line in a full-page ad that it once ran in the New York Times Book Review seeking new subscribers, as I…
GO TRIBE
Ordinarily, the changing of the guard at the Department of Transportation is not an occasion for reconsidering matters of national security. But the retirement of Secretary Norman Mineta, and the nomination of Mary Peters to succeed him, might afford an opportunity to rethink and improve how we…
SPOOKED by the political might of religious conservatives, secular liberals and faithful Demo crats are taking comfort from some recent headlines.
The students take their seats, pull out their pencils, and open their books as they would in any college classroom in America. Here, though, they show up in gray cadet uniforms, gleaming black shoes, and closely cropped hair, not the hip-hugger jeans and baseball caps so popular on other campuses.…
It was a warm weekend day in mid-July when, Republican senator George Voinovich of Ohio says, "it came to me." He was back in Cleveland, his hometown, taking a walk with his wife Janet in the neighborhood where they'd lived for 40 years. "You know," he said, "I've been thinking about John Bolton."…
The Fall of the
TWELVE PASSENGERS ON Northwest Airlines Flight 42, which departed Amsterdam for Mumbai on August 23, quickly aroused the crew's suspicions. Eyewitnesses reported that the 12 passengers, who were of South Asian descent, attempted to use mobile phones and pass them back and forth as the flight took…
From Reuters: Gunmen killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam. The Catholic nun's guard also died from pistol shots in the latest attack on foreign personnel in…
(David Cameron's Clinton-like triangulation continues.) Posted on September 12, 2006: Britain's Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, made a few good points in a foreign policy speech delivered yesterday. But it was also a bit confusing on substance at times. The prospective British PM said,…
Perhaps not. Pope John Paul II often spoke on the decline of European Christianity and the continent's empty churches. But Pope Benedict XVI's recent trip to Germany may foreshadow a Christian resurgence, reports the Christian Science Monitor. [S]ome may be surprised at the receptivity in Germany…
There will likely be more violent acts like this one as the current final status talks draw to a close -- and possibly for some time after. From AP: Kosovo interior minister's car bombed Fri Sep 15, 6:29 AM ET A bomb placed under the Kosovo interior minister's car exploded early Friday in an…
Jerusalem
The National Review's Rich Lowry writes: Lawrence Korb and Peter Ogden of the Center for American Progress had an op-ed in the Washington Post Thursday responding to the piece I wrote with Bill Kristol the other day. They argue we simply don't have any additional troops to send to Iraq. The…
TIMED FOR THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of September 11, Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video tape calling for another round attacks. The tape includes at least two important items that should not be overlooked.
I HATE CELL PHONES.
THE STORY OF A 23-year-old woman in a deep "persistent vegetative state" (PVS) made a splash in the news this past Friday, claiming headlines in the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, among other places. Why did this woman--deemed a "vegetable" after a car crash last year--merit…
HER NAME IS SIA. She is one of the most promising singers to emerge on the music scene in the last few years. And Wednesday night at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., she was one of two featured performers of the British musical act Zero Seven. The couple standing behind me didn't know exactly…
AS THE NEW ACADEMIC YEAR BEGINS, parents will give, as they always do, lectures about studying hard and attending class. But nonetheless many collegians will devote time to chugging pints, throwing darts, and doing just about anything that doesn't involve cracking the books. This seems a gross…
The BBC reports on Zawahiri's latest claim "that a radical Algerian Islamist group has joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France." In the video that aired on a website on September 11, Zawahiri stated: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group…
FIVE YEARS have now passed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and what have our universities been doing? I can tell you about Harvard, and the answer is not reassuring.
Jimmy Carter on CNN: "I've lost my confidence in Joe Lieberman and don't wish to see him re-elected." Meanwhile, taking a page out of Jimmy Carter's playbook, Bill Clinton is overseas dumping the U.S., reports The Times (London): "You've got a great economy, better growth than America has and less…
PRESIDENT BUSH used the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to remind Americans of the nature of the fight against radical Islam. "It's been called a clash of civilizations," Bush said. "It is a struggle for civilization." The president warned that a terrorist victory over the United…
(A reader from our good friend Australia writes: I saw your post 'Fighting Corruption as an Anti-Poverty Program' and how "too little attention is given to one of the biggest barriers to lifting nations out of chronic poverty -- rampant government and business corruption." Our Australian Prime…
WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put…
IT TOOK ONLY A FEW MINUTES for media outlets to disseminate headlines about how the recent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report comparing pre-war intelligence claims against post-war findings was a refutation of the stated reasons for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Focusing on the…
Regarding my September 8 post, a professor at one of the nation's war colleges emails: This line from Bodine's CYA op-ed says it all: "The Cole was also a crime scene, and crew members were witnesses." At no other time in US history, can I remember an attack against a US warship considered a mere…
THIS FALL THE BUSH administration and congressional Republicans will lay a major new spending control tool on the legislative workbench and try to enact it before Congress adjourns. Yet before even trying to pick it up, Democrats will reject it--saying it's too heavy, too light, or somehow just not…
Britain's Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, made a few good points in a foreign policy speech delivered yesterday. But it was also a bit confusing on substance at times. The prospective British PM said, for example, that he supported the ouster of Saddam but then went on to quote a line…
Radio Free Europe reports that the Iranian oil minister is worried enough about falling crude prices to float consideration of OPEC production cuts. "'The high level of crude oil production has led global oil reserves to rise above the usual level,' he said [in Vienna], provoking ‘instability and…
From today's Wall Street Journal editorial: What would Jack Bauer do? If he worked at the CIA in real life today, the anti-terror hero of Fox's "24" would apparently be buying insurance in case the ACLU or John Kerry decided to sue or subpoena him for protecting America with too much vigor. The…
READING THE PRESS IN China, one would never know that the Communist state has diplomatic relations with Israel. A sampling of the coverage from China's tightly-controlled newspapers on Israel's recent war against Hezbollah can lead to only one conclusion: Beijing is no friend of the Jewish state.
"THE TOP FIFTH of American households claimed 50.4 percent of all income last year, the largest slice since the Census Bureau started tracking the data in 1967." So reported the Wall Street Journal just one day before the Commerce Department announced that second-quarter corporate profits were 20.5…
THE "FIGHTIN' DEMS" STORYLINE is one of several Democratic national-security memes circulating in the run-up to the midterm elections. Voiced intermittently by party leaders and much discussed in the liberal blogosphere, it goes something like this: A new generation of Democratic military veterans…
(National Review's Rich Lowry and the Standard's Bill Kristol weigh in on the troop issue in today's Washington Post.) In Iraq, the lack of troops has been a major problem for years, and little has been done about it. A review: From the May 3, 2004 Weekly Standard: But can the coalition get the…
ON APRIL 23, 2006 Tyler Drumheller shared what was billed as a bombshell with 60 Minutes viewers. In a segment called "A Spy Speaks Out," the 26-year veteran of the CIA claimed that the Bush administration ignored intelligence collected from a well-placed source inside Saddam's regime because it…
NEWT GINGRICH IS A READER. Not long ago, on a Saturday morning, the former speaker of the House spent time reading through all of President Bush's recent speeches on the war on terror. Gingrich thinks those speeches, along with others, should be collected in a book and made available to all. And…
The BBC reports: A Somali radio station has resumed broadcasting after it was closed down by Islamist leaders for playing local love songs. However, Radio Jowhar is no longer playing any music, even jingles. The Union of Islamic Courts, which controls much of the south, is split between hardliners,…
Boston
If you get a chance, I highly recommend reading Mayor Giuliani's piece in USA Today. What it shows is that if Giuliani jumps into the presidential race he'll offer a tough, clear-minded view into the nature of the enemy, and he will be unabashed in taking on the liberals on national security…
Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Howard Dean stated: You know, Afghanistan is turning against us, and that is where the fight on terror is. That's where Osama bin Laden is. Osama bin Laden has not been captured five years later. That's a big problem. The "fight on terror is" in Afghanistan, but it's…
JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, Democratic senator from Connecticut and independent candidate for a new term, shared a remarkable insight in Hartford on August 22. He commented, in an interview with talk radio host Glenn Beck, "Iraq, if you look back at it, is going to be like the Spanish Civil War, which was…
THE KIDNAPPING in Gaza of two Fox News reporters, and the significance of their subsequent "conversion" to Islam at gunpoint, vanished from the front pages after their August 27 release. But their story shows three things--that we cannot trust much "news" from the Levant, that much of the media is…
Beckett Remembering/ Remembering Beckett
Berlin
Around the first of September I tend to have memories of my days selling books door to door during my college summers. I worked in what was called the Bible division, because the lead book was a family Bible. I didn't sell many, since most everyone living in my territories already seemed to have a…
Now It's My Turn
Just three weeks after Hezbollah invaded Israel, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and causing the deaths of eight others, Human Rights Watch issued a 49-page report about the war that had been ignited by this attack. The title of the report was Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against…
Terrible Fate
Naguib Mahfouz, 1911-2006
RELIGIOUS DISPUTATION
Invincible
The regurgitation of foodstuffs is one of the least appetizing human activities, and certainly not a Kodak moment. Why then has on-screen vomiting become such a fixture of motion pictures in the past few years? The situation is so dire that upchuck has even begun to appear in animated form, with a…
The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph…
Piscataway, N.J.
Betraying Spinoza
IN 2001, when he was 26, Adam Putnam found himself the young est member of Congress. He was nicknamed "Opie"--for his thick red hair and youthful appearance--and was generally sized up as inexperienced. Five years later, the Florida conservative is chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, the…
Harare, Zimbabwe
"How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews." Thus the British journalist (and communist) William Norman Ewer, in the early part of the last century. The reply came from Cecil Browne: "But not so odd / As those who choose / A Jewish God / But spurn the Jews."
Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
IT HAS BEEN ABOUT two weeks since the international media excitedly declared to the world that Robert Lanza, head scientist at Massachusetts biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology, had derived human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos. The story sparked a media feeding frenzy, with…
(Marc Sumerlin, formerly deputy director of the National Economic Council, outlines a sanctions strategy in the current Weekly Standard. He notes: "The most important policy would be to announce without delay a coordinated release of strategic petroleum stocks…. Global government-controlled…
ONCE AGAIN headlines from media outlets around the country declare "No Saddam, al-Qaeda link." This time the news cycle is being fed by the release of two reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, both of which purport to investigate the uses of prewar intelligence. The first of these two…
(KSL.com reports: "A controversy over words at BYU this morning. A professor is on paid leave for suggesting the government is responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center. The man on paid leave is Dr. Steven Jones. He's a physics professor involved in the so-called ‘9-11 Truth…
Letter to the Editor of the Washington Times, September 6, 2006: Friday's Page One article "Gingrich opposed to U.S. strike on Iran" suggests that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich would oppose a possible military action against Iran to prevent the regime from becoming a nuclear power. This…
Weighing in on the ABC mini-series "The Path to 9/11," the former ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, writes ("9/11 Miniseries is Bunk") in today's Los Angeles Times: One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of…
WHEN MOHAMMAD KHATAMI emerged as president of Iran in 1997, many liberals swooned in delight at the appearance of a self-styled Islamic reformer and moderate. The New York Times announced that Khatami was "dedicated to relaxing or eliminating . . . political and religious repression." Here was a…
AFTER A ONE YEAR HIATUS, HBO's other gripping crime drama, The Wire, finally returns for a new season. While The Sopranos gets all the accolades and takes home all the trophies, The Wire has evolved into the network's most interesting show. Uncompromising and hard hitting, the series is the…
IN THE WINTER OF 2003, before the Democratic presidential primaries, Bush political adviser Karl Rove took a poll. He asked nine senior members of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign who they thought would emerge over the coming months as the Democrats' presidential nominee. The respondents were…
THE CIVIL WAR IN LEBANON may have already begun, or perhaps it never ended and is now entering a new phase after 16 years of relative calm. Yesterday a roadside bomb injured Lt. Col. Samir Shehade of the Internal Security Forces and killed four of his associates. Shehade had been assisting the U.N.…
It's definitely campaign season. This proposal -- the idea that you would cede decisions of such magnitude from the elected commander-in-chief to ground commanders -- is beyond silly. The President, whether Republican or Democrat or Independent, decides when the military objective has been met and…
AFP reports that "China has said it remains opposed to sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear drive, one day after top US envoy Christopher Hill nudged Beijing to take more action over the issue." Guess this is one way China is thanking us for going to bat for them at the I.M.F.
In a speech today, Senator and potential Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden "blasts" the president's national security policies: It is time for America to recapture the totality of our strength -- our military, economic, and diplomatic might…. That is what won the Cold War. That is what…
(The news gets better for Romney with the editors of the Boston Globe attacking him for being "under the influence of those deliberate simplifiers" in the "far right." Of course, one major thing the liberal sophisticates at the Globe don't mention is that under Khatami, as Middle East scholar Reuel…
North Hills, New York
BACK WHEN HOWARD DEAN represented the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" he spoke passionately about the importance of having the presidential nominating process begin in two small, rural states in which outsider candidates with little money or establishment support would stand a realistic…
The Atlantic Monthly's Robert Kaplan has a piece (sub req'd), "Hostage to Fortune," worth reading in today's Wall Street Journal. He makes one point that Republicans hardly ever talk about nowadays: [I]magine how Saddam might have dominated the Arab masses - with rising oil prices, the $50-billion…
Tom Jocelyn has some interesting stuff on his blog regarding a Q & A exchange Time columnist Joe Klein had yesterday on the magazine's web site. PS-- Klein also writes: "I think Murtha's plan is to withdraw to neighboring countries, so we can move in and out of Iraq in case of emergencies-and…
(The Times in Britain reports that the war with Hezbollah has led to a "strategic rethink in Israel" that focuses on "the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel's existence.") Posted on July 18, 2006: If the world flinches and the Iranian…
The Globe and Mail in Canada has more on the plot to destroy a British landmark using 600 kilograms of ammonium nitrate. She started out looking for a husband. Instead, the young Carleton University student became a key conduit for thousands of dollars that, police say, was financing terrorism.…
SOME PEOPLE just can't take yes for an answer. A year ago, the White House proposed giving India civilian nuclear help in hopes of improving relations with New Delhi. That India had used earlier U.S. nuclear assistance to test a bomb in 1974 and then proceeded to test more weapons in 1998 was…
FIVE YEARS AFTER the attacks of September 11, 2001, we face many threats at home and abroad, yet our response has been mostly superficial and expedient. One is left to wonder: Are we serious about winning this fight?
THE ANNOUNCEMENT LAST WEEK that British authorities had arrested 14 people in an inquiry centered on terror training at an Islamic school and adjoining property in the idyllic landscape of Rotherfield, East Sussex, was good news. Then came the bad news: the Jameah Islamiyah school had been used 15…
Paul Marshall's piece, "A Conversion You Can't Refuse," in the current Weekly Standard provides some useful context to an Associated Press report, "Palestinian group to target non-Muslims," that ran on Saturday. From AP: Palestinian militants who held two Fox News journalists hostage for nearly two…
Call it a twofer. In conservative circles, bashing Khatami and Harvard is never bad politics. Thus, the Romney folks just put out this press release: ROMNEY DENOUNCES KHATAMI VISIT TO HARVARD Governor Mitt Romney today ordered all Massachusetts state government agencies to decline support, if…
David Lynch has a very interesting piece in today's USA Today. It suggests that that the conventional wisdom on Iran - that it holds all the economic cards in the nuclear showdown - is largely wrong. The regime may be much more vulnerable to comprehensive sanctions than many realize. Lynch notes…
Christopher Hitchens isn't a fan of making September 11 a national holiday: I don't care that I am no longer able - because of the supposed "sensitivities" of people who were only involved at random - to watch the graphic pictures of what really happened. I have those pictures in my head, and can…
HI HO, HI HO, it's back to work we go. Most Americans who escaped home and hearth for the long weekend fired up their last barbecues of the season yesterday, the holiday on which we down our final gin and tonics, or Diet Coke-and-hot-dogs, depending on taste and upbringing, and prepare to face the…
The Georgian interior ministry revealed Monday that an attempt had been made on August 28 to down the helicopter carrying US ally [Georgian president] Saakashvili and a team of US senators led by influential Republican lawmaker John McCain. "A Strela-2 anti-aircraft missile was fired at the…
Descartes
TONY WILLIAMS, the 26-year-old son of NPR correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams, is cut from the same cloth as the older Williams in some ways, but definitely not in others. Father and son both hold heterodox opinions on matters of race, for instance, but the younger Williams…
Delba Winthrop Mansfield was a remarkable woman. Her many friends (and I was one) liked and respected and admired her. But no one could have been prepared for the inner reserves of strength she showed in her last years. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and advised that she might have only…
Eudora Welty
THIS YEAR, Michigan was supposed to be the latest victory in conservative activist Ward Connerly's state-by-state battle to enforce the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and end racial discrimination in government hiring. Instead, Michigan may well be his movement's graveyard, thanks to strong…
AS JAPAN'S PRIME MINISTER, Junichiro Koizumi, retires this month, attention has turned to his likely successor, Shinzo Abe (pronounced Ah-bay), currently the chief cabinet secretary. Abe has garnered major headlines this summer for his musings on, among other subjects, the necessity for Japan to…
Joe Rosenthal, 1911-2006
BUGS: NO SCWEWY WABBIT
Honor
Little Miss Sunshine
Globalization is real, but its power to improve the lot of humankind has been madly oversold. Globalization enthralls and binds together a new aristocracy--the golden crust on the human loaf--but the remaining billions, who lack the culture and confidence to benefit from "one world," have begun to…
"NEW STEM CELL METHOD avoids destroying em-bryos," the New York Times headline blared. "Stem cell breakthrough may end political logjam," chimed in the Los Angeles Times. "Embryos spared in stem cell creation," affirmed USA Today. Reporting the same supposed scientific achievement by Advanced Cell…
You could almost hear cheers of joy coming from the White House. President Bush, it seems, is back, no longer hopelessly unpopular and embattled. You could see a renewed vigor in Bush's bracing defense last week of his Iraq policy and his warning of the geopolitical disaster that would follow a…
Hershey
Second Acts
A NUMBER OF SCANDALS have erupted in Israeli politics lately. The president and the justice minister have both made headlines for their involvement in separate sex-related controversies, while Prime Minister Olmert himself has been under investigation for possibly receiving an above-market price…
Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine by Candice E. Jackson (World Ahead, 304 pp., $25.95). Since 1992, books about President Clinton have become a cottage industry in conservative circles; there is scarcely enough room on the shelf for another title about the philanderer. Despite…
The Trouble with Poetry
DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
Thirty-eight years ago, American politics was rocked by another politically controversial war. Then, as now, liberal Democrats competed for the allegiance of an increasingly powerful antiwar left. Then, as now, that constituency flexed its muscles in a key Democratic primary that seemed to turn…
(Vets for Freedom has released a new television ad, reports the New York Times, featuring Connecticut veterans: "When we were over there, it was important to know that someone had our back,'' one veteran says. "Like Senator Lieberman," adds a second. The ad continues with four phrases, with each…
(Bloomberg news reports: "Danish authorities arrested nine people suspected of involvement in planning a terrorist attack, the country's police intelligence service said…. The arrests were made after police uncovered evidence that a number of the suspects had 'materials that can be used for the…
It's always interesting to read Sen. John Warner's take on what is going on in Iraq today. But missing from the piece is exactly what George Will would do (not just what he wouldn't do) now in Iraq. After all, before the war he advanced straightforward arguments making the case for removing Saddam…
(New Hampshire tax dollars at work. From Reuters: A University of New Hampshire professor has come under fire from state politicians for teaching his unconventional view that a U.S. government conspiracy allowed the September 11, 2001 attacks to occur…. "What we learn in the mainstream is not the…
Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, held a press conference late this afternoon on the successful anti-missile test conducted earlier today. I believe that the course that we've taken overall has been the right one, which is -- remember, we had no defense against these…
Containment advocates oppose military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing that a strike won't work, that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is exaggerated, and that Iran can be contained. Others argue that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, that all options should…
HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME PRO-LIFERS? What turns people into passionate foes of abortion and related issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research? I'm not referring to those who supported the pro-life position because of their family upbringing or religious faith or because of a political…
THE DISCOVERY AND INTERCEPTION of the London air plots was a reminder that, while our intelligence capabilities have improved since September 11, 2001, our airport-security apparatus remains antiquated. Had the terrorists executed their plan, they would have had a high probability of success.…