Does Tolerance Extend To Not Executing Converts?

Episcopal Church and National Cathedral grant backdrop for brazenly mendacious plea for tolerance from former President of Iran.

In Other News: Fire Hot, Water Wet

Scientist establishes a psychological underpinning of the blindingly obvious.

Patricia Schroeder could not be reached for comment.

A Link to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Pre-War vs. Post-War Intelligence

Links to Iraq Intelligence Phase II Reports:

Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments

The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress

I Can't Decide What Should Happen

Bond villain wannabe Dr. A.Q. Khan ails from prostate cancer.

Would we rather:

A) He slipped in the bathtub tomorrow morning;
B) He suffered a long and harrowing ordeal which brought him to repentance and cooperation with the U.S.;
C) He makes a complete recovery and is bagged by a covert ops. team while celebrating his recovery on some beach outside Karachi

Internecine Bombing?

The most recent attack in India seems to have killed at least 30.

The natural assumption to make here, since the victims were primarily Muslims at prayer, is that the blast was a tit-for-tat retaliation, presumably by Hindu extremists, for the Mumbai bombings in July, but there are curious details which give one pause. A previous explosives find in Malegaon was made by means of evidence obtained from arrested Islamic militants. Malegaon is about three quarters Muslim, so it seems unlikely that the local Hindus would court a riot by attempting violence there, and it seems likely that out-of-towners of any sort would have stood out as well.

Maleagaon also has a history of Muslim violence, dating back to the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.

If this were "green on green" violence, then the follow-up questions which I cannot answer would be:

1) Was this factional--were the target congregants known for some doctrinal dispute with other Muslims in the area; and

2) Was this a provocation by extremists hoping to spark another riot and possible overreaction by the authorities?

The authorities, as is typical in cases of sectarian violence within India, are close-mouthed.

Somewhat Light on White Chips, Though

Naval forces in Arabian Sea:

USS Enterprise (CVN 65) - Arabian Sea
USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) - Arabian Sea
USS Nashville (LPD 13) - Arabian Sea
USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) - Arabian Sea
USS Saipan (LHA 2) - Gulf of Aden

The Kitty Hawk is currently on port call in Thailand. That would be close enough to be of use, but it's a big step down from the build-up in 2005, which saw 3 carrier groups in the region.

The Blue Chips on the Table

8/7/2006 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- A contingent of four bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., is providing both an increase in forces and a security presence to the 36th Air Expeditionary Wing at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam -- making one of the U.S. military's most unique aircraft ready at a moment's notice.

8/31/2006 - -- A 23rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron B-52 Stratofortress taxis on the airfield at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, Aug. 30. The B-52, from the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB, N.D., is one of six scheduled to be deployed to Andersen for four months. The aircraft, aircrews, support staff and maintainers will continue the mission of promoting regional security and preserving regional stability, while providing a continuous bomber presence.

Thursday, September 7, 2006
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. (AP) -- B-1 bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base are scheduled to depart early Thursday for southwest Asia.
On Tuesday, about 300 airmen from the 28th Bomb Wing of the base near Rapid City were deployed for assignments that will last from 120 to 200 days.

UPDATE---
8/28/2006 - ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam (AFPN) -- After more than 140 sorties and 330 released weapons, B-2 Spirit aircraft, pilots, maintainers and support staff from the 509th Bomb Wing are returning home having completed another successful deployment here.

So the Air Force posture is looking almost as relaxed as the Navy one detailed above.

Going All In

Bush makes flat statement:

"The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

The Shia and Sunni extremists represent different faces of the same threat. They draw inspiration from different sources, but both seek to impose a dark vision of violent Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. They oppose the advance of freedom, and they want to gain control of weapons of mass destruction. If they succeed in undermining fragile democracies, like Iraq, and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their dangerous goals. Each strain of violent Islamic radicalism would be emboldened in their efforts to topple moderate governments and establish terrorist safe havens."

So will this be the son's "Read my lips..." moment? The document whose release was heralded in this speech, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism only states that:

"We will continue to create and strengthen international will to interdict material support, akin to our efforts in the Proliferation Security Initiative – a global effort to stop shipments of WMD, their delivery systems, and related material. We will build international cooperation to financially isolate rogue states and their terrorist proxies. We also will continue to expose the vehicles and fronts that states use to support their terrorist surrogates."

With respect, this simply isn't going to stop anyone who's already committed to developing a bomb and, like Iran, has the material means to produce one.

Additionally, might one read perhaps too much into Bush's formulation that we will not permit Iran "to develop a nuclear weapon?" It seems to me to leave open the possibility that the Mullahs in fact already have gotten their mitts on a weapon from outside...

Bullseye!

One step closer to doing what we're told over and over again is the impossible. The Missile Defense Agency conducts a successful flight test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense element of the the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Here's a shot of an interceptor going into the silo.

Political P0rnography

I wish I could say it surprised me to learn that a British television network has decided to fund a feature-length motion picture dramatization of the Left’s recurrent sotto-voce fantasy, the assassination of President George Bush.

Not, as they might easily have done, some fictional President Geoff Holly, or similar roman-a-clef dodge (as they did in the Manchurian Candidate, which accomplished the admirable feat of simultaneously defaming Nixon while hanging the basic outline of the traitors afoot in the Democratic Party circa 1944 about the neck of the Republican Party--and even then, they felt compelled, like a criminal returning to the scene, to remake the film in 2004 removing any ambiguity about the evil of Republicans). No, the Left is tired of pussyfooting around, they want their pound of flesh bloody and unadulterated.

With a morbid curiosity for which I will no doubt atone in purgatory, I sojourned within the fever swamps of the DailyKos to see how badly the Left would betray its baser urges. Mostly, even there, it was recognized that to entertain this conjecture as a dramatic project for public consumption for even an instant was a profound rejection of the American experiment and impulse towards Caesarism which stood contrary to the stated values of most Leftist movements.

However, the pro-forma denunciations of the film had two recurring features that suggest the Left’s rejection of the assassination fantasy is neither completely sincere nor unconditional.

1) The first feature took the formulation along the lines of “I would never see this film, and I would urge others to reject it as well.” This is, I suppose, the situational variant of the well-worn “personally opposed, but politically supportive” cant which has been the Left’s stock-in-trade on issues of sexual immorality since the 1960’s, but it demonstrates a complete lack of seriousness about the nature of the project. If the objection to the film is merely that one finds the theme unpleasant, I suppose this attitude might hold water. If, on the other hand, it is believed, as most of the posters claim to do, that publicizing such fantasies in fact amounts to incitement, then one cannot in moral seriousness suppose that the public danger is eliminated by only allowing those who have no qualms about subjecting themselves to such incitement to view the film. The danger is showing the film publicly, tout court, not that the film is distasteful and therefore unworthy of support.

2) The second phenomenon observed runs parallel to the first in that it similarly reveals an inability to separate the fantastic and conspiratorial from actual reality. A significant number of posters who objected to the film, objected for the tactical reason that the assassination of Bush would only elevate Vice President Cheney, one of the purported masterminds who compose the ruling syndicate in the imaginings of many on the Left. This train of conspiratorial reasoning swiftly deduced that the only possible source of this inflammatory film must be some public relations operation on the Right, following the notion that since the assassination of Bush would probably redound to the popularity of his successor (as Johnson was only able to sustain any sort of public popularity standing in the halo of Kennedy’s secular martyrdom), therefore it must be the case that the Right has come to consciously wish for Bush’s assassination and is, by unspecified Dark Arts, compelling Leftist English filmmakers to produce the material to set off some anti-Bush Travis Bickle in our midst.

To the extent that any politically consequential conclusions can be drawn, it seems clear to me that the Left is in clear denial about the extent of their Bush Derangement Syndrome, and that any attempt by the Democratic Party to craft a serious foreign policy platform on which to run in November is perhaps fatally compromised by this unwillingness to engage in the sort of reality-based analysis of their situation upon which they congratulate themselves so warmly.

A Few Thoughts about Miss England

The lovely, the talented Hammasa Kohistani, 2006 Miss England

1) She's attractive, but I've got to think that you could find a dozen women on the platform at Charing Cross at rush hour who would favourably bear comparison;

2) Given #1, above, I cannot dismiss the prospect that this was an affirmative action win awarded by the judges to attempt to communicate to Britain's "good Muslims" that they have a place of welcome in British society if they could just stop their confreres from blowing up trains, please.

3) The real mindbender is that, despite the death threats she has received from Muslim fundamentalists for participating in such decadent pursuits as beauty contests, her real upset is that English society is causing terror by their intolerance and stereotyping:

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more."

Clearly, she didn't win the contest on her scores in the deductive and analytic reasoning competition.

The Imam Who Didn't Bark

Still waiting for a Muslim spokesperson of any significance to condemn the gunpoint conversions of Fox journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig.

I'm sure our friends at CAIR are working on a humdinger, just as soon as they get done feting former Iranian President Khatami

The U.N. Hits the Snooze Bar

Iran has officially rejected the Security Council's deadline to stop its nuclear enrichment. This is basically akin to Hitler remilitarising the Rheinland--the question of future military consequence is answered by the very developments which caused one to consider the question at all. Iran pursues enrichment because they plan to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as possible.

But we shouldn't worry, we're told, because Iran is certainly 5 years away from a bomb. The chilling frisson this fails to dispel is due to the fact that these are the same intelligence agencies who concluded that North Korea was at least--wait for it--FIVE YEARS away from launching a ballistic missile in 1998, shortly before North Korea proceeded with complete insouciance to launch their first Taepo-Dong 1 over the Sea of Japan.

Iranwatch has a good backgrounder pointing out the manifold failures of western intelligence and the clear objectives of the Iranian regime.

PJ

It Is True That Your Odds of Winning the Lottery Are Better...

Than that of being killed by a crazed Pakistani-American. But we've had our second crazed killer of Pakistani ancestry go off on a spree on the west coast in the last 30 days.

Please don't anyone draw any invidious conclusions, please, or even talk about the odd coincidence. It would be better if you spent your time watching the round-the-clock JonBenet Ramsey/John Mark Karr freakshow.

PJ

Modern Psychology Tips Its Hand

Haven't you always suspected this was the real objective?

Lieberman a Real Democrat?

I missed this piece from Novak earlier this week, but it's a useful reminder that Joe Lieberman may sound reasonable, and may be perceived as conservative - but that's not what his record shows.

Lieberman has to win GOP votes to get re-elected, but that probably won't lead to changes in policy or tone. After all, he's very popular among Republicans as he is.

But notwithstanding that I just saw Lieberman tell Bob Schieffer that he will remain a Democrat if re-elected, I don't believe him. I still cannot believe that he can go back to being a Democrat if he does what it takes to win this race as an Independent. What kind of stuff am I talking about? Garnering donations from Republicans, and hiring Republican pollsters.

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Vigilante Racial Profilers...

Fascinating story from the Daily Mail. Airline passengers feared that two arabic men on the plane were terrorists, and refused to allow the plane to take off until the men were removed.

Apparently these men were not terrorists, but what happens if more passengers do this? I would have thought it unlikely, figuring that if it was not done after September 11, it never would be. But apparently people are not content to see 75 year old caucasian grandmothers treated the same as 22-year old arabic men. Will more of this happen?

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House of Representatives in Suspended Animation

Well, they say that nothing happens in Congress in August. That's especially true this year, when a fire has cut off most power to the Longworth and Cannon House Office Buildings. I was up there today, and the buildings were without air conditioning, most lights, and most elevators. It wasn't quite Logan's Run or Mad Max, but think The Postman and you're close.

Hhhmmm... perhaps the House ought to look into hamsters...

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Meet Your GOP Candidate: Joe Lieberman

You heard it here a while ago. Now Political Wire confirms it: the National Republican Senate Committee supports Joe Lieberman for re-election.

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Jane, You Ignorant Slut...

While on travel, I had the chance to listen to a well-known, non-partisan, political analyst, and a member of the staff of the NRCC talk about expectations and projections for the fall elections.

First the non-partisan: he was not encouraging (if you're a Republican). He said that it's looking likely that the Democrats will retake the House. He noted similarities to 1994, and said that with Bush's popularity extremely low and with Bush's poll numbers appearing to be largely 'frozen,' (an assertion I don't really agree with), it's hard for the GOP to get much traction. This analyst said that for some months, 'macro' polls showed the GOP in big trouble, but that the dynamics of individual races did not seem to follow. He said that as time has gone on however, those races have materialized into ones that the Democrats are likely to win. He also noted that the GOP always took solace in the fact that while the GOP overall was unpopular, most voters still supported their own GOP incumbent. That has changed as well he said, so that now polls show that people are no longer so supportive of their own Congressman. Lastly, he said, polls show that Democratic voters are more highly motivated than their GOP counterparts.

He concluded by saying that this year looks like a big wave - on the order of 15-20 seats. But he added that in such years, the wave usually develops in such a way that about 5 more incumbents get beaten who were thought completely safe. So his guess is that unless something big happens to change the dynamic, the GOP will lose the House with a few seats to spare.

Anyway, the next day I heard from an NRCC strategist who took a completely different point of view. He explained why the GOP will retain control of the House. The key he said, is that the GOP has better candidates, is better at getting out the vote, and has recognized that elections cannot be nationalized (an assertion with which I don't completely agree). On this latter point, he said that Democrats have been trying in vain for years to win a majority based on Iraq, gas prices, corruption, and other meta issues. He said that the reason for their failure is that local issues dominate local races.

I'm not sure that the GOP is set to lose the House. Partly this is because there remain few truly competitive races. NRCC chair Tom Reynolds has pointed out that Democrats needed to win 87% of all competitive races to win the House. Further, Ken Mehlman is the GOP secret weapon. He organized Get-Out-the-Vote efforts for the GOP in 2004 and before, and his ability to identify GOP voters and get them to the polls is unparallelled. Recall that in 2004 Kerry was sure he won the White House, because the numbers showed that Democrats had voted in such large numbers that there was no way he could have lost. The only problem was that Mehlman turned out more GOP voters than Democrats thought possible.

Further, elections can be nationalized. This is pretty basic, it seems to me. Why would there be a '6-year curse' which turns out dozens of members of the President's party, if an election isn't nationalized?

Anyway, the GOP will lose some seats because people are coming out to vote against Bush. But there is no reason that they can't also gain an advantage from pointing out to voters that Nancy Pelosi and her team oppose some of the key laws and tactics being used by the administration to frustrate terrorist attacks. I think that however disappointed voters may be with Bush, they recognize that it is no accident that there have been no successful terrorist attacks in the US since September 11. If reminded why that is so, I think voters will respond by supporting Republican candidates.

On the Senate, this analyst thinks it rather likely that the GOP will stay in control. He said that it is easy to project the GOP losing 5 Senate seats, but hard to get to the 6th (which Harry Reid needs to become Majority Leader). This analyst says that Rick Santorum and Conrad Burns are more or less goners. It is not difficult to project Lincoln Chafee, Mike DeWine, and Jim Talent as losers. But he said that for Democrats to retake the Senate, they then need to win a long-shot - in Tennessee or Virginia. He does not think that especially likely.

But with regard to Santorum, check out Tim Chapman and Political Wire.

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