Libertarian Leanings

Hostages in Rochester, New Hampshire

A middle aged man with what appeared to be bomb taped to his chest has taken two hostages at Clinton campaign headquarters in Rochester, New Hampshire.

ROCHESTER – Part of downtown Rochester has been evacuated as police respond to an armed standoff with hostages at Hillary Clinton's local headquarters. Two volunteers are believed to be hostages.

The incident began at about 1 p.m.

In an interview with WMUR, Lettie Tzizik, an employee of a nearby medical supply company, said a woman who had been released with her small child by the intruder fled to her nearby worksite to seek help. The woman said a man with pepper-and-salt hair in his 40s with what appeared to be a bomb duct-taped to his chest had entered the office and ordered everyone onto the floor.

Former U.S. Attorney Bill Shaheen, a high-ranking Clinton campaign official, said two volunteers were being held captive. He confirmed Tzizik's account of the apparent bomb.

State Police Maj. Michael Hambrook said that the state police bomb squad was en route to the North Main Street scene of the standoff.

"Hopefully, they're going to negotiate this so no one gets hurt," Shaheen told WMUR-TV.

Authorities were sending a tactical bomb unit to assist local police, said Maj. Michael Hambrook of New Hampshire State Police.

The Union Leader will have updates.

The long term

Strategy Page has some insight on that deal between Iraq and the U.S. that calls for a long term military presence.

A recent bombing in a Baghdad pet market, which appeared to be the work of al Qaeda, turned out to be some Shia fanatics trying to rekindle large scale violence between Sunni and Shia Arabs. This Shia group also had some help from Iranian special forces. Thus at least one faction in the Iranian government is not happy about peace breaking out in Iraq. To that end, the Iraqi government has begun negotiations with the U.S. over a long term relationship. What the Iraqis want is a long term American military presence ("50,000 troops" has been tossed about), and guarantees of Iraqi independence... It's unlikely the U.S. would agree to keep 50,000 in Iraq...

The surge - according to Murtha

"I think the 'surge' is working."  So said Representative John Murtha, Democrat from Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. John Murtha, one of the most outspoken congressional critics of the Iraq war, yesterday said he saw signs of significant military progress during a brief trip to the Middle East last week. But he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration must develop an exit strategy.

"I think the 'surge' is working," Mr. Murtha, a Democrat, said in a video conference from his Johnstown office, describing the president's decision to commit nearly 30,000 additional troops at the beginning of the year. "But the thing that has to happen is the Iraqis have to do this themselves. We can't win it for them."

Mr. Murtha has been a strong critic of the White House war policy and has been calling for a troop withdrawal plan.

Various blogs like Captain's Quarters, Power Line, and Politico have speculated that Murtha's abrupt turnabout will hurt Democratic chances of forcing a troop withdrawal.  That would leave Murtha open to the wrath of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  It comes as no surprise then, that he has issued a clarification.

Murtha, one of the most powerful House Democrats when it comes to war funding, gave qualified but likely his most glowing remarks Thursday about the Iraq war.

"I think the surge is working, but that's only one element," said Murtha, who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee. "And the surge is working for a couple of different reasons. And one reason is the increase in troops."

On Friday, however, Murtha's office moved to clarify his seemingly positive take on the surge, this time putting it in the context of renewed criticism of the administration.

"The military surge has created a window of opportunity for the Iraqi government," Murtha's statement read. "Unfortunately, the sacrifice of our troops has not been met by the Iraqi government and they have failed to capitalize on the political and diplomatic steps that the surge was designed to provide.

"The fact remains that the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily, and that we must begin an orderly redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as practicable."

They must have had a chat, Pelosi and Murtha. And well they should.  There is no question that Democratic prospects for promoting a U.S. defeat in Iraq have taken a hit.  Rasmussen reports a rising confidence in the American public that we are winning the war on terror.  As we move through the primary season into summer, the voting public will be presented with a slate of Republican presidential candidates who will be aggressively campaigning on a platform of winning the war in Iraq and winning the war on terror.  By that time Democratic contortions on the issue should be pretty entertaining.

The surge - nuts and bolts

Ralph Peters recently interviewed Lt. Col. Jim Crider, U.S. Army unit commander in Baghdad's long troubled Dura neighborhood. The Colonel explained how his troops turned the neighborhood around.

Question: Congratulations on the superb work "Quarter Cav" has done for us all - Iraqis and Americans. When you arrived in Iraq this time around, did you think you'd be able to make such progress?

Lt. Col. Crider: Our initial experiences upon arrival in March '07 were very discouraging. The enemy controlled the ground - the people - in southwest Baghdad. I saw more combat in the first six weeks than in the entire year of Operation Iraqi Freedom I.

We realized that we'd never kill or capture every enemy, so our goal was to change the conditions on the ground that allowed the insurgency to flourish. Three key factors contributed to our success:

A sufficient number of troops to deny the enemy a sanctuary.

A focus on security where the people live.

The restoration of essential services - it was a revelation that the people viewed us as the government, so when there was no electricity, garbage pick-up, etc., it was our fault in their eyes.

Here's tort reform for you

From the Wall Street Journal:

The barons of the tort bar must have thought 2007 would be a very good year: Some of their biggest cases (Katrina, Enron) were set to pay out, and a Democratic Congress meant no more worries about legal reform. Talk about reversal of fortune: As the year ends, we are witnessing nothing short of the dismantling of what are alleged to be major tort criminal enterprises.

Bill Lerach, the king of class actions, stands disgraced as an admitted felon. His former partners at Milberg Weiss face trial for being part of the same kickback scheme as Lerach. Federal prosecutors continue to pursue a criminal probe into asbestos and silicosis litigation fraud. And now comes the indictment of Mississippi tort legend Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, who is trying to soak insurance companies the way he once did Big Tobacco.

Taji Awakening update

Portsmouth, New Hampshire native Nathan Ritzo is on his second tour with the U.S. Army in Iraq. At the moment he is in the area north of Baghdad called Taji where he is getting a first hand look at Iraqi efforts to reconcile and rebuild.  From Ritzo's perspective it's going pretty well.

Iraqi Shi'ite and Sunni leaders reached out to each other in the District of Taji on Nov. 8 to discuss the future of northern Baghdad Province. The conference was part of the "Taji Awakening," an historic political reconciliation between Iraqi Shi'ites and Sunnis in the region.

Shi'ite and Sunni tribal leaders from across Iraq met with officials from the Iraqi government, military and security forces to discuss expanding the new alliance between Iraq's Shi'ite and Sunni communities to combat Al Qaeda's presence in the region. Also discussed was how to improve the quality of life in northern Baghdad Province after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, four years of terrorist occupation in the Taji region, and sectarian fighting after the regime change...

...Tom Burke is the team leader for the region's embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (ePRT), which played an important role in aiding the Iraqis to plan and organize the event.

"Today the principle members of each of the tribes are present," Burke said. He continued by saying that the Iraqis selected who would attend the conference, and not the Coalition. "They did the selection. Not us. These are the key players for them," he said.

The conference began with speakers addressing the attendees on their concerns for the future of the Taji area and the various problems specific to the different tribes living in the region.

The conference became more informal as the day progressed; the attendees mingled with one another over lunch to further discuss matters concerning the reconciliation process, repairing infrastructure damage and the future of the region.

We take for granted, here in America, that our local elected officials will often confer with officials at the state and national levels to address local concerns.  We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is probably quite a novel concept to the average Iraqi. Saddam Hussein, and more recently al Qaeda, had a very different approach to solving local problems. 

Ritzo's earlier column on the Taji Awakening is here.

Clinton on Iraq

As everyone has probaby heard by now, the latest from our former president Bill Clinton is that he now claims he was against the war in Iraq right from the start. Today's New York Post editorial wonders, "it possible that he's never heard of Google?"

Indeed, the former president boasted in a June 2004 interview with Time magazine: "I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq."

True, he thought the invasion was launched prematurely, and said so at the time. But he never disputed the wisdom of Bush's decision to use military force.

For the record, then, here's what Clinton really had to say about the Iraq war.

"We've got the power, we've got the juice. We should do the job," he told students at the University of Florida in an April 2003 speech.

Later that month, Clinton declared in St. Louis: "Saddam is gone and good riddance" - adding: "Bush has done the right thing in removing Saddam Hussein from power."

And just days after Bush's controversial State of the Union Address that year, Clinton said: "It is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted-for stocks of biological and chemical weapons."

What's more, Bill Clinton made a direct link between 9/11 and Iraq: In a 2004 Time interview, the former president stressed that because of 9/11, Bush had an obligation to move against Saddam:

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing," he said. "There was a lot of [weapons] stuff unaccounted for . . . When you're the president, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for."

I've always wondered why the left continues to accuse the Bush administration of misleading the public into believing Saddam Hussein's Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.  It was Bill Clinton who made that connection.

Surrrender in the war against the war?

A front page article in the Washington Post reports that interviews with a dozen cabbies across Baghdad reveal a genuine and substantial improvement in security throughout the city.

BAGHDAD -- Haider Abbas, a 36-year-old taxi driver, had only a few moments to answer what is often a life-or-death question in this city: Would he drive a passenger home?

The home, on that scorching afternoon last month, happened to be in Adhamiyah, a notoriously dangerous neighborhood where several cabbies had been gunned down. Abbas hadn't been there in two years. But the fare pleaded that it had become safer, so the cabbie reluctantly agreed to go.

"To tell you the truth, I thought I had just traded my life for 5,000 dinars," or $4, said Abbas, who was shocked when he arrived in the traffic-jammed streets of Adhamiyah to see shops open and people strolling in the road. "Then I suddenly realized that security really is returning to Baghdad."

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers.

Since the Washington Post has spent the last several years reporting on the futility of the war in Iraq and burying anything that might imply that we are winning, I would hardly have expected it to report this kind of a development at all, never mind putting it on the front page.  Does this mean the Post, too, is on the verge of surrender to the Bush-Petraeus surge?

Peters' prognostication for peace

So how does Ralph Peters rate the prospects for a lasting Middle East peace to arise from the conference that is in progress in Annapolis?

Think a punk who's grown accustomed to swaggering around town in a face mask with a Kalashnikov is going to scrub squat toilets for a living?

Generations have grown addicted to the struggle - and its perks. It's the only bearable justification for their individual and collective failures in life. Real peace with Israel would probably spark a convulsion throughout the Arab world - as tens of millions realized that their sacrifices were a travesty that merely empowered thieves.

Temperatures dropping

Christopher Booker writes that we are on a course of "planet-saving madness."

The scare over global warming, and our politicians' response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.

Driest-ever autumn to follow wettest summer

Families face energy bill rise in climate fight

Britain's worst polluters

This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.

One might wonder if Al Gore got his Nobel Peace Prize just in time.  Gore was among other Nobel Prize winners who were received by George Bush in the Oval Office.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Global Warming.  The rationale, if you can believe it, is that Global Warming will drive people of the world to fight wars, presumably for the right to occupy the cooler places on the earth, and Gore is saving us from all that.  No kidding.  Be thankful it was a bogus Nobel Peace Prize that Gore won and not the Oval Office.