Libertarian Leanings

Alaa's faith

You might be surprised to hear that there is a voice in Iraq that professes faith in Bush Administration policy.  That would be Alaa the Mesopotamian.  His blogging is sporadic.  Lately, though, he's had some things to say.  On Saturday he commented on rumors that the Iraq Survey Group will recommend looking to Syria and Iran for help getting us out of Iraq.

There seems to be some real geniuses in Washington. I must say, the brilliance of these gentlemen really makes me speechless. It seems that the commission charged with preparing a report dealing with the Iraqi question has come up with the inspired solution that the matter should be entrusted to Iran and Syria of all other, after the U.S. washes her hands clean and go home to live in tranquility never to meddle in world affairs again. Of course it is not stated in these terms but rather couched in reasonable sounding phraseology: gradual reduction of troops; involvement of neighboring states such as Iran and Syria to help resolve the problems etc. etc. Well! Well! Well! Iran and Syria above all and by name, too!! I congratulate these astute gentlemen on this amazing discovery. The world hold its breath in waiting for the official issue of this great report, that President Bush is awaiting impatiently to enlighten him as to the proper direction of the Iraq policy.

After some speculation as to what ailments might afflict the elderly gentlemen who came up with such a gem of advice,

...it is not right to burden these poor elderly gentlemen with such hard work; it is rather inhuman; what with the problems of old age, Alzheimer’s disease and all that. One fully understands their inclination towards rest and quiet retreat.

he concluded,

I don’t think though, that as long as George Bush is president, such disastrous ideas can find their way to implementation. There are other courses of action less harmful, and I am sure that the President will try his best to win the race against time before the end of his term. Let us wish him success from the bottom of our hearts.

And again yesterday, Alaa commented with approval on a meeting between George Bush and Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim. 

A meeting of the highest significance and importance has just taken place. Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, though much reviled and hated by the SodomoLadinists et al, is undoubtedly the highest Shiite figure ever to meet the American leadership at the highest level. This meeting has very profound meaning and is a very important message to the various factions in Iraq. I refer you to my previous post titled “Flirting with Sayid Ali”. There are basically two camps in Iraq now. Not a Shiite Camp and A Sunni camp, but a camp for the new order including a majority of the Shiites, the Kurds, and many Sunnis (for example the tribes of the Anbar Salvation Council, and many, many other Sunnis), and another camp that is composed of sectarian factions totally opposed to Democracy and pluralism including anarchistic revenge groups and gangs of both sects. The first camp is by far the majority of the people.

The strategic instinct of President Bush is guiding him in the right direction again despite all the confusion and pressures.

I'm with Alaa on this one.  The Senate Armed Services Committee has just voted 24-0 to support the Gates nomination as Secretary of Defense.  I wonder what the Democrats are thinking.  Gates is the President's man and he said so at the confirmation hearing.   

Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy voiced skepticism that Bush would accept Gates' advice about changing course in Iraq, quoting the president as saying a month go the U.S. had a ```strategy for victory that will work.'''

``Should we believe you or the president on the critical issue whether the administration is really willing to make a change in its policy?'' Kennedy asked.

``I'm willing to commit that, if I'm confirmed, I will be independent, that I will consider all of the options,'' Gates said. He added: ``There is still only one president'' and ``he will make the final decision.''

A clue to the "final decision":   The president said, "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."   Alaa the Mesopotamian listens.  He hears George Bush and he likes what he hears.  I'm with Alaa on this one.  Keep the faith.

"Not winning" - in four flavors

A Wall Street Journal headline says THE U.S. IS LOSING the war in Iraq.  This is according to an Associated Press account of today's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates.  But when we get past the headline and into the article we find what he really said was, the U.S. is not winning.

Asked point-blank by Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) whether the U.S. is winning in Iraq, Mr. Gates replied, "No, sir."

On the other hand, the Washington Post is apparently able to understand the distinction between losing and not winning, because the Post headline reads, Gates Says U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq.

On to the New York Times website, where the headline said At Hearing, Gates Says U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq, but the story admitted that he also said the U.S. was not losing it either.  Something that neither the AP nor the Post could bring themselves to do.

“We are not winning the war in Iraq, is that correct?” Mr. McCain asked.

“That is my view, yes, senator,” Mr. Gates replied, adding shortly afterward that the United States is not losing the war either.

On the Fox News website the front page headline said, Gates: U.S. Not Winning in Iraq, So All Options Open, but the inside headline said, Gates: U.S. Not Winning in Iraq, Not Losing Either. 

This is an example of why Fox News is considered a right wing rag.  Right there in the Fox News headline we learn that Gates said the U.S. is not losing in Iraq.  At least the New York Times tried to bury it in the story while the words "not losing" are nowhere to be found in the AP and the Washington Post stories.

Bolton's problem was his success

So writes Anne Bayefsky in National Review.

Ultimately, it was his success in defense of American and democratic interests that doomed him. No one was more vociferous in campaigning against his nomination than the defenders of the status quo — Secretary General Kofi Annan, his deputy Mark Malloch-Brown, and their financial backers, George Soros and Ted Turner’s U.N. Foundation. One can be sure they will have broken out the champagne, along with the Russians, Chinese, Sudanese, and the remainder of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — all those who have a vested interest in ensuring a neverending cycle of U.S. money in, support for terrorism and nuclear proliferation out.

She left out Joe Biden.

To Senate Democrats like Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Bolton was too much to abide at Turtle Bay because he effectively advanced White House policies they find abhorrent. Short of, say, Howard Dean, one wonders whom they might now accept as Bolton's successor.

I'm still puzzled.  Why are the Democrats so comfortable aligning themselves with our enemies?  I'd expect a little embarrassment at least that their fortunes track so closely with those of our enemies in Iraq and elsewhere.

Our disingenuous press

A memo about the situation in Iraq written by Donald Rumsfeld in the days before he resigned has apparently caught critics by surprise.  They had no idea that tactics were under constant Administration scrutiny.

Asked about the memo, White House spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said: "The president has said he's been dissatisfied with the progress in Iraq, so the right thing to do is reevaluate our tactics. There are a number of reviews underway, and the president is open to listening to a wide array of options."

You can almost hear her sigh.  But here's a typical reaction to Rumsfeld's memo.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the revelation of the memo would undercut any attempt by President Bush to defend anything resembling a "stay the course" policy in Iraq.

And what does the memo actually say?

The situation in Iraq has been evolving, and U.S. forces have adjusted, over time, from major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence. In my view it is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.

Let's see, we went "from major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence," and now it might be time for another adjustment -- this one a major adjustment.  Yet the critics use the phrase "stay the course" as an accusation that the Administration has failed to adjust to realities on the ground.

I think they confuse policy with strategy, and strategy with tactics.  There is a policy to encourage democratic reform in the Middle East.  The invasion of Iraq was, among other things, part of the strategy to achieve it.  There are tactics by which we fight the battle of Iraq.  The policy hasn't changed.  Tactics frequently change.  But the aims of the critics have not.

As the President has said before, and I have said here as well, the only way to lose in Iraq is to quit.  Yet this is what critics in the press work so mightily to achieve.  They encourage the terrorists and the insurgents to continue their fight by reporting that American efforts are doomed to failure.  Iraqi citizens and American troops die because of it.

Update:  For more on our mainstream media, follow the the link provided by Sissy Willis in the comments.

A special interest

An opinion column in this morning's Nashua Telegraph lamented the special interest money that has gravitated to the global warming discussion.  There was a flicker of hope that the column might delve into the amount of government grant money doled out to support the global warming industry that's sprung up to accept it.  That brief glimmer went out when I found that the column was written by Laurie David, a producer of An Inconvenient Truth.  Her column was an attack on Exxon Mobil for its support for the study of math and science in our high schools.  What piqued her outrage was the National Science Teachers Association's refusal to accept 50,000 free DVDs for classroom showings of her and Al Gore's movie.

Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the (NSTA) capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That’s the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose emission limits.

It’s bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

Revealing words here, and carefully chosen no doubt:  "...a small band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere."  Notice, "heat-trapping pollution".  Carbon dioxide, that clear, odorless, colorless gas, so necessary to the survival of plant life on our planet, is now considered by global warmists to be a pollutant.  But I mean, how would we survive without it?  The fact is life as we know it can't survive without CO2 in our atmosphere, yet Ms. David campaigns to have it labeled pollution.

Other carefully chosen words note that skeptics "have tried to challenge the consensus..."  I'd find her argument a lot more convincing if she accused those skeptics of challenging the scientific evidence.  Instead, they stand accused of challenging "the consensus".  Why doesn't Ms. David accuse them of challenging the scientific evidence?  After all, she produced a movie about global warming.  If she knows of some scientific fact that proves the role of CO2 in global warming, why not mention it in the column?  Surely there have been experiments that measure and compare the effects of infrared radiation on controlled atmospheres with varying levels of the offending gases?  No?

None of that is addressed in her column.  According to Ms. David the causes of Global warming are not open to discussion.  Consensus has formed.  The case is closed.  Instead she goes on about evils of special interest money and the detrimental impact on the children.  But is the case closed?

Last Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, which was brought 12 state attorney generals seeking to compel the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions under authority of the Clean Air Act.  CO2 makes the air dirty, I guess.  William O'Keefe offers his opinion in the Washington Times.

On both procedural and scientific grounds, the court should rule against the AGs. The Clean Air Act (CAA) has a long legislative history that makes clear Congress' legislative intent. The Congress has had ample opportunity to give the EPA authority to regulate CO2 over the past 30 or more years, but has explicitly chosen not to do so. The last amendments were in 1990 right after Al Gore and the father of global-warming hysteria, James Hansen, declared global warming was an impending apocalypse.

Although the Senate version of the CAA contained greenhouse gas provisions, the final bill passed by both Houses and signed by the president did not. If ever the heat of the moment would compel legislative action, 1990 was the time for it. Congress, and especially the Senate, has several times since rejected legislative proposals to regulate CO2. If EPA had clear-cut authority, new legislation would not be needed and that authority would have been cited during debate. Since the CAA does not explicitly grant authority to EPA, the AGs assert implied authority.

According to Mr. O'Keefe, with congressional intent is clear, in order for the court to find that EPA should regulate CO2 there must be compelling scientific evidence. 

Finally, the AGs petition is predicated on a scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions will cause serious health and welfare harm by causing increases in ozone and smog. But, air pollution levels have been declining, not rising. More important, the petition's scientific foundation is weak, at best.

In 1993, the Supreme Court decision set standards for scientific evidence. The court said, "the trial judge must ensure that ... all scientific ... evidence is not only relevant but reliable." "[T]he adjective 'scientific' implies a grounding in the methods and procedures of science" and "knowledge [connotes] more than subjective belief or unsupported speculation." "To qualify as 'scientific knowledge,' an inference or assertion must be [derived by the scientific method.]" Professional judgments and analytical results that cannot be validated by the scientific method are not science.

The AG claims are based on projections from computer models that have not been scientifically validated, do not accurately represent important climate processes, use assumptions instead of observational data, and overpredict actual temperature increases. Climatologists know the climate system is too complex to be driven by one variable -- changes in CO2 emissions -- and yet that assumption is the foundation for these climate models and the motivation for those who would regulate CO2.

There's that word "consensus" again -- consensus based on computer models.  Anyone for a little GIGO?  If you've worked in the computer industry you may know that GIGO stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out."  It means the answer you get from a computer will be wrong if the information you give it is wrong.  The information that goes into global warming computer models should be provable and measurable.  Is it?  If not the model is just another guess.

Yes, there are special interests at work here.  Michael O'Keefe heads the Marshall Institute whose mission is "to encourage the use of sound science in making public policy about important issues for which science and technology are major considerations."

And there's another special interest.  Laurie David no doubt makes a very good living on global warming.

And then there are the rest of us.  But we'll have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide if law and science can be bypassed in favor of hysteria.

I can hardly wait

If John Podhoretz serves as any measure of public reaction to the soon to be released (officially, that is) Iraq Study Group proposal, those boys are in for a rough go.

December 1, 2006 -- YES, it's been quite a week for the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group, the committee formed last spring to offer recommendations on a path forward in Iraq.

They had a wonderfully invigorating leak session the other day with The New York Times, which was the first recipient of the group's key top-level save-America recommendation. Co-chairmen James "Is There An Arab Dictator Nearby Whose Butt I Can Kiss" Baker and Lee "Yes, I'm Still Alive" Hamilton didn't even bother to pretend to brief the president or key lawmakers first.

The president could wait his turn. After all, this is the Iraq Study Group we're talking about here, buddy.

Policy change?

Under a somewhat misleading Wall Street Journal headline, Our Iraq Policy Must Change (subscription required), Jack David says maybe we ought to change our Iraq Policy.

U.S. policy ought to be informed by whether Iraqis are committed to the end result we expected them to embrace. It may be that they are, and still can be, successful with our help. If so, we should provide whatever greater or different assistance is necessary. But there is much evidence that a stable, secure and moderately free Iraq may be beyond the Iraqis' reach, and therefore beyond our own. Shiites kill Sunnis and Sunnis kill Shiites. Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders cannot end the killing. If ending the killing is a priority -- and some Iraqis say it is -- wouldn't Iraqi supporters of that view take more aggressive action? And if too many oppose it, is the end we envisioned attainable? This question is urgent, and we must decide.

Seems like stating the obvious.  It may be that the Iraqis are unable to take on the responsibility, but many of us think it's too soon to give up on them.  Regardless of what Iraqi opinion polls say, the violence comes from a criminal minority.  The majority of Iraqis would rather live in peace.

Mr. David was deputy assistant secretary of defense for combating weapons of mass destruction and negotiations policy from 2004 to September 2006,

Encouraging words

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke encouraging words after his summit with President George Bush yesterday.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready, to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June, our forces will be ready," Maliki said in an interview with ABC News after his meeting with Bush.

Asked whether he would disarm militias such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric, Maliki, himself a Shiite, said: "Definitely. And the government is doing that with all militias, with no exception. There will be only the arms for government troops."

Sadr's supporters who make up one of the biggest blocs in the Iraqi parliament had staged a walk out of parliament and the cabinet in protest of Maliki's meeting with Bush, but they termed it a "suspension" leaving open the possibility of their return to the government at a later date.  My interpretation:  al Sadr blinked. 

In the meantime Bush reiterated his position. 

In the news conference that followed, Bush sought to preempt a growing clamor to start a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a proposed policy shift that has gained traction as a result of the Nov. 7 congressional elections and that is expected to be endorsed by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.). The United States has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq.

Although the president was not asked directly about the panel's recommendations, which will be made public next week but which were partially leaked to reporters late Wednesday, he did say that "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

Let's see what develops.

Local bloggers make an impact!

New England bloggers Solomonia and Miss Kelly are in the news with their coverage of the Boston area imams who were recently held on immigration violations.

Imams Hafiz Muhammed Masood of the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon and Hafiz Abdul Hannan of the Islamic Society of Greater Lowell in Chelmsford, along with Masood’s 24-year-old son, Hassan, were released on bail from the Plymouth County House of Correction last Tuesday.
The Pakistan natives were among 33 individuals taken into custody around the country as part of an ongoing investigation into a visa fraud scheme. The plan allegedly helped large numbers of illegal aliens fraudulently obtain religious worker visas to enter or remain in the states, according to a statement released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Local bloggers “Miss Kelly,” who asked to be identified only by her online moniker, and Martin “Sol” Solomon, teamed up to write a petition that applauds ICE’s efforts.

Miss Kelly will be on the radio with WTKK's Michael Graham as well.