Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, February 01, 2003

Why We Fight - As war with Iraq draws closer, commentators, journalists, and policymakers frequently question whether the Iraqi people would really support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But that question has already been answered. Although Americans remember the Gulf war, many do not realize that, for a few momentous days immediately after it, much of Iraq rose up in open rebellion against Saddam's regime. In fact, 15 out of 18 Iraqi provinces rebelled. I was one of the rebels.

For over a decade, I have stayed silent about what I saw. But now, as the world considers freeing Iraq from Saddam's rule, I feel compelled to bear witness to the last time Iraqis tried to liberate their country.

This is the beginning of a harrowingly intense article from the New Republic, by Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress and veteran of the 1991 uprising that the US shamefully abandoned to its fate.

Please read it. Like the accounts of US and British ignorance of the unmistakeable evidence of the Holocaust, this is a barometer of the dark side of our nation's character.

Sidebar - Now that North Korea and the un-found Bin Laden have failed as Democrat diversions against the war effort, I have to wonder - will the Columbia tragedy be used to the same end? "We can't attack Iraq while we're still in mourning..."
posted by Mitch Berg 2/1/2003 05:47:33 PM

Character - It occurs to me that when the history books are written, someone needs to note this: Bill Clinton served during eight of the most placid years in US history. George W Bush, in the first two years of his first term, has on the other hand presided over one of the most amazingly turbulent periods in recent memory - certainly since the end of the Cold War. September 11, plus a mild but stubborn recession, and now another Shuttle accident...
posted by Mitch Berg 2/1/2003 09:39:39 AM

Grim News - NASA's website - which, understandably, is loading slowly due to heavy trafic - is passing on the news in typical grim officialese.
posted by Mitch Berg 2/1/2003 09:34:28 AM

Columbia MIA - Space Shuttle missing over Texas.

Fox adds this chilling comment:
Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

"We've taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly," said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.
More likely, I'd suspect; Columbia's an old shuttle - twenty years of heavy use, now.

Ugh.

UPDATE: Instapundit has seen video:
MORE: Why it's probably not terrorism: (1) if you planted a bomb, you'd want it to go off on takeoff -- that's when everyone is watching, and there's less time for stuff to go wrong; (2) it's basically impossible to shoot down a reentering space shuttle because of its speed and altitude; (3) there are so many things that can go wrong with shuttles, especially Columbia, which is the oldest, without invoking terrorism. I suppose it's conceivable that a saboteur did some sort of subtle structural damage calculated to cause this sort of a failure while remaining unnoticed during ground checks, but that strikes me as unlikely for a variety of reasons.

From the video it looks like structural failure, followed by an explosion as the spacecraft disintegrated. That's unlikely to be the result of sabotage. Most likely it was failure in a wing spar or some other component, probably brought on by age and fatigue, though possibly caused by tile zippering and burn-through, or damage on launch. We'll see. No point getting ahead of things here, but plenty of reason to think it's not terrorism.

posted by Mitch Berg 2/1/2003 08:51:29 AM

No Blood for Antimatter - The brewing war?

It's all about capturing a crashed UFO, says Pravda.
Jack Sarfatti reported that Friday evening, December 6, 2002 “someone called the Art Bell radio show, claimed his connection with the military and informed that a UFO crashed in Iraq several years ago. The USA is currently searching for any pretext to invade Iraq. In fact, the USA is motivated by the greatest fear that Saddam will reverse-engineer the crashed alien spacecraft.”

It is allegedly said that the craft crashed during the Gulf War (1990-1991), or more recently (probably in December 1998). This became some kind of Iraq’s Rosewell. The USA is currently reverse-engineering the Rosewell craft and fears that Saddam’s scientists may become even more successful than Americans in this or that sphere. It was said that these researches may give Iraq a considerable advance and even make it a leading super power.
Well, as long as someone connected "with the military" calls in to say so on Art Bell's show...

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 2/1/2003 08:27:25 AM

Friday, January 31, 2003

Schwartzkopf Again - Eric Boysen writes:
Let's see..............the president's father and America's favorite real life general are hunting buddies. Colin Powell finally folds up his "let diplomacy work" tent, dumb ol' George W. delivers a masterful State of the Union address, and the next thing you know ol' Stormin' Norman's off the reservation. Hmmmmmmmm..............it just gets curiouser and curiouser, don't it?
Off the reservation? Or playing a convenient "Good Cop?"
Back up.

Whether as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or as Secretary of State, Colin Powell has always played the role of the dissenting dove. It really doesn't matter if he actually believes in the material, it's his job. He serves at the direction of the president. There's always a dove in the administration; there has to be. Otherwise, it's the Kremlin, not the White House.
It's a principle of almost any type of human interaction: Want to make a sour dish? Add a dash of sugar. Want to interrogate a particularly nasty perp? Give 'em a good cop. In theatrical lighting - wanna emphasize a bright spot? Use cool backlighting. Want to emphasize the yang? Toss in some Yin.

No, it's not new-agey twaddle - it's a key factor of human interaction; contrasts emphasize.

Leave aside the whole aspect of (I suspect) the entire Potemkin "dove" movement within the administration, drawing the left out to be recognized.

Eric moves to a great point here:
Now that Secretary Powell has thrown down the gauntlet, lost patience, and had his little tantrums right on script for the benefit of the liberal media he's been leading around by the nose, (not to mention the State Department, Democrats in Congress, European ninnies, etc.) out trots Norman Schwartzkopf to pick up the leash.

After Stormin' Norman takes Matt and Katie and the rest of the Katzenjammer Kids out for a few laps around the Maypole, he's bound to have an epiphany himself. Eureka!! Then maybe we'll hear from John McCain, and so on and so on. This is how to control the media in wartime. It's textbook.

The irony is the liberals in general and the Democrats in Congress either don't recognize their own techniques or cannot let on that they do. This is why they sent out not the head coach, the team captain, or even the pitcher to respond to Bush's State of the Union, but the guy selling popcorn in the upper decks of Washingstonia. Ideologically, the Democrats can't support the administration; politically, they can't oppose the administration. So they sent out the mascot.

This is a very accomplished and media savvy administration about to unleash the dogs of war. It's a certainty they have as much control of the news cycle by now as is humanly possible. It would be criminally stupid not to have control of it.
Great points.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/31/2003 07:07:18 PM

The War on Ugly Guns - According to the Times, the "Violence Policy Center", in response to the wave of terrorists using large-caliber precision sniping rifles against passenger aircraft, is drawing a bead (heh heh) on .50 caliber "sniper" rifles.
The guns, .50-caliber rifles, sell for thousands of dollars and are primarily purchased by military and law enforcement personnel, but hundreds are bought by civilians every year. Some manufacturers' marketing material emphasizes that the rifles can destroy aircraft and armored personnel carriers.
Neither the times nor the manufacturers mention the other factors involved in such shooting. We'll get to that in a bit, here:
Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, the gun-control group that has long campaigned for bans on the .50-caliber rifles, said: "This is not just a gun control issue. It's a national security issue."
They could have been campaigning for a long time - it's certainly a big part of today's VPC presentation - because .50 caliber "sniping" rifles have been available since the early 1850's. The first, in fact - the .52 caliber Sharps rifle - lent its' name to the word we use today to describe an expert marksman, "Sharpshooter".

That, of course, predates manned flight by 50 years. No civilian planes have been shot down by such weapons (as distinguished from .50 caliber machine guns, which took a horrendous toll on US helicopters and aircraft in Vietnam).

The Times gives the truth a chance:
The Transportation Security Administration, however, does not see the rifles as a major threat. Robert Johnson, the agency's chief spokesman, said: "We are aware of it. We have considered it as part of a number of potential threats. We just don't feel it is high on the list of potential dangers."

Manufacturers and many gun enthusiasts say the rifles' critics are overzealous gun opponents who falsely raise fears about terrorism.

Ronnie G. Barrett, a manufacturer [of the Barret Light .50, a weapon of choice among Delta Force, SEAL, SAS and Special Forces snipers], said the idea of shooting down a moving plane with the rifle was "big time ridiculous" because a gunman would have to aim above the plane, to take account of gravity's effect on the bullet as it traveled, and then the plane would not be visible in the scope.

Other rifles could also be used against planes on the ground, Mr. Barrett said.
Mr. Barrett is both correct, and too modest. Any rifle can be used against planes on the ground - and with about the same effect as the .50 caliber weapons.
Alan J. Vick, one of the two authors of the study, said that the possibility of using .50-caliber rifles against parked aircraft was worrisome.

"These weapons are heavy, and as a sniper weapon, using a bipod, laying down, shooting at some terrestrial target, they can be very accurate," Mr. Vick said. "I can understand why people would be worried about them as a terrorism weapon."

He and other experts, while sometimes skeptical that the gun could be used successfully against a plane in the air, said it could damage and possibly ignite a plane on the ground.
Indeed. So, let's walk through this scenario, shall we?
A group of terrorists spends thousands of dollars on a .50 rifle, rather than on five to ten smaller weapons of adequate capability.
The terrorists bring the weapon to a location from which they can shoot at aircraft. Let's assume the terrorists have access to snipers as well-trained as the Delta Force, SAS or SEALS - they'd need to get within 2,000 yards of the airport's runways, apron or hangers. That's an intimidating shot if you're not a world-class expert (Delta, SAS or SEAL), but what the heck.

And if you want to shoot them while flying, you'll need to get down under the glide path (or take a VERY difficult high-deflection shot at a target moving 120-200 mph). Remember, last summer's "Shoulder Fired Surface to Air Missile" scare caused glide paths and airport environs to be more heavily-observed than before.

So the scenario would be...what? A small group of men, one of whom is carrying a six-foot-long rifle, is to sneak into the generally-populated around a major airport, or under the now-guarded glide paths of the same airport? Unobtrusively?

And precisely why would they do that, to deliver a small bullet that'd be only dubiously likely to actually shoot down an airliner, when for the same load and risk, they could bring a surface to air missile (banned for the average American - relax, VPC - but easily available to real terrorists, and vastly more likely to do damage or destroy the target?

The VPC shows its ignorance, incidentally, comparing the task to "bird hunting". Birds don't move at 200 mph. And while shooting a bird with a shotgun at 20-50 yards is simple, try hitting one with a single shot from, say, a deer rifle with a scope. More daunting, to be sure.

The Times quotes an expert:
John Plaster, a retired Special Forces officer who has tutored police snipers, pointed out that such rifles were awkward to maneuver, weighing about 35 pounds.

"It's very unrealistic," Mr. Plaster said. "I have never heard of a commercial plane anywhere in the world that was seriously damaged while in flight by a .50-caliber rifle, ever. It's not by any means a choice weapon."

Sales literature from Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, says of one model, "The compressor section of jet engines or the transmissions of helicopters are likely targets for the weapon, making it capable of destroying multimillion dollar aircraft with a single hit delivered to a vital area."

A competitor, E.D.M. Arms, advertises on the Web that its Windrunner .50-caliber can be used to "attack various materiel targets such as parked aircraft, radar sites, ammunition, petroleum and various thinned-skinned materiel targets."
The essential qualifier - "in the hands of an expert marksman" - went unstated.

I love this - the obligatory scare quote:
Caliber refers to the diameter of the barrel, and .50 caliber is half an inch. At the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Curt Bartlett, chief of the Firearms Technical Branch, said of the .50 caliber, "anything bigger than that would be getting into the range of cannons."
"Omigosh, Muffy! Terrorists can buy something that's almost as big as a cannon!"

Yep. In the world of ordnance, any bullet bigger than .8 inches in diameter is a "cannon shell". In the same way that any car over a certain size is a "truck". The whole line exists to frighten the ignorant.

Inevitably, we end with this:
Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said he would soon introduce legislation to regulate the weapons. Mr. Waxman said he had observed a demonstration at which marines used the rifles to shoot through a three-and-a-half-inch manhole cover, a 600-pound safe and "everything imaginable."
Expert Marksmen, ideal conditions, etc, etc.

It's a crisis in search of a problem.

I'll be following this.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/31/2003 04:07:10 PM

Light Day - More job hunting. Will post more tonight or over the weekend.

I'll be throwing such a party when this is over. And you'll all be invited!
posted by Mitch Berg 1/31/2003 01:21:49 PM

Schwartzkopf - Earlier this week, the left launched itself into a paroxysm of glee - Retired Army General Norman Schwartzkopf, made a comment that could be described as opposing invading Iraq.

What a difference a day makes:
(CNSNews.com) - General Norman Schwarzkopf made headlines on Tuesday when he told The Washington Post he "would like to have better information" before endorsing a U.S.-led war against Iraq. War skeptics seized on his remarks to paint any U.S. action as ill-advised.

But on Wednesday, Gen.Schwarzkopf told NBC's Today show he thought President Bush's State of the Union speech was "very compelling," and he said he looks forward to hearing the declassified information that Secretary of State Colin Powell will share with the world next week.

"Saddam's got to go," Schwarzkopf said Wednesday morning. "He's a monster in every single way you can think of and with the linkage to the terrorists, it's scary what in fact could be done."
I have to admit, I was perplexed by Schwartzkopf's stance on the war. I think a friend of mine, Brian Jones in Atlanta, has it figured out, though. This is from an email from a list-server on which we're both members:
...I smell rope-a-dope. As soon as everybody falls behind Stormin' Norman (like the elder geopolitical statesman he's become now that he's spouting something they want to hear), saying, "Yeah, where's the nukes, we can't go without nukes," we'll get some new intelligence on nukes. Say, next week or so.
I'd thought this; Bush will let the opposition rant itself blue about "no evidence", and commit itself to attacking an evidence-less invasion; then, Bush'll release evidence he's had for quite some time, cutting the knees out of under the opposition.

As the tanks begin to roll.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/31/2003 12:32:13 PM

Thursday, January 30, 2003

Job Hunt Hijinks - As I think I've mentioned on here before, I'm a software designer. Depending on the company I'm working for, my job title might be "GUI Designer", "Information Architect", "Business Analyst", or (I love these) "Usability Engineer" or "Human Factors Engineer". What a wonderful country, where a guy with BA in English can be called "Engineer" without "Sanitation" in front of it. But seriously - where most companies design their software user interfaces by guess, gosh and golly, I bring some engineering methodology to the task - which saves companies a bundle of money. Honest.

I'm not writing this to serve as an online resume (although if you're an IT hiring manager and happen to need someone who do the voodoo I do, please write!), but as a shot of economic good news.

My job is a "leading indicator". Projects and companies hire people like me when they're getting projects off the ground, ramping up, getting ready to move ahead on things.

The last year in my field has been very slow. Not a lot of jobs to be had. I was lucky I had the crappy job I did, even if it ended three months early.

This week, I've been getting some rumblings. Companies calling back. Interviews with hiring managers instead of headhunters (and headhunters calling with open positions). No offers yet - but the fact that the rumblings have started is a good sign.

I hope.

So let's phrase this in the form of economic punditry: My consumer confidence is at a historic low of "0" for this week, but the outlook is improving, depending on whether an offer comes through any time soon.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/30/2003 12:54:33 PM

Low Tower - Some of my friends - these'd be friends on the far left of the DFL and a few Greens - bloviate about what a fabulous guy Jim Hightower is. They were the same ones who swore Hightower's talk show would push Limbaugh off the air, about five years ago, but I digress.

Hightower attacks the notion of the liberal media:
"Liberal Media" my butt! The true bias of the barons who control virtually all of the mass media is not to the left or even to the right, but to the top... to their own corporate class. The so-called "news" we get is filtered through the media's corporate lenses and tinted to a nice, rosey corporate hue. Indeed, revealed by the diligent watchdog group called PR Watch, it turns out that many of the "news stories" we see on television are actually nothing but video feeds from corporations with something to sell.
Y'know, I'll give Hightower this much: there's a point in there. The media is most loyal to "the establishment" of which it's a part.

Now - someone please show me where the major media have come down on the right side of, say, gun control? Abortion? Tax cuts? Contraceptives in schools?

After years of asking, I await Mr. Hightower's answer - or that of any of his supporters - on that question.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/30/2003 10:23:53 AM

Blast of Cold Water - Regis Sabol is left-wing pundit with a long portfolio.

He's also apparently been under a rock for a while. I found this article on Fraters Libertas - an article in an online 'zine Mr. Sabol edits.
Just about any city with an AM radio talk show boasts a few Rush Limbaugh disciples. The guys I ran into in Erie, Pennsylvania, were Limbaugh wannabes. They had the same flapping jaws but not half the intelligence.

Because I don’t listen to talk radio, I didn’t know what I was in for when I called Jeff Johns at WJET 1400 Talk Radio to get publicity for MoveOn.org, a national anti-war organization.
That sets things off for me. Mr. Sabol - supposedly a pundit dealing with the events of the day - seems to be unaware that AM talk radio has become a province - really, the major mass-media presence - of the right, and certainly the only place where the "conservative street" finds a voice.

Mr. Sabol, as Fraters points out, is a mover and shaker behind "Move On", which the Fraters' Saint Paul described as well as anyone ever has:
”Move On” is the group that formed back in 1998 with a single purpose, to support the right of older, married male employers to shag their young female interns while on the clock. Their first case concerned a gentleman named Bill Clinton. (Unfortunately for lascivious, immoral, aging men everywhere, "Move On" never moved on to find a second case to defend.) In an effort to easily distill their message to Congress and the American people on how Mr. Clinton should be punished, their official slogan back then was “Censure and Move On” (many in their constituency of lascivious, immoral, aging men preferred the slogan “Zip Up and Move On,” but that never really caught on with the media consultants).
So we have a guy whose organization's entire M.O. is to forgive the oopses (intern-banging, genocide) of...whom? Anyone opposed to Republicans, I guess.

Sabol, like a sheep to the wolves, was shocked...shocked, I tell you - to find out that conservative talk show hosts didn't learn argumentation in grad school seminars:
We weren’t more than two minutes into the interview when Johns asked if I thought it was all right for Saddam Hussein to gas his own people. What the hell does this have to do with the MoveOn petitions, I thought.
Bear in mind, we're getting the entire context for this exchange from one of the participants, one with whom I'm sure I disagree on most issues. But I can think of three possible answers to his question:
Mr. Sabol is used to the media with which he deals being uncritical, sympathetic, even sycophantic to his cause. It's likely the only interviews he's ever given are with NPR affiliates, Pacifica stations, and major networks staffed with Clinton supporters and Democrats, who'd be perfectly willing to uncritically pass on word of "MoveOn's" petitions without question or comment, or
Mr. Sabol is crying crocodile tears. He set up this interview in full knowledge that he was going to be running into "right wing attack dogs", and he wanted a patented "I'm in the belly of the beast" article with which to titillate his Volvo-driving, "No War In Iraq"-sign-displaying, dictator-appeasing readership, or
Mr. Sabol isn't the brightest light on God's christmas tree.
The interview continued - but really, we all know where this is going, don't we? Innocent lamb lost among the right-wing wolves, yadda yadda. The two talk show hosts tried to tie him to anti-American activities - fairly or unfairly, read the article and judge for yourself.

It's more interesting, really, to note his adjectives used for describing the hosts through the rest of the piece:
"Joe McCarthy would have been proud. "
"I could see these guys at work in a KGB interrogation room" [Actually, liberal gab host Geraldo Rivera perfected this form of interview...]>"these right-wing media whores" [As if "MoveOn" isn't entirely a product of media prostitution]
"Sadly, America has a long tradition of airwave demagoguery. The Jew-hating Father Coughlin drew millions to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930’s and 1940’s. His more contemporary avatars are Paul Harvey and, the most successful of them all, Rush Limbaugh, who has made Hitler’s theory of the Big Lie his stock and trade. [Comparing Harvey and Limbaugh to Coughlin? Indeed? Let's leave aside the Internet truism that once Hitler is invoked, the argument is illegitimate - isn't that big talk for someone who two breaths earlier was whining about "McCarthyism"?]
Millions of his benighted followers believe that if Rush said it, it must be true, no matter how outlandish the lie. "
"Like carriers of the bubonic plague, right-wing radio gunslingers have crawled out of some primordial slime to attack any hapless caller or guest who disagrees with them or, foolishly, attempts to reason with them." [Open note to Mr. Sabol - when have "you" ever tried to "reason" with "us?"]
"They are fascistic yahoos of the first stripe "
"appealing to an audience that is, at best, gullible or subscribes to right-wing dogma, especially when it is served up with venomous mean-mindedness. " [So unlike the intellectual giants who chant "MoveOn! MoveOn!", regardless of the facts]
"These vermin hone their skills at the Goebbels School of Radio Broadcasting." [Oddly, this form of talk radio was "pioneered" by the likes of Tom Leykis and Alan Berg. Goebbelsish, perhaps - and on Mr. Sabol's side of the fence]
"Their great role model is Joe McCarthy, the alcoholic demagogue who was drummed out of the United States Senate after inflaming the great Red Witch Hunts of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s and leaving a bloody trail of ruined lives. " [Perhaps it's time to expand that Internet truism to include references to McCarthy - especially two, disconnected references in the same article]
"The two local yokels "
"My country right or wrong. I thought we’d settled that defense at the Nuremberg trials after World War II. " [Perhaps Mr. Sabol needs to be reminded - the First Amendment applies as much to "yokels" in Erie, Pennsylvania as it does to, say, Robert Mapplethorpe. Nuremberg didn't settle any "free speech" issues - other than the "yokels'" right to speak as freely as Mr. Sabol]
"slathering attack dogs"...
...and so on.

And while Mr. Sabol professes shock at the type of communication that "right wing talk radio" uses, MoveOn itself is behind some pretty shabby, emotionally-manipulative propaganda that would have done proud any authoritarian Minister of Information.

I guess the only response is to advise Mr. Sabol to follow his own group's advice: When you're facing something that you find repulsive, wrong-headed, obnoxious, evil, ugly, and "benighted", well...

...just "Move On".
posted by Mitch Berg 1/30/2003 09:30:24 AM

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Deathblow? - Austin Bay, on why conquering Iraq might put Al Quaeda on the ropes:
9-11's strategic ambush sought to force America to fight on Al Qaeda's terms, to suck the United States into a no-win Afghan war, to bait the United States into launching a "crusade against Islam." Osama bin Laden believed he possessed an edge in ideological appeal, "faith based" strength against what he perceived as U.S. decadence. U.S. failure in Afghanistan would ignite a global "clash of civilizations" pitting all Muslims against America.
The key element of guerrilla warfare, of course - don't fight on your enemy's terms. Not only that, take the fight to him on your own.
Bin Laden's strategy flopped, for a slew of reasons. Chief among them, American liberty remains an ideologically powerful idea. The United States also pulled an "asymmetric" military move of sorts, using Green Beret-guided Afghan allies and hi-tech airpower to topple the Taliban.
It's a play straight from the British playbook - it's exactly how the British fought in many brushfire wars from the '50s through the '70s; SAS-led locals, bankrolled by London, did the dirty work, supported by judicious application of RAF firepower and small units of elite (Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines) infantry when muscle was needed. We saw a reprise of that strategery, only more ambitious, last winter in Afghanistan.

Bay continues to his conclusion:
The massive American build-up around Iraq serves as a baited trap that Al Qaeda cannot ignore. Failure to react to the pending American attack would demonstrate Al Qaeda's impotence. For the sake of their own reputation (as well as any notion of divine sanction), Al Qaeda's cadres must show CNN and Al Jazeera they are still capable of dramatic endeavor.
Like the Tet Offensive, Al Quaeda must "show the flag", earn its credibility.
This ain't theory. Al Qaeda's leaders and fighters know it, and the rats are coming out of their alleys. In Afghanistan, several hundred Al Qaeda fighters in the Pakistani border region have gone on the offensive. They specifically link their attacks to America's pending assault on Baghdad. Al Qaeda terror teams are reportedly moving into Western Europe.

Al Qaeda's offensive thrust in Afghanistan produces open targets for the 82nd Airborne Division. Moving and communicating terror cells are terror cells more vulnerable to police detection. Moreover, the terrorists are no longer operating on their time line, but on America's time line. The United States creates a situation where Al Qaeda either loses ideological credibility or must risk operations during a time of focused U.S. intelligence activity.
Ever see "Das Boot"? A U-Boat was safe when laying still and quiet deep underwater. It was also perfectly ineffective, hiding and not taking any offensive action. When it fires up its engines and has to go someplace...that's when it becomes vulnerable. Same for terrorists; the only purpose they serve when hiding underground is as a threat, and as fodder for left-wing armchair strategists who bay at the moon about waiting for the US to capture them before dealing with Iraq...
But the big blow to Al Qaeda will be the loss of Baghdad. Baghdad is a counter-terror intelligence trove. Saddam's fall will loosen knowledgeable tongues. Al Qaeda will have fewer alleys to inhabit.

But the big loss will be access to Saddam's WMD. A WMD spectacular is the kind of operation that can reverse Al Qaeda's international propaganda decline.
As always, read the whole thing.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/29/2003 09:23:56 PM

Multilateral - So here's what happened:
Congress demanded that the President get their approval. Bush got their approval.
Congress and the media demanded that the President go through the UN
Congress and the media demanded that the President allow inspections. Bush got the inspections.
The left and the media demanded that the President wait until the inspections found something incriminating. So they did.
So finally, the left and the media demanded that Bush "wait for the allies".

Here they are - the prime ministers of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark, and the president of the Czech Republic.

What next, Democrats?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/29/2003 09:11:15 PM

The Peevish Left - I found a surprising editorial in today's Strib, by Paul Scott.
I'm a lefty. But lately, instead of inspiring me, the left keeps making me feel awful about the world.
Awful? When the world is about to suffocated from global warming and we're about to led into a quagmire by the government? Why awful?

Sorry, I digress:
My latest lefty-awful moment happened on Martin Luther King Day last week, as I turned on an MPR call-in show. The subject was the peace movement, and host Katherine Lanpher's guest was New York-based professor of sociology and commentator Todd Gitlin.

An older listener had called in to say he had lived through World War II, had seen what happened when you appeased a megalomaniac, and was starting to get uncomfortable about the reflexive opposition to war with Iraq. He was comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, of course, and mentioned that he remembered Neville Chamberlain's visit to Berlin. Greatest Generation be damned, however; after a minute or so Lanpher told Grandpa to get to his point, argued with him when he asked for more time, then cut him off and turned the mike over to Gitlin.
Let me make a quick aside here: Katherine Lanpher is inexcusable. She's the most inept talk show host in the Twin Cities today. She's a terrible interviewer (heaven help her if the talkback from the producer went out), she handles callers incredibly badly...

...and as much as I respect MPR's news division (yes, fellow conservatives, I think the hard-news people there do a decent job) Lanpher is about as blinkeredly leftist as Ira Glass, without being able to hide behind "art". She's positioned as a pseudo-journalistic "News and issues" host, but she's no less biased than Jason Lewis or Syl Jones. Just less honest about it.

Back to the article:
"The caller can't possibly remember Neville Chamberlain going to Berlin," said the eagle-eyed professor, "because Chamberlain went to Munich. And the rest of his statement is about that accurate."

Touché!

Gitlin has himself written about the alienating ways of the peace movement, so it was disappointing to see him assume the stance that minds are changed through argument and ridicule. After a point-by-point refuting of the comparison between Saddam and Hitler -- steadfastly avoiding any acknowledgment the caller might just be a fellow member of the human race, responding to his very real and affecting experience in life -- our thoughtful radio expert submitted his rhetorical coup de grace: "The analogy crumbles," he said. "It's made of proverbial sand."
Beating up on callers - nervous, fumbling with their thoughts under pressure - is the hallmark of the cheapshot artist.

If you've never called a talk show - it's not easy. You hold...and hold...and hold...

...and suddenly, there's a harsh screeching sound as the host says your name and the telemixer puts you on the air. And BOOM - you have to be coherent.

It's hard enough all by itself. Then, Cacklin' Katherine starts with her little song and dance (if you dare to disagree with her).

It's not easy.

Back to Scott:
I felt bad for the caller -- how shabbily the two had treated him on their little morning show here in the waning years of his life. I also began to wonder where the left gets its harshness -- a know-it-all style of dark grievance-dom that has increasingly come to define the peace movement.
When I was filling in on KSTP the other night, James Lileks summed it up nicely. There are three categories of leftists:
People who view their disagreements with conservatives as honest differences between peers
people who are liberals and just don't think about it that much - it's all they've known, they really don't care about alternatives, and
those who view liberalism as a force that must wipe out a benighted, ugly, stupid, evil opposition. We know who we're dealing with here, don't we?
Back to Mr. Scott:
It was on my mind because I had seen this belief system in full bloom two nights earlier, as I watched a replay of the day's big Washington, D.C., antiwar demonstration.

At the march, speaker upon speaker proclaimed the supposed true motivation behind the current U.S. build-up: The rush to war is about oil. The rush to war is about U.S. global aggression. The rush to war is about Bush Jr. finishing the work of Bush Sr. The rush to war, according to the very name of the organizing body behind Saturday's protest march -- International ANSWER, or Act Now to Stop War and End Racism -- is about race.

The soup of causes, theories and pronouncements made my head spin. It also made me wary of my spokespersons. Much has been made of late of the unlikely bed-partners at these marches -- how the merely conscientious must sit through the orations of the terminally consternated. How the presence of former Milosevic-defender and attorney general Ramsey Clark shouting for impeachment might just alienate the less-cynical pastors, housewives and earnest teenagers who had boarded buses to Washington.
Indeed, it may be the best we can hope for.
I just wish that every gathering of my lefties didn't have to become such a tedious exercise in cause-linking, chant-bullhorning and supposed truth-telling. I have the fantasy of a progressive cause with no Youth and Student Coordinator, no West Coast Representative, no brother from the movement in the country to the south and no presumption that words like Solidarity, Network, Action and Uprising are always to be treated as gospel, the code words that say we are all the same.
An acquaintance described a Green Party convention as being like a Puritan gathering - serious to the point of obsession, dour, clenched...

...that's the impression I - and apparently Scott - got while looking at the demonestrations: like Temperance protesters of the 1890's, awash in the seriousness of their cause, not wanting to sully its purity with any false levity.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't play this game. Look at his face, full of dignity and calm while being pushed into the police station counter like a petty thief. Far from being consumed with rhetorical swordsmanship, crowd counts and secret agendas, he seemed to gain confidence in standing up against the simple, obvious truth -- the whack jobs that the Southern whites had become. He may have come out against the Vietnam War, he may have embraced a peripheral cause or two, but I can't imagine he would have strayed from the optimism of his dream to support the grab-bag of activism and sour outlooks of the scoundrels who would try to use the moment to sign us up for less defensible causes. (Long live the Palestinian people? Isn't theirs the cause that bombed a Sbarro?)

And I can't see him doing something so ineffectual or insecure as pointing out a mistake about an event that happened 70 years ago, not when there was a potential friend to be made.
I suggest this: To the left, there are no potential friends. There are allies, and there are enemies.

It all boils down to the most noxious, caustic phrase to gain acceptance in recent years: "If you're not with us, you're against us", or it's collegiate cousin, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".

All of us who aren't convinced? Yep. We're the problem.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/29/2003 06:10:26 PM

Another Tricky Day - Three job interviews today. The first one - at a local Fortune 500 - is one I really want. Badly. Your prayers, Karmic vibes and best wishes are all eagerly encouraged, as always.

Bloggered - The Blogger website - via which I publish Shot in the Dark - has been down most of the day.

I'll try to catch up here.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/29/2003 02:50:35 PM

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

A Few Good Men - Former Marine Richard Botkin has an excellent article in the current World Net Daily on those who, a week and a half ago, left ports on the east coast for "Southwest Asia". The whole article's worth a read. But having re-immersed myself in SLA Mashall lately, this paragraph struck me:
When I think about the pending war, I think of the protesters, the appeasers, the America haters, Sean Penn, Tom Daschle, Bill Clinton, the French. The only thing the peace-at-any-price crowd has in common with the few warriors who will be at the absolute tip of the spear when hostilities begin is that neither group wants to go to war.

America will win this war against evil. Complete victory this time is the only option. It will be won with or without the support of Al Sharpton, with or without the support of Hillary Clinton, with or without the support of the Germans and the Chinese, and with or without the support of every Hollywood dimwit who thinks sacrifice means drinking grapefruit juice for breakfast.

This war against evil will be won because of who is going to fight it. Armed to the teeth with 21st-century technology, schooled and thoroughly trained in the latest tactics, the on-paper edge goes to our side. Far more important though than all of the precision weapons and night-vision equipment is the firmly rooted culture of victory and sacrifice and duty of our nation's Marine Corps.
Botkin being a former marine, the article lionizes the Corps. He's entitled.

But the same description holds for the rest of the people on their way overseas as we speak. It's not just the weapons, or the numbers - if it were, the Soviets would have trounced Finland in days in 1940. It's who we're sending that makes the difference.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/28/2003 03:33:04 PM

Long Day - I'll catch up the blogging tonight. Lots going on today.

No job offers yet, but we're working on it.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/28/2003 01:21:37 PM

Hitch on Weasels - Christopher Hitchens attacks and debunks the "Cowboy" trope. That's the myth so beloved of the far left and the Axis of Weasels - that Bush and the adminstration are a rogue posse of vigilantes.
A cowboy surely would have wanted to do something dramatic and impulsive (such as to blow up at least an aspirin-factory in Sudan) in order to beat the chest and show he wasn't to be messed with. But it turns out that refined Parisians are keener on such "unilateral" gestures—putting a bomb onboard the Rainbow Warrior, invading Rwanda on the side of the killers, dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast without a by-your-leave, building a reactor for Saddam Hussein, and all the rest of it.
True.

Here's the summary:
In the present case of Iraq, a cowboy would have overruled the numerous wimps and faint hearts who he somehow appointed to his administration and would have evinced loud scorn for the assemblage of sissies and toadies who compose the majority of the United Nations. Instead, Bush has rejoined UNESCO, paid most of the U.S. dues to the U.N., and returned repeatedly to the podium of the organization in order to recall it to its responsibility for existing resolutions. While every amateur expert knows that weather conditions for an intervention in the Gulf will start to turn adverse by the end of next month, he has extended deadline after deadline. He has not commented on the eagerness of the media to print every injunction of caution and misgiving from State Department sources. The Saudis don't want the United States to use the base it built for the protection of "the Kingdom"? Very well, build another one in a state that welcomes the idea. Do the Turks and Jordanians want to have their palms greased before discovering what principles may be at stake? Greased they will be. In a way, this can be described as "a drive to war." But only in a way. It would be as well described as a decided insistence that confrontation with Saddam Hussein is inevitable—a proposition that is relatively hard to dispute from any standpoint
Read the whole thing, of course.

I've said it over and over - in this blog, on the air the other night, and in countless conversations on the subject: the US, and the President, have played this by the numbers. For all the caterwauling about "unilateralism" and "going it alone", we have played the consensus game. Bush had played the game masterfully.

And the left, outraged at being outmaneuvered, doesn't like it one bit.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/28/2003 08:51:51 AM

Deserve Victory - Fellow Churchill buff Elder, from Fraters Libertas, sends this:
I just wanted to let you know that we've created some bumper stickers (hopefully lawn signs are next) to counter the anti-war Left and the "No War With Iraq" signs which I'm sure you've grown as tired of seeing as we have. Our slogan is simple; "Deserve Victory!" and is borrowed from one of the greatest war leaders of all time, Winston Churchill.
Check it out and send in your order.

Of course, a Churchill quote is a quick route to the "A" list of my attention span. The Fraters run this one - surely a classic:
Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe.

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

We cannot guarantee victory, but only deserve it.
And pass the word.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/28/2003 08:25:33 AM

Monday, January 27, 2003

One Prayer Answered - Dave Barry has a blog.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/27/2003 08:05:22 PM

Crunch - I've been job hunting for three full weeks now. I hate it. But hopefully I'm getting down around the end of it here.

I'm down to crunch time on two job opportunities. One, I'm supposed to hear about today (in theory), and I'm supposed to have a second interview for another on Wednesday.

This feels like opening night of a play - after all the brutal work and auditions and callbacks and rehearsals and rehearsals and rehearsals and technical runthroughs and dress rehearsals, it's time to put the show on. You don't know if you're going to flop or be a hit.

So prayers, meditational vibes, karmic energy or best wishes, again, are all gratefully accepted.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/27/2003 08:10:39 AM

Alternate Universe - I remember interviewing members of a local "radical" group, the U of M's Progressive Student Organization, on my old talk show at KSTP back in the mid-eighties. I had a distinct impression that I was chasing a greased pig - it was impossible to get a hand on the argument. They and I were in two very different worlds. The vocabulary, geography and history each of us observed were completely different. I said "Lincoln freed the slaves", they said "Lincoln opened up opportunities for Jim Crow".

Lileks has it pretty much figured out this morning:
One of the speakers quoted in the article said we’d insulted Arab cultures: “Long after the Gulf War was over, we had arms depots outside of mosques, American servicewomen dressed inappropriately for where they were.” So women shouldn’t be in the military? No, of course they should serve. So they shouldn’t be posted to the Middle East? No, they should have the same opportunities as men. So they should wear the veil while they’re on the base? No, but we have to understand that their presence upsets the local culture. So you support overturning the governments that impose strict miserable sexist regulations on females? No, we just have to realize how they see us. And then we do what? I don’t understand the question. Once we realize that they see us as a Godforsaken culture that lets women drive cars AND planes AND wear shorts and thongs, AND dance with someone they just met five minutes ago AND have a day job operating machine guns, then what? Well, we enter into a cross-cultural dialogue that enables a syncretic process aimed at facilitating strategies of coexistence. Yes, but what if they want to kill us because we actually think that their concepts of female servitude are negotiable? Well, I don’t accept your definitions; I think we have to change the terms of the debate so violence is never an option. It’s an option for them. It’s Job One, as the Ford ads used to say - oh, look, it’s a fellow with a bomb-belt, running towards us. Should I shoot him? Violence never solves anything. It’s about to solve you, ma’am. It’s about to solve you for good.
And that more or less sums it up.

It's like arguing an overly smug fundamentalist (you pick the religion) - when cornered, a simple "Read the (Torah, Bible, Quran)" or "Violence never solves anything" or "Dialog! Dialog! Dialog!" usually ends the conversation, as far as they're concerned.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/27/2003 06:45:21 AM

Sunday, January 26, 2003

Sarah and Jim "Crow" Brady - Gun control laws have always been aimed at blacks. It goes back to the very first gun control laws, after the Civil War - where the Klan-controlled government tried to disarm the freedmen and Union Army veterans in the Galveston, making them easier victims. The fight against the law led to the 14th Amendment.

Other gun control acts since then have similarly attempted to disarm minorities first and foremost.

Rarely has this been acknowledged in the major media, though. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, however, has this:
No one tracks the number of felons living in Milwaukee County, much less the racial breakdown. But the state Department of Corrections maintains a database of felons on probation and parole. At the end of last year, there were 10,606 in the county - 67% black, 30% white. Bill Clausius, a department spokesman, said the racial breakdown remains fairly constant.

CEASEFIRE "manifests the most insidious flaws of the criminal justice system for two centuries," said federal public defender Dean Strang. "It says, 'We're afraid of guns, we're afraid of black men, and we're really afraid of black men with guns.' "

Strang said part of the problem is that prosecutors want to send the most likely candidates for long sentences - people with repeat convictions involving drugs or violence - to federal court. Those people are more often black than white.
The suburban lawmaker's biggest nightmare - running into a black kid with a gun on the way between, say, the Ordway and the parking ramp.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 11:05:15 PM

Rainbow Six - The CIA is starting its own private army - again:
During the Balkan conflicts in the mid- and late 1990s, agency paramilitary officers slipped into Bosnia and Kosovo to collect intelligence and hunt for accused war criminals like Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic. But the newly formed teams did not have enough manpower for snatches even when they were able to pinpoint Serbian targets. "The CIA," complains a former senior Clinton aide, "didn't have the capability to take down a three- or four-car motorcade with bodyguards."

Today it does, and the sog's capacities are growing. Its maritime branch has speedboats to carry commandos to shore, and the agency can rent cargo ships through its front companies to transport larger equipment. The air arm, which Pentagon officials have nicknamed the Waffen CIA, has small passenger jets on alert to fly paramilitary operatives anywhere in the world on two hours' notice. Other cargo planes, reminiscent of the Air America fleet that the agency had in Vietnam, can drop supplies to replenish teams in remote locations. For areas like Afghanistan and Central Asia, where a Russian-made helicopter stands out less, the agency uses the large inventory of Soviet-era aircraft that the Pentagon captured in previous conflicts or bought on the black market.
"Waffen CIA", of course, is a play on "Waffen SS" - Hitler and Himmler's private army - and in that wry remark is the big danger.

While there are attractions in creating myriad small, specialized military units to do specific jobs, there comes a point where too much splitting of force, effect and budget causes you more problems than it solves. Nazi Germany's military was hampered (thankfully) by a maze of private armies; Himmler's SS had its own huge army (Waffen SS), lavishly equipped (at the expense of the Wehrmacht or national army), while Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe (Air Force) developed its own very large military force.

One of the big achievements in the last twenty years for the US military is, after forty years of our terribly inefficient (but politically expedient) Joint Chiefs of Staff system, having restored an element of unity of command and focus to our national military operations. Here's hoping we don't squander it.

posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 02:09:39 PM

Swing to the Right - The US and Germany aren't the only countries whose left-wing parties are in disordered retreat.

According to left-leaning Ha'aretz, Likud is reeling in Israel:
With less than a week to go before the elections, Labor is a dangerous freefall. For the first time in the campaign, the largest party in the 15th Knesset could find itself with less than 19 seats in the 16th, according to the latest Ha'aretz/Dialogue poll. The anti-unity move failed. The latest zigzag in the party's propaganda blitz - emphasizing socio-economic issues - made little or no difference. Even wheeling out Shimon Peres as an alternative candidate served only to damage the standing of party chairman Amram Mitzna. The street fights and ego battles among the Labor leadership, primarily between Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Mitzna, are scaring off the few remaining voters who still support Labor.
And, as in the US, the swing is most pronounced among the young:
The deeper one digs into the bowels of the Labor Party, the more desperate the situation looks. Among first-time voters, for example, 0.0 percent (yes, zero percent) say they intend to vote Labor. Compare that to 46 percent of these 18 to 22-year-olds who say they will vote Likud. Even if first-time voters make up just 7 percent of the electorate, the trend is clear.
Watch for the results in Israel. And if we move into Iraq, and all goes according to plan (successful liberation, uncovering of WMDs, release of details of Hussein's torture state), look for left-wing governments in Germany to get rolled way back, and for further gains by the right in Poland, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium...
posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 01:12:00 PM

Judenrein... - ...is German for "Jew-Free" - more accurately, "purified of Jews". It's a word from the Holocaust - a trade, or military unit, or eventually a town or region, would declare itself Judenrein after it had gotten rid of all it's Jews.

Liberal Jewish anti-war groups are being excluded from ANSWER's pro-dictatorship rallies for supporting Israel's right to exist. It's a part of the growing anti-semitism on the left that's driving many Jews to the right.

Judith Weiss of "Kesher Talk" asks:
So - do you want A.N.S.W.E.R. running your antiwar protests? Let's see whether United for Peace forces Jews to leave their identity outside the big tent.
There are quite a few articles linked from the various pieces - they're all eye-openers.

(via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 12:42:00 PM

Hussein's Preparations - According to the BBC, Iraqi opposition groups are providing evidence that Hussein is equipping the Republican Guards to fight a chemical war.
Iraq's Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard are among the recipients of special suits and atropine, according to the documents.

A former arms inspector, Bill Tierney, told Today that "if both these two units have new equipment, then it would indicate that they are prepared to use chemical weapons".

The report of Iraqi war preparations is bound to intrigue UN weapons inspectors, the BBC's Rageh Omaar reports from Baghdad.

According to a UK Government report last year and UN inspectors' findings, Iraq has undeclared stocks of VX and sarin nerve agent. It is thought Iraq could deploy such chemicals quickly.
"Intrigue" inspectors? Like they'll acknowledge them?
posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 12:08:55 PM

League...er, United Nations - The Axis of Weasels - France and Germany - may well be for the UN what Ethiopia was for the League of Nations; proof to anyone who is open to it that it has no place in dealing with international crises.

The "Man with Notebook" crisis, then, would be the UN's Munich.

I have long had doubts about the UN's ability to resolve international crises. Now, I think they're completely illegitimate.

Administration Smackdown - This is the part that amazes me; George W. Bush has been derided as the "Dumb Guy" every since...well, ever since he's been in the public eye. And like Ronald Reagan, he's taken advantage of everyone's low opinion of him; he's used it as a smokescreen behind which he's maneuvered to achieve virtually everything he's set out to do, politically, in the past two years.

So ever since September 11, it's amazed me that so many otherwise politically-astute people have completely poo-poohed the possibility that the "conflict" within the administration is all a show designed to further disarm the administration's opponents. The feud between Rumsfeld and Powell could be legit - but given Bush's control of his adminstration's spin machine, I'd have to wonder if it's not the greatest "good cop/bad cop" scenario in history - and one of the most politically successful.

Think about it; the "feud" between State and Defense splits the opposition. The opposition is occupied reacting to two different sets of initiatives and signals, and only the Administration knows which one is real - or for that matter, can choose which one it is, when it wants to.

Newsweek's bought into it (I think):
WHEN HIS ARCHRIVAL, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had raised the idea of taking on Saddam Hussein only days after 9-11, Powell rolled his eyes in exasperation, insisting Al Qaeda alone should be the focus. Last summer Powell warned President Bush in dire terms not to attack Iraq unilaterally, and prodded him to go to the United Nations.
...which, with benefit of hindsight, we know he did - after he'd used the issue of going to the UN to get the opposition to expend an awful lot of political capital.
But last week, as Powell listened to Europeans boast about the success of the weapons inspectors in Iraq, his patience finally gave out. Sitting across a long rectangular table inside Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the usually genial Powell issued a stark warning to his French counterpart: the clock has run out on Saddam and the United Nations. “Don’t underestimate the resolve of the United States to solve this problem without dragging it out,” he said. The dove had finally morphed into a hawk.
On schedule, I'd suggest. Powell's "dovishness" was a prop.

Well, that's what I think history'll tell us.

Job Hunt Redux - Waiting on final word on a couple of jobs this week. Prayers/karmic vibes/good vibes appreciated.
posted by Mitch Berg 1/26/2003 11:02:55 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive