The War Party Candidate

Donald Sensing tries to understand the circumstances under which John Kerry would go to war. Sensing believes that the Kerry might have announced a qualified doctrine of preemption during his speech at the Democratic National Convention. Although he acknowledges that others, like Bill Hobbs perceive the Kerry's position as reactive, the equivalent of "no first strike", the Reverend Sensing feels that Kerry could be capable of "launch on warning" if intelligence detected a strike in progress but before it had actually arrived. He says:

... Kerry is saying (I think, but who knows?) that he will wage war pre-emptively: "to protect the American people ... from a threat that was real and imminent" (itals added), that is, not an immediately present threat. Furthermore, pre-emption of an imminent threat is a "justification for going to war," although it's the only justification. So just what is Kerry's basic defense doctrine? Apparently it is that Kerry will make war upon those who actually attack us, as would any president, and against those who threaten us, but only if the threat is imminent.

But imminence is an uncertain thing. Despite the large physical signatures of  ICBMs and bomber fleets "false warning" was a serious problem during the Cold War. One incident during the Carter administration was particularly instructive.

The false warning problem has never been a hypothetical one. During the Cold War and after, both the United States and Russia received mistaken warnings of attack. One of the most alarming incidents took place during 1980 when National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski received a middle-of-the-night phone call reporting that warning systems indicated a Soviet all-out attack of 2,200 ICBMs. Just before he was about to call President Carter, who would have had about three to seven minutes to make a decision, Brzezinski learned that other warning systems showed that there was no attack; it was a false alarm. Someone had inserted a tape for a military exercise into a warning system computer. The warning systems were finally accurate, but the danger and possibility of error was never more evident.

If a combination of failures could produce false warning signatures not just in the United States but in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, what standard of proof would a President Kerry require where indications of imminence are not 2,200 missile booster flares but human intelligence or chatter gleaned from intercepted signals? We now know that not only Western intelligence, but Arab capitals were convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the days prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, a consensus unlikely to be matched by any operational warning a President Kerry would have available to him.  General Tommy Franks says that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah both told him that Saddam had WMDs and would use them against Frank's command if he invaded Iraq. In an interview with Parade, the former CENTCOM CINC said:

The biggest surprise for him was that they've found no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the "reason we went to war." He says multiple Middle Eastern leaders, including Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, told Franks that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In January 2003, Mubarak said point blank to Franks, "Saddam has WMD-biologicals, actually-and he will use them on your troops."

Yet Kerry is one of President Bush's harshest critics in this precise case of "launch on warning", a category to which Operation Iraqi Freedom certainly belongs. The hope that Kerry will act preemptively assumes he will act like President Bush in the future when he would not act like him in the past. The political controversy surrounding Operation Iraqi Freedom decision has created an unreachable standard for future preemptive action. Kerry, having thrust a sword into George Bush would be the last to turn it on himself.

The real question is not whether this new avatar of the War Party is a "no first strike" or "launch on warning" kind of candidate: but whether he is at minimum someone who will retaliate after a first strike. In framing his policy in terms of how he would respond to a hypothetical attack on America, John Kerry glosses over how he intends to respond to the actual attack of September 11. That event is curiously undefined in his tale of events. If the attack on Manhattan was an act of war how would John Kerry win it? Is it already won and if so, did George Bush win it? If September 11 is not a first strike in John Kerry's eyes, then what is his theoretical threshold for decisive action?

Voters need more than an index of a Kerry administration retaliatory threshold to judge him as a potential Commander in Chief. Kerry should clarify how he plans to win, if not the present war, then at least a future one, if it comes according to his standard. The cast of characters, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are unlikely to change. The electorate should be granted a glimpse into his roadmap to victory and whether he believes in the concept itself as distinct from mere retaliation. Any brawler with fists can retaliate but it requires a Commanders in Chief with a strategy to lead nations to victory. Even Bill Clinton was prepared to retaliate against Osama Bin Laden for the USS Cole attack by firing hundreds of cruise missiles at his training camps. But George Bush tried to defeat him and for this stood condemned. It is this precise striving for victory, not any single act of retaliation that has made George Bush so illegitimate in the liberal mind. For liberals retaliation  is soley used to "send a message"; it always an invitation to negotiation, like the ones Johnson sent Ho Chi Minh without reply; it is never part of the solution itself. In this curious mental universe, force is immoral unless it is also pointless. John Kerry's self-chosen identification with the Vietnam War is a strangely ambiguous image, which escapes being tragic only for so long as you allow only questions for which there can be no answers.

A Study in Contrasts

The Philippines has nerved itself to summon the Australian ambassador to the Philippines to protest against the accusation that it encouraged hostage taking in Iraq by caving in to terrorists. The Australian reports:

The Philippines government was today expected to summon Australia's ambassador in Manila to express its anger over Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's criticism of its Iraq policy. ... The Philippines ambassador to Australia, Cristina Ortega, said her country was deeply hurt by the comments. "We are very, very disappointed with this harsh criticism," Ms Ortega has told ABC television. ... "It's not very diplomatic language, but Mr Downer is not a diplomat, he is a politician."

These fighting words can be compared to Philippine Deputy Foreign Secretary, Rafael Seguis' bowing and scraping before the Khalid Ibn al-Walid brigade (who held the Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz) on Al Jazeera. According to Reuters:

Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Philippine deputy foreign minister Rafael Seguis reading out a statement, which the television station translated into Arabic, shortly after the expiry of a new execution deadline set by the militants. "In response to your request, the Philippines ... will withdraw its humanitarian forces as soon as possible," Seguis said according to the translation of the statement, addressed to the Islamic Army in Iraq group holding 46-year-old de la Cruz. "I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group," said Seguis. "We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy."

It is bravery or the certainty that Australia cuts no heads that makes the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs so bold?

Addendum

In the meantime American missionary Gracia Burnham returned to the Philippines to confront and testify against 8 Abu Sayyaf rebels who participated in the murder of her husband. This from the BBC:

American missionary Gracia Burnham has made an emotional return to the Philippines to testify against her suspected former kidnappers. Mrs Burnham and her husband Martin were kidnapped with 18 others from a Philippine beach resort in 2001. ... Mrs Burnham is said to have identified six out of the eight suspects on trial as being her erstwhile captors.

"Gracia gave a very smooth narration of her ordeal. It was the strongest corroborative evidence," said state prosecutor Aristotle Reyes. "She cannot forget them because she ate and lived with them for almost a year," he said. Mr Reyes said he had shown her a rusty dog chain used by the militants to restrain her husband, as well as a pair of blue rubber boots she had worn during her captivity.

Gracia Burnham has caused controversy since returning to the US, by claiming that Philippine military officials were colluding with her captors. She made the claim in a book about her experiences called In the Presence of My Enemies.

Will the Philippines ask Mrs. Burnham to apologize for those remarks the way the Australian ambassador has been asked to explain why the reputation of that country's government has been besmirched?

Life is like a box of chocolates

David Frum examines the contradiction at the heart of the Democratic convention. It is the voice of a single hatred in the absence of a single idea. "The Democratic Party arrived in Boston emotionally united and intellectually divided. Democrats are united in their rage against and disdain for President Bush, but they are radically divided in their beliefs and loyalties." Frum goes on the catalogue how the bilocation of ideas has become curiously unimportant. In Boston, the Athens of America of all places, it is possible to believe in two mutually exclusive ideas or better yet, avoid committing to a single one.

On foreign policy, Mr Kerry has criticized Mr Bush from every angle, without ever worrying much about consistency. It has been, in a way, an impressive performance: Mr Kerry has criticized Mr Bush both for offending America's traditional allies in the Middle East, and also for not being tougher on the Saudis; both for siding too much with Israel while insisting that he would side with Israel just as much; both for requesting too much money for Iraq and also for not providing enough support to the troops there.

Mr Kerry has been hard-pressed to find issues that can unite his discordant party. The issue on which he has again and again fallen back is Mr Bush's alleged failure to internationalize the Iraq war. Michael Moore Democrats, who want America to evacuate Iraq immediately, and Thomas Friedman Democrats, who want America to commit to Iraq for the next decade, can at least agree that they wish the UN, France and Germany had bigger roles. This message has been music to many European ears. But now imagine that Mr Kerry has won ...

Then we would get to find out what he really believed, if we were lucky. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, argues that the Democratic Party doesn't know what it wants, doesn't care where it is; but that it is "just sober enough to realize it needs a designated driver like John Kerry to get it home at night." (Hat tip: NRG)

This is a whacked-out party that has spent the past year throwing back Howard Dean hurricanes, being gripped with Michael Moore fever and indulging in Whoopi-esque animosity binges. And yet there's that moment when you are drinking, before you get really blotto, when you realize that you have just enough sobriety for one last lifesaving act of responsibility. For the Democrats, nominating Kerry is that act -- and now he's running a professional, disciplined campaign.

If the convention program reflected the collective party subconscious, the first night would feature a life-size rubber Dick Cheney doll, and the speakers would take turns throwing it around the stage. And yet the Kerry party elite is insisting that everybody wear a responsibility corset. Restrain yourself. Be positive.

"But now imagine that Mr Kerry has won"; that the designated driver has swtiched off the engine at the final destination. Where would we be? Why, everywhere else that everybody else didn't want to go.

Notes

Hugh Hewitt thinks one reason the policy debate at the Democratic convention is so incomprehensible is that the discussion is conducted in code. Some delegates, at least, want things that they aren't prepared to spell out above a whisper. But the plaintext isn't exactly protected by Rijndael encryption. Hewitt notes:

Delegates are far more truthful than the party operatives patrolling the hallways and ferrying prepped guests to the various radio rows. The delegates hate Bush, want out of Iraq, want courts to impose same-sex marriage, and want taxes hiked on all but the poorest Americans. The policy on abortion rights is absolutist; on race-based remedies, the answer hasn't changed since 1978 – quotas by any other name will do.

I played a game on the radio show yesterday, the convention's first day. We played a version of Groucho Marx's "secret word." We were prepared to declare a winner when the first Democrat I interviewed mentioned al-Qaida. None did. It just isn't an issue with them. The consensus seems to be that if Bush is beaten, al-Qaida will no longer threaten Americans.

Now the electorate can choose whatever it wants, but fairness demands truth in packaging. Are the Democrats, in Andrew Sullivan's words, "the conservative party" and "to the right of Bush on the war" or are they really saying to each other in code that Osama Bin Laden is not America's enemy? There are probably a range of views held by different factions at the convention which the hundreds of reporters and bloggers in attendance will describe in excruciating detail. But at the end of the day John Kerry has to decide what he believes and select the platform on which he will run. Moore, Gore, Carter and the two Clintons have demonstrated the convention's many faces; but only Kerry can show us its soul.

Boston and New York

The Democratic convention in Boston underscores how deeply September 11 has changed the political landscape for diametrically opposite reasons. For many conservatives the attack represented the first shot in a war waged against America. In contrast many liberals felt it was the response to the attack that opened hostilities against America; that there was no war except that which we subsequently called down on our feckless heads. John Kerry's slogan to 'restore respect for America abroad' and to 'make it safer' are an explicit accusation that we have created, or at least amplified the danger which faces us now.

Andrew Sullivan's belief that John Kerry will be Bush -- only a better Bush -- founders on this syllogism: Kerry cannot logically continue Bush's essential strategy, however competently, because according to the premise it is that strategy which is the fundamental source of peril. The honest thing to do; and for many liberals the right thing to do, is to reverse course as decently as possible. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero believed that the campaign in Iraq served no purpose; and in accordance with his thinking withdrew the Spanish contingent without regard for the consequences to the interim Iraqi government. Whatever else his shortcomings, the Spanish Prime Minister knew how to follow his own argument to its logical conclusion.

Although the exigencies of politics and the need to attract away the conservative fringe (by playing Amazing Grace for example) may keep John Kerry from being forthright it cannot obscure the fact that two opposing, and therefore contradictory visions, are contending for the electorate this November. The first argues that despite the shortcomings of multilateralism, diplomacy and concession, it is still the best way to settle accounts with radical Islam. It will concede that more might have been done to prevent September 11 but it will maintain steadfastly that the alternative, which was to strike at enemies the way they have struck at us is fundamentally wrong and dangerous. And by exclusion it will maintain that whatever the dangers of Clintonian policy the world was safer then than it is today. Ths second point of view will argue that eight years of wilfull blindness; supporting Bosnian Muslims; ignorning the A. Q. Khan network of nuclear proliferation, buying North Korea its own reactors and receiving Yasser Araft at the White House; the whole policy of concession, bought not a whit of safety. It will argue that our enemies are even now on the point of obtaining nuclear weapons to turn against us, and will if we return to the policies of the past. It will concede that there have been disappointments in Iraq, but that by any historical yardstick our progress to victory -- and here is the unique word -- has been steady, irresistable and therefore inevitable.

This post is not the place to argue in favor of one or the other: but to maintain that the choices are distinct. That is why many Democrats want George Bush out with an almost religious fervor and why many conservatives are fighting for his re-election as if their lives depended on it, because they think it does. Current polls show the candidates nearly level, which means that when the choice is finally made in November, the nation will decide by the slimmest of margins which point of view will grip the wheel. The final count will not so much end the series as send it into overtime. At stake are the lives our children -- whose fates will be determined by what we do or refuse to do -- after Boston and New York.

Keeping Your Rep

Nations like individuals have a reputations which their rivals and opponents study to determine just how far they can be pushed. Readers will recall that Jacques Chirac demanded an explanation of Ariel Sharon's exhoration for Jews to leave France. The New York Times reported on July 19th:

When Israel's prime minister urged the Jews of France on Sunday to flee immediately to Israel to escape anti-Semitism at home, the reaction was swift, angry and unified. French officials, lawmakers, commentators and Jewish leaders all told Mr. Sharon that he was out of line. The office of President Jacques Chirac issued a statement on Monday saying Mr. Sharon would not be welcome in France until he explained himself. "France has asked for an explanation following Mr. Sharon's declaration," the statement from Élysée Palace said. The government, it said, "has let it be known that from today an eventual visit by the Israeli prime minister to Paris, for which no date had been set, would not be considered until such an explanation is forthcoming."

Sharon of course, refused to deliver any such explanation while France waited, and waited and waited ... and then France declared the crisis over. Finished, forgotten. According to the Jerusalem Post, Sharon is welcome in Paris like a long-lost brother.

French President Jacques Chirac has ended the row between Paris and Jerusalem over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's call for French Jews to flee the wave of "wild anti-Semitism" in France and immigrate to Israel. Chirac sent a message to President Moshe Katsav via a senior government minister to tell him that the crisis is over. ...  However, beyond the media hoopla that ensued was a close relationship that developed between Katsav and Chirac during Katsav's state visit to France last February. ... Aware that Katsav had on numerous occasions during that visit and afterwards expressed his admiration for the efforts that Chirac is making to eradicate anti-Semitism in France, Chirac wanted to assure him that the excitement caused by Sharon's call for instant immigration did not have a long shelf life.

What a surprise. Ariel Sharon knew perfectly well that if Jacques Chirac lacked the stomach to face a relative handful of Islamic bandidos he would be thoroughly terrified to confront a technologically advanced state like Israel. France might bluff and bluster; but ultimately it would fold, and knowing this, Sharon simply bullied Chirac into submission. Once countries get a reputation for being thoroughly toothless people stop paying attention to their threats.

The Iranian refusal to convict the killers of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi by state agents similarly illustrates the Mullah's contempt for Ottawa, despite its bowing and scraping. Kazemi's indignant son complained that Canada was being pushed around.

"It's fair to say that Canada has failed to send a clear message to Iran that there will be consequences of their action," Stephan Hachemi, 26, said from Montreal on Sunday. "I don't see any reason why they shouldn't expel the Iranian ambassador from Canada," he said.

But the word "consequences" has long been expunged from the Canadian foreign policy dictionary. And Ottawa of course, lost no time deciding to let itself be pushed around and have its nose ground in the dirt. "The Canadian government is disturbed but has not yet chosen a course of action after an Iranian accused of killing a Canadian photographer was acquitted, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said on Sunday." Compare this with Australian Prime Minister John Howard's virtual promise that the Bali bombers, whose convictions were set aside on a technicality by the Indonesian Supreme Court, would be punished.

Prime Minister John Howard promised his government would do all it could to ensure the Bali bombers were punished despite a successful appeal against one of their convictions. Indonesia's constitutional court upheld an appeal which could throw all trials of convicted Bali bombers into doubt. In a majority 5-4 decision, the court ruled retrospective anti-terrorism laws used to convict several of the bombers were "against the spirit" of Indonesia's constitution.

"Let me make it very clear that every effort is being made by this government, in co-operation with the authorities in Indonesia, to ensure that the overwhelming desire of the people of both our countries (is met) - and that is, that those responsible for these horrible deeds are appropriately punished according to the full vigour of Indonesian law," he said.

There is no reason for Indonesia to doubt that Howard will use every instrument in Austrlia's power, including its military forces, to make sure this happens. Australia is not France and everybody knows it.

Update:

Canada has outlined the steps it will take to obtain justice for a photographer who was tortured and beaten to death in Iran.

The acquittal of an Iranian intelligence agent in the death of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi has done nothing to ensure that truth and justice prevail, says Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew. ... He also hinted at further legal or diplomatic steps to put pressure on Iran, saying the Canadian government is "reviewing its options." But he stopped short of announcing any concrete initiatives. ... Canadian officials said Sunday they had been unable to determine if the weekend verdict marks the end of judicial proceedings in Iran, or whether authorities there may continue investigating other suspects.

John Terry, a Toronto lawyer who represents Hashemi, said the verdict may be appealed through the Iranian courts, but he holds little hope of success there. He has been pressing Ottawa to take the case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Sympathies should go out to the Kazemis, whose mother was murdered in the course of covering a story in Iran. She had been arrested for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the government. "Iranian authorities initially said Kazemi died of a stroke, but a presidential committee later found that she died of a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage from a blow to the head." If Ottawa's strongest remaining action is to go before the International Court of Justice at The Hague it will have tacitly admitted that the problem lies beyond its unilateral capacity to solve without answering the key question of how the Court will enforce its decision, assuming it rules in Canada's favor. At best, a favorable ruling will provide a political basis around which to organize an international regime of sanctions or punishments on Teheran.

Don't You Go, Don't You Go to Far Zamboanga

An article in the Weekend Australia describes the reality behind the Philippine's bluster about "standing tall" and "preserving it's dignity". Martin Chulov reports from Zamboanga City.

WITH a sweep of his arm across the bay, the rebel leader warned: "Whatever you do, don't go anywhere out there by yourself. The Germans were taken from that island," he said, pointing at a small atoll. "They'd just gone there to swim. ...

"Them" are the militants and kidnappers who have terrorised the archipelago for the past 10 years. The Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiah are two legs of a troika of rebel groups, who have fought the Philippines armed forces under the banner of Islam. The third is the separatist but semi-legitimised MILF, accused in the past of harbouring the terrorists and still continuing to co-operate with them.

In Southeast Asia's war on terror, it is the depth of this link that troubles regional governments, including Australia's, which last week described Mindanao as a hotbed of terrorists. In many of the MILF's 13 declared base camps across the province, there is clear evidence JI and Abu Sayyaf members have joined MILF insurgents in combat training. Many have gone on to commit terrorist acts in The Philippines and Indonesia. And only good fortune and smart intelligence work has prevented catastrophic attacks in Malaysia and Singapore. In prison cells across all four countries are members of JI who have trained in the Mindinao camps and subsequently been accused or convicted of atrocities. Three of the Bali plotters trained in Mindinao, including one, Abdul Ghoni, who was said to have helped to make the Sari Club bomb.

The Manila government has long surrendered sovereignty over large parts of the southern Philippines to the enemy. It is not uncommon for children in Basilan, Jolo or Tawi-tawi to point to arrivals from the capital and exclaim "Look! Here come some Filipinos!" The concern which Arroyo showed towards a Filipino hostage in Iraq does not extend to simple farmers even in the heavily Christian Zamboanga peninsula. "Zamboanga's medical examiner said this week that Abu Sayyaf rebels had been responsible for 76 beheadings over five years in the area surrounding the troubled city."

The Philippines "has a long-standing Islamic insurgency powerful enough to limit state capacity in much of the south, yet so decentralized that what ensues is not a shadow government, but pockets of anarchy", the report says.  "These enclaves are dominated by local rebel commanders owing varying degrees of allegiance to umbrella coalitions like the MILF, or ASG, but whose power is rooted in pyramids of particularistic clan and tribal loyalties."

How do those under the gun in Zamboanga feel about Arroyo "standing tall" in Iraq, bravely defying the pressure of arrogant America by going, belly to the floor to feet of a small gang of terrorists? They are not very impressed.

But in the eyes of two military officers contacted by The Weekend Australian, the events of the past week, rather than strike fear in the hearts of the Abu Sayyaf fighters may well have emboldened them. "We take the fight to them every day and our message has been to never give in to terrorism," said one officer insisting on anonymity. "Yet our Government has given in in the blink of an eye when terrorists in Iraq threatened us," he said, referring to the withdrawal of Philippines troops from Iraq following threats to behead the kidnapped contract truck driver Angelo de la Cruz.

Three quarters of a hundred beheadings around Zamboanga never persuaded Manila to stop offering concessions to terrorists in the south. It's a habit long ingrained in leftist circles in the Philippine capital.

Al Qaeda Marches South

Just days after the Indonesian Supreme Court threw the convictions of the men convicted of killing hundreds in Bali into doubt, the European branch of Al Qaeda threatened to turn Australia into a "pool of blood". The Indonesian justices held that the law under which the killers had been convicted was invalid because the anti-terrorism act had been passed after the crime had been committed.

July 24, 2004 -- An Indonesian court ruled yesterday that tough anti-terrorism laws passed last year could not be used retroactively, a decision that raises the possibility of fresh appeals by 32 militants convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings. The Constitutional Court's 5-4 decision could also complicate efforts to prosecute others awaiting trial in the bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Among them is Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged head of Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda linked terror group blamed for the attacks.

This has forced the Australian government to seek new ways to keep the convicted killers in jail. Indonesian authorities have informally assured the Aussies that the murderers would not be released, although the basis for these promises remains vague. Indonesian domestic politics, as in the Philippines, often proves more important than international commitments or the pursuit of abstract justice. Meanwhile in Europe, the Tawhid Islamic Group sought to repeat the tactics which proved so successful with the Philippines -- on Australia. The New York Post reports:

July 25, 2004 -- A group calling itself the European branch of al Qaeda threatened to turn Australia and Italy into hellish "pools of blood" if the two nations did not withdraw their troops from Iraq, while a growing wave of kidnappings swept the country yesterday. The Tawhid Islamic Group, which earlier threatened attacks on Bulgaria and Poland if they kept their troops in Iraq, posted its warning on an Islamic Web site. "We call upon [Australia] to leave Iraq before your country turns to pools of blood," the group said. "We will shake the earth under your feet as we did in Indonesia, and lines of car bombs will not cease, God willing."

The statement referred to the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, many of them Australians. The group also warned Italy that if it did not withdraw its troops, "you will see the lines of cars laden with explosives hit your towns and turn your nights to mornings.

Australia feels it has been set up by Manila's weakness. The Melbourne Age reports:

Mr Downer said the Philippines decision to withdraw troops from Iraq to save the life of a father-of-eight hostage was behind the Tawhid Islamic Group's internet threat against Australia. ''This is the problem with the Filipino decision, you see,'' he said. ''They've acceded to the demands of terrorists and within a day or so of the Filipinos doing that six more people were taken hostage in Iraq. ''Unfortunately these actions have encouraged terrorists to continue these threats so now we are subjected, as the Italians are and the Poles and the Bulgarians, from this particular group, to further threats, and it's very important we send a strong message that we will not be threatened by terrorist groups.''

These sentiments were surprisingly echoed by the famously pacifist New Zealand and the Australian Labor Party.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff, visiting Australia for official meetings, said it was important for countries in the Pacific to stand up to terrorists. ''We do not want the Pacific to be a weak link that enables international terrorist groups to exploit opportunities in the Pacific or to base themselves in the Pacific,'' he said.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said the government needed to take the threat seriously. ''We believe this is our number one national security objective,'' he told reporters. ''It therefore should command all the resources of government. ''We offer the government today bipartisan support in redoubling our effort to eliminate al-Qaeda and any associated terrorist organisations such as the one that has made this threat against Australia today.''

Although the Kiwis and the Australian left are dreamy-eyed, they can recognize an oncoming train when they see one. Counterterrorism experts in Canberra have long felt that the Philippines now constitutes the main source of danger to Australia because the Jemaah Islamiyah can operate, train and arm with impunity in the areas of the Philippines south where virtually no government control exists. ABC News Australia says:

The commander of United States forces in the Pacific, Admiral Thomas Fargo, has raised concerns about the presence of al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah militants in the southern Philippines. Philippine Defense Secretary, Eduardo Ermita, says US authorities are very particular about how Manila is addressing terrorism in the Philippines. Mr Ermita says the US is conscious that there are about 40 JI members in the southern region of Mindanao. The JI regional terror group is blamed for the October 2002 bombings which killed 202 people in Bali and other attacks in Indonesia.

The weakness of the Philippine state has created the regional equivalent of Taliban-era Afghanistan, providing an area of chaos in which terrorists can muster unhindered. The Jemaah Islamiyah is particularly dangerous because it aims at destabilizing every government in the region and establishing an Islamic state including Northern Australia.

The al-Qaeda terrorist group and Jemaah Islamiah aspire to create an Islamic superstate in South-East Asia, called Daulah Islamiyah, which would embrace Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and Cambodia. Last month, the Philippines' national security adviser, Roilo Golez, told ABC's Four Corners that Abu Bakar, with al-Qaeda backing, was trying to include northern Australia in its plans. As secretary-general of the Mujahideen League, the cleric is alleged to have established four territorial groups, called mantiqis, to serve the aim of a pan-Islamic Asian state. One of those covered Irian Jaya and northern Australia.

The main question facing coalition partners USA and Australia is whether to keep working with the Indonesian and the Philippine governments which seem unwilling or unable to face the forces that are slowly tearing them apart; or prepare for a scenario that accepts the failure of these two states. Clearly, a state which cannot even save itself or enforce its authority within its own territory will be of little help in carrying out international agreements. The problem with relying on the dysfunctional regimes in Manila and Jakarta indefinitely is it allows things to go from bad to worse with hands tied out of diplomatic deference to the host "governments". But neither is it feasible to simply await the final collapse or breakup of these two countries before acting. The prudent course would be for America and Australia to develop ways of directly influencing events on the ground by creating structures which bypass the existing and inutile bureaucracies in the capitals. In this respect, both countries will be playing catch-up with Indonesia and Malaysia which have long since created armed groups under their control in Mindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-tawi. The Balkanization of the southernmost regions of the Philippines began thirty years ago. One of the most familiar sights in "peace negotiations" between Manila and Muslim rebels is the presence of uniformed Indonesian officers by the side of the rebels, with the deceptive title of "facilitators". Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's abject surrender to a handful of Iraqi terrorists has simply demonstrated internationally what has long been evident domestically: that no one respects Manila except the punctilious diplomats in Washington and Canberra.

Not Any Safer

The Philippines has found that safety hasn't come with paying ransom. The Philippine ABS-CBN news network  reports that:

Filipino truck drivers working in the Middle East are now banned from entering Iraq to prevent another kidnapping by terrorists in that country. President Arroyo ordered the Department of Foreign Affairs Friday to ensure that Filipino truck drivers working in countries near Iraq are stopped at the border should they attempt to enter that country.

Saudi and Kuwaiti companies involved in the reconstruction effort in Iraq hire foreigners to transport crude oil and construction materials into that country. After the kidnapping of Angelo de la Cruz, Filipino officials realized that Filipino truck drivers are the most vulnerable to the terrorist acts of militants.

But why? Doesn't giving in to terrorist demands make one safer? Can't Filipino workers, if confronted by armed men, simply wave their Philippine passports as a kind of laissez passer? Or has paying ransom made them all walking $6 million certified checks? "Mrs. Arroyo said, meanwhile, the Philippines has tapped the assistance of coalition camp commanders in Iraq to help ensure the safety of some 4,000 Filipino workers in Iraq." That in plain English means that Americans, Britons, Australians and Iraqis are expected to lay their lives on the line to protect citizens of the very country that has provided their enemies millions of dollars to buy new and better weapons so that the Philippine government can take their cut from the paychecks these men send home to their families.

The preemptive ban on Filipinos working in Iraq follows from the belated realization in Manila that they just may have committed a diplomatic boo-boo. Consider if the situation were reversed. If an expatriate working in the Philippines had been kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf and his government had negotiated directly with the kidnappers without reference and against the wishes of the Philippines some eyebrows might be raised. Suppose the home government of the hostage had further announced a deal with the kidnappers on a foreign TV network and paid ransom to a group which had put a bounty on the head of the President of the Philippines, might that not be embarrassing? If Manila suddenly finds that its overseas workers are no longer welcome throughout the region it just might, with some effort, figure out why.

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
Winston Churchill on Munich

The Hostage Game Continues

An Egyptian diplomat was kidnapped and new demands for money were made on the truck drivers who had recently been taken hostage. It is worth noting that neither Egypt nor the truck driver nationals are part of the "Coalition of the Willing". Sky news reports:

An armed group has kidnapped an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq, according to a video tape shown on the Al-Jazeera Arab network. A man identified as Mohammed Mamdouh Hilmi Kotb, a third most senior official at the embassy in Baghdad, was shown on the footage sitting in front of six masked armed men dressed head-to-toe in black.

Kotb was purportedly kidnapped by a group called the Lions of Allah in response to Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's offer to Iraq of his country's security expertise. Staff at the embassy confirmed a diplomat had been abducted.

Meanwhile, a group in Iraq which has threatened to behead seven foreign hostages has issued a new 48-hour deadline. The new ultimatum was made to the hostages' Kuwaiti employers and they demanded that Iraqi prisoners are freed, according to Al Jazeera television. The TV station said that the group has given 48 hours to meet demands that the company pays compensation to the families of the dead in Falluja and Iraqi prisoners in American and Kuwait jails.

Egypt had previously refused to join the US coalition and merely offered to guard any UN premises in Iraq. According to the Washington Times:

Egypt expressed in the past its readiness to dispatch a small contingent to Iraq to guard U.N. offices and centers, but Presidential spokesman Majed Abdel Fatah said Wednesday that the Egyptian troops will not be part of the multinational force and their mission will be strictly limited to protecting U.N. premises.

However, Egypt and all of Iraq's Arab neighbors had recently met to control illegal border crossings in the region. According to the Financial Times:

Iraq's neighbours agreed in Cairo yesterday to try to co-operate more closely on security and in controlling their common borders. "Iraq has all it wants," said Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, as he left a meeting in the Egyptian capital where he met foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Mr Zebari said Iran had offered to host a meeting of interior ministers from the eight countries in which more detailed plans for addressing common security issues and sharing intelligence would be discussed.

Ever since the Philippines capitulated to terrorists in Iraq armed gangs in the region have been ever more ready to intimidate sovereign governments and extort money. The Arroyo surrender differs qualitatively from the Spanish case because Zapatero had already announced his intention to withdraw Spanish troops long before the Madrid attack of March 11, 2004. In the case of the Philippines that sovereign nation, which guards its "dignity" and "sovereignty" jealously when dealing with the United States, obsequiously bowed and scraped before a nameless group of extortionists. Its Deputy Foreign Secretary, Rafael Seguis addressed the kidnappers in tones so craven it is hard to imagine them being spoken to an American ambassador. According to Reuters:

Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Philippine deputy foreign minister Rafael Seguis reading out a statement, which the television station translated into Arabic, shortly after the expiry of a new execution deadline set by the militants. "In response to your request, the Philippines ... will withdraw its humanitarian forces as soon as possible," Seguis said according to the translation of the statement, addressed to the Islamic Army in Iraq group holding 46-year-old de la Cruz. "I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group," said Seguis. "We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy."

The hostage taking game had begun to taper off before the Philippines gave it renewed impetus; an externality to its behavior of convenience that must now be cleaned up by others.

Blood Money

The Belmont Club wrote that Filipino hostage negotiators had a bad habit of skimming stuff off the top when handling ransom money. Maybe it was no different in the case of Angelo de la Cruz. A story from the AP says (hat tip reader JM):

The Malaysians contacted Islamic clerics to "reach out to the hostage-takers" on behalf of dela Cruz and the Philippine government, Bunye said. Bunye also denied that a ransom was paid for dela Cruz. Diplomatic sources, however, said that the government offered up to $1 million to the kidnappers but only about a quarter of the amount was eventually turned over to the abductors. "This release of Angelo is based on negotiations and on meeting the conditions" of the Iraqi insurgents, Bunye said.

Where did the three quarters of a million go? In the Six Million Dollar Man, written before the Filipino hostage was released noted that there were reports six million dollars in ransom was offered: 1 million from the Philippines and 5 million from Malaysia:

Michelle Malkin links to an article in the Philippines Daily Tribune which reports that the Philippines has paid an Iraqi terrorist gang US$6 million dollars for the release of hostage Angelo de la Cruz.

A ransom of $6 million was offered and paid out to the Iraqi rebels holding Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz hostage, to ensure his release before President Arroyo's scheduled State of the Nation Address (Sona) on July 26, a high level Philippine intelligence officer told the Tribune yesterday. This offer was alleged to have been approved by the President herself, who then tapped Malaysian emissaries for the job, the intelligence officer, who asked for anonymity, said. Of the $6-million payoff, $5 million was shouldered by Malaysia and $1 million by the Landbank of the Philippines, the officer added.

... Filipino hostage release negotiations have traditionally been scuppered by the disconcerting tendency of negotiators to pocket part of the ransom money for themselves. Terrorist leader Galib Andang, aka "Commander Robot" bitterly accused Philippine Government officials of cutting themselves too large a slice of the cake.

The two vital points confirmed by the AP report were that the Malaysians were involved and that a ransom was offered. That quarter of a million dollars, paid to the Khalid Ibn al-Walid brigade (who held the Filipino hostage) is coincidentally almost exactly the amount being offered by Zarqawi for the head of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. According to Reuters:

A group led by suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi offered a reward of $282,000 on Sunday for the killing of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, according to a statement posted on an Islamist Web site. "We in Khalid bin al-Walid Brigade announce to the Iraqi people a reward of 200,000 Jordanian dinars ($282,000) to whoever gets us Allawi's head," said a group statement posted on the site.

How about that?

US Envoy to the Philippines Recalled for Consultations

The Chinese news agency Xinhua says the US ambassador to the Philippines, Francis Ricciardone has been recalled Washington for consultations after the Philippines capitulated to terrorist demands.

July 22 (Xinhuanet) -- United States Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone is due to fly back to Washington Thursday for what he described as "consultations" with the US government after Philippines withdrew its contingent from Iraq to save the life of hostage Angelo dela Cruz, reported local media. During a meeting with some local media reporters, Ricciardone said that he is not being recalled, and that he will stay for two-weeks in Washington, during which time he will also take care of some personal affairs. But the ambassador did not exclude "consequences" on relations between the United States and the Philippines because of the pullout, although he did not specify, according to local media reports.

This comes as kidnappers calling themselves the "Holders of the Black Banners" took six other nationals of Third World countries hostage. Newday reports:

"We announce we have captured two Kenyans, three Indians and one Egyptian," said one of the masked men in a video aired on the Arabic TV channel Al-Arabiya. "We tell the company to withdraw and close its offices in Iraq."

The new hostage-taking, by a militant group calling itself the "Holders of the Black Banners," suggested that anti-U.S. guerrillas feel they've found a successful tactic to weaken the U.S. military presence here: seizing the civilian workers who deliver many essential supplies and services to U.S. forces.

It came a day after guerrillas freed Filipino truck driver Angelo dela Cruz, having gotten the Philippine government to pull its small military contingent out of Iraq one month ahead of schedule.

In the meantime, Philippine authorities denied they paid ransom to terrorists in Iraq. AFP reports:

President Gloria Arroyo's government denies reports the Philippines has paid millions of dollars in ransom to buy the freedom of a Filipino truck driver released by kidnappers in Iraq. "We know that some newspapers have engaged in speculation" that Manila paid up to $US6 million ($A8.3 million) to buy the liberty of Angelo de la Cruz, presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye told a news conference.

"That is not true," he added.

Diplomatic sources earlier told AFP a ransom was offered on behalf of the Philippine government to convince the kidnappers to free the hostage. The sources said the kidnappers, who called themselves the Khalid Ibn al-Walid brigade, rejected the unspecified cash offer. In the end Arroyo gave in to the kidnappers' demand and recalled the Philippines' 51-member military contingent in Iraq a month ahead of schedule.

The diplomatic sources in effect confirmed that the Philippine Government had offered money to the Khalid Ibn al-Walid brigade. This is the very same Khalid Ibn al-Walid brigade that has recently offered a bounty of US$285,000 for the head of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. According to Reuters:

A group led by suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi offered a reward of $282,000 on Sunday for the killing of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, according to a statement posted on an Islamist Web site. "We in Khalid bin al-Walid Brigade announce to the Iraqi people a reward of 200,000 Jordanian dinars ($282,000) to whoever gets us Allawi's head," said a group statement posted on the site.

Belmont Club reader JM from the Philippines asks "Why are we so surprised at the RP gov'ts attempt to pay ransom? Aren't we just trying to use the "tried and tested formula" used by Congressman Jules Ledesma to help free his 2 children when they were kidnapped 2 years ago?" He was referring to the formula made famous by a prominent Philippine politician.

Ledesma's children, Carlos Thomas Pek, 10; and Christina Julieta Victoria, 6, were abducted ... they were released days after the abduction near the Makati Medical Center as a result of what Rep. Ledesma said was a "tried and tested formula." His "formula" was generally taken to mean that he paid ransom money.

Except in this case the Philippines was trying to pay ransom to a terrorist organization that had put a bounty on the head of the host government. There will be consequences and they have only just begun.

Jammers

It would be wrong to speculate on Sandy Berger's ultimate motive for removing classified documents from the National Archives. Working with insufficient information is the best way to mislead one's self. However, there might be some value to adopting a preliminary framework for understanding new information as it comes to light. The model that comes readily to mind is to regard Berger's escapade as a kind of information countermeasure. The most common ways to conceal information are to 1) create a decoy signal; 2) generate enough noise to blot out the underlying information; and 3) to reduce the signal of the original information which you want to conceal.

Most readers are broadly familiar with the countermeasures used on military aircraft. They can release decoys, like flares or drones. They can emit signals from jamming pods to white out the enemy radar screens. They can employ a variety of measures to reduce their reflection so that they remain unseen, the so-called stealth technology. Each of these corresponds to one type of countermeasure described above. As an exercise one can hypothetically regard the Plame-Wilson affair, the Richard Clarke book and Sandy Berger's bungled theft as representatives of these three kinds of information countermeasures. The first establishes a false "blip" -- the Bush Lied meme -- which misled intelligent bloggers like Oxblog's Patrick Belton for weeks as he followed this phantom echo. The Richard Clarke book can be considered a noise barrager type of countermeasure. It was for the most part a big sound and light show laced with ominous drumrolls with nothing behind it. When the time came to set Clarke's book against Condoleeza Rice's testimony at the 9/11 hearings there was curious lack of collision, as might be expected once you got past the boundary generated by a noise jammer. Berger's attempt to stuff codeword classified documents into his pants and socks looks like signature-reduction exercise on its face. It was an attempt to excise information; to create a stealth object which could pass through unnoticed.

The presence of countermeasures almost always indicates the presence of real information which the jamming is intended to protect. One of the reasons that coverups are so dangerous is they create the danger of "home-on-jam", where the source of jamming signal is itself targeted. The significance of catching Sandy Berger in the act of purloining classified couments is that it enables investigators to "home-on-jam", to find the beneficiary of the coverup. Where will it lead? Stay tuned. Remember that jamming needs to work just long enough for the real bandit to accomplish its mission.

Six More Hostages Taken After the Philippines Surrenders

The New York Times reports that six more foreign hostages were taken by terrorist groups in Iraq very shortly after Philippine hostage Angelo de la Cruz was released.

Baghdad, Iraq, July 21 — Insurgents in Iraq said today that they had kidnapped six more foreign hostages — and threatened to behead one every 72 hours — a day after a Filipino truck driver was released in exchange for his government's withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

In taking six more hostages, insurgents here seemed aimed at repeating what seemed a concrete success in gaining widespread attention and forcing an American ally to weigh the cost of its presence in Iraq: On Monday, the Philippines finished withdrawing its 51 troops in Iraq, after the captors of the Filipino truck driver threatened to behead him unless his government did so. Iraqi and American officials urged the Philippines not to bend to the captors' demands, for fear that it would encourage more kidnappings.

Today, a group calling itself the Holders of the Black Banners released a videotape, photographs and a statement saying that it had kidnapped six more truck drivers — three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian. The group threatened to kill one captive every three days unless their employer, identified as a Kuwaiti company, closed down operations in Iraq.

These six men, all workers from Third World countries, are the first fruits of the Philippine capitulation. And before the Philippine Left gets started on how it is all the fault of these countries for supporting America it should note that India does not, repeat does not, have any troops in Iraq. Success breeds imitation and the world is witnessing the repetition of the Sipadan hostage appeasement incident on an international scale. These new victims are simply the first of a long series of unfortunates who will be threatened with decapitation unless all nations emulate the surrender of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Even she knows it. Al Jazeerah reported Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's reaction to de la Cruz's release.

After putting down the phone, Arroyo raised both arms and cried “Praise God!” to the cheers of several officials in her office. ... She added, with a hint of warning to all other Overseas Filipino Workers: "Every life is important. Angelo was spared, and we rejoice. We are all rewarded for it, particularly his loving family and friends. But our people must also know that will not always be the case. Innocents will come into harm's way, and circumstances may not allow such a successful outcome."

What circumstances? When the Philippines runs out of ransom money or concessions to offer? If Arroyo's policy were correct then not only Kenya, India and Egypt, but the Philippines itself, faced with a similar situations in the future, should show no hesitation in repeating the performance. But we are not all rewarded for it, particularly the loving family and friends of the new hostages. These and future victims will pay the price of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's domestic political triumph.

Speechless

The Berger story will make it impossible to post until a sense of its extent emerges. The story of the former National Security Adviser stuffing classified material pertaining to the 9/11 terrorist investigation into his pants and socks is like an opening scene into a larger show; the vestibule into a darkened mansion; the trailer to a movie we are half afraid and half compelled to watch.

Where's the Hostage?

Update: Hostage Released

Philippine hostage Angelo de la Cruz was delivered to the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. Reuters reports:

A Filipino truck driver held hostage in Iraq was freed and handed over to the United Arab Emirates embassy in Baghdad Tuesday, an Emirates official said. "He has been handed over and we will hand him over to the Philippine authorities," the official told Reuters. Manila ignored criticism from the United States and Iraq's interim government, which accused it of bowing to terrorists, and completed the withdrawal of its humanitarian contingent of troops Monday in response to demands from the kidnappers. The Philippine ambassador in Baghdad could not be reached, and a source at the embassy said he had heard nothing.

In another story Reuters also reported that "the wife of freed Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz thanked her husband's kidnappers on Tuesday for not harming him". President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said "'it was a time of trial and a time of triumph'. She also spoke with Philippine diplomats in Baghdad, thanking them for their efforts. After hanging up, she raised her arms and said: 'Well done!'

---

I wrote this just an hour earlier.

One of the most important variables to watch in the negotiating process is how the power balance changes at each bargaining step. This is especially true when negotiating the release of a kidnap victim. Before the ransom is paid each side has something the other wants. But once the victim's family has paid the power balance shifts completely to the criminal's side. He's got the money and the victims family can only hope that someone who has lied all his life will suddenly keep his word.

When the Philippine Government pulled all of its 51 troops out of Iraq (and reportedly paid $6M in ransom) it effectively transferred all of its chips to the terrorist gang which kidnapped Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz. Now despite the fact that the Philippines has completed its pullout the hostage has still not been released. ABS-CBN reports:

The nation anxiously awaited Tuesday word on the fate of Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz. Malacañang (the equivalent of the White House) said it is hoping that de la Cruz will be released by Iraqi militants after the government complied with their demand to pull out troops. The last batch of soldiers left Iraq Monday morning and reached the Kuwaiti border at dawn. Reports said they are to board a commercial flight to Manila. Government officials in Manila and Philippine negotiators in Baghdad issued very limited information on de la Cruz's condition.

The Malacañang press corps stayed overnight at the press office awaiting possible announcements from the administration. Reporters who have closed in on the relatives of de la Cruz were likewise clueless as to the progress of the situation. De la Cruz was last seen in a video sent by his captors to Arab TV network al Jazeera.

Hope is all they've got. What is worse, the Philippine Government needs the hostage released more than ever. It would be a political catastrophe for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo if, despite everything his captors held him back. In fact, his kidnappers would be in a position to demand even more from the Philippine Government to avert both domestic and international humiliation. Where once they held a man now they hold a nation.

Even if de la Cruz is finally released, the Philippine Government may still have to contend with the families of those who may be killed from weapons purchased with the ransom money they may have paid for de la Cruz's release. The Virginian Pilot reports that the families of the sailors who died on the USS Cole are suing Sudan for $105 million "claiming the East African nation provided financing and training for the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the attack in October 2000." (Hat tip: Jenn Martinez)

“Al-Qaida could not have existed or planned its acts of terrorism, including an act directed at an American Naval vessel, without the support of state sponsors of terrorism” including Sudan, the suit filed in the Norfolk U.S. District Court , says. The lawsuit was filed by the families of Richard Costelow, James R. McDaniels, Andrew Triplett, Kenneth E. Clodfelter, Ronald S. Owens, Kevin S. Rux, and Lakiba N. Palmer.

James Cooper-Hill, a Texas attorney for the Cole plaintiffs, said if this suit is successful, he will seek Congressional approval for payment from $29 million in Sudanese assets that the United States has frozen, but he realizes that is not enough to cover the amount he is seeking. The lawsuit is seeking $10 million for each of five spouses, $10 million for a long-time companion of one of the victims, and $5 million for each of eight children of the victims, and $5 million for one victim’s sibling.

Sudan last year acknowledged its support of terrorist groups, but has since vowed to crack down on such organizations. In May 2003, the Sudanese minister of foreign affairs, during a visit to the United States, issued a public apology for the aid his nation provided to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Any suit against the Philippines may be bigger. Six million dollars buys a lot of IEDs and it has more money than the Sudan. Paying extortion is really another term for giving money to a bully so he can buy a bigger pair of brass knuckles to tattoo your face. Once he's got the brass knuckles he can force enough from you to buy a meat cleaver. After that, the sky's the limit.

 

Los Alamos on the Potomac

Your not in Kansas any more when things like this happen. (Hat tip: Instapundit).

President Clinton national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is the focus of a Justice Department investigation after removing highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings, The Associated Press has learned.

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after he voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. However, still missing are some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

Berger said, ""I deeply regret the sloppiness involved", demonstrating the little known fact that it is common to stick documents of all descriptions into pants, especially when you are looking for places to store classified material. As of this writing the story had not yet found its way into the Washington Post or the New York Times although the incident apparently took place at least some weeks ago.

The FBI searches of Berger's home and office occurred after National Archives employees told agents they believed they saw Berger place documents in his clothing while reading sensitive Clinton administration papers and that some documents were then noticed missing, officials said.

Following on the recent revelations that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson lied to discredit the Bush administrations claim that Saddam was seeking uranium yellow cake in Africa and a 9/11 Commission involvement that Iran was linked to at least 10 of the September 11 attackers one might be forgiven for thinking that there were efforts to twist the facts to suit a political agenda. It's time to dust off those old Watergate adages: 'It's always the cover up that gets you' and 'Follow the money'.

Update

Reader DN links to the Seattle Times

Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said. Officials familiar with the investigation said Archives staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archives officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey to report the disappearance.

... Justice Department officials have told the Sept. 11 commission of the Berger incident and the nature of the documents in case commissioners wanted more information, officials said. The commission is expected to release its final report Thursday. Congressional intelligence committees, however, have not been formally notified.

Berger is the second high-level Clinton-era official to face controversy over taking classified information home. Former CIA Director John Deutch was pardoned by Clinton just hours before Clinton left office in 2001 for taking home classified information and keeping it on unsecured computers at his home during his time at the CIA and Pentagon. Deutch was about to enter into a plea agreement for a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government secrets when the pardon was granted

The Swarm

The Palestinian leadership crisis continues to unfold a breakneck speed.

Hundreds of armed Fatah members clashed Sunday evening in Rafah with Palestinian military intelligence troops loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's nephew. Shots were fired during the clashes, and the Fatah gunmen torched several buildings used by the military intelligence in the Gaza Strip. The gunmen were protesting the appointment of Musa Arafat by the Palestinian leader over the weekend to the post of head of the Palestinian security forces. Musa said earlier Sunday that he would not resign, despite the protests in the Gaza Strip against his nomination. Arafat's weekend decision to promote his nephew sparked a wave of criticism in the Palestinian leadership Sunday, a day after thousands took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the appointment.

The first gusts of the storm were felt much earlier when United Nations Envoy to the Middle East Peace Process, Terje Roed-Larsen saw fit to criticize Arafat, something the UN does not often do. "Mr. Larsen spoke a couple of days ago before the UN General Assembly in New York on the situation in both Palestine and Israel, holding President Arafat responsible for the current security deterioration and delay in Palestinian reforms." Arafat responded by declaring Roed-Larsen persona non grata throughout the Authority, an ironic order from a man himself confined to a small compound by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Then Arafat's own Prime Minister, who had declared Roed-Larsen's statements out of order, himself resigned ostensibly over the appointment of one of Yasser's relatives to the position of security chief in Gaza. That followed on the heels of the kidnapping of "Gaza Police Chief Razi Jabali and Colonel Khaled Abu Aloula, the director of military coordination for the Gaza Strip, and four French aid workers" by factions opposed to Arafat. If the message needed emphasis his opponents provided it by torching and looting the Palestinian government offices. Trapped in his headquarters on the West Bank Arafat removed his relative, Moussa, as an apparent concession to his opponents. Reuters reports:

Abdel-Razek al-Majaideh was named director of General Security for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, replacing Moussa Arafat, whose appointment to the post on Saturday triggered clashes between gunmen and his loyalists. Moussa Arafat's apparent demotion seemed to be an attempt by the Palestinian president to defuse the most serious leadership crisis he has faced since returning from exile a decade ago. Gunmen opposed to Moussa Arafat -- viewed by many Gazans as a symbol of entrenched corruption -- battled security forces on Sunday in clashes that left 18 people wounded.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz dryly suggested that all was not well with the Intifada and that Gaza had begun to look like Iraq with team colors reversed and both sides losing.

The reports of chaos and intra-Palestinian violence coming from the Gaza Strip demand a look at parallel situations in other places in order to grasp what is going on. Certain elements of the Gaza instability that ignited over the weekend appear at first to be copied from Iraq: the abduction of political leaders and foreign citizens, the armed local uprising, the establishment of fragmented and family-oriented organizations.

It was not the first time that factions had opposed Arafat. There had been political opposition to him before. What was new was an acceptance that terrorist tactics against him were now permissible. Suddenly Gaza appeared less a threat to Israel than to Egypt. The whole skein of terrorist networks was threatening to blow back right on to its state sponsors.

The length of the present crisis in Gaza is likely to determine whether the outcome will be a civil struggle and a mass of organizations that lack any overall control. Such a scenario is the primary concern of the PA as well as of Egypt and Jordan. Senior Egyptian officials held long conversations with Arafat over the weekend concerning the outbreak of violence. According to Egyptian sources, Arafat tried to calm down the Egyptians, and told them everything was "under control." It's questionable whether this claim relaxed the Egyptian security forces, who determined that a continuing deterioration of the situation in Gaza was likely to lead to the failure of Egyptian intervention in the Strip in connection with Israel's disengagement plan.

Egypt is no longer relying on Palestinian cooperation with an Israeli pullout, an Egyptian source said. "Egypt doesn't want to be caught in the crossfire among PLO organizations, and between them and Hamas. If the Palestinian house cannot organize itself, we will not do it for them," he said. An Egyptian military analyst suggested that "it's possible that at the moment Egypt will be compelled to wait and see who is directing the Palestinian Authority - the street or the leadership."

The near civil war in Gaza; the fighting within the House of Saud; the conflict between terrorist factions in Iraq may not be isolated phenomenon but the consequences of the Israeli and American campaign against terror. From Iran to Lebanon the terror masters are no longer secure in their own kingdoms. In an article in the Naval War College Professor Edward Smith reminds us that Clausewitz defined victory as imposing a state of chaos on the enemy: the definition of a rout. Chaos was itself a condition that the enemy had sought to impose upon us by applying disruptive terrorism to set routines of civilization. Smith points to

a dangerously misleading assumption underlying much thinking today about the “revolution of military affairs”: that the United States will always be technologically superior and thus fight faster and better. In reality, tempo of operations is not solely a function of technology; it is also a function of the centralization of command. One can choose to trade centralized control for speed and scope of operations. This may forgo some of the ability to mass effects on a specific objective, but if the effect sought derives from the pace and scope of the attacks rather than from the amount of destruction, or from a cumulative impact rather than specific actions, then this trade-off may be acceptable. In other words, one could confront a technologically superior enemy by creating a new asymmetric zone in which small, decentralized units could operate successfully but in which an opponent using large formations under centralized control could not respond coherently.

America was going to be left defeated and confused. Those decentralized units, like Al Qaeda's airplane hijackers, could tie down a disproportionately large conventional force as the hapless United States was engaged everywhere and effective nowhere. Yet America, in its own way, was redressing the balance by organizational adaptation and the application of new technology. What if it could act so swiftly, so multifariously and so locally that the enemy would be literally overwhelmed by an attack on all fronts?

Instead of thrusting a rapier into the OODA cycle at precisely the critical time, we could unleash something akin to a swarm of bees. Even if no single unit has a decisive impact, the overall effect might be to leave the victim swinging helplessly at attackers coming from all directions, unable to mount any coherent defense save retreat. In essence, we would provide so many stimuli that adversaries could no longer act coherently but must constantly recycle ... The result would be lockout.

A cyclical reboot. The Blue Screen. By broadly attacking terrorism at many levels yet targeting leadership figures individually, the United States and Israel may have created the chaotic effect of an attacking "swarm" upon the foe. Psychologically speaking, this moment may have arrived when Israel targeted Hamas chief Yassin with a Hellfire missile although the effort existed long before. The perceptive Steven den Beste suggested that Israel's real goal in striking Yassin was to create a series of permanent power vacuums in the enemy ranks: in other words, to unleash chaos. The decentralized and cellular nature of terrorism would then begin to recoil upon the enemy state sponsor. Like a carnival dinosaur, the terrorist murder machine had to be carefully caged to prevent it from turning on its masters. In fact, the whole point of terror was to direct the whole mass of frustrations in repressive and dysfunctional societies at the external scapegoats: the Jihad is an excuse for avoiding the task of making Islamic society work. A successful American and Israeli effort to blunt the enemy attack and destroy its command linkages would turn the beast on its keepers. The key to successfully surfing this wave of chaos is to sit right on the boundary of control and watch the enemy get eaten away.

Opposing forces in any battle are therefore likely to have their own, quite different, edges of chaos. These two edges of chaos define three zones. Zone 1 is the zone of chaos—all the combinations of scale, scope, and pace that neither side would be able to manage. Zone 2 defines a complex, asymmetric region in which the better equipped and trained force can coordinate operations but the other cannot. In Zone 3 is the realm in which both sides can operate comfortably—the zone of order. ... If one side is consistently able to operate beyond the other’s edge of chaos, it can induce a state of despair in which further resistance is, or at least appears to be, futile. Focusing precisely on vulnerabilities most likely to drive the enemy into chaos can accelerate this process.

Whether this is in fact beginning to happen is open to speculation. But in the meantime, let's all watch Arafat try to stay in the tube.

The Six Million Dollar Man

Michelle Malkin links to an article in the Philippines Daily Tribune which reports that the Philippines has paid an Iraqi terrorist gang US$6 million dollars for the release of hostage Angelo de la Cruz.

A ransom of $6 million was offered and paid out to the Iraqi rebels holding Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz hostage, to ensure his release before President Arroyo's scheduled State of the Nation Address (Sona) on July 26, a high level Philippine intelligence officer told the Tribune yesterday. This offer was alleged to have been approved by the President herself, who then tapped Malaysian emissaries for the job, the intelligence officer, who asked for anonymity, said. Of the $6-million payoff, $5 million was shouldered by Malaysia and $1 million by the Landbank of the Philippines, the officer added.

Newspapers in the Philippines are not always reliable but their lies are rarely self-consistent. One way to gauge the plausibility of the Malkin citation is to examine whether it dovetails with past and related events. Let's recall that the initial announcement of the Philippine capitulation was made by Filipino Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis. He said:

"In response to your request, the Philippines ... will withdraw its humanitarian forces as soon as possible," Seguis said according to the translation of the statement, addressed to the Islamic Army in Iraq group holding 46-year-old de la Cruz. "I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group," said Seguis. "We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy."

This is the same Rafael Seguis who is engaged in "peace negotiations" with the branch office of Al Qaeda in the southern island of Mindanao brokered by Malaysian authorities.

The Malaysian advance survey team on the Mindanao peace process will not investigate the alleged existence of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist training camps in the region although it has been invited to do so. "That's not in their (survey team's) mandate. There will be no probe of JI camps," said Malaysian Ambassador to the Philippines Mohammed Taufik as he led members of the survey team in paying a courtesy call yesterday on Acting Foreign Affairs Secretary Rafael Seguis and members of the Philippine and Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace panels.

There is an established money trail leading directly from contacts which Seguis would have had in the Philippines to international terror. A story attributed to the Philippine Star claims the existence of financial conduits between Islamic groups in the Southern Philippines and Osama Bin Laden's network.

The Abu Sayyaf and other local Islamist terrorist groups appear to be channeling huge sums of money from kidnapping activities to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, Justice Secretary Hernando Perez disclosed yesterday. Quoting a US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intelligence report, Perez said Bin Laden has been using "Muslim terrorists" in the Philippines as a source of funds to finance his worldwide terrorist operations.

So the short answer is, 'yes it could have happened'. The Philippine Foreign Affairs Department had enough contacts through Malaysia and their partners in the 'Peace Process' to hand over six million dollars to Angelo de la Cruz's captors in Iraq. When they wanted to negotiate his release the Philippine Government officials knew exactly what intermediaries to use. But this does not mean that de la Cruz's release is necessarily assured. Filipino hostage release negotiations have traditionally been scuppered by the disconcerting tendency of negotiators to pocket part of the ransom money for themselves. Terrorist leader Galib Andang, aka "Commander Robot" bitterly accused Philippine Government officials of cutting themselves too large a slice of the cake. Among those who provided "matching funds", as in the Malkin citation above, were Malaysian intermediaries. This from Gulf News:

Ghalib Andang, the high profile leader of the hostage-taking Abu Sayyaf Group who was arrested on Sunday, claimed that he shared the $21 million ransom payment he received in 2000 with 10 mediators, including a military general. Andang said he received only a "measly P10 million" ($181,818) in ransom, out of which he gave P1 million ($18,181) each to his first and second wife, P2 million ($36,363) to his third wife, P4 million ($72,727) to Abu Sayyaf leader Mujib Susukan. The Malaysian government and representatives of Libyan President Muammar Kaddafi had paid $1million for each of the hostages, or a total of $21 million.

The greatest danger to the Filipino hostage's release now is the possibility that the Philippines Daily Tribune account is false or inflated. The Abu Sayaf used to suspect that they had been shortchanged by negotiators and turned on their captives. While no collusion can be proved at this point in the Angelo de la Cruz case this sort of thing has happened in the past. The Belmont Club has described how the kidnapping of European tourists at Sipadan in Malaysia degenerated into a virtual slave market where even the European journalists sent to cover the story were kidnapped and redeemed in their turn.

Operationally these ransom payments are actually cash infusions into terrorist coffers and the "matching funds" are probably a kind of disguised contribution by certain Malaysian and Libyan sympathizers to the cause. However that may be, the scale of the ransom reported by the Philippines Daily Tribune can be gauged by comparison to the World Trade Center attacks which cost Osama Bin Laden half a million dollars. The "ransom" paid by the Philippine Government is twelve times that amount and will kill dozens of Americans and Iraqis before it is expended. Six million dollars buys a lot of IEDs.

While it is unclear that there is any statutory restraint to a payment of ransom to kidnappers, it may be unlawful to award oneself a commission in tacit collusion with the kidnappers. If the Philippines Daily Tribune report is accurate, the involvement of the Land Bank of the Philippines in providing the payment may also raise issues of corporate wrongdoing and money laundering.

An additional consideration when corporations decide whether or not to pay a ransom may be the corporation's responsibility to its stockholders. Although there may be a perceived moral obligation to take action, a ransom payment may be a violation of the corporation's legal responsibility to its shareholders as set forth in its corporate charter.

It would be interesting to see whether there is any recorded vote by the Philippine Land Bank directors on this matter or what method was used to pay ransom if any. The Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Act provides:

SEC. 4. Money Laundering Offense. -Money laundering is a crime whereby the proceeds of an unlawful activity are transacted, thereby making them appear to have originated from legitimate sources. It is committed by the following:

(a) Any person knowing that any monetary instrument or property represents. involves, or relates to the proceeds of any unlawful activity, transacts or attempts to transact said monetary instrument or property.

(b) Any person-knowing that any monetary instrument or property involves the proceeds of any unlawful activity, performs or fails to perform any act as a result of which he facilitates the offense of money laundering referred to in paragraph (a) above.

(c) Any person knowing that any monetary instrument or property is required under this Act to be disclosed and filed with the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), fails to do so.

One "unlawful activity" is specifically identified as "Kidnapping for ransom under Article 267 of Act No.3815 ... " -- the very offense concerned. The Philippines passed this act despite domestic opposition when threatened by international sanctions, including denying licenses to Filipino banks to operate in certain international settings. Yet one can lead a horse to water without getting it to drink. The relatives of Americans and Iraqis who may die in coming months would do well to remember that the Philippine government undertook not to provide money to terrorists. It remains to be seen whether they have kept their word.

The Man with No Name

David Warren is all for naming a certain branch of Islam as the enemy. He argues that common journalistic and policy references to "Al Qaeda" have misidentified the true enemy.

In the course of three years' intense study of the issue, I've become convinced that there is -- well, this is a slight exaggeration -- no such thing as "Al Qaeda" It is, more precisely, only a name applied vaguely to one of several financing and logistical arms of the Wahabi branch of what could more accurately be called the "Islamic Jihad".

And the reason this is so important, he argues, is that it allows Homeland Security to use the appropriate kind of filter to root out the enemy. It recalls the scene played out in B-movie science fiction plots where the deadly aliens remain invisible until the sensors are tuned to the right frequency. And then they stand out plainly.

This may sound a very abstract analysis, but it has practical consequences for "homeland security". For starters, it means we cannot draw neat, legalistic lines between who's in and who's out of the cabal. For instance, a journalist working for Al-Jazeera may be every bit as committed to the struggle as a man rehearsing the assembly of a mid-flight bomb. Each is advancing the Jihad by the means most available to him. And, exempting the one from prosecution while arresting the other is entirely obtuse.

Indications especially from the FBI are to expect a major terrorist hit on North America, sometime between now and the U.S. election in November. I think they are right to expect this. The political, economic, and social fallout from such a hit is unpredictably huge. But I am less and less confident that it can be prevented by anything resembling normal police methods. This is because, thanks chiefly to "political correction", we cannot look at the whole Jihad, and are in fact only looking for the pointy bits.

Warren argues that only by seeing the real enemy can we fight it. The idea of grappling with the unnameable threat also pervades the writing of Bat Y'eor who recently gave an address to French Senators. What, she asked, was the meaning of all the internal security preparation she had encountered.

One need only look at our cities, airports, and streets, at the schools with their security guards, even the systems of public transportation, not to mention the embassies, and the synagogues – to see the whole astonishing array of police and security services. The fact that the authorities everywhere refuse to name the evil does not negate that evil. Yet we know perfectly well that we have been under threat for a long time; one has only to open one’s eyes and our authorities know it better than any of us, because it is they who have ordered these very security measures. ... Today the war is everywhere. And yet the European Union and the states which comprise it, have denied that war’s reality, right up to the terrorist attack in Madrid of March 11, 2004.

Y'eor maintains that "today, Europe itself is living with this Great Fear" the source of which everyone knows but is afraid to mention in almost the same way that an earlier, more superstitious generation avoided mention of the Devil for fear of conjuring it. But the problem with conceding the point to David Warren and Bat Y'eor is that it merely articulating the word would cause a revolution in domestic and international politics something neither Democrats nor Republicans are prepared to do. Domestically it would mean that for the first time in American history, a major branch of a world religion would be declare a de facto enemy of the state. Not people, not a country; nothing with a capital unless it be Mecca, but a system of religious belief. It would strike at the very root of the American Constitutional system. Internationally it would signify that the principal enemy host, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose ruling house is intimately connected to and supports this ideology, should be targeted or its regime changed. Naming Wahabism as an enemy would indicate that the Iraq campaign, which the Bush administration was at pains to reach, was not the end but merely the beginning.

One the most most striking things about the Global War on Terror is how closely it's resolution is linked with the longest standing issues of Western society. For that reason the war intrudes directly and insistently on Western domestic politics. The Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004 and the American Presidential elections in November are cases in point. Both are essentially about the War on Terror. The enemy cannot be named because doing so would overturn the 20th century political and economic foundations to its roots. It would tear down the Big Tent of political correctness; put a prosperity heavily dependent on oil supplies at risk; and replace an entire paradigm of international relations. For that reason naming the enemy will avoided for as long as possible; perhaps even after a mushroom or biological cloud darkens an American city.

Nelson Ascher at Europundits describes how deeply ingrained the Western aversion to waging all out war is. He recalls how Israel of all countries set the standard for appeasement in the 1990s. Despite daily attacks by those who explicitly called for Israel's destruction; despite a memory of the holocaust; despite an intimate knowledge of the Middle East and the presence of a large number of native Arabic speakers who could read the enemies daily messages perfectly, Israel clung to the illusion that it could make peace with murderers until it was no longer possible to deny that they would have to fight if they wished to survive.

In the 90s, not only the Israeli leadership, but much of the population nourished the idea that a definitive peace was well in the way to be achieved and, because of this faith, most newspapers and the media, whenever there was a terrorist attack, said that Israel wouldn’t give in to the terrorists who wanted to destroy the peace process. In other words, one of the requirements for peace was a toleration of the murdering of Jews, and far too many Israelis agreed with this.

Quite simply, no country on Earth tried so hard to appease terror, to believe terror was not terror, to believe not only that peace with the terrorists was possible, but also that it was right around the corner as Israel did in the 90s.

Shortly after the beginning of the current Intifada however, even the Israelis got fed up and thus, after having elected the politicians who were willing to satisfy almost every one of the Palestinians’ exigencies, they changed their minds and not only sent the appeasers to history’s dustbin, but also elected and then re-elected the country’s principal hardliner, a man whose very name had been taboo for many years: Arik Sharon.

Why did they elect Sharon? Because they discovered that, more than inevitable, the conflict with the Palestinians and much of the Arab-Muslim world had never ceased, had never gone away. Anyone who wanted peace got to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be peace before or without victory.

The public awareness of the threat to America despite September 11 is many orders of magnitude less than Israel's. America's immense size, wealth and power provide it with the illusion of invincibility that was never available to the Jews. Consequently its road of appeasement will be much longer; its Michael Moores more numerous and its final awakening more tragic. The Israeli experience shows the end of appeasement is inevitable. But for the present many will regard national security as a game whose rules are to be flouted. Something profoundly uncool. The loss of hard drives containing classified information at a premier nuclear weapons lab shows how few people inhabit the world of David Warren and Bat Y'eor.

For the third time in five years, Los Alamos National Laboratory is shutting down all classified work and hunkering down for investigations and political lashings over the loss of two disks of nuclear-weapons related secrets. ... "I don't like the culture at Los Alamos," said UC vice president for lab management Robert Foley. "I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't like the culture."

"There is talk going around Congress of having legislation that will forbid the University of California from bidding on (the lab) contract because of this incident," (Los Alamos director) Nanos told lab employees. "People in Washington just don't understand how any group of people who purport to be so intelligent can be so inept." Some critics of security at the nation's weapons complex say the Energy Department should get rid of the university as Los Alamos' manager immediately. "I don't think UC should be given any more chances," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight. "I don't see how they can redeem themselves any more. It's become laughable."

If it is laughable, then it is dark laughter. What was on those disks? "Think about this,"  Nanos told reporters, "If you were to tell everybody in the world that this information is out there, you might start a treasure hunt." And that 'everybody' includes the men with no name.

It's Broke and Ain't Gonna be Fixed

Reuel Marc Gerecht's phenomenal article on the sorry state of US intelligence in the Weekly Standard has one major theme: that the CIA lacks the operational methods to penetrate its targets. He describes the heart of the problem as a reliance on recruited foreign agents of indifferent quality as the metric for promotion within the organization. A kind of bizarre sales target without a point or even a purpose.

Under this system, thousands of agents were recruited abroad neither for their intelligence-reporting potential nor their operational utility. They were put on the books--case officers often referred to the sport as "collecting scalps"--because that is how CIAoperatives earned promotion. With some exceptions--extraordinary handling of foreign agents could win you bonus points--the "head count" was the way to professional success. For most case officers, the Cold War was a backdrop for the constant search for an easy "developmental," somebody who could be quickly turned into a "recruitment" for the annual performance report.

It was busywork, a carnival on the periphery while the inner sanctum of the enemy remained inviolate. Nor is there is any bureaucratic probability that things will change. Those in charge today owe their positions to being agent bean counters par excellence -- salesmen of the month -- and are unlikely to alter the game.

The relatively young men who are poised to become the most senior officers of the clandestine service will likely be overwhelmingly from the Near East Division ... These men gained their professional identities in the 1980s. The odds aren't good that they think it necessary to overturn the structure that promoted them.

Yet Gerecht says the only way in to the enemy cave of secrets is by dedicated Americans willing to do it themselves, the riskiest of propositions and not the normal way of doing business. "And there is simply no way that case officers--who still today are overwhelmingly deployed overseas under official cover or, worse, at home in ever-larger task forces--can possibly meet, recruit, or neutralize the most dangerous targets in a sensible, sustainable way." You can't have Americans doing illegal things: what would the Supreme Court say? What is needed is:

a small group of men who seed themselves into these organizations. Some, probably most, of these men would need to be actual case officers--CIA employees--not foreign agents the CIA has recruited.

America needs spies. American spies. It is, of course the last thing either the CIA will do or Congressional oversight will demand. The Standard article goes on at great length to describe how the metrics of intelligence success have been politicized to the point that the issues being debated bear no resemblance to the requirements of the service. The September 11 Commission, for example, will focus on all the wrong things: on irrelevant trivia or upon grand, symbolic dicta. It is with a tinge of bitterness and not a little irony than Gerecht closes by saying:

Tenet, like Casey, will be damned for the wrong things. And if another 9/11 happens, we will start all over again, with more committees, investigations, recriminations, and blue-ribbon recommendations. Another director will come, and the Agency--in the press at least--will again be reborn. We can all be thankful, of course, that bin Ladenism will in the end be defeated not by the prowess of American intelligence, but by the democratization of the Middle East. Otherwise, we would be effectively defenseless against a small, tightly knit platoon of holy warriors who live to kill and die.

Or at least, that's the hope.

The White Flag Goes Up

It's official. The Philippines has capitulated to international terror. A spokesman for its Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed the terms. Bloomberg reports:

Foreign Secretary Delia Albert issued a statement confirming an al-Jazeera report on the plan to win the release of Angelo de la Cruz. The Qatar-based network today televised a video, dubbed in Arabic, in which Philippine Deputy Foreign Minister Rafael Seguis announced the withdrawal. "We are responding to your request and are to withdraw our humanitarian contingent in Iraq as soon as possible,'' Seguis said, according to al-Jazeera's English-language Web site. Seguis spoke with "foreknowledge and full authority of the Philippine government,'' Albert said in the statement. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has to weigh the life of de la Cruz, a father of eight and one of about 7 million Filipinos working abroad to support families at home, against her support for U.S. President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism, which has won her increased American military aid.

Part of that military aid came in blood.

Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wayne Jackson, 40, a highly decorated 17-year Army veteran who was looking forward to retirement in three years, died Wednesday (October 2, 2002) when a nail-laden bomb exploded near a restaurant outside a military arms depot at Camp Enrile Malagutay. The camp is near the city of Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, where Green Berets are housed. Jackson was pronounced dead at Camp Navarro General Hospital.

Jackson was the 11th American to die fighting the Abu Sayyaf. Here's the Stars and Stripes from February 23, 2002 describing the fate of the other ten.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Defense officials fear that all 10 crewmembers aboard an MH-47E Chinook helicopter died in the Friday crash at sea in the southern Philippines. The helicopter, which belonged to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the "Night Stalkers," went down at 2:30 a.m. local time under clear skies while en route to Mactan air base, a logistics base for an anti-terrorist training operation being conducted by U.S. and Philippine forces.

This then is the last goodbye, the final chapter of a chance encounter which began when Dewey sailed into Manila Bay. And if it is the end of shared destiny, it also closes the chapter on every claim and obligation. Remembrance is all that remains.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

Manila Folder

The Arroyo Administration in the Philippines seems to have caved in to terrorists holding one its nationals in the most abject possible terms. According to Reuters:

Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Philippine deputy foreign minister Rafael Seguis reading out a statement, which the television station translated into Arabic, shortly after the expiry of a new execution deadline set by the militants. "In response to your request, the Philippines ... will withdraw its humanitarian forces as soon as possible," Seguis said according to the translation of the statement, addressed to the Islamic Army in Iraq group holding 46-year-old de la Cruz. "I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group," said Seguis. "We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy."

Go to Dean Jorge Bocobo at Philippine Commentary for the latest analysis and developments.

Manila Trying to Have It Both Ways ...

Channel News says the Philippines is not pulling back its 51-man peacekeeping force early.

The Philippines Tuesday denied it was planning an early withdrawal of its troops from Iraq to save the life of a kidnapped Filipino truck driver facing execution by Iraqi militants. A senior Philippine official said the timetable for the pullout of the small contingent remained unchanged, despite a suggestion by Deputy Foreign Secretary Rafael Seguis late Monday that the process could be speeded up. "We maintain the same position," said the senior official in Manila, asking to remain anonymous. "Until all the preparations are completed, that is the only time they are pulling out."

There are two possibilities for this confused state of affairs. The first is that Filipino bureaucrats are waiting to be bribed back into line by the United States. This may not necessarily be true but government officials there are so crooked that even their rulers have angles. But the equally likely explanation is that it is the normal, everyday, absolutely common screwup that constitutes standard operating procedures in that country.

Dean Jorge Bocobo describes how Filipino officialdom at first believed that it had a deal with the terrorists to release the hostage and was triumphantly preparing to announce it on TV when the whole thing fell through. A careful perusal of the text reveals the possibility that the Filipino bureaucrats and the terrorists were confused over the dates. The Philippines had scheduled a withdrawl of its forces on August 20. The terrorists apparently expected them to withdraw on July 20. "His captors say he'll be killed if the Philippines fails to meet their demands. They want the Philippines to pull its small force out of Iraq by July 20th." Dean Bocobo quotes a Manila newspaper that also hints at this confusion.

A purported call from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to De la Cruz's family confirming the truck driver's release sparked jubilation among captive's townmates in Pampanga province.Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas confirmed the call and said De la Cruz was already on his way to an undisclosed hotel in Baghdad, citing unnamed sources from Iraq.But the celebration proved to be premature as the Iraqi militant group holding De la Cruz, the Khalid bin Waleed Corps of the Islamic Army, denied it had released the Filipino and reiterated its pull-out demand to the Philippine government.The pull-out should occur on or before July 20, the militants stressed, and not August 20, the scheduled departure of the 51-man Philippine humanitarian mission in Iraq.De La Cruz made a televised appeal over Al-Jazeera earlier Saturday for the Philippine government to withdraw its troops from Iraq hours before the lapse of the original ultimatum set at 2 a.m. Sunday (Manila time).

Based on my own experience, it is perfectly possible that the Filipino team negotiating with the terrorists spoke in terms of 'withdrawing by the 20th' without realizing that they were talking at cross purposes. In case this sounds too far-fetched consider that the Philippine Army itself doesn't know what is going on. Reuters reports:

The Philippine army is awaiting word today on whether it will withdraw from Iraq earlier than scheduled amid confusion over Manila's response to militants threatening to behead a hostage if troops do not pull out. Foreign department officials held an emergency meeting in Manila after the Arabic Al Jazeera television station showed deputy foreign minister Rafael Seguis offering to withdraw Philippine forces "as soon as possible" to save hostage Angelo de la Cruz. But an army spokesman said on Tuesday that there had been no official order to withdraw and the family of de la Cruz was sceptical after a series of misleading government statements since the crisis began with the 46-year-old's abduction last week.

They are meeting because they don't know what they said and when they said it.

Yes! It can get worse for Manila ...

CNN is reporting that Baghdad is asking allied nations not to cave into terrorism over reports that Manila was prepared to run up the white flag and prostrate itself before the acolytes of Osama Bin Laden.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Baghdad has urged governments not to negotiate with hostage takers amid uncertainty over reports Manila is going to withdraw its troops. Militants holding a Filipino in Iraq have said they will release him on Tuesday, according to a diplomatic source in Baghdad. It was not clear how the message of his release was conveyed. The news came moments after the Philippine government said it would withdraw its 50-member humanitarian force from Iraq "as soon as possible" to save the life of Angelo de la Cruz, a 46-year-old father of eight.

The subtext of Baghdad's message must certainly be 'if you expect to place your workers here, stand fast'.  This is particularly cruel to Philippine officialdom because, despite protestations to the contrary, neither the corrupt Philippine bureaucrats nor its equally corrupt leftist swells really care an effin eff at a rolling donut over the fate of Angelo de la Cruz. The Left in an unguarded moment referred to overseas workers like de la Cruz as the "toilet bowl cleaners of the world". But what both really care about is money, the money that overseas labor contracts bring, the kind they can deduct from overseas workers like Angelo "toilet bowl cleaner" de la Cruz. Now that Baghdad has put Manila on notice, it raises a danger far graver than terrorism. It imperils the gravy train for leechlike leftist front organizations like Migrante and bloodsucking government institutions like OWWA.

Dostoevsky once observed that the suffering of children was the greatest argument against the existence of God. He should have realized that, on the contrary, God has to exist if men like Angelo de la Cruz, who accepted a job in Iraq to pay for an eye operation for his son, are ever to be recompensed for the misfortune of having been born under the Philipine elite. Whatever his fate, the catastrophe that has overtaken the Arroyo administration for its spineless shilly-shallying is shatteringly complete. Churchill knew that cowardice, no less than bravery had its price. Addressing his words to the men of Munich, he said:

"You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."

Keep digging boys.

Doubts About the Swastika Attack

The press is reporting doubts about the veracity of the Swastika attack. CNN says:

But doubts began to surface about the truth of the attack report that stunned France. A 23-year-old mother told police that she was robbed by a knife-wielding gang of six young men while riding a train with her infant on Friday morning, then mistreated after being mistaken for a Jew. None of some 20 witnesses came to her rescue, she told police.

Investigators trying to track down the culprits had almost no clues to guide them. Surveillance cameras at the station where the culprits reportedly left the train showed no young men running from the scene, and no witnesses have come forward despite repeated calls from officials and promises of anonymity.

Both France-Info radio and the television station LCI reported that the young woman had filed several complaints for violence and aggression in the past. Neither provided sources, but LCI said she had filed six such complaints in the past. That information could not be immediately confirmed.

It has been said that the worst way to defend a good a point is with a bad argument. If the woman's story turned out to be fabricated, it would be difficult to grant instant credibility to any such accusation in the future. We'll just have to wait and see on this one. There are a few obstacles to regarding the story as fictive: such as whether the woman cut her own hair, clothes and slashed her pram on a train with knife, and inscribed Swastikas on her stomach with a marker, which should have been observed. The absence of witnesses cuts both ways. Nor is the lack of "young men running" all that convincing. The perps were not described as running from the train. The point telling most heavily against the women, if true, is the six prior complaints. While there is certainly anti-Semitism in France, the odds that one person would be attacked six times is statistically unlikely. If true. We'll just have to watch and weigh.

A Day on A French Train

The International Herald Tribune describes what happened to a woman on a commuter train north of Paris.

The woman was mistakenly identified as a Jew by six men of North African and African origin, who surrounded the victim in what at first appeared to be an attempt to steal her stroller ... One of them said, 'She's a rich kid.' And then he added, 'There are only Jews in the 16th,'" the police spokesman said. "Nothing in the name of the young woman or where she lives has any Jewish character," the spokesman added. The attackers cut the victim's clothing, slightly wounding her in the process, and cut off a lock of her hair, "as a souvenir," one of the attackers is reported to have said. After slashing the stroller, the six attackers overturned it. The baby fell to the ground and suffered a mild bruise, the police said. The men stole a credit card and E200 from the woman, before getting off the train after it pulled into Sarcelles, which is about 17.4 kilometers, or 11 miles, from Paris.

The incident is also reported in the New York Times with one omission. Here's the omission.

About 20 people saw what happened, but none came to the aid of the victim, the police said, adding that only two passengers approached afterward.

The interesting thing was that the woman was only thought to be Jewish -- and that no one came to her assistance. How to judge the bystanders? When I was thirteen, I came on a man being stabbed on dark bridge walkway by a mugger and, being too scared to do anything else, started pelting the assailant with the bottles and trash lying around in an effort to drive him away. The knifeman came after me but a thirteen year old can show a clean pair of heels and I dropped back out of range and pelted him again. He went off and I ran for the cops. No cell phones then. Years later I realized how dead I would have been if the mugger had a gun. I was stupid as only a kid could be.

In this case, there were six assailants with knives and no place to maintain standoff. Were the passengers chicken not to help her? I suspend judgement on that score. But there was one more thing to try. About ten years ago, when I could still run pretty seriously, I saw a man robbed with a knife on a road and followed the thief as he walked at a distance until I called the cops down on him. The passengers on the French train could have done the same when they got off at Sarcelles. Winston Churchill once advised:

"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."
 

But first you must decide never to live as a slave.

Waterloo Again

Steven den Beste quite correctly refers to David Hamilton-Williams version of the account of the Battle of Waterloo, which as it happened, I had at my elbow when I wrote A Tale of Long Ago. Steven rightly points out that accounts of the battle have historically overemphasized the British contribution often at the expense of the Prussians. So much for the facts. The fiction is much better. Who can resist Lady Butler's painting of the Scots Greys? D'Erlon's Corps nearly broke the British line but for a British countercharge. If it didn't happen as the Alexander Armour account has it then it should have.

"At the start of the charge, the Greys had to pass through the ranks of the Highland Brigade. The Highlanders were then ordered to wheel back , when they did so, we rushed through them, at the same time they heard us calling... now my boys, Scotland Forever."

The Greys at Waterloo are as unforgettable as that of Piper MacKay who, when the rest of his regiment, the 79th Cameron Highlanders, had formed a defensive square against a French cavalry attack, stepped outside the square to continue playing "Codagh no Sith". Nor will historical imagination ever better the story of how Napoleon's decimated Old Guard formed a last square and when asked to surrender  replied "La Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas!" (The Guard dies, it does not surrender!) Scholars now think Cambronne, the Guard commander, simply said "shit". Just damn.

Corrections:

David AM Terron MInstLM www.cabarfeidh.com (Website of the Queen's Own Highlanders (Seaforth and Camerons)) writes to say:

Slight spelling mistake re MacKay of the 79th. ["During the formation, Piper Kenneth Mackay of the 79th, a brave Highlander, stepped outside of the bayonets and continued to play round the outside of the square, the popular air of ‘Cògaidh nà Sith' (War or Peace)with much inspiriting effect. "—Jameson’s Historical Record.] MacKay came from Tongue in Sutherland about as far North as you can get without getting your spats wet!

My apologies.

The Toilet Bowl Cleaner of the World

Dean Jorge Bocobo at Philippine Commentary takes the leftist Philippine newspaper Inquirer to task for advocating capitulation in the face of the kidnapping of an overseas worker in Iraq by terrorists. The terrorists have demanded that nation withdraw its fifty odd peacekeepers, now deployed as part of the US coalition. The Inquirer editorializes:

The hostage-taking came at a critical time: The Philippine contingent's tour of duty ends on Aug. 20, and the Arroyo administration had not yet decided whether to extend it or bring the troops home. Now the administration is under the gun. It will be loathe to invite comparisons with the resoluteness of the South Korean and Japanese governments. South Korea did not only refuse to withdraw its 600 troops in Iraq; after their hostage was killed, it decided to send an additional 3,000 soldiers. Japan, which suffered a hostage-taking crisis last April, also did not order a pullout. (The three Japanese hostages were released four days after their deadline.)

But the issue is not about steadfastness. It is about the national interest. In a word, we were duped into supporting the US-led war. The national interest requires that we make amends for our naiveté, and demand an explanation and better behavior from our ally, the United States.

The Inquirer's argument can be answered in one word: Sipadan. Sipadan was a tropical dive resort a few miles across the Philippine-Malaysian border popular with European tourists. On July 1, 2000 Abu Sayyaf Islamic rebels affiliated with the Al Qaeda kidnapped the guests and staff and held them for ransom. A CNN timeline details how the captive infidels were sold back to their families like slaves on a market.

The hostages -- 10 tourists and 11 resort workers -- were taken to an Abu Sayaff camp on the southern Philippine island of Jolo. Over the following months all but one of the hostages, a Filipino, were released, allegedly after ransoms of up to $1million per hostage were paid to the kidnappers.

Filipino authorities were regaled by the sight of European envoys trooping, with suitcases of dollars in hand, to pay blood money for the freedom of their nationals, money that was almost destined to be used against the Filipinos themselves. Appeals to the Europeans to stand fast fell on deaf ears. After all the Europeans might answer, taking a leaf from the Inquirer, that the tourists had been 'misled' into taking a vacation in so lawless a part of the world. That 'European national interest required they make amends for their naivete, and understanding from the governments of Malaysia and the Philippines' was required. It was a land-office business: not only were the original hostages ransomed, but the European journalists who were sent to cover the events were also kidnapped and later redeemed for cash.

The Europeans engaged in precisely the policy of capitulation the Inquirer now advocates. Everyone knew even then that the ransom money would eventually be used to buy more weapons. According to sources quoting the very same Philippine Inquirer, the Abu Sayaf lost no time encashing the ransom into a new campaign of terror directed against the Filipinos themselves.

According to sources quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a large portion of the loot has already gone to purchase the loyalty of villagers and arm them, to buy a speedboat and 10 motorcycles. Reuters quoted police sources on Jolo as saying that Abu Sayyaf has paid 50,000 pesos (about $1,100) to each of some 2,500 followers, many of whom are new recruits. Most of them have also been given new weapons.

Police intelligence sources on Jolo were quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 16 August as saying that some $5.47 million had already been distributed among 13 Abu Sayyaf chieftains. The paper reported that Galib Andang, alias Commander Robot, chief of the hostage-takers and Mujib Susukan, with a combined strength of 880 men, received the lion’s share of the loot, some P201-million. Two other Abu Sayyaf leaders, Abu Pula Jumdail and Nadzmi Sahadulla, alias Commander Global, who have a combined force of 600 followers, each received P5 million, according to the report. Journalists visiting the rebel camp have reported seeing Galib Andang test-firing a batch of gleaming new Uzi sub-machine guns.

High currency notes are suddenly common in the markets of Jolo, while Abu Sayyaf’s arms-buying spree has driven up the prices of weapons in Mindanao. Prices for mortars, light machineguns, recoilless rifles, M-14s, M-16s and even old Garand single shot rifles have suddenly jumped. Intelligence sources quoted in the Philippines media said that the kidnappers have also built up an inventory of some 3,000 home-made landmines which they would presumably deploy to deter any government assault once the hostage crisis is resolved.

... In an interview with the Agence France-Press on 16 August, Wahab Akbar, the provincial governor of Basilan Island expressed anxiety that with the huge ransoms raised, the Abu Sayyaf could “mobilize across the region.” The extreme poverty in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines is driving more young people into the arms of Abu Sayyaf. “Jolo is too small for them. They need expansion,” he said.

Philippines military sources said that thousands have flocked to join Abu Sayyaf since the kidnapping, lured by the huge ransoms the group has squeezed out of foreign governments. Colonel Romeo Tolentino, commander of a military task force in Jolo was quoted by AFP as saying that Abu Sayyaf ranks have swelled at least ten-fold to 3,000 since the start of the hostage crisis in April and recruitment was continuing. Filipino intelligence sources claimed that local armed groups had offered their services to Abu Sayyaf, for salaries of from 40,000 to 100,000 pesos ($889-2,222) for the armed guards for the hostages.

Nor was the whirlwind long in coming. The Abu Sayaf went on to attack Filipino priest Cirilo Nacorda; they went on to raid the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan kidnapping 17 Filipinos and three foreign nationals, including missionaries Gracia and Martin Burnham who were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Martin was killed. They went on to bomb the General Santos public market, killing fifteen and injuring more than 70. They attacked Filipino Jehovah's Witness missionaries. They detonated bombs in downtown Zamboanga killing 5 and injuring more than 100. They kidnapped elementary school children from two schools, together with their teachers and took them to Basilan Island until they too, could be ransomed. They went on to raid town after little town and kill one dirt farmer after another. Still it went on. The Philippine Daily Inquirer itself reported that the Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for sinking a passenger ferry in 2004 that left 186 persons missing. The ransom money in those European suitcases was a gift that just never quit giving.

Now the Inquirer recommends doing it all again. There are about 3 million Filipinos working in the Middle East whose remittances keep the dysfunctional Philippine economy afloat; many of them men and women who fled the very same carnage precipitated by the very same surrender policies that the Philippine left now advocates. The Inquirer has disparagingly called Filipino overseas workers "mercenaries" and the "toilet bowl cleaners of the world"-- like the hostage in question who accepted a truck driver's job in Iraq so he could pay for an eye operation to give back his son sight. Too bad he couldn't give the Inquirer back theirs.

And do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.
-- Churchill on Munich Oct 5, 1938

At Last

Andrew Sullivan describes the difficulties of journalists and tourists visiting America due to the new Homeland Security Rules. There's no denying that new visa rules, machine-readable passport requirements and the fingerprinting requirement have made casual travel to the United States far harder even for citizens of First World allied countries. The arbitrary nature of law and its enforcement will ensure that some 'guilty' persons will be considered technically innocent while 'innocent' persons will be punished as if guilty. A UPI story describes how freed Guantanamo Bay prisoners are back killing Americans, a case where substantive guilt is trumped by technical innocence.

Several detainees released by the U.S. military from the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have rejoined their former comrades-in-arms and taken part in fresh attacks on American troops, according to Defense Department officials and a senior Republican lawmaker.

And in case the journalists think they have it rough, consider the Cuevas family, who entered the US on a tourist visa in 1985 with their three small children and never left until they were recently deported, having in the interim built up a life without obtaining permanent residence under the various amnesties for essentially technical reasons.

But to the US Department of Homeland Security, this was an "all-illegal alien family" and a three month extension was all they could get. On June 30, they boarded a Philippine Airlines flight back to a country that the Cuevas kids barely remember.

Of course, America is at war, though not everyone, not even in Washington and certainly not in foreign capitals, seems to think so. Tom Ridge just announced that the Al Qaeda were planning a major terrorist attack on American soil before the November elections.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A plot to carry out a large-scale terror attack against the United States in the near future is being directed by Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members, senior intelligence officials said Thursday. Bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are overseeing the attack plans from their remote hideouts somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to senior intelligence officials.

"This type of plotting, this type of operational activity, is being done with the direct direction and authorization of that senior leadership," said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Arrests of terror suspects in Europe and the Middle East resulted in the new warning, said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

And since "we lack precise knowledge about time, place and method of attack," despite certain indications, everyone including foreign journalists and the Cuevas family, who in other times might have been cut some slack, will get the chop. The public will continue to hear about innocent Australian magazine journalists being handcuffed because a database search showed they left the US a day after their visa expired twenty years ago and about Norwegian grandmothers being closely searched -- and it will all be true -- but it is useless to expect things to get better until the enemy is beaten. If anything, security measures will become more comprehensive and intrusive as procedures now on the drawing board reach implementation.

But the singular tragedy is that the day 'when the enemy is beaten' is one which special interests, each for their own reasons, are prepared to postpone indefinitely. Belmont Club readers have suggested that the Supreme Court ruling granting full procedural protection to terrorist prisoners of war may result in more human rights violations than it prevents as men in the field become more reluctant to accept surrenders or render captives instead to Egyptian and Iraqi interrogators. Similarly Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria and parts of Iraq like Falluja have been declared "off limits" for diplomatic reasons. To Strangelove's "you can't fight here. This is the War Room" is added "you can't stop these murderers. You might break the law". The Cuevas family must go in part to enshrine the right of Moussaoui to stay. Michael Moore caught the mood perfectly when he told Christopher Hitchens, "Osama should be considered innocent until proven guilty". We might be crazy; but we're not biased.

The inconveniences that Andrew Sullivan describes will grow worse rather than better. In the 19th century it was possible to speak of a "world without passports". Liners departing for Europe in the 1930s allowed guests to party aboard until shortly before sailing. In the 1950s well-wishers could accompany airline passengers right up to the boarding ramps at many airports. In the 1990s children would sometimes be taken to the cockpit to delight in the dials and levers which festooned the control panel. No more. One day people will tell their incredulous children that they once traveled as tourists.

Here, in a high ceilinged room lit from behind by frosted glass panels I can from my workstation remotely roam the company offices on five continents, writing code, deploying assemblies and doing everything a wired early 21st century man should do. In my heart I know that the traveler's via dolorosa and the Cuevas family heartaches are just a business opportunity. That there should be a buck in there somewhere; that doubtless there is. But in more quiet moments, I will remember the hills of Southeast Asia and strangely scented cities in Africa and know that whatever the bottom line says, the buck will never be worth it. Let's finish the job and be free again.

A Tale of Long Ago

When Napoleon reconnoitered the Duke of Wellington's position at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 he remarked to his Marshals that beating the English would be no more serious an affair than "eating breakfast". It was the Emperor's habit to disparage the enemy in front of his men, but inwardly his heart misgave him. Napoleon knew that if Wellington's ally Field Marshal Blucher could concentrate his additional forces on Wellington's left before the close of day that "France was lost". There remained but one chance: to rout Wellington before Blucher arrived. He ordered D'Erlon's corps forward at the pas de charge in one last desperate throw of the dice.

In 2004, French audiences flocking to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to laugh at the stupidity and weakness of their rivals are subconciously participating in a gambit of equal desperation: the notion that if George Bush's reelection can be prevented by a John Kerry victory, that the liberal project which had been thrown off the rails by the September 11 attacks can somehow be set in motion again and the world restored to its proper course. Absent is the Napoleonic self-awareness of the man concious of impending tragedy yet daring it nonetheless.

Waterloo had been lost before Napoleon set foot on the battlefield. The principal Napoleonic innovation of the Army Corps, which enabled combined arms manuever at a subordinate level and proved decisive against the inflexible and unitary command structures of his enemies had been copied and bettered by the Prussians. With characteristic efficiency, the Prussians took Napoleon's inspired improvisations and created a general staff system and restructured their armies so that their brigades were combined arms units, French Corps in miniature. And as for Wellington, he had of old time beaten all of France's Marshals in Spain. Napoleon entered the field at the peak of his powers backed by an army of veterans yet he was not to win. It was not that Napoleon had grown smaller; it was that his enemies had grown larger.

The transnational liberal project and the dream of radical Islam are alike pursuits after a lost glories. In its eighth century heyday, Islam wielded a two-edged sword. Not only were their mobile tactics superior to those of the petty kingdoms around them, they brandished a creed and social structure which was in many ways superior to the barbarian modes which they encountered. Similarly, while Napoleon wielded the levees en masse; he rode on the greater wave of revolutionary France before whose ideas the dynastic houses of Europe trembled. But at the dawn of the 21st century, these two mighty blades had dwindled into single-edged fillets of rusted iron. Islam no longer the representative of a prosperous and tolerant society and the idea of France shrunken to a kind of petty socialism peopled with legions of pensioners.

The truly terrifying thing about the American sword is that it is genuinely two-edged. The front edge consists of military power unparalleled in human history. Yet it is the weaker side; the back edge consists of a system with an an uncanny ability to absorb almost any sort of human, scientific and engineering potential and convert it into unimaginable wealth. The front edge is used but to ward; but it is the back edge that truly destroys rival societies. Osama Bin Laden struck New York first of all and the Pentagon only as a secondary target. The McDonald's hamburger is hated by the French elite more ardently than any Nazi SS division. Both fear the back edge more than the front.

The real strategic problem of the Jihadis is that their power is so one-dimensional. They have the ability to slit throats, burn with acid, stone or destroy with explosives but none whatsoever to produce abundant food, medicine or clothing. One might join the Jihad to act out one's hate or satisfy a sense of adventure, but not to pay the rent. Analogously, the strategic problem of Europe is that it is in monotonic decline. It is shrinking in population and aging; growing at a slower rate than America and much slower than either China or India. Yet both are proud and ancient visions who imagine that they can reverse their fortunes with a few telling blows. Yet just as Osama Bin Laden discovered that destroying the World Trade Center only causes a new and taller one to be built, in addition to the loss of Afghanistan and Iraq to the Jihadi cause, the French may discover that not even the election of John Kerry -- which is by no means foregone -- will alter the underlying tale. Only by changing themselves -- and not by watching Michael Moore -- can they recover their dynamism and become competitive again. But for the moment, let us return to the last hours at Waterloo as imagined by Arthur Conan Doyle.

But a sight lay before me which held me fast as though I had been turned into some noble equestrian statue. I could not move, I could scarce breathe, as I gazed upon it. There was a mound over which my path lay, and as I came out on the top of it I looked down the long, shallow valley of Waterloo. I had left it with two great armies on either side and a clear field between them. Now there were but long, ragged fringes of broken and exhausted regiments upon the two ridges, but a real army of dead and wounded lay between. For two miles in length and half a mile across the ground was strewed and heaped with them. But slaughter was no new sight to me, and it was not that which held me spellbound. It was that up the long slope of the British position was moving a walking forest-black, tossing, waving, unbroken. Did I not know the bearskins of the Guard? And did I not also know, did not my soldier's instinct tell me, that it was the last reserve of France; that the Emperor, like a desperate gamester, was staking all upon his last card? Up they went and up--grand, solid, unbreakable, scourged with musketry, riddled with grape, flowing onward in a black, heavy tide, which lapped over the British batteries. With my glass I could see the English gunners throw themselves under their pieces or run to the rear. On rolled the crest of the bearskins, and then, with a crash which was swept across to my ears, they met the British infantry. A minute passed, and another, and another. My heart was in my mouth.

They swayed back and forward; they no longer advanced; they were held. Great Heaven! was it possible that they were breaking? One black dot ran down the hill, then two, then four, then ten, then a great, scattered, struggling mass, halting, breaking, halting, and at last shredding out and rushing madly downward. "The Guard is beaten! The Guard is beaten!" From all around me I heard the cry. Along the whole line the infantry turned their faces and the gunners flinched from their guns.

"The Old Guard is beaten! The Guard retreats!" An officer with a livid face passed me yelling out these words of woe. "Save yourselves! Save yourselves! You are betrayed!" cried another. "Save yourselves! Save yourselves!" Men were rushing madly to the rear, blundering and jumping like frightened sheep. Cries and screams rose from all around me. And at that moment, as I looked at the British position, I saw what I can never forget. A single horseman stood out black and clear upon the ridge against the last red angry glow of the setting sun. So dark, so motionless, against that grim light, he might have been the very spirit of Battle brooding over that terrible valley. As I gazed, he raised his hat high in the air, and at the signal, with a low, deep roar like a breaking wave, the whole British army flooded over their ridge and came rolling down into the valley.

-- read the rest from How The Brigadier Bore Himself At Waterloo by  Arthur Conan Doyle

The Turn of the Card

Reader DL links to an article in the Telegraph which describes positional jockeying on the Iraq-Iran border. The article suggests that General Ricardo Sanchez wanted to respond agressively to an Iranian incursion but the British preferred to finesse the problem.

America's military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory, a senior officer has disclosed.  An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels.

The incident was disclosed by a senior British officer at a conference in London last week and is reported in today's edition of Defence Analysis. The identity of the officer is not given. "Some Iranian border and observation posts were re-positioned over the border, broadly a kilometre into Iraq," a Ministry of Defence spokesman said.  The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran.

The Iraqi blogger Omar reports that the manuevering has continued even after the American handover of sovereignty to Iraq with the British still counseling restraint.

An Iraqi military check point that is situated at the western bank of Shat El Arab north to the city of Faw at the Iraqi-Iranian border named Shehan was subjected to Iranian fire on Friday. The same thing happened to some Iraqi army patrols between Gazeel and Hadida north to Basra. Colonel Dhafir Sabah Al Timemi mentioned that this was the 4th time the Iranians have opened fire on Shehan check point during the last week in addition to several other aggressions along the line from the north of Basra down to Al Shalamja.

Colonel Timemi said also that Iraqi border guards have captured 83 Iranians who were trying to cross Iraqi-Iranian borders illegally. He said that these Iranians were detained in Al Shalamcha border check point, interrogated and then were handed over to the Iranian side. The Colonel who’s the Iraqi border guards chief in Basra said that the Iraqi side showed discipline and did not respond to the Iranian aggression in the same manner. He mentioned that he was under pressure from the British forces in Basra to respond similarly but he refused saying that this was a “purely Iraqi-Iranian issue” and that there’s no place for any interference from the coalition forces operating in Iraq.

Recently the British Defense Minister, Geoffrey Hoon, alleged that Iran had hijacked British smallcraft with eight personnel across the border in late June, 2004. "Eight British servicemen seized by Iran last week were forcibly escorted into Iranian territorial waters before they were detained, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, told MPs last night." Again the response was muted.

The incident led to three days of frantic diplomatic activity and conflicting signals from Tehran, with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, making reassuring comments as Revolutionary Guards paraded the blindfolded men on television. It was assumed the men had strayed into Iranian waters on their way to Basra to deliver the patrol boats to the new Iraqi river police. But Mr Hoon told MPs in a written statement: "In a recent debriefing the crews have said that they were operating inside the Iraqi border and were forcibly escorted into Iranian territorial waters.

STRATFOR thinks the Iranians are playing deadly games. In their geopolitical diary of July 6, 2004 they offered the opinion that the 2 Iranians captured in planting boms in a predominantly Shi'ite (!) area of eastern Baghdad were probably on a mission to compel the new Iraqi government and its main ally, the United States, into recognize Teheran as a force to reckon with, the kingmaker of the region. The Washington Times reports that publicly at least, Iraq is not amused. If game it is, then Iraq has called and raised.

The new Iraqi government will publish evidence this week linking foreign powers, including Iran and Syria, to the Muslim extremists and loyalists of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein who are behind the insurgency in Iraq. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the interim government had gathered intelligence detailing the support provided to insurgent groups by some neighboring nations.  Although he did not name the countries, senior Iraqi officials indicated that Iran and Syria were the worst offenders. The accusation that governments in Tehran and Damascus have been aiding the insurgents could create an immediate diplomatic crisis for the Baghdad administration that assumed power last week.

Insurgents have benefited from financial support, logistical assistance and training from neighboring government agencies, Mr. Zebari said. Baghdad also thinks that up to 10,000 foreign spies and undercover agents have infiltrated the country since the war last year. He even indicated that Baghdad might not oppose attacks by American troops based in Iraq on neighboring states if those states are backing the insurgents. "Since we started to look at the security situation, we have seen how foreign governments have been helping terrorists," Mr. Zebari said.

Perhaps it's a bluff. Neither Baghdad, London or Teheran will know actually know what hands they actually hold until the US presidential elections are over in November. Though the cards have been dealt they still lie face down on the table.

The Return of the Dreadnought

Nearly a hundred years ago the British Royal Navy launched a revolutionary warship, HMS Dreadnought. The was the first "all big-gun" capital ship powered by steam turbines and her advent made all other battleships, including older vessels of the Royal Navy itself, instantly obsolete. She was the expression of the almost abstract idea of sea control. Because vessels of her class could theoretically sweep the enemy battle fleet from the oceans and fall upon commerce, their mere existence would deny the use of the oceans to the enemy unless a rival fleet could sink them.

In one of the great ironies of history classic sea control passed from Britannia to the United States during the Second World War. For nearly sixty years vessels have plied the great waters at the sufferance and under the guaranty of the USN. Yet even as the USN attained supremacy of the deep ocean, the Blue Water, the character of its principal enemies changed from rival great powers to teeming nests of terrorists in the deep hinterland. To this enemy ashore, indifferent to maritime commerce and sheltering behind civilian populations, the Blue Water navies held no terrors. Two hundred and forty one Marines were blown up in their barracks right under the huge guns of the USS New Jersey and there wasn't a damn thing the Navy could do about it. Colin Powell recalls:

I was developing a strong distaste for the antiseptic phrases coined by State Department officials for foreign interventions which usually had bloody consequences for the military, words like "presence," "symbol," "signal," "option on the table," "establishment of credibility." Their use was fine if beneath them lay a solid mission. But too often these words were used to give the appearance of clarity to mud.

On August 29, before the airport truck bombing, two Marines had been killed by Muslim mortar fire; on September 3, two more, and on October 16, two more. Against Weinberger's protest, McFarlane, now in Beirut, persuaded the President to have the battleship U.S.S. New Jersey start hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend lo overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would. When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American "referee" had taken sides against them. And since they could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the airport.

Although Powell had hoped America would never again stick "its hand into a thousand year-old hornet's nest" Beirut was to prove the rule, rather than the exception in the coming decades. The new enemy facing America did not have to cross the ocean in fleets to kill thousands. They got visas, flew over the Navy in commercial flights and crashed wide-body airliners into skyscrapers. The Navy could no longer remain serene on the Blue Water. It would have to wade ashore to exterminate the enemy in his own nest.

Suddenly, the inshore water or Brown Water became as important as the great ocean highways. The control of narrow straits, the security of harbors as traditionally safe as New York became debatable. Asian countries worried about the vulnerability of their lifeline through the Straits of Malacca, bounded on either side by two Muslim majority countries. A Navy which had never come close to losing a major surface combatant since the close of the Second World War nearly lost the Burke-class superdestroyer USS Cole while docked in Aden. Yet this was but a harbinger of a worse fear: ever since the September 11 attacks the threat of a nuclear detonation aboard a ship docking at an American port became a recurring nightmare.

The US Navy responded by reinventing itself as both an inshore defense and power projection force. All ships approaching the United States, whether merchantmen, smallcraft or men-of-war would be tracked and boarded if necessary. Sensors would be sown on the seabeds. Long endurance airborne sensors would throw an aegis over American approaches. That was the shield. For a sword, the Navy envisioned basing expeditionary logistics at sea in anticipation that America would take the fight right to enemy doorstep. To provide immediate fire support to relatively small groups of soldiers and Marines maneuvering in the enemy heartland the Navy literally needed to create a terrestrial equivalent of the early 20th century concept of sea control.

The notional problem was to project the fleet's firepower hundreds of miles inland on a 24x7 basis and to make it available at a few minute's notice. Part of the solution was to bring extra-long range manned and unmanned aerial strike assets into the Navy's inventory. The other was to reinvent, almost exactly a century later, the 21st century equivalent of the HMS Dreadnought. The electromagnetic rail gun which is being developed for employment in the Navy's next class of destroyers, the DDX, allows the entire ship's power output to be directed into an acceleration device which will shoot a projectile at anywhere from Mach 7 to Mach 16 clear out of the earth's atmosphere onto targets hundreds of miles away. They will be devastating.

To put things in perspective, our current 5-inch gun has a muzzle energy of 10 megajoules. ... In contrast, naval rail guns will achieve muzzle energies from 60 to 300 megajoules. ... Research indicates that a notional first-generation naval rail gun could deliver a guided projectile with an impact velocity of Mach 5 to targets at ranges of 250 miles at a rate of greater than six rounds per minute.

... An important advantage of rail guns is the ability to exploit the high kinetic energy stored in the projectile ... One test demonstrated that the release of the rail gun projectile's kinetic energy alone would create a 10-foot crater, 10 feet deep in solid ground, and achieve projectile penetration to 40 feet.

Since the shells will be solid darts, a destroyer will carry 10,000 rounds in its current magazine space, without ever again facing the danger of a powder explosion. The DDX, in common with the other new generation USN vessels, will be all-electric warships running an Integrated Power System (IPS) that will enable the ships captain to transfer the entire energy output of the vessel at need, to defensive lasers, propulsion or to offensive darts which will eventually range out to thousands of miles. If the new carriers (CVX) will provide the remote sensors, the manned and unmanned attack aircraft to range over the enemy, the new dreadnoughts can provide a rain of kinetic darts. Unlike aircraft which must be held ready on deck or prepared for flight, the rail guns can fire at very short notice.

A first-order analysis comparing the 200-mile volume of fires capability of a single hypersonic naval rail gun to the ordnance delivery capacity of a carrier air wing of F/A-18s is instructive. In the first eight hours of conflict, a single naval rail gun could deliver twice the payload, three times the energy, to ten times as many fixed aim points as carrier aviation.

Yet like the Dreadnought of 1906, the technology will remain lifeless unless harnessed to a valid theory. Absent a conception of victory, it will remain the mere "presence," "symbol," "signal," "option on the table," "establishment of credibility" -- the diplomatic stage props -- that Colin Powell derided in 1984. Without the political will to defeat the enemies of civilization, the naval marvels of the 21st century will be as impotent as the guns of the USS New Jersey at Beirut airport.

Behind the Curtain

Lee Kaplan at Frontpage relates his training experiences with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). That's the same organization that fielded Rachel Corrie to the Gaza strip. Kaplan pretended to be a volunteer for their "Freedom Summer" program which aimed to deploy American and Europeans to run interference for Palestinian combatants in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the Palestine Solidarity Conference held at Ohio State last year, Adam Shapiro told me that the ISM has Palestinian "handlers," or undercover supervisors at all demonstrations against Israel. These supervisors direct attacks against the separation fence that is being built to keep suicide bombers and armed terrorists from infiltrating into Israel and other targets. One of the handlers leading the current attacks on the security fence at the start of this summer’s campaign is a veteran of the Marxist terrorist group PLFP named Hisham Jam Joun. The ISM website, www.palsolidarity.org , openly proclaims that the organization is “Palestinian-led.”

I signed up for the ISM training session, after seeing their Internet announcement calling for volunteers for their new campaign, which they called "Freedom Summer 2004," after the nonviolent campaign of the civil rights movement in the American south in the 1960's. There were similar announcements on local websites run by the ISM all over the United States.

The phone number I dialed put me in touch with Paul LaRudee, a 68 year-old retired Berkeley professor who, along with his Lebanese wife, has been a leader of the ISM movement in the Bay Area. LaRudee assured me that they welcomed everybody, no matter how old or inexperienced. "Most of our volunteers are in their sixties," he said. I was advised if I wanted to train with the ISM I needed to attend an orientation lecture at The New College of San Francisco which was being given by an Arab-American named Jess Ghannam, a psychoanalyst and professor at the University of California Medical School.

Kaplan goes on to relate his training "at 2263 Mission Street in San Francisco, a ratty storefront theater in a rundown area of the city" run by a faculty straight out of Central Casting. It consisted of activists from the hard Left, including such improbable figures as a "queer Jewish woman" -- really half Jewish -- and a lot of people who only seemed to have first names. The training was basically an amateur's guide to infiltrating into Israel for express purpose of creating a confrontational situation with Israeli defense personnel and wherever possible to interpose themselves between Israeli security personnel and Palestinian "activists". They were to conceal their intent from the first.

If they ask you questions such as ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know there’s a war?’ you should reply, ‘I thought it was better now.’ Or say, ‘I had my ticket for a long time and my Israeli friends said I should come.’ If you are Jewish, know your Hebrew name if they ask you what it is. Know your story. Wear your Star of David especially if you are Jewish.”

The beau ideal was described in a story a trainer laughingly recounted. "Jamie told us a story of how 100 'internationals' had surrounded six Israeli soldiers and besieged them at a roadblock set up to prevent suicide bombers from getting into Israel. The soldiers, all young boys and conscripts in the Israeli army, tried to control the mob until they ran out of non-lethal weapons and were forced to withdraw. The trainers all snickered at the story."

I suspect that many readers of Kaplan's article will be struck by the underhandedness and malevolence of the hard Left. But readers with a some knowledge of clandestine operations will be absolutely horrified by something else: there is no way any group of walk-in volunteers from America or Europe can be trained to be anything but cannon fodder by the short "orientation session" provided by these clowns. Those volunteers were expendable and no one, most especially the trainers, were going to let them in on that dirty little secret. It's hard to imagine how these trainers kept a straight face when they instructed the "Freedom Summer" volunteers to leave their thick briefing books behind because they would receive the emailed equivalents once they had penetrated Israel. Once there, they would be told what to do.

We were told once we were on the West Bank and under the Palestine Authority we were to attend another mandatory two-day training session where we would be assigned to "affinity groups." She then began making a bulletin board of how we were to function by setting up rules. The first rule was “Confidentiality.” Volunteers would be assigned to unknown affinity groups where they would function as teams to disrupt the Israel soldiers in military zones.

But I can see how it would work. The volunteers were asked to lie from the git-go at the airport so that psychologically they would consider themselves outlaws from the first. The next step would be actually break the law. "Once we were inside Israel we were told we could make our way to the West Bank even though we were also informed that to go there is illegal. ... We were assured the “ISM corps” was working on legal proposals to challenge the Israeli government at every turn if illegal entrants were discovered." From that point on, their ass belonged to the International Solidarity Movement. Alone in a foreign country, on the wrong side of the law, the "volunteers" only lifeline would be to cling to the Palestinian "affinity groups" so that the psychological dependence would become a physical one. By the end of this process the "Freedom Volunteers" would be anything but.

One of the grandest educations in life is to observe the hard Left operate in cold blood at close quarters. While it may not confirm your belief in the god of history it will infallibly cement your conviction in the existence of the Devil. Read Kaplan's whole article and then look out the window. Is it the wind or is it them out there?