Target Centermass

Category: Central Asia

  • Iran’s Signalling in the Gulf

    Over the last week, Iran has been conducting military exercises in and around the Persian Gulf region and has issued claims of tested leaps in military technology. The message is obvious: think twice, Great Satan. This Pakistan editorial agrees.

    On Wednesday, Iran tested a high-speed underwater missile called Hoot (fish) which it claims is the fastest in the world at 360 kilometres per hour and can avoid sonar (sound navigation ranging) detection. If the claim is correct then Hoot is three or four times faster than an average torpedo, and as fast as the world’s fastest known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995. Some experts think Hoot may be the reverse-engineered Iranian version of the VA-111.

    The missile test is the second within a week of the exercises conducted by the Iranian army and navy in the Persian Gulf. Last Friday Iran claimed to have successfully test-fired Fajr-3 a domestically produced, radar-evading missile. No information was given on the missile’s specifications (range etc) but US sources described it as a 240 mm artillery rocket with a 40-kilometre range, one of a group of light rockets Iran has developed mainly for tactical use on the battlefield.

    Is Iran signalling to the US? The answer is yes. Statements indicate that Iran wants to show its defensive capabilities at a time when the US-Iran standoff is heading up the escalatory ladder. Here are the facts.

    The United States is bent upon preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability. Iran says that it is not developing a weapons capability but that it will not relinquish its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium. But the issue is slightly more complex than this.

    In 2003, an Iranian dissident group revealed that Tehran’s nuclear programme might not be entirely peaceful. This prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency to ask some questions and demand more intrusive inspections of the programme. This led to a confession by Iran that it had not revealed some aspects of its programme to the IAEA, which it was supposed to do under its legal obligation to the NPT. The US, which considers Iran an adversary, pounced on the information and since then has been trying to pin Iran down.

    Most countries are convinced that Iran is not telling the truth and there is more to its programme than Tehran is prepared to admit. This suspicion is based on three facts: By its own admission, Iran did hide some aspects of its programme; why did it do that? Iran is rich in oil and gas; why is it prepared to stake so much on its nuclear programme if the programme is only for peaceful purposes? To what end is Iran developing its strategic missile capability? Strategic missiles need strategic warheads [emphasis added].

    These are tough questions. But they are also linked to certain other issues. The US is constantly trying to put Iran down and has made no bones about it. This has created a psychosis of fear in Iran. Israel, the US protégé in the Middle East, has also declared Iran its primary threat. Iran, for its part, is adamant that Israel is a threat to it as well as to the rest of the Middle East. Plus, Israel is armed with nuclear weapons. Tehran’s position is that the US should be even-handed. If Washington wants Iran to forego any nuclear activities, then it should also accept the proposal by countries in the region and the IAEA that the Middle East should be declared a nuclear free zone.

    There are a couple of key historical differences between Israel and its Islamic neighbors — it has neither expressed a desire to nor attempted to wipe another country off the map, nor has it acted from an motivation beyond a defensive posture.

    Iran’s argument in this regard makes sense because the Bush administration has shown scant regard for disarmament contained in the NPT while emphasising the non-proliferation aspect of the treaty. Moreover, the technical-legal aspects of the game are underpinned by military-political realities. The latest US National Security Strategy has identified Iran as the biggest threat to the United States. That does nothing to improve the situation.

    No, such labeling may not improve the situation, but that is not a statement against its accuracy. Some of the household cleansers beneath my kitchen sink carry warnings that they are poisonous. Those warnings may not improve the products’ ability to remove grime, but it is correct to say these common items can be dangerous. It is also correct to say that Iran, with its nuclear and martial ambitions, ominous announcements about its growing capabilities, and threats toward the U.S. and Israel, has rightly earned its assessment on the U.S. NSS.

    The word on how the US wants to deal with Iran keeps fluctuating between some sort of compromise to the possible use of force. The US NSS has given a list of requirements that Iran needs to fulfil before it can be re-admitted to the comity of nations. But that is just the US perspective and Tehran has simply pooh-poohed it. Signalling military capabilities in the Gulf where the US navy is also based shows that Iran is not about to back down. A report in a US newspaper, quoting US intelligence sources, says Iran could hit back in a major way — within the US and Europe — if Washington chose to use force against Tehran.

    […]

    The only two countries that can prevail upon Iran and the US to try and find middle ground are China and Russia. One thing is clear: Iran does not seem in any mood to kowtow to the US on the basis of the current US policy.

    Iran cannot kowtow to the Americans on this issue if they hope to continue their ambitions of taking the reins of leadership in the Islamic community. That said, being embarrassed on the battlefield is not a course toward leadership either. The radical Iranian leaders had better be quite certain of their diplomatic skills, which have been successful so far against both a plodding Europe and a predictably timid United Nations, to either find a means to hamstring Western efforts or provide a suitably face-saving out. Should that fail, Iran has to be quite certain of its military capabilities to defend itself against forces that have already given lie to past claims of military prowess in the region.

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon has issued statements on the Iranians test claims and military exercises, seeking to dampen concern about announced results and motives.

    Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman responded Monday to Iranian claims that in recent days it has tested improved airborne and undersea missiles. He said Iran has conducted many tests during the past year of both ballistic and anti-ship missiles, and it would not be surprising if it has made some progress during that time.

    “We know that the Iranians are always trying to improve their weapons systems by both foreign and indigenous measures,” he said. “It’s possible that they are increasing their capability and making strides in radar absorbing materials and targeting. However, the Iranians have been known also to boast and exaggerate their statements about greater technical and tactical capabilities.” [emphasis added]

    Quite right. In a related issue, the U.S. spent decades overvaluing the effectiveness of Soviet tanks and several other vehicles. Simply put, claimed capabilities are not always accurate and oft only falsely boastful, and the results of controlled test are not necessarily good indicators of wartime performance.

    Whitman says ballistic missiles have long been an important part of Iran’s military strategy, and that the country has the largest inventory of such missiles in the Middle East.

    Iran has announced three weapons advances during war games it began conducting on Friday. The latest announcement involved a torpedo fired on Monday that Iranian state television says is capable of destroying enemy ships and submarines “at any depth and any speed.”

    See my earlier “falsely boastful” comment.

    The Pentagon spokesman said Iran’s war games and his comments on them have nothing to do with the effort by the United States and several other world powers to convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program.

    Well, that’s diplomatic balderdash.

    It should be noted that any truth behind the announced Iranian military advances, and it is probably that there is some, is most likely attributable to the Russians (hat tip to John Noonan at the Officers’ Club).

    That’s because this Iranian weapon — called the “Hoot,” or “whale” — is based on the Russian Shkval, according to former Naval Intelligence Officer Edmond Pope. “I was informed in late 1990’s by a Russian government official that they were working with Iran on this subject,” he tells Defense Tech. “A cooperative demonstration/program had already been conducted with them at Lake Issy Kul in Kyrgyzstan.”

    […]

    As the AP notes, the Russian-Iranian cooperation could have major strategic consequences for the U.S. navy, possibly keeping American ships from operating freely in the Persian Gulf. “The U.S. and Iranian navies have had brush-ups during the past.”

    Gee, thanks, comrades. That’s a good way to endanger American lives and increase the future threat of Iran becoming a sharper thorn in the weak southern Russian underbelly, a region already exposed to the potential dangers of expansionist radical Islam.

  • Tonight’s Must-Read

    Long are the shadows of past American retreats. In those shadows abide the hopes of our enemies, as they play a waiting game until the Americans once again climb aboard “The Last Helicopter.”

    Hassan Abbasi has a dream–a helicopter doing an arabesque in cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are the last of the “fleeing Americans,” forced out of the Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) by “the Army of Muhammad.” Presented by his friends as “The Dr. Kissinger of Islam,” Mr. Abbasi is “professor of strategy” at the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new radical administration.

    For the past several weeks Mr. Abbasi has been addressing crowds of Guard and Baseej Mustadafin (Mobilization of the Dispossessed) officers in Tehran with a simple theme: The U.S. does not have the stomach for a long conflict and will soon revert to its traditional policy of “running away,” leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, indeed the whole of the Middle East, to be reshaped by Iran and its regional allies.

    To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of “the last helicopter.” It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the corpses of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein’s generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton’s helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

    According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an “aberration,” a leader out of sync with his nation’s character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an “American Middle East.” Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

    Perhaps President Bush is an aberration, a modern American politician willing to actually engage our enemies, be it on the battlefields of Afghanistan and the Middle East or the diplomatic battlefields of the United Nations. This is a president baptized by jet-fuel fire; that will likely not be the case for his successor. Yes, it is imperative that 2009 sees the inauguration of another U.S. president with nerve, spine and brass balls, at least figuratively speaking.

    Mr. Ahmadinejad’s defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as “waiting Bush out.” “We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies,” says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran’s new Foreign Minister.

    Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations with the Middle East as the main battlefield. In that clash Iran will lead the Muslim world against the “Crusader-Zionist camp” led by America. Mr. Bush might have led the U.S. into “a brief moment of triumph.” But the U.S. is a “sunset” (ofuli) power while Iran is a sunrise (tolu’ee) one and, once Mr. Bush is gone, a future president would admit defeat and order a retreat as all of Mr. Bush’s predecessors have done since Jimmy Carter.

    Mr. Ahmadinejad also notes that Iran has just “reached the Mediterranean” thanks to its strong presence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He used that message to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to adopt a defiant position vis-à-vis the U.N. investigation of the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon. His argument was that once Mr. Bush is gone, the U.N., too, will revert to its traditional lethargy. “They can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face,” Mr. Ahmadinejad told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran last month.

    Please, please note that the Iranian rulers’ concept of “saner” American policies post-Bush means a return to acceptance of unnecessary retreat when bloodied and willingness to happily suffer an emasculated United Nations. These are the sane policies that will enable our enemies to continue unchecked their plans to develop a world where eventually they will be strong enough for a showdown of civilizations.

    Folks, while sadly not unprecedented, those are most assuredly not sane policies for the world we shape for our future generations.

    It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of “waiting Bush out” is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush’s plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere. [Emphasis added]

    The weakness in the Bush doctrine is clear in the eyes of our enemies: it will fail not because it could never succeed in Arab culture, nor because we lacked the abilities and resources to achieve the goal of a democratic and self-determining shining city on a hill in the Islamic world, but rather because of bitter and partisan internal politics and infighting. Anti-war and anti-Bush elements may argue that they can support the troops while actively opposing the mission, but the truth of the matter is they are not only undermining our soldiers but are also endangering future generations.

    And they have been quite successful in hindering our efforts and rolling back large chunks of progress we had made.

    In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has shelved his plan, forged under pressure from Washington, to foster a popular front to fight terrorism by lifting restrictions against the country’s major political parties and allowing their exiled leaders to return. There is every indication that next year’s elections will be choreographed to prevent the emergence of an effective opposition. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, arguably the most pro-American leader in the region, is cautiously shaping his post-Bush strategy by courting Tehran and playing the Pushtun ethnic card against his rivals.

    In Turkey, the “moderate” Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is slowly but surely putting the democratization process into reverse gear. With the post-Bush era in mind, Mr. Erdogan has started a purge of the judiciary and a transfer of religious endowments to sections of the private sector controlled by his party’s supporters. There are fears that next year’s general election would not take place on a level playing field.

    Even in Iraq the sentiment that the U.S. will not remain as committed as it has been under Mr. Bush is producing strange results. While Shiite politicians are rushing to Tehran to seek a reinsurance policy, some Sunni leaders are having second thoughts about their decision to join the democratization process. “What happens after Bush?” demands Salih al-Mutlak, a rising star of Iraqi Sunni leaders. The Iraqi Kurds have clearly decided to slow down all measures that would bind them closer to the Iraqi state. Again, they claim that they have to “take precautions in case the Americans run away.”

    There are more signs that the initial excitement created by Mr. Bush’s democratization project may be on the wane. Saudi Arabia has put its national dialogue program on hold and has decided to focus on economic rather than political reform. In Bahrain, too, the political reform machine has been put into rear-gear, while in Qatar all talk of a new democratic constitution to set up a constitutional monarchy has subsided. In Jordan the security services are making a spectacular comeback, putting an end to a brief moment of hopes for reform. As for Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has decided to indefinitely postpone local elections, a clear sign that the Bush-inspired scenario is in trouble. Tunisia and Morocco, too, have joined the game by stopping much-advertised reform projects while Islamist radicals are regrouping and testing the waters at all levels.

    Why should any of these governments suffer real reform or provide substantial assistance, when we have shown weakness in success and rewarded a true ally in the region with an embarrassing reactionary snubbing?

    The editorial’s author, Amir Taheri, wraps up with far more optimism than I truly feel.

    But how valid is the assumption that Mr. Bush is an aberration and that his successor will “run away”? It was to find answers that this writer spent several days in the U.S., especially Washington and New York, meeting ordinary Americans and senior leaders, including potential presidential candidates from both parties. While Mr. Bush’s approval ratings, now in free fall, and the increasingly bitter American debate on Iraq may lend some credence to the “helicopter” theory, I found no evidence that anyone in the American leadership elite supported a cut-and-run strategy.

    The reason was that almost all realized that the 9/11 attacks have changed the way most Americans see the world and their own place in it. Running away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan and Mogadishu was not hard to sell to the average American, because he was sure that the story would end there; the enemies left behind would not pursue their campaign within the U.S. itself. The enemies that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago, however, are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it today.

    Those who have based their strategy on waiting Mr. Bush out may find to their cost that they have, once again, misread not only American politics but the realities of a world far more complex than it was even a decade ago. Mr. Bush may be a uniquely decisive, some might say reckless, leader. But a visitor to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than the polls suggest. [Again, emphasis added]

    Yes, such realities face the American public, a public that generally and historically is made up of far sterner stuff than our recent series of ignominious withdrawals would indicate. However, while I wish that the hopeful outlook of Mr. Taheri proves true, I cannot embrace it yet as probable. This is not because I do not believe that the U.S. is able succeed in Iraq and able to continue to confront our enemies before their danger is imminent; instead, it is because I question whether we will have the national will. The editorial argues that political bickering from defeatist and partisans have doomed our efforts to democratize Iraq in the eyes of our enemy. I’ll go that one further, arguing once again that our effort has been undermined by our so-called friends in the media. I maintain the belief that only fair reporting of Iraq would have sustained public support — there was no need even for the rah-rah stuff, though that possibly shouldn’t have been too much to occasionally ask for in a time of war with so much, a possible pending clash of civilizations, hanging over the horizon.

    In the Bullpen‘s Chad Evans looks at the same editorial and throws in his thoughts. Here’s a tidbit:

    Thus we are left with the debate between “Democracy doesn’t work” and “Democracy may work.” Democracy may not work too, but five years is hardly long enough to ascertain whether President Bush’s Democracy policy has done anything. Even in the case of Palestine, it is now up to Hamas to carry the ball as high as they set it during these past elections. It might prove insurmountable thus lessoning support for Hamas and their tactics. Again though, it might not. It is this guessing game that makes everyone uncomfortable.

    Will the election of 2008 truly be between a continuance of a Democracy policy or more of an isolationist movement with the Democratic Party chairing in isolationism? Political parties can and have switched policies for centuries.

    Protein Wisdom‘s Jeff Goldstein ties the piece to today’s announcement of a Democrat security platform, as follows:

    [The article] notes the “Kissinger of Iran” predicting the US won’t have the stomach to finish the job in Iraq and Afghanistan, essentially leaving the entire middle east to be reshaped by Iran and it’s regional allies.”

    Which, while this is not something the Democrats want to hear about their “smart, strong, tough” new plan, is precisely what our enemies are waiting and hoping for—and in fact has been a strategical aim of al Qaedas from day one. The strong horse and the weak horse.

    Forget that the Iraqis overwhelmingly see the country moving in the right direction (84% of Shias, 76% of Kurds in a January poll); the real problem is here at home, where we have inversely concluded—thanks to 3 years of unrelentingly negative reporting, and the repetition of rhetorical hyperbole, lies, and half-truths by cynical partisan opponents of the President—that the war is a disaster, things are moving in the wrong direction, and the “proper” thing to do now, according to Democrats, is “responsibly redeploy” [read: pull troops out of Iraq] and go on a manhunt for a single Arab who may or may not be dead.

    Go read them both — they’re both on my blogroll for a reason.

  • Security Council Delays Iran Meeting

    The U.N. Security Council once again stands forth as a shining example of impotence.

    The U.N. Security Council postponed a meeting Tuesday on Iran’s suspect nuclear program as the West searched for new ways to break a deadlock with Russia and China over the best way to pressure Tehran, diplomats said.

    The decision came after senior diplomats from the five veto-wielding members of the council and Germany made little headway on bridging their differences during a 4 1/2-hour meeting Monday evening. Diplomats said Russia was the main holdout, with China following behind.

    That deadlock has forced Britain, France and Germany — the European troika leading negotiations on Iran — to reopen the text of a statement that would be the first Security Council response. Diplomats will focus on bilateral talks to try to find an agreement, they said Tuesday.

    “We’ll just keep working on it,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said.

    The United States and its European allies want a statement reiterating demands by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran suspend uranium enrichment, the process that can be used to generate nuclear power or make nuclear weapons.

    Get that? The council cannot even make progress towards a statement. Is there any realistic hope for some action that could be considered resolute or decisive from this bunch on the Iranian nuclear hunt? I’m thinking not.

  • An Apology and a Link Dump

    Sorry, y’all, about the sparse posting of late — darn that real-world job thing. I’ve spent last night, early morning and a good chunk of tonight logged into work and, frankly, I’m a little sick of my computer right now. That said, as a substitute for actual material, here’s a handful of links about this, that and the other.

    Bringing Power to the People

    One of the most persistent myths about Iraq is that our efforts to improve the electrical system failed. That’s just plain wrong. The country’s in far better shape than it was under Saddam.

    But freedom always has a cost: In this case, the demand for power soared after Saddam fell — and crashed the grid. It’s been a long, hard fight to get it back up.

    Iraq never had an adequate power grid. Under the Ba’athist regime, Baghdad might have enjoyed power 18 or 20 hours a day, but other cities got three or four. One of the first things we did was to distribute power more equitably. Baghdad gets less, so its residents complain — but if you’re in almost any other Iraqi city, you’re far better off today than you were three years ago.

    In the wake of the war, we faced two immediate problems:

    * First: The grid was even more decrepit than the worst pessimists had suspected. Saddam never funded electrification adequately; spare-parts money from the Oil-For-Food program went to build palaces and monuments instead.

    * Second: As soon as the borders opened, appliances flowed in, from refrigerators to air-conditioners to satellite dishes (the dishes are everywhere). Money came out from under a few million beds and the country went on a massive shopping spree that hasn’t ended. As soon as the Saddam-era system was exposed to “normal” demands, it crashed.

    Nonetheless, power generation last July averaged 5,300 megawatts; the top pre-war peak was 4,300. Just now, output’s down to 3,900 to 4,200 megawatts— because the system’s being serviced and upgraded to meet this summer’s demands.

    Power matters. As one ranking official (who preferred not to be named) put it, “Power is the Iraqis’ No. 1 concern” and “the center of gravity” for our efforts. Power outages affect far more lives than terrorism does.

    The insurgents and terrorists realize this. The progress to date has come despite frequent attacks on transmission lines and on the pipelines that fuel the power plants (another action that turns Iraqis against our mutual enemies).

    […]

    The challenge isn’t just power generation, either. Everything was decrepit, from sub-stations to the power lines themselves. We faced a daunting task. And our fellow Americans in Iraq have done a far better job than they’ve received credit for doing.

    We aren’t just fixing it all while the Iraqis watch, either. We couldn’t. The cost would be prohibitive, and rebuilding the entire power system was never our intention. Our goal was to jump-start the system, then teach Iraqis how to do it — and more and more projects are now carried out by Iraqi firms and ministries, with U.S. officials offering only supervision and advice.

    Iraqis won’t be fully content for years, of course. They desperately want to be part of the modern world — and that’s going to take a long time. Meanwhile, they’re finding workarounds. Many Baghdad neighborhoods have chipped in to buy communal generators to provide reliable power to their homes. Not the perfect system, but it buys time for development.

    Significant problems remain, no question about it. Iraq was a ruined country. But things are going far better than you’ve been told.

    The emphasis above was added, and Ralph Peters calling out poor coverage by our media is nothing new. I’ll always happily link to columns by or involving him, as I’ve previously done here, here and here. I’ll also happily plug my introduction to Peters, which was his somewhat-prescient novel, The War in 2020. I first cracked that entertaining adventure in the gunner’s seat of an M1 while waiting on a gunnery range at Ft. Hood, travelling in the way-back machine to May of ’93.

    Abbas claims al-Qaida is operating in Gaza

    The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday that he believes al-Qaida has infiltrated the occupied territories and could further destabilise the region.

    “We have indications about a presence of al-Qaida in Gaza and the West Bank. This is intelligence information. We have not yet reached the point of arrests,” Mr Abbas told Al Hayat, the London-based Arabic newspaper.

    Later he added that Palestinian security forces had been given the task of heading off any extremist plots. “Our forces are trying with all available means to prevent them from arriving to carry out terrorist attacks in this region,” he said.

    Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he was not surprised by the remarks.

    Nor should anyone be surprised; stability in the world of Islam is not to the benefit of murderous extremists. For that matter, stability and progress among the Palestinians is not exactly a goal for the surrounding Arab states — a victimized Palestinian people allows allows the despotic states to misdirect the unrest of their people towards the supposed great and little satans of America and Israel.

    Deadly blast ahead of Bush visit

    A suspected suicide car bomb outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi has killed an American diplomat and at least three other people, but President George W. Bush said terrorists would not stop his visit to Pakistan.

    Bush was in neighboring India when the explosion happened on Thursday, and he immediately vowed to stick with his plan to fly to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on Friday evening.

    “Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan,” he said, adding the bombing showed the war on terrorism must continue.

    Bush is not expected to visit the southern city of Karachi during his short visit.

    National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admitted Bush’s overnight visit to Pakistan was “not a risk-free undertaking.”

    The article goes on to mention the actual victim, but the following story does the man a far better justice.

    Foy spent life serving his country

    David Foy was 51, had served 23 years as a senior chief in the Navy, but wanted to continue serving his country. So he signed up for the State Department and spent the last three years in two very remote parts of the world, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan.

    Just five months ago he took over as facilities manager at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, supervising the building’s maintenance staff.

    Yesterday Foy was killed, along with three other people, when a suicide bomber stopped by consulate security staff drove his car into Foy’s vehicle, throwing it onto the grounds of a nearby Marriott Hotel.

    “He talked many times about the challenges he had there, between the different languages and their way of repairing things versus our way,” said Foy’s brother-in-law David Cushing at the family home in North Carolina.

    Foy had four grown daughters, the youngest 20 and in college in the United States. Neither the girls nor Foy’s wife, Donna, lived with him overseas. The State Department has ordered that families of diplomats posted in Pakistan stay outside the country for security reasons.

    […]

    The family, Cushing said, “would like him to be portrayed as someone who spent his life serving the country.”

    And that is how he should be portrayed and remembered. My gratitude goes out to David Foy, as do my best wishes for his family.

  • Defunct French Warship Ordered Home after India Shunning

    Jacques Chirac has acquired another political black eye as France once again signals retreat.

    After a two-month voyage bound for India’s shipwrecking yards, France’s defunct aircraft carrier Clemenceau is returning home after experts concluded it carries far more asbestos than French authorities originally claimed. The saga of the Clemenceau was an embarrassment for the French government.

    Once the pride of France, the decommissioned warship is now the country’s shame. After weeks of uncertainty over the Clemenceau’s fate, French President Jacques Chirac ordered late Wednesday that the ship return home. Mr. Chirac’s decision comes on the eve of a visit to India, where opposition has been growing against the ships planned dismantlement in the Alang shipwrecking yards.

    Ever since the Clemenceau steamed out of the port of Toulon on December 31, it has been the object of a growing international dispute. Greenpeace and several environmental groups argue it carries far more asbestos on board than the 45 or so tons French officials first claimed. Egyptian authorities originally blocked the Clemenceau from entering the Suez Canal en route for India, for fears of its toxic cargo.

    When Egypt finally gave the green light, the Clemenceau received another setback: India’s supreme court barred the ship from entering Indian waters pending a determination whether the ship was too hazardous to be dismantled. That decision was expected Monday. But the court said it would tap a new committee of experts, and make a final ruling scheduled for Friday.

    Greenpeace hails Mr. Chirac’s announcement as a victory.

    Yannick Jadot, head of Greenpeace’s campaign in France, told French radio that he hoped Paris will assume a leadership role to ensure other toxic European ships are dismantled safely. He said safeguards were needed so poisonous materials could be removed from such vessels without harming the environment or workers’ health.

    As much as I relish an international embarrassment for Chirac, I am loathe to grant any encouragement to Greenpeace.

    The Clemenceau is now returning to France. For the time being, its unclear just where it will finally be dismantled.

    Likewise, I will not be celebrating such an ignominous demise for what was certainly once a proud vessel. Those who served upon her should step forth and demand an honorable resolution for the carrier.

  • Prosecutors to Introduce Alleged Terror Camp Photos

    Details of the prosecution case against a father-son pair of would-be domestic Islamist terrorists are surfacing, including satellite photos purported to show an al Queda training camp in Pakistan.

    The government has satellite images of a suspected al-Qaida training camp that federal prosecutors claim was attended by a man on trial for terrorism-related charges, according to a prosecution brief.

    Prosecutors had previously said they would seek to introduce images from Pakistan but had not publicly disclosed the nature of those photographs. The evidence is expected to be a key part of the government’s case against 23-year-old Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, 48.

    On Wednesday, a jury of six men and six women was seated for the trial of Hamid Hayat, who is charged with supporting terrorists by attending the camp in 2003 and 2004 and then lying about it to the FBI. Opening statements are scheduled to begin Thursday.

    The government also claims the son planned to attack hospitals and supermarkets after he returned to the U.S.

    Umer Hayat is charged with lying to the FBI about his son’s attending the camp. His portion of the trial is to begin next week before a separate jury that was seated Tuesday.

    Both deny the son attended the camp. In their brief, prosecutors did not offer any direct evidence that he did, such as photographs or witness accounts that place him there. Rather, their case centers on statements the men made to a confidential government informant in the U.S., the men’s purported videotaped confessions and the photographs they say show the actual camp.

    The Pakistani government denied any of the camps exist. Prosecutors, however, said they have satellite images “of a location consistent in appearance with the militant training camp that Hamid Hayat ultimately confessed that he attended,” according to the 60-page trial brief filed Tuesday night.

    The document outlines the government’s case against the father and son from Lodi, an agricultural community about 35 miles south of Sacramento. Both have been in custody since their arrests last June and have pleaded not guilty.

    […]

    Umer Hayat is charged with two counts of making false statements to FBI agents and faces eight years in prison if convicted. His son is charged with three counts of making false statements to the FBI about attending the camp and with providing material support to terrorists. If convicted, he faces up to 31 years in prison.

    Meanwhile, the defense has concocted a stunning argument.

    Defense attorneys have not offered an alibi to show that Hamid Hayat was anywhere other than where prosecutors say he was. But they contend the informant asked leading questions and that the FBI pressured the father and son to confess without a lawyer or interpreter present.

    Damn those leading questions.

    Mark my words — Islamist terror will assuredly come to our shores again. Thankfully, I’m pretty sure these two bastards won’t be involved.

  • A Tale of Two Duh! Headlines

    Please be so kind as to file them both under the “well, I should freakin’ hope so” category.

    Poll: Americans fear Iran will develop, use nukes

    Americans are deeply worried about the possibility that Iran will develop nuclear weapons and use them against the USA, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds, but they also fear that the Bush administration will be “too quick” to order military action against Iran.

    […]

    There is little doubt among Americans about Iran’s intentions. Eight of 10 predict Iran would provide a nuclear weapon to terrorists who would use it against the USA or Israel, and almost as many say the Iranian government itself would use nuclear weapons against Israel. Six of 10 say the Iranian government would deploy nuclear weapons against the USA.

    I’ll admit, I’m editing quite selectively, but the story really did try to hide the meat of the poll behind the numbers based upon a so-far successful undermining of the Bush administration and piss-poor reporting of our successes in Iraq.

    US and Israel ‘trying to destabilise Hamas’

    Hamas has accused the US and Israel of refusing to accept the result of a democratic election, after a report that the two countries are discussing means to destabilise and bring down a Hamas-led Palestinian administration.

    The New York Times, citing diplomatic sources in Jerusalem, said Washington and Israel intend to block funding for the Palestinian Authority in an attempt to ensure that Hamas cabinet ministers fail and new elections are called.

    After Hamas’s election victory, the US and EU warned the Islamist group that unless it renounced violence and recognised Israel’s right to exist they would cut funding for the Palestinian Authority.

    Let’s see … a terrorist organization is rightfully elected the run the Palestinian state-or-whatever. The two governments that have previously shouldered a lion’s share of the funding for the state-or-state-of-anarchy balk. Is this undermining or just a shade of common-sense diplomacy? I’m voting for the latter, and I would really like to see a little hardball played here — the Palestinians made a choice and Hamas must find a way to function as a true government or fail upon their promises. After all, they have a rather sizable role to play in the violent anarchy over which they now supposedly govern. That Hamas would decry a withholding of funding from those they’ve deemed enemies is a truly special brand of weak victimization for a state-or-state-of-bloodletting that has already banked for years upon its claims of victimhood.

  • America Won’t Attack Us, Says Iran

    Iran again grabs the opportunity to play the role of the little streetpunk in need of a good smackdown.

    An Iranian vice president said he did not believe that the US would attack his country over its nuclear programme and compared defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to a vampire showing its teeth.

    “Iran is not Iraq, Iran is not Afghanistan,” Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee said during a visit to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

    “They still cannot leave (those two countries), it is impossible for them to invade Iran.”

    The United Nations nuclear watchdog voted last week to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme – raising the stakes in the dispute over the Middle Eastern country’s nuclear ambitions.

    The US and Europe suspect Iran is secretly developing bombs, but Iran insists the programme is for energy.

    The US has denied it has any plans to invade the country, but Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with a German interviewer recently that all options, including a military response, were on the table.

    Asked about that report, Mashaee said Rumsfeld was like “Dracula showing his teeth”.

    Actually, yeah, I can kind of see the Dracula in Rummy. Then again, I kind of like that in a Secretary of Defense. It’s not the nature of the position to be the good cop in the greater scheme of things.

  • Another Mohammed Cartoon Link Dump

    Shameful appeasement

    The past several days of mayhem throughout the Muslim world — all thanks to a handful of mild cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed — have provided a clarifying moment for those still uncertain about what the West faces from radical disciples of the Islamic faith.

    What’s clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.

    What is also clear is that the West’s own leaders, both in Europe and the USA, as well as many of our own journalists, have been weak-spined when it comes to defending the principles of free expression that the artists in Denmark were exploring.

    Instead of stepping up to passionately defend freedoms won through centuries of bloody sacrifice, most have bowed to ayatollahs of sensitivity, rebuking the higher calling of enlightenment and sending the cartoonists into hiding under threat of death.

    Many U.S. newspapers have declined to reproduce the cartoons out of respect for Muslims, setting up the absurd implication that an open airing of the debate’s content constitutes disrespect. Both the U.S. State Department and the Vatican have declared that Muslims were justified in being offended, while former president Bill Clinton, speaking in Qatar last month, called the cartoons “appalling.”

    Read the whole column. I particularly like the following portions:

    Thanks to this heritage of healthy irreverence, today self-deprecation and parody are favorite ingredients in the volatile, spicy stew we call freedom. That’s why we roast our most powerful in tribute — and why politicians collect, frame and display cartoons that lampoon them. The ability to laugh at oneself, or to shrug off insult, is a sign both of a mature ego and a mature society.

    Unfortunately, much of the Arab/Muslim world enjoys no such legacy, much to its cultural impoverishment and to our potential peril. It might help us to win this war of ideas if we properly understand our own.

    … and …

    Two common apologist arguments beg rebuttal. One of them compares printing inflammatory cartoons to crying “fire” in a crowded theater, implying that one shouldn’t express things certain to offend others. Never mind that all political commentary would cease by such a standard, but the reason crying “fire” is forbidden is practical. People panic and stampede when they hear it, and it is false. It is imperative to cry “fire” when there really is a fire. It is also imperative to cry foul when cartoonists face death threats for doodling.

    The other argument, also based on a logical fallacy, is that the Danish cartoons are comparable to racist caricatures of Jews in Nazi Germany and blacks in the segregationist South. The Boston Globe, which saw fit in the past to defend “Piss Christ” (a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine) as well as a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in feces as worthy of government subsidy, made such a case recently.

    There are at least two reasons why The Globe’s comparison is bogus: gas chambers and lynchings. Both the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan were officially sanctioned enforcers of immoral social orders that used caricature to further degrade and dehumanize beleaguered minorities they ultimately murdered.

    There is no equivalence between organized murder on behalf of a malignant social system and a half-dozen nerdy artists, speaking only for themselves, lampooning a fanatical religious sect whose members, by the way, specifically advance the delightful goal of exterminating millions of “infidels.”

    The correct comparison, in fact, for Nazi and Klan terrorists are their brothers under the hoods — the jihadists who issued a death sentence on writer Salman Rushdie, who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl and businessman Nick Berg, and who kidnapped an innocent American female journalist and showed videos of her sobbing and terrified among armed men holding guns to her head.

    A ‘dangerous moment’ for Europe and Islam

    As Islamic protests grew against the publication in Europe of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, a small Arab movement active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark responded with a drawing on its Web site of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. “Write this one in your diary, Anne,” Hitler was shown as saying.

    The intent of the cartoon, the Arab European League said, was “to use our right to artistic expression” just as the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did when it published a group of cartoons showing Muhammad last September. “Europe has its sacred cows, even if they’re not religious sacred cows,” said Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the organization, which claims rights for immigrants aggressively but without violence.

    Such contrasts have produced a worrisome sense that the conflict over the cartoons has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion.

    “This feels to me like a defining moment,” said Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor of European history. “It is a crunch time for Europe and Islam,” he said, “it is an extremely dangerous moment,” one that could lead to “a downward spiral of mutual perceptions, and not just between extremists.”

    U.S. says Iran and Syria stoking cartoon protests

    America entered the row over the Muhammad cartoons yesterday accusing Syria and Iran of stoking up protests against the caricatures to suit their own ends. In France, the publication of all the offending cartoons by a magazine sparked further protests.

    Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said: “I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes. The world ought to call them on it.”

    Meanwhile, as all this plays out over a dozen, generally tame cartoons, some of which showed more the cartoonist’s fear of Moslems than an image of Mohammed, realize that today’s tremors are, at least in part, driven by lies and fakes (hat tip to Gateway Pundit).

    Also remember that, while the entire brouhaha is supposedly based upon the employment of images of the prophet Mohammed, such images are certainly nothing new. No, there are other motivations at play here, and they may be a case of radical Islamists showing their hand too early.

  • U.S., Russia, Germany Cancel Afghanistan Debt

    Smart move all around.

    Afghanistan on Wednesday hailed decisions to cancel the impoverished country’s debts to the United States, Russia and Germany, but the country likely will remain dependent on foreign aid as it recovers from decades of war.

    Afghanistan owed $108 million to the United States and $44 million to Germany from loans before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Russia claimed it was owed about $10 billion from loans to a puppet communist government in the early 1990s.

    “After 30 years of devastation, we are starting from nothing and any move such as this helps the reconstruction of Afghanistan,” said Khaleeq Ahmed, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

    The Bush administration said Tuesday it will forgive the entire debt, following a similar pledge from Russia on Monday and from Germany at a donors’ conference last week.

    Even with the loans forgiven, Afghanistan looks set to remain reliant on years of foreign aid. More than 90 percent of the government’s $4.75 billion budget in 2005 was financed by international donors, and Karzai has said his government will need propping up for about a decade.

    The International Monetary Fund’s representative in Afghanistan, Joshua Charap, said that even by 2010, Afghan government revenues are expected to cover less than two-thirds of total expenditures.

    Charap said the removal of the foreign debt would allow Kabul to “normalize its credit rating,” paving the way for new loans.

    Nearly a third of government spending this fiscal year has been on its new army and police amid rising crime and the Taliban-led insurgency. The hard-line Islamic militia was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.

    This poor nation, ravaged and rent by strife since the days of disco, needs all the assistance possible in succeeding, and the three countries forgiving debt are all safer with a peaceful Afghanistan.