Interesting Stuff # 40

Judge Rumsfeld by His Successes And Failures

The facts why: Rumsfeld is arguably the most successful Defense Secretary in American history. Let's treat him that way.

Iraqi Sunni leader turns his guns on foreign insurgents

Sheikh Jadaan's armed followers claim to have arrested and killed 300 would-be jihadis entering from Syria, many bound for service as suicide bombers with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Sheikh Jadaan fled Iraq in 1998 after falling out with the regime. Last November he accused US and Iraqi forces of heavy-handedness, calling for the "American occupiers to get out of Iraq and leave Iraq to the Iraqis". However, he is convinced that the presence of foreign terrorists such as Zarqawi risks leading Iraq into permanent chaos - potentially prolonging the occupation.
Sheikh Jadaan's stance follows similar moves by many secular Sunni insurgents, who have ended their marriage of convenience with al-Qaeda in protest at its brutal methods.
The split is understood to have received tacit encouragement from the US military, although it is reluctant to encourage private militias, which it says operate to no agreed military guidelines and could pursue private feuds.

Iraqi Forces Take Lead in Operation Cobra Strike

Iraqi army soldiers are gradually taking the lead in all operations in Haswah and Iskandariyah, stabilizing the northern Babil province, military officials in Iraq reported.

IRAN’S CONTINGENCY PLANNING FOR WAR AND ITS ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE US

LETS REVIEW THE ASSUMPTIONS THAT IRAN IS MAKING ABOUT THE UNITED STATES IN ITS UNAPOLOGETIC QUEST FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND ITS LAUGHING AT SANCTIONS AND POSSIBLE MILITARY ACTION:
(A) PERHAPS OTHER COUNTRIES WOULD KEEP THE US FROM DOING ANYTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT IRAN, THROUGH THE UN OR OTHERWISE;
(B) THE US WOULD ATTACK IRAN WITH PRECISION AND RESTRAINT IF AT ALL;
(C) WHATEVER TACTICS IRAN WOULD USE IN RESPONSE TO A US ATTACK — TERRORISM, OIL EMBARGO, CHAOS IN IRAQ, USE OF THE MSM — WOULD CREATE A “QUAGMIRE” BEYOND THE “STAMINA” OF THE US TO WITHSTAND;
(D) THE LACK OF IRAN’S ACTUAL WARMAKING POWER WOULD BE OFFSET BY A COMBINATION OF MILITARY SELF-RESTRAINT BY AMERICA, GLOBAL AND DOMESTIC PROTEST AT AMERICAN ACTION, DOVISH POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN THE US, THE MSM’S AMPLIFICATION OF WHATEVER IRAN WOULD DO TO PUT IT ON A SUPERIOR FOOTING TO AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION, AND PERHAPS FACTORS UNKNOWN.
WE CAN ARGUE ABOUT VARIOUS OF THE ASSUMPTIONS IF YOU LIKE, BUT THERE IS ONE ASSUMPTION THAT IRAN IS MAKING THAT IS INCONTROVERTIBLE: THE US WILL NOT USE OVERWHELMING FORCE TO LIQUIDATE IRAN’S NUCLEAR CAPABILITY, ITS MILITARY AND THE COMMAND STRUCTURE.
IRAN’S BASE CASE APPEARS TO BE THAT THE US WILL USE PINPRICKS IF IT DOES ANYTHING AT ALL. IN RESPONSE IRAN WILL UNLEASH AN ARRAY OF TERRORISM, ECONOMIC PENALTIES, AND DAILY DOSES OF US TROOPS GETTING KILLED IN IRAQ AND ELSEWHERE, DIAL UP THE MSM TO VIDEO THE MISERY, AND WAIT FOR THE QUAGMIRE TO DEMORALIZE THE INFIDELS. SHOCK AND AWE MIGHT JUST AS WELL BE SHUCK ‘N’ JIVE. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD UNDERSTANDS NOW HOW TO WAGE A PROPAGANDA WAR AGAINST THE US, USING THE COMPLICIT MSM: YOU CAN JUST PICTURE THE DAILY SCENES OF CAR BOMBS AND SUICIDE MISSIONS AGAINST AMERICANS, AND IRANIAN WOMEN WAILING WITH BROKEN BABIES ABOUT THE CRUELTY OF THE US ON FOX AND CNN. FINAL SCORE: QUAGMIRE 100, US 2.
GIVEN THE WARMAKING STYLE OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, AND THE TOTALLY NON-WARMAKING STYLE OF ITS DEMOCRATIC OPPOSTION, IRAN’S ASSESSMENT SEEMS PRETTY CORRECT TO US.

IRAN’S RHINELAND MOMENT

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer.
The answer to their question above is obvious. Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities would hamper Iran from going nuclear, which must be America’s number one objective, as we have discussed. Like the men of the 1930’s, these commentators list reasonable objections to American or Western action against the aggressor of the day. The objections are sound in all but one aspect: they fail to deal with the actual totalitarian aims of the Nazi or Islamic enemy. Undoubtedly all sorts of problems ensue from wiping out the aggressor’s coveted capabilities, and we should expect him to retaliate. So what? The Clarke/Simon line of thinking refuses to engage the larger issue that is just over the horizon, and must be faced.
How much worse will it be when Iran actually has nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them? How much worse will it be when Iran uses them or credibly threatens to use them against the US, Israel or other allies? Why indeed should Americans take it for granted that the US would retaliate massively against Iran if American cities are hit by nuclear blasts of disguised origin in martyrdom operations? The world faced similar questions seventy years ago, but the stakes are higher today, given the devastating impact of nuclear weapons. Will we once again wait too long and once again pay the much higher, more tragic price? Consider this: there is no greater basis for believing that a nuclear Iran will not use its nuclear weapons than for believing that men will not fly airplanes into skyscrapers.
From the reoccupation of the Rhineland to the start of World War II was three and a half years. Where will we be three and a half years of inaction from now?

DANISH CARTOONS: DEATH WISH PART II

Unlicensed email servers illegal under new rule

China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', and also reiterate that emails which contain content contrary to existing laws must not be copied or forwarded. Wide-ranging laws of this nature have been used against political and religous dissenters in the past.

The Fedora Gap

A lot of really bad decisions clearly happened, yet there is no evidence that Bush huddled in a dark room somewhere with Haldemanesque cronies and plotted in classic Nixon fashion to willfully deceive the public -- and if all goes well, destroy the world. If he did, the tape hasn't surfaced.
The Downing Street memo was a bust. Plame is still foggy, hard to follow. The list goes on and on. Desperation for material is the real reason Dick Cheney's hunting accident took off as a story. For a few days there, it seemed that the veep was finally becoming the Strangelovian madman he's always needed to be for this tale to work. Then he went on TV, the picture of contrition. Fizzle.

A General Misunderstanding

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld….I never saw him endangering troops by insisting on replacing manpower with technology. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we always got what we, the commanders, thought we needed….The outcome and ramifications of a war, however, are impossible to predict. Saddam Hussein had twice opened his jails, flooding the streets with criminals. The Iraqi police walked out of their uniforms in the face of the invasion, compounding domestic chaos. We did not expect these developments.
We also — collectively — made some decisions in the wake of the war that could have been better. We banned the entire Baath Party, which ended up slowing reconstruction (we should probably have banned only high-level officials); we dissolved the entire Iraqi Army (we probably should have retained a small cadre help to rebuild it more quickly). We relied too much on the supposed expertise of the Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi who assured us that once Saddam Hussein was gone, Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds would unite in harmony.
But that doesn't mean that a "What's next?" plan didn't exist. It did; it was known as Phase IV of the overall operation. General Franks drafted it and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department and all members of the Cabinet had input. It was thoroughly "war-gamed" by the Joint Chiefs.
Thus, for distinguished officers to step forward and, in retrospect, pin blame on one person is wrong. And when they do so in a time of war, the rest of the world watches.

The Pelosi Doctrine : Darfur and the Democrats' security delusions

The job of the special envoy, she says, is to find ways to "stop the violence, bring the people to the negotiating table and get humanitarian relief to the people who need it." These are contradictory goals. Bringing "people" to the table means giving Sudan's government--the perpetrator of the genocide--a seat and thus a veto over how and when the Darfur crisis is resolved. It is Khartoum that is the chief obstacle to deploying U.N. troops in the region.
This is of a piece for what passes as a security policy in most of Ms. Pelosi's party….

Her "special envoy" is a substitute for the kind of action that might actually make a difference. In the short term, that would mean arming the Darfuris so they can defend themselves. In the long term, it means regime change in Khartoum--which would almost certainly require the use of U.S. military force.
Mr. Bush's reluctance to commit U.S. troops in Sudan is understandable given our current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan and our obligations around the world. But if Ms. Pelosi's outrage over Sudan is more than posturing, she'd focus less on the White House and more on the fecklessness and obstruction of the countries and United Nations that she typically invests with so much moral authority.

Saudi Justice : The kingdom's reforms haven't gone nearly far enough

Whatever liberalization has been accomplished does little to enable ordinary Saudis to exercise basic human rights. For millions of Saudi citizens and foreign residents, the absence of enforceable legal standards means that officials still wield power arbitrarily, and that the rich and powerful remain above the law. Equal protection and consistent enforcement would radically alter the corrupting exercise of power that currently stymies law-abiding Saudis.

Revising a myth: Revelations from KGB files challenge the legend of Chile's Salvador Allende

In recently revealed KGB files, Allende emerges as a client of the Soviet Union and its most important asset in Latin America after Fidel Castro….

As part of operation TOUCAN, the KGB forged a letter tying the CIA to an assassination campaign by Chile's intelligence service, known by its Spanish acronym DINA. Many fell for this Soviet disinformation, including the late syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. The “World Was Going Our Way” includes the entire letter and also notes that, in 1976, The New York Times published 66 articles on human rights abuses in Chile and only four on Cambodia, where the communist Khmer Rouge had begun a murderous genocide that killed an estimated 2 million out of that nation's 7.5 million people. The authors find no adequate explanation for this “extraordinary discrepancy.” …

Chile has since become a model of democratic politics and free-market, free-trade prosperity under a center-left coalition friendly to the United States; policies President Bachelet pledges to continue.

Our Intimidated Generals

On This Week Joe Klein, whom no one can accuse of being a Bush fan, said that Bush repeatedly asked the generals in Iraq if they had everything they needed and they repeatedly assured him they did. But when Jerry Bremer asked them what they would do with an additional division, they said, we'd clear Baghdad. Excuse me? The American army in Iraq does not have a single general with enough guts to respond to the president's question with "depends on what you want us to do?"
Sorry, guys, civil control of the military is not our problem. Gutless military leadership is.