Free Republic

My prayers are with you and your mother.

The fact the Left hates him is the greatest tribute to his effectiveness.

It’s “free”.

The Indian example is probably the worst of all possible excuses to use. The policy of divide and rule; the tragedy of the Partition; the way the Indian empire distorted British policy for long decades; how it led to the British involvement in Egypt to protect the Suez; it’s role in securing the Horn of Africa, once the sealane to India and that in turn possible to the Scramble for Africa and other catastrophes too numerous to mention. Iraq is one example that comes to mind. It was an Anglo-French Frankenstein created under Sykes-Picot. Whatever the Archbishop’s theology is like, I think his history is suspect.

But I don’t think his understanding will get better. Certain points of view are proof against facts. But such lead to consequences which none of us can escape.

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - An inmate at an El Salvador jail was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside -- a novel attempt to disguise his apparent escape plans. Guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison outside the capital San Salvador found the V40 grenade, about the size of a golf ball, lodged up the man's rectum during a security clampdown, a prison spokesman said on Thursday. ... Last year, prison guards found an M67 grenade in the vagina of a female visitor at the overcrowded La Esperanza-Mariona prison on the northern fringes of San Salvador.

Spend the money. You'll know as you start writing the check whether it is the correct thing to do. You may or may not save the cat, but if you can't let him go, then you can't let him go.

Belmont Club has been altered to reflect Defenselink announcement that pullouts are not yet final. Thanks.

Wretchard

The IDF has tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, nuclear weapons, etc and the small numbers of people the Israelis have killed that you quote conclusively prove that Israel does not kills civilians as policy. If you want to know what the profile of killing civilians as policy looks like consider Nanjing (with swords and bolt action rifles), Dresden (with propeller driven aircraft), Rwanda (with machetes) and Kosovo (with far less weaponry than the IDF). Also you may want to consider the Sudan. That's not the profile we see in your figures.

Last I heard a platoon had three squads, more if there was a support platoon.

We're not going to lose it. Don't even think about it. Without victory there is no survival. There is nothing after defeat.

I don't lie to my son about Santa, but tell him the truth at the level he asks about. The other day he said that he didn't want to know about the 'fake' Santa Clauses in department stores and he read up on St. Nicholas. He had gone from one level of perception to the other. But he still believed in one Santa up in the North Pole. One day he will ask if there's a real Santa in the North Pole and I will say there isn't a man with a white beard, but that each and every parent has been given the task of being Santa Claus on behalf of St. Nicholas to distribute the tokens of love which is what we remember on Christmas Eve.

Santa can either be a parable or a lie. He's a lie if we use him to deceive but a parable if we use the story to describe what is hard to explain in any other way. Yet for some, and especially those who feel the universe is an empty place bereft of meaning, Santa will always be a lie; a cruel delusion to fool ourselves into believing that the promise of love will ever be kept; and the 'truth about Santa' a euphimism for pledging allegiance to bitterness where we would withold it from hope.

Bioniche's research is in oncology and infectious diseases.

Discovery research at Bioniche focuses primarily on three areas of medicine where there is a strong need for safer, more efficacious therapies: oncology, inflammation, and infectious diseases. Pre-clinical research and formulation research is conducted in the company's facilities located within the Bioniche Therapeutics Research Centre at the NRC Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal, Quebec.

I wonder what the rest of Arafat's portfolio looks like.

Mr. Chirac will live to regret this. It was smallminded and from a small man.

Sorry about the Maine numbers, my browser was pointed at the wrong totals. No, Maine does not have GWB up by that much.

The CNN site says with 11% of precincts in the figures are:

Bush --7,801,683,
Kerry -- 6,179,810

Interesting to see whether this "Sherrif" device can be used to disperse the human shields so favored by the militants who distribute women and children around them, a la PLA. In a way, a microwave beam will act like a winnowing wind which will blow out the chaff from the grain leaving the real targets for the kinetic rounds.

This may be the quid pro quo for the release of the two French hostages. It may be meaningless, but it will be a fictive hook on which the terrorists can hang their legitimizing hat.

The problem is that the war is an issue that Kerry cannot ignore. He can't go blithely through the campaign pretending it is September 10, 2001. He is in the position of having to go into the water to fight the shark. Lieberman could have gone into the water with Bush on this issue, at least better than Kerry. Dean in his own way could have done so too to the extent that he represented a stark alternative. But Kerry is like a guy who runs in and out of the surf and comes out with a few fingers less each time.

This is expected and entirely natural. The "Ba'athists" are out of power and will never regain it, not in the least because the Shi'ites won't let them. That's the way it was designed to work and that's the way it is working.

Once again, CBS is trying to escape the kill zone and move it broader ground. But they have admitted only have photocopies, which cannot be authenticated and are only claiming the documents could have been typed -- but the claim is categorical and categorically false.

Moreover, they are still using the contents of the photocopies to build their claim, such as the supposed interference of Col Staudt. So the focus of the attack on CBS must remain their photocopies of unknown provenance.

The Left is ripping off the mask. It's becoming a straight powergrab, a straight gimme. The public good manners are going out the window. The culture wars were always a civil war, but restricted to cultural weapons. The scary thing about new developments like CBS and the UN is that the Left are casting away these weapons as inadequate ...

The way the auction goes is the terrorists mutilate the hostages, which actually drives the ransom price up. Of course you could argue that it will drive the ransom down, the "goods" now being damaged. An ugly business.

The thing about French diplomacy is that it works without a net. When it fails, there is no fallback. My guess is they'll find some third party to pay the ransom and pretend they didn't cave.

Russia's kids are target practice for the Islamonazi's and France suggests dusting for prints!

They've gotta know where this investigation is leading, in case it goes where they don't want it to go.

There is no evil beyond this.

They'll think of something.

I'm off on a lot of things. But I try to do better.

Kids with their parents. The school selected precisely because it was a school. Radical Islam may have gone berserk.

Even nations that are not part of any American coalition have been emboldened to act against pockets of chaos which spawn terrorism. There may not be global government, but there is global leadership. Sometimes all the confused need to snap out of their drifting is someone to say, 'follow me'.

At the close of the 19th century, Canadian pundits were predicting that it would become the eading North American nation in the 20th century. It didn't happen. Now indications are that China and India will blossom in the 21st century. The fate of Canada is less certain, and the pundits know it. However, they can still hope for American decline as a substitute for their own ascendancy. But it is a poor and pathetic replacement ambition.

With a change of emphasis in pronunciation, "Si, se puede" becomes understood as "If you can".

Alien versus Predator.

I don't think the Chinese can control the Taiwan Strait or the airspace over it for the time required to mount an invasion. All the US has to achieve is denial, while the Chinese must maintain control, which is a far higher standard. The US can use mines, SSNs and antiship missiles of all descriptions on the invasion flotilla and its logistical tail, which if disrupted at any point in the first week will mean the doom of the expeditionary force. The worst scenario for the Chinese would be if the US let the first wave come ashore and chopped off the tail behind it. The amount of ammo, fuel and supplies needed by the landing force is enormous. Look at what nearly happened to the RN in the Falklands against an Argentinian airforce operating at the limit of its range. But in this case, it will be the Chinese trying to cross a body of water in the teeth of the greatest naval force in history. They can't cross unless they can guarantee the USN won't intervene. Maybe if there's a President they can do a deal with before invading, but not before.

If the Feds busted the AQ first-stringers who were going for the mega-financial institutions in New York city, they might be falling back on their bench. The enemy may have secondary targets in the way the USAAF had alternates back in WW2. Same pattern. Truck bombs on landmarks, infrastructure and banks, except instead of NYC it will be in places like Charlotte, Rochester or Cleveland.

The Philippine delegation was a token one, but the Spanish contingent was not. By all accounts it fought well and nothing Zapatero subsequently did should diminish that. In fairness to Spain, Zapatero had committed to withdraw the troops before the Madrid bombing. When elected, he carried out his plan. So in a technical sense, the enemy didn't force him to do anything he wasn't going to do anyway. In the Philippine case it altered its established policy, reneged on a diplomatic committment and paid ransom to a nonstate entity. They dispatched a Philippine Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs to deal with the sworn enemy of Iraq, a state with which it has diplomatic relations. Both Spain and the Philippines caved in the larger sense, but the Philippines did it with all the bells and whistles.

They could go free.

"Chinese language version available". Well, well.

"How did this stay quiet for eight (8) months? That answer is almost as interesting as to what is still missing.

Possibly because Berger hoped to cut a deal. When that became impossible, his only chance was to turn it into a media circus in the hope of escaping under the cloud of 'partisan persecution'.

This is a tremendous article and it touches on the key to Al Qaeda's previous success and the root of its current reversals. To a certain extent American tactics have partially succeeded in driving the enemy into "chaos". The near civil war in Gaza; the fighting within the House of Saud; the conflict between factions in Iraq, etc. But it is not all due to American skill. The enemy is in part the victim of his own dysfunction. If one considers Gaza, the disorder there is threatening Egypt as much as Israel. Clearly, the Jihad is full of destructive forces which cannot be contained and will as easily devour them as the 'infidel'.

The worst outcome is for everyone to stay in Zone 3, where things drag out to an indeterminate conclusion. The best is to drive the enemy into Zone 1 while remaining on the boundary of Zone 2. Great article.

We need to get on with winning it. People will endure restrictions for a purpose and as long as they see a serious effort to defeat the enemy they will put up with it. But nearly half the country thinks there is no war on at all and is not eager to bring matters to a conclusion which will result in the worst of worlds: sacrifice wihtout apparent purpose and indefinite restriction with no light at the end of the passage.

A Bradley doesn't weigh 60 tons.

John Burns is basically a good guy, the exception in the NYT.

Zarqawi is a Sunni, and the new Prime Minister is a Shi'ite. Ayatollah Sistani has fatwa-ed Zarqawi. Nobody is going to complain -- except Zarqawi.

The US supplies 63% of the budget and about 99% of the mobility and strategic assets of NATO. The Europeans used to provide real estate to face the Russians. The real estate is nearly worthless now. We need a new alliance geared against the terrorist threat, but it won't look like NATO. It may have Russia, Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, some Eastern European countries and India in it. Why should it have France?

Thanks

Yet the only submarine campaign that every succeeded was the USN's campaign against Japan. Every other campaign, including the Germans in both wars was defeated. In that sense, it is a perfect metaphor for what normally happens in war. The enemy starts it. America perfects it.

Despite the Guardian tagline, the Americans don't seem to be "sitting ducks".

Ah! Maybe they need them to barter all for all the IRG guys who are now in a US hoosegow in Iraq.

Could be three small boats in the Shatt Al-Arab or near Abadan where Iraq and Iran share a border. Eight sailors on three dinghies is possible.

"Iyad Allawi is one of a US-backed clique ... " This is an amazing use of words with pejorative connotations. Journalism like this is sometimes described as "shrill", "baiting" or just plain amateurish.

Bowral is a nice little town in the Southern Highlands, about two hour's drive from Sydney. The town is about 2,500 feet in elevation, on rolling hills. It is winter in the southern hemisphere, so the temperatures will be in the low 30s and high 20s. There will probably be no snow, but a fire and a good slug of scotch will be welcome.