Nowhere Man 2

Q: What's the worst thing you can do with a gun?

A: Point it at someone when you have no intention to use it.

The Washington Post reports on a United Nations request to have America bolster its authority. (Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the United States this week to consider sending troops to Haiti to support a U.N. peacekeeping mission beset by mounting armed challenges to its authority, according to senior U.N. officials. ... He expressed hope that the United States would participate in a planned U.N. rapid reaction force, authorized by the Security Council earlier this month, that would have the firepower to intimidate armed gangs threatening the country's fragile political transition. Officials said that similar requests are being considered for other countries, including Canada and France. "We want scarier troops," one senior U.N. official said.

Annan told Rice that the Haitians "respect the U.S. military," according to a senior U.N. diplomat familiar with the closed-door meeting. Annan added that the United Nations may make a formal request for troops later, the diplomat said.

There are no suggestions by the Secretary General that the weapons carried the current Brazilian force are inoperative. So far as anyone can tell, their ordnance works just fine. So logically, what Kofi Annan really wants is someone, like the Americans, to relieve him of the onus of ordering someone to pull the trigger, though perhaps he hopes that the American reputation for 'scariness' will make that unnecessary. It's not as if the Brazilians have been totally helpless. The Post article continues.

In Port-Au-Prince on Wednesday, hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers raided a slum filled with gangs loyal to Aristide, killing six gunmen. The largely Brazilian force suffered no casualties during the eight-hour offensive. About 300 soldiers participated in the operation. Troops detained 13 suspected criminals and turned them over to Haitian police.

So Secretary Rice suggested to Kofi Annan that if he wanted scarier troops she would be more than glad to help him get the French and Canadians.

The plea from Annan comes weeks after Rice questioned the need for U.S. military intervention in Haiti, saying that it would be a "mistake" to abandon confidence in the ability of the Brazilian-led peacekeeping force to do the job. Rice provided Annan with no pledges of military support, officials said, but offered to help persuade France and Canada to contribute to the mission.

Not that there would be much wrong with Canadian or French weapons either. The post Nowhere Man argued that the worst form of demagoguery consisted in promising what you had no intention to deliver. Like 'Safe Havens' for Kosovars, safety for Rwandans, justice for the Darfur or an unswerving commitment to catch Mohammed Farah Aideed while withdrawing the armor and heavy weapons necessary to do it in the first place. Unable to deliver not because the peacekeeper's weapons are malfunctioning but because no one wants to take responsibility for using them. If America has any utility at all to transnational liberals it is as a garbage collector and checkwriter for all the dreams it peddles.

Nowhere Man

Politics at its most corrupt is the art of promising something for nothing; or more realistically, concealing the price for services rendered. Nobody wants to mention that "free health care" is paid for by tax deductions. Still fewer want to admit that security is obtained by force; information by compulsion; or that war involves violence. The process of "extraordinary rendition" is a case study in laundering responsibility; a description of how a commodity is provided by an astute political division of labor. The commodity in question is defense against Islamic terrorism. The Washington Post reports:

Before a CIA paramilitary team was deployed to snatch a radical Islamic cleric off the streets of Milan in February 2003, the CIA station chief in Rome briefed and sought approval from his counterpart in Italy, according to three CIA veterans with knowledge of the operation and a fourth who reviewed the matter after it took place. The previously undisclosed Italian involvement undercuts the accusation, which has fueled public resentment in Italy toward the United States, that the CIA brashly slipped into the country unannounced and uninvited to kidnap an Italian resident off the street. In fact, former and current CIA officials said, both the CIA and the Italian service agreed beforehand that if the unusual operation was to become public, as it has, neither side would confirm its involvement, a standard agreement the CIA makes with foreign intelligence services over covert operations.

Italy wanted to be rid of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a suspected terrorist, but was unwilling, for domestic political considerations, to act against him. Therefore it arranged to have the United States snatch him from Milan. The United States wanted information from Nasr, but for domestic political reasons, was unable to apply torture to get it, however much the Left wanted that to be true. Therefore it passed him to Egypt for actual questioning. It goes on. Canada wanted to move on a Syrian-born Canadian citizen suspected of terrorist links, which is, as everyone knows, a very un-Canadian thing to do. So it got America to do it for them. "In Canada, a government inquiry has revealed a greater role by Canadian intelligence in the Justice Department's secret 2002 'expedited removal' of a Syrian-born Canadian citizen to Syria after he was detained as he changed flights at a New York airport." The New Yorker described that incident in these terms:

Arar, a thirty-four-year-old graduate of McGill University whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teen-ager, was arrested on September 26, 2002, at John F. Kennedy Airport. He was changing planes; he had been on vacation with his family in Tunisia, and was returning to Canada. ... Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”

Then the righteous can turn around and point the finger of accusation at George W. Bush after they have gotten what they want. The New Yorker again: "A year later, in October, 2003, Arar was released without charges, after the Canadian government took up his cause." Okay. The Post described how Italy had its cake and ate it, too.

Last Thursday, an Italian magistrate issued arrest warrants for 13 U.S. intelligence operatives. The warrants charged that they kidnapped a suspected terrorist, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr -- also known as Abu Omar -- held him hostage at two U.S. military bases and then flew him to Cairo, where he alleged to his wife in a phone call that he was tortured under interrogation.

And was that before or after Italy got is share of the information take? And any day now, US human rights organizations are going to go on about how brutality is being practiced in Syria and Egypt, though one really can't expect better of the inferior races. These would be the very same organizations who will ask what is being done to safeguard the United States against another Al Qaeda secret attack and why it wasn't done sooner. The question implicit in this cynical political game is what purpose is served by conscious self-deception.  The World War 2 generation now being criticized for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan at least had the sand to do it under its own name. Twenty first century men have another slogan: Not In My Name. It's an organization which wants the annihilation of Israel without the taint of anti-Semitism. It is separate and distinct from Not In Our Name, though one can hardly see why, because its "mission is to build, strengthen and expand resistance to stop the U.S. government's entire course of war and repression being waged in the name of 'fighting terrorism.'" Not that it is for terrorism, lest anyone misunderstand, just that whatever must be done to stop it should not be done in "our name". So to keep everybody happy what's necessary will be done in the name of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morroco and the CIA. This is called moral behavior. But what's in a name?

Yet acquiescence to this cynical game of political correctness represents the greatest debasement of all. Not only is it cowardly and irresponsible, it allows polite society to evade, for however long it wishes, substantive debate on moral choices which should concern us all. A society which wants to wage war without seeming to shed blood is one which has no intention of confronting the ethical issues. Then we are blind in heart as we are in sight. Nothing to see here, just Move On.

Just Roll To Your Rifle and Blow Out Your Brains

The Sunday Herald has an article on Kandahar's most fearsome lady detective, going up against all manner of Afghan perps, while swathed in a burqa. (Hat tip: MIG).

First her six children are breakfasted, their faces washed and hairbrushed and they are made ready for school. Next comes the firearms check. Malalai Kakar counts bullets into a curved AK-47 metal clip, rams it home into her assault rifle, and makes sure the safety catch is on.  ... When these morning rituals are completed and the kids are off to school, Kandahar’s most fearsome woman hoists a blue burkha over her head, climbs into a pick-up truck and heads off to the office; another busy day with murderers, sexual abusers and wife batterers is about to begin.

Malalai Kakar is testimony to Arthur Eddington's observation that "not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine". Many years ago, in a mountain village on the Zamboanga peninsula, I met a follower of the charismatic cult leader "Tootpick", who founded a militia dedicated to the murder of Muslims. Toothpick's beef against Muslims started when a band of armed Muslims raided his village, killed his entire family then shot and left him for dead in a well. While in that dark hole he found a bottle of merthiolate filled with what he imagined to be a mysterious liquid to which in his delerium he attributed mystical powers. Although his neighbors dragged him out of the well and took him to the hospital, Toothpick forever attributed his survival to the strange power that pulled him literally from the grave. He ever after wore that bottle of merthiolate as an amulet around his neck. It wasn't long before he and his band of know-nothings had added to their store of ritual. One practice which his recruits found particularly impressive was that of playing Tony Orlando's "Knock Three Times" over a portable sound system as they went dauntlessly on the attack. The Kandahar story continues:

Shuffling around her office is one of the victims she rescued, 45-year-old Anar Gul, who was chained in a basement by her husband until Kakar discovered her and burst in with a truncheon in one hand and a pistol in the other. The woman’s first husband had died, so according to tribal custom Anar Gul was forcibly married to his brother, an abusive heroin addict. “I beat the husband,” Kakar says, “first in the house, then in the police station: punch, kick, slap, I was so angry. If I’d used my stick, he would have died.” ... Few of the male criminals who hate Kakar are brave enough to attack her. They have all heard the story of how during the Eighties she shot dead three would-be assassins who came on a mission to kill her. 

British filmmaker Polly Hyman is making a film about Kakar’s life. I guess she'll never get around to doing Toothpick's. Too grotesque; too funny and too weird.

A Forgotten Battlefield

A reader wrote to ask whether the highland city of Baguio in the Philippines had to be destroyed by the McArthur's 5th Air Force in 1945 as part of its operations against the General Yamshita's army in mountainous Northern Luzon. "Where should one go for material outside of the official US Army history written by Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines? The controversial part has to do with the carpet bombing by the 5th AF of the city center, which seems to have been unjustified by the tactical situation. The air force was much less restrained in Baguio than it had been in Manila, where MacArthur and Krueger had limited bombardment purely to artillery. Any thoughts?" My answer got longer and longer and it is reproduced below. As I worked through the problem I realized that I was looking at one of the major forgotten campaigns of the Second World War.

General Tomoyuki Yamashita is probably best remembered as the man who captured British Malaya in ten weeks. In 1944 he braced himself to repel the inevitable assault of Douglas McArthur. Realizing that he could not fight the US Army on the plains of Luzon, he withdrew the bulk of his army to the subtropical Cordillera mountain range whose peaks soared to 10,000 foot altitudes. Here, he hoped to bleed McArthur's forces dry. Luzon was to become the scene of a gigantic clash of arms. Yet today it is largely forgotten.

"Did Baguio have to be destroyed? You should consult the 33d Division's historical website. This unit was principally engaged in taking Baguio, advancing as the hammer from the southwest while 37th division came up from the northwest. It's incomplete, but there's a reference to a book published in 1948 detailing the campaign. There's also a map which indicates the 33d's general plan to take Baguio. In general, the 33d and the Japanese were fighting for the ridges, along which the Americans had to advance to move on Baguio,  itself the confluence of a series of ridges, as can easily be seen from a map. Once you are at Baguio City, any place away is down until you get to the larger massifs to the north.

The outer defenses of Baguio consisted of a bunch of hill and ridgetop positions designed to keep the 33d from reaching the Pugo river, from which they would begin their final climb to the inner ring of Baguio's defenses (Mirador and Observatory Hills). Pugo's defense depended on the retention of Hill 3000. If you read 33d's history, the main tactical problem facing the division was displacing artillery. The mountainous terrain and poor road network meant the axis of advance was extremely restricted. So the entire division essentially advanced along a battalion front. The 33d's commanders moved forward by creating an artillery fan and pushing a battalion along it's axis. Whenever Japanese resistance materialized, they would stop and clear the resistance with a combined artillery/infantry attack. Behind the US advance, the engineers struggled to widen the road and the US hired thousands of Igorot porters (mostly women) to carry up supplies, probably Class 1 (food etc) for the troops.

The Japanese, for their part, had long since hauled the artillery up into the Cordilleras and had existing dumps, so they did not have to drag their supply train along. It was already to hand. Their defensive tactics involved channeling US advances along the ridges, halt them with machinegun nests and from the vantage of high ground, direct Japanese artillery and mortar fire on them. Hence, the 33d would aim to take the highest terrain features using the infantry/artillery combo already mentioned. Practically every ridge and hilltop along the way was hammered with every artillery asset 33rd could obtain, the constraint being ammunition. This map  illustrates how this battle for high ground developed.

Baguio's curse was that it was topographically no different from any other ridge top. The essential advantage of using 5th AF was that it could haul its own ammo. I doubt the 5th AF bombardment did much tactical good. The CEP of that era was probably about 200 meters and the only targets the pilots could realistically aim for were buildings along Session Road, but the infantry of that era used whatever it could get. Baguio itself was simply one strong point of what was simply one the largest defensive positions ever seen in the Pacific and possibly in the world. 

This map shows the strategic disposition of Yamashita's force. He concentrated his force in central ridge of the Cordilleras, the meta ridge of ridges. Baguio was the lock which kept the Americans from climbing the southern end of the ridge towards his lofty positions. Yamashita probably hoped Krueger would be stupid enough to work his way north along the ridge on a one batt front. They would still have been fighting in 1948. However, 32d (Red Arrow) was assigned to to swing behind Yamashita on the east. Its divisional history  is remarkably uninformative. But in general, 32d division's brief was to push into the gap between the Carballos and the Cordilleras, entering the Cagayan valley and by moving north along the valley deny Yamashita food from that source and use it as a highway to flank Yamashita's force. You can move faster on the valley floor than along those damned ridges; which is what 32d did. It moved laterally on the valley floor then went up it into the hills to cut Yamashita's metaridgeline position in several places. Yamashita could not move quickly enough along his own ridge position (remember he had displace men, munitions and ordnance to shadow the lowland movements of Red Arrow) and his strength was used against him. Pretty piece of work that.

Did Baguio actually have to be reduced to serve the purpose? As a pure map exercise involving maneuver forces, the answer is probably 'yes'. Krueger's idea would be to draw Yamashita south via the Baguio campaign, string him out along his own ridge then hit him with a flank attack from the Cagayan Valley. The alternative strategy would have been to simply besiege Yamashita in the Cordilleras and do nothing. Unfortunately, McArthur was already thinking of Coronet and Olympic (the invasion of Japan) and he needed the Northern Luzon US Army units for that operation (33d was actually deployed after the Baguio campaign for the assault on Japan). So siege was not an option for Krueger. All in all, Krueger did very well against a first class Japanese commander. Yamashita lost nearly a quarter of a million men on Luzon, 152,000 of them in the North, a number equal to half of von Paulus's entire loss at Stalingrad (300K). The Japanese lost 15 divisions in the Cordilleras. US KIA on Luzon were over 10,000 men, which is huge by today's standards but his kill ratio was absolutely phenomenal compared to Okinawa or even Vietnam two decades later."

One final question remains left over from this whole campaign: the fabled Treasure of Yamashita. US News and World report describes what has become a legend in its own right.

There are many versions of the tale, but the main elements are pretty standard. Beginning in the late 1930s in Manchuria and China, Japanese teams pillaged the countries they colonized, stripping them of the most precious metals and jewels. Ultimately, this hoard was loaded onto a Japanese ship, which sailed for the Philippines. The ship made land in the Philippines, the story goes, and Yamashita hid the riches on the island of Luzon ... The legend ignores several facts. Yamashita was never a favorite of the military clique running the war. He was cashiered by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. In 1944, after Tojo was removed, Yamashita was dispatched to the Philippines. From December 1944 until he handed over his sword in September 1945, Yamashita had to relocate his headquarters at least six times, driven ever deeper into the mountains and the jungles by devastating U.S. air, land, and sea power. It's hard to see when he would have had time to hide all that gold.

Whatever historical spotlight remains on that old highland campaign has been usurped by this lurid tale, which is probably fiction. The astounding feats of American advance and Japanese resistance have themselves been forgotten.

Oh Say Can You See

Michael Ignatieff writes in the New York Times about a mission whose outcome is not yet known. It is the American mission to spread the Jeffersonian dream of freedom to the world. He asks two questions: first, whether any set of flawed human beings can set out upon a such a missionary enterprise without being guilty of self-righteousness; second, whether the Americans are willing to pay the high price for this endeavor. (Hat tip: MW)

John F. Kennedy echoed Jefferson when, in a speech in 1961, he said that the spread of freedom abroad was powered by ''the force of right and reason''; but, he went on, in a sober and pragmatic vein, ''reason does not always appeal to unreasonable men.'' The contrast between Kennedy and the current incumbent of the White House is striking. Until George W. Bush, no American president -- not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition ... If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office.

Although Ignatieff plainly wants to see freedom spread, one of the sources of his unease is the role of God, or something like it, in the missionary endeavor. How much better it would be, he seems to ask, if any claims to universality or transcendence could be kept out it. Then we could bring the Europeans and the Canadians in on it.

From the era of F.D.R. to the era of John Kennedy, liberal and progressive foreigners used to look to America for inspiration. ... For a complex set of reasons, American democracy has ceased to be the inspiration it was. This is partly because of the religious turn in American conservatism, which awakens incomprehension in the largely secular politics of America's democratic allies. ... Ask the Canadians why they aren't joining the American crusade to spread democracy, and you get this from their government's recent foreign-policy review: ''Canadians hold their values dear, but are not keen to see them imposed on others. This is not the Canadian way.'' One reason it is not the Canadian way is that when American presidents speak of liberty as God's plan for mankind, even God-fearing Canadians wonder when God began disclosing his plan to presidents. ...

Yet for all of that, Ignatieff recognizes the power of the idea that Liberals have ceded to the Conservatives. But he fails to ask himself what precisely it was about the Conservative embrace of the Jeffersonian proclamation that sets it apart from the Liberal acceptance at arms-length as exemplified by John Kennedy. He doesn't convincingly explain why Reagan should discover in liberty something which John Kennedy had missed; why George W. Bush should find in it something which Bill Clinton did not.

It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians ...  Faced with the Republican embrace of Jeffersonian ambitions for America abroad, liberals chose retreat or scorn. Bill Clinton -- who took reluctant risks to defend freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo -- partly arrested this retreat, yet since his administration, the withdrawal of American liberalism from the defense and promotion of freedom overseas has been startling. The Michael Moore-style left conquered the Democratic Party's heart; now the view was that America's only guiding interest overseas was furthering the interests of Halliburton and Exxon. The relentless emphasis on the hidden role of oil makes the promotion of democracy seem like a devious cover or lame excuse. The unseen cost of this pseudo-Marxist realism is that it disconnected the Democratic Party from the patriotic idealism of the very electorate it sought to persuade.

One possibility is that Reagan and Bush possessed a faith in the universality of human liberty that Kennedy and Clinton did not. It was one thing to coldly deduce that China could be reached by sailing westward from Europe, but it took Columbus to stake one's fate on it. Ignatieff sees this, but cannot bring himself to admit it. Missionary endeavors require a kind of faith. A kind of action in advance of the result. The Canadians and Europeans would not come on those terms and so we should not be surprised that they have not come at all.

John Kerry's presidential campaign could not overcome liberal America's fatal incapacity to connect to the common faith of the American electorate in the Jeffersonian ideal. Instead he ran as the prudent, risk-avoiding realist in 2004 -- despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he had fought in Vietnam. Kerry's caution was bred in the Mekong. The danger and death he encountered gave him some good reasons to prefer realism to idealism, and risk avoidance to hubris. Faced with a rival who proclaimed that freedom was not just America's gift to mankind but God's gift to the world, it was understandable that Kerry would seek to emphasize how complex reality was, how resistant to American purposes it might be and how high the price of American dreams could prove. As it turned out, the American electorate seemed to know only too well how high the price was in Iraq, and it still chose the gambler over the realist. In 2004, the Jefferson dream won decisively over American prudence.

Ignatieff's oddest choice of words is to characterize Kerry as a realist and George Bush as a gambler, as if there were any certainty to be derived from sitting back passively, as he accuses the Liberals of doing; as if there were any recklessness to warring on enemies who had warred on you. "The real truth about Iraq is that we just don't know -- yet -- whether the dream will do its work this time. This is the somber question that hangs unanswered as Americans approach this Fourth of July." But that's what freedom is: the ability to ask a question and not be afraid of the answer. 

Memory Slam the Door

Reader RD writes to say that "Michael Ratner, the guy leading the fight to free Guantanamo's prisoners has signed petitions in support of NPA and its leader, Jose Maria Sison". Jose Maria Sison is the leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the highest person in the chain of command which ordered the execution of Colonel James Rowe. The Anti-Protester blog writes:

On May 30, 2005 the NY Times reported on an increasingly successful effort by the Center for Constitutional Rights,(CCR) which it described only as "a group based in New York," to enlist lawyers to represent detainees being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The story focused on CCR's success in recruiting prominent law firms to the effort including Clifford Chance, Dorsey&Whitney; Allen & Overy; Covington & Burling and Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering Hale & Dorr a firm that, oddly enough, also does business with companies involved in the U.S. defense, national security and government contracts sectors. ...

In order to fully understand CCR's publicly stated reasons for advocating for prisoners at Guantanamo, which center on the concept of "civil rights," and to understand its lesser known but much more important reasons for wanting interrogations there halted, it is necessary to briefly examine the history of the CCR and its leadership ... and a thorough examination of CCR's current president, Michael Ratner, who is the driving force behind the Guantanamo shut-down effort, is absolutely vital to understanding the position that CCR takes today regarding the rights of prisoners captured in the War on Terror. ...

Besides providing legal support for terrorists and enemies of the U.S., Michael Ratner and CCR endorse communist, fringe leftist and radical groups with anti-U.S. agendas. Ratner himself often signs petitions on behalf of such groups. A typical example of this involves the case of Dr. Jose Maria Sison, the head of the communist New Peoples Army (NPA) of the Philippines ... the NPA eventually turned on itself and killed approximately 1000 of its members in a paranoid orgy of bloodletting. Sison, who headed the NPA at the time, is widely believed to have ordered the purge. Sison and NPA are on terrorist lists in both Europe and in the U.S., which has frozen NPA's assets. Michael Ratner, along with Lynne Stewart, Ramsey Clark, Leslie Cagan, C. Clark Kissinger, Michael Steven Smith, the NLG and others signed a petition demanding that Sison and the NPA both be removed from Europe's list of known terrorists. The group also voiced its opposition to any attempts that might be made to extradite Sison from the Netherlands, where he currently lives.

Readers who remember my piece on Colonel Rowe will recall that I regarded his assassin, Danilo Continente, as a cog in the wheel. (See the comments on the post). Although I regarded Continente's sentence of 16 years imprisonment too light to fit the crime, I believed that justice was best served by going after the masterminds and enablers of the crime rather than punishing the triggerman further. Rowe, it will be recalled, successfully concealed his status as a Special Forces soldier while a POW in Vietnam until

students in a so-called anti-war organization in the United States researched public records and formulated biographies on Americans captured in Vietnam. After reading Lt. Rowe's biography, his Viet Cong captors became furious. They marched him into a cramped bamboo hut and forced him to sit on the damp clay floor. Several high ranking Viet Cong officials were staring down at Lt. Rowe. They held out a piece of typed onion skin paper.

"The peace and justice loving friends, of the National Liberation Front, who live in America, have provided us with information which leads us to believe you have lied to us," they informed Lt. Rowe. "According to what we know, you are not an engineer . . . you have much military experience which you deny . . . You were an officer of the American Special Forces."

The passage from Anti-Protester, substantially echoed by Front Page Magazine shows why I felt this way. The same people who betrayed Colonel Rowe in Vietnam and who subsequently ordered his execution in the Philippines are still in business. The same "peace and justice loving" activists, or people of their ilk, are working to free as many terrorists as possible from Guantanamo Bay. And the same Jose Maria Sison who commanded the Communist force which killed Colonel Rowe is still resisting extradition from Europe, from which he has presided over the murder of thousands. They are laboring ceaselessly to bring to us what we so richly deserve. We owe them no less than to return the favor.

Quagmire

Ted Kennedy and Donald Rumsfeld exchanged one liners over whether Iraq was an American win or an insurgent victory. The Australian Broadcast Corporation reports:

TED KENNEDY: Secretary Rumsfeld, as you know, we are in serious trouble in Iraq, and this war has been consistently and grossly mismanaged, and we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. Our troops are dying, and there really is no end in sight.

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, that is quite a statement. First, let me say that there isn't a person at this table who agrees with you that we're in a quagmire, and that there's no end in sight. The suggestion by you that people – me or others – are painting a rosy picture is false. I think that the comments you made are certainly yours to make, and I don't agree with them.

TED KENNEDY: Well, my time has just expired, but Mr Secretary, I'm talking about the misjudgements and the mistakes that have been made, the series which I've mentioned. Those are on your watch. Isn't it time for you to resign?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Senator, I have offered my resignation to the President twice, and he's decided that he would prefer that he not accept it. And that's his call.

Carl Levin and John Abizaid had exchanges of their own. From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation again.

CARL LEVIN: General Abizaid, can you give us your assessment of the strength of the insurgency. Is it less strong, more strong, about the same strength as it was six months ago?

JOHN ABIZAID: Senator, I'd say…

CARL LEVIN: Could you put the mic right in front of you?

JOHN ABIZAID: In terms of comparison from six months ago, in terms of foreign fighters, I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago. In terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I'd say it's about the same as it was.

CARL LEVIN: So you wouldn't agree with the statement that it's 'in its last throes'?

JOHN ABIZAID: I don't know that I would make any comment about that, other than to say there's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency.

CARL LEVIN: Well, the Vice-President has said it's in its last throes. That's the statement that the Vice President. Doesn't sound to me from your testimony, or any other testimony here this morning, that it is in its last throes.

JOHN ABIZAID: I'm sure you'll forgive me from criticising the Vice-President.

CARL LEVIN: I just want an honest assessment from you as to whether you agree with a particular statement of his, it's not personal. I just want to know whether you agree with that assessment. It's not a personal attack on him, any more than if he says that something is a fact and you disagree with it, we would expect you to say you disagree with it.

JOHN ABIZAID: I gave you my opinion of where we are.

So just where are we? From that set of exchanges above, we get the following headlines. General, Cheney at odds on Iraq, Iraq insurgency still strong, general says, Iraq war an 'intractable quagmire': Ted Kennedy, 'US not losing in Iraq'. One would think then, that we are on the Eve of Destruction. The Washington Post reports:

Abizaid noted that while confidence among U.S. forces in the field "has never been higher," the political mood in Washington appears strikingly different. "I've never seen the lack of confidence greater," he said. ... Rumsfeld and the other military authorities attempted to present a picture of considerable progress in Iraq across not only military but also political and economic fronts. They said that despite a rise in enemy attacks since earlier this year, the number remains at about the same level as a year ago and at only about half of previous peaks. They said Iraqi security forces are becoming more capable, and Iraqi opinion polls showed more confidence in the forces and in the interim government. Additionally, Iraqi political authorities remain on track to draft a new constitution and elect a new national government by the end of the year, they said.

We are probably in politics as usual. Here's the money quote from the Post. "There appeared to be little support on either the Senate or House armed services committees for setting a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops." There would be lots of support for a withdrawal timetable if there were any substantial sense the US was being defeated. Then the discussion in the Senate moved on to a subject which indicated, in a backhanded way, where the Senators really thought things were going.

Arguing that something needs to be done to "change the current dynamic in Iraq," Levin suggested added pressure on Iraqi authorities to keep to their schedule for a new constitution and national elections by warning them that failure would cause the United States "to rethink our presence there."

Levin's (D-Mich.) question accidentally suggested that there was a causal relationship between an American presence and a future Iraqi constitution and national elections, which would in turn imply that without OIF there would be no constitution and no elections. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

The Big Sleaze

Raymond Chandler's detective novels presented the reader with a series of questions that had no obvious answers. Philip Marlowe's problem was figuring out how to connect the dots. The Washington Post does a Chandler in its latest story on the Oil for Food crisis. (Hat tip: Tim Blair)

The U.N. Security Council had detailed knowledge of how Saddam Hussein was violating U.N. sanctions, but was so divided that many violations went largely unchecked, according to documents released Tuesday by a congressional panel.

Divided as in everybody voted differently each time there was a meeting? Or divided as in everybody was having their own meeting? The answer was provided a little further down the story.

Saddam "cleverly exploited" sanctions in a variety of ways, granting "oil and humanitarian supply contracts to those willing to bend the rules in Iraq's favor." Iraq's supporters on the Security Council included Russia, China and France until mid-2001 when it backed a U.S.-British sanctions proposal. Other supporters included Iraq's neighbors -- Jordan, Syria and Turkey -- who received smuggled Iraqi oil.

It turned out that Security Council was remarkably consistent in a divided way. Supporters stayed supporters and opponents remained opponents throughout the 90s, except they didn't do anything but object and do nothing. Strange that the Washington Post should describe the Security Council as divided when it was as united as the US Congress on the Fourth of July: one half denouncing the other half for identically patriotic reasons while scratching each other's backs. Except something changed in 2001: the pro-Saddam faction of the Security Council caved to the antis. Here's the Post's account.

Washington and London eventually succeeded in getting the sanctions committee to set the price of Iraqi oil at the end of every month -- rather than the beginning -- to prevent Iraq from taking advantage of fluctuations in the oil market to impose the surcharges. The two countries said the policy cut illegal payoffs to Saddam's government. But U.N. officials and council members, including Russia and France, demanded an end to the retroactive pricing policy because it led to a sharp drop in oil exports, which meant less money for the oil-for-food program.

Marlowe pushed his chair back then walked over to the filing cabinet which contained nothing but a bottle of whiskey and some air. He took a pull and sat down. What changed in 2001 to stir up the pot? He logged on to an Internet news site and ran the headlines backward from May, 2001. The hint of a smile crept over his face. Florida. That was it. Florida. He got up, put on his hat and headed out the door.

Who's On First?

Glenn Reynolds links to Karl Zinmeister's article in American Enterprise Online, The War is Over, and We Won where Zinmeister claims that:

Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. ... With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over. Egregious acts of terror will continue -- in Iraq as in many other parts of the world. But there is now no chance whatever of the U.S. losing this critical guerilla war.

Gregory Scoblete thinks it is premature to declare victory in Iraq because "guerilla wars" take decades to conclude; and since this one is only entering its third year, declaring the outcome makes as much sense as calling the result of basketball game in the first quarter. He further argues that by declaring the proceedings settled, Zinmeister is setting up the public for a cruel disappointment when the next flare-up occurs.

Don't get me wrong, I think on the whole, the trends are indeed positive in Iraq and that they can be sustained assuming continued American involvement and savvy leadership on behalf of Iraq's political class. I hope Zinsmeister is correct, and I'm optimistic about the longer-term prospects for our success in Iraq. But I'm actually amazed that after "Mission Accomplished," "cake walk" et. al. conservatives aren't more reserved when declaring victory.

Indeed, Zinsmeister's proclamations are irresponsible. Guerilla wars are notoriously long, bloody affairs. Expectation setting is crucial. Fault the media all you want for painting an unduly grim picture in Iraq, but isn't flatly asserting that victory is at hand equally wrong-headed? Reading Zinsmeister, you'd be forgiven for thinking that (a) U.S. troops could begin coming home shortly, (b) that in a few more months things will be noticeably calmer, or (c) that no course corrections are necessary. When A and B don't materialize, and it's hard to think they will, people will rightly wonder whether they've been lied to or whether the people making such sweeping claims were spinning or ignorant of the facts. Then - and this is crucial - the public support needed for seeing the war through to a successful conclusion will erode even quicker.

What does it mean to win a war against guerilla insurgents? What does it mean for a guerilla insurgency to triumph? The one answer that is popularly advanced -- one that is implicit in Scoblete's argument -- is that guerillas win if they simply remain in existence.  This site lists more than 383 armed guerilla groups extant in the world today. Clearly all of them exist and just clearly not all of them are triumphant. There are, for instance 27 armed guerilla groups in India, 9 in Britain (the most famous of which is the Irish Republican Army) and 11 in the United States. Yet no one asks whether it is premature to declare the Westminster Parliament in control of the Northern Ireland or wonder whether Los Matcheteros will take over the Washington DC. And the reason is simple: while the IRA and Los Matcheteros are still likely to exist in 2010, there is little or no chance that these organizations will seize state power in all or even part of Britain or the United States. Seizing state power over a definite territory is the explicit objective of nearly every guerilla armed force in the world today: if they can achieve that, they win. If they cannot achieve that and have no realistic prospect of ever achieving that, they are defeated, however long they may continue to exist.

Guerilla leaders themselves know this and invariably attempt to create a state-in-waiting in the course of their campaign based on an armed force, a united front of allies willing to support the guerilla's political objectives and a hard leadership core in firm control of both. They also attempt to create micro-states in the course of insurgency usually styled "base areas" or "liberated zones". Political influence, combat capability and territorial control are the real metrics of a successful guerilla campaign. The argument that mere existence or avoidance of defeat constitutes victory is hogwash: both the IRA and the Red Hand Commandos exist, but clearly the IRA is the more successful guerilla organization because it has a national united front, some combat capability and hard and diverse leadership core where the Red Hand Commandos do not. Even Al Qaeda, which some claim to be a creature of pure thought has sought to control territory in Afghanistan and spread its influence through Islamic "charities" while under the control of a central group of militants. It was, in other words, no different from any other classic guerilla organization.

While the Iraqi insurgents still retain the capability to kill significant numbers of people they are almost total losers by the traditional metric of guerilla warfare. First of all, by attacking civilians of every ethnic group and vowing to resubjugate the majority ethnic groups in the country they have at a stroke made creating a national united front against the United States a near impossibility. Second, there is a battle for supremacy among the insurgent leaders. The New York Times (hat tip: DL) reports:

Late Sunday night, American marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: in the distance, mortar and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them. In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer. "Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire. ... "There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."

In that context, the battlefield victories of the US Armed Forces and its coalition allies are not the empty triumphs the press sometimes represents them to be but expressions of the complete strategic bankruptcy of the insurgency. No national united front; no united hard core of leadership; no victorious armed force. This in addition to no territory and increasingly, no money and what is there left? Well there is the ability to kill civilians and to avoid being totally exterminated by the Coalition; but that is not insurgent victory nor even the prospect of victory.

When Austin Bay, upon returning to Baghdad after the absence of a year notes that "the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004" because:

It was the first time I saw independently deployed Iraqi forces. Now, I see senior Iraqi officers in the hallways of Al Faw Palace conducting operational liaison with U.S. and coalition forces. I hear reports of the Iraqi Army conducting independent street-clearing and neighborhood search operations. Brigadier Gen. Karl Horst of US Third Infantry Division told me about an Iraqi battalion's success on the perennially challenging Haifa Street.

it is not an irrelevant anecdotal fact. It is an observation that the new Iraqi government increasingly has a national united front; control of territory and an ever more potent army at its disposal. This condition has a name, although it may be irresponsible to use it.

Forty Years Ago Today Sgt Pepper Taught the Band to Play

Michael Carroll reviews the role of the United Nations leading up to the Six Day War in 1967. (Error spotted by commenters) In an article in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (hat tip: MIG) he describes the failure of United Nations Peacekeepers to maintain a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces along their troubled border. The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed to the Middle East in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis in 1956.

Originally intended to be a short-term "emergency" force, UNEF quickly fell into a comfortable routine patrolling along the international frontier and Gaza Strip. Despite complaints in New York about the expense of peacekeeping, it was clear that UNEF 's presence was a deterrent to further hostilities, and for most politicians and diplomats, this uneasy peace was clearly preferable to an open war in the Middle East. After ten and a half years, UNEF had become a well- recognized fixture in the Egyptian desert.

It is important to remember that the world in 1965 was practically another planet. The United Nations was a serious player in international relations. UN flagged forces, albeit mostly American, had turned back an invasion of South Korea in 1950. And the UNEF had actually helped keep the Arabs and Israelis from engaging in open war for10 years. The United States was not nearly so dominant in 1965 as it is in 2005. The Soviet Union was still regarded as a superpower, providing the weaponry and ideology that fueled Arab nationalism.  America was tied down in Vietnam with little in reserve to spare for a major commitment to the Middle East and, in the eyes of many, already in irreversible decline.

One other striking difference of that era was the confidence, perhaps even overconfidence of Arab nations in the power of their national armies. Armed with the Soviet made weaponry, numerically superior to the Israelis, the Arab street of the day had little doubt that they would drive the Jews into the sea once hostilities began. One Egyptian commander told a UN officer "I will see you for lunch at the best restaurant in Tel Aviv in a few days."

In January 1964 the Arab League officially declared its desire to achieve "the final liquidation of Israel." The problem was UNEF. For the Arab armies to triumphantly fulfill their historical mission it was necessary to get the United Nations, then a body taken seriously, out of the line of fire. (Thirty years later, neither the Serbs nor the Muslim Kosovars would show the slightest respect for the United Nations. Peacekeepers would be trussed to lamposts. UN armories would be looted.) Gamal Abdel Nasser simply decided to tell the UN to clear out.

The message to withdraw UNEF was first conveyed to the commander of UNEF, Major General Indar Jit Rikhye, on May 16, 1967. The UAR Liaison Officer, Brigadier General Ibrahim Sharkawy, called Rikhye in the afternoon to inform him that a special envoy would be arriving with an important message for the UNEF commander.

The message was a demand for UNEF to leave the buffer zone. Amazingly by today's standards, the UN held firm. "The courier, expecting immediate compliance on the part of UNEF, was sorely disappointed when General Rikhye merely noted the contents of the letter, and informed his visitors that he would pass the message on to Secretary-General U Thant. Rikhye would have to await orders from New York." This simple act of decisiveness took the Egyptians aback and forced them to take their case to New York. Unfortunately Secretary General U Thant chose this moment to begin the long journey down the slippery slope. U Thant believed that the UN could not maintain itself on the Egyptian border without the permission of the host country and recommended a gradual withdrawal. But -- and here is the time warp factor again -- Canada believed it was necessary to defy Nasser in order to preserve the buffer -- and peace in the Middle East. Although some that the question be put to the Security Council. But U Thant was adamant and Canada was outvoted. The withdrawal began.

In the meantime, Egypt's preparations were advancing apace.  It blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba. Nasser characterized this act as "an affirmation of our rights and our sovereignty over the Gulf of Aqaba. This is in our territorial waters and we shall never permit a ship flying Israeli colours to pass through this Gulf." Seeing that war was in the offing, Israel sent its own diplomats around the capitals of Europe to see what their attitude would be if Israel warred against Egypt.

Unwilling to await the results of U Thant's discussions in Cairo, the Israeli Cabinet dispatched Abba Eban on a whirlwind tour of Paris, London, and Washington to gauge international support for Israel. Thoroughly disappointed with the reception from President Charles DeGaulle, Eban fared better in London where he at least felt he had, "crossed…into the twentieth century." Eban inferred a much higher degree of sympathy for Israel in Britain and was impressed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's resolve to work collectively on the international stage to oppose Nasser's closure of the Straits of Tiran. In terms of a diplomatic solution, Israel was pinning its hopes on Britain and the United States to bring about a peaceful resolution. President Johnson took a strong stand against Nasser's closure of the Straits of Tiran. The limiting factor, however, was that any action to be undertaken in the Middle East needed the full support of Congress which, after having written a blank check for Vietnam, was understandably reticent. ...

As Eban flew back to Tel Aviv, Nasser was speaking to a group of Arab trade unionists, predicting that "the battle against Israel will be a general one…and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. " Confident of the Arabs numerical and qualitative superiority over the IDF, Nasser felt he had little to fear from a war with Israel ...

UNEF deliberately slow the process of withdrawal in an effort to delay the outbreak of conflict, but events had gone too far. On June 5, 1967 the Israelis annihilated the Arab air forces on the ground and then proceeded to destroy the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria while seizing the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai, creating the map of the Middle East as we know it today. Viewed against the backdrop of 1965, the world forty years later is a strange place. Since then the Arab world found, then squandered, the oil fields beneath them. Israel would become overwhelmingly dominant in conventional force. The mantle of Arab nationalism would shift its basis from a quasi-Marxism to Islamism. The Soviet Union would collapse. America would bestride the world. But Israel itself would change, withdrawing from Gaza, destroying the very homes of its citizens who had settled there. And no longer would Arabs anchor their claim to the lost territories, their claim to Israel itself, on the strength of arms but upon the rights of the defrauded. The gallant invitation to lunch in the best restaurant in Tel Aviv would give way to a permanent hand held out to the European Union and the UN social welfare agencies.

Carroll suggests that the decline of the United Nations peacekeeping as a serious international force may have begun with UNEF's abandonment of its mission; that UNEF began a withdrawal which has never stopped. Perhaps it is fairer to say that the passage of years magnified all the tendencies present even then. It is hard to recognize in this historical portraits the Canada, America and the UN of today. But if that brings on a sense of nostalgia or loss, it should also evoke the spirit of opportunity. One thing is certain: 2045 will differ from today by as wide a margin as the present from the eve of the Six Day War.

Memory Hold the Door

The assassin of Col. James Rowe, the "political prisoner" Danilo Continente, is scheduled to be freed from prison on June 28th after serving his maximum sentence. Philippine President Fidel Ramos refused to pardon Continente during his term of office despite representations by 'human rights organizations'. But with his sentence served, Continente will soon be a free man. The left-leaning Philippine Daily Inquirer has started a countdown to the blessed moment.

In just nine days, Donato Continente becomes a free man. And for him, freedom means becoming a full-time father to his 6-year-old son. Continente, 43, one of two men convicted in the killing of US Army Col. James Rowe in 1989, is set to be released from the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa on June 28. Bureau of Corrections records show that he has served the maximum sentence of 16 years.

His chief regret, the Inquirer says,  has been an inability to spend time with his son, conceived on a conjugal visit.

During the occasional visit, after the child had become comfortable with his father, they would spend the allotted eight hours chatting and frolicking in the prison's playground. "He would often ask me if it was really a prisoner because he couldn't see barred cells and barbed wire." ... Continente was initially convicted as a principal in the murder of Rowe, for which he was given a life sentence on Feb. 27, 1991. But upon review, the Supreme Court ruled in August 2000 that he was only an accomplice and lowered his sentence to 14 years. He was recommended for release thrice under the Ramos administration's amnesty program: In January 1993, by the Presidential Review Committee secretariat; in June 1993, by the Department of Justice, and in 1994, by the Presidential Committee for the Grant of Bail, Release on Pardon and Parole. But Continente remained behind bars, allegedly because of pressure from the US government.

The Left always kept the faith with Continente, who at the time of the murder was a staff member of the Philippine Collegian, the student newspaper of the national university, famous for its radical politics. Ever and again they clamored for his release as they are even now doing for terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. The New York Times reports:

May 29 - In the last few months, the small commercial air service to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been carrying people the military authorities had hoped would never be allowed there: American lawyers. And they have been arriving in increasing numbers, providing more than a third of about 530 remaining detainees with representation in federal court. Despite considerable obstacles and expenses, other lawyers are lining up to challenge the government's detention of people the military has called enemy combatants and possible terrorists.

It's a way of sending them their love, showing that they care. And they do. Describing the treatment of terrorists confined in Guantanamo, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said:

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

In contrast, Colonel Nick Rowe's fate has always been to be forgotten, though he didn't seem to resent it. When Rowe was held captive as a POW in Vietnam, during which he suffered from dysentary, beri-beri and fungal attack -- diseases unknown in Durbin's Guantanamo -- he protected his fellow prisoners by concealing his identity as a Special Forces Officer, which if revealed would single them out for special cruelty. His deception worked for months. But the Left did not forget.

Acting on a request from the North Vietnamese, students in a so-called anti-war organization in the United States researched public records and formulated biographies on Americans captured in Vietnam. After reading Lt. Rowe's biography, his Viet Cong captors became furious. They marched him into a cramped bamboo hut and forced him to sit on the damp clay floor. Several high ranking Viet Cong officials were staring down at Lt. Rowe. They held out a piece of typed onion skin paper.

"The peace and justice loving friends, of the National Liberation Front, who live in America, have provided us with information which leads us to believe you have lied to us," they informed Lt. Rowe. "According to what we know, you are not an engineer . . . you have much military experience which you deny . . . You were an officer of the American Special Forces."

Lt. Rowe sat dumbfounded, unable to comprehend that his own people would betray him. He felt it was over. He had lied to the communists for five years. Worse in their eyes, the Viet Cong had believed him. They had lost face and, for that, he would be punished. Soon after, the Viet Cong Central Committee for the National Liberation Front sent orders to Rowe's camp ordering the cadre to execute the uncooperative American prisoner.

On the day Lt. Rowe was being led to a destination for execution, he and his small group of guards were caught on the edge of an American B-52 saturation bombing raid. The guards scattered, leaving Lt. Rowe with only one. Lt. Rowe knew he had nothing to lose. He bided his time until the remaining guard carelessly moved to Rowe's front, whereupon Lt. Rowe bludgeoned him with a log and escaped. Not only did Lt. Rowe survive his ordeal as a POW, he escaped and emerged stronger than before his capture, more committed to the American ideal and more convinced than ever that what the communists had planned for Vietnam and the world was a blueprint for tyranny and human suffering. Nick Rowe frustrated the communists. They never broke him. They never shook his faith in the American system. He was the quintessential American fighting man, unable to be broken mentally or physically.

The communists, however, never forgot Lt. Nick Rowe. They never forgot the threat men such as he posed to them and their view of world domination. Shortly before 7 a.m. on April 21, 1989, a small white car pulled alongside a gray, chauffeur-driven vehicle in a traffic circle in the Manila suburb of Quezon City. The barrels of an M-16 rifle and a .45-caliber pistol poked out the window of the white car and spit out more than two dozen shots. Twenty-one of them hit the gray car. One of the rounds hit Col. James "Nick" Rowe in the head, killing him instantly. The hooded NPA killers had ties to the communist Vietnamese, Rowe's old enemies in Vietnam. It took the communists nearly 25 years, but they finally silenced Nick Rowe. What they could not do in a jungle cage in South Vietnam's U Minh Forest through torture, intimidation, and political indoctrination, they did with a .45 and an American-made M-16 on the streets of Manila.

His killer will be free in 9 days.

By Other Means 3

Reuters is reporting a battalion-sized Operation Dagger following right on the heels of a similarly sized Operation Spear. Spear targeted the area of Karbila, right next to the Syrian border at the western end of the Euphrates river line. Dagger, on the other hand has hit Ramadi, which is near the eastern end of the Euphrates river belt heading for Baghdad. Both ends at once, so to speak.

QAIM, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces launched their second major offensive in western Iraq in as many days on Saturday, both designed to root out militants dug in along the Euphrates river valley. The military said around 1,000 Marines, sailors, soldiers and Iraqi troops had begun Operation Dagger north of the city of Ramadi, a rebel stronghold west of Baghdad, and that about 50 insurgents had been killed on Friday in the first operation.

Ramadi has been described as a logistical hub of the insurgency. According to the Associated Press, the current operation is of a piece with the March assault on an insurgent camp along Lake Tharthar and the discovery of huge caches in the area.

In early June, Marines sweeping the eastern part of the lake discovered an underground bunker complex in a rock quarry that had recently been used by insurgents and included air-conditioned living quarters and high tech military equipment, including night vision goggles. The military later destroyed the complex and weapons caches.

Sfgate also notes the increasing tempo.

The assault, dubbed Operation Spear, was the third large-scale attack led by U.S. Marines in volatile Anbar province in the past six weeks. The area has long been the main bastion of Iraqi Sunni Arab guerrillas and foreign fighters filtering in across the porous Syrian frontier.

That was Spear: then came Dagger. The question is: how can this be happening? According to the calculations of Fester,  a self-described "Lefty" political blog, Coalition forces are losing the casualty exchange with insurgent forces. He calculates the enemy is killing us at nearly double (1.8:1) the rate that we are killing the enemy.

Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the insurgents lost roughly 500 men to any future combat operations in the month of May while inflicing roughly 450-500 permanent direct losses on the Iraqi government forces and another 400 US soldiers are out of action due to death or serious combat injuries. Therefore the incapacitation ratio is roughly 1.8:1 in favor of the insurgents. Against US forces only, the ratio is near unity. ... 

So where do are US forces getting the the manpower to up the pace of attack? Overall US force levels are being drawn down. America has lost 18,000 men in theater to troop reductions after the Iraqi elections. According to Global Security Org, the total number of US troops in theater is expected to fall from 153,000 to 135,000. One possible answer is that America is understating the number of men in theater by excluding the Special Forces from the count.  But even if the entire 10th Special Forces group were included, it would add only about 3,000 men to the total. The increase in tempo cannot come from having more Americans.

One other possibility is that the Coalition is throwing more cannon fodder, what the Daily Kos called "fresh meat", against the insurgents. Austin Bay notes that more and more Iraqi Army units are being used in operations. Austin Bay recently attended a briefing in Baghdad and reported that "In at least nine out of ten security operations, the new Iraqi military is providing half of the forces." That would permit the US to reduce the number of troops devoted to security operations and devote them attacks against the insurgents, where the Left assures us they would be lucky to break even against Zarqawi's men.

In either case, if the calculations of Fester and the Daily Kos are correct, the increased tempo cannot be sustained. Reason: if a player keeps losing chips at the table he will run down his stake. If combat results favor the enemy it necessarily follows that the more combat, the better for the enemy. Sooner or later, according to the predictions of the Left, the Coalition must retire bankrupt from the field. The relative availability to generate forces was the theme of Richard Oppels's article on Tal Afar, a city on the Tigris line.

Nine months ago the U.S. military laid siege to this city in northwestern Iraq and proclaimed it freed from the grip of insurgents. Last month, the Americans returned in force to reclaim it once again. After the battle here in September, the military left behind fewer than 500 troops to patrol a huge region. ... "We have a finite number of troops," said Major Chris Kennedy, executive officer of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which arrived in Tal Afar several weeks ago. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. "This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country. In the past, the problem has been we haven't been able to leave sufficient forces in towns where we've cleared the insurgents out."

In the near term, the operational tempo (billed as "violence", "instability" or "mayhem" in the media) will almost certainly increase for the following reasons. First, Iraqi forces are now coming online and they are not the "fresh meat" the Daily Kos claims. Though they may have shortcomings, Iraqi troops are far from totally ineffective and actually represent a net increase in coalition combat power against the enemy. Second, the cumulative results of two years of intelligence infrastructure building coming into fruition in the larger size of caches being found and in the number of "tips" which precede many of the recent captures and rescues. Third, the insurgent strategy of attempting to ignite a civil war as described in the last post, will generate its own backblast. Back to Oppel's article.

Khasro Goran, the deputy provincial governor in Ninewa, which includes Tal Afar (said) "There is no life in Tal Afar," he said in an interview a week ago. "It is like Mosul a few months ago - a ghost town." There are more than 500 insurgents in Tal Afar, he said, and they project a level of fear and intimidation across the city far in excess of their numbers. Thoroughfares lined with stores have been deserted, the storefronts covered with metal roll-down gates. In northeast Tal Afar, a young mother now schools her six children at home after a flyer posted at their school warned: "If you love your children, you won't send them to school here because we will kill them." ... At least 40 members of two predominantly Shiite tribes of Turkomen, the Sada and Jolak, were killed in two car bombings in May. The perpetrators, American officers said they believed, were members of the predominantly Sunni Arab Qarabash tribe, which they say has strong ties to Syrian fighters and links to the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Qaeda leader in Iraq.

In other words, the Coalition is actually gaining and will continue to gain in strength. This does not necessarily prove we are winning because the enemy is also reinforcing the Iraqi battlefield with every combatant he can muster. Oppel notes the influx of reinforcements from Syria:

At Rabiah, the principal northern border crossing to Syria, several hundred American soldiers arrived three weeks ago and say they have disrupted the smuggling of weapons and money. But they doubt there has been any curtailment yet in the infiltration of foreign fighters, often difficult to distinguish from legitimate travelers. "As far as foreign fighters coming in from the border control point, I can't say we've had any impact on that," said Captain Jason Whitten, the company commander whose troops oversee the Rabiah crossing.

What we are witnessing is a race between the force-generation capabilities of two sides. Materially speaking, the enemy is bound to lose. Al Qaeda is openly rushing every available fighter into Iraq. But millions of Iraqis Sunnis, Kurds and Shi'ites who have no intention of being resubjugated, fueled by the oil wealth of Iraq can be counted on to resist them, supported by the most deadly military force in the world. On the face of it the enemy cause would be lost. But in the matter of the will to win the outcome becomes more doubtful. Iraq has become the recruiting focus of a generation of Islamists and Leftists while the United States public has won itself enough temporary safety to forget the dangers of September 11. The enemy's hunger -- almost desperation for victory -- stands in symbolic contrast to the desire among many Americans to close Gitmo. The war in Iraq has bought American homeland security in the most unexpected of ways. The enemy has learned to refrain from awakening the US giant, the better to defeat him in his sleep.

Mosul

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the surrender of an Al Qaeda big in Mosul.

US forces have arrested the leader of the Mosul branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a capture described by the spokesman for coalition forces as a major defeat for the terrorist group. Mohammed Khalaf, also known as Abu Talha, was arrested last Tuesday, said US Air Force Brigadier General Don Alston.

"Talha was one of al-Zarqawi's most trusted operation agents in Iraq. This is a major defeat for al-Qaeda terrorist organisation in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi's leader in Mosul is out of business," Alston said. He added that US forces found Abu Talha in a quiet neighbourhood in Mosul after a number of tips.

Abu Talha, he said, did not go through with a reported threat to kill himself rather than fall into American hands. "Instead, Abu Talha surrendered without a fight," Alston said. His arrest follows the June 5 capture in Mosul of Mutlaq Mahmoud Mutlaq Abdullah, also known as Abu Raad, who was Abu Talha's key facilitator and financier.

Michael Yon, a writer who has become the personal chronicler of the Battle of Mosul has described the struggle for this city. Mosul has been characterized as the strategic linchpin of the Sunni insurgency because on it depends any hope of insurgent control over the huge oil fields of Eastern Iraq.  Abu Talha for one, may no longer believe in the victory of the insurgency in Mosul. And maybe he should know. Sixty years ago, Richard Tregaskis chronicled the Marine struggle in the Southwest Pacific in Guadalcanal Diary, a place later to become known to the Japanese as the "Island of Death". It was not American firepower that convinced the Japanese that they would lose; they knew that already. It was that they learned, for the first time, that the Americans wouldn't give up.

This article is best read alongside the interview with Dr. Saad al-Faqih, a Saudi who is on the UN terrorism list, and is said to be an expert on Al Qaeda. (Hat tip: MIG). In that interview,  al-Faqih admits that the Al Qaeda had weakened greatly within Saudi Arabia because they had mistakenly attacked the state security forces and ordinary civilians. Henceforth, al-Faqih believes, the Al Qaeda will focus on attacking the Saudi Royals. But it is his comments on Al Qaeda's activities in Iraq that are germane.

the invasion and occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaeda a huge boost and the Saudi government has indirectly admitted (in a research paper highlighted by the al-Arabiya channel) that at least 2,500 Saudis are fighting in Iraq. ... Al-Qaeda has lost ground militarily, politically and ideologically. Attacking civilians proved to be a major blunder and it remains to be seen whether they can fully recover from it. Also by attacking the security forces they lost a lot of sympathy inside these organizations. The momentum in Saudi society today is not particularly sympathetic toward al-Qaeda. The situation was very different 2-3 years ago, when ordinary people were willing to give the jihadis shelter and other forms of support.

The solution lies in what is happening in Iraq, since many ordinary people and the security forces are supportive of jihad in Iraq. And of course the jihad in Iraq is strongly linked to al-Qaeda. ... I believe that Zarqawi is al-Qaeda in Iraq. ... Zarqawi is not simply a man of pure action, but a good strategist who has studied the situation in Iraq closely and concluded that the best way to defeat the Americans is to provoke a sectarian war in the country. ... 

Al-Faqih clearly believes that Al Qaeda is looking to Iraq for a reversal of fortune. In consequence, they've dispatched a large number of their best Jihadis there, some 2,500 from Saudi Arabia alone. This is a major investment in strength. They fully intend to win a civil war after an American departure that will bring the Shi'ites to heel. The interview continues.

MA (interviewer) : But how does this square with al-Qaeda's avoidance of sectarian schisms in Islam?

Al-Faqih: This is an Iraq-specific strategy and it actually makes a lot of sense. It is important to note that it is easy to mobilize Iraq's Sunni Arabs into a coherent mass, since historically and culturally they are very powerful, much more powerful, in fact, than the Shi'as.

MA: Does this strategy of targeting the Shi'as have the blessings of bin Laden?

Al-Faqih: I can not say for sure, but I am inclined to think that it does have the blessings of bin Laden.

MA: Does this strategy look beyond the current occupation of Iraq?

Al-Faqih: Yes it does. One of the ultimate goals of this strategy is to sweep the Shi'as from power once the Americans depart the arena.

This point has been noted in the Belmont Club before: that the insurgents have no expectation of defeating the US outright on the battlefield, but are confident that a loss of American political will will eventually repeat the Vietnam withdrawal of 1972, after which a there will be triumphant Sunni return to Baghdad after an indecent interval. This envisioned success additionally depends on whether the Iraqi government forces (reviled by the Daily Kos as "fresh meat") will fold up and maintaining a foothold in Mosul, which is the geographical key to the eastern oilfields. If the Al Qaeda are banking on Iraq to save their global political fortunes they are playing long odds. It's difficult to see how Zarqawi can provoke a civil war with a numerically superior ethnic group, in control of the oil fields fighting to prevent re-subjugation and expect to prevail. If one of Al Qaeda's chosen representatives, Mohammed Khalaf a.k.a. Abu Talha has declined to fight to the death in Mosul, the wheels are falling off their wagon.

No Way Out 2

One sure way to put out a fire at sea is to sink the ship. The Philippine public's reluctance to take to the streets to oust President Gloria Arroyo, internationally famous for paying ransom to Iraqi terrorists, and domestically notorious for having conspired to electorally defraud her rival, Fernando Poe Jr., has been been based on the desire to preserve what remains of the constitutional process. Having discovered that none of the current crop of leaders can uphold the substantive aims of democracy, the weary Filipinos have decided to preserve its mere form. That was the fire on board. Gloria Arroyo's magnificent solution was to file charges against the National Bureau of Investigation (the equivalent of the FBI) agent who recorded her in the act of plotting with electoral officials to steal the elections. The charge? Sedition. The Philippine newspaper ABS-CBN reports:

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Wednesday filed inciting to sedition charges against Samuel Ong at the Department of Justice (DOJ). The case against the former NBI deputy director stemmed from his call for the overthrow of the Arroyo administration after he claimed last Friday to have the master copy of wiretapped conversations between the President and an election officer. State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco said the NBI submitted news clippings that contained Ong's seditious remarks as evidence. ... Earlier NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco said the agency had information on Ong's whereabouts, but would not pursue him until an arrest warrant is issued.

Ong is actually in the keeping of the Catholic Church hierarchy, surrounded by crowds of reporters and camera men. But in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the Pearl of the Orient seas, officials pretend to a secret knowledge of his location, seeking to demonstrate their competence in their customary and farcical way: "the agency had information on Ong's whereabouts"; their motto, 'always outwitted, but never fooled'.

The cycle is complete. Because Philippine institutions cannot remove venal officials, people take to the streets to oust them directly thereby weakening the institutions still further. And because every replacement is just as corrupt and incompetent as the last, the weakened institutions are even less able to oust their successors and in response to institutional failure another round of street unrest follows. Before jet fighters acquired engines with a thrust greater than their weight,  air combat was characterized by a steady loss of energy as dogfighters turned in circles at ever lower altitudes. The same is now true of the Philippines. The dogfighting circles of corrupt presidents alternating with "People's Power" movements that kick them out has taken its institutional energy right down to the deck. But if anyone thinks there's no more room to drop he would be mistaken. By prosecuting the man who blew the whistle on her theft of the Presidency and charging him with sedition, Arroyo is demonstrating the falsity of what she would be advised to affirm: that her retention somehow preserves the institutions which she is even now destroying. Shipboard fire? Sink the ship.

The opposition to Macapagal has been kept back -- so far -- by fear of what might follow another extraconstitutional eviction of a President. But at some point they will realize that Arroyo is manufacturing chaos just efficiently as any mob; and then they will troop, with heavy heart, back into the streets to effect a change that isn't; to promise a hope that no one believes in; to invoke a future that doesn't exist; in the name of a country that has long ago been forgotten.

Update

Presidents can usually survive being hated. It's being laughed at that's fatal. One of the aftermarket cellphone ringtones now being sold  in Manila is a reproduction of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's edifying conversation with election officials, as she prepared to rig the elections.

"Hello! Hello! Hello! Garci (the name of the election official)
So, will I still lead by more than one million?"

The response to this tide of ridicule has been the typical official bluster admixed with a confession of helplessness. Here's the Philippine equivalent of the attorney general trying his hand at standup comedy without being quite aware of it.

"They are liable under the law," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said of mobile phone users keeping or spreading the ring tone. Gonzalez earlier warned people that the possession and dissemination of CDs showing that Ms Arroyo had pressed for the rigging of the presidential election violated the Anti-Wire Tapping Act of 1965. ...I told you already that nobody can control somebody from doing something that he wants to do whether it is against the law or not," Gonzalez said when asked repeatedly whether the DoJ (Department of Justice) was going after those spreading the ring tone.

"One school of thought, and I think many of you will agree with that, is that the more you entertain these things, the more it would whet the appetite," he said. On the other hand, if you do not enforce the law, you are also accused of being inutile, that the government is weak. We have to balance this. We are studying the balance," he added. Gonzalez said the DoJ would not go after mobile phone firms for the spread of the ring tone.

Asked whether he believed it was Ms Arroyo who was speaking on the tape, Gonzalez said: "I am not a voice expert. Yes. Yes. To some extent. But I will never admit that that is the President (speaking)."

These are the very same Filipino officials who can be relied on to unswervingly fight the Abu Sayyaf "to some extent" after "studying the balance". The staunch allies in the War on Terror. God help us all.

The Six Weeks

Australian hostage Douglas Wood, has been released in Iraq, not through the payment of ransom, but apparently through military action. Here are excerpts from the text of Prime Minister John Howard's speech to Parliament:

Mr Speaker, I am delighted to inform the House that the Australian hostage in Iraq Mr Douglas Wood is safe from his captors. Mr Wood was recovered a short while ago in Baghdad in a military operation that I’m told was conducted by Iraqi forces, in cooperation in a general way with force elements of the United States. He’s now under the protection of the Australian Emergency Response Team in Baghdad. I understand that he is well. He’s undergoing medical checks at the present time. I know that all Australians will be jubilant at this news. ...

I want to place on record the Government’s great appreciation to the officers of the Government who have done such wonderful work. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has displayed superb professionalism throughout this whole incident. The work of Mr Nick Warner who has been the head of the Emergency Response Team has been quite exemplary and I want to pay a special tribute to Nick. He’s an officer who’s known to many of us and he’s done great things for Australia, not only in Iraq, but also in the Solomon Islands. I want of course to thank the Special Forces and the other members of the Emergency Response Team that went to Iraq. Brigadier McCabe and all of the units in Iraq that have been associated with this.

Can I also pay special tribute to the contribution of the Minister for Foreign Affairs who has had the day-to-day carriage of this on behalf of the Government and may I also thank the Opposition, the Leader of the Opposition and the Member for Griffith for their understanding at every stage of the difficulties involved and the need for us to unite to save an Australian and this has brought out some of the best things in our people. I also place on record my appreciation for the efforts of the Australian Islamic community and of Sheik Al Hilaly.

Many people have tried, we are overwhelmed with relief, nothing compared of course with the relief that his family must now feel. Can I also say that at no stage has a ransom been paid, at no stage has the Government compromised its position in relation to our commitment to Iraq, the level of our force commitment and I want to reiterate our commitment to the stability and reconstruction of Iraq and to the Iraqi people who are daily, the victims of terrorism and crime.

I did endeavour before making this statement to contact the Iraqi Prime Minister. I'll do so, I hope very shortly to express my thanks for the efforts of his forces and may I record again our thanks to our American friends for their constant support and availability and cooperation, it is a wonderful outcome for this man who suffered so much and it’s a tribute to the work of our Iraqi and American friends that this has come about.

Howard called Wood's family with the good news four and a half hours ago. New.com.au adds:

Mr Wood was kidnapped around six weeks ago by a group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahidin of Iraq. News of his ordeal first became public when his captors released a DVD showing him pleading for his life and surrounded by masked gunmen.

Mr Howard said his release would be met with jubilation by Australians who had closely followed Mr Wood's plight over the past weeks. "This man has suffered immensely," he said. "I want on behalf of all of the Parliament to pay tribute to the dignity and strength of his family."

Mr Wood's release comes just days after French journalist Florence Aubenas was reunited with family and friends following her five-month Iraqi ordeal. While there has been speculation France paid a ransom to secure her release, Mr Howard said no ransom had been paid to free Mr Wood'. "At no stage has a ransom been paid," he said. Mr Downer admitted he had not been overly optimistic that Mr Wood would be released. "Very few have been released by military action of this kind," he told ABC TV.

One part of the story which will be contentious is the role played by  Australian Muslim cleric Sheik Al Hilaly, who promised to negotiate the release of Woods but who apparently failed. Tim Blair has described Hilaly's activities in Iraq at some length. The Sheik spent most of May and the early part of June negotiating a release and announced at several points that a deal of sorts had been reached only to rescind his announcements. The most interesting section of Blair's chronology is this:

June 3 “We hope, God willing, that within the next few hours to hear the news of the hostage’s release,” says al-Hilali after attending a Baghdad mosque. In Sydney, Trad reports that the Sheikh has learned Wood was recently moved to a safer location, but could not be released because of ongoing fighting.

June 5 The Sheikh meets Douglas Wood, according to the Federation of Islamic Councils’ Ikebal Patel: “He said to me: ‘I’ve seen him eye to eye’, those were the words he used, eye to eye, it was Douglas.” ... 

June 6 Sheikh al-Hilali tells AP that he hasn’t physically met Wood: “I have seen a recent CD video lasting 12 to 15 minutes where Wood is alive and good and in honest hands. He looked normal and said ‘I am OK, I am fine’ and that he needs help from his family and the government.” The Sheikh adds: “God willing, Mr Douglas will be free in a short time.”

Hilaly (or Hilali if you prefer) left Iraq without negotiating any release at all on June 9. Two possibilities emerge. The most likely scenario is that the Sheikh Hilaly was surveilled until the Australian Emergency Response Team (trust Canberra to give a Special Forces unit the name of an ambulance service) felt there was enough info to signal a go-ahead to an Iraqi rescue force. The less likely scenario, but no doubt one that will be peddled in Europe, who cannot conceive of an alternative, is that Hilaly actually ransomed Wood and arranged for a staged rescue. That's extremely unlikely because Hilaly would have trumpeted a successful release had he been able to arrange one and John Howard would never risk being part of a setup that would effectively put his political career in the hands of an Islamic cleric privy to a "secret deal".

So here's how I think (speculation alert) it happened. Hilaly went to Iraq prepared to ransom Wood and return to Australia the big savior of the helpless kuffar. In good faith. But Hilaly gets dusted down with the latest tracking technology upon arrival in Baghdad ("in cooperation in a general way with force elements of the United States") and leads surveillance to links in the chain. Hilaly leaves Iraq frustrated, but has unwittingly provided key parts of the puzzle, for which John Howard was extremely grateful. Brigadier McCabe, possibly the onsite Aussie crisis manager, makes the judgment that the Coalition knows enough to risk springing Wood and calls Howard, who gives the nod. Or something like that. The Iraqi forces move in and when Howard is told everything went well he gives the big speech in Canberra.

Update

More details from the Associated Press:

Iraqi and American forces spotted a form huddled beneath a blanket when they raided a home in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood Wednesday. The residents insisted it was their ailing father - but the unfazed troops knew they'd found their man: Australian hostage Douglas Wood. Wood, 64, wearing a tan dishdasha, or traditional Arab robe, and with his head shaved, was smiling broadly as he was freed following 47 days in captivity.

Update 2

Tim Blair is all over the Douglas Wood rescue discussing, among other things, the predictable innuendo that Wood had not been rescued but that Australian Muslim cleric Sheik Hilaly had persuaded the "militants" to release the hostage. CNN reported that Wood was found during a routine cordon and search. However,  an Australian newspaper (hat tip: Tim Blair) has a detailed version which coincides, in many respects with the surmise I initially had.

Mr Wood was freed by a military operation in Baghdad after seven weeks in captivity. The U.S.-based engineer was rescued by an elite team of U.S. and Iraqi troops at 8.30am yesterday (Baghdad time) at a house about one hour's drive from the Iraqi capital.

Australian SAS troops working with the Government hostage team also were involved in planning the rescue operation. Well-placed government sources said the authorities were tipped off about Mr Wood's location. "U.S. and Iraqi forces knocked on the door and lo and behold, Mr Wood was there," a source said.

... Keysar Trad, the Sydney spokesman for the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly, last night said it was the sheik who provided the crucial information. The Mufti has campaigned extensively for his release, travelling to Iraq and offering himself in Mr Wood's place.

This squares with the earlier Belmont Club guess that Hilaly provided the crucial information -- without knowing it. Who knows?