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ood old Yankee know-how has been on display in Waziristan lately, as drone-fired missiles are slamming into rat-filled hovels. The latest report claims 20 “militants” – al-Qaeda and taliban terrorists – were killed.

A fine thing indeed, but what’s with this paragraph?

One attack in Mohammadkhel village about 28 miles west of Miran Shah, the region’s main town, killed about 19 people, most of them alleged militants but also including about a half-dozen foreigners, the officials said, citing agents in the field.

You mean the foreigners weren’t also terrorists? Were they perhaps European tourists on an eco-tour? Hollywood stars and Parisian fashion models on a round-the-world Smug Quest?

More likely they were jihadis from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Euro-Muslims on the only real kind of tour that reaches those parts, jihad madrassa tours. A half-dozen foreigners? A half dozen more dead terrorists, most likely.

Since this is evidence of stepped-up efforts to win the war in Afghanistan by taking  out the terrorist dregs that dragged that sorry butts back to the mountains after we took out most of their compadres in Iraq, one would think that Barack “The Kabul Kid” Obama will be singing the praises of the attack.  Bets anyone?  Anyone think he’ll actually praise a successful military action?

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A Mighty Wind

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s wind power ready to step up, step in and replace tried and trusted energy-producing technologies? Well, this photo seems to say maybe not. I am reminded of a Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live when Amy Poehler reported:

According to a new report by the Energy Department, wind turbines can produce a fifth of the nation’s annual electricity needs within about two decades. Which could drastically reduce our dependence on foreign wind.

Twenty percent in twenty years – oh, great! Let’s just shut down the oil biz now and twiddle our thumbs ’til 2028. As Dylan said (in a line William Ayres really, really liked), “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Hat-tip: Jim Continue Reading »

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Super Nan Readies For Denver Showdown

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est you think this week’s Democratic convention in Denver will be just a showcase for the pontificating and grandstanding leaders of the party that knows what’s good for us even if we don’t, Nancy Pelosi stands ready to set you straight. This is no small deal.

“We’ve got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it today.” (source)

Thank God we’ve got a proven, capable Dem savior like Barack Obama to get us through the fight with the super-nemesis, Maverick Man.

And Joe Biden? The perfect sidekick for The Mighty O and Super Nan, sez Madam Speaker:

“Joe Biden is the all-American boy.”

I’m sure he looks great in tights, too.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda Continue Reading »

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t’s finally come out: the target of the most recent missile attack in the Pakistan border region is Abu Khabab al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s premier bomb and WMD techie, who was thought to have been killed at least once before. This time, it looks like we smoked him – but let’s wait for confirming evidence.

If al-Masari’s DNA is splattered about the bombed out target, the world is much better off without him. Counterterrorism blog says al-Masari, “an Egyptian also known as Midhat Mursi al Sayid Umar, ran Al Qaeda’s top training base in Afghanistan, and literally wrote ‘the book’ on chemical and biological warfare for terrorists worldwide.” He is credited with the design of the Richard Reid shoe bomb, and materminding a deadly attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in 1995.

Let’s hope he’s gone.

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ast night I headlined a report of a missile attack in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border area, saying it sounded like the sort of operation designed to take out Taliban leadership.

We have a confirmation of sorts … from the Taliban:

A missile apparently fired at a religious seminary in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region early Monday killed seven people, a local Taliban leader said.

The pre-dawn attack was carried out at a ‘madrassa’ at the border region of Azam Warsak at 3 a.m., Maulavi Nazeer said.

The missile attack also injured three others, he said.

Locals said that the missiles struck seminary belong to a local cleric Maulana Jalail, who is considered to be linked with Taliban.

Locals believe that the missiles were fired from Afghanistan to hit a house in the Pakistani area near the border with Afghanistan.

The army spokesman confirmed the incident but did not say if it was missile strike or a bomb blast.

He said the coalition forces exchange intelligence with Pakistani forces before their actions. (Global Security/IRNA)

Al Jazeera adds:

Residents said the house where the missiles struck belonged to local tribesman Malik Salat and that suspected pro-Taliban fighters used to stay there.

Several villagers said they heard jets approaching from Afghanistan before the strike.

Still waiting for something official … and that’s interesting. In some earlier attacks, there were immediate outraged charges of civilian deaths and mutterings from the DoD about investigations. Reaction to this attack is muted … as if we hit what we wanted to hit.

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he Washington Post editorial page is not where you’d expect to see an essay that condemns the Dem prez nominee as hopelessly confused and wrong-footed, but there it is, Mr. Obama in Iraq.

The editorial stands out on a day that finds much of the media trying valiantly, but not too effectively, to cover their O-swoon – see Mo Doud’s Cocky or Commander-in-Chiefly? in today’s NYT for an example – or are focused on McCain’s criticism of Obama on the surge (that “he’d rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign”), like this from Joe Klein:

I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

What do you say we measure Klein’s criticism of McCain against WaPo’s criticism of Obama? The editorial winds up for several paragraphs before delivering this closer:

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Other than choosing the word “eccentric” when so many other words would have worked better (thick-headed, flabbergasting, laughable, cro-zo), that pretty much nails it. You have in Obama a candidate who is clueless regarding the threats we face and the best means to face them, who wants so much to not be Bush that he refuses to acknowledge reality.

I for one would rather have a president who makes the mistake of calling out a fool all by himself instead of assigning the task to a surrogate, than one who tramples over Pakistan – a nuclear-armed nation that’s just barely holding off an Islamist uprising – to hunt for Osama bin Laden, who latelyhas done nothing more threatening than issuing tapes that are, to borrow a word from above, cro-zo.

Photo: AP

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In the early days after 9/11, according to Doug Feith’s new book, War and Decision, a key decision was made regarding our method of retaliation: Our response would be a war on terrorists, not an action against the perpetrators of that specific act of terror. Included in potential theaters of battle in this new war was Latin America. Today, we learned more about just how well that campaign is going.

CARACAS, Venezuela (NY Times) — Colombian commandos disguised as rebels spirited 15 hostages to freedom on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt (right), a French-Colombian politician held for six years, and three American military contractors, according to the hostages and the Colombian authorities.

Ms. Betancourt, speaking just hours after her rescue, described the operation as “perfect.” Talking to Colombian radio and later at a news conference in Bogotá, she said helicopters of what had seemed to be rebels had landed around dawn in jungle area where the hostages were being held.

It had appeared to be just another change of location, she said, and she was handcuffed and “humiliated” before being put on board the helicopters.

But after takeoff, she said, the crew told their passengers they were free. …

The United States was involved in the planning of the operation and provided ‘’specific support,” according to the White House. But officials would not describe the nature of that support, or say whether it included military help or intelligence assistance. (emphasis added)

A Reuters report adds:

The rescue was a huge coup for popular President Alvaro Uribe, an anti-guerrilla hard-liner who has used billions of dollars in U.S. aid to push the rebels onto the defensive, cut crime and spur economic growth.

It provides more detail on the operation:

The rescue was carried out in the southern jungle province of Guaviare, Santos said. Soldiers posed as members of a fictitious non-government organization that supposedly would fly the hostages by helicopter to a camp to meet with rebel leader Alfonso Cano.

“The helicopters, which in reality were from the army, picked up the hostages in Guaviare and flew them to freedom,” Santos said. Two guerrillas were captured in the operation.

Obviously, we had excellent intelligence, acted on it swiftly and boldly, and caused grave damage to the enemy. No FARC guerrillas were reported as casualties, but the group lost its most valued hostage and has internationally humiliated. FARC has lost three of its top leaders this year, its inventory of hostages has dropped from 40 to 25, and its numbers have shrunk, reportedly, from 17,000 to 9,000. I’d say this particular war on terror is working. Continue Reading »

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eymour Hersh, who ever since Vietnam has fathered stories supportive of whatever enemy America is fighting, has done it again, blowing the cover on a Presidential Finding in support of new, aggressive efforts to gather intelligence on and destabilize Iran’s ruling Islamo-oligarchs.

The New Yorker story leads off with:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Hersh admits that such Presidential Findings are “highly classified,” with distribution limited to “Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees – the so-called Gang of Eight.” He does not, of course, hint at his source for the treasonous leaking of the document.

Hersh’s intent is clear: To do all he can to demonize Bush, even at the risk of increasing the chances that the truly awful people who rule Iran may be able to thwart (i.e., torture, kill) the truly valiant Iranians who are risking all in the name of that quaint concept called freedom – particularly the Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups Hersh specifically called out. Proof? Look no further than this:

United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. (emphasis added)

“The President’s war on terror?” The whole thing – Beirut, Khobar, the African embassies, the Cole, 9/11, Bali – is just the President’s war on terror to Hersh and his ilk, who, in their hatred of any American government that chooses war, believe no external threat really involves us, and that there’s no one out to harm us but our president.

Hersh will continue to live his comfortable, coddled life, wooing his fellow traveler sources, while in Iran the mad Mullahs and Mah – I’m in the – moud – for counterintelligence Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “Hersh? There’s a Jew who’d not all bad!”) will step up their efforts to seek out and exterminate any Ahwazi Arab, Baluchi or other groups or individuals who pose a threat to their jihadist ambitions.

Sedition, thy name is Seymour Hersh.

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The Libs won, finally, after pushing pig-headedly through every logical obstacle placed before them, and got the men of Guantanamo, who never saw a provision of the Geneva Conventions they didn’t mind breaking, rights beyond what we’ve ever offered foreign enemy combatants before.

Now that a few hundred habeas hearings are going to be scheduled before federal judges, what possible hope do we have that the judges will handle the matter well? As Andy McCarthy points out today at The Corner, we don’t trust judges enough with criminal cases to let them make habeas decisions without reams of guidance and piles of precedence, there are no such safety brakes in place to guide judges in the proper handling of foreign enemy combatants. McCarthy points out the risks of this situation:

By comparison, (a) alien unlawful enemy combatants are more serious threats to public safety (indeed, to national security) than drug dealers and violent felons; (b) alien unlawful enemy combatants are also not defendants accused of crimes (they’re hostile operatives captured in military operations overwhelming authorized by Congress following the mass-killing of nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11) and, therefore, they are not entitled in detention hearings to the constitutional presumption of innocence that applies in civilian prosecutions (by contrast, they do get the presumption of innocence if charged with war crimes); and (c) judges have no institutional competence in determining the status of enemy combatants, a war power the framers committed to the political branches.

McCarthy proposes a narrow detention procedure law for these cases, which could be modeled on the federal pretrial detention statute, followed by a national security court, but sees the problems inherent in the suggestion. The Left has fought tooth and nail to minimize the risk posed by the Guantanamo detainees and to give them undeserved legal rights, and they’re not about to settle for a Pyhrric victory this close to the finish line.

Even with all the guidance before them, liberal judges often make horrible habeas decisions, and little itty bitty bad guys catch a break as a result. It would be nice to say “we can’t allow such mistakes to happen with the detainees,” but that’s ridiculous. We are going to allow such mistakes to happen thanks to the SCOTUS ruling, and we are going to deal with the consequences — in this case, the deaths of our soldiers, our allies, or us.

I share McCarthy’s concern that when that happens, Obama and the other politicians who brought us to this point will be shielded by the courts. Let’s hope that as that happens, the communicators on our side will be more effective than the Bush communications team, and the American people will be reminded that it was politicians on the left, not the courts, that have the greatest measure of responsibility.

hat-tip: memeorandum

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Role Model Day?

Here’s an interesting take on Father’s Day from Sweating Through Fog:

I’m getting pretty tired of seeing things that treat being a father as just a “male role model.”

A father is not a male role model. A father is an adult male that a child knows:
a) will take a bullet for them.
b) will work hard for many, many years, doing things he may or may not like, in order to provide a loving, secure home for his wife and children.
c) loves the child enough to consider the well-being of that child the foundation of his worth as a person.

You can be a male role model if you teach a kid how to ride a bike, throw a curve ball, learn a trade or act on a date – all good and wonderful things. Fatherhood is an irrevocable, lifetime commitment to sacrifice – with grace and pride – for the benefit of a child. A child derives great benefit knowing that someone made those sacrifices for them.

God bless the Dads who dedicate themselves to doing both, and God bless the kids who have neither. For them, today’s not much of a day.

Father’s Day Read

David Woo, a photographer with the Dallas Daily News gave a reverse Father’s Day present to son Jake that merits an entry in the Chronicles of Fathering — Woo the elder visited Woo the younger at his post on at Forward Operating Base Iskan, south of Baghdad.

Woo the elder’s piece is posted at the Dallas Morning News today; here’s a poignant excerpt:

As I walked about 100 yards to my room, the only light was moon glow. As I looked up, I had to stop. Before Jake was deployed to Iraq, I told him that I would go outside every night before I went to sleep, look up in the heavens and say a prayer for his safety. This time, my prayer was a little different:

“God, I’m here with my son now. Keep him and his fellow soldiers safe.”

For whatever his reasons, God did not keep several thousand of Woo’s fellow soldiers safe in Iraq. What a terrible, terrible day today must be for those families and those fathers. Please keep them in your prayers today … there are no words sufficient to the loss.

(See Woo the elder’s photo gallery from the trip here.)

Predators And Reapers

Two of the coolest named weapons in the US arsenal, the Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft, are flying over the Pakistan/Afghanistan border like never before, in a renewed effort to bring in Osama bin Laden before the end of the Bush presidency. The Times of London reports:

As Mr Bush arrived in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe, defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

I’m not a big supporter of last-minute legacy-building by presidents, so I have to ask why this effort wasn’t undertaken sooner? Why the big rush now?

I hope they get him — today wouldn’t be soon enough — but having big stories in major international newspapers about the hunt isn’t going to help the effort any.

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