PoliticAlex

Cool pics of our troops in Iraq...

courtesy of the Washington Post. These pics say more than the nightly news is reporting, and seeing our guys in action - at camp and on the job, makes all of us proud. Good job!

Top Zarqawi Aide in US custody...

as Foxnews.com reported today. Apparently Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf was picked up during a raid on Jan 15, with a couple of other nasty folk:

Two other militants linked to Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group also were arrested, authorities announced Monday.

Al-Jaaf was "the most lethal of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's lieutenants," the statement said.

Al-Zarqawi heads Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terror network's local affiliate. The group is behind many of the car bombings, beheadings, assassinations and other attacks driving the insurgency in Iraq.

The suspect was linked to the August 2003 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others. The U.N. attack was "planned and directed by two others affiliated with Abu Omar," the statement said.

Al-Jaaf was responsible for 32 car bombing attacks that killed hundreds of Iraqis, the statement said. Al-Jaaf "confessed to building approximately 75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad since March 2003," said Thaer al-Naqib, spokesman for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Sounds like our guys are doing a bang-up job rounding up the terrorist nutjobs, a couple at a time. How sweet would it be to get Zarqawi this week? Oh, but we need to be careful because if our military interrogators actually, well, interrogate Al Jaaf to find out where his boss is hiding, the LLL's will bring out the sobbing masses to scream violations of the Geneva convention. Never mind that capturing a top Zarqawi aide could actually result in the capture of the big cheese himself. Such a coup could only happen if we are allowed to extract the information as necessary - using military tactics. After all, this is war - a fact too easily forgotten in certain circles.  I hope that our military leaders proceed unafraid - we must not bow to political pressure now.

Our country is truly blessed to have a a CinC that is steadfast and stays on task, regardless of poll results and political pressure.  And such determination on the issues, even when undermined by leftist claims that he "refuses to admit mistakes", has paid off - our economy is back on track, particularly given the inherited recession and the staggering blow to our economy of Sept 11th, as well as the costs of the war on terror.  And to the people who claim our war in Iraq is not a war on terror, take another look at the nightly news and tell me that bombing a wedding party to make a political statement isn't terrorism. We are fighting the war on their turf - terrorists are flocking to Iraq and are getting beaten down, one at a time. The terrorists are going to Iraq, and attacking our military - the men and women who are trained to fight back and win. The terrorists are not bombing America, taking on defenseless citizens riding on a plane or on a bus, or working in an office building.  We have kept them off our soil - that is the first big step.   

If you want the latest info on the work our troops are doing to help Iraq take care of itself, and improve humanitarian conditions, check out this Centcom site and the latest report on the successes in Iraq.

Mary Mapes fired from CBS over "memogate", three others asked to resign...

as a result of the CBS panel investigative report authored by Dick Thornburgh and Lou Boccardi. Fox News has the entire report, as well as the scoop on the firings, here's a taste:

Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been let go for the parts they played in preparing the controversial "60 Minutes Wednesday" election-season story about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS announced Monday.

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; "60 Minutes Wednesday" Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard's deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, according to CBS.

The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated, the network said.

Longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who was the correspondent on the September segment, announced his departure as anchor of "CBS Evening News" late last year. His final show will be March 9.

and

The CBS probe team concluded in its report that the network news organization failed to follow basic journalistic principles in preparing, reporting and following the Bush piece.

CBS News then made matters worse with its "rigid and blind" defense of the "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment, the panel reported.

It found that the news organization should have set the record straight earlier.

"The panel finds that once serious questions were raised, the defense of the segment became more rigid and emphatic, and that virtually no attempt was made to determine whether the questions raised had merit," the report concluded.

However:

The panel stopped short of saying the CBS story arose out of any political bias on the part of the network or its news coverage.

Instead, the report concluded that the problematic National Guard segment was aired because of "myopic zeal" on the part of CBS to break the story first.

The report is inconsistent with this conclusion, showing bias on the part of CBS throughout. Michelle Malkin has a great analysis of this at her site today, including the specific example of the use of Col. Hackworth as a qualified expert to support the authenticity of the story in the Sept 8th segment. CBS relied on his conclusions despite his lack of connections to any of the players in the story. As Michelle observed, on pages 106-107 of the report, the panel states:

Mapes said that she asked Colonel Hackworth to “look at the back and forth” in the Killian documents because he had worked in the Pentagon and knew about Pentagon politics. Even though Colonel Hackworth was never in the TexANG, did not know Lieutenant Colonel Killian or any of the other relevant individuals, had no personal knowledge of President Bush’s service in the TexANG and had no personal knowledge regarding the Killian documents, he reached some highly critical conclusions in his interview regarding President Bush’s TexANG service based solely on the purported authenticity of the Killian documents and his general knowledge of the military.

First, Colonel Hackworth concluded that the documents were “genuine.” He reached this conclusion by relating his own experience at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War when he was running the “Army input system for . . . basic training.” Colonel Hackworth said that, while in that post, he received and refused requests by members of Congress and generals to assign certain men to particular units and wrote “cover my own butt” memoranda in many cases to document his refusals. Colonel Hackworth then concluded that Lieutenant Colonel Killian was “in the same kind of pickle that I found myself in” and proceeded to discuss what Lieutenant Colonel Killian was thinking at the time he wrote the memoranda.

Rather asked Colonel Hackworth whether there was any doubt in his mind that the documents were real, and Colonel Hackworth replied, “Having been down that road before I would say that these are genuine documents.”

Second, Colonel Hackworth concluded that, by not taking his physical, then-Lieutenant Bush was “insubordinate” and would have been treated more harshly had he been “an unconnected Lieutenant.”

Third, Colonel Hackworth stated repeatedly throughout his interview that then-Lieutenant Bush was “AWOL” and that a person would have to reach that conclusion when reviewing the documents “unless you’re the village idiot.” Colonel Hackworth appeared to be referring to the fact that he had seen no evidence that President Bush was “present for duty” once he left for Alabama in 1972, although he did not articulate clearly how he reached his conclusion. Finally, Colonel Hackworth concluded that “the bottom line here is – is the abuse of power.” He said that “[I]t’s how people up at the top can . . . lean on the little people.”

Rather thought Colonel Hackworth was a “strong and valuable expert witness.” Mapes also believed that Colonel Hackworth was important for the Segment and included excerpts of his interview in early drafts of the September 8 Segment script. These excerpts were ultimately cut from the final script by Heyward and West.

Continuing on, I read the following disturbing section regarding the use of the handwriting expert on the Sept 8th segment, and the gross discrepancy between the conclusions he actually drew from the documents, and the representation of his conclusions on the program. The report states, on pg 108:

Matley flew from San Francisco to New York on Monday, September 6 to be interviewed by Rather. While he was waiting for his flight, Matley created a one-page handwritten list of eight points regarding the Killian documents, which he revised later in the day as he received more Killian documents and information from Miller and Mapes. Matley arrived at the 60 Minutes Wednesday offices around 5 p.m. but was not interviewed until Rather had finished the CBS Evening News broadcast.

When Matley arrived, he was shown the four additional Killian documents that Smith had received from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett the previous day. Significantly, Matley was the only document examiner to be shown these additional documents prior to the airing of the September 8 Segment.

After reviewing the new documents, Matley met with Miller and Mapes in Miller’s office and reviewed his notes with them. Matley told the Panel that he informed Mapes and Miller that he could not authenticate the documents due to the fact that the documents were poor quality copies. Thus, he was obliged to assume that they were reliable copies of authentic documents.

Matley told Mapes and Miller that the preponderance of the available evidence suggested that all of the signatures on the documents he was asked to analyze appeared to have been written by the same person, which included two of the six documents that Mapes received from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett, only one of which was used in the September 8 Segment. The Panel notes that three of the six Killian documents did not contain any handwriting, and two of these were used in the September 8 Segment. Moreover, Matley explicitly said that he could not opine on the document that contained only initials, the August 1, 1972 memorandum, which was used in the September 8 Segment.

Matley, whose specialty is handwriting analysis, was invoked as the authority for the following statement in the September 8 Segment: “We consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.” The Panel finds this statement troubling given that of the four Killian documents relied on in the Segment:

Two had no handwriting at all on them;

One had only initials which Matley said he could not verify; and

One had a signature which Matley said matched, with qualifications, signatures in the official documents.

These points are all reflected in Matley’s handwritten notes that he prepared that day, which are attached as Exhibit 5. Matley said that Mapes and Miller did not make a copy of his notes. He recalled that Mapes said to him that they were “not interested in all the parameters” of his findings. As later reported in Chapter IX, Matley later had these notes typed up and faxed them to 60 Minutes Wednesday on Friday, September 10.

The producer of the segment was "not interested in the parameters of (Matley's) findings" - troubling indeed. There is so much more to this report, I am off to read it all. More on this to come. In the meantime, check out today's posts at Rathergate.com - excellent, ongoing analysis of the details included in this report. This story will only get more interesting.

NJ man charged in laser beam vs airplane pilot incident...

as reported today at Newsday and elsewhere (ht: Steve, tx):

The defendant, David Banach, 38, first claimed his daughter aimed a laser at a helicopter, but later admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at two aircraft near Teterboro Airport last week, authorities said.

He was charged Tuesday with interfering with the operator of a mass transportation vehicle and making false statements to the FBI. He faces up to 25 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 if convicted.

and:

Mendola-Longarzo (ed: Banach's attorney) said Banach was using the beam to look up at the stars, and was shining it at trees and neighbors' houses. He uses the $100 device, which he bought over the Internet, for his job with a local labor union, testing fiber optic cables for holes, she said.

"He wasn't trying to harm any person, any aircraft or anything like that," she said.

The FBI took a much dimmer view of his actions.

"What was done was foolhardy and negligent," said Joseph Billy, special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark bureau. "While this particular incident was not terrorism-related, the FBI considers this an extremely serious matter. Not only was the safety of the pilot and passengers placed in jeopardy by Banach's actions; so were countless innocent civilians on the ground in this densely populated area."

So, don't go around pointing your laser where it doesn't belong - we get the point. But is prosecution of this guy, along with the attendant costs of adjudication, costs to house him in Club-Fed, etc really worth the investment? Did we really know that aiming a $100 laser pointer at an airplane was against the law? Intellectually speaking, it should probably occur to us that, in the post-9/11 mindset of our country, that the appearance of a laser dot on the side of an airplane would, understandably, cause some sort of ruckus. And a laser could be, theoretically, used as a weapon to blind or distract pilots in a terrorist plot. 

Ignorance is not a defense, granted...but I don't particularly agree that my taxes should pay to house this guy for 25 years. Charge him for the costs of the hovering FBI-copters, perhaps...

We'll have to see how this one plays out. 

2004 - the year of the Blog?...

MSNBC explores the role of blogs in the election, in international disasters (such as the recent Tsunami) and increases in blog readership over the past year. Heady stuff, although this blogger does not quite fit the profile of the average "blogger"...

Suburban man playing with laser, meant no harm to airplane pilot...

or, so says David Banach, of Lake Parsippany, according to the Daily Record (ht: drudge). Seems he was just playing with his daughter in the backyard, flashing a common laser pointer around. Much ado about nothing? Well, if it was distracting enough and disturbing enough to warrant national attention, I'd say that this suburban story has a happy ending.  I, for one, would certainly rather find out about this potential hazard as a result of a little goofing around in someone's backyard, rather than from a breaking story of a "downed airliner, terrorism suspected" - wouldn't you?

Crunching more numbers - US not so stingy as UN portrayed last week...

as detailed in this article penned by Bruce Bartlett of Townhall.com.  He makes some excellent points, particularly noting that (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2002) the percentage of GDP spent on US defense is significant:

The first thing one notices when looking at the big foreign aid contributors is that they all spend very little on national defense.  According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2002, The Netherlands spent just 1.6 percent of its gross domestic product on defense.  Norway spent 2.1 percent, Switzerland spent 1.1 percent, and Ireland spent a piddling 0.7 percent.  By contrast, the U.S. spent 3.4 percent—and this was before the Iraq war. It’s easy to be generous with foreign aid when another country is essentially providing your defense for free. (emphasis added)

An excellent point. Given the fact that we have undertaken the arduous tasks of liberating Afghanistan and Iraq; arduous but, in my view, absolutely necessary - I'd say that the US is exceedingly generous in areas of international interest.

Our extensive, expensive peacekeeping roles in years past in regions such as the Balkans, Kosovo, Bosnia and elsewhere should certainly be considered "foreign aid" - even though the Bush administration has believed from the outset (as described in Bush's 2000 campaign platform) that our role as peacekeepers internationally should be scaled back. Instead, Bush suggested, the US should focus on fortifying our military strength to fight for our own country, if and when the need should arise (as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, although I don't believe anyone could have predicted how draining guerilla warfare against intangible enemies would be on our resources). Spending on our military has been, necessarily, on the increase, and such spending only benefits the smaller countries incapable of defending themselves against terrorists. Our military suffered from spending cuts in the 1990's, with outdated, outmoded equipment hindering the front in Iraq (which was, of course, recently blamed on Rumsfeld) - even in the 2000 CNN article linked above, this problem of depleted military strength was highlighted during the 2000 campaign:

"Current readiness is problematical, but future readiness is in serious trouble," said Joseph J. Collins, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"In the last decade, we have spent a lot to keep our force busy and ready, but we have not spent nearly enough on modernization, personnel, and facilities," Collins said. "The next administration will face tough choices as it tries to maintain current readiness, replace old equipment, and modernize all at the same time.

If what Collins suggests is true, the long-term goals of the military will have to be assessed. In the years leading up to the Gulf War, as the last dangers of the Cold War melted and then evaporated, the military was designed and intended to conduct full-scale operations on two separate fronts.

As readiness was challenged by funding cuts and peacekeeping deployments, experts, including higher-ups inside the military, determined that the two-front war strategy would be impossible to maintain. Many argued that a single-front conflict would be difficult to sustain.

And this was from a 2000 campaign article, at CNN.com, no less.

Bush's 2004 Agenda for America proposes numerous defense spending projects, believed to be necessary to maintain our role as a world leader/superpower. Such spending is crucial (though, my cynical mind reminds me, proper oversight of such spending tends to be much less than necessary- but that's another topic) to ensure that future battles are not fought on our shores. September 11th must remain fresh in our minds (stunning slide show, thanks to LGF). The current administration understands, as some of our European counterparts do not (the most recent elections in Spain come to mind), that the perception of strength is essential to our continued national safety interests - and defense spending by our country is indeed beneficial to those countries tucked within the cloak of US protection.

Our defense budget, therefore, should be factored substantially into international, humanitarian aid spending (along with all of the other bits provided so kindly by Bruce Bartlett in his 12/31/04 Townhall article). At least, that's what the facts tell me.

(and Happy New Year, by the way..it's going to be a very good year)