Heard on Rush's show today that there was a preview of the 9/11 miniseries below held in DC, and among the viewers was Richard Ben Veniste - last seen as one of the cheerful 9/11 commission guys - who took vehement exception to it, and got vicious with the producer or director or some such. Rush said to expect an actual campaign to debunk the show, to include TV ads. Is this true? Dunno. But its good gossip.

What? Batchelor is saying something about he isn't going to be with ABC radio anymore. His website says hiatus. I really like his radio show, no other talk show has as good a lineup of guests, regular and otherwise.

Instapundit links this post about a ruling under McCain-Feingold that "there can be no paid political broadcast ads criticizing incumbent Members of Congress for the two months prior to the Nov. 7 election."

This bears repeating:

I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! But one thing I do know:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

During the year or so I did not blog, I toyed with a new blog - changing the look and perhaps, the tone, of overpressure.com. The new tagline, "Liveblogging the apocalypse." Because, as I wrote last November, I was feeling apocalyptic. And the new graphics were Cold War era duck and cover stuff.

I was apparently running ahead of the curve - see this column in the Washington Times: Gathering nuclear storm, and this one by Stanley Kurtz at NRO - Our Fallout-Shelter Future.

There's all this about Richard Armitage being the original Plame leaker going on now. I have never been all that engaged on the topic, but I do want to make a point about Armitage - he's a Naval Academy graduate. I have expressed before what I think about USNA grads in politics - don't vote for 'em. And as a PS on that, Virginia has a USNA grad running for Senate. Don't vote for him, either.

I was commenting over at Ace of Spades, and figured, hey, wasting all that good content there, let's repurpose it here.

The occasion is a miniseries from ABC about 9/11 that purportedly will be "fair." It will use the 9/11 Commission Report and "The Cell" as sources. Three years ago I wrote:

I also read The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, And Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It, by John Miller and Michael Stone. Just read it. I don't know why we bothered with a 9/11 commission, the whole story is right there.

It traces the cell that did 9/11 from the murder of Meir Kahane in 1990, to the WTC bombing, through the Monuments plot, the Millenium, and then 9/11 - and of course through Khobar Towers, the East Africa embassies, and the Cole. Also covers Bojinka, Ramzi Yusef's plan to blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific using liquid explosives assembled onboard - very much like the recently foiled plot in the UK. Careful observers will note that the bulk of these events occurred during the Clinton presidency.

While this may be the first network miniseries covering this, last year there was a similar show from National Geographic, and it plowed the same ground. The facts are pretty clear about all of the connections.

Not sure that I'll watch this - I hardly watch network TV, and 5 hours is a lot, what with classes starting again. It seems likely to start some discussions, but I doubt it changes any minds.

I have a pretty hard and fast rule that with so-called transnational terrorists, there is always a nation involved. For proof of this theory, read Ion Pacepa at NRO. Sometimes peple point at Bader-Meinhof as an example of a domestic terrorist group grown up in a democracy - but the truth is that they were backed by the Soviets. As were the Middle Eastern terrorist groups of the day - Libya was a pretty tightly coupled client state.

All the "this is a new kind of terrorism" people should read this, but since they usually coincide with the "secular Saddam would never cooperate with religious Osama" crowd, I don't know that it does any good.

But the key is that I always think of it as common knowledge that the Soviets were behind terrorists (its no mistake that the AK-47 and not an M-16 is on the Hizb'Allah flag), but evidently it isn't so common.

A lot of argument over who "won" the recent Israel v Hizb'Allah conflict. President Bush says Hizb'Allah did not win - Hizb'Allah says yes they did. Syria calls it for their proxy. Bill Bennett at NRO says we should believe Hizb'Allah and not the President on this one - and he seems pretty persuasive.

I heard people on John Batchelor last night argue both sides. John Loftus had an interesting take, suggesting that the whole thing was a sucker's bet, the 30,000 troops (15k from Lebanon, 15k from the UN) are going to displace Hizb'Allah (even if they won't be disarming them), and this is a loss for Hizb'Allah, Iran, and Syria. This post at Captain's Quarters kind of supports that - Iran is suddenly willingly to talk about the nuclear stuff where they weren't before.

But one thing is clear - and that is that the outcome is unclear - there is too much ambiguity. Whatever else, Israel's stated goals at the outset are unmet - the kidnapped soldiers are not returned, Hizb'Allah is still armed and threatening Israel. If they are trading this for "the world" to seriously deal with Hizb'Allah, then maybe its an okay outcome for them, but the world was supposed to be seriously dealing with Hizb'Allah before.

My call is that this is a win for Hizb'Allah, and against our ally - and therefore against us. And we were complicit in it. Now, I'd like to think that we wouldn't do such a thing - that there is some other strategery going on. But at this point, that's just wishful thinking.

Only so many folks could write this:

Sure, there's that boo-tique appliance store with the free coffee and gorgeous showroom, but they might as well drive a mailed fist up your nether regions when you show up, just to set the tone for the final financial outlay.

Surprised?

For the blog spammers to find the blog again. Oh, and for me to get interrrupted.

UPDATE:That's just ridiculous - hundreds of spams on this post. And just plain dumb, no real links, or whatever. Just stupid. Now I have to close the comments.

THis is a big story. Fox is all Sky right now. The story:

Police say they have disrupted a major plot to blow up a dozen planes over UK and US cities with explosive devices smuggled aboard as hand luggage.

Police are have arrested 20 people in London - the culmination of a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months.

Passengers trying to board international flights from the UK are not being allowed to carry on normal hand luggage.

No hand luggage - that's going to cramp some styles. And if they are doing that now, then it doesn't sound like they are completely convinced that they have thwarted this whole thing.

posted by blaster at 02:27 AM | Comments (0)

Lieberman loses. Maybe he runs Independent, maybe he wins again. Doesn't really matter either way. He is one of the few Democrats who actually seem to understand the necessity to fight the war on terror, but it wasn't like he was swaying the debate on anything. Lamont will be just another millionaire in the Senate. Don't know that there is any larger meaning. I guess you can't say Kos has never won one any more, so that's something.

But Lieberman's loss or win as and Independent really doesn't mean anything for Republicans or conservatives.

Variations on a theme from Stanley Kurtz at NRO. Noted while reading Argghhh!

Evidently Lileks is picking up the same vibe. Preach it brother passage:

Thirty years of hearing Death to the Great Satan, however, hasn’t left the average American mad. It’s left them bored. It's left them disinterested in the final consequences to the societies in which the chanting mobs appear. They don’t care. And as I said, that may have more injurious consequences than Disappointed Engagement or Active Animus. The former leads to withdrawal; the latter leads to rash plans quickly nixed when the anger cools.

A nation that no longer cares about what happens Over There is a nation, I think, that has already made its peace, however subconsciously, with a horrible conclusion.

I am amazed that this has come to pass. I don't think that President Bush is the cause, but certainly the reaction to him is - but Iran is in the driver's seat on every important issue in the world right now. Oil prices? Act a little crazy, revenue just pours in. Non-proliferation? North Korea? Hizb'allah? Iraq?

On each of these issues, Iran is winning - and the world, apparently, is backing them.

I mean, for all the talk about how Bush is a crazed religious nut bent on war, when presented with the real thing, the world seems at best non-plussed. They excuse, or worse, condone, or even worse, support the positions of Iran. Cindy Sheehan is best buddies with Hugo Chavez who is best buddies with Ahmadinejad, and George W. Bush is the bad guy.

Is the world really that crazy?

Worse yet, the world is souring on freedom. Even NRO has gone South on it - read Rich Lowry's latest:

All around the chaotic and violent Middle East, human hearts are yearning for many things, but freedom isn’t high on the list.

That just sounds too much like the "Muslims can't handle freedom" crap that we've heard before, and I just don't buy it. They really can't handle fascism, and that is why we have seen the troubles there, not because they can't handle freedom. Syria and Iran, neither of which are free, are pushing Hizb'allah. Lebanon is mostly collateral damage in the exchange.

Worse, Lowry lights out after the President for being a Christian - and that means that he can't understand that other cultures cannot adapt to freedom. Hell, we shoulda just elected Kerry, I guess. What was that election about, anyway?

But I still don't buy the cultural arguments against handling freedom - we've heard it before in all sorts of settings, but the evidence is clear that it isn't so. What is the difference, culturally, between mainland China and Taiwan? North and South Korea? Venezuela and Argentina? Turkey and Syria?

Dude, the dishes are done.

A commenter, below, asks:

What did you think of Rick Santorum's 500 chemical shells? Real WMD's or safe to put under your kitchen sink?

I guess a good place to start is reviewing the story:

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.

Austin Bay had an ongoing roundup on the story.

First of all - they are not "Rick Santorum's 500 chemical shells." As far as I know, no US Senator has his own chemical weapons stoclkpile. These 500 shells belonged to the former Iraqi regime - Saddam Hussein. And the report of the weapons was not from Senator Santorum - it was from John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. Santorum's part, along with Representative Hoekstra, was in requesting that the report be declassified - and of course publicizing it once it was declassified.

That we have recovered that many might seem susprising, since, according to the press, Iraq had no chemical weapons. But of course that wasn't true at all, that there were no chemical weapons in Iraq. A story on the final Duelfer report contained this passage:

In all, U.S. forces have recovered 53 decaying chemical-filled shells or artillery rockets that apparently were looted from unguarded ammunition bunkers or other sites.

As of October 2004, we had some number of chemical weapons that were recovered, and in May 2004 there was a chemical round used as an IED against US troops, so that whole "Saddam didn't have any WMD" line is bunk, and has been bunk, all along. When the number was 53, it could be dismissed as a "few dozen" shells. A little harder to dismiss hundreds of chemical weapons. But of course they do, just now they are "outdated." Were they "safe to put under your kitchen sink?" I dunno, you try it first, and let me know. Undoubtedly some of the 500 weapons were harmless enough, and some were obviously very dangerous. The range goes from a rusty and empty shell with traces of a chemical filler (it had leaked out), to a complete and functional binary sarin shell. The distribution on that range is unknown.

It of course makes for a number of other further interesting questions. One of the ways this story is dismissed is that Senator Santorum - who is facing a tough reelection campaign - announced this - why didn't the administration announce it, if it can so obviously shut up the "No WMD" crowd? Why not announce it in October 2004, when it could have helped Bush's reelection?

Of course, these are people who do politicize intelligence, so they expect everyone else to do so.

And when you consider that, those questions answer themselves. If, in October 2004, the administration had announced that 500 weapons had been recovered, wouldn't they have been accused of politicizing intelligence, perhaps of making it up or planting the weapons? Would it have shut down the "no WMD" folks? Obviously not, because they still exist, after this revelation.

But why doesn't the administration use information like this to refute the lies instead of just letting them linger, to become accepted truth? Why has the intel community sat on this information for years?

I'll go back to what I've written before - WMD in Iraq have been systematically downplayed, not hyped up. And there is no clearer evidnce that this is correct than this story. The intelligence community has bottled this information up. This was forced out of classification, and there is still more classified that we do not know. I don't know why it would be classified, or remain classified - I can't see protection of sources and methods here - we obviously had a public effort to recover Iraqi WMD - and I can't see the tactical intelligence value. I have posted a grand theory on why we downplay this stuff before, but I still don't see how it all comes together. Perhaps one day we'll really know what is going on.

Is if we let them win. Cliff May at NRO explains exactly how we are doing that.

One reason that the Washington Examiner felt it necessary to editorialize for winning is that it doesn't appear that we - and here I mean the West, as it is ill-defined - are not at this point in time. Rich Lowry at NRO:

At the same time that terrorist insurgents around the world are spectacularly demonstrating their depravity, the West has acted to give them more rights and to tie its own hands with unrealistic expectations of strictly limiting collateral damage. The Supreme Court has granted Geneva Convention protections to al Qaeda, part of a push to wipe out any moral and legal differences between civilized armies and terrorist bands. The outcry over Qana is directed entirely toward Israel by the “international community,” rewarding Hezbollah for deliberately endangering civilians.

Down this road is defeat for the West, and victory for the only people in the world hoping for more Qanas.