Al Qaeda is worried about infiltraters. Yeah, well good. I read that one of the ways we combatted Abu Nidal was by preying on his paranoia. We would openly send agents to meet with his lieutenants, and offer them huge sums of cash. They would turn it down, but Abu Nidal wouldn't believe it and whack them anyway. I hope we are "getting inside their decision loop." (Link via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Islamic Jihad has trouble, too. (Link via The Greatest Jeneration.) Good.

Cracker Barrel Philosopher points to a couple of good stories. Best quote:

As one Marine put it, this was the perfect war. "They want to die, and we want to kill them."

Actually pretty good. Tom McClintock and Cruz Bustamante seem to know the most about the mechanics of the government - they know all the wonk stuff, bills by number, etc. Not surprizing, since they are in the government. Doesn't necessarily mean they have the best answers, though. Arianna Huffington seems to be running against President Bush, and throws out negative barbs to Arnold. Bustamante basically called Arnold stupid a couple of times. McClintock sounds pretty good. And, the thing people were waiting for, what is Arnold like? Well, he sounds good, too. He's not stupid, he has some good answers. Then there is the Green Party candidate - he is getting mostly lost in the noise. Peter Camejo is not a wild haired, wild eyed nut. His ideas are not going to go anywhere - single payer health care, increasing taxes, etc.

Anyone who says this process is a corruption of democracy should see these people on the stage. I don't know that I have seen a Green candidate and an independent on the stage with the 2 major parties before (I am sure in other states that this happened, but I haven't seen it.) Obviously California needs a change. It may be a circus, but at least its a good circus.

Mission Compromised. It was, well, okay. The characterization was simplistic (if the character was fat, you knew they were also evil). The score settling with the Clinton administration, and other notables in the Oliver North universe, was ham-fisted. But when the main action got going in the last third of the book, it was a pretty good read.

I guess none of that is really surprising, but there were some surprises. Surprising, to me anyway, was the very strong theme of Christianity running through the book. And that there were some pretty sloppy parts that should have been cleaned up by the editors - some continuity and sequencing problems, and one major anachronism caused by the ham-fisted score settling (a negative reference to Desert Fox, which took place in 1998, though the events in the book are in 1995).

Also kind of strange was North's introduction of himself as a character. The main character, a Marine LTC who is head of the Special Projects Office for the White House seems as if he should be the proxy for North in the book, but North himself plays that role. It seems that North is trying to tell a story about himself, fictionalizing it so that secrets are not really revealed. But it is hard to determine what that story really is. It could just be out and out fiction, and that twist provided just to provoke more interest in the fiction, but it just doesn't seem that way.

Charles Schumer is making sense. Charles Schumer.

"I fully support the teaching and worship of Islam in the military, but I think it is common sense that the groups in charge of vetting people don't have links to terrorism and are fundamentally pluralistic," Schumer told reporters.

When Schumer is less PC than the Army, one has to wonder.

Also, in further Bizarro events, the Kofi Annan speech that I thought sounded pro-US sounded to Sean Hannity like it was bashing the US. The BBC says it, too. But it sounded to me that it was a rebuke not of the US acting without UN authority, but a chiding of the UN for not providing the US the legitimacy for what needed to be done. This is the part that makes me think that:

Annan cautioned the world body must face up to the concerns of countries that feel "uniquely vulnerable" to a threat because that's what will drive them to "unilateral action."

He said the United Nations has come to a fork in the road and must meet its responsibilities and decide how it will deal with "perceived threats."

PS - what Schumer is making sense about is this:

Officials said Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information about suspected al Qaeda detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base on his laptop computer.

Wow, talk about your dull political speeches. I think he is blowing an opportunity, here. Not sure why he is taking this time to talk about sex tourism. Sure, it is a problem. But I don't see that the kind of talk that will win the French to our side.

I guess his overall point, as he is winding up, here, is that there are many moral issues that require the UN to take action. And the UN isn't doing it, not just on Iraq, but the other ones as well.

Maybe I am not listening closely enough, but it sounds to me like Kofi Annan, in his speech before President Bush's, is on our side.

I am listening more closely now.

The new Mark Steyn column, where he notes what everyone else does about the Democratic candidates:

And the net result of this media onslaught? According to a poll in the Washington Post, 69 percent of Americans think Saddam was involved in 9/11.

According to all the experts, that's the one thing that absolutely isn't true: Oh, no, they've assured us, there's absolutely no connection between Saddam and terrorism; why, he's ''secular,'' they're ''fundamentalist,'' and ne'er the twain shall meet, etc.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans beg to differ. You may say that just shows what a bunch of morons they are, which is fine and dandy if you're a Fleet Street hack or a European foreign minister. But it's not a viable position for a Democratic Party candidate. Unfortunately, the Dems need a good third of that moron vote if they're not to be humiliated at the polls next November.

Besides, who are the real morons here? According to another poll in the last week, 70 percent of Iraqis are optimistic about the future. Egged on by their media pals, the Democrats have somehow managed to wind up on the wrong side of 70 percent of both the U.S. and Iraqi electorates, cut off in the corner reserved for wimps, defeatists, Eurosophists and Halliburton-planned-9/11 conspirazoids.

You know: RTWT.

I think David Warren coined the term "flypaper" for what is going on in Iraq right now, and it has definitely stuck. Probably Andrew Sullivan is its strongest proponent right now. No less a light than Thomas Friedman agrees. It even made the front page of the Washington Post.

The general idea of the "flypaper" theory is that we have gone into Iraq and the mass of the US military is a tremendous piece of bait for the bad guys, who come and attack and get killed instead of killing civilians. Iraq attracts terrorists, who get stuck there.

But why does this work? I noted earlier that the war in Iraq followed the principles of Sun Tzu. One thing that he wrote that applies to the flypaper: "Seize what he values, and he will do what you wish." This isn't just Iraq, but the whole war on terror.

Clausewitz isn't left out, either. What we have done with Iraq is to make it the "central battle in the war on terror." The CENTCOM generals have called it that, as has Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, and the President himself. Having a central battle is important, to Sun Tzu, and to Clausewitz. One of the things that military strategists look for is the "center of gravity," somewhere that the military can focus on and destroy in order to win the war. The whole problem with a war on terror is that the terrorist organizations are decentralized in their locations, their command, and their support, so there wasn't a center of gravity. Thus, we had to create the conditions or a center of gravity - and we did it in Iraq. This is how Army Field Manual 100-5, Operations, describes the center of gravity:

Center of Gravity. The center of gravity is the hub of all power and movement upon which everything depends. It is that characteristic, capability, or location from which enemy and friendly forces derive their freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. Several traditional examples of a potential center of gravity include the mass of the enemy army, the enemy’s battle command structure, public opinion, national will, and an alliance or coalition structure. The concept of a center of gravity is useful as an analytical tool to cause the joint commander and his staff to think about their own and the enemy’s sources of strength as they design the campaign and determine its objectives.

The essence of operational art lies in being able to mass effects against the enemy’s main source of power—his center of gravity, which he seeks to protect. At any given time, however, a center of gravity may not be immediately discernible. For example, the center of gravity might concern the mass of enemy units, but that mass might not yet be formed. Additionally, the center of gravity may be abstract, such as the enemy’s national will or an alliance structure, or concrete, such as strategic reserves, C2, or industrial bases and LOCs.

The Iraqi Republican Guard is a good example. Although not located in Kuwait, it was the real source of power necessary for Iraq to hold that country. The destruction of the Republican Guard was seen as the center of gravity for achieving the strategic goal of removing the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The eventual destruction of elements of the Republican Guard in the Kuwaiti theater of operations led to the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and limited their capability to return. The initial analysis of the enemy’s center of gravity requires constant reappraisal during both planning and execution. It may develop or change during the course of the campaign.

And that, in essence, is how the flypaper strategy works - it creates a main source of power where we can "mass effects." It gives us central position in the region, bordering Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran, and gives us freedom of action to operate without the constraints that operating out of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait might.

That is precisely what is happening right now in Iraq. And it wasn't by accident, it was by design.

Bring 'em on.