Category: The Dish

"Liquids". That’s, to me, the most interesting aspect of the foiled terror plot in London. Why liquids? What were these weapons? One possibility is hydrogen cyanide. Ron Suskind’s book revealed the terrorist breakthrough in a device called a "mubtakkar" that can be easily concealed in a carry-on bag and once detonated, kills everyone in a confined space within minutes. It’s a variant of the Zyklon B innovated by the Nazis. Money quote:

U.S. intelligence got its first inkling of the plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. It contained plans for a gas-dispersal system dubbed "the mubtakkar" (Arabic for inventive). Fearing that al-Qaeda’s engineers had achieved the holy grail of terror R&D ‚Äî a device to effectively distribute hydrogen-cyanide gas, which is deadly when inhaled ‚Äî the CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured design, which comprised two separate chambers for sodium cyanide and a stable source of hydrogen, such as hydrochloric acid. A seal between the two could be broken by a remote trigger, producing the gas for dispersal. The prototype confirmed their worst fears: "In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot ‚Äî and then kill everyone in the store."

The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney the following morning, prompting the President to order that alerts be sent through all levels of the U.S. government. Easily constructed and concealed, the device ensured that mass casualties would be inevitable if it could be triggered in any enclosed public space.

I wonder if this was the intended device for the U.S-U.K. airplanes. Think of them as having the smallness and ubiquity of an iPod, but with the impact of an instant gas-chamber. It’s their iGod. Sending them to paradise and the rest of us to oblivion.

"You can always count on the judiciary to make stupid rulings. Not only stupid, but dangerous," – Tom DeLay, the kind of corrupt, power-hungry politician who despises courts, and the system of checks and balances the Founders intended. Notice that this remark came after a decision backed by Scalia. These Republicans are not just after "activist" judges; they’re after any check on their power.

This excellent piece is by my long-time opponent on marriage issues, Stanley Kurtz. But I find myself in grim agreement with him on the war:

If you are willing to kill yourself — if you are willing even to impoverish, immiserate, and let die much of your country, you can accomplish a great deal. Hezbollah’s gains in its war with Israel stem from its ability to define success as mere survival, even as the country around it is destroyed. This is no mere clever public-relations spin, but the reflection of a profound reality: the growing independence of terrorist organizations from states, and the willingness of Islamist terrorists to sacrifice all in pursuit of fundamentally non-material goals. With military success (accurately) framed as the near-complete destruction of terrorist forces, decisive military victory is virtually defined out of existence.

Kurtz is way too soft on the Administration for making our problems much worse with their botched Iraq invasion. He cites "our inability to pacify Iraq." It was, in fact, a decision not to pacify Iraq, made by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush ‚Äî overruling all good military advice. But that’s the past. The future is grim. Until the Arab Muslim world lets go of its refusal to embrace modernity and its rigid, honor-bound defense of the most extreme version of Islam, we will have to fight a long grueling war, in which I fear some nuclear or WMD exchange is inevitable. We will lose many many more civilians. Kurtz goes on:

[T]he entire Western world now stands in a position roughly analogous to that of Israel: locked in an essentially permanent struggle with a foe it is impossible either to placate, or to entirely destroy — a foe who demands our own destruction, and whose problems are so deep they would not be solved even by victory.
We can leave Iraq, as the Israelis left Lebanon. But we’ll likely be back, there or somewhere else, before long. Some say our army should wait among the Kurds, striking selectively in the rest of Iraq, only when al Qaeda returns. That’s a plan. Yet its likely to end up where Israel is in Lebanon, especially if al Qaeda starts kidnapping American soldiers with cross-border raids into the "Kurdish entity."
Meanwhile, short of a preemptive war, Iran is bound to get the bomb.

And that’s when it gets truly scary.

A reader suggests:

Not only is the environment a conservative concern, it has its own anthem by (who else?) Lynyrd Skynyrd: "All I Can Do Is Write About It."

"Well this life that I’ve led has took me everywhere
There ain’t no place I ain’t never gone
But its kind of like the saying that you heard so many times
Well there just ain’t no place like home
Did you ever see a she-gator protect her young
Or a fish in a river swimming free
Did you ever see the beauty of the hills of Carolina
Or the sweetness of the grass in Tennessee
And Lord I can’t make any changes
All I can do is write ’em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin’
Lord take me and mine before that comes

Do you like to see a mountain stream a-flowin’
Do you like to see a young ‘un with his dog
Did you ever stop to think about, well, the air you’re breathin’
Well you better listen to my song
And Lord I can’t make any changes
All I can do is write ’em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin’
Lord take me and mine before that comes

I’m not tryin’ to put down no big cities
But the things they write about us is just a bore
Well you can take a boy out of ol’ Dixieland
But you’ll never take ol’ Dixie from a boy
And Lord I can’t make any changes
All I can do is write ’em in a song
I can see the concrete slowly creepin’
Lord take me and mine before that comes
‘Cause I can see the concrete slowly creepin’
Lord take me and mine before that comes"

Larkin’s "Going, Going" is the English version:

… It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn’t going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts —
First slum of Europe: a role
It won’t be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won’t be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

Mexico City, 6.12pm.

A military reader writes:

From my sources, Ricks is leaving a lot of the internal Pentagon and US Army politics out of the picture. And if that internal politics is considered you get a bigger picture of what the criticism of Rummy and Bush are getting from Retired US Army Officers.

Many retired US Army Flag Grade Officers have truly been upset about a number of reforms that the Bush Administration have pursued, prior to and after 9-11.  Mostly their complaints have been restructuring of the US Army from a force capable of fighting the Cold War scenario to a force capable of fighting an asymmetrical war (i.e. taking on terrorists and guerilla forces). The canceling of the Crusader Artillery system and other budget cuts really pissed those guys off at Rummy and Bush. Then on top of that Shinseki retires when they were hoping he‚Äôd get another two years at being Chief of Staff of the US Army (Shinseki was the point man with Congress to try and block some of these initiatives). That was just the first shoe to drop.

Number Two was the calling out of retirement of the current COS Gen. Peter Schoomaker to replace Shinseki. Schoomaker is a Special Forces type that was/and is ready to think in different ways to develop the US Army.

Number Three, Special Operations Command is upgraded to be on par with the other CINC‚Äôs (i.e. Southern, Central, etc.). The Armor, Artillery, Aviation, Paratroopers and Infantry communities (considered conventional commands) in the US Army now have another force to reckon with in getting promotions, coveted positions and such.  That was a real knock down to those communities.

Number Four was Gen. James Jones, USMC (formerly Commandant of the Marine Corps and should have been retired) gets to be The Supreme Allied Commander Europe.  "Whoa, a Marine as SACEUR, that‚Äôs our baby!"  Another smack down to the conventional commands in the US Army.

Number Five, Gen. Peter Pace, USMC now becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In what should have been the US Army‚Äôs turn to hold that job.   

Getting the picture? Times are a changing and the army ain‚Äôt adapting too well to it.  Therefore all the criticism of Rummy early this year and last was mostly from retired US Army types (Zinni is the exception and well he may have a few of his own personal reasons). And of the ones I can recall speaking out certainly weren‚Äôt Special Forces types.

Now I hope that this gives you a little more insight into what has been going on. If Ricks was a little more forthcoming in his descriptions of the politics … which I can‚Äôt believe he is unaware of … then maybe we could make a more measured opinion of the criticism being lashed out at Rummy and Bush.

Disclosure time: I am a former Marine, member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a believer in the GWOT since 1983. Lebanon and Hezbollah … bring back any memories?

I’m glad to have this perspective as well. But the overwhelming weight of the military criticism of Rumsfeld ‚Äî and the private criticism is far more voluminous and vituperative than the public stuff ‚Äî is simply that this war has been run incompetently, with contempt for military expertise and without any rational relationship between paltry means and grandiose ends. We also have the evidence in Iraq on the ground: "fiasco’ is the only term that sums it up. Yes, there are other agendas here: the army against Rumsfeld, the CIA against Cheney, and so on. But there are also the results. They speak for themselves.

Mel Gibson’s "Signs (of Anti-Semitism)". It’s not like he didn’t warn us …

The next generation of soldiers will not tolerate the bigotry and unfairness and stupidity of the ban on openly gay soldiers. Firing 55 Arab linguists because of the gender of the people they fall in love with is a way to lose a war, not win it. Here’s another sign of the times: an award-winning essay at West Point by a cadet who opposes the policy. Money quote:

"I love the Army and I think that this is hurting the Army," said Raggio, 24, in an interview this week from his new military post at Fort Riley, Kan. "I see it as my obligation to say ‘I don’t agree with what you’re doing.’ I’m not being insubordinate ‚Äî I just think we’re making a mistake here."

And so they are. And one day, when bigots don’t run the GOP, the mistake will be rectified.

A Connecticut reader writes:

I disagreed with Lieberman on Iraq, I disagreed with him on the bankruptcy bill and on social security (I give some slack for cloture on Alito) and most especially when he scolded any Democrats who would criticize Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq. That last really set my skin on edge, when a pol sets himself up as the arbiter of what is or is not acceptable in political speech it seems to me they arrogate a bit too much power to themselves.

But the day I knew that I would vote for Lamont was the day that Lieberman started to criticize the voters for daring to vote against him, setting the primary up in effect as a litmus test as to whether [his alleged] deviation from Democratic orthodoxy would be permitted, whether the Democrats were still tolerant of free-thinkers. First, it was an obvious lie ‚Äî many Democrats supported the war in Iraq and some still do. But second, it was Lieberman  attempting to tell us, the voters, the basis on which we should vote. Setting himself up as indispensable (someone should remind him of De Gaulle’s line about the cemeteries being full of irreplaceable men) and stating the terms on which his defeat would have to be evaluated.

The sheer preening self-righteousness and arrogance of this was staggering. Is this really how the man thinks? This is the guy whose great asset is "character?" And then to see the Washington Democratic Party rally around him and this argument. What do they think they are, the Central Committee of some authoritarian party that determines the list of candidates for whom voters are allowed to cast a rubber stamp ballot?

And listening to Lieberman’s speech last night ‚Äî "carry on for the good of the country" ‚Äî was to hear a man who has so conflated his career with public policy that I thank God that someone so mendaciously delusional was never a heartbeat away from the presidency.

I voted for Lieberman in the past. He has become a walking testimony to the need for term limits.