The Dish

It may well happen in Europe and it may well look like this:

Ms. Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. They had 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, which they had hidden and were preparing to move when they were arrested on Tuesday afternoon. Officials said they also had military grade detonators. German and American officials said that such indicators made them suspect connections to Al Qaeda.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office, said, calling the links to Al Qaeda "close." German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests, which they said were the fruits of a six-month investigation involving 300 people from the police and prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday, police raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

Congrats to the Germans. Some obvious points: these men are educated, two of three are German nationals, all seem to have been trained not in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a putative ally. It is hard to see how the Iraq war – whether a failure or a success – would have any impact on this tiny cell’s attempt at mass murder in the name of God. This is simply the religious violence we have to contend with for the indefinite future. All we can do is what the Germans did: keep up surveillance (with protections against abuse), and run as many to ground as we can.

(Photo: German security officials lead one of three terrorist suspects from a helicopter to Karlsruhe’s federal court 05 September 2007. By Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty.)

"Under the circumstances, Petraeus’ strategy amounts to fueling several of Iraq’s main conflicts," – Matt Yglesias.

"The truth is I don’t know Larry Craig. And it’s possible he is everything some say he is. But they say it without facts. Is that moral? When the news of Craig’s bathroom encounter first broke, I thought Craig must have been involved in a Pee Wee Herman moment — or something. But he didn’t even touch himself, let alone the officer in any sexually overt way. He didn’t expose himself. Hell, he was in a bathroom stall. And neither he nor the officer exchanged a single word about having sex. In fact, Craig never said a word. In the end, what we have here is a shoe touch … or was it a tap? That, along with his hand on the divider between the stalls and something or other was, we are told, code for soliciting sex. It seems to me that the officer should have taken the sting operation at least one more step, no? Wasn’t he a little premature in flashing his badge when he did?" – Mark Levin, arch-social conservative defending a man in a gay sex sting.

One of the big alleged successes of the surge is much more tenuous than it might appear. Money quote:

[T]he Dora market is a Potemkin village of sorts. The U.S. military hands out $2,500 grants to shop owners to open or improve their businesses. The military has fixed windows and doors and even helped rebuild shops that had burned down, soldiers and others said.

"We helped them a lot. We gave them money, security, even the locks on their doors," said a 36-year-old Iraqi interpreter at the outpost whom U.S. soldiers call Jimmy for security reasons. He asked that his real name not be used. "Everything we gave them. That’s why the violence has stopped. That’s why they cooperate with us."

Some shopkeepers said they would not do business in the market without U.S. support. "The Americans are giving money, so they’re opening up stores," said Falah Hassan Fadhil, 27, who sells cosmetics.

Buying temporary security is not the same as Iraqis providing it themselves. But in the security field,
"Iraqis" don’t exist. Sunni tribes, Shiite militias and Kurdish parties are not an Iraqi government, and certainly not a national security force.

Craig’s voicemail does not sound like that of a traumatized or rattled figure to me. Is denial that deep? Or is power merely that addictive? Of course, some pols just know how to brazen out a toughie. To wit:

Ambers has it. Completely content-free blather. Which is not exactly what he needs to reassure us about at this point.

A flying car is here at last. The Guardian has more details.

They had the goods on Bush’s Iraq exit strategy two years ago.

Hugh Hewitt has had a slight adjustment in his view of the Craig affair. Yesterday, he pronounced that the distinction between the cases of David Vitter and Larry Craig was entirely a function of one pleading guilty to a misdemeanor and the other never being actually arrested or convicted by law enforcement for procuring prostitutes. This distinction is of Sesame-Street comprehension level, according to Hewitt. Now glance back at Hewitt’s first explanation for why Craig had to resign forthwith:

I realize that I did not say this about Senator Vitter, but Craig’s behavior is so reckless and repulsive that an immediate exit is required.

Repulsive. That’s not a legal term last time I checked.

It seems to be far harder than for other kinds of immigrants. Islam really is a totalist religion/ideology. It abhors the West and its spiritual and intellectual freedom so deeply that even two generations on, many Muslim immigrants remain unassimilated in Western culture. At least that’s what a new study from Europe finds. Money quote:

Using the UK Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, we explore the determinants of religious identity for Muslims and non-Muslims. We find that Muslims integrate less and more slowly than non-Muslims. A Muslim born in the UK and having spent there more than 50 years shows a comparable level of probability of having a strong religious identity than a non-Muslim just arrived in the country. Furthermore, Muslims seem to follow a different integration pattern than other ethnic and religious minorities. Specifically, high levels of income as well as high on-the-job qualifications increase the Muslims’ sense of identity. We also find no evidence that segregated neighborhoods breed intense religious and cultural identities for ethnic minorities, especially for Muslims. This result casts doubts on the foundations of the integration policies in Europe.

The PDF is here.