Standing in Awe of Iran - delivering unbroken eggs!

Yes, a long one but some interesting articles and thoughts.

No unemployment for terrorists with al Qaeda. (See 1 below.)

Liberals love to dump on Karl Rove but he is one of the more astute analysts and has posed some very thought provoking questions, for anyone with an objective mind, to ponder. (See 2 below.)

Even the associate editor of "The Oregonian" has some doubts about Obama's instincts and judgement but the liberals out there adore Obama.

I would appear to me the press and media want the most the Democrats to nominate their most liberal candidate and this is why they leaped frog Hillary and embraced Obama. (See 3 below.)

Victor Davis Hanson on what it takes to become a general and what becoming one might reveal about our military. (See 4 below.)

President Bush and a State Department spokesman put the best face on Hezballah's take over of Lebanon by stating it avoided a civil war. In fact it was a rousing defeat for the West and our diplomatic initiatives and no amount of sweeping it under the Oval Office Rug will alter that fact. (See 5 below.)

Olmert tries to allay concerns regarding Israeli concessions to Syria regarding The Golan. The U.S. and Israel seems to be on the same page for now. (See 6 below.)

More speculation about an Iranian response should Israel attack.

The fastest way to separate Syria from Iran is to destroy Iran's military and nuclear capability. A new paper soon to be released suggests Iran's ability to respond is questionable. Something I have said consistently. Standing in awe of Iran turns us into a pitiful giant.

The same was true about Russia. Yes, Russia could launch missiles but they could not deliver unbroken eggs to stores yet, many in The State Department remained frightened of Russia.(See 7 below.)

I am off limits, my wife is off limits. Just accept us without question because we are the change artists America needs so badly. (See 8 below.)

According to Marc Sheppard, Al Gore dribbled his birthday wishes to Israel. (My advice to those in the Middle east and all over the world is stop drinking water and washing your car! Makes about asa much sense as what we hear from Al.)(See 9 below.)

Netanyahu questions Olmert's moral right to negotiate with Syria.

Olmert has every right to negotiate with Syria and Israelis have every right to throw him out of office. Questioning Olmert's moral right is one thing and a thin basis for disagreement. Believing Olmert is not morally fit to lead is something else. The latter does not prevent Olmert from carrying out his policies as he sees fit as long as he heads the government.

Netanyahu's argument against Olmert is the same one many made against Clinton who carried out some questionable policies allegedly to shift public attention away from his "Blue Dress" grief. President Clinton had every right to conduct the affairs of government as long as he remained president - questionable as they may have been and amoral as he was and is. (See 10 below.)

Beware of Israeli spinologists. Beware of spinologists everywhere! (See 11 below.)

Article pertaining to possible McCain Veep! (See 11 below.)

In yesterday's WSJ, Paul Ryan had an excellent op ed piece entitled: "How To Tackle the Entitlement Crisis." Though I believe the word "crisis" is so overworked it has become self-defeating but we are facing some very serious problems. Ryan proposed these solutions:

Health Insurance - Universal access by shifting from government and employer to individual and offering a tax refund of some amount. He proposed $9500 for tho0se currently 55 when they retire and those now in the system and above 55 will remain in the current system. The program would be portable and could be purchased from any company regardless of state lines.

Social Security - give workers under 55, the option of investing 1/3rd of current contributions to personal retirement accounts. This account is owned and fully inheritable. A guarantee is made to assure those who opt our receive no less retirement benefits than if they remained in the system. (I see a potential problem here because people could speculate on the assumption they have nothing to lose. Sort of like the speculative home buyer who wants the government to make him whole. On the other hand I never understood why liberals oppose allowing people to invest in our nation through stock ownership. Special investment accounts could be established to resolve this possible problem.)

Tax Reform - Give taxpayers option of moving to a simplified tax code with two brackets 10% up to $100M and 25% above. Offer $39M exemption for family of four, eliminate tax on capital gains,dividends and estates and reduce corporate rate, or staying with current system.

These proposals provide options, are a sound basis for a rational discussion, are simple, take the government out of the equation but coming from a Republican Congressman, they have little chance of being considered. So let the crisis begin and it surely will give time.

Dick



1) Moroccan Arrests and the Security of Militant Recruiters
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Moroccan security services recently dismantled an 11-member militant jihadist network that operated in the cities of Fez and Nador, the official Moroccan government news agency Maghreb Arabe Press (MAP) reported May 19.

According to the report, the network was involved in recruiting young men to fight in Iraq and had also allegedly sent recruits to train in camps run by al Qaeda’s franchise, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in neighboring Algeria.

The recent crackdown follows a string of similar arrests in Morocco in the wake of the Casablanca suicide attacks in 2003. These countermeasures, including an arrest in February of 35 alleged militants with ties to AQIM, have thrown jihadist militants in Morocco off balance. The arrests also underscore the difficulty jihadists face when recruiting in a country where infiltration efforts by the local security service are aggressive.

But authorities are not the only ones with resources. The latest edition of an Islamist online magazine called Sada al-Jihad (Echo of Jihad), published by the Global Islamic Media Front, provides readers with 10-pages of instructions outlining security measures jihadist recruiters can implement when operating in a place with an aggressive — and hostile — intelligence service, such as Morocco.

The fact that this type of detailed instructional material is provided to a worldwide audience over the Internet is truly disturbing. But the material itself is enlightening in many respects, especially in how it points to a number of shortcomings in the jihadist recruitment efforts while underscoring the vulnerabilities the jihadists perceive among authorities.
A Cautious Approach

Morocco is not the only country where jihadist recruiters face arrest. Over the past year, hundreds in Saudi Arabia have been apprehended and charged with recruiting militants and facilitating their travel to places such as Iraq to fight. In truth, we can say with some certainty that not all of those arrested were guilty, given the way the Saudi government works. However, the security measures do underscore the prevalence (and therefore problem) of jihadist recruiters in the kingdom.

Recruitment is also not isolated to the Middle East or South Asia. In fact, it is a global phenomenon that operates even where local intelligence forces are hostile to jihadists — such as Europe and North America, where arrests of terror facilitators and financiers have occurred. However, recruiters in locations such as South Waziristan obviously do not face the same pressures and can recruit far more quickly and aggressively than they can in such cities as Casablanca or London.

Enter the author of the 10-page jihadist article from the Global Islamic Media Front. Essentially, the piece provides “practical advice” on how to recruit in a hostile environment. The article was ostensibly written by the Abu Zubaydah Center, an organization apparently named after a senior al Qaeda official who was captured in March 2002 and is currently being held in U.S. detention at Guantanamo Bay. Abu Zubaydah, whose actual name is Zayn al-Abidin Mohammed Husayn, is a Saudi by birth and believed to have been al Qaeda’s senior recruiter.

In addition to warning against physical threats posed by security agencies, the article notes another risk for recruiters — one of an ideological nature. Do not push too hard, it warns, or the jihadist ideology may be rejected. Therefore, the author recommends a gradual approach among recruiters for identifying, indoctrinating and eventually training and deploying recruits. In many ways, these tactics are similar to those undertaken by cults or even pedophiles who subtly “groom” young children in order to exploit them.

Indeed, the author suggests that recruiters target young men — luring them during impressionable adolescence when they are more likely to identify a recruiter as a father figure. Occasions such as funerals were proffered as perfect opportunities to initiate a relationship with a vulnerable target. Orphanages were suggested as particularly good places for recruitment. Orphans do not have family ties that could interfere with a recruiter’s intention, the article noted. Avoid mosques, the article suggests, as they may be under surveillance by the government. Schools, universities, bookstores, gyms and social clubs were all suggested as better alternatives for recruiters to operate.

In many ways, the information in this article jibes closely with an excellent study on radicalization in the West that was produced by the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division in 2007. That paper, based on an examination of the lives of militant jihadists, covered five attacks or disrupted plots in Amsterdam, Madrid, London, Toronto and Sydney. It discussed in some detail the vulnerabilities that can result from a personal crisis that would therefore lead a person to identify with radical ideology. Much of what the NYPD study mentioned about recruiters (called spiritual sanctioners) and the places recruiters operate (called radicalization incubators) is supported by the jihadist how-to.

In the jihadist piece, the need for operational security during the recruitment process was emphasized, as was the need to minimize any concrete connections between the different elements of the jihadist support network — whether between recruiting cells or through propaganda, fundraising or operational cells.

The emphasis on watching your back while recruiting was also highlighted in the series of careful checks the author suggested a recruiter conduct at each stage of the process in order to identify potential intelligence service plants. These tests were also helpful to ensure that the potential recruits were not only ideologically on board and obedient but ultimately capable of fulfilling their future mission.

According to the article, the ideological indoctrination process begins only when the recruiter feels certain that the candidate is suitable, that he is not a plant and that his identity, family and character have been authenticated through a series of tests.
Stepping Stones

Timing is everything in the recruiting game. First, the recruiter must plant the idea of jihad into the target’s mind at an opportune moment. Tools employed during these opportunities may include a news report used to demonstrate Western aggression against Islam, the suffering of Muslims or the corruption and repression of the regimes in the Muslim world. Such reports open the window for a discussion about the general subject of jihad and provide a chance for the recruiter to gauge the recruit’s response to the subject.

If the recruit responds positively and further shows interest in the topic or in the discussion of battles outlined in the Koran or in hadith or other significant battles in Muslim history, the recruiter may carefully proceed to the next step. This could include exposing the recruit to general jihadist propaganda such as a video. At this stage, the propaganda selected should not be too specific or traceable to a specific person or group, the article warns. The idea is to simply test the waters and see how the recruit responds.

The article’s treatment of jihadist propaganda, specifically video, underscores the importance of this influential medium to the recruitment effort — and of the Internet as an anonymous tool for dissemination. Video is a powerful emotional medium and recruiters should focus on moving images of jihad and jihadists in action rather than staid theological lectures about the subject of jihad, the article warns.

Each recruit should view the videos in isolation from other recruits, the article suggests. This is suggested not only for security reasons, but also so the recruiter can gauge the reaction of the recruit after a particularly emotional scene. The presence of others could temper or alter a recruit’s reaction. The author also recommends showing the video in the dark to enhance the emotional impact while providing the viewer a sense of freedom to express his emotions. This use of video to gauge responses and mold behavior is again somewhat similar to the approach taken by predatory pedophiles, many of whom will show pornographic videos to children they hope to groom.

Next, recruiters are encouraged in their undertaking to use Islamic religious texts concerning the duty of jihad. Passages that contain the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed are especially emphasized given that he is such a universally revered figure. At this stage, the recruiter is advised to avoid the influence of moderate religious teachings — those that reject Salifist jihadism — by focusing on the least contentious areas of Islam and those upon which all scholars agree. For example, the author notes that all scholars agree that jihad to liberate occupied Muslim land is an absolute duty. The more contentious areas can be dealt with later, after the recruiter has a greater emotional bond with the recruit and a higher degree of ideological trust has been established.

Other material that is encouraged includes that which emphasizes the ideal of the Islamic state under Shariah, or Islamic law; a Muslim’s duty to obey the emir; and the necessity to submit to Allah in all things. The recruiter may also begin discussing how Arab states and nationalist ideologies counter doctrine outlined in the Koran and the ideal Islamic state under Shariah.

As recruits progress ideologically and pass additional tests ensuring their physical and emotional preparedness for the tasks ahead, they may then begin to acquire physical skills necessary to participate in the jihad. These range from physical fitness and military training to media expertise, computer skills and secure communication techniques. As in earlier stages, operational security is prominently featured and recruits are trained to be cautious. The article emphasizes the importance of instructing recruits about methods used by security services and ways to avoid detection or revealing too much information if captured and interrogated.

In the final stage, the recruit is prepared to fight on the jihad front whether in their home country or abroad in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Even in this final stage, the author notes that recruits must not be rushed and that recruiters ensure their protege is motivated to fight by true religious conviction and not merely emotion. Fighters driven by emotion cannot withstand the pressure of combat and other hardships of jihad with the same conviction as religiously driven men, the article notes. Recruits who are unprepared or ill equipped to fight in active combat should be assigned to other tasks such as fundraising, recruitment, propaganda, arms smuggling or document fraud.

Many recruits who set out to fight return to their home country claiming they were dissuaded from believing that militancy was the only way to defend their faith, the article says. Others were unfit for combat because they refused to follow the orders of their emir without hesitation or question. The abundant anti-jihadist material on the Internet is often used as justification by those who return, but the article’s author believes these incidences stem from improper ideological preparation on the part of the recruiter. To avoid these failures, the recruiter must make certain that a recruit is aware of the intense material, physical and mental difficulties they will inevitability encounter on the path of jihad. The need for recruits to take security measures before and after departure for the jihad was again stressed.
Vulnerabilities

The article’s emphasis on the need for jihadist recruiters to protect themselves from apprehension clearly demonstrates that they are feeling pressure from the global war on terror and increased efforts by law enforcement and intelligence services who have adopted a pre-emptive and disruptive approach to counterterrorism. Since 9/11, several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have instituted laws allowing authorities to charge people conducting acts in preparation of terrorism. These laws allow authorities to act before an attack occurs.

Recruiters are also clearly concerned about the ability of governments working together to trace international networks that support jihadists. Therefore, the jihadists emphasize the need to operate in an isolated, cellular fashion while cutting all contacts or traceable threads binding the various cells together.

The article makes clear that recruiters are a critical component in the jihadists’ worldwide endeavors. Due to the effort and care required to successfully recruit and indoctrinate recruits in hostile environments, the arrest of a recruiter can significantly impact an organization’s ability. This is especially true if recruits are attracted to the cause because of a close personal relationship with the recruiter rather than the draw of the ideology, as the article asserts. Laws such as the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act of 2006 that criminalizes inciting or encouraging others to commit acts of terrorism should allow authorities the ability to attack this critical and vulnerable component of the jihadist network.

Ultimately, the article provides clear evidence that jihadist recruiters perceive they are under ideological pressure. This is perhaps the most important element in examining the true vulnerability that exists for recruiters. According to the article, jihadism on its own merits is a tough sell. In spite of the relentless global propaganda efforts by individuals such as Osama bin Laden, jihadism must still be camouflaged in order to make it palatable to many Muslims — even those who are impressionable and emotionally needy. This is a sign that the ideology of jihadism is not spreading as rapidly as some had hoped and others had feared. It is also an indication that perhaps the ideological war against jihadism is gaining some traction.

2) Obama's Troubling Instincts
By KARL ROVE


Barack Obama is ambling rather than sprinting across the primary-season finish line. It's not just his failure to connect with blue-collar Democrats. He has added to his problems with ill-informed replies on critical foreign policy questions.

On Sunday at a stop in Oregon, Sen. Obama was dismissive of the threats posed by Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria. That's the same Iran whose Quds Force is arming and training insurgents and illegal militias in Iraq to kill American soldiers; that is supporting Hezbollah and Hamas in violent attacks on Lebanon and Israel; and that is racing to develop a nuclear weapon while threatening the "annihilation" of Israel.

By Monday in Montana, Mr. Obama recognized his error. He abruptly changed course, admitting that Iran represents a threat to the region and U.S. interests.

Voters need to ask if Sunday's comments, not Monday's correction, aren't the best evidence of his true thinking.

Is Mr. Obama's first instinct to dismiss North Korea, the world's worst nuclear proliferator, as an insignificant threat? Is his immediate reaction to treat Venezuela as a wayward child, rather than as an adversary willing to destabilize the hemisphere? Is his memory so short he has forgotten the Castro brothers' willingness to aid revolutionary movements? Is he so shortsighted as to ignore the threat to Mideast stability that Syria's meddling in Lebanon and support for Hamas and Hezbollah represents?

Mr. Obama's Sunday statement grew out of a kerfuffle over his proclaimed willingness to meet – eagerly and without precondition – during his first year as president with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. On Monday, he said it was a show of confidence when American leaders meet with rivals; he insisted he was merely doing what Richard Nixon did by going to China.

I recommend that he read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqué worked out over months of careful diplomacy.

The Chinese didn't change because of a presidential visit. In another book, "Diplomacy," Mr. Kissinger writes that "China was induced to rejoin the community of nations less by the prospect of dialogue with the United States than by fear of being attacked by its ostensible ally, the Soviet Union." Change came because the U.S. convinced Beijing it was in its interest to change. Then the president visited.

The same is true with other successful negotiations. President Ronald Reagan prepared the ground for his meetings with a series of Soviet leaders by rebuilding the U.S. military, restoring confidence in American intentions, and pressuring the Soviets by raising the specter of a missile defense shield.

Reagan knew rogue states only change when they see there are real consequences of their actions, and when it is in their interest to change. This requires patience, vision, hard work and the use of all the tools, talents and relationships available to the U.S. We saw a recent example when Libya, fearful of American resolve after 9/11, gave up its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. These programs, incidentally, were more advanced than Western intelligence thought.

Reagan knew he must not squander the prestige of the American presidency and the authority of the United States by meaningless meetings that serve only as propaganda victories for our adversaries. Mr. Obama seems to believe charisma and smooth talk can fundamentally alter the behavior of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

But what might work on the primary campaign trail doesn't work nearly as well in Tehran. What, for example, does Mr. Obama think he can offer the Iranians to get them to become a less pernicious and destabilizing force? One of Iran's top foreign policy goals is a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. This happens to be Mr. Obama's top foreign policy goal, too. Why should Iran or other rogue states alter their behavior if Mr. Obama gives them what they want, without preconditions?

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said in Florida that in a meeting with the Iranians he'd make it clear their behavior is unacceptable. That message has been delivered clearly by Republican and Democratic administrations in public and private diplomacy over the past 16 years. Is he so naïve to think he has a unique ability to make this even clearer?

If Mr. Obama believes he can change the behavior of these nations by meeting without preconditions, he owes it to the voters to explain, in specific terms, what he can say that will lead these states to abandon their hostility. He also needs to explain why unconditional, unilateral meetings with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong Il will not deeply unsettle our allies.

If Mr. Obama fails to do so, voters may come to believe that he is asking them to accept that he has a "Secret Plan," and that he is hopelessly out of his depth on national security.

3) NUANCE OR CONFUSION?
By David Reinhard

I don't think Barack Obama favors appeasing our enemies, and it's beyond my understanding why he cried foul when President Bush spoke last week to the Israeli Knesset about the general folly of appeasement. After all, even if Obama is raring to sit down and chat up the globe's worst thugs without any preconditions, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll give in to their demands. Talking isn't appeasing.

We'll only know if Obama is an appeaser if he gets a chance to parley with the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba and North Korea and they have their way with him. Until then, we only know that Obama's parley-at-any-price policy has created "issues" for him. He's taken a position that other top Democrats think unwise, and he himself seems to realize is, at least, politically untenable. His "no preconditions" stand has also forced him to make statements that won't withstand scrutiny, or John McCain's attacks.

It began when Obama answered a YouTube/CNN debate question last July. "[W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?" His reply: "I would."

Hillary Clinton just as quickly pointed up some of the problems with his "no preconditions" stand -- she wouldn't want to be used for propaganda purposes or make things worse with these nations -- and John Edwards agreed with Clinton. In recent days, Democratic graybeards such as Sen. Joe Biden have parted company with Obama on this. Now, Obama says that preparations would, of course, be necessary, and his campaign talks about these nations' leaders having to meet benchmarks before sitting down with him. He likely has a nuanced exegesis of the difference between preconditions and preparation and benchmarks, but the latter two sure seem like preconditions, and this sure seems like a case of being for preconditions before you were against them.

In trying to talk his way out of his position, Obama's only made matters worse for himself. It began last week when he cited John F. Kennedy's sit-down with Nikita Khrushchev as a precedent: "When Kennedy met with Khrushchev," he said, "we were on the brink of nuclear war."

Uh, no, Senator, the brink of nuclear war came in the Cuban missile crisis more than a year later. In fact, Kennedy's weak performance in Vienna prompted the Soviet decision to put missiles in Cuba, which brought us to the brink of nuclear war.

In Portland on Sunday, Obama said Iran, Cuba and Venezuela "don't pose a serious threat to us" since they spend but one-one-hundredth of what we spend on our military. They're not like the Soviets. "If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us," he said, "they wouldn't stand a chance."

Never mind that the threat posed by terror-sponsoring nations like Iran or terrorist groups isn't their conventional military strength, but their ability and inclination to use unconventional weapons against stronger nations in this age of asymmetrical warfare. The next day in Montana, Obama said Iran posed "a grave threat." Grave? Not serious? Whatever.

Team Obama isn't even clear what its own candidate favors. Obama adviser Susan Rice told CNN that Obama never said he'd meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Israel-is-a-stinking-corpse-and-must-be-wiped-off-the-map fame. He only said he'd meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. An odd response in and of itself, but no sooner had she spoken then around came the YouTube video of Obama telling reporters last fall that he would meet with . . . Ahmadinejad.

None of this seems to matter to Obamaniacs, but it should to the rest us. It certainly makes it hard to conduct a real debate. Tuesday, for example, Obama chided McCain for misrepresenting his Cuba policy. "His charges aren't serious," Obama said. "That's the problem. I have never said that I was prepared to immediately normalize relations with Cuba."

But this is how Obama replied to a question on whether he supported normalization in a 2003 candidate's questionnaire: "Our longstanding policies toward Cuba have been a miserable failure."

It's starting to appear that a naive eagerness to talk with U.S. enemies without preconditions is only part of Barack Obama's problem.

4) Do We Still Have Grants and Shermans?
By Victor Davis Hanson

Who becomes a general -- and why -- tells us a lot about whether our military is on the right or wrong track. The annual spring list of Army colonels promoted to brigadier generals will be shortly released. Already, rumors suggest that this year, unlike in the recent past, a number of maverick officers who have distinguished themselves fighting -- and usually defeating -- insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chosen.

For example, scholar-soldier Col. H.R. McMaster, Special Forces Col. Ken Tovo and Col. Sean MacFarland -- all of whom helped turn Sunni insurgents into allies -- could, and should, make the cut.

These three colonels have had decorated careers in Iraq mastering the complexities of working with Iraqi forces in hunting down terrorists and insurgents. And they, like David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, in the past did not always reflect the Army establishment in Washington. Their unconventional views about counterinsurgency warfare do not hinge on high-tech weaponry, tanks, artillery and rapid massed advance.

But most wars are rarely fought as they were planned. During the fighting, those who adjust most quickly to the unexpected tend to be successful. And in almost all of America's past conflicts, our top commanders on the eve of war were not those who finished it.

Few in 1861 anticipated the carnage that would ensue in the American Civil War, in which massive armies collided with lethal new weapons -- and depended on industrial production, electronic communications and railroads.

Before the war broke out in 1861, the obscure U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman had failed at almost everything they had tried. But after the Union army was nearly wrecked by establishment generals like Ambrose Burnside, Henry Halleck, Joseph Hooker, George McClellan, John Pope and William Rosecrans (who were all wedded to the set style of Napoleonic warfare), President Lincoln turned to his two generals who best understood modern warfare.

On the eve of World War II, Gen. George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, promoted a series of junior officers -- Omar Bradley, J. Lawton Collins, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor -- while retiring senior generals he felt had little idea of the new warfare of armored vehicles, rapid mobility and close air support.

The Iraqi war is no exception. The brilliant and rapid invasion of Iraq in March and April 2003 required accomplished artillery and armor commanders -- quite unlike the subsequent insurgency.

The terrorist bands that sprung up during the occupation were at first dealt with through conventional tactics and weapons. Only as American and Iraqi losses mounted did a few gifted officers begin to work with the Iraqis, learn the elements of successful counterinsurgency doctrine and slowly win back the hearts and minds of the civilian population.

Now we will see whether the former mavericks can become incorporated into the military establishment. Will this wartime change in Pentagon thinking be enough -- and in time? It depends on how many of the forward-thinking colonels get promoted and how much influence they wield.

A newly ascendant Gen. Sherman captured Atlanta in time to save Lincoln the election of 1864, and with it the Union cause itself. The successful invasion of Normandy and subsequent race to the Rhine would have been unimaginable without Gens. Bradley, Eisenhower and Patton -- all unknown colonels as late as 1940. So far, a few largely unheralded colonels in Iraq have salvaged the American cause.

The significance in the promotions of an H.R. McMaster or a Sean McFarland to general is not that they represent the nature of all future American wars. In fact, it is easy to conceive how a blow-up in North Korea or Iran would require a return to conventional military assets of heavy armor, firepower and high-tech close air-ground support.

Instead, the issue is whether the military still remains flexible enough to find the right commanders for the right type of fighting at the right time -- and is preparing for all sorts of diverse scenarios in an increasingly competitive and unpredictable world.

A common complaint is that a worn-out military has lost the peace in Iraq and should withdraw in defeat. In fact, recruitments in June exceeded the military's goals, violence in Iraq is down, Shiite and Sunni terrorists are losing ground to the new military of a constitutional Iraq -- and the junior American outsiders who engineered all that may soon be seniors on the inside.

5)The power of Hezbollah: Though a political deal in Lebanon may avert civil war, it codifies the group's growing clout.
Los Angeles Times Editorial

Lebanon's factions appear to have halted a nascent civil war -- at least temporarily -- with an agreement struck Wednesday in Qatar between the Western-backed government of Fouad Siniora and the Syrian-backed Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah. But the peace deal cannot fairly be called a compromise. Hezbollah won That's the result of its stunning military victory earlier this month after the Lebanese army remained neutral as Hezbollah forces seized West Beirut and critical roads leading to Damascus. Siniora's government was forced to make serious military concessions to Hezbollah and to enter into talks brokered by Qatar, which has close ties to Syria.

Depending on one's ideology, the deal reflects a necessary acceptance of political and military reality, or it is a sickening defeat for the secular, democratic movement that began March 14, 2005, and ultimately kicked the Syrians out of Lebanon. Either way, it's a blow to the U.S., which has hailed the Cedar Revolution as a triumph of democracy and sent significant military aid to Lebanon in the hopes of preventing a Syrian comeback. Now it sees Hezbollah, a terrorist group that is in some ways more frightening than Al Qaeda, triumphing in Lebanon less than a year after Hamas took over Gaza.

In some ways, this outcome was inevitable. The Shiites had long been punching below their weight in Lebanese politics because of the inability of their spiritual leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, to translate his immense popularity and military strength into political power. Now he has. The deal gives Hezbollah veto power in the Cabinet in exchange for a pledge not to use its weapons to settle political disputes. Needless to say, it does not require Hezbollah to disarm, as a U.N. resolution toothlessly demanded.

However, by turning his guns on his own countrymen, something he said he would never do, Nasrallah has squandered much of the credibility he had earned among many Lebanese as the nation's premier resistance fighter against Israel. And therein lies hope that Nasrallah's command of the Lebanese Shiites could one day be challenged. Hezbollah would have had far more power in Lebanon by now if it had begun building its stake in the government years ago. Instead, it boycotted the Cabinet, held the parliament hostage, prevented the election of a new president and killed scores of people to demonstrate its military power. Now that it has gained the political leverage it longed for, will it use its clout to help unite and rebuild Lebanon?

Don't bet on it. Damascus and Tehran are likely to call the important shots, while Washington is left to ponder the meaning of yet another rout of one of its best Middle East allies by a popular but violent Islamist movement.

6) Olmert: Israel and Syria both know what they need to do for peace
By Zvi Bar'el


A day after warring neighbors Israel and Syria announced a renewal of peace talks after eight years, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Thursday that both sides know what they need to do for peace.

"The Syrians know what we want and we know what they want," Olmert told Kouchner.

Olmert told the French foreign minister that the talks with Syria would not detract from peace efforts on the Palestinian front, saying, "Israel intends to hold parallel peace talks [with the Palestinian Authority and Syria] without having one set of talks take precedence over the other."


Israel set terms for concluding a peace deal with Syria on Thursday, closing ranks with Washington in demanding Damascus distance itself from Iran and stop supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militants.

Syrian Information Minister Muhsin Bilal told Al Jazeera television on Thursday that Damascus had received guarantees from Israel via Turkey for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights and rejected conditions put forth for concluding a peace deal.

We received commitments and messages from the Israeli government and the Israeli prime minister that guarantee, via the Turks, that he knows what the Syrians want," Bilal said.

"He knows that the whole of the Golan Heights will be returned to Syria and that Israel will withdraw to the lines of 4 June 1967," he added added.

The Syrian minister also condemned Israel's setting of any prior conditions.

"These conditions have already been rejected as is the phrase 'difficult concessions' as what the Syrians are de demanding is their right," Bilal told Al Jazeera, in reference to a withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Olmert has not said publicly that Israel would give up all of the area.
But he has spoken of "difficult concessions" Israel would have to make in any land-for-peace accord with Syria and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said both sides would have to make "painful concessions."

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said Israel had shown that it might return the plateau. "Without this commitment we cannot conduct any negotiation," he told Reuters.

During his talks with Kouchner on Thursday, Olmert also said that Israel still hopes to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians by the end of 2008. He said that his meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and the meetings Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has held with top Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia, have been focused and serious.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, speaking in the West Bank, said he was not worried Israel would pursue peace with Syria at the expense of progress in the U.S.-brokered negotiations with the Palestinians.

"The concern is if the [Israeli-Palestinian] political process ... does not proceed at the pace necessary," Fayyad told reporters. "I hope other tracks are moving and moving well."

Livni: Syria must renounce support of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas

Earlier Thursday, Livni said that Syria must distance itself from Tehran and cut ties to Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas if wants to conclude a peace treaty with Israel.

"Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors but Syria also needs to understand that it needs also full renunciation of supporting terror - Hezbollah, Hamas and of course Iran," Livni said in English.

Continuing her remarks to reporters in Hebrew, Livni called Syria's ties with Iran "problematic", referring to the Israel's accusations that the Islamic Republic sponsors Hamas and Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

"The Syrians also need to understand that... they must distance themselves completely from their... problematic ties with Iran," she said in Hebrew before the start of a meeting with Kouchner.

Barak addressed the talks in public for the first time on Thursday, tempering high hopes by saying that the way to peace is long.

"The Syrians know that concessions are a two-way street, and the distance from here to a peace agreement is vast," Barak said, speaking at a ceremony of appreciation for Israel Defense Forces reservists at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

"Peace will come only from a position of power and security," the defense minister continued.

Vice Premier Haim Ramon, who also met with Kouchner, told him that while Israel is ready to make painful concessions for peace, an agreement won't be reached if Damascus continues to provide support to Hezbollah and Hamas, and to serve as Iran's central ally.

Also on Thursday, Al-Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, printed an interview with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who said that an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights is not only a Syrian demand, but a Syrian right.

"Syria won't advance negotiations without a commitment to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights." He also said that he hopes Israel will display seriousness in the indirect peace talks that have been launched between Jerusalem and Damascus, so that the discussions can develop into direct talks.

Ankara impressed by 'upbeat mood in the talks'

At Syria's insistence, the talks will initially be indirect, with a Turkish mediator shuffling between the two sides. However, Ankara is impressed by the present upbeat mood in the talks and hopes that by next month the time might even be ripe for a direct meeting between Israelis and Syrians, a senior Turkish official said.

The official, who is involved in the Turkish mediation, said this week's meetings in Ankara dealt mainly with "selecting issues for debate and refreshing the issues in agreement."

The Turkish mediator in the talks is Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief advisor to the Turkish Prime Minister on foreign policy. Davotoglu scurried from one office to another this week, passing messages between the Israeli and Syrian delegations.

Davotoglu has recently visited Damascus several times, meeting senior Syrian officials including Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara and Syrian Foreign Ministry legal advisor Riad Daoudi. Daoudi, who probably headed the Syrian delegation for the talks with Israel in Turkey, conducted the talks with Turkey on Israel in the past year. He also dealt with the
international investigation into the murder in 2005 of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Syria is presenting the talks in Turkey as President Bashar Assad's achievement. Syrian commentators said on Arab television networks that the talks were being conducted according to Assad's terms: They were held in public, were based on the Madrid Conference that set the terms of Israeli withdrawal, adopted Israel's willingness expressed in 1995 to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for a full peace and were not conditioned, at least at this stage, on a Syrian disengagement from Iran, Hezbollah or the Palestinian organizations in Damascus.

The Turkish mediation efforts have been going on for over a year. Turkey is trying to prevent Syria's isolation and to curb Iran's influence in the Middle East and assumes that it would be easier to achieve peace between Israel and Syria than between Israel and the Palestinians. Turkey went ahead with the talks over U.S. objections.

"We understood the American displeasure but we are acting on Turkish interests rather than American ones," the Turkish official said.

Asked if Washington had pressured Ankara to block the move with Syria, he said Washington made its position clear "and we made ours clear. I'm sure Washington will be pleased with advancing the process, after all it is supposed to be the 'honest broker' that Assad is looking for."

A Turkish government source told Haaretz that Turkey could lead the mediation a certain way but cannot replace the United States. "It's like a relay race. We do our section and if it succeeds we pass the baton to the Americans," he said.

Another Turkish source said that the move is intended to serve Turkey, Syria and Israel rather than the process itself. "Erdogan is under threat to have his party outlawed over his remarks on women's headcoverings, Olmert is tied up in investigations and Assad needs to break out of his international isolation and the Hariri murder entanglement. A bit of commotion over the peace process will do none of them any harm," a government official said.

7) Is an attack on Iran a big risk?
By Yossi Melman


The standard assumption is that a military attack by the United States or Israel to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be disastrous for the attackers, and would threaten the stability of the entire Middle East.

Various experts outline doomsday scenarios for such an occurrence, and warn especially of Iran's harsh reaction. Fearing the reaction of the ayatollahs has a paralyzing effect. Even before the first shot has been fired, Iran can credit itself with a success. It created an image of an omnipotent country that will not hesitate to use its power to respond and avenge a military operation against it. This is an impressive psychological achievement.

But a new paper, to be published this month in the U.S. by two well-known experts on the subject, sketches a different and more complex picture. The paper is "The Last Resort," written by Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The main point, notes Dr. Clawson in an interview with Haaretz, is that the success or failure of a military attack depends on many variables, and not just the degree of damage the attack would cause.

What are these variables?

The type of weapons chosen for the attack - will nuclear or conventional weapons be used? Who attacks - the U.S. or Israel? Will the attack cause serious collateral damage to the surroundings, that is causing a lot of civilian casualties? Will only the nuclear sites be attacked, or other regime targets? After the attack, will President Ahmadinejad announce Iran's departure from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty? If the attack completely destroys Iran's nuclear program that is one thing, but if it does not, that is a different story. Then Iran will be able to continue to develop its nuclear program, and the world will no longer care about that. In short, this is subject that is dependent on many variables.

Nevertheless, what would be deemed a success?

If the attack does destroy the nuclear facilities, and it leads to a broad consensus in Iran that nuclear weapons are dangerous for the future of the regime or the nation. In other words, success or failure is determined by the political result of the military attack. The primary objective of the military option has to be to convince Iran to cease its nuclear program, that it's not worthwhile to continue. Destroying the nuclear facilities is not an end in and of itself; it is merely a means to an end. And therefore it is necessary to create the political conditions that will increase the chances for the success of the attack.

And what will be a possible result of an Israeli attack?

Again, my answer is that it depends. Israel has to create the circumstances in which world public opinion will understand Israel and its motives, even if it regrets the attack.

That's more or less what happened with the attack against the nuclear facility in Syria?

Yes, it is quite similar. Israel benefited from President Assad's hostile attitude to the world, and therefore the international community showed understanding of the Israeli air force's attack. Israel did not have to do much because Assad did the job for it. In this respect, Israel also benefits from Ahmadinejad and his statements. They help Israel present its position to the world and explain the threat it faces.

Do you share the sweeping assessment of most experts that Iran's reaction if attacked will be harsh and painful?

No. Iran's record when it comes to its reactions in the past to attacks against it, or its important interests, is mixed. When the Taliban assumed power in Afghanistan and persecuted the Shi'ite minority there, Iran mobilized military forces on the border and threatened to respond, but in the end it did nothing. The same occurred when the U.S. shot down an Iranian passenger airline in 1988: Iran threatened to avenge the incident, but in the end the exact opposite happened. Not only did Iran not respond, but also the incident hastened its decision to agree to a cease-fire in the war with Iraq for fear that the U.S. was about to join the war on Saddam Hussein's side.

In another incident during the war, Iranian boats attacked an American naval force that set out to mine the Gulf. The U.S. did not expect Iran to react, and was surprised. This did not stop it from sinking half of the Iranian fleet in response.

Iran has lately been threatening that if it is attacked it will close the Straits of Hormuz and block the flow of oil, and thereby damage the world economy. But this is a problematic threat, since it would also affect Iran's friends and supporters, such as China and India. I have no doubt that in such a case, they would be angry at Iran.

But most experts estimate that in the event of an Israeli attack, the Iranians will respond with force and launch Shihab missiles at Israel.

It is possible, but first, the Shihab missiles are not considered particularly reliable. Iran deploys them without having done hardly any significant tests. Second, the Shihab's guidance system is not very accurate. The missile's range of accuracy is up to a kilometer. And finally, Israel's aerial defense system - the Arrow missiles would certainly intercept quite a few Shihab missiles. Moreover, Iran's firing missiles at Israel would enable Israel to respond in a decisive manner.

And what about Hezbollah? They will certainly mobilize to help Iran and respond against Israel.

There is no guarantee that Hezbollah will react automatically. They will make their considerations on the basis of their interests, as they understand them. In Hezbollah, they are very aware of Israel's strength, and of the harsh reaction that may result if Hezbollah attacks.

In other words, you're basically saying that things are not as they seem? That Iran is like a dog whose bark is worse than his bite?

There's something to that. My assessment is that contrary to the impression that has been formed, Iran's options for responding are limited and weak.

8) Obama describes Michelle's role in his judgment
By Allan J. Favish

Despite the protests of her husband, Michelle Obama deserves intense scrutiny. She may be family, but she is also at the top of her husband's list of advisors; perhaps no less important than Robert Kennedy was to his brother Jack.

She would be a key figure in a hypothetical Barack Obama presidency, her judgment relied upon when it's time to make decisions. We have the candidate's word on it. Didn't you read about it?

Perhaps not.

Unless you read Trumpet magazine, founded by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, you almost certainly didn't know about the candidate's view of his wife's role when he has to make decisions. Since his claim to superior judgment is a fundamental premise of his campaign, you might be interested in what he has to say about her judgment.

But that particular issue of Trumpet seems to be hard to get. It sounds like the issue denied to Stanley Kurtz. His article in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Weekly Standard entitled "Jeremiah Wright's 'Trumpet'" examines "the 2006 run of Trumpet, from the first nationally distributed issue in March to the November/December double issue." Kurtz refers to an issue or issues that he could not obtain. Kurtz states,

"Obama himself graced the cover at least once (although efforts to obtain that issue from the publisher or Obama's interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful)."

Trumpet Cover
Obama is on the cover of the March 2007 issue, which also includes an article titled "Barack Obama: History in the Making" by Temple Hemphill. The article extensively quotes Obama and contains some nice photography. But one short segment quoting the senator has assumed particular importance in light of his statement May 19, 2008 to ABC's "Good Morning America" that people "should lay off my wife." He added to GMA:

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable."


Here is how he characterized his wife's role in his judgment, scanned from the magazine:


Trumpet excerpt



Not only is Obama endorsing Michelle's "solid judgment", he is stating that he relies upon her above all others for "solid judgment".

If that's the case, then his claim to superior judgment, a cornerstone of his campaign, is necessarily dependent upon the quality of Michelle's judgment. If he endorses the judgment of somebody who has poor judgment, that means that Obama has poor judgment. So we have to examine Michelle's judgment through her public speeches, as well as other information which helps us evaluate her judgment.

Moreover, it would be unfair to the electorate to keep the views of a presidential candidate's top advisors hidden or immune from public debate. A presidential candidate's top advisors have significant influence over the candidate's policy choices. If she is the person who has the most influence on Obama's judgment, the public needs to know all about her views. The judgment of a president shapes the future of the nation. In time of war, the survival of the nation may depend on the president's judgment. We know now that Obama relies heavily on her judgment when he makes decisions.

In addition, of course, Michelle Obama has been campaigning for her husband, and expressing her views at public events. It is not reasonable for anyone giving a speech to be immune from criticism simply because of a family relationship.

Barack Obama's pose as a defender of his wife clashes with the public's right to know about his top advisor, a person who shapes his judgments and whose judgment he endorses.

9) Gore Celebrates Israel's 60th With Whoppers
By Marc Sheppard

After delivering a scientifically inept global warming lecture in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, greenhouse gasbag Al Gore presented Israel with a 60th birthday gift of custom tailored, regionally-targeted Globaloney.

As adaptable to his surroundings as any desert snake, the shameless Nobel laureate told conference attendees that plunging water levels in their lakes and rivers were the result of -- guess what? Quoteth the Goracle:

"In this region of the world, the water crisis is one of the most important manifestations of the global climate change crisis."


In reporting the story, the Associated Press offered this explanation for his reasoning:

"Water levels in Israel's major bodies of water are dropping quickly. The level of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, has receded about 3 feet (1 meter) each year for the past 25 years. The Jordan River, the biblical location of Jesus' baptism, is only a few feet (centimeters) [sic] deep in some places."


Well put, but here's the problem -- while the waters are dropping, any allusions to a global warming connection are as bogus as AP's English-to-metric conversion (which I've taken the liberty to highlight).

As universally accepted and explained here by the Smithsonian, since the Dead Sea's outlet to its original affluent -- the Sea of Galilee -- evaporated about 18,000 years ago, it has maintained equilibrium by receiving "fresh water from rivers and streams from the mountains that surround it" to offset evaporation. But that changed 40 some odd years ago:

"Until the 1950s, the flow of fresh water equaled the rate of evaporation, and Dead Sea water levels held steady. Then in the 1960s, Israel built an enormous pumping station on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, diverting water from the upper Jordan, the Dead Sea's prime source, into a pipeline system that supplies water throughout the country. To make matters worse, in the 1970s Jordan and Syria began diverting the Yarmouk, the lower Jordan River's main tributary."


Gore's baloney aside, it was - in fact -- the diversion to farmland, hydroelectric projects and cities of 90 percent of the rivers that feed it that was responsible for the Dead Sea's dramatic declines. And the 1970 Yarmouk channel diversion only exacerbated the negative impact that Israel's 1964 Sea of Galilee damming was already having on Jordan River depths.

Neither of these phenomena resulted from the "planetary emergency" Gore told the Israelis we face. Not content to merely peddle his claptrap, he brazenly appealed to the "Jewish people's 'sense of justice' to help overcome the global warming crisis."

Hours later, Gore would only further his fraudulence. In a keynote speech to Tel Aviv University's International Conference on Renewable Energy, he hyped the unproven perils of carbon, and then repeated his trademark "consensus" ruse: [my emphasis]

"Our scientists have given us the diagnosis: We're burning too many carbon-based fuels. We got a first diagnosis, a second and a third. Last January, we got a fifth opinion. Three thousand scientists from 130 countries have been studying this for 20 years. Scientists were asked how certain they were of their findings, and said they were 99-percent certain."


Strange he neglected to mention the 32,000 scientists who have signed the "Oregon petition" that rejects Gore's calamitous projections, any Kyoto-style emissions caps, and the very premise of manmade global warming outright.

Nor did such greenhouse gas bubble-bursting detract him from deviously augmenting his earlier plea to the Jewish state's "sense of justice" with these to its moral duty -- as he perceives it -- conveyed as pure pontificated gibberish:

"The people of Israel stand in my moral imagination as guardians of the proposition that we as human beings are answerable to moral duties, that there are ethical laws that should guide our decisions and choices. At this moment in history when, for the first time, all of the people of this earth have to make a clear, seemingly difficult but really quite simple moral judgment about our future, the people of Israel can lead the way to a renewable future."


I've shredded Gore's AGW lies quite a few times here at AT, including here, here, here and here. And a few weeks ago his particularly disgusting and inopportune attempt to connect the unthinkable human tragedy of Myanmar to global warming warranted these harsh words.

But these latest fabrications and exaggerations weigh all the more contemptible by virtue of both their milieu and timing -- having been spoken just days after the Warsaw funeral of Irena Sendlerowa. She, you see, was the Polish Catholic credited with rescuing 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Irena Sendlerowa's historic bravery facing the Nazis earned the 98-year-old a Nobel Peace Prize nomination -- the very same year as Gore's.

Somehow, in an act totally devoid of any "sense of justice," the gentle hero was denied the honor in favor of the bombastic charlatan -- who Tuesday dared speak to the Israeli people of "moral duty" while lying through his teeth.

It seems the more his little scam unravels, the more loathsome his methods become.

10)Netanyahu: Olmert has 'no moral right' to negotiate with Syria
By GIL HOFFMAN

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is "up to his neck in investigations," has "no moral right" to conduct negotiations with Syria, Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Thursday, claiming that there a broad consensus view considered the declaration of the talks an attempt on the part of the prime minister to distract attention from the investigations of alleged corruption against him.

"There is broad agreement from Right and Left that the diplomatic process cannot be used to shelter distressed politicians," Netanyahu said in a Likud faction meeting. "Most of the public knows the prime minister expedited the talks with Syria and set the time for revealing them to distract the public from the investigations against him."

Olmert, he said, "who is up to his neck in investigations, has no moral or public mandate to conduct fateful negotiations on Israel's future... Just a few weeks ago, the Hizbullah destroyed democracy in Lebanon. The US, France and the rest of the free world condemned Syria and called to isolate it."

Netanyahu also claimed that talks with Syria could not advance Damascus's divorcing itself from extremist elements. "Syria is an inseparable part of the axis of evil," he said. "They already said they would not disconnect from Iran. Ceding the Golan would make it a frontline post for Iran that will threaten the entire country. If you believe Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem that Olmert has already promised to give up the Golan up to the banks of the Kinneret before the negotiations have begun, this is unprecedented diplomatic and security abandonment.

"This irresponsibility joins the failures of running the Second Lebanon War, the failure of preventing the rearming of Hizbullah, the failure in preventing Kassam fire on the people of southern Israel. It is forbidden to allow the Kadima government to continue its failures. Most of the public agrees with us. Most of the pubic is against giving up the Golan," he said.

Netanyahu called on all parties "from Right and Left to return the mandate to the voters and agree on a date for elections."

In late April, amongst reports of the renewed diplomatic moves between Israel and Syria, Olmert traded jabs over the Golan issue with Likud Netanyahu, who accused the prime minister of amateurism.

"The Golan must stay in our hands, because if we withdraw, we will receive Iran on our northern border," Netanyahu said in response to reports that Olmert had told Assad he was willing to withdraw from the Heights in exchange for peace.

"I am very surprised that the prime minister is willing to give up the entire Golan Heights, even before negotiations have begun, in such an amateurish, reckless way... This is not how you build peace."

Netanyahu's comment triggered a sharp response from Olmert's office.

"In order to refresh Mr. Netanyahu's memory, he was the one [who] sent then-Syrian President Hafez Assad an American businessman [Ron Lauder] to relinquish the Golan Heights in Israel's name, before any negotiations had begun," read a statement issued from the Prime Minister's Office.

"Even before the negotiations began, Netanyahu also gave up the city of Hebron and offered to give up to Arafat - whom he called 'friend' - large parts of Judea and Samaria within the Wye framework. He is not one to teach the government [what constitutes] responsibility and good judgment," the statement continued.

The statement concluded by saying Olmert would "persist in trying to achieve peace, and will do so in a reasonable and responsible manner, taking a stance that will ensure Israel's security."

This statement prompted a further comment from Netanyahu, with his office responding that "despite Olmert's attempts to mislead the public, Netanyahu insisted on keeping the Golan Heights, and that was why the talks were stopped. It is ridiculous to be preached at by a serial conceder like Olmert, whose unilateral concessions harmed the security of the state."

Herb Keinon contributed to this report.


11) Beware The Spinologists
By Ron Ben-Yishai ▪ Nahum Barnea ▪ Sever Plocker




When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared at a press conference last year and with a grave face announced that he was suffering from prostate cancer, “spin experts” (and there are many of those around here) rushed to warn us: The PM is choosing to divert the public and media discourse to his disease in the face of the threatening shadow of the Winograd Commission. “It was a perfect spin,” they concluded with sharp irony.


Meanwhile, as it turned out, the Winograd report did not damage Olmert badly, while the cancer is still in his body. The “spinologists” grew silent.



Only a few months passed, and again we saw the spin commentators hit the media. Look at that, they warned us, he’s done it again. Olmert timed his MRI test to serve as an excellent spin to coincide with the tough period of the new police probe against him. It’s all about spin, they said.


Yet meanwhile it turned out that Olmert’s medical situation has not deteriorated, and the spin magic evaporated within a few hours. However, our spin-struck commentators do noet let the facts confuse them: They find new spins. So now, the signals exchanged between Olmert and Syrian leader Assad are interpreted using spinologist logic as yet another attempt to divert public discourse to another direction


Assad has his own problems, including a nuclear reactor that was bombed, the Lebanon entanglement, and an international probe over the Hariri murder. Against this backdrop, Assad is obviously seeking to direct global media attention to another issue, and Olmert, of course, is seeking to get away from the bribery and corruption affair.


And so, any diplomatic initiative, the renewal of talks with Syria, progress in talks with the Palestinians, or even a lull agreement with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are all interpreted as some kind of scam.


Recipe for inaction
Israeli politics bears much of the fault for the public disappointment with it. Many politicians brought upon themselves the cynical, skeptical, and alienated attitude of the Israeli public. Yet we must recall this: Our leaders are the people entrusted with our future, our destiny, and our hopes. If any move they undertake and any diplomatic initiative they come up with are interpreted as a cheap and clever spin, Israeli politics will be headed to complete paralysis.


The alienation and cynicism may serve to perpetuate inaction, lack of initiative, and ultimately, a despairing decline.


It is ok to yell out “spin” when there is good reason for it, but those who suffer from “spinophobia” ultimately end up viewing any move as a spin, ranging from a medical examination to contacts with bitter enemies.



Spinophobia leads to despair, indifference, and alienation from politicians and from politics. If we reach the point where we are disgusted by our politicians all the time and under any circumstances, we shall bring upon ourselves future leaders who deserve only scorn and alienation.


Under such circumstances, I don’t know what’s more dangerous: A small yet stable case of prostate cancer, or spinophobia that spreads through the nation’s body and soul.

12) McCain Veepstakes: Bobby Jindal
By John Gizzi


Here’s an important pointer for anyone planning on interviewing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: Before sitting down with the 36-year-old Republican, clear your schedule all around the time of the interview, because you ask Jindal something, he will always get a detailed answer -- and then some.

When we spoke recently, I reminded Jindal of how I last heard him when he was a U.S. House member two years ago, telling a luncheon audience about how people volunteering their services on relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina found they were thwarted by federal regulations. What particularly moved me, I told him, was his story of how a doctor from Pennsylvania was not permitted to treat patients in parts of Louisiana ravaged by the worst natural disaster in American history until he filled out several forms.

“They told him he literally had to mop floors, if you remember, at an airport that he was in where there were people dying.” Jindal told me, “There are thousands of these stories. I talked to a sheriff in an area where they had people with boats that were ready to go in the water and rescue people and they were turned away because they didn’t have proof of registration and insurance, they didn’t bring the right paperwork. The bureaucracy was just awful.”


The 36-year-old governor then proceeded to tell more sad sagas of Americans from other states who were trying to help Louisianans in their worst hour and kept running into a bureaucratic brick wall. Barely stopping for a breath, Jindal vividly contrasted the horror stories of dealing with government bureaucracy in attempts to help Katrina victims to successful relief efforts by non-governmental sources -- Wal-Mart, Ford Motor and churches.

“They are so much more responsive, so much more nimble, they can respond so much more quickly than any government bureaucracy you’ll ever see,” said Jindal, who then went into a mini-tirade about how hard it was for local government to get assistance for rebuilding public schools because “instead of giving them that flexibility, [the federal bureaucrats] said we need for you to document every single one of these items that were destroyed.”

That’s the Jindal the picture. In an age of sound bites, Jindal gives you facts, figures, and details. And it works: Four months after becoming the highest-elected Indian American in the nation and the third Republican since Reconstruction to be elected governor of Louisiana, one poll shows the son of Indian immigrants getting high approval ratings from more than 70% of Pelican State voters.

That’s one reason talk of him as John McCain’s running mate is mounting. During a dinner in Indianapolis the night before the May 6 primary, my colleague Jamie Coomarasamy of the BBC observed that Jindal was featured on Page One of the Washington Times that day and had been boomed for Vice President by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard in his column in the New York Times one day before.

“I’d say it’s Jindal’s week, isn’t it?” said Coomarasamy, echoing what scores of pundits were saying.

An American Saga

The story of the man who was named Piyush Jindal at birth but later insisted on being called “Bobby” (after the youngest brother on TV’s long-running “The Brady Bunch” series) is becoming as well-known to Republicans as the rise of Barack Obama is to Democrats. A graduate of Brown University and a Rhodes Scholar, the young Jindal was an intern with Rep. Jim McCrery (R.-La.); at 24, head of Louisiana’s state Health and Hospitals Department (which accounts for 40% of the state budget); at 27, He then served as executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare; at 28, president of the University of Louisiana System (with more than 80,000 students), at 30, and assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for planning and evaluation under George W. Bush.

Jindal narrowly missed election as governor of Louisiana in ’03, rebounded the following year to win a New Orleans-area U.S. House seat, and then captured the governorship with ease last year.

Of the first of two special sessions of the state legislature since Jindal became governor, he says “[We] passed several tough ethics laws trying to change [the state’s] practices from before where people profit by being in government. We passed some very strict rules that say elected officials can’t do business with the state. We also passed disclosure from lobbyists, putting all government spending online, getting rid of free football tickets, a cap for meals. We did several things that will restore people’s trust in the government. We’ve seen the studies that Steve Forbes and others have done saying what we could do to create jobs is to attack corruption.”

Of the second special session, Jindal proudly says “we got rid of a bunch of taxes like the ones on new equipment for utilities; we extended the state’s new market tax credit; which encourages renewal in these enterprise zones. It is interesting, at one point, right after the storms, the Democratic mayor of New Orleans came out and said to the federal government, why don’t you make the city a tax-free zone? If you do that, that will do more to stimulate the rebuilding than a whole lot of the money you’ all are sending down here. And nobody at the federal level pursued that idea. I think as conservatives, we have fundamental core beliefs of different policies and the role of government we think are better for people, for their quality of life.”

Meshing traditional conservative ideas such as tax cuts with newer concepts such as tax-free zones is an example of why, aside from his youth and moving life story, Jindal is increasingly talked of for national office.

At a time when even conservatives recoil from talk of abolishing some government agencies such as the Department of Education, Louisiana’s governor talks proudly of how he brought a Fortune 500 executive in to run the state Department of Labor and “in four months he has already proposed getting rid of his department. Why not come up with regional business councils, where the majority of the businesses are actual business owners, instead of the government’s going to the business owners and saying this is what we think you need in terms of training programs, and work force. They’re the customers, put them in charge of it.”

Whenever Jindal talks about shutting down a government agency such as the Department of Labor, he couples it, if he thinks it necessary with an immediate call for a positive alternative. In dismissing his state’s “charity hospitals”, a legacy of Huey Long’s governorship in the 1930s, as old and out-dated (“It doesn’t have the premiums, it doesn’t have the deductibles, it has very modest co-pays.”), Jindal makes a passionate pitch for “private coverage to involve health-savings accounts, purchasing pools, tax credits -- and it’s going to involve changing the way that Medicaid and SCHIP operate.”

Like other conservatives in the Republican Governors Association, Gov. Jindal was critical of the $35 billion State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress and vetoed by President Bush. But, he quickly adds, Republicans must come up with a more private-sector and business-oriented alternative to SCHIP, and to Medicaid as well. Louisiana, which spends more per capita on health-care than surrounding states, provides “a tremendous opportunity for change throughout the state, and it will help our business community, ” says Jindal.

So what does Jindal think of becoming the Republican vice presidential candidate with John McCain? Before posing the question, I noted that former Rep. Bob Livingston (R.-La.) had recently told me he hopes Jindal doesn’t become Vice President because it would put liberal Democratic Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu, into the governor’s mansion.

“It is very, very flattering,” Jindal says of the Veep talk, “But I’ve got the job that I want.
This is an historic opportunity to change our state. We won’t get a chance like this in our lifetimes again. I do not want to turn down something that I have not been offered. I have had several conversations with the senator and we have not talked about the vice-presidency,. I am very, very happy with the job that I have. I’ve got the job that I want. You can tell Bob that I am planning to run for re-election.”

By that election day in 2011, Jindal will be 39 -- and still have plenty of time for national politics.