Bush's plan in Fallujah is becoming more clear. Ask the bad guys to hand in their guns (pretty please) -- then give them new guns and spiffy uniforms and call them a "local security force." That way we can pull out the Marines and let the bad guys have Fallujah back. They can start using it again as a base for attacks against coalition forces and maybe no one will notice in time for Bush to be reelected. Brilliant.

Seriously, we seem to be doing everything possible to lose Iraq. After having spent so much blood and treasure toppling Saddam, defeat now would be a crime against US soldiers, the American people and the Iraqis. You started it, Dubya. We backed you. Now finish it.

Boo! Toomey loses. Well, we all lose really. But look on the bright side, maybe the Dems will beat Specter this November.

Toomey wins!

We hope. Still too early to know.

Meanwhile, here's an article on Cold Fusion. No, really.

Spain has completed its withdrawal from Iraq. We leave them with these parting words:

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death
but once.
William Shakespeare

The Village Voice is joining the bandwagon:

John Kerry Must Go

The article makes the obvious point that Prince John is not electable, but stops short of predicting, as we have, that he won't even be nominated.

In an interesting coincidence, Tom Brokaw had announced his retirement.

This is fascinating:

Sudan Orders Syrian WMD Out Of Country

Go read it.

US troops are moving into the outskirts of Najaf where Sadr is holed up with his posse:

[Brig. Gen. Mark] Kimmitt told Fox News Tuesday that insurgents in Najaf number in the "hundreds, certainly not thousands" and that the reason more Iraqis are not turning them in is that they are afraid of them.

Or maybe, just perhaps, the Iraqis don't want to snitch because they are unsure of our willingness to deal with the bad guys. What would give them that idea? Anyway, no point turning in the local gang if the only thing to come of it is their revenge against you and your family.

Reading between the lines, it is interesting that Bremer et. al. consider Sadr a more pressing problem than the Fallujah folks.

Calling all Pennsylvanians! Today is the day. Vote for Pat Toomey in today's Republican primary and put Arlen Specter out of our collective misery for good.

Thanks in advance.

This is interesting:

At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

The article goes on and on like this. You should read it all.

Dan Darling's Winds of War update has been posted. Check it out. We especially like his ending comment:

Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi is seeking drastic legal reforms to his nation's totalitarian police state, including an end to his revolutionary court system as well as arrests without warrants. At this rate, one half expects him toss a shilling to a boy in the street and tell him to buy the biggest goose in all of Tripoli ...

Here's an article on DDT in The Atlantic (hat tip Virginia Postrel). An excerpt:

As a consequence, locally transmitted malaria, absent from the United States for roughly thirty years, has returned. Since 1988 locally transmitted malaria has appeared in California, Texas, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, and New York City. Anopheles mosquitoes -- members of the genus that carries malaria parasites -- are common almost everywhere in the United States and, for that matter, in most populated regions of the world.

Stupid question, but we have to ask: Why aren't we killing the mosquitoes? If West Nile Virus wasn't scary enough, shouldn't multiple drug resistant malaria be?

Who is defending the mosquitoes? Where is their lobby? What products must we boycott? Whom do we throw out of office?

This might be a good place to drop a bomb.

We'll be watching this story about the Japanese hostages in Iraq:

Now, a steady stream of news, much of it leaked from governmental sources, is hinting that the first three hostages may have faked their kidnapping. If and when these suspicions becomes provable, the public backlash in Japan against the anti-war left could be fearsome, and drive Japan’s foreign policy even further toward muscular collaboration with American defense efforts. Given Japan’s formidable economic and technological resources , the coalition of the willing would benefit substantially for a long time to come.

This is posted on the front page of the Lucianne site:

"I saw some war heroes ... John Kerry is not a war hero. He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11."

John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who joined the Navy's Coastal Division 11 two months after the future senator left Vietnam.

Washington Senator Patty Murray is one of the Senate's dimmest bulbs. She once claimed--incorrectly--that Osama bin Laden was popular among Muslims for "building day care centers."

Murray's reelection this year is considered likely, though there may be some good news on this front.

Three show stopping problems solved, about 90 left to go, but Governator Schwarzenegger is doing a first rate job:

"Without his leadership, this [Worker's Compensation Reform] bill would not be ready today," Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga said. "He's restoring job creation." Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield added: "What a difference a year makes. What a difference a man makes."

So much for Daschle's "Nadar" problem in this year's South Dakota Senate race against challenger John Thune.

We're not quite sure what to make of this, but it is interesting:

GOP Typically Wins White House With Majority Vote, Dems Usually Win with Minority of Popular Vote

Venezuela's despot ruler Hugo Chavez is not a top tier problem like Syria, Iran and North Korea, but we hope the CIA is doing everything possible to remove him just the same.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, at the end of a three-day visit to Venezuela on Saturday, blasted President Hugo Chavez for aiding Colombian guerrillas, blocking a recall referendum sought by the opposition and ignoring a flourishing black market for passports and other official documents that could fall into the hands of terrorists.

"We may reach the point where the U.S. has to treat this government as a hostile and unfriendly government to the U.S. and the U.S. interests," said Nelson, a Democratic member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

Yes, we may reach that point...about a year ago.

Uh oh. Remember that super duper disarmament deal we just negotiated with the terrorists in Fallujah? Well, it's hard to believe, but they may have been insincere!

Without firing a shot or shedding any blood, Marines struck a huge blow to the insurgency on Monday when they uncovered a sizeable cache of heavy weapons in a roughneck neighborhood in northwest Fallujah.

...

Marine leaders said that while they will continue to scour the piece of Fallujah they occupy for more arms, they say the huge cache on the fringe only hints at what the insurgents have ready in the center of the cramped and irregular Jolan borough where they have had two weeks now to prepare for the final showdown.

Hooray. There's a disarmament deal in Fallajuh. Now all the terrorists, foreign Jihadis, criminal gangs and Saddam dead-enders will have to go get new weapons before they can start attacking US troops again. Yes, finding new weapons in Iraq should be quite a chore.

But wait, it gets better! Who said anything about disarmament? Didn't we say we were going to get the guys who murdered, mutilated and paraded the bodies of 4 US civilians just a couple of weeks ago? The agreement, thank goodness, deals with this issue as well:

The agreement included only a vague reference underlining the "need" to investigate the killing and mutilation of four American civilians in Fallujah on March 31.

By our count Fallujah is looking like a complete and overwhelming victory for terror in Iraq. Way to go Bremer, you idiot.

Here's a perfect example why electronic voting machines can't be trusted. Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez has hurriedly purchased them just in time for the upcoming recall election.

The brand Chavez chose is made in Florida...

The latest Kerry flip-flop:

Kerry, in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," was asked whether he would follow President Bush's example and release all of his military records. "I have," Kerry said. "I've shown them -- they're available for you to come and look at." He added that "people can come and see them at headquarters."

But when a reporter showed up yesterday morning to review the documents, the campaign staff declined...

Prince John explains: "I said I would but that was before I said I wouldn't."

Via VikingPundit:

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- The index of leading economic indicators rose 0.3 percent in March and had its greatest year-on-year increase in two decades as the U.S. expansion gained momentum.

Our reader (readers?) may have noticed fewer posts concerning Prince John (aka John Kerry). Well, it's just not fun anymore. First, it's just shooting fish in a barrel. Second, we are still not 100% convinced he'll even be the nominee.

So we'll limit Prince John posts to the essentials for now, keeping our powder dry until July.

The Left says that we must not forget the lesson of Vietnam. What they mean is: "All wars are Vietnam."

Trent Telenko has an excellent article on the strategy behind Iran's support of Sadr and other destabilizing forces in Iraq. No Summary will do. Read the whole thing right now.

The year's Taliban Spring Offensive in Afghanistan is being called the weakest yet.

Probably that's in no small part due to the fact that al Qaeda has moved resources from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Iraq's WMD have been found--at least large portions of its nuclear program--in Europe.

From Political Diary we hear about a fantastic project in Little Rock, Arkansas:

Many people laughed when former New York GOP Congressman John LeBoutillier and businessman Dick Erickson announced plans to build a Counter Clinton library and museum in Little Rock. Their effort would compete with the $160 million Clinton Presidential Library now under construction down the street. Skeptics aren't laughing quite as much now that the IRS has given the group tax-exempt status to raise money for their own building sited on land just off the Clinton property.

The Counter Clinton library is planned to include 16 rooms of multi-media exhibits that would discuss the Clinton record in foreign policy and terrorism along with the Clinton scandals that range from Whitewater to Chinese fundraising to Monica Lewinsky. A companion museum in Washington would feature hard copies of Clinton documents, including some that have been donated by former Clinton political adviser Dick Morris.

We wonder which museum will have more visitors.

The invasion of Iraq was meant to remove a regime with a track record of sponsoring terrorists. This become an immediate problem post 9/11 because a) we learned the hard way that terrorists could strike us on our own soil, and b) Iraq was a known producer of chemical and biological weapons and had an ongoing nuclear program. So we put two and two together and decided that, rather than let Iraq equip and train terrorists with these weapons for future attacks on US soil, we'd go there first.

Since then the issue of protecting Americans from terrorist attacks in their homes has been derailed by stupid, partisan attacks. But the issue remains and fortunately there are still serious minded folks in this country trying to deal with it.

So how real is the threat? Let's ask Jordan, which just foiled an attempted al Qaeda chemical attack on its soil.

Now Iraq was just one state sponsor of terrorism. The attempted chemical attack on Jordan came from terrorists based in Syria. Much of the recent fighting in Iraq has been funded and sponsored by Syria and Iran. Iran also sponsors Hezbollah, a top flight terrorist group which until 9/11 held the record for killing the most Americans through terrorism. Then there is North Korea.

And that's just the first tier!

So what are we going to do about it? Obviously Kerry has no intentions of fighting a war on terror. He's said so. He's said the threat is overblown and that it should be a police matter, not a military one. The original JFK once said that we must not encourage belligerence through weakness. This JFK has told us that he plans to do just that. Thank God he'll never be president.

It may be a twofer: Debka is reporting (and is currently the only one) that Abu al-Walid al Ghamdi, the Saudi born al Qaeda commander in Chechnya, has also been killed. We'd like to see this story confirmed, but if true, it's been a might fine weekend for the war on terror.

Ding dong, another bad guy is dead.

Congrats to the Israeli soldiers and airmen who rid the world yesterday of this blemish: Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Hamas is vowing to retaliate with, gasp, more terrorism.

General Myers is calling recent events in Iraq a sign of US success and desperation on the part of the bad guys.

We think there is a huge US success here. The fact that the Iraqis sat out Sadr's "popular" uprising is a stunning vote of confidence in the US plan. Chalk up one for the good guys.

We've been on brief hiatus, but we're back now.

First comment is on Iraq. First there was Tet, then Mogadishu, now Beirut with some Jenin thrown in for good measure. What message do you think they are trying to send? And, to whom in the US are they sending it? Come on guys, you know who you are.

Major kudos to Bush for staying the course. Many lesser men have buckled under far less pressure. See above.

Andrew Sullivan has posted a letter from a Marine in Fallujah:

This battle is going to be talked about for a long time. The Marine Corps will either reaffirm its place in history as one of the greatest fighting organizations in the world or we will die trying. The Marines are fired up. I'm nervous for them though because I know how much is riding on this fight (the war in Iraq, the view of the war at home, the length of the war on terror and the reputation of the Marine Corps to name a few). However, every time I've been nervous during my career about the outcome of events when young Marines were involved they have ALWAYS exceeded my expectations. I'm praying this is one of those times.

Read it all.

Victor Davis Hansen writes:

Out of all the recent chaos emerges one lesson: Appeasement of fundamentalists is not appreciated as magnanimity, but ridiculed as weakness — and, in fact, encourages further killing. A shaken Spain elected a new government that promised to exit Iraq. In return, the terrorists planted more bombs, issued more demands, and then staged a fiery exit for themselves. France, as is its historical wont, triangulated with the Muslim world and then found its fundamentalist plotters all over Paris. The Saudi royals thought that they of all people could continue to blackmail the fundamentalists — until the suicide-murderers turned their explosives on their benefactors and began to blow up Arab Muslims as well. General Musharraf once did all he could to appease Islamists — and got assassination plots as thanks.

The Iraqis who attacked the Marines in Ar Ramadi were not Sadr militia, thugs or spontaneous rioters:

A group of about 70 Iraqis who attacked a Marine Corps unit in Ramadi were trained military fighters who disappeared after the battle, defense officials said yesterday.

Many reporters are confusing the Shi'ites, led by Sadr, with the Sunnis.

The insurgents we've been fighting since last year have been almost exclusively Sunnis in the Sunni Triangle. Fallujah has been a center of the Sunni insurgency. It's also been left largely untouched--until recently when the Marines arrived. The Marines are now fighting house to house clearing the city. StrategyPage reports that the Marines now control nearly half the town.

Ar Ramadi is also in the Sunni Triangle, and the attack there was led by the Sunni insurgents. It has nothing to do with the Shi'ites or Sadr's Shi'ite uprising. While there are reports of "low level" cooperation it is almost certainly ad hoc and opportunistic.

The Shi'ite uprising led by Muqtada al-Sadr appears to have been planned for quite some time and is taking place in Shi'ite cities which have been quiet and peaceful up until now. GlobalSecurity has some maps.

While Fallujah is still on people's minds due to the atrocities recently committed there by the insurgents, it's not a concern at the moment. The city is surrounded and being systematically cleared. The rest of the Sunni Triangle, with the exception of Ar Ramadi, has remained quiet and it seems likely that once operations in Fallujah are complete that the Sunni areas will be in better shape than before.

The problems in the Shi'ite areas, however, are new and therefore more troubling. The good news is that, so far, there has been no popular uprising. The fighting has been limited to Sadr's thugs whom most Iraqis do not support. That leaves Sadr isolated and his insurgency doomed to failure. Almost. Next week tens of thousands of Iranian Shi'ites will arrive in Iraq for a religious pilgrimage. We posted earlier regarding suspicions that Iran is behind Sadr's troublemaking. It is possible that the Mullahs would use the pilgrimage as cover to resupply and reinforce him. Or, depending on how effective the Coalition has been reigning in Sadr, Iran might decide to cut him loose and cut their losses.

The bottom line is that we should have a much better picture of the situation sometime next week (the date of the pilgrimage is not fixed, but depends on observations of the moon by senior clerics). In the meantime lets all just take a deep breath and let our troops do what they do best. Good Hunting!

Senate memos reveal that Democratic obstruction of Bush's judicial nominees may have been motivated at least in part by a desire to effect the outcome of pending cases:

"The cloud of corruption hanging over Senator Kennedy and his office is growing darker," Mr. Mazzella said. "If the Senate ethics committee does not immediately investigate and punish the shameful behavior detailed in the memo, then it can no longer maintain any credibility."

Let's see if the Senate can summon the stones to prosecute this crime.

Rantburg has a collection of comments on Sadr from Iraqi bloggers.

Sadr's offensive hasn't caused a popular uprising, but it has attracted Palestinian terrorists.

These guys won't be blowing up any pizza joints after the Marines are through with them.

Disgraceful:

In an interview broadcast Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended terrorist Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr as a "legitimate voice" in Iraq, despite that fact that he's led an uprising that has killed nearly 20 American GIs in the last two days.

Next thing you know he'll be praising Tim McVeigh.

We speculated earlier on the possibility that the Kerry campaign is a bait and switch--that he will be replaced at the last minute. Seems others are thinking along the same lines:

But of course, Kerry isn't really the nominee yet. He is only the "presumptive nominee."

...

In the 2002 elections, New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli experienced a collapse in his electoral viability after securing the Democrats’ nomination for re-election. Despite New Jersey state law to the contrary, the Supreme Court in that state decided to allow the Democrats to substitute a more viable candidate after the Torch withdrew from the race. All in the interest of giving the voters a choice, you see. And, as you may recall, the Democrats still hold on to the Senate seat vacated by Torricelli

If you don’t think such an option could be exercised again, you are kidding yourself.

Sadr is also getting help from Iran.

This really should be getting more coverage:

"I will support the real Islamic unity that has been created by Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the victorious Hezbollah, with Hamas," al-Sadr said in a Friday sermon in the southern city of Kufa. "I want them to accept me as their striking arm in Iraq, as necessity and opportunity dictate."

There's a report that Syrians are fighting alongside the insurgents in Iraq:

The 12 Marines were killed Tuesday in Ramadi, where Maj. Gen. James Mattis, 1st Marine Division commander, said his forces still were fighting insurgents that included Syrian mercenaries along a one-mile front.

Sounds potentially like an act of war...

There is also a report that the Marines called in an airstrike to destroy a Mosque that insurgents were using as a bunker.

Here's a UPI article comparing the fighting in Iraq to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam:

After the first few hours of panic, the South Vietnamese troops reacted fiercely. They did the bulk of the fighting and took some 6,000 casualties. Vietcong units not only did not reach a single one of their objectives -- except when they arrived by taxi at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, blew their way through the wall into the compound and guns blazing made it into the lobby before they were wiped out by U.S. Marines -- but they lost some 50,000 killed and at least that many wounded. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Vietcong troops in South Vietnam.

Tet also marked the end of the Vietcong, the South Vietnamese guerrillas that had been plaguing US troops. The North Vietnamese Army lived to fight another day, but the Vietcong was all but obliterated.

Austin Bay is also making the Tet analogy:

The Fallujah fascists and al-Sadr think they can defeat or at least deflect America by causing U.S. casualties, then parading the bodies before Peter Jennings and Al Jazeera. Al-Sadr adds another wrinkle: multiple "hotspots" to seed the impression of broad insurrection. It's a clever gambit, staging gunfights in Basra, Kut and Baghdad, and leverages contemporary cable Tv's appetite for 24-7 repetition and magnification. The goal is a "Tet effect," an echo of North Vietnam's 1968 offensive, which was a battlefield disaster for the North Vietnamese but a media (and hence political) victory.

However, Tet 1968 and Mogadishu 1993 are dated scripts. We're post 9-11.

Right. And Bush is no Clinton nor Johnson.

Al Sadr, the low level cleric waging war against coalition troops in Shi'ite areas of Iraq, has issued his demands:

On Sunday, the list of demands grew to include the release of an unspecified number of prisoners, notably a key aide named Sheik Mustafa al-Yacoubi, who was arrested on Saturday and was also charged in connection with Khoei's death.

By Monday, Sadr's demands had morphed into a rambling, typewritten list that circulated around the compound: The Americans must withdraw. They must leave Iraqis to govern themselves. They must release all detainees. And this: "I also demand they reveal the crimes committed by the occupation forces, and try them, especially those who did bad things to the Iraqi people."

Who does he think he's dealing with, the Spanish?

The Marines have begun operations to clean up Fallujah. Meanwhile, a low ranking Shi'ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, has launched what might be a coup attempt in Baghdad.

Sadr fled to Iran after his father was killed in Iraq in 1999. He returned after Saddam's fall and has been causing trouble ever since. Some are connecting the dots and accusing him of working for Iran to destabilize Iraq.

John McCain, every Democrat's favorite Republican, is at it again. Isn't it time to make the party switch official, Senator?

Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, has an excellent editorial on last week's tragedy in Fallujah, Iraq:

Lynching is deliberate. It is opportunistic rather than purely spontaneous, and it has a clear intent: to insult, to challenge and to frighten the enemy, and to excite and enlist allies. The mutilation and public display of bodies follows a distinct pattern. The victims are members of a despised Other, who are held in such contempt that they are considered less than human. Respectful treatment of the dead is the norm in all societies, and a tenet of all religions. Publicly flouting such basic dignities is a communal expression of hatred designed to insult and frighten. Display of the mutilated remains must be as public as possible.

...

The worst answer the U.S. can make to such a message--which is precisely what we did in Mogadishu--is back down.

Now treat yourself to the whole thing.

Some of Kerry's former Vietnam commanders are questioning his claims of heroism:

Burkett, whose 1999 book, "Stolen Valor," is considered to be the definitive history of falsified Vietnam War claims, told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg that Kerry's former commanders would allege that the top Democrat's Purple Hearts were awarded for "self-reported injuries that were virtually nonexistent."

"He never got a day of treatment, he never spent a day in a medical facility," Burkett said. "These were all self-reported wounds, which you're going to hear from some swift boat guys in the future as to the nature of those wounds."

Charges like these need to be proven, but if true they explain a lot.

Iraqi scientists who may have information on Saddam's WMD are being systematically assassinated:

"I want the world to be informed that these individuals are being assassinated, and it's not because they have a new cooking recipe," said Rep. Steve Buyer, Indiana Republican and chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee.

Rantburg has an excellent piece on the Marines and Fallujah.

The attacks earlier this week were especially brutal, and seemed to be a deliberate attempt to recreate the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu which sent the US running. Anyone who thinks the US will run this time fails to understand that there is a new sheriff in town.

The Army left Fallujah alone, rarely entering the city, which has made it a kind of safe haven for insurgents. The Marines, who recently replaced the Army's 82nd Airborne, were having none of that and immediately began aggressive patrols of the city. The rebels were faced with a use it or lose it choice and have fought back. We expect there will be some tough fighting in the days and weeks to come, but the outcome is not in doubt.

Good hunting!

A British colonel has won libel damages against two UK tabloids which had accused him of committing war crimes in Iraq.

The newspapers' lawyer said that "the defendants now accept that all these allegations are untrue and should not have been published".

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore Labs have broken the power output record for a solid state laser.

Congratulations to Hernando de Soto, winner of the Cato Institute's Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty -- and a cool half million bucks prize money. Those unfamiliar with de Soto's work may wish to start here.

Accusations of vote fraud are being made in a close Democratic primary contest between incumbent Ciro Rodriguez and challenger Henry Cuellar in San Antonio, Texas. While we would love to see left-wing moonbat Rodriguez defeated, the allegations are troubling.