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Snap TCP
Over last weekend, fourth platoon performed an evening mission to establish a snap traffic control point to search for people carrying illegal weapons. As is customary, the Humvees drove lights out, with the troopers wearing night visions goggles, and with me staring out into the darkness. When the vehicles reached their destination and established the checkpoint on the road, the only illumination came from the stars and the chem lights placed like bookends on the control area. The road was quiet that night—only one vehicle came through the TCP. But as luck would have it, this night the platoon would be one-for-one. When the unit asked the man to step out of his vehicle, SSG Pugh saw an AK-47 sticking out from beneath the driver’s seat. While it is legal in Iraq to have one AK-47 in your residence or business, it is not legal to carry one on your person or in your car. The troopers therefore confiscated the weapon.
When the man was questioned about where he lived and where he was going, he offered answers that suggested he was not terribly familiar with this area. He was Kurdish, and from what he said, it appeared that his home was farther north. There have been rumors that the Kurds are bringing in more fellow Kurds from outside the area to stack elections—think of it as politics Kansas style—which lead Lt. Naum to think that this man may have been one of the electoral transplants.
Posted by Robert Alt | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 5/29/2004 8:58 AM
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Internet Access
At long last, I have gotten what appears to be a reliable and fast internet connection here at Bernstein. As long as it continues to work, there should be many more posts to follow.
Posted by Robert Alt | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 5/29/2004 8:48 AM
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"It Must Be Sad to Be Al Gore"
Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi reflects on what it must be like to be Al Gore. He endorses Howard Dean, and the Dean campaign starts to unravel. He gives a speech about global warming on a frigid winter day in New York. He backs Air America, the liberal radio channel that is another disaster in the making. He is also supposed to be starting a cable news channel for the under-35 crowd, except most of those folks don’t watch TV news. Good luck with that demographic, Al. But if Al Gore manages to latch onto the Kerry campaign, Kerry will be even sadder.
Posted by John Moser | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/28/2004 9:42 PM
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New Iraqi Prime Minister?
While the UN’s Brahimi is thinking things through,
the Iraqi Governing Council--just before they were about to meet with Brahimi--announced that they chose one of its members, Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim and former exiled opponent of Saddam Hussein, to become prime minister in the new government taking power June 30. Here is the
AP story, and the Reuters story on the issue. Note the interesting permutations and complications. Allawi is being "nominated" (I think) by the Governing Council, and that Brahimi and the UN are a bit surprised: "It’s not how we expected it to happen," chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. That they were surprised by this is very interesting. Also note that the wire reports are delighted to point out that Mr. Allawi has worked with the CIA (to topple Saddam), and that the Bush administration is said to be "delighted" with the choice. It is implied by some that both these points should be to Mr. Allawi’s disadvantage.
Also note that he is related to Ahmed Chalabi, but they are not close, it is said. Note this from the AP dispatch:
"Allawi would appear far from the qualities Brahimi had been seeking for the government’s top spots: local, non-political ’technocrats’ respected by Iraqis. Allawi, in contrast, is a veteran political leader who lived in exile for decades.
But after weeks of speaking of empowering Iraqis, it may be difficult to reverse the public announcement by the Iraqi council.
’It is a done deal,’ Hameed al-Kafaei, the spokesman for the Governing Council, said. Allawi ’is a prime minister-designate.’"
Interesting and amusing stuff, is it not? Politics is easy to love. I also note that John Kerry has given a speech on foreign policy in which he charged that President Bush undermined America’s safety by having "rushed off to war" in Iraq without adequate help or "a plan to win the peace."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/28/2004 4:59 PM
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Lileks’ good rant
James Lileks tells you what he thinks of France-Russia-Germany-China’s attempt to change the our UN resolution on Iraq. A sample: "China wants the UN to give the new Iraqi government authority over the American troops.
Well, that didn’t take long, did it? You can argue about the idea itself, whether it has merits, gives the new government more legitimacy, et cetera – moot points all, to me. China. Do you think they’re doing this out of concern for the Iraqis? I tell you what, lads: we’re going to set a nice example by beginning our exit June 30. How about you follow our lead and take your thumb off Tibet’s carotid artery, eh? How about free elections over there? How about we send in the Blue Helmets to supervise that transition?"
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/28/2004 11:11 AM
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Arnold soaring
The Field Poll shows that 64% of California voters say they believe Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing a better job as Governor than they expected. Just 11% think he is doing a worse job, while for 15% he has met their expectations. And 65% of the voters say they approve of the job he is doing, and only 23% disapprove. See
Daniel Weintraub’s comments on this amazing feat. If you don’t think that the national Democratic Party is worried about this, you should keep your day job.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 5/28/2004 10:59 AM
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Barnett’s core
I just discovered that Thomas P.M. Barnett (author of "The Pentagon’s New Map") is a blogger. Read a few pages into it, I think you’ll find some interesting points and unusual insights. Note especially (a few pages down) his thoughts on how Russia and China are connecting: "Russia’s president Vladimir Putin floats the notion that many in the Core are waiting anxiously to hear first and foremost from China: the push to make the currency truly tradable with the rest of the world’s convertible currencies. This is a huge form of connectivity, because by linking your currency to the world outside, you let that world start determining the real power of your money beyond your borders—pushing up or driving down the value according to its fluctuating desire to buy, hold, or sell you money. At once you give up a lot of control over your economy while gaining a lot of help in keeping your currency logically priced according global market conditions.
Going convertible is a key step to joining the Core big-time. Once the rest of the Core can hold your money, companies become more comfortable in dealing with your economy, because now they have additional mechanisms by which to manage the risk of entering in and doing business within your economy."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/28/2004 10:52 AM
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WW II Memorial
Charles Krauthammer is very critical of the Memorial: "The good news is that the Mall survives. The bad news is that for all its attempted monumentality, the memorial is deeply inadequate -- a busy vacuity, hollow to the core.
The memorial is a parenthesis, quite literally so -- two semicircular assemblies of pillars cupping the Rainbow Pool on the invisible axis that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument." Catesby Leigh is also critical of the architecture. And Ken Masugi says this: "Yet, despite the failure of the memorial as architecture the fact that it will for a few years more attract living memorials gives it a dignity that cannot be lost over time. (Compare the architecturally hideous Vietnam memorial.) Speaking with veterans is a moving experience whose educational impact transcends the failed efforts of the architect."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 5/28/2004 8:59 AM
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The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow opens in theaters today, and Al Gore can hardly wait. The reviewers can, however. You can read my thoughts on the movie here. My summary point may be enough for you: "The Day After Tomorrow is to serious climate science what Hogan’s Heroes was to serious depiction of prison camp life in World War II."
Other reviewers are finding the movie just as comical. The Washington Post this morning says of the film’s director roland Emmerich, "He’s never made a movcie you could believe and he still hasn’t." And the Wall Street Journal’s indispensible Joe Morgenstern says "the movie comes to feel like a giant TV tuned to the Weather Channel on Groundhog Day. . . Seldom has grandeur struggled so mightily, and fruitlessly, with rampant goofiness."
The final delight of this film is that it is backed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox. Which means that Murdoch, the bogeyman of the Left, will be laughing all the way to the bank on the paranoia of the greens. I’m taunting environmentalists that there is no disinformation in the film that can’t be dispelled on Fox News in the coming weeks, and I thank them for cross-subsidizing Brit Hume.
Posted by Steven Hayward | Link to this Entry | Comments [7] | 5/28/2004 7:17 AM
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The economy
The economy grew at a "4.4 percent annual pace from January through March, faster than estimated last month, as businesses replenished inventories, government spending rose and home construction accelerated.
The reading on gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, compares with a previously reported 4.2 percent rate and a 4.1 percent fourth-quarter pace, the Commerce Department said in Washington. Initial jobless claims fell by 3,000 to 344,000 last week, the Labor Department said." And also note this: "Corporate profits jumped 31.6 percent in the year ended in March, the biggest increase since the first quarter of 1984, the Commerce Department’s report showed. A rebound in manufacturing and more investment in new equipment will enable the economy to keep growing for the rest of the year." That’s that. Now let the ebb and flow of war in Iraq become even a poor and mangled peace and there will be an end to carping.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 5/27/2004 4:28 PM
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1979, when the retreat stopped
John Derbyshire claims that the 25th anniversary of 1979 is worth noting: this is the year (aside from Russia invading Afghanistan, Vietnam invading Cambodia, China invading Vietnam, Khomeni taking Iran, etc.) that "the miserable shuffling retreat had been stopped." He kind of feels sorry for Carter, but Steve Hayward takes issue with that. For more--indeed, everything--on Carter see Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/27/2004 2:16 PM
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Terror notes
Muslim cleric arrested in London. "Abu Hamza al-Masri, the fiery Muslim cleric whose shuttered London mosque was linked to Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid, was arrested Thursday in Britain, accused in a U.S. indictment of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon and providing aid to al-Qaida, officials said.
Al-Masri, 47, also is charged in the 11-count indictment with hostage-taking and conspiracy in connection with a December 1998 incident that killed four tourists in Yemen."
South Africa foiles terror plot: "South Africa’s police chief has said his officers revealed a plot linked to al-Qaeda to disrupt April’s elections.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said a number of people from outside South Africa had been arrested on 9 April, five days before the poll.
He told parliament’s security and safety committee that those detained had had ’evil intentions’ against South Africa - though he gave few details.
Mr Selebi said the police operation had led to arrests in Jordan and Syria."
Musharaff "said junior army and air force personnel were involved in an assassination attempt against him in December and that the suspects have been captured." Bali prosecutor is killed. Two cars exploded in Karachi, near the Pakistan-American cultural ceter, killing one, and injuring twenty five. Three killed by army in Beirut. Explosives found near NATO venue in Bratislava. Germans search for the "Caliph of Cologne". A top al Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia "issued a battle plan on Thursday for an urban guerrilla war in the kingdom, already reeling from a recent spate of militant attacks on Western and security targets." In the meantime, the press is sceptical of yesterday’s Bush administartion warning about terror threats.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 5/27/2004 12:00 PM
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Gore’s Scream
Here is Al Gore’s rant to MoveOnPac. I saw it. It was unbearable. I was enraged at first, then felt ashamed that he was incapable of feeling shame. He is now irrelevant, at best becoming the spokesman for about five percent of the American people. John Podhoretz says this: "A man who was very, very nearly president of the United States has been reduced to sounding like one of those people in Times Square with a megaphone screaming about God’s justice. It is almost impossible to believe that this man was once vice president of the United States.
As a stalwart supporter of the war, I would naturally be inclined to find Gore’s line of attack discomfiting and upsetting, even enraging. Instead, I feel an intense sadness and a great sense of relief. The sadness comes from the sight of a man losing his sanity in public. The relief comes from the fact that he is not, and never will be, the president of the United States." Well said, John.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [205] | 5/27/2004 10:18 AM
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Ponnuru’s response
Ramesh Ponnuru, a very able writer and thinker, has responded to my contumelious assault on a point of his. I take his response at face value and we don’t need to stretch it out.
He is right that I do not maintain that the Iraqis (or any other human beings) can govern themselves democratically just because they have the right. But they do have the right, and they are now going to be given the power and the opportunity to attempt to actualize it. I don’t expect self-government to be immanent, but I expect movement toward the
ought.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 5/26/2004 2:54 PM
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Iraqi politics as Mr. Madison’s war
What should guide the new political regime in Iraq? It should be Henry Adams’s definition of politics: "the systematic organization of hatreds," according George Will. Good, as far as it goes, but Ken Masugi recommends this addition from Federalist 55: "As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 5/26/2004 10:30 AM
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