Catching up on Iraq

I’ve been behind on these. Totten has a video, On Patrol in Ramadi.

Yon has a touching tribute in Under Distant Stars, which came with an email message:

I’ve just spent 10 days on the Iran-Iraq border with an excellent British “Battle Group” called 4 Rifles. We truly were living under the desert stars.

I am currently in Basra. There are reports that Basra is in chaos.

These reports are false. Basra is mostly peaceful; the British have not lost a soldier in combat for more than a month, and Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence has plummeted in the last six weeks or so.

The British have NOT pulled out of Iraq or Basra yet, but from what I can see, their force reduction decisions are militarily and politically sound, and are supported by top American commanders in Baghdad.

The news reports I am seeing about Basra are incomplete at best, and largely inaccurate.

(Reminds me of Mosul during 2005.)

And his latest dispatch also came with this:

Iraq is on the mend, al Qaeda is on the run, and the civil war has abated to a point where the term "civil war" no longer applies.

Accurate war coverage is increasingly important.  Even prominent seemingly well-informed
persons can get
it wrong, such as retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez who previously commanded the war in Iraq.  His recent public statements –selectively excerpted and then widely dispersed by the hot winds of media – made it clear that this former senior commander is far out of touch with the current situation.  
 
But there are commanders with a finger on the pulse.  

When earlier this year I wrote about the 1-4 CAV transforming an abandoned seminary in a Baghdad neighborhood that had been decimated by
civil war, the "surge" had not even begun;
but already pundits, politicians and editors had declared it a failure. Though I’d spent only a few days with LTC Crider and his 1-4 CAV soldiers at the new COP Amanche, I ended the dispatch on a note of hope based on observation. I recently received an email from LTC Crider with an update on that Baghdad neighborhood.  Please read "Achievements of the Human Heart" and see for yourself.
 
I was in al Basra province when I saw news reports claiming that Basra city had descended into chaos in the wake of an announcement about the draw down of
British Soldiers.  I emailed the facts
about Basra to several bloggers who hold the media accountable, and the resulting effort got the attention of Tom Foreman who anchors CNN’s "This Week at War."  We were able to make a CNN interview, and the result is a segment that accurately reflects a complex and changing situation.  Bravo to CNN for setting the record straight, and to the tireless bloggers who are making a substantial difference in the way news about the war is delivered.

There are major developments to share with readers in upcoming dispatches. If
things go at-least-mostly according to plan
(which is all we can hope for in war), and if I can rely on the help of readers who share my frustration with the lack of accurate reporting, we can  significantly widen the stream of news flowing from Iraq so more people can obtain a truer picture.  This will require the will and generosity of readers.  But more on that, soon.
 
Michael
Basra, Iraq

Investing Idea

Mikey Kaus may be on to something.

Time for the Invisible Hand to become a Fist

Maybe I’m just one little guy with one little blog. But I’m going to try to get this idea spread to the major gun organizations: NRA, GOA, and SAF.

This is a call for help from inside California to freedom lovers everywhere.

Background:

Governer Schwarzenkennedy just signed the so-called microstamping bill. This requires that new semi-automatic firearms sold in California starting in 2010 have microstamping technology which puts a unique serial number on the shell casing as it is fired. The trouble is that the technology doesn’t exist, meaning by 2010 you won’t be able to get a semi-automatic in this state.

Every firearms and ammunition manufacturer in the country needs to stop selling to California today. This especially means to California law enforcement.

Action items for every gun owner and shooter in the whole country:

1) Ask the following question at the gun shop:

Does the manufacturer of this gun/ammo sell to anybody in the state of California?

If the answer is positive, your reply has to be, “please show me a different brand, and tell them I won’t buy theirs until they stop”. If that means you leave the shop empty handed, so be it.

2) Contact the major manufacturers letting them know, politely, exactly why they should be following Ronnie Barrett’s example. Let them know that we’re on their side. If this sort of idiotic anti-freedom legislation rolls out to the rest of the country they’ll lose their entire market permanently. They know even better than we that microstamping is science fiction.

When every police department in the state starts running out of guns and ammo, maybe the littlebrains in Sacramento will get a clue. And the lethargic California gun owners who aren’t yet active will have to get busy being squeaky wheels.

This microstamping bill is as close to a ban as you can get without being one. Now is the time to act.

Here are contact links for Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Taurus, Sig Sauer, Heckler & Koch, Mossberg, Para-Ordnance , Wilson Combat.

Got another or better contact link? Please leave a comment.

Update:

Judging by some email I’ve gotten, I didn’t make it clear enough that I mean for this to be an ammo boycott also. If ammo suppliers think they’ll lose all their national civilian ammo sales because they’re
selling to California law enforcement, they might be willing to put on the brakes. And the sooner the cops in California run out of ammo, the sooner the heavyweight lobbyists will kick democrat (and RINO) patootie in Sacramento.

A Partial List

of those who did not win a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Britain Happy to Submit or Die

Melanie Phillips calls them on it.

The Idiotarians Have Taken Over California

Governer Schwarzenkennedy just signed the microstamping bill. This requires that new semi-automatic firearms sold in California starting in 2010 have so-called microstamping technology which puts a unique serial number on the shell casing as it is fired. The Governator said at the signing,

While I appreciate and understand that this technology is not without
limitations, I am signing this bill to provide law enforcement with an
additional tool for solving crimes committed with semi-automatic handguns in
California.

Public safety is one of the most important roles of government and I
encourage all stakeholders to work on improving this technology so that it
may become an even more effective crime fighting tool.

I’m glad he “appreciates” that the technology is “not without limitations”. Allow me to list a few of the limitations.

First, it doesn’t work, and nobody makes guns that have it. Oh, some claim it works in a lab. But it really is still just science fiction. I guess that’s the “improving this technology” part is.

Second, it can be defeated in 5 minutes work using a nail file. That’s it. The high tech system can be nullified by just scratching the little stamper.

Third, you just know that some bad guys will sweep the ground at shooting ranges for brass to scatter at crime scenes.

Fourth, it won’t affect revolvers. Guess what’s going to get more popular. If not revolvers, it will be…

Fifth, the millions of guns without microstamps in them. This is a mature technology. Old guns will work just fine with new ammo. So either they’ll just be stolen or smuggled into the state from elsewhere.

This sort of nonsense really defines stupidity. I can only hope that all gun manufacturers stop selling weapons to all California police and state agencies right now. They certainly have no motivation to actually implement this absurd technology, so they may as well play hardball and see how the morons in Sacramento squirm when the cops can’t get guns anymore. Perhaps if they feel the heat they’ll see the light.

Rush’s Bid for Greatness

A brilliant move.

Bid here.

Update:

As of Sunday morning the bid is over $40,000. And you can see the backstory here.

Cascading Into Error

Be sure to read this cautionary article.

(Free registration required, or use bugmenot.)

In the case of fatty foods, that confident voice belonged to Ancel Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago (the K-rations in World War II were said to be named after him). He became convinced in the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of heart disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors.

There were two glaring problems with this theory, as Mr. Taubes, a correspondent for Science magazine, explains in his book. First, it wasn’t clear that traditional diets were especially lean. Nineteenth-century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the percentage of fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according to the best estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in the modern Western diet.

Second, there wasn’t really a new epidemic of heart disease. Yes, more cases were being reported, but not because people were in worse health. It was mainly because they were living longer and were more likely to see a doctor who diagnosed the symptoms.

Algore’s Big Prize

Congratulations!

The Leak That Wasn’t

LGF has an update on that SITE story. May not have been as bad as reported.

The Most Powerful Microscope in the World

How about resolution down to a fourth the diameter of a carbon atom?

That’s so crazy only a university professor could believe it

Heh.

The Losers Can’t Lose Fast Enough

The most famous skyscraper in New York will be celebrating a holiday of the men who destroyed two New York skyscrapers.

Regretable

That’s what some are calling the leak that ruined SITE’s ability to monitor al Qaeda videos.

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.

“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

Since it’s a WaPo story, the blame goes to President Bush, of course. The real blame belongs with the leaker (CIA, I’m looking at you), who should be hunted down and tried for treason.

Like that’s gonna happen.

Hat tip: Agrapha.

Wanna Barf?

The Nasty Little Man is getting a movie.

The trailer is laugh-out-loud funny. If you can keep your lunch down.

In Dutch

LGF and Christopher Hitchens are right on: America needs to stand behind Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Chill Out

The skeptical environmentalist points out that even if you buy anthropogenic warming (he does) Kyoto is not the way to fix it.

The typical cost of cutting a ton of CO2is currently about $20. Yet, according to a wealth of scientific literature, the damage from a ton of carbon in the atmosphere is about $2. Spending $20 to do $2 worth of good is not smart policy. It may make you feel good, but it’s not going to stop global warming.

We need to reduce the cost of cutting emissions from $20 a ton to, say, $2. That would mean that really helping the environment wouldn’t just be the preserve of the rich but could be opened up to everyone else — including China and India, which are expected to be the main emitters of the 21st century but have many more pressing issues to deal with first.

The way to achieve this is to dramatically increase spending on research and development of low-carbon energy. Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, be they wind, wave or solar power, or capturing CO2emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25 billion per year but would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto Protocol and would increase global R&D tenfold. All nations would be involved, yet the richer ones would pay the larger share.

Gee… what non-carbon energy source somehow didn’t make the list?

Yes, he’s still an environmentalist, whatever that really means. I have to agree with his calls for cooling it, and kudos for pointing out that global warming just might be a good thing.

The Best Police in Iraq

Michael J. Totten has another post up. It includes a surprise chance to meet AQI face to face.

“Who is he in the cell with?” I said.

“They locked him up with Al Qaeda.”

I froze.

Al Qaeda was just down the steps? I was suddenly overwhelmed with morbid curiosity. Ever since September 11, 2001, I have wanted to look into the eyes of the kinds of people who would murder thousands of innocents and think their reward would be virgins.

Still Think Outlawing Lead Is A Good Idea?

You might knot when all your gadgets break.

I don’t know what all the fuss about lead is, anyway. Once you’re old enough to not stick random things in your mouth it ceases to be much of a threat.

Was Haditha an al Qaeda Op?

There is evidence that it was. And that AQI could, as usual, count on our own “news” media as allies.

The prosecutors in the case against eight Marines charged with murder and cover up at Haditha still maintain the besieged infantrymen acted solely out of malice and poor judgment when they killed 24 Iraqis there. The prosecution’s investigation was launched after a story by Time magazine reporter Tim McGirk on March 6, 2006 accused the Marines of cold blooded murder in retaliation for the death of a brother Marine.

McGirk received his video “evidence” and contacts from two known Iraqi insurgent operatives already under observation by Marine Corps counter intelligence teams. One of the Iraqi witnesses McGirk relied on had just been released from almost six months captivity for insurgent activities and the other witness was considered a useful intelligence tool by Marines listening to him talk on his cell phone. McGirk never interviewed the Marines, who ironically had prepared a similar intelligence summary in anticipation of his canceled visit.

Child Abuse Watch

I don’t know how Hamas can sink any lower in ways it finds to abuse the children of “Palestine”.

They’ll find a way, though.

Al Gore vs. Algore

See how far one man can slide into moonbattery between 1992 and 2007. Back before he became Algore, High Priest of Knowing What’s Good For You, the hypocrite was criticizing Bush for ignoring Iraq’s ties to terrorism.

Science and Islam

A physics professor from Pakistan laments the lack of scientific progress in the Islamic world.

Where his points are about science, they are well-taken.

Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or “butterfly-collecting” activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked.

Followed by a pot shot at the West.

Religious fundamentalism is always bad news for science. But what explains its meteoric rise in Islam over the past half century? In the mid-1950s all Muslim leaders were secular, and secularism in Islam was growing. What changed? Here the West must accept its share of responsibility for reversing the trend. Iran under Mohammed Mossadeq, Indonesia under Ahmed Sukarno, and Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser are examples of secular but nationalist governments that wanted to protect their national wealth. Western imperial greed, however, subverted and overthrew them. At the same time, conservative oil-rich Arab states—such as Saudi Arabia—that exported extreme versions of Islam were US clients. The fundamentalist Hamas organization was helped by Israel in its fight against the secular Palestine Liberation Organization as part of a deliberate Israeli strategy in the 1980s. Perhaps most important, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US Central Intelligence Agency armed the fiercest and most ideologically charged Islamic fighters and brought them from distant Muslim countries into Afghanistan, thus helping to create an extensive globalized jihad network. Today, as secularism continues to retreat, Islamic fundamentalism fills the vacuum.

There may have been undesireable consequences to some foreign policy decisions, but that hardly explains why his campus at Islamabad “has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore.” When he holds up the EU as a shining example of how to do things right it’s tempting to dismiss him. But the article raises many good points, and the best part about it is that his article’s very existence is a sign of reform in Islam.

And that can come none too soon.

AQI Sitrep

The Long War Journal has an interesting post about the state of al Qaeda in Iraq. That high-value target recently popped near the Syrian border has unearthed a lot of interesting nuggets.

Bergner said several documents were found in Muthanna’s custody, including a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from “a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.”

How long before America makes that list?

Other documents found in Muthanna’s possession include a “pledge of a martyr,” which is signed by foreign fighters inside Syria. and an expense report. The pledge signed by the recruited suicide bomber requires the terrorist provide a photograph and passport, and states the recruit must enroll in a “security course” in Syria. The expense report is tallied in US dollars, Syrian lira, and Iraqi dinars, includes items such as clothing, food, fuel, mobile phone cards, weapons, salaries, “sheep purchased,” furniture, spare parts for vehicles and other items.

Mobile phone cards and sheep. Footfall indeed. And I cheered at this bit of good news: We killed the barbarian who led the savage attack on the Yazidis in northern Iraq.

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

This bearded man from Reno may surprise you.

All I can say is, “Way to go.”

OAK Apologizes

Good for them.

There will be people watching to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Fred Blows Another One

He toured an ethanol plant and then did an about-face on subsidies.

“I have voted against subsidies in the Senate,” said Thompson. “But I think it’s a matter now of national security and we’ve got to avail ourselves of a lot of different resources, and I think renewable has to be a part of that picture.”

The ethanol scam is the worst of all the idiotic bio-fuel options. It’s going to be hard to work up any enthusiasm for someone who thinks it’s a good idea. And for anybody who likes subsidizing specific industries.

Dang. Looks like once again I will have nobody to vote for for president, just someone to vote against. I wonder if there’ll be someone I can vote for before I die.

WWN Legacy Watch

Another agency filling in for the dear, departed Weekly World News uncritically reports what one phone call, or an ounce of common sense, would tell them is absolute codswollop.

OAK vs the Corps

This has been in the news today.

I’ve got half a mind to go down to the airport and let the TSA goons know that the lot of them together aren’t worthy of licking the boots of any one of the Marines they have disrespected this way.

But maybe I’ll calm down and go straight to the airport management.

Soldiers Hand Out Newspapers And Rice

Totten doesn’t think that’s much of a headline. If you know the context, though, it’s just fine.

The Pro-Defeat Lobby in the MSM will be glad to know that they’re having an effect on troop morale:

“Are you going to bash us or what?” he finally said.

“I didn’t come all the way out here in August just to bash you guys,” I said. I felt some sympathy for his complaint, but was at the same time tired of hearing it. “I write what I see and hear, good and bad. You won’t get bad press from me unless you act badly.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You’ll be the first.”

I’m hardly the first. I know several journalists, political liberals as well as conservatives, who write it straight and don’t wallow in soldier-bashing. But the soldier-bashing that’s also out there sure does make an impression. Every journalist who embeds in Iraq must hear these complaints as often as I did, and I heard it daily.