Chris At Home

While waiting for a phone interview. Tick, tick, tick.

• Al Qaeda had 3 more aviation atrocities planned, but they were foiled again. They don't seem to be able to put their plans into action; we must be doing something right.
  
  
• Israeli PM Olmert holds Premier Forum with his predecessors to discuss Iran. It looks like he is trying to build consensus and political capital for something big.
  
  
• Israeli airstrikes go awry, kill civilians. If this keeps up, they might kill as many innocent people as the Palestinians blew up in a university cafeteria a few years ago. Of course, the Israelis kill civilians by accident, the terrorists kill by design. The intended targets were the terrorists who have fired 140 rockets into Israel this month. More context here.
  
  
• The Iranian economy isn't doing so well. It makes me wonder if there isn't a weak point in their infrastructure that could bring it all crashing down. A refinery? A power plant?
  
  
• Soccer is evil, says Jihadi site:

  Claiming that soccer plants the seeds of nationalism, and is therefore part of a "colonial crusader scheme" to divide Muslims and cause them to stray from the vision of a unified Islamic identity, the website told readers: "The sad fact of the matter is that many Muslims have fallen for this new religion and they too carry the national flag.

  
  
• The Presbyterian elite get a clue from their congregations, dump Israel disinvestment policy:
  

  In a stunning reversal of two years ago, the Presbyterian Church's 534 voting members this evening overwhelming disavowed their previous embrace of "phased, selective divestment" from Israel. This is a crushing defeat for proponents of the movement to brand the Jewish state the new apartheid South Africa, as this was the very same organization that kickstarted mainstream acceptance of divestment back in 2004.
  
  Just before 6pm CST, Presbyterians from all over the country gathered in Birmingham, AL, embraced a new divestment-free policy toward the Middle East, 94-5 percent. It was a rout. A shocking one, in fact. The 2004 biennial conference decided "to initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel." That resolution passed with over 80% of the vote, according to a Presbyterian church spokesman.

  
  
• Analysis of Iran's military and political strategy:
  

  The Iranians know they cannot win a war against the United States. Their stated policy is to deter the U.S. and its allies by threatening a war that will cause such damage at such a price that this option will become unacceptable. With this perspective, they are investing very smartly in deterrence enhancers and force multipliers instead of replacing obsolete equipment.
  * What does Iran invest in? Precision strike munitions, anti-ship missiles, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and space capabilities. The newer Shahab 3ER missile (based on the North Korean No Dong), with a reach of 2,000 km, can threaten Ankara or Alexandria, giving Iran leverage over the entire Middle East.
  * Iran has acquired eighteen BM25 land-mobile missiles with launchers from North Korea, which can strike targets in Europe. In the past, the BM25 has been produced in two models: one with a range of 2,500 km and the second with a range of 3,500 km.
  * Well-substantiated reports indicate that the Iranians managed to smuggle out of Ukraine several Russian Kh 55 strategic cruise missiles, probably not to be deployed but to be emulated and copied.
  * In 1998 Iran announced a space program. A space launcher that can orbit a satellite weighing 300 kg can be altered into an ICBM that could drop more than 300 kg on Washington.
  * Iran's political leadership is now aiming toward global power projection in the name of Islam, demanding recognition that Islam comprises 25 percent of humanity and should occupy its rightful place in decision-making in world affairs. Statements like this are not about self-defense.

  
  
• Amnesty International says torture, killings of American soldiers might be a war crime. Might. The Confederate Yankee looks at the Geneva Convention, which shows terrorists can be executed on sight.
  
  
• Clinton officials become hawks:
  

  Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

  
  

Armed robots!

I don't like James Lileks enough. He has a great column today on the Democrats 2006 strategy, er...slogan.

Nancy Pelosi announced that should the Democrats retake the House, item No. 1 will be bold and sweeping: They will "give America a raise by increasing the minimum wage."

Apparently Pelosi believes that America makes the minimum wage. The population consists of industrial workers who get a dime each day for the number of fingers they haven't lost to the machinery, a few million skinny Bob Cratchits shivering in underheated counting houses, and six plutocrats whose tight control over Consolidated Spats, Amalgamated Whalebone and other nefarious trusts keeps everyone poor and shoeless.

The minimum wage was indeed a New Direction -- last century, anyway. But when the unofficial GOP slogan is "Fight and win the War on Terror by blowing up more bad guys real good," a call for a wage boost is like running against FDR with a pledge to reduce postal rates.
...
"Ensure Dignified Retirement." Again, sounds great. Mandatory fedoras for men; a 50 percent reduction in Viagra commercials. But no: The Democrats wish to "prevent the privatization of Social Security," because you cannot be trusted with your own money. It's an interesting definition of dignity: waiting by the mailbox for your government check.

Update: I felt bad about my previous comment, wondering if Murtha was suffering from Alheimers because he thinks our retreats from Beirut and Somalia were great strategy and we should "redeploy" the troops to Okinawa. This article asks the same question and damns his pretensions of understanding military strategy.