SwiftVets win trial

Two months ago in my posting The Swift Vet Case, I attempted to take on Newsweek's Eleanor Clift ugly assertion that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were just a Karl Rove "Sleeper Cell" making what Ms. Clift referred to as a "scurrilous attack on Kerry’s military service." She asserted that "The charges advanced by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would never hold up in a court of law." I disagreed and sent her a letter to that effect - a letter which became my post. I concluded:

Contrary to your view, the “sleeping giant” awakened in this matter is not Mr. Kerry but rather thousands of Vietnam veterans who have spent much of their adult lives defending their honorable service from the unfair “hyperbole” of Mr. Kerry and the too willing assumptions of its truth by people like you.

Will they attempt to justify the war? No, and nor should they. They were not the policy-makers and bear no responsibility for the strategic decisions that placed them there. Neither is the war’s justification relevant to Mr. Kerry’s behavior during or after the war. No, the trial would be about his truthfulness, his wartime and post war behavior, the effects of that behavior and what they say about Mr. Kerry’s fitness to be commander in chief.

In short, it is exactly the case that the SwiftVets are bringing to help the American voters to decide.

Just a little short of two months later, the majority of American voters showed their agreement with the SwiftVets. Case closed.

Thank you, SwiftVets! May you have Fair Winds and Following Seas the rest of your days. Well done!

Things I won't miss after the election

These words:
"Selected not elected"
"Stole Florida"
"If every voted had been counted"
"When I served in Vietnam"
"AL Gore, the real president"
"He won the popular vote"
"outsourced Tora Bora"
"ABB" (Anybody But Bush)
"Discredited SwifVet Charges"
"Bribed and coerced"
"Unilateral"
"I have a plan"
"AWOL"


These people:
Any one who said they were emigrating if Bush got re-elected. Bon voyage!
"Lawrence "You're a Liar' O'Donnell
Tom Daschle
Terry McAwful
Bob Schrum
MoveOn
Ralph Nader
Wes Clark
Howard Dean
Al Gore
Mrs. Heinz-Kerry

You can add to the list in the comments section

Dear Osama

Dear Osama,

Hope you enjoy living in caves!

George says we'll be looking for you.

Four more years!

Take a Deep Breath

You voted. I voted. Lots of people are voting. It takes a while to sort their votes out.

Take a deep breath. Don't panic.

Wait for the real results...not the exit polls.

The sun (no matter the results) will rise in the morning.

VOTE

VOTE!

The Rest of the Tape

The New York Post has an article on what was left off the Osama bin Laden tape as shown, including this excerpt (hat tip to Roger L. Simon):

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape - of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday - bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military's unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

In my view this "missing" information explains a great deal about why OBL decided to attempt his gambit to see if he could affect the U.S. election - President Bush and the Global War on Terrorism is having a terrific effect on OBL and his bands of jihadists.

Beldar takes on Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's idiotic "we're making new terrorists" comments, which I noted to him in a comment on one of his earlier posts. In view of the Post article, my view is that bin Laden is pushing hard for John Kerry because of the trouble he is having getting anything organized and because we are killing any new recruits almost as fast as they are sent out. Further, holding successful elections in Afghanistan means that OBl's plea for a super Islamic state is substantially lessened because people freed from the Taliban Sharia state have proven they do not want to repeat that horror. In short, Rendell's pitiful argument is totally negated by OBL's own words.

Let's keep it that way!

Update: Power Line has an interesting report on a translation of the OBL tape that includes threatening individual U.S. states that don't vote the "right" (anti-Bush) way. Hmmm.

More Reasons to Re-Elect the President

American Digest offers up 50 great reasons to re-elect the President. Hat tip: Power Line

Tarheels 31-Miami 28

WOW!

The Disloyal Oppostion

The Diplomad site makes some excellent points about what has happened to the Democrats and the exactly wrong message that is being sent abroad.

Update: Exactly on point is this Kerry Spot piece by Jim Geraghty:

Last night, I heard secondhand that a left-of-center friend said, during a discussion about the tape, “Well, now I actually agree with bin Laden, I mean, the stuff he said about Bush.”

It was probably meant as a joke, or as a statement of irony. I wasn’t there, so I don’t want to draw conclusions about the statement’s meaning, and apparently the topic of conversation shifted so that no one could really analyze what that speaker meant.

But I have little doubt that in some other corners of our country, a statement like that was probably said and wasn’t a joke, or wasn’t ironic.

There was an old saying about politics stopping at the water’s edge. There was a reason for this, and for the concept of the “loyal opposition.” Suppose the U.S. and another country were in a trade dispute. The other country would want different policies, and thus would want the incumbent party out of power. So they would seize on any criticism from the challenging party, and use it for rhetorical purposes to strengthen their case both with their own population and in other countries. “Even the American challenging party says the incumbent leader’s policies are unfair and a failure.” No party wants to be seen as putting foreign interests ahead of their own citizens’ interests, so they have to be on guard that their arguments aren’t providing fodder for foreign powers with different interests than America.

Over the last three years or so, we have seen that concept obliterated. We’ve seen a truly unparalleled deluge of criticism of the president that well beyond policy differences. He is tarred as a war criminal, a fool, an idiot, a warmonger, a man who trades blood for oil, a mass murderer of innocent civilians, a stooge of sinister corporate interests, a puppet of Cheney, a terrorist himself, the anti-Christ, the second coming of Hitler, a slave to Ariel Sharon, an anti-Muslim hatemonger… and I’m sure I’ve left out plenty.

This rhetoric has been picked up by the British left, the European left, the Arab press, and anti-American interests around the globe. And — to my knowledge — not one Democrat, not one voice on the left has said, “Hey, we know you hate Bush, but stay out of it. He’s our president, leave the criticism of him to us.”

Osama's Back

Note to all of you who have tried to claim that the attacks on the September 11, 2001 were some sort of plot by the President or some vast right wing conspiracy - this ought to put your fevered imaginations to rest: Bin Laden Claims Responsibility for 9/11.

In the video, bin Laden accused Bush of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because Al Qaeda "hates freedom." The terrorist leader said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims.

Let's see, countries that threaten Muslims include: the U.S., the U.K., Russia, China. Pakistan, Australia, the Philippines, Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Tunisia, Belgium, Germany, Indonesia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Israel. I may have missed a couple. Apparently Sweden is safe.

"We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden said.

"Our nation?"

The principal stated aims of al-Qaeda are to drive Americans and American influence out of all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia; destroy Israel; and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East. Bin Laden has also said that he wishes to unite all Muslims and establish, by force if necessary, an Islamic nation adhering to the rule of the first Caliphs.

According to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa (religious decree), it is the duty of Muslims around the world to wage holy war on the U.S., American citizens, and Jews. Muslims who do not heed this call are declared apostates (people who have forsaken their faith).

Al-Qaeda's ideology, often referred to as "jihadism," is marked by a willingness to kill "apostate" -and Shiite-Muslims and an emphasis on jihad. Although "jihadism" is at odds with nearly all Islamic religious thought, it has its roots in the work of two modern Sunni Islamic thinkers: Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb.

Al-Wahhab was an 18th-century reformer who claimed that Islam had been corrupted a generation or so after the death of Mohammed. He denounced any theology or customs developed after that as non-Islamic, including more than 1,000 years of religious scholarship. He and his supporters took over what is now Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism remains the dominant school of religious thought.

Sayyid Qutb, a radical Egyptian scholar of the mid-20th century, declared Western civilization the enemy of Islam, denounced leaders of Muslim nations for not following Islam closely enough, and taught that jihad should be undertaken not just to defend Islam, but to purify it.

So, his "freedom" for his nation means a holy war, the creation of a Islamic super nation (but only for Muslims who believe exactly as he does- the rest can be killed or converted). His "freedom" means the freedom to believe exactly as he does and follow the rules of Sharia as he would have them interpreted.

[C]alling the Sharia 'law' can be misleading, as Sharia extends beyond law. Sharia is the totality of religious, political, social, domestic and private life. Sharia is primarily meant for all Muslims, but applies to a certain extent also for people living inside a Muslim society...

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.
"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.
"It appeared to him [Bush] that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

This last stuff is just pure baloney and a blatant play to the Michael Moore "makeitupumentary" fan base who believe that 5 or 7 minutes might have made some difference in what happened on 9/11. Actually, at the time of the book reading the second tower had already been hit. Apparently, OBL is of the school of thought that the President should have jumped up and perfotmed the classic "When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" routine intead of calmly letting his subordinates get a handle on what was happening before deciding on a response (if I'd been in the Natonal Command Center, I would have appreciated that- it's hard enough trying to sort through first reports - which are almost always wrong- without any "prompting' by the higher levels of the food chain).

Osama has obviously been following the election process and is trying to get President Bush out of the way. He apparently (and to my mind correctly) reads Kerry as a "negotiator and not a fighter" whose election might provide time for the OBL movement to recover from the damage being wrought on it by the US and our allies. Now is not the time to give him what he wants.

Update: Beldar has a good piece on OBL's gambit.
Update: A good analysis at Captain's Quarters
Update: While I like his analysis, I disagree slightly with Wretchard at Belmont Club about the significance of what OBL did not directly say in the tape.

It is important to notice what he has stopped saying in this speech. He has stopped talking about the restoration of the Global Caliphate. There is no more mention of the return of Andalusia. There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.

Instead, I think he certainly implies in his use of the phrase "our nation" that he is still tracking towards the unification of Muslims into a single Islamic nation. I think that the Captain has it right in his analysis that OBL has toned down his language to attempt to appear "reasonable":

Far from signaling a surrender, I believe that OBL wants to influence the American elections as another demonstration of his power. He wants to depose George Bush, but he's smart enough to understand that a fire-breathing performance only helps Bush by scaring/insulting the voters. His moderate performance was designed to appeal to the reasonable leftists and centrists who tend to believe that America brought Islamist terror onto itself. His "offer" amounts to a lever with which to promote anti-Israel sentiment to undercut support for Bush, as well as give people the impression that the war is Bush's fault, despite the years of Al Qaeda attacks on American assets.

Update: Donald Sensing has an excellent post about the effect of the "Chicago Way" on OBL's motivation for the newest tape.
Update: Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette offers up some good stuff including this pithy bit on Osama's reappearance: " Just in time for Halloween he's come out swinging, one would assume with his best stuff, and lo and behold it's Michael Moore quotes"
Update: Roger L. Simon says only 6 minutes of the OBL tape was shown and some of parts left out talk about the damage the U.S. has done to the OBL network.

Pirates! Terrorists! Oh, My!

For those of you who never, ever go to sea, you might find it surprising that pirates still cause problems for the world shipping. While piracy problems exist in many parts of the world, the Straits of Malaaca are particularly dangerous especially along the Indonesian coast. Large oil tankers, carrying oil to the world from the Middle East pass regularly through these straits...The International Chamber of Commerce provides a weekly piracy report that is always interesting to read (if you are a old sea dog like me)

The Asia Times has an interesting series of articles here, here and here on piracy and maritime terrorism. The author, Eric Koo, reaches this conclusion:

Piracy and maritime terrorism are forms of asymmetrical warfare that non-state actors use as instruments in disrupting the peace and security of states. It is therefore necessary for navies to revamp and find new definitions for their role in the modern security context.

The U.S. Navy is paying attention, as noted in this article from Military.com:

“The seas are unpoliced and unregulated and, therefore, attractive to those who want to exploit or abuse them,” said U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon R. England. Speaking in July at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., England said, “On average, more than one ship each day is attacked, robbed, hijacked or sunk.”

The situation grows worse each year, according to the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), part of the Commercial Crime Services division of the International Chamber of Commerce. Recorded pirate attacks increased by 20 percent in 2003 alone, rising to a total of 445 incidents compared with 370 in 2002, according to IMB statistics. In these incidents, 21 seafarers are known to have been killed -- compared with 10 the previous year -- and 71 crew and passengers were listed as missing, IMB reported.

For as long as mankind has used the sea to transport valuable, there have been people willing to attempt to hijack the goods. Armed merchants, convoys and Navy escorts were used to help stem the problem in years past. Looks like we might have to return to those techniques again.

Piracy and maritime terrorism are linked. Here's an interesting warning article that starts out, "Singapore is trying to blow the whistle on the global threat posed by jihadists taking their terror tactics to the sea.

In his new book Shadow War, Richard Miniter devotes an entire chapter to "Terror at Sea" including a chilling portion about the odd assault on chemical tanker Dewi Madrim in March 2003 by a group of armed men. Instead of partaking of the usual cargo jacking or kidnapping, the attackers made only token effort at robbery, but devoted their time to disabling the ship's radios, switching on their own radios and "...practiced steering the vessel."

Noel Choong, who runs the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was concerned about "three things - the automatic weapons, the fact that chemical tankers were targeted, and finally, the fact that they know how to operate the tankers..."
Pirates in the South Pacific rarely use automatic weapons. They usually target oil and diesel tanker - which have cargos that are easily sold in black markets - not chemical tankers..."

Hmmm...

Miniter also notes that Osama bin Laden once had a fleet of 15 ships...

A recent workshop on Maritime Security, Maritime Terrorism and Piracy in Asia had some interesting topics, e.g "  Piracy, Armed Robbery and Terrorism at Sea in Southeast Asia:A Global and Regional Outlook." Wish I could have gone.

Keep an eye on the sea.

 

North Korea Justs Keeps Hanging On

Nicholas Eberstadt has an interesting piece in Policy Review looking at how North Korea continues to exist as a state. Some good tidbits:

But how was this reported trade deficit financed? After all, North Korea is a state with a commercial creditworthiness rating of approximately zero, having maintained for a generation its posture of defiant de facto default on the Western loans it contracted in the 1970s.
Historically, the dprk relied upon aid from its communist allies — principally, the Soviet Union and China — to augment its imports. After the collapse of the ussr, China perforce emerged as North Korea’s principal foreign patron, and Beijing’s largesse extended beyond its officially announced subventions for Pyongyang. The dprk’s seemingly permanent merchandise trade deficit with China constitutes a broader and perhaps more accurate measure of Beijing’s true aid levels for Pyongyang (insofar as neither party seems to think the sums accumulated in that imbalance will ever be corrected or repaid).
Implicit Chinese aid, however, cannot account for North Korea’s import upsurge of 1998-2003. To the contrary: China’s implicit aid to North Korea — i.e., its reported balance of trade deficit — fell during these years, dropping from about $340 million to about $270 million. (The total was back up to $340 million in 2003 — meaning that China’s implicit aid to Pyongyang was no higher than it had been five years earlier.) North Korea’s non-Chinese balance of trade deficit, by contrast, apparently soared upward (see Figure 4). Whereas in 1997 the dprk reportedly only managed to obtain a net of $50 million more merchandise from abroad than its commercial exports would have paid for — after factoring out China — by 2002 the corresponding total was well over $900 million.
Indeed, if we remove China from the picture, the line describing North Korea’s net imports of supplies from abroad rises steadily upward between 1997 and 2003. It is this graphic that captures the economic essence of North Korea’s shift from its “Arduous March” period to its Kangsong Taeguk epoch.
And how was this jump in non-Chinese net imports financed? Unfortunately, we cannot be precise about this, since many of the sources of funds involve illicit transactions. North Korea’s international counterfeiting, drug trafficking, weapons, and weapon technology sales all figure here, although the sums raised from those activities are a matter of some dispute.
Nor do we yet know exactly how much of the South Korean taxpayers’ money was furtively channeled from Seoul to Pyongyang during this period. One set of prosecutorial investigations has convicted former President Kim Dae Jung’s national security adviser and several other aides of illegally transferring up to $500 million to Kim Jong Il’s “Bureau 39” (a unit of the ruling party specially charged with funding Kim’s royal court) on the eve of the historic June 2000 Pyongyang summit. The possibility of other unreported official Seoul-to-Pyongyang payoffs during the 1998-2003 period cannot be ruled out — nor, of course, can the potential volume of any such attendant funds be determined.

How about this:

It may be perplexing and counterintuitive to see the United States — the dprk’s longtime principal opponent and antagonist in the international arena — described as a major backer of the North Korean state. Yet this is now in fact the case. Figures compiled by Mark Manyin of the Congressional Research Service provide the details (see Table 1). In the 1996-2002 period, Washington awarded Pyongyang just over $1 billion in food aid, concessional fuel oil, and medical supplies. (Interestingly enough, nearly $350 million of these resources was transferred in the years 2001 and 2002 — under the purportedly hostile aegis of the George W. Bush administration.)

Hmmm...drugs, weapons, under the table payments from South Korea and US aid - what a way to keep your country afloat. But it gets better. North Korea believes in a "self-sustaining national defense industry!"

This is a fascinating and revealing formulation. In most of the world today, a country’s defense outlays are regarded as a weight that must be shouldered by the value-adding sectors of the national economy (hence the phrase “military burden”). North Korea’s leadership, however, evidently entertains the concept of a “self-sustaining” defense sector — implying that Pyongyang views its military activities as generating resources rather than absorbing them. In the enunciated view of Pyongyang’s leadership, the dprk’s military sector is the key to financing the recovery of the national economy.
It does not require a great deal of imagination to spell out the operational details of this approach. While forswearing any appreciable export revenues from legitimate commerce with advanced market economies, North Korean policy today seems to be banking on the possibility of financing state survival by exporting strategic insecurity to the rest of the world. In part, such dividends are derived from exports of merchandise (e.g., missile sales, international transfer of wmd technology). But these revenues also depend heavily on what might be described as an export of services: in this case, military extortion services (or, perhaps better yet, “revenue-sensitive threat reduction services”) based upon Pyongyang’s nuclear development and ballistic missile programs.

Simply amazing. Read the whole thing. Great work Professor Eberstadt!

Hat tip: NRO's the corner

Cheney Gets It Right

The Kerry Spot on National Review Online

CHENEY RESPONDS TO KERRY/TIMES/BARADEI OCTOBER SURPRISE
This is more like it. From the AP:
"If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail," the vice president told supporters in his first comment on the controversy that erupted Monday.

Cheney, the most senior administration official to comment on the latest development in Iraq, complained that Kerry does not mention the "400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured."

Nearly 400 tons of explosives have disappeared from a former Iraqi military installation. The International Atomic Energy Agency had warned the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq to secure the explosives, fearing they could fall into the wrong hands. The materials are key components of plastic explosives like those insurgents have used in car bomb attacks.
Speaking to a crowd in an area of Florida with several military bases, Cheney also said, "It is not at all clear that those explosives" that were lost "were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad." ...

Cheney also invoked the name of retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to rebut another of Kerry's criticisms - that the Bush administration wasted a chance to catch terrorist leader Osama bin Laden when the United States had al-Qaida fighters surrounded in Tora Bora in Afghanistan.

Franks "stated repeatedly it was not at all certain that bin Laden was in Tora Bora," said Cheney. "He might have been there or in Pakistan or even Kashmir."

"Now John Kerry sitting 6,000 miles away, he is trying to cast doubt on these amazing performances" by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney said.

Kerry frequently asserts that the administration "outsourced" the job of hunting down bin Laden to Afghan warlords.
"U.S. Special Forces were on the ground, and in charge of the operation around Tora Bora," Cheney said. "They relied on Afghan fighters to help them kill and capture Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Tora Bora. They knew the landscape."

(my apologies for lifting the entire quote from the KerrySpot, but it was darn well worth it...)

Go get 'em Mr. Vice-president!

Absolutely Brilliant

If you haven't read Wretchard's War Plan Orange then you have missed a great piece of analysis.

UN Official Attempts to Influence US Election

Did Mohammed El Baradei leak documents regarding the "missing" explosives? If he did, then here's the question posed byRoger L. Simon: Is this beyond Oil-for-Food?

Consider this: That means a high official of the United Nations... and not just an ordinary high official but one empowered with preventing nuclear weapons proliferation... is trying to influence a US election. And we thought we had seen everything with the Oil-for-Food scandal!

My, oh, my! I feel myself getting seriously vexed...

Update: Might as well poach my comment to Mr. Simon's question:

Is this the new UN theme song? (To the tune of "Bad to the Bone")

I cheated a hundred times, that's nothing new
I'll cheat a thousand more baby, before I am through
I wanna change your president, yours and yours alone
I'm here to tell ya honey, that I'm corrupt to the bone
Corrupt to the bone
C-C-C-Corrupt
C-C-C-Corrupt
C-C-C-Corrupt
Corrupt to the bone"

(with apologies to George Thorogood)

Mohammed El Barade must go. It seems he's...corrupt to the bone!

Update: Was the IAEA asked to destroy the bad stuff? A former inspector says so...
here Hat tip to Instapundit!

"I want my son to serve..."

Steve Dunleavy in the New York Post says "I want my GI son to serve under Bush". His son, an Army reserve captain is on his way to Iraq.

I know just how he feels. My older son, a Navy helicopter pilot, just deployed to the Sand Box environs, too. As Mr. Dunleavy says, there is nothing different about my son than any of the thousands of men and women who are out there doing their jobs, or any of the thousands who are just back or who are gearing up to go. They all deserve to serve under the best leader we can give them. It's not John Kerry.

In 1971, when Mr. Kerry gave his infamous Senate testimony attacking his fellow veterans of Vietnam, I was finishing my senior year in college. After four years of ROTC, I was getting ready to be commissioned. Within a year I was deployed off Vietnam when the North Vietnamese rolled across the DMZ in the Easter Offensive of 1972.

His comments on that war had an impact then, and his comments on the current war are having an impact now. In both cases I believe those comments provided aid and comfort to enemies who where engaged in combat with soldiers, Marines and sailors of the United States. Aid to an enemy engaged in trying to kill Americans.

Having trouble with the idea that we had people in action in 1972? I suggest you read the Bridge at Don Ha by John Grider Miller or go to the USS Mullinnix site to see the shell splash photo or visit the USS Sterrett site to learn about the battle off Dong Hoi where the USS Higbee took a bomb in her after gun mount and the Sterett fought off a Styx missile attack. The North Vietnamese had plenty of fight left, helped in no small part by the words and actions of the anti-war crowd, including John Kerry.

Now he is at it again. As Matt Heidt at Froggyruminations says so well:

Kerry, true to form, has denigrated the actions of the US Military even though he knows the Tora Bora operation successfully killed Usama bin Laden. Kerry’s persistent disparagement of the US Military in a futile effort to achieve his life’s ambition is further evidence for his unfitness to serve as CINC...

Now he putting at risk more troops. Now he is putting at risk Steve Dunleavy's son and my son and the daughter of ...

Do not elect this dangerous, lying man.

Update: The Kerry Spot has the proper response to Kerry and his willing accomplices

Come on, guys. The New York Times, international bureaucrats like Mohamed ElBaradei and the Kerry campaign are coordinating October-surprise hit pieces on President Bush. This is screaming for a tougher response. Something like an attack ad stating, “Kerry is playing Monday Morning Quarterback with the 101st Airborne’s performance in Iraq. In 1971, John Kerry smeared our troops as rapists and butchers then... He’s smearing them as incompetent now. This Nov. 2, show John Kerry what you think of his attacks on our troops."

Amen!

Kosovo vote reveals failure of UN rule

The Telegraph of London has another sad report on Kosovo: Kosovo vote reveals failure of UN rule(Hat tip: Instapundit)

Barely more than half of Kosovo's 1.4 million voters went to the ballot box. While the province's majority ethnic Albanians were struck by apathy, its 130,000-strong Serb minority was seized by anger and completely boycotted the poll.
Only a handful of Serbs voted, following calls from Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian Prime Minister, and the Serbian Orthodox Church to stay away. Mr Kostunica described the election as a "failure".
The level of absenteeism prompted Soren Jessen-Petersen, the UN governor in Kosovo, to protest that some Serbs had been intimidated into observing the boycott and had "had their democratic right to vote hijacked".
In one success however, the 20,000 Nato soldiers who maintain the peace in Kosovo were not called into action on election day, as the province remained calm.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

20,000 NATO troops to maintain "peace." It's just a ticking time bomb. The Kosovar Albanians do not want to be part of Serbia...the status quo cannot be maintained except at great expense.

See my earlier blog on Kosovo to get a flavor of how failed this state is..

My Simple Guide to international Law

Over the years of my law practice and service in the reserves (as a non-lawyer), I have reached a conclusion about "international law." That conclusion is that such a thing barely exists. I am not alone in this view. See this:

International law is stuck in a morass of contested doctrinal description. Its content, effect, and very existence are grist for incessant academic debate and political wrangling.(Warning note by Eagle1: The cited article is written in what I assume to be some sort of "intellectual" languange that smacks of the sociology "we are really a science" stuff I read as an undergraduate. The concept of a simple declarative sentence using simple but appropriate words seems to have been lost somewhere in the groves of academe.)

Not surprising, really, nation states, like the human beings that comprise them, tend to cooperate when it's in their interest to cooperate and not otherwise. Thus, some international things are easy - passports, visas, certain aspects of maritime merchantile and shipping law, trade agreements, etc. Some things are hard- weapons control, international criminal courts, etc. Easy or hard seems to my jaundiced eye to depend on how much control (freedom to act) of its national interests any nation is being asked to cede to some alleged "higher" authority.
So, it is relatively easy for a nation like "Grand Fenwick" to agree to eliminate nuclear weapons, as they never had them and never will. However, to demand that the U.S. eliminate nuclear weapons during the height of the Cold War was to ask the U.S. to abandon a major part of its defense strategy. It wasn't going to happen.

Which gets me to my main point: no "law" - international or not - is effective unless it can be enforced.

There are plenty of articles, books and internet sites devoted to pointing out laws that forbid or require some activity that to our modern minds seem silly but that are still on the books but either are not enforced or cannot be enforced.

In the Admiralty law context, there are many forms of generally accepted terms for inclusion into a contract to engage the use of a ship (a "charter party"). These terms include the duration of the charter and penalties for its breach. They also include, usually, a specification of where a suit can be brought to enforce the agreement. Why be specific? It is hard won wisdom that the legal system of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick may not be as fair and just in handling cases brought for or against its own subjects as might some neutral court or arbitrators. Commerce abhors such inconsistency and the resultant uncertainty. It avoids it by sticking with known forums.

In matters of war and peace, enforcement of treaties, sanctions and other results of diplomacy depend on two factors:
(1)The consent of the party in violation to concede any violation and the willingness of that party to take corrective action as required, or
(2) In the absence of such consent the willingness and ability of the other parties to the treaties, etc, to take necessary actions to force the violator to consent or to remove the violator's government and replace it with a government willing to cease the violation(s).

When President Bush went to the UN regarding Iraq, he first sought the UN's help in getting Iraq to comply with existing agreements and sanctions. He asserted that failure to act would put into question the rationale for the continued existence of the UN. When the UN proved unable or unwilling to act to enforce it own resolutions, he and a group of other nations undertook the enforcement themselves, not in derogation of the UN, it seems to me, but in its defense.

Senator Kerry wants to reverse that process and adopt the idea that even a completely toothless UN is better than one that has member states willing to enforce its resolutions.

Sometimes in looking at the U.S. role with the UN, I am reminded of the movie High Noon. It becomes well-known in a community that a collection of "bad guys" is getting ready to roll into town and cause trouble. The sheriff learns of the plot and seeks the assistance of the town people. Despite their occasional muted indications of support eventually they all fail the sheriff - they all feel they "have too much to lose" or perhaps it's "the wrong fight at the wrong time." The sheriff is conflicted but chooses his "duty" over other considerations. When he has vanquished the evil-doers and the town people belatedly offer their congratulations, he throws his badge in the dirt and rides off. His honor is intact.

Update: Fixed some typos...

N.Korea: Let's Talk-- Powell Let's Not

N.Korea Sets 3 Conditions for 6-Way Talks to Resume

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the official KCNA news agency that the United States must drop its hostile policy and be prepared to join a compensation package in return for the North freezing its nuclear programs.

Good things come to those who wait...

Update:On the other hand, Powell:

Secretary of State Colin Powell rejected on Saturday a North Korean demand that the United States meet certain conditions before the communist country would agree to take part in a new round of six-country discussions on its nuclear weapons program. "My view is that all of the issues that they laid out as conditions are subject to discussions at the six-party talks," Powell said.

"This is a six-party discussion, not a U.S.-North Korea discussion or an exchange of U.S. and North Korean talking points," Powell told reporters while traveling to Japan for talks with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and other officials. Powell also plans stops in China and South Korea.

Summary: NK tries another "we're just peace-loving harmless simple folk" shot and the SecState blocks it.

Note to NK: Do you own a map? Have you noticed your geographical location? Here's some help: you've got water on two sides and states you don't want to irritate on your north and a strong country to your south that has all sorts of alliances to help come to its defense. You produce exactly nothing that the civilized world would miss (no oil, no gas, no gold, no food). Do you think making friends with Iran will help you? They've got their own problems...You may need to re-think your strategy soon...

Carter's Goofy Numbers

Former President Carter made some goofy comment the other day while speaking to Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: [A]s an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force. Do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?
CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War more than any other war until recently has been the most bloody war we’ve fought.
I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war. Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a non-violent way...

Many people have already pointed out that in raw numbers, it just isn't true that the Revolutionary War was "the most bloody."

But were there more deaths per total US population? Here are the numbers:

Revolutionary War: Battle deaths as percentage of population= .18%
Civil War: Battle deaths as percentage of population: .68%
WWI: Battle deaths as percentage of population: .054%
WWII: Battle deaths as percentage of population: .21%

By this measure, the US Civil War was the "most bloody," followed by WWII and then the Revolutionary War.

Support:
US Census Press Releases Back in July 1776, there were about 2.5 million people living in the colonies. In the Revolutionary War there were 4435 battle deaths. Battle deaths per capita %=.18% (.001774) (4435/2,500,000)

Civil War 1860 population 31,443,321 (27,489,561 free, 3,953,760 slave). Total battle deaths Union and Confederate: 214,938. Battle deaths per capita %=.68% (.0068357) (214,938/31,443,321)

WWI population
Population: 99,111,000 Battle deaths: 53,402. Battle deaths per capita %=.054% (.00053881) (53,402/99,111,000)

WWII population
Population: 133,402,470 Battle deaths: 291,557 Battle deaths per capita %=.21% (.0021855) (291,557/133,402,470)

Battle Deaths US in America's Wars: U.S. Casualties and Veterans>

American Revolution (1775–1783)
Total servicemembers
217,000
Battle deaths
4,435

Civil War (1861–1865) 
Total servicemembers (Union)
2,213,363
Battle deaths (Union)
140,414
Total servicemembers (Conf.)
1,050,000
Battle deaths (Conf.)
74,524

World War I (1917–1918)
Total servicemembers
4,734,991
Battle deaths
53,402

World War II (1940–1945)
Total servicemembers
16,112,566
Battle deaths
291,557

Korean War (1950–1953)
Total servicemembers
5,720,000
Battle deaths
33,741

Vietnam War (1964–1975)
Total servicemembers
8,744,000
Serving in-theater
3,403,000
Battle deaths
47,410
Other deaths in service (theater)
10,789
Other deaths in service (nontheater)
32,000
Nonmortal woundings
153,303
Living veterans
8,295,0001

Gulf War (1990–1991)
Total servicemembers
2,183,000
Serving in-theater
665,476
Battle deaths
147

America's Wars Total
Military service during war
42,348,460
Battle deaths
651,008

Update: Cleaned it up a little.